Blood Thorn

by A. S. Green

  Alex recoiled with surprise. If he’d had any doubts about her power, that unexpected mood shift would have slapped them right out of him. Her anger released a chemical booster into the air and, like a shot of adrenaline, it went straight to his heart.

  Whatever his expression was, it pissed her off even more. “This conversation is done. And you’re going to have to find a new assistant. Now, let me go.”

  Damn. He needed to talk faster. He put his arms out wide to block her passage. “That man you saw in the alley… He’s been struggling with his control and what you witnessed was a terrible accident.”

  Her eyebrows drew together in a clear expression of cynical distrust. “It didn’t look like an accident. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear he was very intentionally drinking her blood.”

  “Ah, well. Yes.” Alex figured they’d be getting to this part soon enough. “He was feeding from her on purpose; the accident was taking it too far.”

  Ainsley’s knees locked. “Oh my god.”

  It was another mood switch, another emission of power. Alex inhaled sharply, his body reacting not only to the influx of pheromones in the air, but to the scent of Ainsley’s heated blood. His erection punched at the front of his pants as if it knew its true mate, and maybe in normal times, that would be fine. But these were not normal times.

  “I’m being punked, right? Please tell me you’re kidding,”

  “Sorry,” Alex said. “I can’t do that.” He dropped his gaze from her face to her hips, focusing there because he expected her to bolt at any moment. Eyes could deceive, but hips never did.

  Ainsley turned sideways and covered her face. “Holy shit. Holyshit, holyshit, holyshit.”

  Then she pulled her hands from her face, and stared at him in disbelief. “But you’re a businessman.” She threw her arms out in a gesture of exasperation. “An obviously successful one!”

  Damn. Her chemical output was downright mercurial—a ba’vonn-shee banquet—and this new flare of exasperated incredulity made Alex’s lungs expand to their full potential. “Is that going to be a problem for you?”

  “What kind of GQ, movie star lookalike…” She waved her hands around like she was looking for the word. “Fortune 500 businessman hangs out with a guy in an emo wannabe vampire cult? It’s—”

  “Rory’s not a wannabe, though he’s not a vampire either. He’s a ba’vonn-shee. As am I.”

  Ainsley looked at him like he’d lost his mind, which was ironic because that’s exactly why he needed her. Without her as his queen, he would be following in Rory’s footsteps soon enough.

  “This is crazy,” she said. “I have to get out of here.”

  Giving her more fodder for that particular conclusion wasn’t ideal, but Alex was already deep into it and running out of time. “It’s true we drink blood for our physical nutrition, so we’re more or less vampiric, but we’re actually fae. Originally from Scotland.”

  She glanced toward the door, giving her next move away even as she tried to appear casual. “So you’re telling me you and your friend are, like, vampires in a kilt?”

  Alex raised his eyebrows at her barb. He didn’t tolerate impudence—not from his staff, and rarely from his clan—but he had to say, he found her attitude tantalizing.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets, hoping that would put her more at ease. “I’ve never met an actual vampire but as I understand it, they are created. Ba’vonn-shees, on the other hand, are born.”

  She scoffed. “I doubt the girl in the alley would appreciate the distinction.”

  Alex pulled his hands from his pockets and stepped closer, his desire to be near her struggling against what he knew was right.

  She took a strategic side-step, getting a better angle on the door.

  He paused. “We don’t have to be dangerous, Ainsley.”

  “You expect me to believe that?” Her eyes were active as she quickly made her calculations.

  “Yes. I do expect you to believe that.”

  Ainsley launched herself toward the door. It took no effort for Alex to meet her there, and he sandwiched her warm body between his own and the solid wood panel, her back against his front.

  Her body heaved with its panicked need for oxygen. She smelled like she did the other night—heather and thyme—and, in heels, her ass fit perfectly into the crook of his groin.

  “In addition to our exceptionally good hearing, we’re also exceptionally fast. Now, please. Take it easy. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Do you hear yourself?” she seethed.

  Yes, he did. But it wasn’t like he wanted to be rough with her. There was just no way he could let her walk away from him again. “My job is to protect you.”

  “Like hell it is.”

  Even trapped, Alex could feel the fire, the fight in her rise up. He got the impression hell was a strong curse word for her sensibilities.

  She grabbed the door handle and jerked. Her elbow caught him in the obliques, and the door rattled in its frame.

  “Stop resisting. I don’t mean to overwhelm you, but there’s more I need to explain. This will all make sense if you give me some time.”

  “I seriously doubt that. I need to go.”

  “You need to come home with me. The rest of my clan needs to meet you.” Alex couldn’t wait for the others to stand in her presence, to bask in her powerful emissions. Finn was right; they would survive. For the first time in over twenty years, hope surged.

  “There’s no way I’m going home with you.” She thrashed in his arms and Alex suppressed the rumbling growl in his chest.

  This wasn’t working, and his time was up. He didn’t want to muscle her around any more than he already had, but she was giving him no choice. He wrapped his arm around her waist and hauled her back toward his desk, sitting her ass on top of it.

  For a split second—a very dangerous second—his imagination went to other scenes they could play-out on his desk, but he’d made a vow to himself and he wouldn’t break it.

  He picked up the small potted plant at the opposite corner of his desk. Its yellowed leaves had seen better days. He’d meant to toss it last week. Thank Christ he hadn’t, because now the plant could do the talking for him. “Hold out your hands.”

  “Why?” She sounded more irritated than afraid. Alex took that as a victory.

  “Hold out your hands,” he said, his impatience clear.

  Still, she folded her arms, tucking her hands into her armpits. More red spirals fell out of the clip at the back of her head.

  He grabbed her wrist and forcibly unfolded her arms. Then he turned her hand upward and set the plant in her palm. “Now look at me.”

  Ainsley looked up, and Alex held her gaze. He stared into those blue eyes as he dragged the back of his fingers down her cheek, along her jaw, then the length of her neck. He let his hand fall away before he touched too much.

  Even so, her nipples pressed against the silk, her neck and cheeks bloomed with a rush of heat, and her pulse throbbed in the hollow of her throat. Her voice came out as a whisper. “What are you doing?”

  He tipped his chin down to gesture toward the plant, and she dropped her gaze. Just as he expected, the plant was no longer wilted. Its stalk had thickened, its leaves had unfurled, going from a pale yellow to a lush dark green.

  Ainsley blinked at it in amazement. “How did you do that?”

  “I didn’t.” Alex leaned down to whisper in her ear. “You did. You’re life.”

  When he pulled back, her lips parted and there was a moment when he saw something in her eyes, something that registered as excitement. But then, just as quickly, the moment was gone.

  She shoved the plant back into his hands. “You’re insane.”

  “Not yet I’m not. Now, please. Can we sit and talk about this?”

  “So you can what? Suck my blood?”

  Alex’s mouth watered at the suggestion. “You never know. You might like it.”

  Ainsley’s eyebrows shot u
p with incredulity, and if Alex could have punched himself, he would have. What was he saying, You might like it?

  Ainsley put her hands on his chest and pushed. “This is looney tunes. Now let me go.”

  Alex could have held his ground, he was infinitely stronger than she was, but this time he stepped back and let her hop off the desk. She was halfway to the door when he played his trump card. “I know who you are, Ainsley.”

  That did it. She froze in her tracks and looked over her shoulder at him.

  “I know where you come from. Don’t you want to know that, too?”

  Her mouth popped open, and he knew he’d hit the targeted nerve. She’d bared it to him when they talked at the bar. Not knowing her roots…it bothered her. A lot.

  “That’s not fair,” she said.

  He folded his arms. “You’re the one playing hardball.”

  “I would’ve never told you about my dad if I’d known you’d use it.”

  “Not against you,” he said, putting as much meaning into his words as he could. “Never against you.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said, her voice whispery soft.

  “Everything I’ve told you is true.”

  “Then tell me what you know.”

  “Just to have you run away again? No. My clan needs you, and you want answers. This will be a mutually beneficial arrangement for both of us.”

  She bowed her head and muttered something unintelligible at the floor.

  “Tell me you’ll stay, Ainsley. We’re not barbarians.”

  She raised her head and stared at him. Alex could taste her indecision in the air—yet another emotional sampling of all she had to offer his clan. Her pheromonal communication was incredible, and his body’s reaction to each signal had been intense and exultant.

  There was a knock, jolting Ainsley out of her paralysis. Alex strode past her and swung the door open. “Judith.”

  “My apologies, Mr. Campbell. With the last minute change, Ms. Morris’s employment paperwork took longer to process than I thought.”

  Morris. So that was her last name. And he had her paperwork, which meant he also had her address. That gave Alex the information he needed to make a bold but risky move.

  “If it meets with your approval,” Judith continued, “I thought we could go over her assignments for the week, then I could give her a tour of the offices and introduce her to the staff before she starts full-time tomorrow.”

  “Excellent plan. But I’ve had something come up that will take me away from the office for the day.” This was a lie, but Alex needed a reason for suddenly giving Ainsley the space she demanded. “You can finish her orientation, but we’ll talk about Ms. Morris’s assignments in the morning.”

  He shifted his focus to Ainsley. She didn’t take her eyes off him, probably wondering what he was up to.

  He hoped he was reading her right. It was a huge gamble to let her go without finishing their personal business, but that gamble could pay-off big if he played it right. Based on everything he knew about her so far, the next steps would go more smoothly if it was her own curiosity and initiative that brought her back to him tomorrow.

  If he lost that bet…well…he now knew where to find her.

  Ainsley’s gaze shifted to the rejuvenated plant, giving Alex a surge of confidence that his instincts were correct. He strode to his desk and picked it up, setting it gently in her hands again. “Keep it. For your cubicle.”

  Her hands wrapped around the ceramic pot as if cradling a bomb, then she stepped closer to the door testing the limits of his acquiescence.

  Alex bowed his head in submission. She was his queen, after all.

  7

  Tuesday morning

  Ainsley’s eyes snapped open at the sound of her alarm. Fear clung to the edges of her memory, but it wasn’t a nightmare that had left her drenched in sweat. Not entirely anyway, because the lingering flickers of terror were accompanied by a faint pulsing between her thighs.

  She searched her subconscious for what might have caused it and resurrected the feel of massive arms encircling her waist, then the wild, erotic feel of warm lips at her neck, the tickle of teeth grazing against her skin.

  Alex’s deep voice flooded her thoughts. “You never know. You might like it.”

  “Sweet suffering Jesus.” She threw an arm over her eyes. She’d hoped yesterday had been a figment of her imagination, but it wasn’t. Her new boss was actually convinced that he and that guy in the alley were some kind of…vampire…fae…something-or-other.

  He’d completely bamboozled her at Douggie’s, fooling her into thinking he was just some normal, though overdressed businessman in a college bar. How could someone so successful and outrageously good looking be so completely deranged?

  And what was that weird trick with the plant? It was obviously some David-Blaine street magic designed to get her off-balance.

  Well, she wasn’t an idiot. Alex Campbell didn’t really know who she was, or where she came from. For God’s sake, he hadn’t even met her before Friday.

  Maybe her mom was tight-lipped, and her own research had turned up bupkis on her dad, but there were safer ways, more normal ways to get answers than to go back to Thorn Enterprises.

  There was a knock, and Ainsley rolled over to face the door. She’d opted to live at home during college to save money for grad school. Wake-up knocks were nothing new. “Come in.”

  The door slowly opened, revealing her mother. She was short and petite with chocolate brown hair and wide brown eyes. She had none of Ainsley’s curls—or curves—and if not for the shape of their mouths, there’d be no resemblance between them at all.

  “I heard your alarm. You’re getting an early start. It’s only five-thirty.”

  Ainsley pushed up on her elbows. “I’ve got to stop at the lab this morning before going in to work.”

  Her mother entered and sat on the edge of Ainsley’s bed. Her expression read: concerned-mom speech ahead. “You looked beat when you came home yesterday, and that was just orientation.”

  Ainsley cringed, remembering. “It wasn’t your ordinary orientation.”

  “Don’t you think—” Her mother suddenly stopped, pinched her lips together, then exhaled, starting in again. “Listen. I know I’ve said this before. But after killing yourself all semester, you need a break.”

  Ainsley flopped back on her pillows. Her mother had been right about that last week. If she had any idea about what had happened since then, she’d probably wrap her only child in protective foam and lock her in her room.

  “You’re right,” Ainsley said.

  “I am?” Her mother’s brows arched with incredulity.

  “I’m going to give them my notice when I go in today.” She hadn’t given her manager at the fair that courtesy, but then, her old manager wasn’t nearly as bloodthirsty.

  Her mother let out a breath. “Good. Now I’ll go make you some breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day.” She got up and left the room.

  Ainsley swung her legs over the edge of the mattress and took a long drink from the water glass she’d left on her bedside table. She glanced up. Did the plants on her windowsill look…healthier? Fuller than the day before?

  She swallowed, then froze with her glass halfway lowered to the table. It wasn’t just the plant in Alex’s office that had acted so inexplicably. The floral crown at the fair… The petals on the daisy at the bar… Had she really had something to do with those things?

  No. No way. She shook her head to clear the preposterous ideas from her imagination. None of it was real.

  Not bothering to shower, she got dressed, grabbed the bagel from her mom as she rushed down the hallway, and made it to campus just as the overnight lights in the parking lot were starting to blink out. She was in the bright fluorescent lab by six-fifteen and making the last of her notes by seven forty-five.

  The lab door opened behind her. “You’re here early, Miss Morris.”

  She glanced ov
er her shoulder to see Professor Patel hanging his sports coat on the hook. There was more hair on his corduroy pants—likely from his St. Bernard, Snuggles—than there was on his shiny bald head.

  “Good morning, Professor. I wanted to get some data collected before work.”

  “You’ve got a day job this summer?” he asked in his lilting accent. Then he chuckled warmly. “I do respect your work ethic, and I want you to know, I recommended you to the selection committee for the Eaton-Jackson grant.”

  Ainsley set down her notebook. “Thank you, Professor. I appreciate it.”

  “Don’t thank me.” He slipped on his lab coat and came to stand beside her at the tank of micro algae she’d been studying. “I’ve had students working on this photosynthesis project for years; no one has been able to get the energy-transfer results like you have.”

  “Really?” Her thoughts naturally returned to Alex’s potted plant.

  “Really. It’s exciting, and it’ll do wonders for your Northwestern application, and if you continue to pursue this in grad school, you should consider publishing. Light harvesting in aquatic environments… It’s impressive.”

  “Maybe I will. If you really think it’s that good.”

  He tipped his head to the side as if questioning her sincerity. “Modesty is a rare thing in academics, particularly with someone with your ambition. Embrace your gifts, Miss Morris. That’s all we have to set ourselves apart.”

  “Yes, Professor.” Ainsley gathered her things, feeling a warm sense of pride in her chest. She slipped out of the lab, heading to the small student office where she’d been assigned a desk. She had her head down when she hit the hallway and ran into a wall that had never been there before. “Uff.”

  “Ope, watch it, Ainsley.”

  She looked up. “Ah! Sorry, Frankie. Didn’t see you there.”

  Frankie, the overnight custodian closed the supply closet door. He was a wiry man with the paunch of middle age. His sandy blond hair was cut short, and his face was nearly obscured by a thick beard.

  “No worries. Just storin’ these mops away. You’re up-and-at-it, I see.” His eyes descended her body. “Not your usual T-shirt and dungarees, either.”