Enticed By Blood: A Sweetblood World Vampire Romance

by Laurie London

  His blood ran cold.

  Juliette.

  She was in terrible danger. He needed to get to her.

  A surge of anger shot through him like a drug, making the pain from the silver blade all but disappear.

  With a growl, he launched himself at the nearest revert, the one who had stabbed him and knocked the guy off balance. Unsheathing his own knife, Andre was on him in an instant, slashing and jabbing. The instant the blade struck home, he pushed it to the hilt and twisted. With his heart muscle pierced by silver, the vampire would soon turn to dust.

  Andre pulled out the weapon and jumped to his feet, ready to take on the next asshole standing between him and Juliette.

  To his surprise, the other revert held up his hands and backed away. “I don’t want any trouble, okay? These two aren’t—” The guy grimaced as he glanced at the body withering at his feet. “—Aren’t my friends. I just met them a few weeks ago.”

  He was young. Probably only a few years past his Time of Change, when a born vampire’s cravings began, which would put him around the same age as Etienne. His brother had made some poor choices, too.

  “Then get the fuck out of here.” Andre hesitated just long enough to ensure that the guy was indeed leaving and not planning to double-cross him the minute his back was turned, then he sprinted to the hotel and Juliette.

  Not wanting to waste time using the door and the stairs, he scaled the wall, just as the vampire had. He’d reach Juliette faster this way.

  The muscles in his injured arm cried out with every movement, and energy drained out of his system.

  He needed blood. A lot of it. But he couldn’t stop. Not until he got Juliette away from that monster. It would only take a vampire a few minutes to drain a human, so he didn’t have much time.

  He reached for the ledge and his hand slipped. “Fuuuuck!”

  Hanging on by only the fingertips of his other hand, he willed himself to keep going. Juliette needed him. And he needed her.

  With a loud grunt, he pulled himself up and swung inside.

  But the room was empty.

  Juliette’s sweet scent was mixed with that of the revert’s, the putrid, rotted meat smell of a vampire who only drank human blood.

  Heart hammering in his chest, he dragged himself to a locked cabinet in the closet and punched in the code. Grabbing the gun, he jammed in a clip with silver bullets, chambered a round and headed out the door.

  On the far side of the hotel’s center staircase, the plastic film sealing off the north wing of the hotel had been torn away.

  The revert had taken Juliette there. Half-running/half-staggering, he headed in that direction, each step harder than the last.

  He’d been fooling himself, pretending he’d never loved her. That he could go on with his life and forget about her. Once you fall in love, it’s hard to go on without it, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise. And now that she was in danger, he’d risk everything to save her.

  CHAPTER 7

  O nce they were deep inside the area being renovated, the woman shoved Juliette down to the ground.

  “Much better,” she said, taking a deep breath. “It didn’t smell right in that room. Made me sick to my stomach.”

  Juliette couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but there was no other possible explanation for the fangs and super-human abilities. The woman was a vampire.

  Rubbing the abrasion on her elbow from hitting the sawdust covered floor, she glanced around, looking desperately for another way out but there was none. Maybe if she could keep her talking… “What do you want?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” the woman asked flatly. “We’re hungry.”

  “We?”

  “My friends. Your boyfriend was arguing with them.”

  Juliette’s heart tightened with dread. Those men were vampires, too. That explained what she’d seen out the window. They’d hurt Andre, but had they…killed him?

  Bile rose in her throat and she choked. “What did you do to him?”

  The woman shrugged, advancing closer. “Couldn’t tell you and I’m too hungry to care.”

  Juliette scrambled away from her, trying to put as much distance between the two of them as she could. In her haste, she hit a pair of sawhorses and knocked a tool box to the ground, scattering tools everywhere. She grabbed an awl and held the point out like a knife.

  Tilting her head, the woman just stared at her like a hawk examining the prey it was about to shred to pieces. Her eyes were almost more frightening than her fangs. Emotionless black holes with no irises. Even the whites were dark.

  “Are you scared yet?” the vampire asked. The curiosity in her tone was genuine, as if she truly wasn’t sure.

  What a sick freak. “Why? Do you want to hear me beg?”

  “Blood tastes best when the host is frightened.” She talked like she was reading from some kind of vampire manual.

  Instinctively, Juliette wanted to cover up as much exposed skin as possible. As she pulled the robe tighter, her fingertip brushed against the amulet in her pocket.

  What had the housekeeper said—that it was supposed to ward off evil? Talk about an epic fail.

  She rubbed it with the pad of her thumb anyway. Maybe at the very least, it would give her a sense of peace. She said a silent prayer, hoping Andre had managed to get away.

  Footsteps pounded on the wood floor.

  A rip of plastic.

  And there was Andre, stepping into the room. He was still favoring his arm, but now he had a gun. And from the looks of it, he was ready to use it.

  “Get. The fuck. Away. From her.”

  “Andre, no!” Juliette yelled. “Go back. She’s a monster.” She had no idea if a gunshot would kill a vampire, but she couldn’t assume it would.

  The woman turned her head from Andre to Juliette then back again, as if she couldn't decide whether biting Juliette would be worth the risk of getting shot.

  Too late. Andre fired, and the shot echoed in the empty space.

  The vampire fell in a heap on top of Juliette.

  What the hell? She hadn’t been this close a second ago. Juliette kicked her off and looked in horror as the body began to curl in on itself.

  The vampire had been at least ten feet away, next to the sawhorses when she was shot…or had she?

  Dropping the awl, Juliette jumped up. “Andre, are you—”

  “Stay away.” With the gun at his feet, he doubled over in pain.

  He must be delirious from blood loss. Ignoring his protests, she flew to his side and tried to examine his injury.

  “Juliette, no,” he said, turning his head away.

  “You’re hurt. You need help.”

  “You need to…stay away. Please. It’s not…safe.”

  His eyes looked like they had when they first arrived at the hotel. The pupils were huge. Only a thin gold ring of his irises remained.

  “In this condition…I’ll…hurt you.”

  “What are you talking about?” The man was clearly going into shock.

  “I am…like her.”

  Putting a hand gently on his back, she leaned in close. “You’re in shock, Andre. You’ve lost a lot of blood. Let me—”

  Then there was a sharp, stabbing pain in her neck and her world went black.

  CHAPTER 8

  What the hell have I done?

  Andre crawled away from Juliette, collapsed to the floor and covered his head with his hands.

  How could he have been so stupid?

  He should’ve been more forceful with her to get away from him. Showed his fangs to scare her. Then she would’ve known what he was, that he was no different than the vampire who’d attacked her.

  But part of him—a very dark and deadly part—had wanted her to come closer. He’d wanted to taste her rich blood again—mouthfuls and mouthfuls of it—until his energy had been replenished and his hunger sated. He’d allowed himself to be too enticed by her. He’d caved to his dark nature and let i
t control him. He’d taken too much, and now she was gone.

  His precious, beautiful Juliette.

  He destroyed the best thing that had ever happened to him. The one woman who’d finally made him feel alive.

  What a fool. What a selfish, monstrous fool.

  He wasn’t sure how long he spent on the floor. It felt as if time both stopped and sped out of control. Five seconds? Five hours? He didn’t care. He’d stay here until the sun came up and sucked all the energy from his body.

  “Are you okay?” A male voice echoed somewhere nearby.

  Mateo.

  So the Guardian had finally arrived. Well, he was too damn late.

  The guy was asking him something else, but Andre tuned him out.

  He wasn’t okay. He’d never be okay.

  Mateo came closer, the sound of his boots like a metronome in Andre’s head.

  “Leave me alone,” he started to say, but then a soft, quiet voice answered Mateo’s question.

  “Yeah, I’m…a little woozy, that’s all. But I think…I’ll be fine. Can you check on Andre?”

  Juliette? At the sound of her voice, hope pricked at the agony surrounding his heart. It couldn’t be possible, could it? He’d held her in his arms. She was limp. He’d drained her.

  He lifted his head from the floor, not sure if what he thought he’d heard was real or his over-hopeful imagination.

  Juliette sat on the ground with her back against the wall. Shaken and pale, but alive.

  A tidal wave of emotion nearly knocked him to the floor again and he choked, barely able to speak. “Juliette! You’re…alive.”

  She flashed him a weak smile. “Yes, and so are you.”

  “But I thought you were…” He looked at Mateo. “I don’t understand.”

  “Did you think you’d drained her?” his friend asked.

  He pushed to his feet. “Yes, I—” Pain stabbed at his shoulder, and he groaned.

  “If you had,” Mateo said, bending to help Juliette, “you’d be healed by now. I don’t think you took much from her.”

  Andre bristled. Felt his pupils expanding with anger as he thought of another male’s hands on Juliette.

  She’s mine.

  Leaping forward and ignoring his pain, Andre was over there in a flash, grabbed his friend by the shoulder and shoved him away. “Get away from her.”

  “Whoa, calm down,” Mateo said, brushing the sawdust from his shirt. “I was just trying to help.”

  Andre dropped to his knees in front of Juliette and took her hands in his. They were cold. Too cold. “You were dead, ma cherie. In my arms. How is it that you are alive?”

  “I must’ve fainted. I’m one of those people who passes out when it comes to blood. When I get my blood drawn, even if they only take a little, I have to do it while lying down otherwise I think about it too much and— Well, you’ve seen what happens.”

  The thing was, she hadn’t fainted when he took her blood in San Francisco. Was it because they’d been making love at the time and he’d quickly wiped her memory afterwards?

  The fact remained, however, that he had almost killed her tonight.

  She closed her eyes. She had to be terrified of him.

  “I’m so sorry, Juliette.” Overcome with self-loathing, he let go of her hands and started to move away, but her touch on his knee stopped him.

  “I must admit, I’m surprised and shocked, but I’m not frightened of you,” she said, guessing his thoughts. “You’re completely different from them.”

  He searched her eyes but didn’t see a sliver of fear. She had to be in shock. Either that or she was crazy. “But—”

  She shushed him. “I would like someone to explain this new reality to me, though. I think I deserve that much.”

  Yes, she did. Andre darted a glance at Mateo. The Guardian shrugged. He didn’t have a problem with it.

  So Andre told her about their kind, that only Darkbloods and other reverts still killed humans. The majority of vampires today lived peacefully and secretly within the human population, staying out of the sunlight and needing blood only occasionally. And despite popular mythology, they didn’t live forever—just several human lifetimes.

  “It’s against our laws for humans to know of our existence,” Andre continued. “If someone finds out, we must wipe their memory. Which was why I wiped yours.”

  He started to explain about the Van Helsing groups, a small but secret society of vampire hunters who track and kill his kind whether they’re reverts or not, but she interrupted him.

  “You wiped my memory?”

  He looked down at his hands. “I took your blood in San Francisco, so I had to remove those recollections—”

  Her hand flew to her neck. “You took my blood before this?”

  Guilt stabbed at him. He nodded.

  “And I didn’t turn into a vampire?”

  And then it dawned on him what she’d been thinking. “You’re not going to turn from my bite tonight, ma cherie. It takes the blood of two vampires to become a changeling. That’s why you didn’t change back in San Francisco.”

  “And permission from the Council,” Mateo added. “They must approve before a human is turned.”

  Yes, the Council, Andre thought with distaste. He’d had a few run-ins with them in the past.

  “And did I pass out then?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. He could almost see the cogs turning in her mind. “So no humans know about you, except for these hunters?”

  Mateo piped in before Andre could answer. “There are others, but they’ve been sworn to secrecy. I know a few other Guardians who are with human women. They seem to make it work.”

  She stretched out her leg and touched Andre’s ankle with her bare foot. “Would you want to make things work between us? Now that I know the truth.”

  His head snapped up. “You aren’t afraid of me?”

  “Only of you breaking my heart.”

  He blew out a long, slow breath. Juliette wasn’t afraid of him, despite what he’d done to her.

  “Listen,” Mateo said, clearing his throat. “I’ll leave you two alone. I’ve got some clean up work to do.”

  Andre glanced over at the female vampire’s body. A pile of ash and some metal rivets from the clothes she’d been wearing were all that was left.

  “Thank you, my friend, for handling things,” he said.

  Mateo grinned. “What can I say? It’s my job. I’m here to serve.”

  Andre helped Juliette through the construction site to his suite of rooms in the other wing of the hotel.

  After making sure she got something to eat, he tucked her into bed then turned to leave.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To my study. I need to catch up on some reading.”

  “Why can’t you do that here?” She patted the mattress beside her.

  He wanted nothing more than to climb into bed with her and pull her into his arms. “Probably not a good idea.”

  She propped herself up on one elbow. “That’s why you left San Francisco, isn’t it? Because you were afraid that something like this would happen?”

  He nodded. “I implanted a memory suggestion with several of the staff so they thought I’d left with a woman who was my wife. I knew you’d go there to find me. I thought it’d be easier if you hated me.”

  “Easier?” she choked. “Easier for whom? I hated that I hated you.”

  He rubbed a hand over his face and thought about the nights he’d spent on Bourbon Street. The absinthe bars. The women. “The truth is, I’ve been miserable, too. I’ve done everything I could think of to forget you.”

  “And did any of it work?” she asked, softly.

  “No.”

  CHAPTER 9

  It took forever for Juliette to convince Andre that she was okay. She couldn’t talk him out of sleeping on the couch in his study the first night, and he waited on her hand and foot the next day. After th
at, he caved, but slept on the far side of the bed with his back to her, refusing to touch her.

  She understood that he was afraid of hurting her, but she found it harder and harder to stay away. She craved the intimacy of a physical relationship with him, and yet she respected him and wanted to honor his feelings, too. She just hoped he’d come around soon. Although her whole world had been turned upside down with the revelation that vampires actually existed, she’d come to terms with it because her love for Andre superseded everything.

  During this time, she examined the cabinetry her father had made and where they were to be installed. Turned out, the contractor had made some minor adjustments to the space that caused them not to fit. All that was needed was some trim. Although Andre had tried to explain the situation to her father, he hadn’t listened to him. He did listen to his daughter, however, milling the trim pieces one day and overnighting them the next.

  Juliette also helped Andre and his staff clean up the mess from the storm, clearing branches and debris, and raking leaves. No one seemed to question their employer’s strange hours, having accepted the fact that he was a night owl and slept late. This gave her a chance to email and get some work done online.

  It was after midnight and Andre was still at his desk, pouring over the financials of a new deal when Juliette came up behind him.

  “When will you be finished? Let's go to bed.”

  “If you're tired, you can—

  “Who said anything about being tired?” She rotated his chair around so that he was facing her and then dropped her robe. She’d gone to one of the lingerie shops in the French Quarter and bought black lace panties, a matching bra and high heels.

  His gaze roamed slowly over her body, making her nipples tighten. She wanted his hands all over her, exploring every inch.

  “Ma cherie, what are you doing?” he asked huskily.

  “What does it look like I'm doing?” She loosened his tie and straddled his lap. “I need you, Andre. I want you to make love to me.”