I had to face the truth. We could not do this. Not yet. Not until I learned to control my urges. No way would I get through sex without taking her blood.
I had no discipline around her. What would happen when I climaxed? My fangs would come out, and my thirst for blood would be too much to handle.
In some ways, I was still that adolescent boy. I hadn’t learned to control myself. I hadn’t had to.
Her skin glowed like fresh strawberries, and when I inhaled, her earthy pheromones infused my senses, and my cock responded once more.
Unfortunately, so did my teeth.
“I’m so sorry. I have to go.”
“Dante—”
But I was out the door.
I needed blood.
I needed it now.
Chapter Sixteen
Erin
“What the…” I said aloud.
He had come searching for me. He had asked to meet me here. He had gone in when he found my door unlocked—
Why had my door been unlocked?
At the moment, I didn’t care. I was so hyped up, my body so ready to be fucked. My nipples were hard and pushed against my bra.
My panties were already soaked. He hadn’t even kissed me, only touched my cheek—yet I was aching for him as if we were right at the brink of consummation.
What had I done wrong?
I wasn’t above giving myself an orgasm when I was this needy, but I knew masturbating wouldn’t suffice.
No. Only Dante Gabriel.
Dante Gabriel, whom I knew next to nothing about.
But there was someone who might be able to help. My brother’s partner, Dante’s cousin. I sent a quick text to Jay.
Are you guys off duty yet?
His response came about a minute later.
Just about. What do you need? Want to catch some breakfast?
Yes. That sounds great. Invite your new partner too.
I’ll see if he has any plans. Why? You got the hots for him?
I rolled my eyes. Men were such pigs.
No. I thought he might be hungry. Never mind if it’s that big a deal.
I’ll meet you at Port of Call. Half an hour.
Sounds good.
I pushed my phone into my purse, ran a brush through my hair, redid my ponytail, and left.
“All I know is that he’s River’s cousin,” Jay said, munching on his scrambled eggs. “Though it is weird that he showed up at your place yesterday.”
I cleared my throat and took a sip of my decaf. “Yeah, that’s why I was asking.”
Jay could usually tell when I was spewing half-truths at him. Detective’s instinct and all. Today, though, he didn’t bat an eye.
“I don’t know River very well yet,” Jay said. “He’s a good guy though. A good cop.”
“So why didn’t you bring him to breakfast?”
“He was busy. Said he had a lot of family stuff to deal with right now.”
Classic brush off. Apparently he wasn’t interested in getting to know his new partner or his sister any better. Today wasn’t the day I would find out anything more about Dante Gabriel.
I could deal. Not that I had a choice.
“You have any more information on the woman who disappeared from the ER the other night?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It’s like she vanished into thin air. And then we have another missing patient from the clinic on Gravier Street.”
“Lucy told me.”
“How did she know?”
“I have no idea. I just assumed you or some other cop had told her.”
“Not that I know of.”
That didn’t particularly surprise me. Lucy always seemed to know things before other people did. She would laugh it off, saying she came from a long line of really intuitive women. Said she didn’t believe in any of the psychic bullshit that flooded New Orleans.
I didn’t believe in that stuff either, but sometimes Lucy made me wonder.
Jay rubbed at his neck. That was the third time I’d noticed him doing so since we started breakfast.
“You all right?” I asked. “Stiff neck or something?”
“No. I’ve just got this itchy spot.”
“Let me take a look.”
“What for?”
“Because I’m a nurse, dumbass. I might be able to tell you what it is.”
“All right.”
I got up and walked over to his side of the table. “You’ve been scratching it a lot. It’s all swollen and red.”
“Erin, that’s what I do when something itches.”
“We’ve had this talk a million times, Jay. You have to resist the urge to scratch it, or you just make it worse. It’s all so red now that I can’t even see what’s going on.” I examined his neck, palpating the tissue. The skin was mostly smooth, except for a couple of tiny raised welts about an inch and a half apart.
“Looks like something bit you,” I said. “Maybe a mosquito.”
“Not that I recall, but it itches like crazy.”
“Could be a spider. Probably happened while you were asleep. Get some hydrocortisone cream from the drugstore. That will help the itching. It should go away on its own, but if those bumps aren’t gone in a week, let me know. I’ll take another look.”
“Yes, Doctor,” he said jovially.
My brother was a good guy. He didn’t ever mean to upset me, but he did know I had become a nurse because I didn’t want to go into six-figure debt going to medical school.
“Jay…”
“Oh. Sorry, Sis.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not. You made the right choice. I wouldn’t want to be up to my eyeballs in debt either. I’m sorry Mom and Dad didn’t have more resources.”
“It’s not their fault, either.”
“Yeah, I know.” He finished up his eggs. “I’m beat. It’s home and to bed for me.”
I yawned. “Yeah, me too.” I got some bills out of my purse and placed them on the table next to the few he had thrown out. “We’re good with a decent tip.”
“Okay. See you, Sis.”
As I drove home, med school invaded my mind. I’d dreamed about it since I was a kid and had gotten my first toy stethoscope for Christmas. But Jay and I were the children of a construction worker and a cashier. They worked hard, but they didn’t have the money to put me through med school. Or college for that matter. I was paying off student loans for my RN and would be for the next several years.
I was nearly home, when something compelled me to turn down a different road.
Chapter Seventeen
Dante
I no longer knew night from day. The room had no windows. Sometimes fluorescent lights nearly blinded me, but more often I was left in the dark. A servant came three times a day to release me so I could go to the bathroom and eat my meal. Meals were usually some kind of chicken or beef, potatoes, a vegetable, and a quart of water.
“The queen wants you to stay hydrated.”
Staying hydrated only made me have to piss, which I ended up having to hold until they let me go to the bathroom. If the servant got lazy and took his eyes off me, which he rarely did, I would dispose of some of the water down the toilet instead of drinking it.
Until she found out.
She never told me her name. But she knew mine.
“I hear you haven’t been drinking all of your water, Dante. Have I not told you to eat and drink everything that is brought to you?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, my queen,” I said through gritted teeth.
“When you don’t drink enough water, you don’t produce enough blood. You wouldn’t want me to drain you, would you?”
If she drained me, I would die.
Sometimes I wished for death. Other times I yearned for survival so badly that I knew I would do anything to save my own life.
What I yearned for mostly was escape. To be unchained.
How long had
I been here?
I had no idea. Days had morphed into months and months into years. My facial hair had thickened. A servant shaved me every day—not only my face but my groin. The queen liked it that way, he said, didn’t want anything hampering her access to my femoral artery.
“Answer me, damn it!”
“No, my queen. I don’t want you to drain me.”
“You need to be more careful, Dante,” Bill said, handing me a bottle of aloe lotion. “Your skin apparently isn’t used to the sun. It’s even more sensitive than normal.”
I squirted some of the lotion into my hands and rubbed it on my neck and face.
“You’re pretty red.”
“I know. I can feel it.” The aloe cooled it a little, but it still hurt. I’d come home and gorged on a pint of blood from the refrigerator. Being with Erin had made me ravenous in a way I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to sate.
Bill had found me in the kitchen wiping my mouth.
“You’re not blistering, so that’s good. What were you doing out after sunrise without sunscreen on?”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“I suppose you weren’t thinking about that, anyway.” Then he arched his brow. “You were kept somewhere away from the sun, weren’t you?”
“I’m not ready to talk yet, Bill.”
“I understand.”
But he didn’t. No one would. And he was right. I hadn’t been thinking about sunscreen.
I’d been thinking about—had been consumed with—getting to Erin. I hadn’t given a damn about what the sun might do to my skin.
“Where did you go anyway?” Bill asked.
“Just to get a cup of coffee,” I lied.
“You do know that I have a coffeemaker here.”
“Yeah, but I don’t understand it. It doesn’t look like the old one I remember.”
“It’s a single-serve machine. You use little cups or pods. Come on. I’ll show you how to use it. It’s simple. You can make a cup for your sister. She’s coming over after work for coffee. In fact, she should be here by now.”
After a quick lesson on Bill’s newfangled coffee machine, I had a cup of coffee that I didn’t particularly want. It was nice and strong, though. Strong coffee was a decent substitute for blood when necessary. We couldn’t go longer than a week without real blood, but coffee helped ease the withdrawal symptoms that popped up if we went longer than twenty-four hours.
Since I’d just had a pint of blood, I didn’t need the coffee for that reason. I drank it anyway.
“You know,” Bill said, “we can get you some help. I can find you a therapist.”
I laughed. “After hearing my story, any therapist worth his degree would have me put away.”
“I won’t put you away, Dante. If you tell me, maybe I can help.”
I shook my head. “No one can help me.”
“That’s not true.”
“I get it,” I said. “I’m not trying to be rude or unappreciative.” I was held against my will for ten years. Unspeakable things were done to me. And I finally escape and find that my father and my uncle went after me and never returned. How am I supposed to deal with any of that? No one could.
“People deal with things every day that none of us can imagine,” Bill said.
Had he been reading my mind again? Telepathy wasn’t a common trait among vampires, and I’d never known Bill to have it. Could he have developed it in the last ten years? Or was he just intuitive, having lived so long?
I stood, trying to tamp down the rage that began to boil inside me. “Yeah? Well, I’m not really concerned about those people right now. Maybe that makes me a selfish bastard. I don’t fucking care.”
“Calm down. I was trying to get you to open up your perspective a little. That’s all. You’re not ready for that yet, and that’s okay too. Sit back down, Dante. Please. Let me help you.”
I sat. I always did what Bill requested. It had been drummed into me since I was able to think for myself. He was the oldest living male pureblood vampire, and he deserved the respect of his kind.
Then something popped into my head. “If you’re the oldest living male vampire, who is the oldest living female vampire?”
He sighed. “I don’t know. Pure vampire females are much rarer than males.”
“Why?”
“In the beginning, it was because childbirth was very difficult for them. Now, I don’t know.”
“My mother died giving birth to Em.”
“Yes, she did. We’ve come a long way with medical technology, but childbirth still isn’t easy for our women. And those who do live through it produce a male child eighty percent of the time.”
“Why is that?”
“No one knows. We’ve had our best scientists studying it for decades, with no reliable outcome. I’ve discussed it with the other elders. It seems the universe has decided it’s done with us. There is no other explanation. We’re a dying species, Dante. You know that as well as I do.”
“It still doesn’t make sense. We’re superior in many ways.”
“Back to childbirth. Fertility. You know that vampire females only go into estrus once every two to three years. With human females being fertile once a month, our demise was inevitable.”
He was right. When we were gone, no one would miss us. No one even knew we still existed.
Emilia burst through the door.
“You’re late,” Bill said. “Did they keep you longer than normal?”
“No. I just went to the pharmacy for a few things after my shift ended.” She held up a bag and walked toward me, sniffing. “You smell… There’s something strange about how you smell.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s something different about your scent. Something kind of… earthy. Like truffles.”
Erin. I wasn’t ready to talk about that either.
“I was out this morning,” I said.
She sniffed again. “It smells…familiar to me. I can’t place it…” Then she clamped her hand over her mouth and ran from the room.
“Emilia, what’s wrong?” Bill yelled to her.
Her retching sounds echoed from the bathroom.
“Poor thing must have picked up a bug,” Bill said.
Either that or the smell of Erin on me made her sick. I hoped that wasn’t the case, because I planned to smell a lot more like Erin in the future. As soon as I figured out how to control my blood lust.
“Bill—”
But a knock on the door interrupted me.
Chapter Eighteen
Erin
The home that had once housed the iconic Heartsong B and B was huge and gorgeous. It was painted canary yellow with navy-blue shutters. White columns held up a balcony outside the second-floor windows, and two additional wings stood adjacent to the main part of the house. I slowly opened the wrought iron gate and strode forward until I stood in front of the cherry wood door that featured an antique brass door knocker.
Goosebumps erupted on my flesh. Why had I come here?
The compulsion had frightened me. Something had taken over me as I turned down Prytania Street, the street that would lead me toward Heartsong. Lead me to Dante.
He’d run out on me only hours before, and though I should be in bed right now, I hadn’t been able to control my desire to come here.
To see him.
I pulled the heavy ornate door knocker toward me and let it go.
I was all in now.
The door opened, and Dante stood there. “Erin. Hi.”
“Hi,” I said, warmth flooding my cheeks. “I’m not sure why I’m here. I—”
“That’s okay. Uh…I’d invite you in, but my sister’s really sick.”
What a moron I am. Needy much, Erin?
“I’m sorry. I honestly don’t know why I’m here.” I regarded his face. “That’s quite a sunburn. What happened?”
“Oh. Yeah. I told you my skin is really sensitive. This is what I get for going without sunb
lock.”
“Right.” Seemed pretty harsh for only being out for a little while. He hadn’t been red at all when I’d seen him at my apartment earlier. “So…I should go.”
“Dante, who’s at the door?” A pretty young woman with short dark hair and brown eyes approached.
Must be his sister. His sister who didn’t look sick at all. If only a hole would open on the porch and swallow me up.
“This is Erin. She’s a nurse. Erin, this is my sister, Emilia.”
She stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you. Why are you standing out there? Come on in.”
“Well, I…”
“Don’t be silly. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Sweet tea?”
“No, please. I’m fine.” I walked into the hardwood foyer.
The inside of the old house had been modernized, and all the beautiful antique furniture that I’d seen in old photos of the Heartsong was gone. Still, the house definitely had an old feel to it—as if it knew things, was keeping secrets.
I had only lived in New Orleans for a few years, but even in that short time, I’d come to realize it was a very special place. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but I’d met some otherwise rational and logical people who did, who actually believed many of the places in our fair city were haunted.
Including this house.
Dante had said it wasn’t, but as I stood in the elegant foyer, I wasn’t so sure.
I went no farther than a few feet. Why was I here? Embarrassment cloaked me, making my skin tighten around my body.
I needed to leave.
I opened my mouth to say as much, only to find Emilia staring at me, one eyebrow raised.
“Have we met before?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. I work the night shift at the ER.”
“I haven’t been to the ER in about… Well, never.” She laughed. “But something about you is very familiar.” She inhaled and let out a breath slowly.
Unchained: Blood Bond Saga: Volume One Page 7
