Then she heard Achilles respond. Good. She’s finally transitioned.
Congratulations. You got her through it.
Beck swung her gaze across the room focusing on Achilles. With a start she realized she was hearing the private mental exchange between him and Dmitri. Even with the suddenly guilty dip in her stomach at the thought that she was eavesdropping, this was too important. She screwed her eyes shut and tried to tune in, or mind meld, or whatever it was vampires did.
Don’t congratulate me just yet. I think we might have a worse problem to deal with, and it may be something I need your help to resolve.
Exactly how did she get through her transition? I thought it had stalled.
She needed ichor.
Saints. Brother—tell me you didn’t feed her.
What else was I suppose to do, let her die?
Dmitri let out an irritated sigh that echoed in her head. You know I have to ask you this, have you imprinted with her?
The long pause made her stomach squeeze and turn uncomfortably. What was an imprint and how dangerous was it? The way Dmitri sounded, it seemed like a very big no-no, which meant it couldn’t be good.
Yes.
Hell. You’d better bring her to my office at headquarters. I’ve got news regarding the lead on Rebecca’s maker.
Beck’s eyes popped open, but she didn’t dare look in Achilles’s direction for fear of revealing that she’d been listening in. Dear God. What did it all mean?
Suddenly he was no longer on the couch. Instead he was right beside her, his words close enough to send a shiver of longing down her spine. “We’re leaving. Get your jacket.”
Beck crossed her arms and turned to face him. “It’s almost dawn. I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Vampires and sunlight don’t exactly mix, do they?”
“You’re right. Grab your sunglasses, too.”
“I fail to see how that’d help me from burning to a crisp.”
He heaved a sigh and materialized her sunglasses into his hand. “You won’t fry, just possibly get a nasty sunburn. But from the looks of your skin, it wouldn’t be anything you haven’t risked before.” He unfolded the glasses and gently slid them on her face. “The sunglasses will delay getting a migraine from the intensity of the light.”
“But how—”
He pressed a cool broad finger to her lips, making them tingle. “You can ask questions later. Right now we have an appointment to keep. I’ll drive.”
He phased a fitted black leather jacket and a pair of ultra black wraparound sunglasses for himself and her wool peacoat. He walked her to the door and opened it. “After you.”
She looked at the open door. “Why are we going in the car when you could just zap us there?”
“It’s called transporting, and we’re going in the car because I like driving the car.”
“What was Dmitri talking about?”
He stared at her long and hard, a glint of wariness in his eyes. “Well, well. Eavesdropping at such a tender age for a vampire. That’s a new one.”
She cocked her hip to the side and crossed her arms. “What is an imprint?”
She couldn’t see his eyes behind his dark sunglasses that all but screamed screw you. “Imprint?”
“Yes.”
“Something you don’t need to worry about because you’re planning to go back to being mortal. Right?”
“Damn right.” Beck twisted her tongue in her mouth gnawing on the edge of it. Against her better judgment she grasped his arm. “Perhaps I want to know for scientific reasons.”
“Perhaps you want to know because you’re nosy.” Beneath her fingers his arm flexed. God his muscles were huge.
“Look, I think I have the right if there’s something growing, forming, building, whatever between us.”
He pulled his sunglasses down and his intense gaze hit her dead center in the chest. “Right now the only thing between us is a relationship as mentor and fledgling. Once you go back to being mortal, even that will cease to exist, and I’ll just be a figment of your imagination.”
More like her sexual fantasies. She glanced down at her hand on his arm and realized he hadn’t removed it. His jaw was working hard, and she could hear his teeth grinding as if he held an awful lot back. The hot blatantly sexual energy coming off him hit her. She looked up through her lashes at him. “So do you feed all your fledglings like that?”
“No.”
Beck quirked a brow, her lips bending into a small warm smile. “Then I’m special.”
“Yes.”
His voice sounded thick. Her fangs throbbed just behind her gums at his response. Clearly he didn’t ever intend to tell her this, but she still wanted something from him. She wanted him to explain the imprint to her rather than just brush off her questions as if she were stupid.
“You want something, Achilles. I can see it in your eyes and feel it through our touch. What do you want from me?”
He gently, but firmly pulled her hand from his arm, leaving her feeling the loss as if she’d suddenly snapped her mooring and was now adrift in an unfamiliar ocean.
“Nothing. Not a damn thing.” With that he turned on his heel and strode out into the dawn, leaving her to follow.
Chapter 8
Achilles was helpless to resist her.
She slid her small hands up his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him from breast to thigh. Her body heat seared everywhere they touched. “Feed me.” She might as well have said take me. Either way it had the same impact on him. Achilles’s legs trembled. His body ached to feel her.
A low determined rumble from her stomach indicated she wasn’t just reacting to the imprint forming between them, she was indeed still hungry. Achilles blew out a ragged breath. He didn’t need the damn oxygen in his body but maintaining control was essential to his survival and hers.
It was his duty to feed her, to protect her, no matter what it cost him personally.
And that cost was going to be high.
Incredibly high.
Forming a full imprint with her would mean he’d be excommunicated from the clan. It was one thing to exist as a halfling, unable to feel the things others took for granted; it was completely another to be excommunicated from the clan.
Vampires like that had few options and either became solitary or part of a nest of reivers to survive. Life as a solitary vampire was impossible for a halfling. He’d go mad without interacting with others of his kind. And adopting the mores of a nesting vampire went against everything within him.
No. That wasn’t an option, either. If it came down to being excommunicated, he’d beg Dmitri to behead him. But at this moment none of that mattered. What mattered was taking care of his fledgling, the cost be damned.
He looked down into her eyes and found himself in the cool tranquility of a shaded wood. “Then eat.” The words came out with a slight tremor, because, despite the fear of what might happen, his need was almost as intense as hers.
Her fingers threaded through the hair at his nape, her small palm curving to cup the back of his head. She pressed his head down at the same time she rose up on her toes to bring them face-to-face.
“Kiss me.”
Achilles couldn’t stifle the primal growl vibrating deep in his chest. He captured her mouth, fangs and all, in a fierce kiss, his hands splaying over the curve of her hips. Her soft wet mouth against him sent sparks shooting through him like an electrical hot wire.
The dewy tongue that had been torturous before now brushed with a tempting silken slide that made him lose all his good intentions. Her scent blended with the nuance of his own ichor, making her taste like a sweet confection impossible to resist.
He crushed her to him, reveling in the feel of her firm, hard-tipped breasts pressed against the wall of his chest. The soft sound she made deep in her throat torqued his lust yet another notch. And he knew, he feared, that every second, every sensation, bound them more tightly together, creating
a stronger, unbreakable imprint.
Mind-blowing as kissing Rebecca was, Achilles tried to pull back. The warning bells in his brain were pealing loud and clear. He knew, as she couldn’t, the ramifications of taking this to the next level. Deep in the recesses of his mind he was conscious of what was really happening between them and his duty to stop it.
Her strength had increased and Achilles found himself locked in her arms. She moved swiftly. Her fangs scraped along the tender inside of his lip as she suckled it, releasing a flood of ichor into his mouth. She kissed, still sucking at his lip, her tongue touching and twirling with his.
You have to stop. You must stop. Kill the imprint. Kill it now, his rational mind screamed. But gods, how could he release her when she felt so damn perfect in his arms? When for the first time in centuries had he felt awake, alive? All he could think was how good it would be to bond with this woman.
But she doesn’t want to be a vampire. That thought stopped him in his tracks. He pulled back, swiping roughly at the remaining ichor seeping from the cuts already healing in his lip.
“That’s enough, fledgling. No more.”
Rebecca tipped up her chin, licking her bee-stung lips, dark from their kiss, with relish. “It’s no big deal.” Hazel eyes gleamed with excitement. “A kiss, that’s all.”
If she only knew. He could already feel the throbbing of the imprint in the air between them. Perhaps she didn’t know what that sensation was, but he damn well knew. And he knew better than to allow this to continue.
He pulled away, shoving down the sleeve of his sweater over his forearm. “You should have plenty of ichor to see you through a full transition.”
“Meaning what?” Beck touched her fingers to her sensitive lips.
He crossed the room and sprawled out on her girly couch. Wasn’t easy trying to maintain a light casual air between them as if what had transpired had really meant nothing at all. Just dinner—vampire-style. “You won’t need to feed from me again.”
“Ever?”
He shook his head, grateful for the moment that there was some space between them.
“Regular blood should do the trick from here on out. I’ll teach you how to glamour and feed properly from a donor.” Beck pressed her two fingers to the spot between her eyes then spread them upward along the ridge so they spread out in a V just over her brows.
Unable to take his gaze from her face, Achilles sat up his eyes narrowed. “How long have you done that?”
“What?”
“That. With your fingers.”
Beck stared at him. “I still don’t get what you’re asking.”
He mimicked her movement showing her precisely what he’d seen. “That.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Always.”
Gods above and below. For an instant she had reminded him so clearly of Ione.
In all his years as a mentor, only Ione had been able to break his concentration, his focus, with a sensual pull so deep it couldn’t be denied.
But imprints were eternal, lasting beyond the boundaries of time or space, life, death and undeath. How could he possibly be open to forming an imprint with Rebecca when he’d clearly formed one with Ione thousands of years before? His bond with Ione had lasted centuries and had nearly been the death of him.
But his attraction to Rebecca was no less real, no less addictive. If he were honest with himself and her as well, he hadn’t merely marked her as his own when they’d kissed while she had dreamed. The imprint had begun to form the moment they’d physically touched and she’d wrapped her arms around his neck. It had only strengthened when she’d fed from him.
He’d done his best to deny it. But an imprint was something beyond the powers of an individual vampire. It was the combined powers, passions and pain of two vampires forever linked.
The realization hit with the force of a category five hurricane, leaving him shaken and in a cold sweat.
No. Impossible …
And yet—
Could it be that the reason he couldn’t resist Rebecca was because she was Ione reborn?
As a warrior he should have seen the signs. But the knowledge was both bitter and sweet. Ione may have been reborn as vampires with unfinished business sometimes were, but in this lifetime as Rebecca she had no intention of remaining a vampire. Worse yet, in this century she had the technology to make it so.
As painful as severing the newly reformed imprint would be, allowing it to strengthen would only cause them both more pain when she returned to her mortal form. Half of him, and of her, would die. He’d been there, lived that and wouldn’t put his worst enemy through it, let alone Rebecca.
He raised a hand to touch her, but let it drop useless by his side. Beck turned away, her shoulders tipped inward. She believed he’d rejected her. It’s for the best, he told himself resolutely. Do your job, let her go. Let the imprint die. Maybe in another time and another place, she’ll come back again and want to be a vampire.
“My head just hurts,” she muttered.
“Is your vision shifting?”
Rebecca’s eyes narrowed, then blinked rapidly as if dust had been blown into them making them water. “What’s happening to me?” An intensity sparkled in her voice. She plunked down on the couch, holding her hand out in front of her and twisted it first one way then the other, testing her vision.
“It’s all part of the final stages of your transition.”
He grabbed the remote and flipped on the television to reinforce the casual image he was going for. In reality his sudden realization about Ione being reborn as Rebecca had him feeling more skittish than a yearling colt brought out into the ring for its first war horse training. Ione had been the mentor, he the fledgling. Now with the roles reversed he was bound and determined not to repeat their earlier mistake. He would protect them both against the unendurable pain—even if it meant hiding the truth about the imprint from Rebecca. Even if that meant rejecting her advances.
He didn’t know what was on the television, hadn’t even glanced at it. He was just staring in the general direction of the screen so he wouldn’t have to make eye contact with her. His ears strained and heard the ebbing pace of her heart, the beats coming slower and slower. Did she even realize that she was losing her last grasp on her mortality? What surprised him more was that she hadn’t seemed to need to sleep in the earth to complete her transition the way most vampires did. The mutated virus in her system was odd, indeed.
“Stop spoon-feeding me, Achilles. Isn’t it your job to explain things to me and help me with this transition? Tell me how to stop whatever’s happening!”
“You can’t stop it. Your senses are becoming amplified. Sight, smell, hearing, taste—all amplified a thousandfold.”
She shifted, leaning forward. “What about touch?”
Unable to stop it, his gaze flicked to hers and held. “Yeah. That, too.” She stretched, hands high over her head, causing her neck to arch and her breasts to thrust proudly forward. Gods, she was gorgeous. Gorgeous, dangerous and totally, completely off-limits.
Beck relaxed out of her stretch more energized that she had been in years. Whatever was in that ichor was amazing stuff. A bit freaky at first, but amazing. After she completed the vaccine, she fully intended to explore the medicinal properties of ichor. She did a slow mental check of all her systems, filing away what she noted so she could share it with Margo when they spoke again.
Her breath caught. “Wait. I don’t have a pulse!” She patted herself down as if it were somehow misplaced in one pocket or another.
Achilles sat casually in the recliner, phased a beer in hand and raised it in salute to her. He gave a dry chuckle completely unimpressed by the gravity of the situation. “Congratulations, you’ve joined the ranks of the undead.” He turned back to the television and took a sip.
Her fangs throbbed again, but this time was different. The gnawing hunger had abated. But she was pissed, her breath came fast and heavy, the air smelling oddly of pepper.
She hadn’t asked to be a vampire, had never wanted to be undead. Being congratulated and reminded only stung more. She needed to stop being such a sissy and get back to work on the vaccine. She needed to find a way to get a hold of ichor from Evaline St. Croix.
“You can stop huffing and puffing like you’re a fire-breathing dragon, as well.” The deep masculine tone of his voice was laced with annoyed amusement. “You won’t need to breathe unless it makes you feel more comfortable around mortals.”
“I’ll keep breathing if I feel like it.”
He shrugged. “Your choice. I was just letting you know it was unnecessary.”
How’s the fledgling holding up? The voice came out of nowhere, echoing in her head just like Achilles had when he’d been talking to her vampire to vampire. Only this wasn’t Achilles’s voice. It sounded like Dmitri.
Then she heard Achilles respond. Good. She’s finally transitioned.
Congratulations. You got her through it.
Beck swung her gaze across the room focusing on Achilles. With a start she realized she was hearing the private mental exchange between him and Dmitri. Even with the suddenly guilty dip in her stomach at the thought that she was eavesdropping, this was too important. She screwed her eyes shut and tried to tune in, or mind meld, or whatever it was vampires did.
Don’t congratulate me just yet. I think we might have a worse problem to deal with, and it may be something I need your help to resolve.
Exactly how did she get through her transition? I thought it had stalled.
She needed ichor.
Saints. Brother—tell me you didn’t feed her.
What else was I suppose to do, let her die?
Dmitri let out an irritated sigh that echoed in her head. You know I have to ask you this, have you imprinted with her?
The long pause made her stomach squeeze and turn uncomfortably. What was an imprint and how dangerous was it? The way Dmitri sounded, it seemed like a very big no-no, which meant it couldn’t be good.
The Vampire Who Loved Me Page 9
