“My Laird.” Rebecca glanced at Achilles. His gaze encouraged her. “There is one more thing. My mother was changed some time ago.
Is there any way I could locate her with your assistance?”
Roman steepled his fingers. “She may have remained isolated out of fear of changing you. Are you sure she wishes to be found?”
Beck shook her head. “I don’t know, but I’d at least like to try. I want her to know that she can go back to being mortal, if she wants to.”
Roman’s eyes glittered. “And what of you, Doctor? What are your intentions?”
“My Laird, I’d like to become vampire permanently,” she responded.
Roman eyed Achilles. “And are you willing to serve as her maker?”
Achilles pulled back his shoulders, drawing him up so straight and stiff, he looked more like a warrior than she’d ever seen him. “Given our imprint, my Laird, I think I’d have to kill any other vampire that touched her in such an intimate way.”
Roman grunted. “Your imprint is strong already. Are you certain you’re willing to seal it for eternity?”
“If that is what she wishes.”
“Then you have my permission—” he smiled “—and my blessing.”
Achilles dipped his head in a bow, giving the familiar salute of his forearm and fist over his chest. “Thank you, my Laird.”
“From the smell of it, my blessing is rather an afterthought. Your imprint is already far stronger than any I’ve encountered in several centuries.”
Beck’s skin heated with a blush. Achilles’s face swiveled in her direction so fast she gasped. The look in his eyes was purely predatory. Gods, I’ve forgotten how exquisite your blood smells, he said in her head.
Roman bit back a grin. “You are free to go.”
Beck grabbed Achilles’s hand and didn’t wait to be told twice. She transported them using the imprint. When the stretch and pull finally subsided, she fully intended for them to be in her bedroom, but found herself somewhere quite different.
“Since you were tapping into my powers I took over our destination. Hope you don’t mind the detour.” His breath was rough and warm against her hair.
The light of a gibbous moon, now more than half complete, slanted in luminescent shafts through a row of massive fluted white marble columns, casting the floor of the Doric style temple in patches of light and dark.
A warm breeze, laced with the salty tang of the sea and touched with the greenness of rosemary, rippled sheer swaths of fabric that fell like curtains from massive stone beams above the columns to enclose a huge bed covered in crimson silk. Their roof was the dark expanse of night sparkling with stars and the low hanging moon. Two enormous braziers warmed the air and suffused a gentle glow of firelight against the fluted columns. The ancient open-air temple, with the white stone the only part remaining from millennia of exposure, echoed with the shush of the waves outside.
Beck marveled at it all. “Where are we?”
“We’re where it all started.” He lifted her up into his strong arms and carried her toward the bed, set like an altar in the middle of the temple. “I did a few minor modifications. It’s fallen into ruin in the past 2,500 years, but the stone has remained. As has our imprint.”
Her heart jumped, not just with surprise or wonder, but with a jolt of recognition. This felt right. He felt right. “I’ve always wanted to visit Greece.”
“There’s only one way to really do it justice.” He phased away their clothing, leaving them clad only in the fragrant night air.
He set her upon the bed like a precious offering. The cool silk beneath her warmed instantly with the rush of heat pouring through her. Beyond the columns, the moonlight painted a sparkling path on the water, and turned the edges of the waves pearlescent on the shore.
Achilles phased a dark red rose. The heady perfume filled the air as he traced it slowly down her forehead, her nose, then lingered on her mouth. The delicate softness of the petals brushed her lips and sent shivers coursing through her as he began to repeat the course of the rose with his mouth, scattering kisses across her skin, so light, so tender, they were like the faint silken brush of a feather. Teasing, making her skin ache for more.
He lingered at her mouth, his lips first teasing, then more insistent. Sweet and reverent as he was, she wanted more. No, she wanted all of him. Now.
Her hands curved over the round of his strong shoulders and across the muscled planes of his back, drawing him down to her. Every tantalizing inch where bare skin met bare skin sparked into a electrical connection that shimmed through her, making her feel truly alive for the first time. Beck arched up, pressing her aching breasts against him, crushing her mouth to his.
Achilles resisted the urge to take all of her in one mind-blowing rush. Instead he nuzzled her ear, inhaling the vibrant scent of ginger that clung to her hair and the softer, more subtle scent that branded her as his and his alone. His fingers traced beneath the soft curve of her breast, feeling the rapid thumping of her heartbeat just beneath her ribs. She gasped, the sound making him all the harder.
Her excitement became his own, the steady thrum of her mortal blood like the endless rush of the ocean called to him, made him ache with need. There just at the juncture of her neck and collarbone lay the sweet offering. He watched her pale moon-kissed skin throb erratically with the shifting surge of her life’s blood.
His fangs extended and there was no holding them back. “Rebecca, before I change you—”
Her soft chuckle vibrated through the wall of his chest, rubbing her against him with a delicious friction. She wrapped a silky leg around his hip and slid downward in a caress. “Go ahead. I already heard you.”
“You can still hear me?”
She turned her head to the side, her chestnut curls spilling across the pillow in a dark wave, exposing even more of herself to him. His fangs throbbed, venom pearling at the tips. Achilles wiped away the venom with his tongue, and laved a trail from her ear to the softest spot near her artery as his hands cupped her breasts. She bucked beneath him.
“What are you waiting for?” she gasped. “Do it.”
He sunk himself into her, the rush of heat and life pouring into him, through him. She moaned, soft and deep, writhing against him, the heat of her skin searing in its intensity.
Unable to stop himself, he gripped the curve of her sweet derriere, cradling himself against her, damp with perspiration and feminine desire. He stroked along her cleft with his shaft. Exquisite torture for them both.
“Achilles,” she moaned his name and he had no defenses. He sunk into her tight wet heat, letting it close around him, strip him of his will, his strength to do or be anything without her. What good was immortality, when you had to be without the one thing that made you whole?
He pulled back, then pressed forward, the delicate slide of her around his shaft a caress he felt to his very core. In their shared mind he experienced her release building, a wave ready to crest with nothing to hold it back.
It shook them both. He arched back with the power of it, crying out her name.
Her rapid breath fanned his face, with the sweet mortal warmth. Inside need warred with knowledge. She’d lose that again. Lose the heartbeat that pounded so steady and sure beneath those lovely breasts. And she’d lose so much more.
But how he needed her. Not just tonight. But for ever.
She still had the choice. She had to know what she stood to lose before he would change her. If she still wanted to be a vampire, then and only then, would he complete the maker’s process with her.
“Am I a vampire yet?” she asked her eyes sparkling in the moonlight.
He brushed aside a dark curl stuck to her eyelashes with his finger. “That was feeding and fabulous sex. To make you a vampire I have to replace your mortal blood with my ichor.”
She skimmed her fingertips over his back, making his skin tighten in response, the desire for her filling him again.
“There is some
thing else you need to know before I can show you how to make a vampire the old-fashioned way.”
“What?”
“You need to understand what you’re giving up.” He lifted himself on an elbow and curved his other arm around her waist, turning her so that her bare bottom pressed against his groin. “Look out at that shore,” he whispered into her ear.
“It’s beautiful.”
“As a vampire you’ll never spend a day out on that beach under the warmth of the full sun.”
“No more SPF 30? I can live with that.”
“You’ll lose all those friends and family that are mortal and watch them grow old and die.” She shifted, against him, her skin growing cooler, her discomfort scenting the air with the sour hint of vinegar.
“I’ve already lost almost everyone I’ve loved.”
Her words hit him in the chest like an arrow, piercing his heart. He tenderly caressed her hair with his fingers.
Beck turned to him, looking into his eyes and the pain and loss he saw buried deeply there, as images from her mind flashed into his own, almost broke his heart. She’d suffered so much for such a young mortal.
He kissed her lightly, reaching out to take her hand. “You also won’t have children, Rebecca. Vampires only reproduce by making other vampires, and it’s against our laws to make a child into one of our kind.” Beneath his forearm her stomach tightened reflexively.
“Have you ever wanted children?”
He tore his gaze away from her, staring far out into the ripples of the ocean.
“I never expected to live long enough to have any.”
Beck watched the play of the moonlight on his face. His thoughts flitted in and out of her mind. He’d been far too young, too full of Spartan pride at being a great warrior to consider what he stood to lose. And he didn’t want her to regret her choice.
She pressed her palm to his cheek and Achilles’s gaze connected with hers. “All I’ve ever wanted was to love and be loved for who I am. To matter more than anything else to someone. I’ve found that in you.”
Achilles looked deeply into her eyes and a wave of something far more potent than desire crashed into her, washing over her and filling in all those bruised, dented spots in her heart. “I love you, Doc. Pure and simple. Just as you are.”
A surge of hope welled up inside her, but she held it back. He’d been so certain before that her emotions had been only the imprint. What if that was true for him? “Is that the imprint talking?” she whispered as she touched his sculpted lips.
“Hell, no.” He said it so fiercely she felt the words pierce her fingertips.
“How can you be so sure?”
This time he didn’t answer. He drew her to him, his eyes mesmerizing in their intensity, and kissed her so deeply Beck felt every pore open, each little hair raise with a static electric effect, drinking him in.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in two millennia. You complete me.”
“Your better half?” she teased.
“You can say that again, sweetling.”
“I have a better idea.” Why don’t you kiss me?
His mouth curved into a devilish smile, his fangs glinting white in the moonlight, and he did just that.
Epilogue
Two things had happened the night Achilles had taken her to the temple, both of them unexpected. One, she had not become a vampire as she’d anticipated because, two, well, perhaps three, she’d conceived that night and was pregnant with twins.
Somehow the antidote had done more than just keep Achilles from turning to dust. In modifying the DNA structure, Beck had inadvertently changed the genetic sequencing that kept vampires sterile. For now the news about the antidote’s unexpected side effect was being kept under wraps until she knew exactly what the outcome was going to be. The council had thought it would be best not to stir a panic among the clans until they were secure in knowing how to explain the facts to others of their kind.
One thing scared Beck more than becoming a vampire all over again, and that was becoming a parent. With Roman, Dmitri, Kris and Achilles’s help, she’d found her mother among a nest of reivers on the East Coast. Victor or Vane, or whatever he had called himself over the centuries, had twisted her mind so much from the person Beck use to think of as her mother, that she hardly recognized Beck when they’d finally met.
They’d resumed a rocky relationship, and it made Beck all the more insecure about what kind of parent she’d be. Nevertheless, Beck kept counting down the days until she could return to being a vampire.
“You’re certain we have to wait?” They lay spooned together in the center of their king-size, four-poster bed. Light from the candles filtered through the sheer silk canopy.
Judging by how she felt, the day was nearly over. Being mortal on a nocturnal schedule was proving to be less of a challenge than she’d anticipated. But it was necessary since they were living in their apartment in the clan complex.
Achilles kissed her on the forehead. “Do you want to argue another round with Dr. Shepperd?”
Beck sighed and snuggled closer to him, letting the firm warmth of him curve around her backside. “No.” But the waiting was agonizingly slow.
Achilles smoothed his hands along her full belly and Beck felt the babies twirl and roll in response to their father’s touch. “Oooo, no, no, baby, not there.” She pressed gently at the tiny foot lodged just beneath her rib until it released.
“They’re just as eager to arrive as you are to hold them in your arms.”
“I don’t think so.” She turned to look at her mate, a flutter of panic kick-starting her heart.
The pillow shifted as he cocked his head to the side. “What’s wrong?”
“What if they’re born mortal?”
The lines furrowing his brow smoothed out as he spiraled one of her brown curls around his finger. “Then we watch them grow, and if they decide to become vampires, we become their makers.”
“But what if they’re born vampire?”
“Then we’ll learn along with everyone else how that works.”
“What if they have only one fang?”
He brushed a soft tender kiss along her temple, then rested his unshaved cheek against her. “We will love them anyway. If you keep worrying like this, you’ll age far more than you ever planned on before we can change you back into a vampire.”
Beck sighed, stuffing the big body pillow wedged under her enormous stomach into a more comfortable position.
“Turning back into a vampire isn’t going to repair the stretch marks, is it?”
He nuzzled her ear. “I’m afraid I’m the wrong person to ask about those sort of things.”
“I’m ready to be done.”
“Patience, sweetling.”
Patience, I don’t think so. She was tired of being the size of a small, okay, large, limousine. Even when she sat down her belly extended just over the tips of her knees. A sharp pain speared across her lower back, gripping her belly, making it hard. Beck sucked in a startled yelp, then let out her breath as slow and even as she could manage as the pain subsided.
Achilles stared at her in horror. “What was that?”
Beck arched her eyebrows. “That was a labor pain.”
She wasn’t certain if he’d feel what she did when it came to labor because of their imprint.
Achilles sat up looking at his mate, eyeing her warily. “That can’t be right. Are you certain it is supposed to hurt that much?”
“You want the good news or the bad news?”
“Bad.”
“They’ll get closer together.”
He winced. “Good?”
“They’ll end after the babies are born.” And when exactly was that supposed to be? An audible pop sounded and their gazes connected. “What was that?”
“I think my water just broke.”
Achilles didn’t waste any time, he grabbed a towel from their bathroom, trying to help Rebecca clean up as he tried to reach
the doctor through his mind.
Let me know when the pains are less than five minutes apart, Dr. Shepperd responded.
They get that close?
Actually, they’ll crest into one another before the birth.
Achilles gripped the edge of the table as he and Rebecca groaned together.
You better come now.
The wall of pain crested, tearing him in two like a pair of chariot horses tied to either end of him, then prodded to take off in opposite directions. Achilles arched with the pain.
As a Spartan, he’d been whipped, he’d been beaten, he’d walked for days without food and only the merest supply of water. But never, never had he endured such as this.
The only time he’d ever come close is when they’d tortured Ione. Panic seized him, making his throat swell shut even as the pain began to recede.
“Don’t you dare die on me,” he growled at Rebecca.
Her tightly closed eyes snapped open. The pointed glare could have ignited a match. “I’m not dying. It’s called labor. You just wish you were dead.” Sweat dotted her skin, making her hair curl even more tightly. “You’d better call Dr. Shepperd while you still can. They’re coming fairly close together.”
“Already did,” he muttered through clenched teeth as pain radiated through him.
A spiral of dark smoke curled in the room. Achilles thanked the gods Dr. Shepperd was so quick, but his thanks came too soon. The dark particles knit together in the form of Dmitri’s wife, Kristin, as she transported into their bedroom.
“How exciting!” She clapped her hands together. “The babies are coming.” She hurried over to Rebecca and grasped her friend’s hand. “How are you doing?”
“We’re in labor. How in the hell do you think she’s doing?” Achilles snarled.
Kristin looked up, flipping her long blond hair behind her shoulder. “Nice of you to be so supportive.”
Another column of smoke appeared as Dr. Shepperd arrived. “How’s our mother faring?” He smiled.
Achilles panted, barely able to stand. “Do something! We—She’s in pain!”
Dr. Shepperd stared at him for a moment, his eyebrow arching over the edge of his wire-rimmed glasses. “Interesting.”
The Vampire Who Loved Me Page 21
