by J. R. Ward
“Just leaving,” she said with a wave as she hissed at Michael, “Get in the damn car.”
The kid rubbed at his spiky hair. “Ah . . .”
“Thanks for your help.” Even though he hadn’t given her any.
She was beyond relieved as she started the engine and pulled out of the spot—
Another Mercedes appeared right behind her, ready to put the drive to use, preventing her from putting them in reverse and doing a K-turn to get right out onto the street. She had no choice but to head up the ring—around in front of the house where the attendants were all lined up and people were milling around.
Goddamn it.
“Put your head down,” she said to Michael as they approached the front door.
Please, oh, please, oh, please . . .
Just as she came up to the mansion, an elderly couple stepped forward to get into their car. With the Mercedes on her ass, and the pair’s Cadillac blocking her way, she was trapped.
Sweat broke out between her breasts and under her arms and she tightened her hands on the wheel.
The front door opened wide and she fully expected to see the butler stumble out.
But it was just another elderly couple, ticket in hand as they approached an attendant.
Claire’s eyes bounced to the car in front of her. The man was behind the wheel, but the woman was chatting with the kid who was holding her door open. Move it, Grandma! Of course the woman didn’t. When she finally sat down, she fussed with her skirt and seemed to bitch to her husband a little, then turned back to the attendant.
One hundred and fifty-five million years later, the Cadillac’s brake lights flashed and the sedan began to move at idle speed.
Heart pounding, hands straining, lungs frozen solid, Claire begged and pleaded with the universe to let them get away.
And then it happened.
The Cadillac went down the hill. And so did she. And then she turned onto the road behind the couple. And then she was going thirty-two miles an hour heading away from the Leeds estate.
As soon as she got a dotted line, she floored the accelerator and sucked the doors off the Cadillac.
Eyes on the road, she fumbled with her bag. She needed her phone. Where was her—She pulled it out and hit speed dial.
As it rang, she glanced at Michael. He was braced in the seat, arms out straight against the door on one side and the armrest on the other, legs crammed under the glove compartment. He was as white as paste and his eyes pinged around his skull.
“Put your seat belt on,” she said. “It’s to your right. Reach down and pull it across like I’ve done with mine.”
He found the strap and yanked it around himself, then resumed his deer-in-headlights routine, bracing himself for an imminent impact that wasn’t going to happen.
It dawned on her that he might well have never been in a car before.
“Michael, I can’t slow down. I—”
“I’m fine.”
“We’re going—” Her call was answered, the man’s hello an incredible relief. “Mick? Thank God. Listen, I’m coming to your house and I need some favors. Huge favors that I won’t ever be able to rep—thank you. Oh, Jesus, thank you. About an hour. And I have someone with me.” She hung up and looked across the seat. “This is going to be all right. We’re going to a friend’s house in Greenwich, Connecticut. We can stay there. He’s going to help us. It’s going to be okay.”
At least she hoped it was going to be okay. She assumed the butler wouldn’t come after them through legitimate channels, but as she drove through the night, she realized there were other ways to get someone. Ways that didn’t involve the human legal system. Shit. There was no telling what kind of resources Fletcher had at his disposal, and if he had enough wherewithal to be successful at what he’d done for so long, he was smart.
Which meant he’d taken down her license plate. And he also knew where she lived, didn’t he. Because . . . oh, God, she’d woken up in her bed at home after the three days with Michael. Fletcher had somehow gotten her back there.
Maybe he had some mind tricks at his disposal as well.
Maybe they should have killed him.
7
When Mick Rhodes’s Federal mansion came into view an hour later, Claire wondered whether she was doing the right thing by getting her friend involved even tangentially.
After all, she was pulling into the guy’s driveway with an escapee vampire who had a bad case of justifiable agoraphobia. Who was also carsick.
Michael was green around the gills as she put the Mercedes in park. “We’re safe.”
He swallowed hard. “And we’re not moving. This is good.”
The front lights came on and Mick walked out onto the porch.
Claire opened her door and got out as Michael did the same. “Mick is an old friend. We can trust him.”
Michael sniffed the air. “And he was your lover, was he not?” he said softly. “He remembers you with a certain . . . need.”
Jesus. “That was a long time ago.”
“Indeed.” Gone was the fear and the queasiness. Michael was dead serious. And staring at Mick like the other man was his enemy.
Vampires were evidently rather territorial of their mates.
Mick lifted his hand in greeting and called, “Glad you made it. And who’s your friend?”
“He’s going to help us, Michael,” she said, going around to her man and taking his hand in hers. “Come on.”
Michael’s eyes shifted over to hers. “If he touches you inappropriately, I’m going to bite him. Just so we are clear.” Michael glanced back at her friend. “I’m not an animal and I shall not behave as such. But you are mine and things will go better for him if he respects that.”
Vampires were evidently very territorial of their mates. “He will. I swear it.”
Mick shifted impatiently. “Are you two coming or going?”
“Coming,” she muttered as she started to walk forward. When they got to the house, she said, “This is Michael.”
“Nice to meet you, Michael.”
Michael glanced at the palm that was offered. As he bowed slightly instead of putting his hand out, she wondered whether he didn’t trust himself to touch Mick even in a polite way. “How do you do?” he said.
“I’m all right.” Mick put his hand back in his pocket with a shrug, then frowned. “Chains . . . is that what you have on your arm?”
Claire took a deep breath. “I told you I needed big favors.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. Then Mick shook his head and indicated the open door. “Come on in, you two, and how about we start by ditching your iron, buddy. Unless you’re wearing it as a fashion statement? I’ve got a hacksaw.” He glanced at Claire. “And maybe you’d like to tell me what the hell is going on here.”
An hour later, Claire was drinking a cup of coffee in the library, looking over the rim at Michael, who was free of the chain and seemingly much more himself after the nausea of the car ride had fully faded. Dressed in his robe, he fit in perfectly here, she thought. With the formal, antique feel of the library, he seemed to have stepped out of a Victorian novel—maybe the very one he held in his hands. He was loving all of Mick’s books, examining their spines, taking them out, leafing through them.
“Where did you find him?” Mick asked softly from behind her.
“It’s a long story.”
“He’s . . . unusual, isn’t he?”
Christ, you have no idea, she thought, taking another sip from her cup.
“Michael’s unlike any man I’ve met.”
“And he’s why you’re leaving the firm, isn’t he?” When she didn’t reply, her friend murmured, “So what do you need from me?”
“Somewhere to stay the night, for starters.” She stared down into the coffee. “And I want to buy him a new identity. Birth certificate, social security number, credit history, tax payments, driver’s license. I know you know people who can take care of this, Mick, and wha
t I get for my money has to be impregnable. It has to stand up in court. Because we might end up there.”
Which was going to be no fun at all.
“Shit . . . what kind of mess are you in?”
“No mess.” It was far, far worse than a mess.
“Liar. You show up here with a man who’s covered in iron links . . . talks like a Victorian but looks like he could cheerfully eat me alive . . . has hair down to his ass and is dressed in a red silk Hugh Hefner special. And who smells like a . . . well, he smells really good actually. What kind of cologne is that? I think I want some.”
“You can’t buy it. And Mick, frankly, the less you know the better.” Because she was about to become a white-collar criminal. “I also want to use your computer. Oh, and we have to sleep in your basement.”
Michael turned, frowned at the two of them standing so close together, and came across the room, putting his hand on her shoulder. Mick had the smarts to step back.
“So will you help us?” she asked Mick.
Mick rubbed his face. “Let me buy the identity for you. The man I know is really touchy and he won’t accept a payment from anyone else but me. You can reimburse me somehow. And you’re serious? You want to sleep in my basement? I mean, I’ve got six guest rooms in this ark and this is an old house. It’s not nice down there.”
“No, downstairs is better.”
“We shall stay in a proper bed,” Michael announced. “We shall stay upstairs.”
She looked over her shoulder. “But—”
His hand squeezed gently. “I shall not have you sleeping in quarters unfit for a lady.”
“Michael—”
“Perhaps you will show us to our room, kind sir?” Okay, clearly when her man decided something, that was that.
Mick frowned. “Ah . . . yeah. Sure, buddy—”
Michael wheeled toward one of the windows. And positively growled.
“Stay inside,” he said. Then disappeared into thin air.
Mick barked out a curse, but she wasn’t about to worry over her friend. Claire ran for the window and watched as Michael took form on the side lawn in the moonlight.
The butler was back. Fletcher was standing there like something out of a nightmare, glowing like a ghost though his form was solid.
Her first thought was that he’d probably put some kind of GPS device on her car. It was the only explanation for how he could have found them. But then she realized he was not human. So God only knew what kind of shit he had at his disposal.
“Who is that?” Mick said from behind her. “Or . . . Christ, Claire, should the question be what?”
What happened next was gruesome and horrible and the only option. Michael and the butler faced off, and they fought to the death.
Fletcher’s.
Claire couldn’t watch, but Mick did and she tracked his face as he witnessed the carnage.
“Is Michael . . .”
“He’s doing—” Mick winced. “Yeah, there’s not going to be much left of that other guy to bury.”
She knew it was over when Mick took a deep breath and rubbed his face. “Stay here. I’m going to go see about . . . your man?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s mine.”
Mick went around the corner to the front door, and she heard the men talking softly from the other side of the doorway.
“Claire?” Michael said without coming into the room. “I’m fine, but I shall go get cleaned up, shall I?”
It wasn’t a question even though he’d posed it as one. She knew he was staying outside because he didn’t want her to see him, but screw that.
She walked across the library and through the—
Okay, that was a lot of blood. But it didn’t appear to be his because it was on his hands and his . . . mouth. As if he’d bitten Fletcher. A number of times.
“Oh, God.”
Except then she looked into his eyes. They were grim and serious and resolute. As if he’d done what he’d had to and that was that. But there were shadows in them, as if he were afraid she’d think he was a monster.
She pulled herself together and walked over to him. “I’ll help you wash.”
After she bathed Michael, she got him some clothes. Which was a joke. Though Mick was a big guy, the only thing that fit her man even remotely was a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a button-down shirt—and even still, it was all tight and showed a lot of ankle and wrist.
But he looked good, his hair damp and curling at the ends as it dried, its red and black colors coming to life.
Mick showed them into a lovely bedroom that mercifully had only two windows and thick drapes. Hopefully that would be enough protection.
Mick was the one who pulled the lined curtains into place.
“You need anything, you know where I sleep,” he said. He hesitated at the door, then closed them in together.
Claire took a deep breath. “Michael—”
He cut her off. “You said you could do anything while you were with child, correct?”
When she nodded, he looked at the bed as if imagining them on it. “Even . . .”
She had to smile. “Yes, even that. But first, we need to talk—”
He was on her in a heartbeat, pressing her back against the door, his hands rough on either side of her waist.
“No talking,” he growled. “First, I take you.”
His mouth clamped onto hers, his tongue going deep, and then there was a tearing noise—her blouse being ripped open. Oh, God, yes . . . He kissed her until she was dizzy for a reason other than her pregnancy, and sometime in the middle of the rush, he picked her up and laid her out on the bed. With smooth coordination, like he’d been planning the moves, he pushed his pajama bottoms down, pulled her skirt up, bit through one side of her panties, and then—
He was inside.
Her body arched up against him and she held on hard as she gasped. She was extra tight because she was only partially ready for him, but the moment he drove into her, she caught up with him. He pumped heavy and strong, but with care as well, the antique bed groaning under the force of his body as he took her.
The glorious smell of him invaded her nose and she knew what this was about. This was him staking his claim to her in addition to loving her. This was a possession by something other than a human man and it was so totally fine by her.
Michael came with a great clenching of his body and a roar that broke through the silence in the house. Loud as it was, their host had to have heard it so it was a good thing she didn’t care enough to be embarrassed as her own orgasm swept through her.
After it was over, they stayed locked together, intertwined, their breathing hard for precious moments.
And then he said, “Forgive me . . . my love.” He pulled back and smoothed her cheek while gently kissing her lips. “I fear I am rather . . . territorial when it comes to you.”
She laughed. “You be as territorial as you want. Coming from you, I like it.”
“Claire . . . what do we do about the future?”
“I have it all planned out. I’m very good at strategy.” She put her fingers through his long, luxurious hair, the red and black strands curling around her wrist and arm. “I’m going to fix it so your mother leaves you everything.”
“How?”
“I redrafted her will every four months or so while she was alive and I’m going to do it one last time downstairs in Mick’s study tomorrow morning.”
Yes, she was violating the professional code of ethics she’d sworn to when she’d taken her oath as an attorney. Yes, she could be disbarred. Yes, she was compromising her personal standards. But a great wrong had been done seemingly without remorse and sometimes to right something, you had to get your hands dirty. There were no more Leedses left, so there were no heirs to contest the will. And the philanthropies would be left in, so there would still be millions upon millions going to them.
The wrong she would commit was the right thing to do.
; And the fact that Fletcher was dead? Just made it all easier.
“She owes you,” Claire said. “Your mother . . . your mother needs to take care of her son and I’m going to make sure she does.”
“You are my hero.” The love shining in Michael’s eyes was a benediction unlike any she’d ever seen.
“And you are my sun,” she replied.
As they kissed again, she had the weirdest sense it was all going to work out, even though none of it made sense: a human woman who never thought she’d get married and have a family because she was too tough for that kind of thing. A male vampire who was both pliant and fierce—and who hadn’t been out of a dungeon in fifty years.
But it was right. They were right for each other.
Although God only knew what the future had in store for them.
EPILOGUE
Nine years later . . .
“Daddy! I’m coming for you!”
Claire looked over the moonlit lawns of the Leeds estate and watched her oldest child, Gabriella, go into full stealth mode. Her waist-length red and black hair was a shroud in the night, her coltish legs long for an eight-year-old. She moved quickly and silently to the stand of fruit trees in the back garden, going over the grass like her father did with fluidity and grace—as was the way with vampires.
Michael materialized behind his daughter and shouted, “Boo!”
Gabriella jumped about twelve feet into the air, but recovered quickly, landing on her feet and tearing after her father while giggling. She tackled him, and the two went down in the grass, fireflies hovering above the tickling fest as if they too were laughing.
“Mama, I’m finished,” came a quiet voice from the left.
Claire put her hand out and felt her son’s little palm slide into hers. “Thank you for cleaning your room.”
“I’m sorry it got so messy.”
She tugged Luke into her lap. At six years old, it was clear that he took after his father’s side as well and not just on looks. Luke was going to grow up to be what Michael and Gabriella were. He had an aversion to the sun; he was a night owl; and his hearing and eyesight were abnormally acute. The real tip-off, though, were the adult-sized canines that had come in already. Well, that and the fact that Luke and Michael smelled exactly the same, like dark spices.
