by Talyn Scott
“Yes.”
“You lie.” Ciaran’s eyes flared, flaming with the knowledge only ancients owned.
“Okay. Do you still want me for this job? If so, my coven will stay uninformed of any personal contributions I make. This is our understanding or it won’t be done, not by me.”
True Alphas did not take to threats. “Let’s say that I agree with your discretion. Hear me now, blood drinker; if you make a move against me or change my plan, you die.”
Steve studied the most terrifying uncrowned Alpha he’d lain eyes upon and promised, “You’ll have her before the full moon.”
Ciaran watched the vampire dissolve into mist. Involving another outside his clan wasn’t his first choice. But with technology the way it is and cameras everywhere one turned, kidnapping a lass and bringing her the few hours from Fort Myers to Miami wasn’t realistic or wise. Misting her form was the sole option. Unfortunately, only vampires could mist a human.
Stepping into his favorite pub, he felt the loss. A sensation he hated, loathed to the core. Years upon years couldn’t take it away. The pain behind his sternum had insistently called for her to stop the emptiness, a five hundred-year-old void that carried the depths of a bottomless pit. A continual need left unfilled no matter how he tried. He bedded lasses here and there. In his younger days, they revolved around his bedchamber. A sexual carnival of treats, and excitement thought to occupy his mind and quench his hunger. He could have one so beautiful that men would kill for or many at a time, that he could service endlessly and not tire. It never worked. Left cold and empty inside, his soul was lost. In the night, it floated with the swamp’s steam and eventually arose in the morning’s heavy muck. He never moored, although he’d stayed in the same spot for one thousand years.
6
“Roll up the windows.” Bane and Renee had played the window game ever since they left the bar. Up, down, up, down, she was beyond stubborn. At a stop light intersecting US 41, people openly stared. No wonder, she was gyrating to some God forsaken music currently blasting through his fractured eardrums. The Moroccan drum was offbeat, causing her to swing her hips in the most appealing manner, creating a spectacle whenever they stopped. “You’re gonna cause an accident,” he complained once more. “What is this shi...music?”
“I have a recital on Saturday.”
His girl had some golden metal thing between her forefinger and thumb, snapping it with the bizarre offbeat drum. He knew better than to ask, but he did anyway, “A recital?”
“Belly dancing. I’ve been taking lessons for three months, and my instructor feels I’m ready to participate. Well, that and I came up with the seventy five bucks he required for the fee.” She skipped the gas bill. But who needed hot water? Of course, that would mean the stove and the dryer wouldn’t work. Hmm, maybe she should skip the cable bill and pay the gas. Decisions, decisions….
“You’re going to do that,” he motioned to her torso, “in front of others.”
She was clearly offended. “Duh, what part of recital didn’t you understand?”
The part that says you’re not shaking your body in front of the masses. He ground his teeth. “Just asking. Why does it keep playing over again? I swear the c.d. is skipping.”
“It’s annoying, isn’t it? Sugar Baby confused it with her Frisbee. I had to chase her two blocks and wrench it out of her trap,” Renee seemed indifferent. “I hope I don’t screw up the rest of the dance, since I haven’t been able to practice to the entire song for weeks.” She hadn’t the money to replace the c.d..
As they came to the next stop light, he tried, once more, to roll the windows back up. Digging her little finger on the switch, she pushed them back down. “Why are we in an argument about the windows?”
“The air conditioner is broken; we’d fog up the car, and it’s simply too hot.” Plus the car smelled like a kennel and a gas-station bathroom combined, she wrinkled her nose. No amount of those little pine trees and gloppy, car scent gels could mask the pet fumes. Feeling that extra heat again, burning her skin, Renee pulled out the neck of her shirt, blowing on her cleavage.
Above all the odors encountered in the car, when she blew on her chest, fuck, the scent of her went right to Bane’s heavy sack. He never released himself earlier, hadn’t had the time. “I’m having your air fixed,” he promised rather hoarsely. Bane would buy her a damn car. Drive away with this one and come back with a new one.
“No.”
“You’re my girl, and I want to fix your car.”
“I wouldn’t take handouts, even If I was your girl.” With guilt, she thought of that thousand-dollar bribery that Jayce had given her this month, unfortunate for her that she needed a new set of tires, and those blasted vet bills had depleted the rest. She was still in the hole.
“You are my girl.”
“Am not.”
“I’ll take care of you.”
“Don’t need you to.”
As they arrived home, Renee’s barking dog broke the conversation and the sound barrier over the neighborhood. “I don’t want you living here.” He turned off the car.
“Redundancy.”
“Caring. Tell me how to change your mind. What will it take?” He could get Jayce to put her to sleep, maybe the vampire could, and move her out just like Tatum.
“Where’s your car?” Renee glanced around, and then fought Bane when he took the keys from her hand and opened the front door.
“You know I have a Harley and I park it a few blocks over, since I can’t leave it here.” A few blocks would be back at the Island, he usually misted here.
Scrunching her forehead at the insult, she pushed through the house before him. “I’ll be making more money soon, since I have less than a year left of school. Until then, you and everyone else can shove it.” She reached for the dog’s leash as Bane grabbed her elbow.
“What’s on your arm?”
She stared at the stain, had scrubbed at it for three days, and answered, “Beet juice.” She gave him an ‘anybody would know that’ look.
“You drink beet juice?”
“Sometimes, but I’m using it to dye herbal soap that I’m selling it under the North Bridge during Thursday’s Farmer’s Market alongside my homemade, natural dog biscuits. I cleared eighty nine dollars last week.” She smiled proudly.
“So you’re full time at school, have rounds at the hospital, wait tables at a bar, and sell dog treats and soap on Thursdays.”
He was incredibly fine, evening stubble covered his strong jaw, darkly black, almost blue. “Yeah, um, soap and …” she grew pathetically horny in an instant.
He smelled her. She wanted him. No female could ever lie to a Were. “Dream of me.” Bane’s too handsome face lit with a rare smile.
“Never.”
“You’re killing me.” He moved closer, a brush of his body against hers. She smelled like the Highlands, fresh and sunny. His, she smelled like his. The scent in his nostrils hadn’t dissipated since the first encounter with her arousal and it wouldn’t leave. It was the way of his species. The mating scent was paramount to their lives, their way of tracking and coming home to what belonged to them. “Dream of me,” he repeated, cupping her small face. “Dance with me in the moonlight, kiss me under the stars, make love with me in the warm surf where white clouds litter the nighttime sky.”
“Are they your typical pick-up lines?” They’d worked. She was breathless, mostly damp in undisclosed places.
“No, those are more in line with: take off your clothes, slip into my handcuffs, stretch across my lap and accept the spanking you deserve, wait just a bit longer, and you can have the orgasm you need instead of the smaller one that’s gnawing at you now. You’ll notice I said were, since I’m not trying to pick anyone up any longer. I’m faithful. I’ll only have you.”
“Okay, okay…I get the picture.” She stepped back, dropped the subject, honestly knowing she could never satisfy his needs. No doubt, he was the preverbal Dom. “You didn’t
have to take me to and from work. All the same, I appreciate it.” She wasn’t moving from the threshold, because he wasn’t getting further in the house. If he did, well, let’s just say that things would not be leaning towards handcuffs and spankings.
“A kiss before I go?” he asked nicely. “What’s a simple kiss going to do?”
A lot, she thought. “Speaking of kisses, I found out, earlier; you're in cahoots with Dr. Holt. Is it in the water on Sanibel, should I never drink there again? One on one isn’t enough anymore, you need an extra man to finish the job?”
Heavy emotions flashed over his golden face. Eyes of the bluest sapphire turned to bitter storm. His lip curled, before he stopped himself from saying something he would regret. “Little one, are you telling me you can’t handle two men?” A large, booted foot came forward, resting between her size eight Nikes.
“How would anyone answer that?”
Rejection angered him so much, that he couldn’t touch her. “Tell me what’s wrong. What the problem is you wouldn’t finish explaining earlier.”
“No.”
Barely breathing, he still couldn’t touch her. Tempestuous sapphires challenged desperate emeralds, their eyes glittering with heat, disdain, and fear of the unknown. “I’m holding myself back for you, because of your inner pain and hidden secrets. But there’s only so long, Renee. Only so long that I’m going to last around you without losing my mind and taking my right. Think about that when you go to sleep. Think about me spreading you open and dipping my tongue deep inside and tasting you. That’s where we're going, Renee. That’s where we're ending.” His look scoured her, heating her skin with unrestrained desire. “One night soon, sooner than you realize, you’re gonna burn for me.”
“And the Academy goes to…”
“Shut up, leech. What’d you find out about Palazzo?” Standing on Renee’s roof, Bane had a hard-on comparable to the Florida peninsula, and the last thing his dick wanted to see was Dru.
“I lost him in the Everglades.”
Bane didn’t hide his surprise. “What’s a vamp doing around swamplands?”
“It’s odd. I’ve known him forever. He hasn’t family or a woman there.” Dru’s face was pale, whitewashed under the moon.
“Why can’t you read his mind?”
Dru never disclosed inner coven secrets to opposing species. “I can’t read him,” he shrugged. Worried for Renee, more than Bane realized, he would take a leave from the hospital and stay with her twenty-four seven. “Why are you sporting a two by four?”
“Do you get hard around her?” Bane clamped his teeth, blocking the Were’s canines.
“I’ve been hard since the hospital, over two weeks ago. You have no idea what it was like to meet her. And then, seeing that my Bride was linked to werewolves and guarded by the Beta, no less, I was enraged for a while.”
“I guess that goes both ways.”
“It needs to go three ways; I have a plan.”
“I know it’s our dinner and a movie.” Bane rolled his eyes, bored at the thought of a human ‘date night’.
“No, I have a plan for tonight. Problem is, I need blood.”
“Hell, no,” Bane was repulsed, “go hunt like everyone else.”
“It won’t work for this particular plan.”
“Then you’d better elaborate and hope that I don’t kill you afterwards.”
“In a way, it’s a trick of smoke and mirrors. I’m not sure it will work, but would like to try regardless. I drink from her.”
A snarl left Bane’s lips.
“Whatever,” Dru said, clearly unaffected. He was powerful enough to take on a Beta any given day. “I drink from you.”
Bane shook with anger, his voice scarcely audible, “The day any leech drinks my blood; I'd better be going in the ground, permanently.”
Dru continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “We join gifts. My ability to reach her mind meets your ability to ghost her body.”
Bane turned, considered his natural enemy. “So if I stomach being your dinner, I can move things along with my girl.”
“Our girl,” Dru corrected. “I’m not certain it will work. But I’m willing to try anything, nearly anything, to move things along. Are you?”
“Fuck.”
“No, no fucking.” Dru may have to jack off a bit, but Bane would, too.
“When you drank from her before, she was asleep and didn’t awaken?”
“I’m a pro. She’s my bride. It makes things easier for my species.” He bent back, allowing the wind to feather his hair. Heat from his desire was getting to him, becoming harder to control as the days lengthened one into the other. Time had been cruel. Centuries he’d waited, now, what was his lay beneath his feet. He couldn’t touch her because of her past. An unfair cruelty had turned Renee’s life for the worse, and she needed to rebuild her confidence. “Are we in an agreement, then?”
“Damn it….yeah, I’ll agree.”
He cocked his head. “She already sleeps. I’ll be back momentarily.”
“No, I’ll go with you,” Bane disputed.
A sharp turn brought Bane, chin to chin, with Dru. The vampire bared his fangs, overgrown needles more lethal than a Were’s, and hissed, “I made the binding contract with you. One of us could have disappeared with her for a lifetime and never found the other. This, drinking my Bride’s blood, is an exceptionally private moment, which I will not share with you or anyone. Are we clear?”
“Threats are unwise.”
“Coming between any male of my species and the blood of his Bride is a signed death warrant. Take it as a threat, take it as a promise, but take it the way I intended it to be,” his fangs grew, sharpened further. “An indisputable rule in our joined relationship,” he vanished.
She says she doesn’t want Bane; Dru sat on Renee’s bed, but all knew otherwise. Late this night, when Bane drove her home, Renee almost caved. His emotion-filled spiel set a trap for her heart. Bane almost had her. Her body ensnared – her mind struggled. Fought against her demons, the ones he would slay. “Be gone,” he whispered to the creatures that occupied her boudoir. Twenty-eight paws trampled one another, obeying his command. They should, as he dictated to Bane, nothing would come between him and his Bride. Nothing. Especially, he salivated, if they attempted to prevent a delicious light feeding coupled with necessary bonding.
“Open your mind, my sweet. Embrace the position as my Bride, become one with your vampire,” he whispered. Nuzzling her delicate, sleeping form, his tongue etched a moist trail across her jugular. She was heady tonight; stress and exhaustion marked her scent. Loving all flavors of his Bride, he would drink with tamed passion. Until the time they mated, not under the full moon as the Weres, but a true vampiric mating, he expected minimal feedings. After that, there was no taming anything, ever again. “I’m still quite thirsty, sweet. You have no idea what you do to me.” He was hard before he struck.
Extending further than before, a delicate vein crossed alongside her jugular met his teeth. Slowly, he pulled her essence, slid it around his tongue, and swallowed its gift of pleasure. She was delicious and womanly. So erotic was her flavor, his groin tightened to pain. The sensations racking his body he’d not known before, all new and palpably welcome. He could have a lifetime of this when she properly cooperated. Mireasa mea dulce, viaţa mea şi sânge sunt unite pentru totdeauna. A promise, Renee was his Bride; her blood joined with his life forever.
He was on fire and wanted her to share the flames. “Come, wolf,” he whispered, knowing Bane could hear every word, every sip.
Bane misted beside her bed. Looking down at the comfortable scene, he longed to thrust inside her and bury himself. He wanted to rub his naked body over her sheets, her flesh, saturating his body with her scent. His beast flickered, much too focused on the crimson that trickled Dru’s chin. Glancing over her throat, Dru hadn’t cleaned her neck, washed it with his tongue.
“Go on,” Dru encouraged. Reading Bane’s thoughts, knowing h
e needed a taste. Who could blame him? It was his right, his destiny.
Try as Bane might, he couldn’t enter her mind. However, other Weres didn’t have the gift of the ghost, a rarity – in this case, a blessing. Therefore, he had to trust the vampire to keep her asleep. His beast lengthened its tongue, urging him forward. He knelt. He smelled. He felt. He wanted. With an audible groan, a slow lick trailed her pulse, as another lick followed. Lapping, as a canine – a werewolf- he cleaned her skin. A taste hit his palate, promising that he would never savor another. The beast continued in mid-transformation, eyeing Dru. Contemplating his needs, he fought to share. Possibly, he understood the dynamics. Maybe, he was desperate enough to tamp his feral ire. Truthfully, Bane knew the wolf’s mind. He wanted to stay in full transformation always and kill anything that looked her way.
