Up in Flames

by Alice Brown

  “So, do you have a shower I could borrow, sweets?” Lucas asked of his mate.

  “Umm, I have a little studio at the end of the hall.” She started wringing her hands again, and he wondered why she was so nervous this morning.

  Reaching over and lightly clasping her hands, he inquired, “Hey, what has you so uptight this morning?”

  She sat down abruptly on the side of the bed. “It’s just, I’m accustomed to taking care of everyone else, and I can’t believe I was so selfish last night and totally lost control and cried myself to sleep lying on top of you. And, well, I should have been the one taking care of you, not the other way around.”

  Knowing how much the admission had cost her, he pitched his voice low and soft, “Baby, I am fine. And as your mate, it is my honor and privilege to care and protect you. Now, how about we blow this room and you show me down to your place. I’ll even be a good patient and let you help wash my back. Okay?”

  Her laugh sounded like tiny bells tinkling. “Sure, come on.”

  He had just stood from the bed when Walter stuck his head in. “Oh, good, I wanted to catch you before you left. Brought you a few changes of clothes and a toiletry bag so you can shave, shadow boy. And don’t forget I want to speak to you just as soon as you are available.”

  The door had just clicked closed when Meredith laughed again. “Shadow boy?”

  “Yes, he gave me that nickname a few years ago. We were on this three-day stakeout, and he swore I could grow a five o’clock shadow faster than he had ever seen in his life.”

  “Okay, well, let’s get you ready for a shower before someone else comes in and calls you something worse.” She chuckled as she led the way out the door.

  The halls were completely empty, leaving only the two of them. Lucas found his clothes and other items stacked on a counter outside the patient rooms. They arrived at Meredith’s little studio a quick moment later. Looking around, he had to admit that it was tiny, but very well-kept and clean.

  There was a low dresser in the living room that doubled as an entertainment center, with an old television perched on top. Meredith walked over and opened the top left drawer. “You can put your clothing in here if you’d like. The bedroom is so small I couldn’t get it in there, so I decided to leave it out here.”

  Lucas walked over and put everything in the drawer before reaching down and pulling out what he needed. He turned to his mate who was standing in the middle of the floor wringing her hands again.

  Sitting his clothing back down, he walked over to her. Spotting a couch off to his left, he grasped her hand and led her over to the couch. When he reached it, he sat and pulled her down.

  “You are acting like a scared kitten, baby. It’s not like I am going to bite you. Well, not unless you ask me really, really nicely.” He grinned at her as he wiggled his eyebrows and waited to get a response. She chuckled a bit, but still looked nervous.

  “Sweetheart, would it help if we got to know one another better?”

  Her answer of “maybe” was just barely heard even with his keen vampire hearing.

  “Okay, I’ll go first since you told me about the last eighteen months of your life last night. I have been a Texas Ranger for about eight years and a vampire for fifteen. I was with the Dallas PD before my turning. It just took me a while to figure out I could be a vampire and in law enforcement also.”

  “Do you have any siblings? Are your parents still around?” she inquired. He smiled, relieved that in the conversation department, it seemed they would do just fine. He was betting on their bedroom activities being just as enjoyable, or even more so. It was just going to take him a bit longer to woo her into bed. “No, I was an only, very spoiled child. My parents died several years before I was turned, so I am quite literally, all alone.”

  “Me too. And I am so tired of being alone. Television sucks these days, and I have maxed out my Kindle with the number of books that it will hold.” She placed her head on his shoulder, and he wrapped an arm around her and kissed her forehead.

  “Never again, baby, never again. Now we’ve got each other, so neither of us will ever have to be alone again.”

  They sat there together in silence for a long time. Finally, knowing Walter would get impatient if made to wait much longer, Lucas said, “I am going to go jump in the shower. How about if I call you when I am ready and you can help wash my back. Then I need to go talk to Walter for about an hour. After that, we will have the entire day to get to know one another, or do anything you wish.”

  She gifted him with her radiant smile. “I think I like that plan.”

  He gave her another hug and a kiss on the forehead before releasing her. He longed for the day she would feel comfortable around him and he could actually kiss her. The mating pull had already started, and it was agony. He wanted her under him in the nearest bed, with him sunk so deep in her she didn’t know where he ended and she started. But that was not to be right now. As taxing as it proved, not to win her trust beforehand could easily hurt their relationship in the end.

  Reluctantly, he released her and stood. “Where’s your shower?”

  Meredith walked him to her bathroom and showed him how the shower was set up. “I’ll call you in a few, baby,” he said over his shoulder as he headed to get the water started.

  *****

  Wow! Meredith still couldn’t believe Lucas Nate Calloway was her mate. The man was gorgeous! Hair as black as midnight, high cheek bones giving hint to a bit of Native American heritage, strong, long nose, kissable lips, and a body that was worthy of licking. If Lucas had a flaw, she had yet to find it. And here she was, just blah! She knew her vampire heritage had given her a leg up on her looks, and she would be forever grateful for that. Because without the added benefit, Meredith would have considered herself downright ugly.

  But what was she going to do? Yes, there was little doubt Lucas would lay down his own life to protect her. But how was she going to tell him that she couldn’t physically leave? That even thinking about the possibility of leaving the safe confines of the building sent her into the worst panic attack in the history of vampires? Even Dr. Weathers had tried working with her and prescribing medicine. Nothing worked. She heard her name and sighed deeply. Then there was the other thing she was scared to tell him. She wasn’t looking forward to having sex with him, even if her body had turned traitor on her yesterday. Admittedly, she was still very naïve when it came to sex. She’d tried it, twice exactly, and hated it both times. Yes, at twenty-seven she was still trying to figure out what all the fuss was about.

  She walked into the steam-filled bathroom. He must have felt her tension, because he handed her the washcloth and soap without ever turning around. Gently and carefully, hoping not to cause him any pain, Meredith washed the fast-healing wounds on his back.

  *****

  Fifteen minutes later Lucas was seated in Walter’s private office. “So, please tell me that you didn’t nearly sacrifice your life for nothing. Please tell me you’ve got Intel at least.” Walter sat back in his chair, rocking slightly.

  “Oh, I’ve got information. First of all, the entire gang is back. Second, Eddie McDaniels is supposedly working at a small newspaper and magazine publishing house called Lorelei Publishing. Third, and you are not going to like this one, according to the Merry Band of Misfits, they have been on a killing spree for a while now.” Lucas watched Walter push to sit up as he continued, “I know we’ve had a couple of murders that we strongly suspected them to be involved, but the way they sounded, you would think there would be more bodies. So your guess is as good as mine as to what is really happening. I just don’t know anymore,” Lucas ended, tired.

  “Did Meredith tell you her involvement with this case?” Walter inquired.

  “Yeah, she did. I want to hunt down every last one of those bastards and kill them off nice and slow just for putting her through pure hell these past eighteen months.”

  “Lucas, I know you two are mates. And under normal
conditions, I would slap you on the back, wish you the best of luck, and be on my way. But this is different. She came to me ten months ago a totally defeated, scared, broken young woman. She asked me for protection. Now,” he knew Lucas was getting ready to interrupt him so he held out his hands, “just hear me out, buddy.

  “She can’t leave this building. And I mean she literally can’t leave. If you so much as mention the possibility she will have a panic attack that will scare the crap out of you. I know her place is small. But considering we didn’t even have a place set up for her ten months ago, I have had to work with what was available. Add in the fact I don’t want anyone knowing she is here. I have my suspicions we may have a mole within the group. That is why even the team doesn’t know she is here. I just wasn’t sure who I could trust.”

  Lucas shook his head in amazement. As Rangers, they’d been trained to pick up on the smallest of details that might lead them to solving a crime. And here they had a young woman their boss had been hiding for the past ten months right under everyone’s noses.

  Chapter Three

  Lucas walked back to Meredith’s little studio. He was still trying to figure out why she had acted like a scared kitten around him earlier that morning. He’d had Walter pull up what little he had on her. According to her file she was twenty-seven years old. She was a half-vampire, with a human mother and full-vampire father. He supposed she had lived a fairly sheltered life while growing up—most half-vamp children did. But still, at twenty-seven, surely she had been out on her own long enough to experience the world for a few years, hadn’t she? No, there just was no way a twenty-seven-year-old bombshell like herself was unexperienced, or was she? As hard as he was trying not to believe it, her actions spoke the truth. He wondered if she could still be a virgin. A twenty-seven-year-old virgin in this day and time? Did such a thing even exist?

  When he arrived it was to find the door locked. He smiled as he pulled out the key she had given him on his way out the door. Well, at least she listened to me and locked up behind me, he mused. As he entered he called out, “Meredith, baby, it’s Lucas.”

  He didn’t see her anywhere and wondered why she would have left. Just as he was about to turn around and walk back out to go look for her, he heard a distressed sound. Immediately going into Ranger mode without even realizing it, he threw the key down on the table by the door as he homed in on the sound and her scent. It hit him then, like a barreling freight train. The scent that was coming from her bedroom was pure fear.

  Racing into the room, he didn’t spot her at first, but followed the scent to the little closet. Pulling the door open, he wasn’t prepared for the frightened, tear-stained, bloodshot doe eyes that greeted him. She was trembling uncontrollably, and seemed to be having problems breathing.

  He reached in and scooped her up into his arms. Placing her face against his neck, he hoped the mating pull and his scent would help calm her. He sat down on the side of her bed, rocking gently back and forth, while his brain raced trying to remember what he had learned about panic attacks and flashbacks.

  She grabbed the front of his shirt. “Lucas, don’t let them get me. Please, please, I beg you, don’t let them take me. They are going to kill me,” she sobbed, gasping for breath. “And after they finish…Oh God, Lucas, I’ll never survive! Please,” she begged. “And, oh God, they are going to kill you, too! No, I don’t want it to end like this!”

  “Shh, baby, nothing is going to happen to you. I’m here, and I promise you I will protect you. Just lean against me, babe. That’s a girl. Match your breathing to mine. Good girl. That’s it,” he crooned, rubbing her back in an attempt to calm her down.

  It took about ten minutes before she finally was able to break free from the panic attack’s death grip. She looked up at him with her red-rimmed eyes, tears still on her eyelashes. He leaned in and kissed the tears away, still holding her safely in his arms. Finally, after another ten minutes of just letting her calm herself down within the safe confines of his arms, it looked as if she had calmed down completely. “What caused the attack?” he gently inquired.

  Her eyes widened and her breath hitched.

  “Hey, now, don’t go down that road again, babe.”

  She shook her head, but knew Lucas could hear her heartbeat start to race again. Her chest felt like it was caving in as she reached around him and grabbed her phone she had thrown on the bed when the attack first started.

  “They found me.” The tortured whisper caused his own chest to hurt. Damn, he hadn’t even known her for twenty-four hours, and yet he already knew in his heart he loved her. Now wasn’t the time to tell her that though. She needed his protection, and he was determined to give it to her. Everything else could wait.

  “What do you mean, they found you?” he asked in a low voice, as he put a tight leash on his temper for her benefit. She didn’t need him flying off the handle right now. One look at her told him she was only a couple of seconds away from going through another panic attack.

  “Here,” she offered him her phone with shaky hands. He automatically took the phone in one hand and wrapped his other arm protectively around her. She buried her nose back in his neck, but at least she seemed to be trying to settle down on her own. Pushing the button, he listened to the message.

  “I know where you are, you little bitch, and when I get you, I am going to torture you, letting you bleed out slowly, painfully, for making me chase you for almost two years. That’s after the boys get finished with you. I hope you like it rough, because after the hell you’ve put them through, you’ll be lucky if they don’t split you in two. And tell that Ranger he is damn lucky he is still breathing. The boys fucked up leaving him there and not going back to finish the job. It won’t happen the next time, because next time, I am coming after you personally. You understand me, bitch? I am coming after you, and don’t think for a minute that hiding out in the Rangers’ headquarters is going to protect you. Enjoy your last few days of freedom, I am coming for you!”

  Lucas hit disconnect and threw the phone up against the wall, feeling satisfied when it disintegrated, leaving a dent in the wall. Although he felt better, it had scared an already terrified Meredith. “Baby, I need to call Walter immediately with this.”

  “I…knnnow,” she tried sitting up in his lap, but was shaking so badly she nearly fell off.

  “Hey, don’t you go anywhere.” He hooked a finger under her chin. “Baby, look at me. I know you are scared. I get it. They now know where you have been hiding. And it looks like Walter was right. He suspects we have a mole in the group.” He fished his cell phone out of his pants pocket to call his boss. “The question is, who found out between yesterday and today that you are here.”

  A few seconds later he was filling his boss in on the message. Ending the call, he told Meredith, “We might want to go into the living room. Walter is coming up and he’ll be here in just a moment.” Although Lucas knew his boss needed to talk with them, he cursed the reason. Eddie McDaniels had caused enough problems in his own life for the past four days, and the constant terror Meredith had been forced to live with over the past eighteen months was completely unacceptable.

  This time was supposed to be for him and Meredith to get to know one another. They should be in bed, with him buried balls deep inside her. Well, maybe not. He thought back to how she acted before his shower. Why was she so jumpy? Was it all related to how scared she was of Eddie and his goons? Or was there something more, something deeper going on?

  A knock at the door snapped him out of his thoughts. He stood up, picking Meredith up as he went, and deposited her on the couch in the living room. Then, going to the door, he first called out to make sure it was Walter. He now knew for a fact they had a mole in the group, which meant there were very few people he worked with on a daily basis he could trust. And that was just a damn shame!

  Walter walked in with a thunderous look on his face. His boss wasn’t taking the proof of a traitor in their midst any better than he
was.

  *****

  It was well into the afternoon by the time Walter had finally left Meredith’s little studio. While she had always known it was tiny to begin with, put two giant, larger than life Rangers in the tiny dwelling and it was enough to make even her feel claustrophobic.

  They had tried to reassure her they would do whatever it took to keep her safe. But after the phone message earlier, she had her doubts that even two huge Rangers could keep her out of the clutches of Eddie McDaniels. They had discussed ways to try to flush out the traitor, switching out Meredith’s burn phone on a weekly basis, and how they were going to catch Eddie once and for all. He had played games with them since the killings had started two years ago, and he was still playing games. Only now it looked like he had an inside man spilling secrets.

  They discussed moving her, but immediately discarded that idea. She would be even more out in the open, and since Lucas had no intentions of leaving her anyhow, staying where she was for the time being seemed the wisest course. If anything, Walter hoped it would help draw out their mole.

  By the time Walter left, she had managed to calm down completely. She found just having her mate near helped her. And yes, she had only known him since yesterday, but the mating pull was doing its job, and she realized that along with feeling sexually attracted to him—something took her totally off guard—she was also fast allowing him into her heart. It scared her more than anything, because she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if something happened to her Ranger. It was bad enough he had come in yesterday half-dead. Dead-dead. As in never breathing again. Just the thought alone brought a piercing pain through her chest.

  How was she going to explain her other fear without driving him away? Yes, mate, even though I’m wet for you, the idea of having sex with you scares the crap out of me?

  After he had showed Walter out, Lucas sat down on the couch next to his mate. “So, explain to me how someone as beautiful as you are has gone without having sex?”