Blood Vow

by J. R. Ward

  "You don't have to."

  "Worried about being seen with me?"

  Elise recoiled and then stared up at him. "No, not at all. Why would you say that?"

  "Because I'm jealous."

  Okay, that was hot. But then she did the math. "Wait, of Peyton?"

  Axe rinsed his razor under the water, knocked it twice on the edge of the sink, and then resumed the de-bearding on the other side of his face. "Yeah."

  She put both her hands up. "Let me tell you right now, you have nothing to worry about. First of all, I saw him shirtless last night--"

  Axe turned his head so fast, he cut himself. "What--"

  "--and he doesn't hold a candle to you. At all."

  His eyes narrowed at her. "Did he come on to you?"

  "No, and he wouldn't ever." She got to her feet and eased into Axe's body; extending her tongue, she lapped up the bright red blood--which caused an immediate physical response in her male. "He knows better."

  Before Axe could say anything else, she sank down onto her knees, opened her mouth...and slid his erection home, sucking him deep as she cupped his heavy sac.

  "Oh, fuuuuck--" There was a bang and a crash as Axe fell back against the wall. "Oh, shit..."

  Popping his erection out of her mouth, she ran her tongue up the underside of him, and then circled his head. "Still jealous of him?"

  "Evkaeeio jgo eo faiofkal flla."

  Or something to that effect.

  With a smile, she went back to work, stroking him, sucking him, twisting his balls, teasing him with the sharp points of her fangs. Soon, he was panting and straining, and then coming in her mouth--and she was relentless, milking him dry until he sagged, all his power gone and inside of her.

  And oh, the way his eyes clung to her, as if she were the most sexually exciting and satisfying female on the planet.

  "I owe you," he said with a speech impediment she'd never heard come out of him before.

  "And I look forward to collecting. I think I'm going to go downstairs now, though--or we'll never get out of here."

  Axe mumbled something, and then she was leaving him be...with the biggest smile on her face.

  There was a serious rush to turning a male like that into putty. Go fig.

  Down by the dwindling fire, she got Peyton's phone and called her own cell.

  Her cousin picked up on the first ring. "Yellllllo."

  "Thank God you're alive."

  "You, too. Where are you? And no, your pops didn't call--you want to know why?"

  "Why?" She switched the phone to her other ear so she could tuck in her shirt. "And please tell me it's not because he drove over to your house the second the sun set to look everywhere for me."

  "He didn't call because I reset the GPS locator."

  "You did what?" She shook her head. "I'm sorry, what?"

  "I made the GPS locator report that you've been in your room all night. Well, as of three a.m., which is a perfectly respectable time to come home."

  "Peyton, no offense. You aren't that smart."

  "Screw that--I'm in school. The Brother Vishous himself taught us how to do it. So as long as your sire didn't check your room, you're good to go. Did no one call me?"

  "I don't know. You've got some texts, I didn't read them. They're not my business."

  "Well, nobody came looking for you in my room at my house. So I must have done something right. You can kiss my ass when I give you your phone back."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Meet me in a half hour at the cigar bar--I'll bring it to you then. And boooonus, I'm going to get off hearing you tell me how wonderful I am in your stupid bodyguard's presence, because he'll be there with the rest of us. He always shows up if there's free food."

  Elise rolled her eyes to herself. But she did owe Peyton. Unfortunately. "You are such an egoist."

  "Ha! If I'm the reason you got to be out all day without getting in trouble? I'd call that accuracy, not ego, when it comes to me being a god."

  "I'll see you soon."

  "I bet you can't wait, either. Buh-bye."

  --

  First stop actually turned out to be Elise's family's mansion, and Axe let her go into her father's house alone. As he waited on her frozen front lawn, he wondered what it would be like to live in a place like that. With servants, and a museum's worth of stuff, and money, money, everywhere.

  He thought of his unheated, dingy cottage.

  Had his mother made it happen? he wondered. Had she made it to where she had told his father she wanted to go? Mistress of a house just like this one?

  Was she happy--assuming she was alive? Hell...did she ever think of him? Wonder what had happened to the son she had left behind?

  As Elise emerged out of the front door, he could tell by the skip in her step that all was well. Her father hadn't caught on.

  "Are you ready?" she asked as she came up to him.

  "Always. Everything okay with your father?"

  "No problems--and I told him I was meeting Peyton out, with you as an accompaniment, and he was fine with that."

  Axe almost kissed her. But then he remembered that there were probably security cameras all over the outside of the mansion and around the property. Shit, he was still worried whether anyone had seen their little clinch behind the old oak tree the other night.

  "Let's go." She smiled so widely, he couldn't help but return the grin a little. "And brace yourself, Peyton thinks he's a god because he rewired the GPS system on my phone."

  "Oh, yeah. V taught us that--should have thought of it myself. And if that cousin of yours is a god, it's only because his bong is telling him lies again."

  Axe dematerialized downtown first and checked the alleyway. Then he texted Peyton's phone, which Elise still had, and told her to come along ahead.

  "This feels like a date," she said as they walked around to the front of the cigar club. "Don't you think?"

  As she took his hand and kept holding it, he frowned. "Are you sure you want to come out of the closet with me, so to speak?"

  "I'm all about honesty, right? I have nothing to hide."

  "Once Pandora's box is opened, you can't shut it back up."

  "I'm not afraid. Are you?"

  He cleared his throat. "Fuck no."

  As they came up to the entrance, Axe held the door open for her. And he had to admit, he wanted Peyton to know that Elise was his and his alone.

  "I'm going to take my cues from you," he muttered after he followed her in.

  "Good." She linked an arm through his. "Let's do this."

  As they walked back to Peyton's regular table, Axe was aware that he was blushing like a motherfucker--but hopefully, the dim lighting and the ambient smoke in the air hid the shit well enough. Funny...for as many people as he'd fucked, he'd never been...claimed...before. Never wanted to be, either. And the realization made him like something else about Elise: She always knew where she stood. There was no waffling, no inconsistency, nothing hidden or misrepresented about her.

  She was solid as a rock.

  And given that he'd had a void for a mother and a ghost for a father?

  Okay, wow. Enough with the psychoanalyzing.

  Peyton was already at the seating arrangement, holding court with some other vampire males, his casual, Rich Guy suit and open-collar shirt making him seem like exactly what he was: a son of privilege who always got the girl, had the car, led the pack.

  And that male's eyes snapped to where Axe and Elise were linked.

  Axe was ready for anything. But what he got, at least in the short term, was nothing much: Peyton just stared over at them and then smiled remotely as Elise broke free and approached him.

  The bastard didn't get up, but made her come to him--which made Axe want to leave the guy spitting teeth and shitting out his lower intestines.

  "How great am I?" Peyton said, like he was the fucking Pope or something. "G'on, tell me. Don't hold back."

  Elise just cocked a brow, took out his phone, an
d swapped it for her own. "You are amazing. Incredible. And a total blowhard--which, considering how young you are, is really saying something."

  "I'll just focus on the first two, thank you very much." Peyton looked at Axe, his tone hardening. "And if it isn't the man of the hour. The big hero. Sit down and have a drink. Or as you're working, maybe you should stand in a corner and just watch her, bodyguard."

  Elise froze, but Axe didn't.

  He simply parked it across from the guy and kept his hands out and ready. He didn't think Peyton would make a direct move, but there clearly had been a lot of alcohol consumed already, and the male was giving off territorial hormones like he had Elise's certificate of title in his back pocket.

  Fucking asshat cocksucker.

  Elise crossed her arms over her chest. "I can't believe you just said that."

  Peyton shrugged. "It's the truth. He works for your father, doesn't he. He's supposed to keep you safe, isn't he. What exactly do I have wrong here?"

  "Your tone of voice, for one thing."

  "Ah. Interesting. So you're coming to his rescue." Peyton lifted his Scotch. "See, I thought it was supposed to be the other way around."

  "We're leaving." Elise shook her head. "This is ridiculous. And you're being totally inappropriate."

  "Am I? Funny, does your judge of character only kick in when you're not fucking someone?"

  Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd it was go time.

  Axe exploded up out of his chair and was on the son of a bitch a blink later, picking the male up by the throat, knocking his leather armchair over, and forcing him backward until they hit the emergency exit and burst outside.

  Axe spun Peyton around and hung him up on the outside of the building. "Time for you to back off."

  "You asshole," Peyton hissed. "You fucking got her, didn't you."

  Elise came rushing out of the cigar bar--but Axe stopped her with an order and a palm in her face. "Go back inside."

  "Axe, don't hurt him--"

  "Let me handle this--"

  "Let him go--"

  Peyton's fancy loafers were dangling above the ground, and he was turning blue, but he was so furious, he didn't seem to care.

  "Why do you"--Peyton gasped--"want her to leave?"

  Axe snarled, baring his fangs. "Because there's no reason for her to see what I'm going to do to you."

  "Axe, please--"

  That was when Novo materialized on the scene, sauntering over from across the street, the female more amused than surprised as the emergency exit clicked shut.

  "Peyton," she drawled, "you always find the fun, don't you."

  "Al--" He choked and coughed. "--ways."

  It was hard to say when exactly Axe tweaked to the fact that they were in trouble. But one minute, he was focused on getting Elise to go back inside so he could kill Peyton, and the next...

  Novo caught the scent at the same time he did, the female's head turning to the direction the wind was coming from.

  "Oh, shit," she said under her breath.

  Axe dropped Peyton and let the guy find his feet and his oxygen. If he did. "Elise, back inside. Now."

  "No, I'm not leaving until--"

  Axe took her arm and airlifted her to the door. "That's a lesser. That smell--it's not old garbage, that's a fucking lesser."

  Elise's look of alarm was the good news and the bad news: bad because he never wanted to see her scared; good because she didn't argue with him anymore.

  He grabbed for the handle on the door they'd come out of and--locked. The emergency exit was locked. Duh.

  "Goddamn it," he hissed.

  Axe only had one gun on him, but as he glanced at Novo, she was already taking her forty out. Peyton was the same, palming up--except he was coming toward Elise.

  "I'll take care of her," the male announced.

  "No, she's my responsibility--"

  "She's my cousin--"

  "Will you two cut it out--"

  The three of them escalated to yelling, which was exactly the wrong fucking thing to do, because down at the end of the alley, the lesser, who had previously had no concrete direction, glanced their way.

  And then started coming at them.

  "I'm going to do this--"

  Axe's bonded male ended Peyton's op-ed right goddamn there with a roar to rival Godzilla's--proof positive that whatever civilized veneer vampires sported as they went about their nightly biz, at their heart, they were animals, unconstrained by logic when pushed.

  Especially the males.

  Peyton's shock was obvious, but there was no time to go into the how-did-bonding-happen thing. The slayer, previously on the approach to tease out whether they were human or vampire, now had its answer--and it whistled, calling others in for backup.

  Axe put Elise behind him. "Stay with me. Use me as a shield."

  And then he raised his gun. There were three slayers now, and--

  "One at six," Novo barked.

  Snapping his head around, Axe cursed. "Peyton--"

  "Yeah, I'm covering her, too."

  Elise's cousin fell in tight, closing ranks around her, as Axe got his phone out and tried to text--

  "Go into Contacts," he said as he thrust his phone back at his female. "Text the Brothers."

  A trio of lessers. Humans everywhere. Elise in the middle.

  This was the definition of a cluster-fuck.

  hage was losing his mind.

  His ever-loving mind.

  As he and Mary sat in the billiards room, the mansion was empty except for doggen: Wrath and Beth were taking a breather with L.W. down in Manhattan; Phury was up at Rehv's Great Camp in the Adirondacks with the Chosen; V, Z, Tohr, and Butch were at the Audience House with Bitty and that uncle of hers along with Marissa--and Lassiter was riding sunshine shotgun on the little girl's shoulder. Meanwhile, iAm, Trez, and Rehv were in town at shAdoWs and Sal's, with Rehv helping the Shadows optimize their revenue. The other females were out on a girls' night. And he hadn't seen any of the young bucks since First Meal.

  It was as if the community knew they needed some space to self-destruct.

  Rhage checked his Rolie again. "How much longer can it take?"

  "I don't know. I mean, it could be hours." Mary looked at her phone by tilting the screen. "Marissa said she'd shoot me an update when she was able to."

  "Goddamn it. I feel like I'm waiting to hear if I have cancer."

  "As somebody who's gone through that one? Yup, it's pretty close."

  "I just--"

  "Shit!" Mary jumped up. "I forgot!"

  "Forgot what?"

  She put her hands up to her face. "The letter he wrote. I never gave it to Bitty. Oh, God, I don't want Ruhn to think I'm obstructing anything!"

  Justlikethat, she was out of the billiards room, her feet carrying her fast up the grand staircase. Moments later, she came back down breathing heavily, with the folded papers in her hand.

  "What does it say?" Rhage asked. "I mean, he told us we could read it."

  It seemed like the closest they could get to what Bitty was experiencing with the guy.

  "I really hope...well, there's nothing to be done now." Mary sat down and opened the pages. "I will apologize. It was an oversight...it's all just been so emotional."

  As she read what had been written in pencil, she was silent for a while, her brows moving up and down as her eyes went back and forth.

  "What's in there?"

  "Sorry. Ah, he works on the estate as a handyman, fixing fences and tending the lawns and buildings. He...takes care of the barn cats and the two security dogs. Lives by himself. Says...well, this is too bad."

  "What, that he molests farm animals?"

  Mary shot him a look. "No, he seems apologetic he wasn't schooled." She went to the second page. "Oh...this is about Bitty's mom."

  "What?" he prompted.

  When she didn't reply, he let her go and waited, drumming his fingers on his knee. Checking his fucking watch. Letting his leg bounce against the sofa.
>
  Her eyes finally lifted. "It's so sad. It's...heartbreaking. He talks about all the things he used to do with Annalye when they were kids. Sounds like a pretty perfect upbringing on that estate. Their parents worked for the landowners--it's been generations of the two families together. Everything changed, though, when Annalye met the male who was Bitty's father. Ruhn's respectful about it and doesn't give many details. But he says he never stopped thinking about his sister and he tried to find her numerous times. He didn't know for a while that they had even come up here to Caldwell."

  Rhage rubbed his face. "You know, this would be so much easier if I could hate him."

  "Would it...?" Mary murmured. "I'm not so sure."

  "He can't take care of her like we can."

  Mary went to the last page. "Oh...my God..."

  "What?" Okay, now he felt like going for his dagger. "What--"

  "Look at this."

  She turned the final sheet to him. And "Oh, my God" was right. Covering the white paper, there were incredibly detailed and beautiful pen-and-ink drawings of a big house, and fields...a little cabin...a close-up of a dog...a cat napping all curled in a ball.

  "He's an artist," Mary breathed.

  As Rhage let his eyes travel over the pictures, he wanted to hate everything about the letter and the dumb-ass fucking drawings. He wanted to take a shit all over those pages, rip them to shreds--hell, nail them to a tree trunk and put bullets into them until there was nothing but shreds left.

  Except he couldn't.

  Both his logic and his instincts were telling him that Ruhn was a good guy, a simple guy--which was not to say there was anything stupid happening with her uncle...just that there was an honest life of hard work being lived on his part. And yeah, the tragedy of that dead sister of his was only going to be eased if Ruhn could do right by his niece.

  Mary's phone went off with a bing! and the two of them both reached for it on the sofa cushion--Mary won the race and didn't waste time opening whatever it was up.

  "It's Marissa. They're still talking, Ruhn and Bitty. She says that...Bitty was really shy in the beginning, but is now asking questions. They're going to eat."

  Yeah, 'cuz First Meal had been a no-go, even for him.

  "It's going to be a long while," Mary concluded. "And it should be."

  Rhage scrubbed his eyes. It was so weird. When Ruhn had turned up and turned out to be real, there had been a tearing in him, a ripping apart, a searing pain. And now, with each new piece of information, Rhage felt like Bitty was a ship going out to sea, disappearing first by feet and then by yards and soon by miles as she floated off, leaving him on the shore.