It took only seconds for Marissa to react to the blood, to act on the primal need to survive, the instinctive understanding of what she needed to continue to live. He let her take what she needed, the wounds on her neck and shoulder, beginning to seal as he knew they would. But he couldn’t allow her to take too much, not without the risk of becoming too weak to protect her if the wolf returned. Not without feeding himself and that wasn’t an option at the moment.
“Enough,” he ordered softly, commanding her mind, “Sleep.”
She didn’t fight the compulsion as some humans would, didn’t require an addition mental push. She simply collapsed against him, a soft delicate flower of a female, and he knew on some level, she trusted him.
“Tell me you have a reason the council will consider acceptable for saving her.”
Evan’s gaze lifted, cutting through the darkness, to find, Aiden, the eldest of his two younger brothers, leaning on the wall, one foot propped over the other. He scooped Marissa into his arms and stood up.
“A good reason,” he said. “But not one they’ll accept.”
Aiden cursed. “They’ll kill you and if they don’t she will. The virus will make her a monster.”
“Not if I kill the wolf, and the virus with it, before the full moon.”
“The virus will make her go crazy long before the full moon.”
“It won’t.” He started walking, intending to pass his brother and head to the parking lot.
Aiden captured his arm before he passed. “It will,” he insisted.
“She won’t go crazy,” Evan ground out between his teeth, jerking his arm free and charging forward.
Aiden cursed softly and then quickly fell into pace with Evan, the tension rolling off of his brother telling Evan that Aiden had a good idea why Evan was so sure of his words, and most defiantly wasn’t happy about it.
Barely a minute later, Evan slid into the backseat of Aiden’s escalade with Marissa curled in his arms. Aiden climbed into the front seat and turned to face Evan immediately. “You exchanged blood with her?”
Evan gave a slow nod.
“Fuck!” Aiden cursed, hitting the steering wheel and then turning a black heated stare on Evan. “Damn it to hell Evan, are you trying to get yourself killed? Is that it? You’re tired of this life and you’re looking for a ticket to goodbye? Now you can’t erase her memory. She will know about us. She will be a danger to us no matter what happens to the wolf.”
Evan was all too aware of what the bond had created between them. “I’ll deal with the woman.”
“She’s infected Evan,” Aiden ground out between cuspids now elongated with his anger. “She’s going to turn into a monster. And that monster will share a mental channel with you that will allow her to hunt you down and kill you herself. And whatever it is you think you feel for her, and I assume you must, or you wouldn’t be pulling this crap – well, she won’t feel it for you. She’ll want you dead.”
“Not if I kill the wolf.”
Aiden stared at Evan for several longs seconds before he asked, “And if your blood, and the bond you’ve created with her, isn’t enough to keep her from going crazy?”
They both knew she’d struggle with primal urges that would have to be controlled. “I said I’ll deal the woman.”
Aiden stared at him several long moments, and then turned without another word and started the truck, the silence and dark shadows, filled with implications.
In all their days as Wardens, as Vampires, none of them had ever made the mistake of creating a blood bond with a human, a mistake that could expose their entire race. It could be remedied only two ways – death or conversion to Vampire. He’d vowed he’d never curse another human to his existence. Never steal a human life as a vampire had done his and his brothers, and a good number of those in their village, all in one violent night of blood feasting. But he wouldn’t allow Marissa to be the reason his brothers were hunted down and killed either.
Chapter Four
Marissa sat up in her bed with a gasp, the air in her chest expanding with such force it was as if she’d been dead and found life. The sensation was intense, and her chest heaved with several deep drags of air – in and then out. Her heart thundered as she struggled with a sense of disorientation. Her gaze flickered frantically across her room – her bedroom – her home. That was good. Safe. Though she wasn’t sure why she thought she wasn’t safe. There was a reason – something just out of the reach of her memory.
The room was dimly lit, light filtering through the red-shaded lamp on the nightstand, her gaze locking on the digital clock that read four am.
Her nostrils flared with the sudden awareness of a familiar scent, and she drew it in as readily as she had air moments before, savoring it – darn near tasting it. Her mouth watered, and oddly, her skin warmed. Had she ever smelled anything so delicious in her entire life? Textured, rich and multi-colored, in a way a scent had never been before. It reached inside her and flowered.
She inhaled yet again, hungry for more of the scent, eager to identify its source. Spicy and male, she realized. A flash of images charged through her mind of tall, dark, good-looking – Mr. Hot-One-Night-Stand with long dark hair and smoldering sensuality. She’d been upset about her patient’s death, about telling the patient’s sister about the loss. The bar and drinks had followed.
Evan. She remembered him. She’d lost herself in those dark eyes of his, and found herself doing just what most people did, running her mouth to the bartender, telling him her life story. And somehow, she’d been close enough to him to know his smell. She most certainly remembered the mindless, out-of-character flirting she’d done with the man and the decision to throw caution to the wind and forget everything but the night -- and the man. But then nothing. Everything else was a blank.
She raised her arm to her nose, the scent of him was on her skin, and instinctively she pressed her thighs together against the sudden warm heat there. She could smell the man all over her, all over the bed, the room which must mean they’d had sex. She went utterly still, her hand clutching the sheet.
The silky material caressed her naked ultrasensitive skin and delivered a jolt of realization. She was naked and having some sort of super-sensitized reaction to the sex she’d had, but she didn’t remember one pleasurable moment of it!
Marissa lifted the sheet and confirmed her state of undress, quickly dropping the sheet back in place. How had this happened? The one time in her life that she’d allowed herself a hot fling, and she had no memory to lavish in.
A sudden sound in the other room shuddered through her body, a soft, barely there sound. So why was it radiating through her like a shock wave? Like a blow horn? Why were her teeth grinding together, her ears ringing? Hangover, she reasoned. It was the only explanation. My God, how much had she drank to be in such a state?
The front door opened and shut, softly. So softly, she didn’t think she should have heard it, not with the bedroom door shut as well, but she did. Everything, including her panic, felt magnified. She reached for the phone and knocked it off the nightstand. Trying to recover, she struggled with the blanket, and the material felt oddly rough against her skin, more like sandpaper.
Frantically, her gaze slid around the room, in search of her clothes. She lifted onto her knees, trying to see the floor, the cool air conditioning on her backside reminding her just how exposed she was with an unknown someone in her home.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway, and she cringed as the sound banged around in her head. Her temples pounded, and her eyes blurred. Suddenly her mind took control and she wasn’t in her bed anymore. Her mind transported her to a dark ally, to a moment of fear when she saw red eyes in the shadows. Her chest tightened. No. No. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. She shook her head in refusal of what she was remembering.
“You’re awake.”
The voice jerked her from her mind’s eye, her gaze flying toward the whisky rich, familiar voice. Evan. Evan was standing th
ere. He was real. The red eyes were not real. Her hand curling around the sheet, clutching it to her chest. She drank in the sight of Evan standing there, letting him – needing him – to take her away from some just out of reach horrific image in her mind. He stood in the doorway – the door, she hadn’t heard open despite hearing everything else in magnification, but she didn’t let herself think about that.
Instead, she focused on how good Evan looked, how perfectly masculine, how amazingly sexy. She needed the escape, the indulgence, to calm the panic building inside her over that vision from the alley, the eyes. He was bigger than she remembered, broader, his faded jeans and black tee hugging an obvious abundance of lean, well defined muscle. And his hair – that long raven hair touched his shoulders, no longer tied back at his neck. God, she loved his hair. The very idea that she’d had that body all over her body, and didn’t remember it, was just too impossible to believe. It couldn’t be possible. It just couldn’t be. Yet, the warmth spreading over her skin, the heaviness of her breasts, the tightness of her nipples, said differently.
“I…” she started. “No, you…I mean. What did we…no, not what--" She pressed a hand to her face at her miserable rambling and groaned. “Oh please, just tell me.” Her hand fell from her face. “Did we--?”
The last part of her question faded as she realized that Evan had soundlessly moved again. Not only had he closed the distance between them, he towered over her, his gaze shifting from her face to do a heated inspection of the vivid view of her bare backside. Marissa quickly lowered herself to a sitting position and covered herself, feeling more than a little embarrassed – and aroused – by his inspection. Her legs clenched together, the tingling awareness there so intense, she almost gasped. Her skin tingled too, and her nipple ached. Even her own hair brushing her shoulders sent a shudder down her spine. Despite Evan’s hotness, something wasn’t normal about what she was feeling. Surely, this couldn’t be from the alcohol.
Evan sat down beside her, his eyes twinkling with mischief, one dark brow arching. “Were you trying to ask if we were intimate, Marissa?”
Intimate. She swallowed hard against the sudden dryness in her throat, and the erotic, out of character, highly detailed images that came to mind. Wildly erotic images of the two of them together flashed in her mind. A memory or was it just fantasy?
She nodded, surprised to find her voice. “I’m wearing a sheet, nothing but a sheet.”
“You had blood on your clothes, and you insisted on taking them off.” His lips twitched. “I turned my back.”
“You didn’t turn your back when my sheet fell a few minutes ago.” She paused in stunned realization of exactly what he’d said. “And I just stripped my clothes off? That doesn’t fit my personality.”
“You were intoxicated,” he reminded her, “which is also why I turned my back then, but not this morning.”
She studied his handsome face. His cheekbones were high and defined. His jaw was strong and square. He held her stare, met her scrutiny without a blink. She cringed at the truth in his eyes. “So the moral of this story is clearly that I’m not a good drinker. Wait.” She blinked at him. “What blood?” Red eyes flashed in her mind. “Blood…I…,” Her stomach knotted, her mind fighting to show her an image she didn’t want to see. She dropped her head into a hand, the other still clinging to the sheet.
Suddenly, Evan was there, his hand framing her face, his touch confusing her senses. She wanted him. God, how she wanted him, like she’d never wanted in her life. “Kiss me,” she ordered, when she would never be so bold. “I need you to kiss me.”
“And I need you to remember Marissa.”
She shook her head. “No. No I--”
He leaned forward, framed her hips with his hands. Warm waves of awareness rushed over her with his nearness. The scent of him -- stronger now, richer, more male -- invaded her senses, arousing something unfamiliar inside her. Something that made nerves and fears and inhibitions be damned. That need, that burn, to kiss him rose inside her again. She wanted to shove the sheet away, to tear off his clothes and feel his skin against hers.
“You must remember,” he told her, the command in his voice like a silky stroke between her thighs.
She let go of the sheet, wrapped her arms around his neck. Her nipples puckered, the stiff peaks brushing his chest. She moaned. “Kiss me.” He still hadn’t touched her, still pressed his hands into the mattress. “And damn it, kiss me.”
“Not until you tell me about last night.”
“I already told you I don’t remember.” She pressed her lips to his, wild and wanton, in a way she’d never felt before, but she didn’t care. She felt it now, and she wanted to feel him – all over – next to her, inside her, on top of her, behind her. Her tongue pressed past his lips.
He moaned and then gave into her, his mouth closing down over hers, one hand spearing through her hair, the other molding her close. His tongue stroking hers, wickedly hot, and then gone. He pressed her down onto the mattress, his legs framing her hips, his hands holding hers over her head. “Not yet.” His hot stare brushed her nipples, lingering on her breasts, before lifting to her mouth, then finally her eyes. “Tell me about last night.”
“Why do you want to talk when you could be inside me?”
His gaze raked over her breasts, a teasing caress that had her squirming, his eyes dark with hunger when they met hers. “You want me inside you because of what happened last night, which is why you need to remember it.”
“That’s not true. I wanted you the instant I saw you. I wanted you before…” Her chest tightened and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out what he wanted her to remember.
“Before what, Marissa?”
Fire washed through her. She was hot all over, her mind racing with images she tried to reject, her thighs aching from the emptiness he could fill. If only he were inside her, she could escape…escape something…she wasn’t sure what. She was wild though, wild with need, desperate to feel him buried inside her, taking her, filling her. She reached for his mouth. He pulled back.
“Damn you,” she all but yelled at him.
“I was damned a long time ago,” he said, his fingers curling around her jaw. “But you aren’t. Not yet. Not if I have anything to say about it. Tell me what happened last night.”
“Fuck me or let me up.” She barely knew such a bold order as her own, but her body did. Her body knew she needed him inside her, as if he were her lifeline, her drug, she couldn’t live without.
His dark eyes were flickering with something dangerously primal that only made her want him more. “I’ll fuck you when you tell me what I want to know,” he stubbornly replied. “When I know that you know what is happening to you.”
“You were there,” she said. “You know what happened to me.”
“I need to know you know. Tell me.”
A rush of adrenaline had her fighting to free herself, when she didn’t really want free -- not from him. Not from Evan. He was too strong for her, too big to fight. So instead, she arched into him, tried to touch him, tried to find the relief she knew he could give her. Still, he held back, held himself just out of reach. Desperation curled inside her, and she cried out his name. She hurt – for him, to feel him, to be with him.
She heard him reply, but she didn’t understand what he was saying. “I need…” Her vision went blurry, and Marissa had no idea what came over her, what happened to her in that moment. She sunk her teeth into Evan’s shoulder. A second later, she felt his teeth pierce her neck.
Chapter Five
Her blood flooded his mouth as his was into hers. It was sweet, hot and erotic. She was a woman between worlds – torn between human, wolf, and vampire. A woman whose primal urges would control her, destroy her, if he let them. The exchange of blood would temporarily dilute the wolf’s virus, as would the bonding of their bodies, the release of primal sexual urges. He knew this, yet, he’d resisted. He wanted her to understand, he wanted her to know he
wasn’t using her, wasn’t taking advantage of her. That he was helping her. There was no turning back time, no immediate way to destroy the wolf’s virus eroding her body, her mind. No way to get her to comprehend the implications of it all, without taming the beast within. Fucking her was the best thing he could do for her right now, and he knew it.
“Oh God I’m…” She arched against him, and he could smell her arousal, damn near taste the orgasm his bite had delivered in her blood. He eased his teeth away from her neck, swiped his tongue over the puncture marks to close them, his hand stroking her breast, fingers tweaking her nipple.
He tugged his shirt over his head, and tossed it aside. Then brought his mouth to hers as she calmed, swallowing her gasps with a gentle, sensual kiss. He could taste his blood on her tongue, and never in his life had he felt anything as sexy and arousing.
“I bit you,” she whispered against his mouth, as if she too was responding to the same thing he was.
“And I bit you,” he reminded her, working his boots off, and kicking them to the floor. “You taste like sweet succulent honey.” He nibbled her lips. “How do I taste?”
“Like the dream you,” she said, “an erotic, amazing dream.”
He froze, his mouth lingering over hers. Damn it, she was still in denial. She had to accept reality. Evan pushed off the bed, wasting no time ridding himself of his jeans and boxers, deciding he’d rather her find it in a dream rather than a nightmare, but either way, it would happen now, today.
She tucked her feet beneath her, stroking her breasts as she stared at him. Her gaze traced the jut of his cock, thick and pulsing with arousal. “You are really one hot dream man.”
Evan took the open she gave him, going down on his knees on the bed, and roughly lacing his fingers into her hair. Rough was what she wanted, what she needed, what the wolf would demand it of him and her. He pulled her mouth to his. “Not a man, Marissa,” he said. Baring his still extended fangs, to add, “A Vampire.” And then he gave her a hot kiss, a vampire kiss, his teeth nipping her tongue, her blood spilling into her mouth. He settled his cock between her legs. She was dripping wet and hot, her thighs clamping down around him, trying to claim him.