He checked the growl forming in his throat. “Did he hurt you? Was that why?”
She shook her head then winced. “He got hurt because of who I am. When I asked you to kiss me, I wanted to know if—” She looked away.
“You’re worried you’ll hurt me.”
She nodded and her gaze fell to her lap. “I know what it is to take a vow. It’s just that it would be really nice … once … to know I could kiss a man, be with a man without hurting him.”
“You wouldn’t hurt me,” he stated.
“So you say.”
He really shouldn’t open this door. His vows spun around in his head, slamming against the inside of his skull, but she was next to him and she had said words he said to himself. They get hurt because of who I am.
Jesus. He knew exactly how she felt.
He struggled to remember all the reasons to refuse her. He knew the right reasons were there, he just couldn’t find his rational thoughts, not one of them. Besides, he wanted to do this for her. He wanted her to know that although many things had been impossible for her here on Mortal Earth, it was only because she needed to ascend, to be with a man on Second Earth, someone like him, a powerful vampire who could take all she had to give.
The thought of all her power did him in, what it would be like to have her under him, to be connected to her, his cock buried deep, his fangs in her neck, his mind drifting through hers. He wanted it all.
He sent the question softly into her mind, You sure about this?
Uh-huh, she responded, her telepathic abilities just about perfect. “We could start with one kiss,” she suggested, “and if it doesn’t work out…”
Like hell it won’t work out.
She sighed. That’s what I’m hoping.
He turned toward her. His rib cage hit the steering wheel. He could hardly move his knees, the car was so damn small.
He tried to relax but his body was a cauldron. He gripped her arms and hauled her against his chest. He kissed her fiercely, claiming at least her lips, imprinting that much of his body onto her memory.
Oh, God, she parted her lips.
He drove his tongue hard, taking possession of her mouth, maybe too hard because she pulled back then twisted sideways out of his arms. He was about ready to apologize, but she shifted a little then tucked herself against him so that her head now rested in the well of his shoulder. Oh, she was just getting more comfortable. She even slung an arm around his neck. Yeah, the car was small and they both had to adjust.
He slid his palm over the back of her head, caressing. The silky strands drifted over his fingers.
“Kiss me again,” she murmured.
He bent over her and kissed her as though he’d never had his tongue in a woman’s mouth before. He searched every crevice, rimmed her teeth, her lips, and battled her tongue. He couldn’t get enough.
Desire roared through him.
God help him.
Little moans escaped her as she trembled in his arms.
Was he hurting her? “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice trimmed with rough bark.
She moaned softly. “Yes, yes. God, yes. I’m not hurting you, am I?”
“Not even a little. I promise you, I can take whatever you’ve got.”
She whimpered then lowered her head back to his shoulder and once more he took her mouth. Her hand slid over his shoulder and down his arm, squeezing, gripping, savoring his muscles. He loved it but man …
He pulled back in utter agony.
“Do more of that,” she whispered. She slid her fingers lightly over the back of his hand. Damn, he was pawing her breast through the soft cotton T-shirt. He glanced around at the neighborhood. The hour was late, the night dark, but just in case, he created a complex mist around the car. Any mortal looking in their direction would experience confusion and it would be as though the car didn’t even exist.
Was he really going to do this? He should stop now, so help him. However, his willpower had vanished. It had been too long. Too fucking long.
He pushed her sweater aside, pulled her top up then her bra down. Her soft warm flesh felt like heaven against his hand. She had an idea of her own as she rose up then arched over him, her breast pressed to his cheek.
Oh, yeah.
He turned, settled his mouth on her lavender-drenched breast, and suckled until her body undulated against his. He wanted to use his fangs. Oh, God, how he wanted to use his fangs. He wanted to sink them deep and make her come. He growled heavily, which caused her to throw a leg in his direction. Unfortunately, she hit her knee on the dashboard and cried out.
He drew back and looked at her. “This car is too damn small,” he said. “Are you okay?”
She nodded until her gaze fell to his lips. She gasped. His fangs had emerged. Dammit.
She drew back. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” she whispered, leaning back into her seat, her gaze fixed to his mouth. The waves of lavender receded.
He winced and closed his eyes. He had no choice. Had to rein himself in but the dam had broken. He ached in his groin like he’d just gotten kicked.
He took deep breaths, a lot of them, until his fangs retreated. “You’re right. This wasn’t such a good idea. Let’s get you home. Where to?”
“I live in Carefree.”
He nodded several more times. “On the way you can ask me more questions.” He met her gaze.
She finally looked into his eyes. “This is real, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Vampire.”
“Yes.”
She shifted her gaze to the windshield. “Oh. What am I looking at? I saw it earlier at the club.”
He touched the ignition and started the engine. He growled his frustration. He was a starving vampire sitting next to a nine-course meal and forbidden to eat. He waved a hand and dispelled his creation. “We call it mist.”
“How does it work?”
He glanced at her. “Well, for ordinary mortals and most Second ascenders, mist is designed to confuse the mind. For instance, if a mortal walked by right now, his mind would simply glance past the car as though the vehicle wasn’t even there. But I take it you can see it.”
She nodded.
“What do you see?”
“Like cobwebs sort of, but more like a really beautiful intricate yet loose mesh. And white. It’s white.”
He shook his head and chuckled. “That’s amazing. That’s what I see as well, and my warrior brothers see the same. But up until this moment, I’ve never had an ascendiate capable of detecting the physical composition of mist.”
She put her seat belt back on. She fell silent. No doubt she was feeling overwhelmed—and why wouldn’t she? This was a lot of information to take in.
He turned the car around and headed in the direction of I-10.
Silence reigned for a good long while. He gave her time. Finally, she asked, “So what prompted you to leave the little black-and-red invitation at my feet?”
He shook his head. “I hated leaving you in such despair. I thought, maybe, if you were in the middle of your call, it would help.”
“I guess it did because here I am.”
“Here you are.”
“So why the Blood and Bite? Couldn’t you have just invited me to a Starbucks or something?”
He chuckled. Oh, God help him if she made him laugh. He tended to fall hard for a woman who had a sense of humor.
“You know that club is really sexist.”
He glanced at her and smiled. “Tell me honestly, down the road, if you and I had never met, do you think you might have gone back?”
He sensed her sudden discomfort, but when a rush of lavender wafted beneath his nose he had his answer.
She shrugged. “Well, okay, maybe. Once. Just to see what it was like.”
“The women who go there enjoy themselves.”
“And those warriors enthrall the women.”
“In part. Try to think of it as a shortcut to the usual seduction. It’s really n
ot much different.”
“We’re talking levels of power. It is different.”
“Except for one small thing. A woman has to be willing to be enthralled. Period.”
“Oh.” She was silent for a moment then asked, “And have you found most women willing?”
He glanced at her. He saw the challenge in her eye. Honesty might serve him in more ways than one, and he saw no reason to yield to a lie. “Yes.”
She looked away from him. He could guess her thoughts, especially since he couldn’t detect even the smallest trace of lavender shedding from her body right now. Good. If she found him disgusting, like maybe she thought of him as a sexist pig, then she’d leave him alone.
“Are any of the warriors married?”
“None of the Warriors of the Blood but a high percentage of Militia Warriors take wives … or husbands. We do have women who serve as Militia Warriors.”
“So there’s a difference between the two groups?”
“Unfortunately there’s a big difference. There are only seven Warriors of the Blood, but across the world there are hundreds of thousands of Militia Warriors. The militia serves as a peacekeeping force, sort of like your National Guard, but with many of the same duties as regular police officers, you know, handling disturbances, theft, home invasion, domestic disputes, homicides, the usual.”
“And the Warriors of the Blood?”
“We mostly serve Endelle fighting death vampires as a unit here in this part of the world.”
“I’m not sure I understand. Death vampires only reside in the Phoenix area? No other place in the world?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. There are death vampires in every territory, every country on Second Earth. Militia Warriors all around the world battle death vampires but only in large units, since it takes at least four Militia Warriors to bring down one death vamp. As for the Warriors of the Blood, we’re here as a layer of protection for Endelle, which tells you why the Commander keeps rounding up death vamps from other continents and shipping them to battle us. If he can break our ranks, put us in our graves, then he can break Endelle and her administration.”
“Seven men against one man who appears to command an army of death vampires? How does that work?”
“It didn’t used to be so bad but with the explosion of the population of Mortal Earth and the increased number of ascensions that occur on all seven continents of the world, the number of conscienceless ascendiates, ready and willing to drink dying blood, has increased as well. We’re a little overworked at present, and the number of Militia Warriors who die each year is heartbreaking.”
She shook her head. “Which leads me back to my original question—the Warriors of the Blood don’t marry?”
“I guess we got off topic but the answer is, rarely.”
“Why?”
The question pierced him straight through the heart. His memories of Helena and his children surfaced yet again. “It’s just too damn dangerous. Not for the warrior, but for those he loves.”
* * *
Alison held her arms around her sides like a vise. Her fingers plucked at her sweater. Chills kept running through her even though she wasn’t cold.
She fixed her gaze out the window and watched a blur of streetlights and old worn-out houses go by. How long since she had spoken? She glanced around. They were approaching I-10. That long, then.
Her thoughts had become a stormy sea, the waves high, a lot of crashing surf. She couldn’t seem to make sense of what was happening to her, the mind being a limited thing and only able to absorb so much.
Then there was the continued onslaught of Kerrick’s massive presence in her car, the lingering erotic male scent of him, his nearness, and the temptation of touching him at will …
She drew in a long shaky breath.
“You’ve grown quiet.” His deep voice filled the car and once more battered her senses.
“A lot to think about.” She shifted toward him. “What was your rite of ascension like?”
Did he just shudder? Great.
“Every ascension is different. You can’t compare the two.”
“Try me.”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yeah. I do. I need answers, Warrior.”
His gaze snapped to hers then back to the on-ramp. When he’d merged into the light early-morning traffic, he said, “Well, I was a wild beast, full of rage. I still am when I think about what happened. The death vamps raped and drained my wife, Marta, my mortal wife, my first wife. She was dead before I found her. My son Evan, not a month old, was fussing in his cradle but alive.
“My ascension involved abandoning my son that same day. Once I completed the ceremony, I went on a rampage, killing and then more killing until I’d found every last one of those bastards who had essentially destroyed my family.”
Alison felt the depth of his pain. He remembered those days or weeks as though they were yesterday. A wife raped, a son abandoned. Jesus. “You ever wish it undone? Your ascension?”
He nodded. “I would undo it for Evan’s sake. I hate that I left him. I still think about him, hurt for him, wish I’d thought of him instead of my need for vengeance. I think abandonment is one of the worst things you can do to a child. You don’t have children, do you?”
Alison shook her head, even laughed. “Not possible.”
“You mean you can’t have children?”
She glanced at him. “As far as I know I can. I was referring to the power thing I was talking about earlier. Every year, my power kept getting stronger, and by the time I was in my late twenties, well, I couldn’t be with a man anymore, not without … causing damage.”
“I’m not surprised,” he murmured.
Alison needed to change the subject … fast. “If I ascend, do I have to leave my family behind? Is that one of the rules?”
“Every ascender’s situation is different. Some are happy to leave Mortal Earth and never look back. Those who want to sustain the connection to loved ones face a variety of dilemmas. For one thing, every visit requires a pass, as well as counseling.
“The greater dilemma becomes the nature of immortality. Once ascended, you have the potential of living forever. Each day that passes in which you do not age creates a problem for your family, your friends on Mortal Earth. As the decades wear on eventually a separation becomes not just necessary but sensible. And of course, there’s always the matter that we keep our world hidden from mortals, hence the counseling.”
Alison couldn’t imagine saying good-bye forever to her parents, to her brother, to Joy, to little T. J., even to Joy’s husband, Ryan. Her heart ached just thinking about it.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “The best thing to do is to take this one step at a time. Let’s get you ascended first.”
She nodded, staring straight ahead. “Good idea.”
After a few minutes, as he merged onto the 51 now heading north, the more pressing aspects of her current predicament shook the foundations of her mind all over again. A shiver rolled through her. “So,” she ventured into the stillness, “what are the odds I’m even going to make it through the night?”
“I’m right here,” Kerrick said. “It’s my job to see you through this. The warriors will help. And Endelle.”
She thought of Darian, of having counseled him for the past year. What had he meant by it, by being in such close proximity to her all that time but not lifting a finger against her? It didn’t make sense.
“Why didn’t Darian—the Commander—take my life when he had the chance? I saw him every week for a year.”
His thumbs once more drummed the steering wheel. “Again, we have certain rules we have to abide by. An ascender isn’t fair game until he or she has answered the call to ascension. Endelle would have had the right to demand a trial to prosecute Greaves if he’d harmed you. But that law works both ways. Endelle, all of us, have to be careful how we do our jobs.”
He scowled. “But I’ll tell you what I reall
y don’t get. Do you see that car in front of us? That’s a BMW M3 with a four-liter, V-8 engine, some of the best handling in the world, and the driver is going fifty-two fucking miles an hour!”
The warrior next to her was irritated at how a mortal drove a car?
Alison jerked forward and laughed, which helped a lot. In this moment, the vampire next to her seemed so, well, normal.
Warrior Kerrick, however, was not amused. “You think that’s funny?” He changed lanes, sped by the BMW as fast as he could in a car that started to shake. He eased back to fifty-five so that her Nova could relax.
“I take it you’re not the patient type, are you?”
“I have no patience for someone driving a car that could easily fly at a hundred miles an hour.”
Alison shrugged. “Think about it, Warrior. At this hour of the morning, the driver could easily be drugged out or drunk off his ass. Slower would be better.”
He grunted but still wore his scowl.
“Okay. You’ve told me a lot of bad stuff about Second Earth. So now tell me what’s so great about ascension? I’m not exactly feeling the love.”
When he didn’t speak right away, she shifted to look at him. “Having a hard time answering the question?”
Once more his head wagged and his thumb tapped the steering wheel. “It’s just been so long since I’ve stopped to think about it. Well, you’ll never have to worry about gum disease.”
“What?” She barked her laughter.
“Hey. It can be a real issue.” But a smile played at the edges of his mouth. “We don’t have diseases on Second. It’s awesome. No tooth decay or hangnails or goddamn cancer. You can smoke ’til you puke and you’ll never get sick. We don’t age. When we get a cut or a bruise, we heal fast. We’re not completely immortal, though. Decapitations will end a life, strangulation, explosions.”
“Terrific.”
He shrugged, as in, Get used to it. But he continued, “And you’ll never see more beautiful gardens than on Second. Horticulture is the highest form of art.”
“Huh. Sort of like the Garden of Eden.”
“Pretty close, but with paled-out, blue-tinged death vampires just to keep things interesting.”
Her turn to shrug. “There’s always a stinger on one of the insects.”