Mine, page 7
“I got time left,” he said out loud. You know, in case He was listening. Or She. Or Whoever was up there.
How stupid was he going to feel if it turned out that he had six months… and he spent them all sitting in this bed, staring off into the darkness, waiting for the Grim Reaper to remember where he lived?
And as for sex? Yeah, sure, his cock didn’t work, but his fingers sure did.
His tongue most certainly did.
Giving his Lydia pleasure was pleasure to him, and that was a helluva lot more than some cancer patients had or could do tonight.
Easing his hips to the side, he pushed his numb hand into the front pocket of his jeans. The zip tie with its trimmed end was about as romantic as a monkey wrench, but it was the only stand-in for a ring that he could find in the house without asking anyone. He’d intended to put it on Lydia’s finger in that apple orchard, and then go with her to find something more proper. Fate, that fucker, had had other ideas, but two could play at that game—
Tap, tap, tap.
On his shoulder.
Daniel jerked around, expecting to see Lydia—
Nobody was at the bedside. No… that wasn’t true. He could sense someone’s presence.
“Hello?” he called out. In case somebody had knocked on the closed door. “Come in?”
Although if it was a white coat with a tray of needles and bright ideas, he was going to regret—
Shouting. Someone was shouting.
Out in the hall.
Even though it was the last thing he needed to do, he put the zip tie aside and gingerly got off the mattress. When his legs supported his weight on his numb feet, he picked up his sweatshirt and yanked it on. Then he took out his snub-nosed nine millimeter from a drawer in the bedside table and slipped the small gun into the front pocket of the jeans where the zip tie had been and headed for the door.
Old training and too much relevant experience had him back-flatting by the exit. Holding his breath, he listened for a heartbeat or two, and then slipped out into the hallway.
In his bare feet, he made no noise at all as he walked slowly toward the sounds.
No more shouting now. Just muffled mumbling, as if he were in a game of reverse Marco Polo, with the closer he got, the quieter the target became.
It was a woman.
Phalen?
Where are the guards? he thought as he zeroed in on the woman’s study. Surely they’d heard it, too?
Unless this was another dream…
The door to her inner sanctum was closed, and he put his ear to the cool panel. When there was only silence, he knocked.
“C.P.?” Knock-knock. “Hello?”
After a moment, a dim response: “I’m all right.”
Daniel frowned and spoke to the door. “You don’t sound all right. Was that you yelling?”
When there was no response, he put his ear flat to the panels again. Then he knocked once more. “What’s up, Phalen.”
No response.
Stepping back, he ran his palm over the new-growth on his skull and reminded himself that though he was a guest in her fortified house, her life was none of his business, and if she wasn’t answering him? See the previous operant statement—
Tap, tap, tap—
Daniel wheeled around, and as he lost his balance, he grabbed on to the molding at the jamb. “What. What do you want?”
Yes, he was talking into the air, but something was absolutely standing beside him, and this was clearly another dream, and—
Was that lavender? Why was he smelling lavender…?
The weeping was so soft that at first he figured it was his own wheezy respiration, but when he held his breath and the quiet sorrow persisted, he knew the rhythmic, heartbreaking stuff wasn’t him.
“Fuck it.” He grabbed the handle and announced loudly, “I’m coming in.”
Pushing things wide, he looked to the glossy desk to the left. No one was in the chair that had been turned away to the side. Checking out the seating arrangement on the right—
In the open doorway to the half bath, C.P. Phalen appeared, her face white, one arm around her chest, the other extended down her body.
So that she could attempt to cover the enormous bloodstain between her legs with her hand.
“I think I’m losing the baby,” she choked out.
NINE
STOP! DON’T HURT him!”
As Lydia jumped into the summit’s clearing, her arms were out, her hands ready to do something, anything. Meanwhile, in front of the mountain’s best view, the vampire Xhex had a vicious-looking dagger right at Blade’s gut—and if the female followed through on her facial expression?
That brother of hers was not just going to end up with one hell of an ouchie, his entire digestive system was going to roll out and land at his feet.
And then where was Gus St. Claire going to be?
“I need him!” Lydia exclaimed as the two of them looked over at her.
Well, Xhex turned her head. Blade’s gleaming eyes were all that moved in his case, and he quickly wiped at them with his hands. Then he stared off at the view, stony and stoic, his red robes swirling around him in the gusts that rode up the elevation’s western side.
“Please,” Lydia begged as the wind cut through her clothes, its cold claws making her shiver. “I have to talk to him.”
Xhex’s cursing was so low, she couldn’t catch the words. But when the female stepped off and took her dagger with her, at least there was a reprieve.
“Thank you,” Lydia whispered.
“You’re fucking crazy,” Xhex responded tersely.
And then Blade looked at her.
In the tense silence that followed, Lydia was glad she’d taken one of the SUVs up the big trail and jogged the rest of the way to the cave where he had been staying. Her wolf side had wanted to run, but she was not about to be naked in front of the male again—even though it meant nothing to her.
“Good evening, wolven,” he said in a low, seductive voice. “You came all the way up here to find me? I am quite popular this evening, it appears.”
“I need you,” she told him.
“Do you ever listen to good advice?” Xhex bitched. “No, of course not—”
“I have to talk to you.”
“I am, as ever, at your disposal.” Blade bowed low and then pointedly glanced at his sister. “Although I must say, dear Lydia, that I did not expect to see you again.”
As some of her kin howled off in the distance, she’d had enough with the pleasantries. “A friend of ours has been abducted. And Daniel says that you can help us—”
As he put up his hand, she stopped. “Will you excuse us,” he said to his sister. “We do not require a chaperone the now.”
“Too bad. I’m not leaving.”
Yeah, okay, enough with the sibling conflict, as well. “Daniel says he has a lead from when he worked for you. About a—”
“I am out of that line of business.” The male took a step back. “So I’m afraid that you will have to solve the problem with your friend on your own. Is there anything else about which I may be of service?”
“But Daniel told me—”
“I cannot help you.”
Another gust of wind swirled around the male, sure as if his essence was calling the restless energy of the night to him, and as if in response, more howls from her kin echoed and weaved through the shadows.
The clans were reassuring her she was not alone, and she loved them for it.
“Is that all?” Blade asked as he stared at her. “And do take your time, I am enjoying the view.”
“Will you cut the bullshit,” Xhex snapped.
“You should feel honored, my lovely wolf, that this one”—he inclined his head in his sister’s direction—“cares for you so deeply. Usually, she is much more reserved with her affections.”
“Kurtis Joel,” Lydia announced, loud and clear. “Daniel says you know where to find him.”
Blade’s facial expression did not change in any way: There wasn’t a twitch of an eyebrow or a shift of the lip, not a tic or a frown. So he knew exactly who she was talking about. The ironclad composure was a dead giveaway.
“Don’t lie to me.” She stepped toward him. “There’s an innocent man’s life in the balance and Daniel—”
“I am terribly sorry to inform you that your intended is wrong.” A shoulder lifted in casual disregard. “I cannot help you. Now, if there is nothing further, you must excuse me…”
As the male turned away, she pictured Gus, clear as if he were standing before her, from his Afro to the H.R. Pufnstuf t-shirt he liked so much to the faded, well-worn jeans he always wore.
“You’re our only hope. Please.”
Blade froze. And then turned back around. For a moment, there was a glow of menace about him, and she recognized what it was: A predator on the hunt. She knew the feeling from her wolven form.
“What exactly are you offering,” he said in a deep voice.
“You know what?” Xhex pointed to Lydia with a jab of her forefinger. “I’m done warning you. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll walk the hell away from him right now; otherwise you’re going to live with the consequences. Either way, I’m out.”
The vampire dematerialized, leaving behind a string of curse words that were consumed by the wind. And then Lydia was alone with the male, the night somehow growing darker, the air getting even colder. As she tried to keep calm, she realized his sister was right. This was not a male you wanted to show weakness around.
And sure enough, like he could read her discomfort, Blade lowered his head and looked at her from under hooded lids. “What exactly are you offering me in return for my aid?”
“I can pay you,” she blurted.
“I already have money, but perhaps something else then. What else are you willing to pledge, female?”
“I don’t know what you’re implying—”
“The hell you don’t.” His voice practically vibrated with a distinctly masculine intention. “There is only one thing I want from you and you know precisely what that is.”
“I am in love with Daniel,” she said with force.
“Oh, yes, I know.” He tilted his head to the side, his stare gleaming. “But let us consider your situation, shall we? If I help you with this problem concerning your friend, if I handle things on your behalf—and I believe we both know what you want me to do—then you will owe a payment—”
“I am not sleeping with you—”
He put a hand to the center of his chest, as if offended. “Not now, of course. Not whilst your Daniel still lives. I am not a total savage, you realize.”
Lydia’s heart started to pound so hard, her hearing was affected by the rushing noise.
“Ah, if you could only see the expression on your face,” he said with a smile. “And yet I do not understand the shock. You need something I have. I want something you have. This is a negotiation—and I am willing to delay my resolution so that your conscience is clear. Quite a sacrifice to your benefit.”
In a bald voice, she said, “I do not want you.”
“I know that. Yet it does not bother me.”
“And in any event, I can’t trust you.”
“Actually, you can, in this situation. It will be amply clear whether or not I live up to my side of the bargain—and it goes without saying that what you are looking for is something I can provide. I am uniquely suited to this mission of recovery of the remains and revenge. After which, I will wait for however long is required so that your mate is not betrayed by our little arrangement. Indeed, he need never know.”
She recoiled. “I am not going to lie to Daniel.”
Blade’s shrug was nonplussed, as if they were discussing nothing more than a lunch date between friends. “I do not care whether you do or don’t. That is your business.”
When she just stood there, he put his palm out for a shaking. “Do we have a deal? Do you want your revenge or not.”
“Gus could still be alive,” she said in a numb way. Mostly to herself.
“Not if he is in Kurtis’s hands. If that is who has your friend? He was dead within the hour—if he was lucky.”
* * *
As Blade read the wolf’s grid, he attempted to regard her pain, fear, and helplessness with the detachment so characteristic of the psychopathy that defined him: On the surface, her upset was a consummate win and amusement for his symphath core, this forcing of a female of worth to give herself to him, in the midst of her mourning, when she had absolutely no interest in having sex with him, because she was trying to avenge the wrongful killing of someone who evidently was important to her, a tasty meal of distress.
Such a delicious tangle of toxic emotions. For her.
Oh, and the chaser? Underlying all of it was the fact that her beloved Daniel, once so strong, so capable, so well-trained, could have gone after “Kurtis Joel” himself, had he been physically able to do the job. But he was dying, and his disease had made it such that he’d had to send his female up here, to ask his sworn enemy to do something he would have completed quite easily just half a year ago.
The duality of the cruelty was delicious. A two-for-one feast.
And Blade was such a glutton.
Under normal situations.
“So,” he forced himself to prompt as he deliberately regarded his extended hand. “Whatever are you going to do?”
Crossing her arms over her chest, she lifted her chin. “Just tell me what you know.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ll take care of it myself.” Her golden stare was unblinking. “You’re right, we both know what I’m looking for and I don’t need you to do my work for me. Tell me where the man is, that’s all I need from you.”
As she regarded him down the bridge of her nose, he recalled her riveting transformation, that which was lupine becoming human in appearance not with some ghastly series of cracks and pops and drooling à la eighties horror films, but rather with a graceful shift that was molecular ballet as opposed to anatomical car crash.
His sex stirred beneath his robing, thickening.
How could he be erect, though? He did not favor females. And he certainly had never tiptoed into the quicksand of obsession over something as transitory and unimportant as an orgasm. Or twelve. Or twenty.
Be a hero, he told himself. Give her what she—
Blade shook his head. “No.”
“Why are you so heartless?”
“It is my nature,” he heard himself reply. “I am what I am.”
“Well, that’s true for me as well.” She glared at his palm. “And my answer is no. We do not have a deal.”
A blaze of pain went through him, and he found himself swallowing a gasp with a grim surge of masochism.
Naturally, his unparalleled reactions merely piqued his interest further.
He was not a male to whom people said no.
Well, not unless they were answering the question Would you like to die under mine hand this night?
“What are you going to do about your friend,” he asked softly as he lowered his arm. “Let him go?”
“You don’t have to worry about that, do you. And now you’re right. You are never going to see me again.”
As she turned away, he bit out, “Daniel doesn’t know what I do about dear old Kurtis.”
The wolf glanced over her shoulder, her whiskey-colored eyes as cold as January. “My husband can find everything out. He’s very resourceful.”
“He told me that you were not mated—forgive me, I believe ‘married’ is the word.”
“He is my husband—and we will take care of ourselves. I’d thank you for the kind offer, but it wasn’t kind and I am never going to thank you for anything.”
“Do not go after Kurtis Joel yourself,” he said grimly.
“Goodbye—”
“If you want to live long enough to see your husband die, do not go after him.”
The female stared at him for a minute. Then she took three steps forward until they were face to face. She was tall enough so that she didn’t have to tilt back to meet his eyes, and as her upper lip pulled up off her canines on one side, he could sense her wolf coming to the fore, just under her skin.
“You have no idea who I am,” she growled. “And no clue what I will do to protect what is mine.”
Blade’s own fangs descended as his cock positively pounded with need under the drapes of red. “I pray you do not find him.”
“Pray for him, not me.”
With that, she ran off without a sound, ducking into the pines, moving with the kind of coordination that one rarely saw in humans, but that was true of every nimble animal of the forest. In her absence, he exhaled and fought a wave of mourning so great, he felt certain it would knock him off his summit perch and send him tumbling to his death in the valley far, far below.
As devastating as it was to think he would never see her again, there was something worse.
For the first time in his life, he hated that someone thought he was an asshole.
TEN
LYDIA PULLED THE SUV she’d borrowed under the porte cochere and parked it at the stone mansion’s front door again. After cutting the engine, she left the blacked-out box where she’d found it. As she jogged up to the fortified entrance, she was pissed off and still talking to that symphath in her head.
Who knew there were so many different ways to use the word “asshole.”
Courtesy of C.P. Phalen’s state-of-the-art security monitoring, her entry into the house was facilitated by one of the guards, and as he unlocked the bolting mechanism and opened things, she ripped by him—and his frozen, expressionless face reminded her of Blade’s rankling superiority. Which made her want to punch something—
Lydia stopped dead two strides into the black-and-white foyer.
The scent of blood was precisely the kind of crappy news flash that the night seemed determined to keep providing, and the air was so saturated with copper that she expected to see a decapitated body down on the marble-tiled floor. Glancing back at the guard, the man was shutting the door, and then he returned to his sentry spot by the archway into the library that looked out over the back acreage. It was on her tongue to ask him if he smelled it, too, but then he probably didn’t. She sometimes forgot how much better her nose was.
