Bound In Death (A Vampire and Werewolf Romance) (11 page)

After waiting for so long now, that savagery was just beneath his surface. 

His claws wanted to come out. He wanted to snarl and howl and take.

But the man held onto control. Barely.

He carried her toward the bed. Put her on the heavy covers. Pulled back to stare down at her.

Did she want him?  He inhaled, desperate to see—

“Why do I feel this way?” Her voice was a husky stroke right over his skin. “No matter what happened before, I shouldn’t want you this badly.”

Yes, you should.
“There’s nothing wrong with desire.” Not a damn thing.

Her wet hair spread behind her on the bed.  The towel was knotted between her breasts. 

She stared up at him. Her eyes were so blue. As blue as the skies over Ireland, the home she’d once had. “I don’t know you,” she whispered.

You did.
“Then get to know me.” At first, he’d wanted her to get all of her memories back. But now, in truth, there were parts of their past that he never wanted her to remember. Selfish? Yeah, but it would be easier to forget those parts.   

The betrayals. The lies.

He reached for her hand. Brought it to his lips. He kissed her knuckles and turned her hand over so that he could score his teeth over her palm.

Her breath hissed out.

“Your body knows me, and I know it.”
That towel needs to come off.
He had to make this good for her, before the beast took over for him.

Too long.

“I’ve dreamed of you in this bed.” A stark confession from him.   

Jane shook her head. “I never have dreams. Only darkness.”

When he’d lost his sight, she’d been the only light in his darkness. 

He licked her palm. Then Alerac inhaled the tempting scent of her arousal. She wanted him. She feared him, but she wanted him. 

He put her hand back on the bed.  Let his fingers trail up the silken skin of her thighs.

“J-just so you know…” she told him, watching him with desire shadowing her eyes. “This isn’t because I owe you for my life.”

His fingers eased up a few more inches, pushing away that towel. “Then what is it about?”

She rasped out a quick breath. “Desire.”

Oh, he was well acquainted with desire.

“It’s not natural, the way I feel about you,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t want you this much.”

Yes, she should. “Maybe your body just remembers what your mind can’t.” 

“Don’t…”

The one word had his head jerking up. If she was telling him to stop, to back away, he would.

For her, he’d do anything.

But then she said, “Don’t hurt me.”

She fuckin’ broke his heart. The heart too many had tried to carve right out of his chest. The heart he’d given to her two centuries before.

“I won’t.”  Then he was unknotting that towel.  Peeling it away from her body. She was just as she’d been in his dreams. Those perfect, round breasts with their pink-tipped nipples. The soft curve of her stomach. The lush flare of her hips.

The temptation of her sex—soft and pink and waiting.

He bent his head and took a breast between his lips. Licking. Sucking. Tasting.  The nipple was hard and tight and he loved the way she gasped and arched toward him.

He kept tasting her, sampling her, even as his fingers slid down her stomach and pushed between her legs.

She was wet for him.

Already. 

Yes.

Her hands were on his back, her nails lightly raking over his skin. He’d wanted her touch for too long. 

His eyes squeezed shut as he kissed his way down her stomach. 

“Alerac?”

He kept kissing her.  He’d taste the need she had for him. He’d make sure to give her pleasure before the beast broke free.

Her pleasure mattered. If he made it good enough for him, maybe she’d stay, once she learned the truth.

He’d seduced her to his side before.

Can I do it again?

His hands pushed her legs apart.  Her scent—so good—was making him light-headed with raw need and lust.  He stroked her with his fingers, learning the secrets of her sex once more. Her hips rose helplessly toward him.

Her body tightened. 

He put his mouth on her.  He damn well feasted.

She jerked beneath him. Tried to pull away.  

“Alerac—it’s too much!”

No, not even close. 

He used his lips and his tongue and he worked that sweet flesh until he knew that her release was at hand. He could feel it approaching in the stiffness of her body, the gasps that broke from her mouth.

He pushed his finger into her. Licked the center of her need.

Jane came against his mouth.

The taste of her pleasure broke his control.

He surged back over her. When she reached for him, Alerac grabbed her wrists and pinned her hands to the bed.  He could see the edge of her fangs peeking out behind her red lips. Her eyes were shining with pleasure.

Mine.

He drove into her, plunging as deep as he could go, lost to everything but her. The bed heaved beneath them. The slats groaned as he thrust.  Faster. Harder.

A growl built in his throat. The wolf was pushing through his control, demanding that he mark the mate he’d lost so long ago.

He wanted to put his teeth on her, right there where her neck curved into her shoulder. The bite would claim her.  Show all others that Jane belonged only to him.

And it would give him her blood. The powerful, intoxicating blood that had first addicted him.

His canines were burning in his mouth. Stretching. Sharpening. He parted his lips. Put his mouth right over that sweet spot.  He sucked the flesh.

A choked scream came from Jane as she bucked beneath him. Another release. Pleasure that shuddered through her—through him.

Don’t bite her. Not yet. Not. Yet.

He yanked his mouth away from her and erupted into the core of her body. The pleasure was more than he remembered. Stronger. Consuming. Obliterating all that had come before.  

Linking them.

Bonding them.

His heartbeat thundered in his ears, a mad drumbeat that wouldn’t slow.  Sweat slickened his back as he slowly lifted his head.

He stared down at Jane, lost.

“Y-you’re still doing it,” she whispered, her words a husky tremble.

His brows lifted. His cock was in her body, sated, but…
I want more of her.
“Doing what?” 

“L-looking at me…like you could devour me…”

He smiled.  That was exactly what he wanted to do.

Alerac began to thrust again.

Her legs curled around his.

She met him.

The pleasure rose once more.

***

She didn’t dream of darkness. 

For the first time since she’d crawled out of that swamp, Jane dreamed of blood.

Rivers of blood, enough to choke her. To drown her.

She saw men in an old chamber, a room made of stone. A fire flickered in a hearth. Voices were shouting.

Don’t kill him!

The voice that made that desperate plea…
that voice sounds like me.

The chamber vanished.  She never saw who was being killed there. Jane was too busy staring at a new scene.

A dungeon. Two men were chained to the walls. When their heads turned, she realized that they weren’t men.

Vampires.

“You can’t do this…”
One hissed.

“Watch me,” Alerac said and—

Wait, Alerac?
In that instant, Jane realized that she was seeing these images from Alerac’s point of view. She almost seemed to be inside of Alerac and looking out at the world from his eyes.

Even as Jane made that realization, the river of blood deepened. Alerac sank his teeth into the vampire’s throat and he fed.

The vampire died moments later, horror and shock still on his face.

Then Alerac turned to the next vampire.

“Don’t!”
The vampire shouted, fear making his eyes flare wide.
“I wasn’t there! I don’t know where she is!”

“
Of course, you were there,”
Alerac’s voice seemed to boom all around her. “
I saw you.”
 

His claws reached for the vampire. 

That vision—that dream—vanished. Turned into another. More vampires. Being tortured by Alerac. Being drained by him. He took their blood. Liam was with him, watching his alpha. Smiling with a sick and cold grin as the vampires died.

“I’ll find her,”
Alerac promised. “
Even if I have to kill every one of you.”

“No!”  Jane jerked up in bed, the scream breaking from her lips. 

Her heart drummed, shaking her chest, and the sheets were tangled around her naked body.

In the next instant, the bedroom door flew open.  Alerac stood there, dressed in his jeans, nothing else. “Jane? What’s happening?”

I saw you kill—you killed my kind.

She’d been told that Alerac was a master when it came to killing vampires. She’d just seen the master up close and personal on his kills.

He rushed toward her. His claws were out. 

She flinched.

Alerac stilled. His eyes narrowed. Those bright eyes. Too bright. That gaze swept over her.  Then his lips tightened. “Been dreaming, have you?”

She jumped from the bed. Wrapped the sheet around her body. She’d been moaning in that bed beneath him just hours before.  Moaning beneath a man who killed so easily. “I don’t dream.” 

He went back and closed the door behind him. Blocked that one wonderful exit. “No, I guess memories aren’t dreams, are they?”

She could still
feel
him on her body.  “M-memories?”

“When you took my blood, I knew it would happen.” He shook his head. His claws vanished. “Just a matter of time. With my luck, I should’ve known the visions would come the first time you slept.”

She just stared back at him.

His hands fisted. “Right. You don’t
remember
that part, do you?”

“No,” she gritted out. “I don’t.”

“When a vampire takes blood from live prey, the vamp can tap into that person’s memories.” 

So she didn’t have her own memories, but she had his?

“I’m not sure which highlights you saw,” he said, and she was glad that he didn’t try to come any closer to her. She wasn’t sure what she would have done. “But I’m guessing from the scream that just shook this place, they weren’t good ones, huh?” 

She gazed into those glowing eyes. “Do you have good ones?” 

His fisted hand rose and pressed over his chest. Right over that dark tattoo that covered his heart. “I do.”

“I didn’t see them.”

“What did you see?”

“You.” Her breath felt cold in her lungs. “Killing vampires.”

He nodded. “I’ve done that.” A long pause. “A lot.”

“But you weren’t just…killing them. You were—you were drinking from them.”

All emotion left his face.  “Saw that, did you?”

“Do werewolves do that?” She hated being so lost. “You drink from your prey?” She’d thought that blood-drinking was something that only vampires had to do for survival.

Alerac began walking toward her.  She backed up, instinctively, and her shoulders pushed into the heavy wood of the bedroom’s wall.

He kept coming. Stalking her. Closing in.

“No,” the answer slowly growled from him. “Usually, we just kill our prey and move on. But I needed their blood.”

“
Why?”

His jaw was clenched tight. “
You.”
 

Jane could only shake her head.

“You changed me. After you, I wasn’t just a werewolf.” He sounded angry, enraged—at her? “I had to feed from them. I didn’t want their blood.  I wanted—”

He broke off. She was pretty sure her heart had just jumped right into her throat. “You wanted my blood,” Jane finished.

“I guess you addicted me.” Still angry. “You
changed
me. Made me into something other than the wolf I’d always been. I stopped aging. I didn’t die, and the hunger for the blood grew.”

So—what? He was some cross between a vampire and a werewolf?

“It wasn’t just about feeding.” Those images were in her head, and Jane couldn’t get them out. “You—you tortured them.”

“Yes.”

No denial. She’d hoped for one.

But he just stood there, watching her.

“Why?” Jane demanded.

“Because they deserved the pain that was coming to them. They were there that night. They
took
you. They trapped you.”

“And you killed them.”

A little shrug. “It’s what I do.”

He
terrified
her. “No one should speak of death so easily.”

His eyes narrowed. “What did the vampires look like in your dreams?”

She wanted to put distance between them. To run.  

I can still feel his touch on my skin.

“T-two were chained in a dungeon.” That was what it had looked like. Just like a medieval dungeon that she’d seen on a history channel special once. “One was blond. The other had brown hair.  You killed the blond first, and then—then you turned on the other one, even though he said…” She couldn’t finish.

“Dunstan said that he didn’t know where you were.”  He raked a hand through his tousled hair. “He lied. It was his ship that took you across the ocean.  Your blood that I’d found still staining the floor of the vessel.”

Nausea rolled in her stomach.

“He deserved exactly what he got.”  There was no remorse from Alerac. “They all did.”

She shouldn’t ask. She shouldn’t, but she did. “How many?”

He stared back at her.

“How many vampires have you killed?”

Then he smiled at her. Lifted his hand. Stroked her cheek. “My Jane…I stopped counting long ago.”

She knocked his hand away.  Shoved
him
away.  She’d thought that she could trust him. That he could help her.

But he was just as much of a monster as the creatures that had come after her. Killing. Not caring.  Again and again.

“Jane.”  Anger beat in her name as he squared off against her.  “You don’t know what they did—”

She locked her arms around her body.
Escape.
It was all she could think of.  “How long until you drink from me?” He’d said that her blood addicted him. That she was the one he truly wanted.