Luther's Return (Scanguards Vampires Book 10) (8 page)

Just like Luther did now. The hard outline of his erection pressed firmly against her center, making her knees weak and her mind foggy. His hungry mouth prevented her from forming any protest, even if her brain had been capable of doing so—which it was not. All it seemed to do was send messages to her hands to continue exploring his chest. To caress the marred skin, stroke the angry scars and find the beauty beneath them. To feel his heart beating into her hand.

A vibration charged through her. Was it his heartbeat that sent these waves through her body? A groan came over his lips and bounced against hers, making her tremble in his arms. Involuntarily, Katie rocked her pelvis against his groin and felt another vibration.

She realized then that she was powerless in the arms of a vampire. Powerless, because she wanted what he was offering. A chance to forget.

10

Blake disconnected the call to his voicemail and cursed as he rushed along the corridor of the executive floor at Scanguards’ headquarters in the Mission district. At the door at the end of the long hallway, he stopped briefly.

Thomas Brown-Martens, Chief of IT
and
Eddie Brown-Martens, Deputy Chief of
IT
, it said in bold black lettering. The two had combined their last names after their wedding and blood-bond. Not only did they now share an office and in effect the management of Scanguards’ IT department, they spent practically twenty-four hours a day in each other’s company. How they could stand that much togetherness was beyond him.

Blake shook his head and knocked quickly, not waiting for an answer before he opened the door and entered.

Two heads spun in his direction. Eddie, pointing at something on the monitor, stood behind Thomas, who was sitting at his desk.

“Hey,” Thomas greeted him.

“We were about to call you. I think we found something,” Eddie said, staring back at the screen. “Run it again,” he told Thomas.

Whatever Eddie and Thomas had found could wait a moment. “I had a call from Katie. I need to look at the video of Isabelle and the kidnapper again,” Blake requested.

Thomas motioned him to step closer. “We’re looking at it right now.”

Blake walked around the desk so he could look at the monitor, and watched the kidnapping unfold once more. This was his worst nightmare come true: one of his charges had been abducted under his watch. Something like this was never supposed to happen. He and his team had been protecting all of Scanguards’ children for almost two decades now, and nothing had ever happened. They’d been safe. Heck, nobody had as much as fallen off a bike under his watch. And now this. A kidnapping.

“See, there.” Eddie pointed to Isabelle’s mouth. “I’m not an expert in lip reading, but I think she’s saying
I’m not Kimberly
.”

“Fuck! Katie was right.” Blake raked a hand through his short hair. Why hadn’t he seen this immediately when he’d watched the video for the first time? Maybe because he’d been too focused on trying to get a better visual on the kidnapper’s face.

Thomas looked over his shoulder. “That’s Katie’s stage name. This guy wasn’t after Samson’s daughter. He wanted Katie. What did she say?”

“She mentioned letters from an obsessed fan. But it doesn’t make sense! If it was an obsessed fan, he would recognize that he wasn’t abducting Katie.”

Eddie nodded. “True. Particularly since the kidnapper had to be a vampire or a hybrid. He would have recognized that Isabelle is a hybrid.”

Thomas swiveled his chair around. “Yeah, but did he know that Katie isn’t a hybrid? If he’s an obsessed fan and never met her face-to-face, how would he know that she
isn’t
a hybrid? If he’s seen her on TV or in the movies, he wouldn’t be able to tell. The cameras can’t catch a vampire’s aura, nor a vampire’s scent.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now, why or how. He got the wrong woman. We’ve gotta find him and get Isabelle back, before he realizes she isn’t Katie and hurts her.” Blake pulled out his cell. “We’ll start with the letters.” He dialed Katie’s number. “Let’s pull prints off them, run them through the databases, and see whether we can narrow our search area with the help of the postmarks. I doubt he’ll have written his address on the envelopes.” The phone continued to ring in his ear. “Come on, Katie, pick up!”

Thomas nodded in encouragement. “We’ll analyze the letters. Maybe he left some clues in his writing. Stalkers like to show their superiority. They think they’ll never be caught, so they play with their prey. If there’s something in there, we’ll find it.”

“You’ve reached Katie, please leave a message.”
Beep.

“Crap!” Blake cursed. “Katie, I got your message. Call me immediately. We need those letters.” He disconnected the call and looked back at his two colleagues. “Do you know where Wesley is? Wasn’t he supposed to take Katie home?”

“He’s probably still at the university with John, interrogating the audience and the student actors. The forensics team sent the first batch of fingerprints back and we’re running them through the system. We’re still waiting for the students and stagehands and anybody else who’s been backstage to be fingerprinted so we can eliminate their prints and isolate the perpetrator’s. Isabelle’s we have on file.”

Blake nodded, drawing in a few breaths. Just like they had DNA samples of every member of Scanguards and their families in a vault in the basement. “Good. I know you guys are on top of it, but I need everybody to give more than their best in this case. Isabelle is in danger. And I know she’s scared. We have to bring her home. That’s our first priority. I don’t care what we have to do, on whose toes we need to step, or what laws we need to break to make that happen.”

“We all feel the same,” Eddie said, exchanging a look with Thomas. “Isabelle is just as much our family as the rest of Scanguards.”

“Katie needs protection,” Thomas added, rising from his chair. “You want me to assign a security detail to her? Once the kidnapper realizes he’s got the wrong girl, he’ll be making another attempt.”

Blake could only agree with Thomas’s thought process. “Yes, find out from Wesley where she is. Let’s get those letters from her. And then Jake will guard Katie at her house.”

“Consider it done,” Thomas said.

A knock at the door made them all turn.

“Come in,” Thomas answered.

The door opened and Haven entered. His gaze immediately fell on Blake. “Thought I’d find you here.”

“You’re back already? What about the lead?”

Haven shook his head, regret in his eyes. “Sorry, false alarm. It was a case of domestic violence. It wasn’t Isabelle. We sorted the jerk out for kicking his girlfriend around, but the two had nothing to do with Isabelle’s abduction.” He motioned to Thomas and Eddie. “Anything new here?”

Thomas and Eddie remained silent, their gazes shifting to Blake.

Blake sighed. “I’m afraid so. We just figured out that Isabelle wasn’t the target.”

Haven’s forehead furrowed. “But if she wasn’t, then who was?”

“Katie.”

“Fuck!” Haven cursed and turned back to the door.

“What are you doing?”

Haven ripped the door open and looked over his shoulder. “She was in the observation room earlier. I’ve gotta get her and protect her.”

Haven raced into the corridor and to the elevator bank, jamming his thumb on the button to call the elevator.

Blake ran after him. “What the fuck was she doing at HQ?”

“She wanted to help.”

“You smuggled her in? That’s against—”

“I don’t know who she sweet-talked to get in, but you know my sister. She’s resourceful.”

“Yeah, and one day that trait will get her into trouble.”

Haven nodded. “I just hope today is not that day.”

11

Luther was losing all sense of time and place. All that mattered right now was the woman in his arms: the softness of her lips, the intoxicating taste of her mouth, the spellbinding touch of her fingers as she gently traced his scars. As if their ugliness didn’t bother her.

Just like the faint smell of witch on her didn’t bother Luther. He’d always abhorred witches of all kinds—most vampires did—but Katie’s scent appealed to him, in fact lured him to her like a beacon guiding a ship to shore. A ship adrift in a vast ocean. A ship that had lost its compass.

Katie responded with passion, despite his demanding kiss and his insistent touch.

Despite the fact that he was a dangerous vampire, a stranger in fact, she pressed herself to his body, and encouraged him to grind his hard cock against her with an ever increasing tempo. The soft cries of passion and lust coming from her throat urged him to roam her body, explore her lush curves, while the scent of her arousal drove the vampire inside him insane with need.

His body heated with every lap of his tongue against hers. Deeper and deeper he foraged into the cavern of her delicious mouth, running his tongue along her teeth, nibbling on her lips, tasting her. He was starving for this kiss, couldn’t get enough of it. For over twenty years, he hadn’t kissed a soul, hadn’t felt this kind of intense connection with another living being. For over two decades he’d only known the touch of his own hand, as he satisfied his base needs during the lonely daylight hours in prison, when it was quiet and most vampires slept.

But none of the orgasms he’d experienced at his own hand compared to the pleasure he felt now kissing this woman, this witch—the actress with eyes like a cat. Green eyes. The eyes that had stared at him from those posters in the prison cell.

Shit!

Abruptly, he released Katie. This was all wrong. Breathing hard, he stared at her. Her lips looked bruised from his kisses. Her hair now fell over her shoulders. Had he been the one to undo the medieval hairdo?

When he met her eyes, he could see it clearly: the lust and passion he’d awakened in her.

What the hell had come over him? He couldn’t even remember why he’d kissed her in the first place. But he knew why he had to stop: he had to stay away from women. A woman had been his doom once, and he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

“Go!” he demanded roughly, breaking eye contact. “Go home.”

“No fucking way!”

Her resolute answer made him snap his head back to her. He narrowed his eyes. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, drawing his attention away from her face and to her luscious breasts, which only moments ago had been crushed to his chest. Such softness, such comfort they’d provided him.

“I’m not leaving until you tell me what you know about the guy who wrote those letters.”

Luther’s nostrils flared. “You’re not in a position to make demands. Besides, I have no idea who wrote the letters.”

He turned on his heel, ready to leave, because the longer he stayed in her company, the harder it would be to extricate himself from it. He knew himself too well; twenty years alone in a cell had made sure of that. Katie was the kind of woman who could get to him, and he wasn’t going to allow that.

“But you have a suspicion.”

He hesitated for a split-second, but it was enough for Katie to add, “I knew it!”

Luther pivoted and glared at her. “Listen to me. I think it’s better you go home and stay out of my business. And for what it’s worth, I apologize that I kissed you. Chalk it up to the fact that I was in prison for twenty years.” He paused for a moment, before adding a lie to his statement. “Frankly, I would have kissed anything with tits at this point. Nothing personal. Wrong place, wrong time.”

Katie pressed her lips together in obvious displeasure. Good, she’d finally gotten the message. Already relaxing, he made a motion to turn.

“Not so fast, buddy!” she said rather calmly. Much too calmly for a woman who’d just been told that the passionate kiss they’d shared meant nothing. “Samson is going to find out about this. I’ll show him the letters, and then he’s going to hunt you down like a dog.”

Luther tilted his head to the side, looking at her for a long moment, before opening his mouth. “May I point out one thing?”

Katie raised her eyebrows in curiosity.

He lifted his hand. “I’m the one who’s got the letters. So it appears you have nothing to back up your allegations.”

For an instant he thought he saw something flash in her eyes, but then it was gone again, and she even smiled. “Oh, I have copies at home. So do with those whatever you want.”

He growled in displeasure.

“Help us find Isabelle. You have the key. You know things we don’t,” she continued.

“Even if I had any information that could help you find her, Samson has made it clear that the next time he sees me, he’ll kill me. This time he won’t stop to ask questions. He’ll strike first. And despite everything, I rather value my life. So the answer is no.”

“If you don’t want to help us, I’m going to tell Samson that you lied to him. That you’re hiding the fact that you know who’s behind this.”

“I passed their fucking lie detector test!”

“I know for a fact that the machine isn’t all that accurate,” she claimed.

Luther narrowed his eyes, but couldn’t tell if she was bluffing or not. “Gabriel looked into my memories. He cleared me. So you’ve got nothing.”

Katie brought one hand up and pretended to inspect her fingernails. “You forget that I’m a witch.”

“What’s that got to do with my innocence?”

“What if I put a spell on you that makes you confess to the crime?”

He sucked air through his nostrils. Had he heard correctly? She was threatening him with witchcraft? No vampire had any defenses against it, and he feared it as much as the next guy. “You devious, little—”

“—bitch?” she offered politely. “Oh please, I’ve been called worse.”

“I was gonna say tramp,” Luther corrected her.

Katie pushed herself away from the car and came toward him. “Now here’s how this works: you’ll lead me to the man who wrote the letters, I’ll play bait, and you’ll catch the guy. If you don’t do it, I’ll set all of Scanguards on your tail.”