Austin's Lost Bride (The Sterns) (3 page)

He kept thrusting in her. The muscles in his face tensed, he was getting close to his release. Her moans came more clearly now. Fingernails scraped down his back. Her tongue seemed to fight against his for superiority and he pulled away to lock with her eyes.

What he saw was not love. She wasn’t smiling anymore. What he saw was desire.

Need.

A relentless longing for the same release that he craved.

All exceeded in intensity by one other emotion. The emotion that broke his heart: anger.

He realized that they weren’t making love as they used to: sometimes with tenderness, sometimes with wild passion, but always with love.

This was battle. Sex was the weapon. The victor claims the last release.

He was close to losing.

Rebecca saw the change sweep over his face. He knows she realized, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t control himself and his cock kept driving into her. The friction in her heat was immense and she squeezed the muscles in her tunnel to hold his cock tighter. She could feel the intensity of her desire rising and she struggled to control her own release until after Austin filled her. It wouldn’t be long.

His tempo changed, slowed, and she knew he was fighting for control. She couldn’t allow him to hold himself back until he finished her off. He needed to come first, and her hands left his hips and moved down under his groin to massage his balls. He wouldn’t be able to take it and she flashed a hard, triumphant look at him.

He shook his head fiercely and slapped her hands away from him as his pumping ceased.

“NO,” he said.

His face looked ashen, filled with the agony of unfulfilled release. A thin coating of control had come over him and he started to pull away. Out of her. His seed still unspent.

Rebecca’s face contorted in undisguised anger. No pretense of any other emotion or affection.

“You’re not leaving until we finish.”

In three quick moves she had flipped their positions. Austin looked up at her from his back, the desire and determination on his face unmistakable. A second later she had repositioned the entrance to her pussy over his cock and ground herself down on him. Pleasure swept her body but she felt his control weaken more.

He tried to push her away, but her strong thighs and legs held onto him too tightly to throw her off without hurting her. She arched her back, reaching with her hand to his manhood. Massaging his balls again, one after the other, his muscles started to twitch under her.

She continued working her fingers on him, while sliding up and down with her tight heat along his shaft. Her clit was engorged but she willed herself to maintain control. She felt as his last bits of control began to crack. Just a moment longer and he would erupt inside her and then she could let herself have the pleasure her body demanded. She smiled in triumph.

The first blow was so subtle she would have missed it except for the crack she felt in her mind. She pulled herself back up and looked down at him as his hands lightly landed a second blow to her body, opening her chi paths, breaking her control.

Three.

Four.

There was no time to react.

She let out a primal scream as her orgasm took hold of her. It exploded into her and swept out to every part of her body. She wanted to stop her hips from thrusting onto him but her body wouldn’t obey and she kept grinding. He arched his back, grabbing her hips to pull her down on him. His cock burying itself as deeply as it could as his seed filled her.

Rebecca was shaking. Her body had experienced pleasure. Deep, satisfying physical pleasure, and she had been powerless to stop it, to control it as she wanted. She held back tears as she rose from him, his cock slipping out of her. Her legs wobbled as she stood and he rose to stand in front of her.

Austin regarded her and his face was stone. She had lost the fight. The fight she had started. She felt her anger rising to the surface, ready to burst.

“We finish this with Mannus tonight, then I never want to see you again,” she said.

He nodded.

Fine, she thought. Don’t say anything, her anger finally bursting. She hit him.

He didn’t even try to block her as her fist crashed into his face. Blood started coming out of his nose and he stood there.

“I hate you for what you did and I will never forgive you,” she said.

She turned and ran back into the house, neither one of them noticing the empty eyes watching them from behind the second floor curtains of the neighboring house.

Chapter 3

The cool water practically froze Rebecca’s skin as she washed away the evidence of her lovemaking. She couldn’t clean herself enough, couldn’t stop crying. She hated herself as much as she hated him.

Despite all her training and everything she did to control herself, she had come first, and worse, she had liked it. Liked it a lot. Five years without him, without his hands touching her, caressing her, giving her the pleasure she had felt moments ago. She expected to be over him after so long, but she wasn’t. Her body had remembered how much she had once loved him.

Tonight she vowed it was over. They would kill Mannus and she would never see him again. That was the only way. The only way she could be certain to keep her control.

She’d run away back to Los Angeles, she thought. A cowardly way to act, but she had no other choice.

She finished up her shower quickly and decided to get the hell out of there for a few hours to clear her head. Weakened vampire or not, she needed to be rested and clearheaded tonight or she’d just get them both killed.

Clothes were hanging in the closet and she managed to find some things that fit her. That was the good thing about hunters, she thought, they stocked the safe houses with street clothes that look good and let you just blend in. Nothing too fancy or flashy, but simple, recent styles so you wouldn’t attract stares.

The house wasn’t too big, but she didn’t know where Austin was. She didn’t want to see him until they needed to leave. Opening the front door, she slipped out quietly. She didn’t bother leaving a note. Screw him, she thought. He knows she’ll be ready on time to head out.

Life in the neighborhood moved slowly but it wasn’t dead, and she realized how utterly foolish she’d been to have sex in the backyard, even with a high privacy fence. She went ten shades red as a neighbor grinned at her as she walked by his porch.

Another rule of the hunters broken, she realized. She should have veiled herself as she left. Safe houses needed to be anonymous and she’d let herself be seen leaving. Too late now and a few people were outside, making a last-minute veil impractical.

She sighed and kept walking. They’ll go on with their day and forget her in a few minutes, she hoped.

After a few blocks she made it to a small park and decided to rest under one of the trees. She needed to think. Find a way to control the images that swept past her even as she walked.

Thoughts of Austin. Of that day five years ago that changed her life forever.

Rebecca Carter was happy, ecstatic, and totally nervous. This was their day. In less than thirty minutes she’d be married to Austin and then he’d whisk her off to her dream vacation in Hawaii. Nothing could ruin it for her.

She met and fell in love with Austin in training, and when she was still and meditating she could see the love in Austin’s soul. It was a six sense she developed that told her Austin’s love was true and that her late mother was always watching over her. It never failed her. Except for that day.

Standing in the church, waiting for her father and Austin to take their places and let the ceremonies begin, she felt her mother’s presence with her. Not serene as usual but excited and trying to reach out to her. She thought at the time that she was trying to share in her joy, but seconds later she realized she was wrong. It was a warning.

The windows shattered with teargas and flash bang grenades. Guests started screaming but it was too late to get out. The grenades went off stunning people and teargas filled the room.

Gunfire erupted outside and people dropped to the floor crying, not knowing which way was safe. Only guests who were hunters, some shielded, could still move around and they headed straight for the fighting. She was shocked and outraged. Her friends, her extended family, had just been hurt and she was going to make whoever did this pay. She prayed that Austin was safe.

She turned to head outside and hit the floor. The attack on her mind came so suddenly she almost didn’t have time to defend against it. Her mental defenses went up as she went down and the last thing she remembered was a vision of Mannus laughing at her.

When she woke up at the hospital the next day, Austin was at her side, head hung low. He couldn’t even look at her as he spoke. The fighting had ended almost as quickly as it had begun. They weren’t looking for a big fight. They just wanted one person and then they fell back.

They wanted her father.

Austin had organized the available hunters as fast as he could. Austin’s connection with her father was strong. Her father had loved him and couldn’t wait until he was a proper son-in-law. Another hunter had used tracking charms to trace the connection from Austin to her imprisoned father. The hunters fought the thralls and Austin confronted Mannus to save her father.

But he didn’t. Mannus had already turned her father. Instead of saving him and killing Mannus, he let Mannus escape. Then he killed her father.

She knew in that instant that if she had been able to move better she would have killed Austin in the hospital. She gave back his ring and dismissed him from her life. No man who could harm her father, even as a vampire, could be her husband. She knew her father had to die. He had become a vampire and the beast would drive even a good man to evil. But other hunters were nearby and could have done it. Austin chose to do it himself and she would never forgive him.

That day she lost her future husband, her father, and her connection to her mother. Her paranormal senses never fully came back and she didn’t know why.

Sitting in the park thinking of the past, she didn’t hear the man approaching until too late. She spun quickly to face him but the Taser had already pierced her skin. As tens of thousands of volts of electricity surged through her body, she cursed Austin’s name a final time before blacking out.

Austin watched her walk away, slamming the back door behind her. She was truly lost to him. He realized that now and couldn’t stop the overwhelming regret sweeping over him. Every inch of his body and soul wanted to run to her, take her off her feet and ask for forgiveness.

He wouldn’t. It was too late and he was too proud. She would never have him back and he was a fool for having briefly thought that she had forgiven him. Something so alien to him like begging wasn’t going to help. Some things can just never be forgiven.

Like killing your fiancée’s father
.

Rebecca’s face had turned to grief and then to stone when he told her the story at the hospital. He had only told her that her father was dead, not even that he had killed him.

But she knew.

He never met her eyes as he spoke and she just knew what he had done. She commanded him to look at her face filled with grief and simply asked confirmation if he had killed him.

Words tried to come out of his mouth but nothing escaped, not even his breath. He was utterly speechless and filled with shame. As her face went hard and her eyes filled with fury, he answered her. He wanted to explain, tell her why he did it, but she wouldn’t listen to anything.

She handed him his ring and told him to leave. Forever.

Killing her father wasn’t something he wanted to do. He wanted to save him, but Mannus escaped and there was no time. As much as he loved Rebecca, her father had been like a second father to him, and they were going to be his family. But no matter how terrible the consequences were, in his heart he knew he’d kill him all over again.

Austin shook and cleared his head. He had no time for regrets. Mannus needed to die tonight and his preparations weren’t finished yet.

He heard the shower turning off inside and touched his face where she hit him. She threw a good punch. Blood was still slowly coming out of his nose and he cleaned himself with the outside faucet.

He felt the hairs on his neck stand up and quickly became alert, looking around for danger, subtly tensing his muscles to fight. In the corner of his eye he thought he saw movement in the neighbor’s window but when he looked up there was nothing there.

Rebecca was making him twitchy and he went back to finish the stakes.

He got back to his work and sighed moments later when he heard the front door open. Standing up on a log to peer over the fence he saw her walking down the street. She’d be back, he knew.

He went back to work.

Chapter 4

When he had finished his work, he decided to rest to be at maximum alertness when they went hunting. Sleep was restless and his mind wouldn’t let go of dreams of loving Rebecca. He was just as tired when he finally woke up as he had been before he went to sleep.

So much for getting rest
.

Rebecca wasn’t there.

She said we’d finish this together. Austin just couldn’t believe that Rebecca might have gone on to fight Mannus alone for a second time.

He did another check of the safe house to make sure he didn’t miss anything she might have taken. A quick walk-through the rooms told him that everything was still in place. She hadn’t taken any of the items they had each prepared. She would want to have the stuff she had made, he knew. He also knew that she could have her own stash of items tucked away somewhere else, but his instinct told him that she wouldn’t go solo again.

When he watched her leave hours ago, he assumed she’d be back well before evening. Dusk was still hours away this time of year, but they needed to get ready, head out, and track Mannus to wherever he was sleeping. Finding him before he woke again to feed and regain his strength was crucial.