Bitten 2 (31 page)

“Are you planning on telling me what’s going on?” he asked after several minutes of somewhat uncomfortable silence.

“Not really, no.”

Apparently unwilling to let the matter go, he asked, “It’s got something to do with the vamp murders, right?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that statement,” I replied, impressed that my words were barely slurred at all.

Maybe I’m getting a handle on this whole booze thing.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“You can take it however you want, you big sexy wolf,” I said, and then froze when I saw the stunned expression on his face.

And then again, maybe not.

“I hadn’t really meant to say that out loud,” I muttered, unable to meet his gaze.

When Hank said nothing in reply I set my half-empty bottle on the table and rose to my feet. The room tilted prominently to one side, and for a second I thought I might dazzle the pack master with a spectacular display of projectile vomiting. Thankfully, after several long and slow breaths, I managed to push the churning ball of beer and stomach acid back down into my gurgling gut. The room had mostly righted itself, though my head was still swimming, but I figured the long walk back to Asylum would be a good opportunity to clear my mind. And get my rampant hormones under control.

“I’ll err... see myself out. Thanks for the drink.”

I’d made it as far as the doorway when a large hand settled on my shoulder, and I almost crumpled at the pain that shot through me. Spinning me around to face him, he asked, “What the hell was that?”

“I... I’m not sure,” I replied, reaching a hand up to probe my shoulder, only to whimper at the light touch. “I had a run-in with a vamp earlier,” I explained, trying to remember exactly what had happened in the tunnels beneath Asylum. The panic and fear had blurred the incident to indistinct images, and the beers I’d slammed back weren’t helping my thoughts move any faster.

Ah, shit
, I thought as I remembered the vamp rearing back to strike, yellowed fangs gleaming in the light of my cell phone.

“God dammit!” I cursed. “That fanged fucker bit me!”

“A run-in, huh?” Hank asked, his eyebrows crawling halfway up his tanned forehead.

“Shut up and just take a look at it, will you?”

Peeling back the collar of my shirt, Hank grimaced as he inspected my shoulder. “That looks nasty.”

“Yeah, well, it hurts like a bitch,” I snarled in reply, craning my neck to try to get a glimpse of the bite.

I didn’t see much except a bloody smear across my skin, and judging from the pain suddenly making itself known, was a little relieved that I couldn’t see anything else.

“Take off your shirt.”

“Hey man, like I told your sister, I’ve got a boyfriend,” I said, trying my best to sound indignant while ignoring the half of my brain that was chanting
Yes, yes, yes, yes!

“I’m not looking to cop a feel, Riley. I need to take a look at your shoulder.”

“Oh.”

Pointing at the empty chair, he commanded, “Sit down. I’m gonna go grab the first aid kit.”

Removing my shirt proved to be about as much fun as a root canal, and I’d just finished wrangling it over my head when Hank returned with a rather sparsely stocked and dusty first aid kit. As a were, he didn’t have much need for a lot of first aid supplies. Like me, he could heal everything from a paper cut to second degree burns in a matter of minutes, which begged the question why my shoulder felt like it had been reduced to a piece of raw meat. It should have been little more than a fading scar by now, not the bloody ruin I glimpsed in the corner of my eye.

“This might sting a bit,” he warned before dumping what was surely molten lava on my shoulder.

The label on the bottle proclaimed it to be hydrogen peroxide, but I was convinced that was a lie. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to whirl around and punch him in the face when he doused the wound with lava once more. Instead I settled for gritting my teeth and clutching the edge of the table hard enough to make the wood creak.

“Son of a...” I hissed.

* * *

I watched the pile of bloodied cotton balls grow on the table as Hank went about cleaning out the wound, his motions as gentle as possible, but making me cringe and whimper like a pup nonetheless. What felt like hours later he taped a gauze pad into place and declared me done.

“I’m no doctor, but that should hold you over for a while,” he said, and then paused when he glanced down to where my hands still rested on the table.

Following his gaze, I saw that I’d managed to gouge eight matching grooves in the wood.

“Umm, sorry about your table,” I offered with a sheepish smile.

“It’s okay,” he reassured me. “I’ve been looking for an excuse to get a new one anyway.”

“Really?”

“No,” he replied with a weak smile. “But it’s fine.”

Busy berating myself for being as destructive as a tornado, I didn’t sense his hand moving towards me until he swiped the pad of his thumb against my cheek. A spark of sensation rippled through me, blocking out the throb from my shoulder, filling me with feelings of a much more lustful and heated nature.

“You had a little blood on your cheek,” he explained, though his gaze was firmly planted on my tongue peeking out between my lips to moisten them.

“Thanks,” I replied, my eyes drawn to the gleam of the light on the golden stubble covering his cheeks.

I didn’t realize I’d meant to move until I was already on my feet and reaching for him. We crashed into each other like colliding asteroids in one of Saturn’s rings, drawn together by our own gravitational pull, unable to stop the impact.

A low moan rumbled deep in his chest, vibrating through him and into me, stiffening my nipples into aching peaks. Snaking my hands up to fist the thick curls of his hair, I pulled his lips down to mine. For all the heat in the hands that grabbed my ass to pull me tight against his body, Hank’s lips were soft and smooth like sun-warmed silk, and tasted faintly of cinnamon and honey. Arousal rippled through me like fire in my veins, warming me from the inside out and making every nerve buzz with excitement.

It was the loud
snap
of a button popping off Hank’s shirt that cut through the lusty haze long enough for me to realize what a humongous mistake I was about to make.

Are you insane? What the hell are you doing?
my inner voice cried while the wolf growled her disapproval. She was one hundred percent team Holbrook and was none too pleased that I was jeopardizing our relationship in a moment of alcohol- and fear-fueled lust.

Leaping back, missing the warm weight of his hands on my hips almost immediately, I swiped the back of my hand across my lips to erase the taste of him.

“What the hell did you do that for?” I demanded, feeling my face flush with a tangle of self-hatred, arousal, and embarrassment.

“It takes two to tango,” Hank replied with kiss swollen lips, his voice rough, and the ice blue of his eyes shrunk down to thin bands around his dilated pupils.

“Well, I’m not interested in whatever dance this is,” I shot back, gesturing to the space between us.

Taking a step towards me, eyes flashing with barely restrained desire, he said, “You seemed interested enough a minute ago.”

“Let’s just attribute that to a moment of insanity and move on,” I said backing away and retrieving my shirt. “I’m seeing someone.”

“So you’ve said, but where is this elusive ‘someone’ you keep mentioning?” he challenged, lips that had felt so damn good against mine quirking into a derisive smile.

“I...” I faltered, wetness welling up in my eyes when I found that I didn’t have a response for him. The truth was, I didn’t know where Holbrook was. Like a sharpshooter, Hank had zeroed in on my vulnerability and fired true, piercing me to the quick.

Seeing the pain on my face, his expression softened as he took a step back. Even as I sagged in relief at the distance between us, I fought the desire to be wrapped up in his arms instead. I was almost thankful when my phone rang in my pocket, even if it was “Coffin Whore” flashing on the screen. Seeing Chrismer’s nickname reignited the fire of rage at the Shepherd’s attempt on my life, squashing any lingering traces of desire.

My voice was sharp and brittle when I answered. “What do you want?”

“Ms. Cray,” a rich masculine voice replied in a purring murmur that would have sent a cold shiver down my spine if my anger hadn’t warmed me all the way through.

Cordova. Even better.

I’d been expecting him to call sooner or later and had to fight against the urge to immediately tear into him.

“Cordova,” I replied, forcing the word out between my clenched teeth while my heart pounded in anticipation against my ribs. I was looking forward lambasting the master vamp for his ill-conceived attempt on my life. A mixture of expectant delight and trepidation tangled in my stomach to give me an almost weightless feeling. Of course, as the old adage says, what goes up, must come down.

“Ms. Cray, where is my automobile?” Cordova asked with deathly calm, chipping away at my excitement. I had no doubt that if he could have reached through the phone and wrung the answer out of my delicate little neck he would have, but I was damned if I’d go down without getting a few licks in myself.

“Your what?” I asked, affecting an air of puzzlement and boredom.

“My Ferrari. Where. Is. It?”

“Oh,
that
.” Looking up, I found Hank staring at me, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open, whether in shock or abject horror, I couldn’t tell.

“You stole the Shepherd’s Ferrari?” he asked in a hissing whisper. “Are you nuts?”

Probably
.

Covering the phone with my hand I replied, “I didn’t
steal
it, I merely
borrowed
it.”

“I’m waiting, Ms. Cray,” Cordova murmured in my ear, each repetition of my name feeling like a nail being driven into my coffin.

“I had to borrow it due to unforeseen events.”

“If there is a single scratch—” he started to threaten, and I rolled my eyes at his dramatics.

“Tell me, Cordova,” I began, cutting him off while examining the damp label on my beer bottle. “What pisses you off more: the fact I took your precious Ferrari, or that your little plan to get rid of me didn’t work? What was it? Did I get too close to discovering something you’d rather keep buried in the dark?”

Whatever I had been expecting Cordova to say in reply, it wasn’t the plainly spoken “Have you suffered a stroke?”

Infuriated by his flippant dismissal of my near death experience at the hands of one of his vamps, I snapped, “Fuck you, you undead sack of shit!” and hung up, my hand trembling when I set my phone down on the table. Sitting down heavily in the chair, I splayed my fingers on the tabletop and wondered whether the tremor was from my anger, or the knowledge that I’d just hung up on one of the most powerful men in the state.

Only a few seconds passed before my phone began to vibrate and chirp emphatically. Slumping back in the chair, I retrieved my now warm, half-empty beer, and sucked down a reassuring gulp.

“You gonna get that?” Hank asked, eyeing the buzzing phone as if it was a coiled rattlesnake, poised and ready to strike.

“Nope,” I said, biting off the word with a sharp smack of my lips.

The buzzing and chirping cut off as Cordova was kicked over to voicemail, and I fought to ignore the growing feeling of nausea.

It’s just from the beer,
I tried to reassure myself, though I knew the words were hollow.

Although I’d expected it, I still jumped when my phone lit up again, filling the warm kitchen with the sound of dozens of crickets until it went to voicemail. On Cordova’s third attempt, I decided I’d better answer before he came to the conclusion that more physical means of communication were needed.

“What’s up, Al?” I asked, regretting the casual moniker when an icy chill seemed to flow down the phone line to pierce the warmth of my irritation, and freeze me to the core.

“I’d advise that you never do that again.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant hanging up on him, or calling him Al, but figured that avoiding both was probably the wisest choice in the long run.

What long run? He just tried to kill us.

“Now,” he said, sliding back into the velvety purr that was half aristocratic refinement, half undead creepiness. “Would you care to explain the reason for absconding with my vehicle?”

Raking a hand through my hair, the stab of pain in my shoulder brought my anger back to the forefront, instantly burning through my intentions to play nicely with the master vamp.

“Sure. As soon as you’re done explaining why you tried to kill me.”

“I understand you may be suffering from some sort of mental episode, so I do apologize for my use of crass language, but what the
fuck
are you talking about, Ms. Cray?”

“The two vamps you set loose to drain me like a juice box. If that wasn’t intentional, then you’ve got some serious security issues going on over there.”