Blood Born (13 page)

He paid no more attention to her struggles than if she’d been a child, even laughing very softly, his mouth close to her ear. There was a strange, coppery smell coming off him as he whispered, “Do you know what you are? Have you heard him? How close is he?”

The words didn’t make sense. She heard them, recognized them, but they didn’t make sense. Still snarling, she reached back, digging for his eyeballs as she arched her back, heaving and twisting. He jerked his head away from her scrabbling fingers and tightened his grip around her neck, laughing again.

“Fight all you want,” he crooned. “You can’t hurt me. I’m not weak and mortal, like you. You’re just an annoying little fly, and I am the swatter.”

Black was closing in on her, she could feel her brain shutting down from lack of oxygen. Fly … swatter? Not fair. Her killer was a nut…. Might not stand trial, claiming nuthood…. Just wasn’t fair.

Using the hand that continued to silence her, he pulled her head to the side, exposing the curve of her neck. Chloe hung on to consciousness, still trying for his eyes even though she was aware her hands were flailing uselessly now. His mouth moved over her neck, nuzzling, opening—

And then he was gone. Just like that. The arm around her neck, the big body pressed against her back—gone. Chloe fell limply to the ground, landed half on the sidewalk and half on the grass, choking and
coughing and unable to think, to do anything other than lie there dragging deep, rough breaths of air into her lungs. Somehow she managed to roll onto her side and curled up in a fetal position, shaking and crying, unable to think.

Sounds … she could hear something. She didn’t know what it was, some kind of thudding sound, but with a
wet
sound, too. Her chest heaving, she tried to focus her eyes. There were dark shadows cut by streams of light from her front porch and the streetlight that was several yards away, in front of her neighbor’s house, shadows that seemed to swirl and blend until she wasn’t certain what she was seeing. Two men … fighting, she thought, though they were moving so fast she thought she might be hallucinating. One of the men was her attacker; she saw his bare arms flashing. He was completely bald, and big—damn, was he big—but he fought with a speed and silence that was disorienting.

The other man … who was he? Someone passing by? Coughing, she struggled to her hands and knees, thinking only that she had to help him because the other man was so much bigger. But she couldn’t get to her feet, couldn’t help—

Her cell phone … 911. She had to call 911.

She silently repeated the numbers to herself as she looked around, as if she was afraid she might forget why she was looking for her purse. Where was it? It had been on her shoulder, but it wasn’t there now, and the yard was too shadowed for her to see. Blindly she patted the grass and concrete around her, sweeping her hands out … there. Her hands shaking, she grabbed the strap and pulled the purse toward her. The effort upset her balance so much that she fell weakly to her side again, but she didn’t lose her death grip on the purse strap.

The two men were moving so impossibly fast they were nothing but a blur. Her eyes and mind weren’t working in sync yet, the effect dizzying, so she simply shut her eyes and felt around inside her purse for the sleek hard plastic of the little phone, right there in the side pocket where she always put it.

It slipped from her nerveless fingers, fell to the concrete. The back popped off, but the battery stayed inside. Panting, she grabbed it up again—and became aware that the sounds of the fight had stopped, and the silence was as terrifying as the attack. Which of them had won, her attacker or her rescuer?

A shadow of a man came around the car, and Chloe surged forward, a tiny mewling sound coming from her throat as she crawled up the front steps, fumbling with her phone, trying to punch in the numbers at the same time she kept darting panicked glances over her shoulder. His eyes … dear God, were his eyes
glowing
?

“It’s all right, miss,” he said in a deep, steady voice, the tone as calm as Sunday. “He won’t bother you anymore.”

She froze, staring up into those eyes as he moved fully into the light, and relief washed through her in a warm flow that eased all the tension from her muscles, all the terror from her mind. He wasn’t her attacker. She didn’t know who he was, but he definitely wasn’t the huge bald guy. This man was tall and muscular, but with a lithe grace that made it seem as if he were flowing, instead of moving in the slightly clunky way most people walked.

He wore boots and jeans, and a dark, long-sleeved shirt, which as far as she was concerned was the best outfit ever for a man. His hair was long and dark, too, falling around his broad shoulders. Did she like long hair on a man? She wasn’t sure. And when had she decided that boots and jeans were
it
for dress code?
Didn’t matter, though; she liked it now. She was so relieved she liked everything about him. Vaguely she wondered if she should be relieved, and why she was. This guy was a stranger—a helpful one, but still a stranger. “I’m calling the police,” she said, showing him the phone in her hand.

He smiled, and for a moment she forgot about the phone. “You don’t need the police.”

No, of course she didn’t. How silly. The danger was over, the bad guy gone. She hadn’t seen his face, anyway, so she couldn’t give a description beyond “big, bald, bare arms.” Yeah, that would really get his ass caught. She tried to remember why she’d been so desperate to call 911.

He sank to a crouch in front of where she half-sat, half-lay on the porch steps, reached out and touched her arm. “Are you hurt?”

“Just shaken.”
Shaken, not stirred
. She almost laughed at the stray thought but her throat hurt, her knee hurt, her hand hurt, and she realized she had just lied. She turned her hand, looked at the scrape on her palm, blood darkly smeared there. “Maybe a little banged up, but not much.”

“May I?” He took her hand, not waiting for her to actually give permission, but she was oddly charmed and comforted that he’d asked. His own hand was very warm, masculine, his long fingers hard and comforting as he turned her palm up. Chloe found herself staring at her hand, at the way it looked so feminine and delicate cradled in his, at the gentle way he touched her as if he, too, was acutely aware of how much bigger and stronger he was. She didn’t usually feel like a delicate flower, and the sensation was a little bemusing. She was Level-Headed Chloe, who had—Hadn’t she been about to call 911? Why had she stopped?

That was puzzling, but not enough for her to worry
about it. All in all, she was feeling very peaceful right now.

Then he lifted her hand to his mouth. The touch of his lips was soft on her scraped palm, the tiny licks of his tongue so light she could barely feel them. Wait. He was
licking
her?

“You can’t lick me,” she said sternly. “I don’t know your name.”

He looked up and a quick grin slashed across his face. “Luca,” he said.

In his own way, he looked as …
brutal
wasn’t the right word;
dangerous
, maybe? … as the other guy. Yes, dangerous was a good way to describe him. There was something very hard about him, not just that he was obviously in great shape, but a look, an expression, that said he was as tough mentally as he was physically. His features weren’t exactly handsome, but they were so sculpted that she didn’t think she’d ever forget exactly how he looked.

With that last thought, she had the impression that the very air around them began to shimmer. Yesterday the shimmering had alarmed her; tonight it simply felt all apiece with the night, the moment.

He was striking-looking, in so masculine a way that no one would ever associate the word “pretty” with him. His skin was tanned, and in contrast his eyes were strangely light. Whenever he caught her gaze she found it almost impossible to look away. Okay, flat impossible. She felt as if she were being cocooned in velvet, all her cares and hurts floating away as if they’d never existed.

“Luca,” she repeated. “Is that an American name?”

“No.” He lifted her hand to his mouth again, and his tongue once more began a slow, gentle movement over the scrape. She was okay with it now, because she knew his name. They’d been introduced … sort of. She
knew his name but he didn’t know hers, and that seemed wrong.

“I’m Chloe,” she said. “Chloe Fallon.”

He looked up again, his pale gaze meeting hers. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Chloe Fallon.”

Her hand had stopped hurting.

“Sit very still,” he said softly. “I’m going to heal your knee, too. You won’t be alarmed, and you won’t even remember that it was hurt.”

“Of course I’ll remember,” she said automatically.

He smiled, eased her pencil skirt up over her knee, and bent his head to her leg where a thin line of blood trickled down from her bruised and scraped knee.

Chloe took a deep breath. Warmth flowed through her again, and it had nothing to do with relief. She looked down at his dark head bent to her leg, at the two strong hands cradling her calf and ankle, and she took yet another breath as images swirled through her mind, images that had to do with her skirt being pushed higher, with his mouth moving higher. Her breasts tingled as her nipples began to tighten. Oh, my.

He’d told her she wouldn’t be alarmed, and she wasn’t, but he hadn’t said anything about “disturbed.”

He lifted her leg a little higher, moving his mouth and tongue over her shin; cool air rushed under her skirt, all the way up her thighs. Chloe leaned back a little more to maintain her balance. She was all but lying on the steps now, her legs spread a little, the injured one lifted as if to his shoulder …
Stop
, her subconscious whispered.
Brakes on
.

“That’s enough,” she managed to say, though her voice wasn’t very loud or very forceful.

For a moment she thought he was going to ignore her and she wasn’t certain how she felt about that—good? bad?—as his mouth continued lightly moving on her skin. Then he rubbed his chin against her calf in a gentle
caress and finally lifted his head. “There,” he said, his tone slightly thick. “All better.”

And it was. She stared down at her knee. The trickle of blood was gone, all the pain was gone … she couldn’t even see the scrape. “That puts a whole new twist on kiss it and make it better,” she said in wonderment. She lifted her hand, examined it in the yellow glow of the porch light. No scrape there, either. “Wow.”

He smiled as he reached down and gripped her hand and pulled her to her feet. Her knees wobbled and he put his hand under her arm, held her steady for a moment until her balance settled.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said, feeling embarrassment heat her cheeks because she hadn’t already thanked him; after all, he had saved her life. “He was … he was going to kill me.” A slight frown knit her brow as she looked around. “Where is he?” Was he lying unconscious behind her car? Was he dead? Just … gone? And shouldn’t she file a report, or something? Oh, right, Luca had said she didn’t need the police, so no report.

“He’s gone,” Luca said. “He won’t bother you again.”

Well, that was a relief. She barely wondered why she would so blithely take his word for it, then the moment of doubt was gone and everything was okay.

She couldn’t stand there all night, she thought. Nor was she inviting him inside for a cup of coffee—for one thing, she didn’t want coffee, she wanted to go to sleep, but the main reason was that a thread of unease suddenly ruined her contentment. She didn’t know him; she couldn’t invite him in. She should find her keys, thank him again, and put an end to a very long and upsetting night.

Where
were
her keys? They’d been in her hand, so of course she’d dropped them. She sighed as she looked around, but they weren’t in sight; for all she knew, they
were somewhere in the shrubbery. “My keys are down there somewhere,” she said ruefully.

“Here they are,” he replied almost immediately, stooping to pick up something in the black shadow of a bush. He straightened with her keys in his hand.

She blinked at the dangling keys. “How did you find them so easily?”

“The streetlight was shining on them just right.”

She took the keys, smiled shyly at him, and went up the steps to the front door. Her back to him, she inserted the key and turned it, then pushed the door open. She turned to look back at the man who stood at the foot of the steps. “Thank you again, Luca.”

He went very still, an expression of surprise, almost shock, on his face. “It was my pleasure,” he finally said.

Saying “thank you” didn’t seem like enough. She needed to do something more, something tangible. “I’m the night-shift manager at Katica, a restaurant down on—”

“I know where it is,” he said, a trifle abruptly.

“Come by tomorrow night and I’ll see that you get a free meal.” He still looked a bit taken aback by something, and less than thrilled by her suggestion, so she added, “The chef is really great. I can promise you a meal you won’t forget, and a special bottle of wine.”

“Thank you,” he said, sounding rather formal. He even dipped his head in a truncated bow. “I’ll stop by if I can.”

“I’ll look for you, then.” Chloe stepped into her house, then closed and locked the door, set the alarm. She felt remarkably calm, considering all that had happened. She knew she should be shaky, but the horrible details seemed very distant, and all she could think about was maybe getting some sleep—

“Chloe!”

“Dammit,” Chloe said as the voice suddenly whispered
urgently in her ear. There went the hope of sleep. Something had to be done; this had to stop.

    Standing outside, Luca stared at the door as it closed behind Chloe Fallon. He felt as if he’d been body slammed.
She had remembered him
. She had not only remembered he was there,
she had remembered his name
.

Not only was she not supposed to remember him at all, he’d glamoured her into forgetting Enoch’s attack had ever occurred. He’d healed her wounds—and hadn’t that been an exercise in self-control, he thought wryly. She’d tasted … God, she’d tasted the way he imagined ambrosia would taste, and the scent of her had wrapped around him, gardenia-sweet on a warm summer night. He didn’t understand it. She was pretty enough, not beautiful but definitely pretty: a normal little human working a normal little job, her strength puny, her senses dull in comparison to his—and still he’d had to fight the sudden screaming urge to flatten her there on the ground and take her, body and blood.