Crave (8 page)

“Cal? Callum... you’re scaring me now... wake up, you bloody vampire... you’re stronger than this.” Firm hands grabbed his shoulders and rattled him.

He smacked them away, snarled, and shot one hand out at his attacker. He locked it tight around whatever it hit first and squeezed.

“Cal... lum.” The irritating voice sounded more distant, turning tighter and strained as he increased the pressure of his grip. “You’re... hurting... me...”

Hurting?

Callum’s eyes shot open and instantly closed against the brightness that assaulted him. His head spun until he felt on the verge of vomiting. Someone grabbed his wrist, tugging at it. He slowly rolled his eyes open again. Kristina’s hands were locked tightly around his wrist.

Trying to pull his hand away from her throat.

Tears lined her dark lashes and fear shone in her irises.

Callum sat up fast, sending his head spinning violently, and crashed back onto the bed again, his hand slipping from her throat. He closed his eyes and groaned. What had happened?

He remembered how incredible it had felt making love to Kristina and then it all went hazy.

“Are you alright?” The hoarseness of her voice stabbed him deep in the gut.

He had said he wouldn’t hurt her but he had. It had been an instinctive reaction, which meant something bad had happened to him. All vampires reacted on instinct when they felt they were in danger or were hurt so badly that they lost their more human side because of the pain.

“What happened?” he ground the words out and the world slowly stopped spinning around him. He risked opening his eyes again and found Kristina leaning over him, one hand on her bruised throat and the other stroking his cheek.

“You blacked out,” she whispered almost apologetically. “You don’t remember?”

He shook his head and she looked as though she didn’t want to bring up why he had passed out. She bit her lip, hesitated, and then blushed.

“I got a little carried away... and I, uh, well...” She glanced down at his left hand.

Callum frowned. It was aching. Now that he noticed it, he recalled that she had kissed his wrist and his entire body had come alive, burning so fiercely that he had climaxed again.

He slowly raised his left hand and slid his gaze across to it.

Ragged red marks formed a rough broken circle on the point just below his wrist.

He blinked.

“I... it won’t happen again... I didn’t realise that you were going to pass out or anything like that. I just... I know what I said earlier... but the urge struck me and I sort of followed through without thinking.” Her words were a blur after that, a running apology that collided into nothing more than noise in his aching head.

She had bitten him.

He raised his eyebrows and stared blankly at the bloodstained wound.

The first release when they had felt so close and connected had been incredible enough. The second had come upon him without warning, fierce and violent, intense.

Because of her bite?

He looked back into her eyes.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” She touched his cheek, her eyebrows high on her forehead, concern filling her eyes. “You look a little out of it still.”

“Did you feel it too?” he said and her cheeks blazed, turning her whole face crimson this time.

She went to glance away but then stopped herself and nodded. The awkward edge to her expression became nerves and her fingers trembled against his face.

“Did you pass out too?” he whispered and her eyes widened. It was all the answer he needed. “Why?”

Kristina shrugged but he saw straight through it. She knew why but she wasn’t going to mention it. It was possible that they had both overloaded when she had bitten him. Vampires were capable of blacking out when bitten. There was nothing quite like the feel of someone sinking their fangs into your flesh at the right moment during sex. He hadn’t thought werewolves would share such a kink though. Was that all it was?

The look in her eyes said not to press her for an answer. She climbed off him, sat on the bed with her legs tucked to one side, and traced patterns on the duvet.

Callum slowly pushed himself up onto his elbows. The condom was gone. How long had he been out?

He glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was close to five A.M., which meant he must have been out cold for over five hours. It had felt like only a moment.

He rose from the bed, stripped off his trousers and underwear, and then held his hand out to her. She looked at it as though it was going to bite her.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He pressed one knee into the mattress and brushed his knuckles across her throat. It still bore the impression of his fingers. How close had he been to strangling her? “It was instinct. Surely werewolves experience something similar when disorientated or injured?”

Her gaze zipped to the bed again. He hadn’t meant to imply that she had injured him. He wasn’t angry about what she had done. The pleasure of it had just been too much and he hadn’t been able to take it.

“Kristina, I’m not going to hurt you... and I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. It was just the heat of the moment. I felt the urge to bite you too... you were just beyond my reach.” He cupped her cheek and brought her head around so she was facing him again, her eyes on his. The shyness in them made him smile. She was worrying and not because she feared his anger. For a werewolf who tried so hard to keep her distance, she was doing a terrible job of it right now. Her eyes were so open, reflecting feelings that reassured him that it wouldn’t be hard to convince her that something was happening between them. It also reassured him that she didn’t find the idea of him biting her repulsive. “If you want to bite me again, I would like that. Although, perhaps, not during sex. If you want me to bite you, we can do that too. We can do whatever you’re comfortable with. Does that sound alright with you?”

She surprised him by nodding, slipping her hand into his, and coming to stand before him.

“Now, it’s almost dawn.” Callum wrapped his free arm around her waist and ran his fingers down the lacing at the back of her corset. “As regrettable as it is to get you out of this sexy little number... it has to come off. I want to sleep next to you.”

He shifted his hand lower, to her skirt, and raised it. Her bottom was soft as feathers beneath his fingers and she bit her lip and pressed her hands into his bare chest. He let her go. If they kept on like this, the sun would have long risen before he finally fell asleep with her tucked against him.

Her wide pupils lured him in.

Callum heaved a sigh.

Undressing her was going to play havoc with his libido anyway. They would just have to sleep in late.

He grabbed her backside and raised her up his body. She wrapped her legs around his waist, looped her arms around his neck, and kissed him.

Callum fell onto the bed with her beneath him and set about making her cry his name all over again.

Kristina woke slowly, sated and sleepy, the duvet and the naked vampire wrapped around her combining to make the perfect temperature for snoozing the night away. Callum’s bare front moulded against her back, his right arm heavy over her waist, hand cupping her right breast, anchoring her to him. Her own right hand was hooked behind her, holding his firm backside. His cool breath puffed against her throat, slow and steady, and he felt as bone tired on her senses as she did.

In her one hundred and twelve years of life, she had never felt so safe, not even as a youngling in her mother’s arms.

The way Callum held her pressed so close to him so there wasn’t a millimetre where their bodies didn’t touch and the sleepy growls that accompanied any shift of his body against hers or tightening of his grip, made her feel so protected. She was sure that if anyone came for her here and right now that he would instantly snap awake and fend them off.

But how long could this fairytale last?

He had already said that he would leave Paris in a week.

Everything else he said came rushing into her mind like a dam had broken and flooded it, driving out the comfort of sleeping in his arms. He had made out as though he felt things were already more than just a fling between them to him and had said some fairly pretty words that most women would have been flattered to hear.

God, they had flattered her. She had almost gone along with him and let her guard drop, but then she had got the better of herself.

And then he had proven that he could see straight through her.

He knew she was on the run from her pack.

He had seen through her later too, when they had been screwing. Making love. She couldn’t even bring herself to lie about it and pretend it had just been sex. That had been more than just sex, and more than making love. It had been intense, consuming, and incredible.

But the emotional ties that had formed between them scared her.

They left her vulnerable and tore at her.

When she had come around to find that he had passed out too, she had wanted to run and not look back. It wasn’t just the bite that had sent them both over the edge. It was their blood combining. She had drunk deeply in the short time before she had slipped into unconsciousness, greedily sucking down his rich blood. How much of it was still in her, tying them together?

She had fled her alpha because he had learned that she was ripe for mating and wanted to sire a child with her and tie her to him.

Her mother had told her about mating before she had passed away. Compatible mates often experienced things more intensely, and highly compatible ones even more so, to the point where both the male and the female involved often passed out during a mutual climax when she was receptive and ready to bear a cub.

Her mother had never mentioned anything about a blood exchange though. Kristina fiercely held onto that, using it to ward off her fear. They had passed out because the combination of sex and blood had proven too much for both of them. That was all it had been. She wouldn’t take his blood again during sex, or let him take hers, and that would prove that she was right. They had been intimate a number of times without either of them blacking out. It was just the involvement of blood.

A vampire couldn’t be a mate to a werewolf.

It wasn’t genetically possible.

Werewolves had broken away from their human ancestors millennia ago. Vampires were a completely different race, bearing only a physical resemblance to a human.

A heavy feeling settled in her stomach.

She stared at the far wall in the cream bedroom until it swam out of focus.

Callum was an elite.

Didn’t that mean he had human blood in his family?

She had never heard of a vampire impregnating a werewolf, or vice versa, but what about a human?

He stirred behind her, sighing against her throat, and crushed her to his chest.

Her stomach grumbled in response to the squeeze.

“You sound hungry,” he murmured and kissed the nape of her neck. It tickled and she wriggled and then froze when she felt the press of his cock against her backside.

She was hungry, and encouraging him to get a hard-on wasn’t going to get her fed.

“You want breakfast?” He snuggled closer to her, as though he was trying to convince her to say no and stay in bed with him.

“It’s gone five in the afternoon. I don’t think they serve breakfast at this time.”

He chuckled, pushed himself up on one elbow behind her and dropped a tender kiss on her shoulder. She turned her head to look up at him. Long strands of his black hair had fallen out of his ponytail and brushed his cheek. She had never been one for long hair but she didn’t mind it on him, although if she had her way she would convince him to cut it into a shorter wilder style that would suit his handsome face so much better. Still, he looked sexy as hell all rumpled from sleep, his green eyes soft and warm.

He pressed his lips to her shoulder, looking up at her through his lashes, his expression sweet and boyish.

“Look around you. You’re in the presidential suite in an obscenely expensive hotel. I think you can order whatever you like and they would rush to get it for you.”

“Even blood?” she said and his expression darkened.

“Unfortunately not.” He swept his lips over her shoulder and nestled his crotch against her bottom. “That is something we have to go out and collect ourselves. Are you hungry for blood?”

She shook her head. “You?”

Kristina feared he would say yes. The few mouthfuls she had stolen from him last night had satisfied that side of her hunger but she was sure that it would have left him with a need to feed and replenish what she had taken.

“I’m fine for now. Elite vampires don’t need as much blood as our aristocrat brethren.”

Because of the human element in their DNA? She wanted to say it aloud but wasn’t brave enough to hear him confirm that he was part human like she was.

“So, do you want to eat or not?” He reached over her, grabbed the phone from the bedside table, and settled back into bed behind her.

Kristina rolled to face him, pressing half of her body into his as he lay on his back, patiently holding the phone with his finger hovering over the button that would put him through to room service. She was hungry but she was also afraid he was going to think she was a pig when she started rattling off the growing list of food she wanted.

“Well?” His eyebrows rose.

“You really can’t eat anything?”

“Not a sausage,” he said with a smile and her mouth watered at the thought of sausages. “But don’t let that stop you. I’ll order your food, wait for it to arrive, and then shower while you’re eating if you don’t want an audience.”

She cursed him for seeing straight through her again.

“Okay.” She blew out her breath and he punched the number and brought the phone to his ear.

“This is the presidential suite. We would like to order some food,” he said into the receiver and then looked at her.

Kristina rattled off everything she had a hankering for and listened to him repeat it, his emerald eyes growing wider and wider with each item. Bacon. Scrambled eggs. Toast. Marmalade. Croissants. Sausages. Fried tomatoes. Sautéed potatoes. Pancakes. Waffles. Strawberries. Chocolate sauce. Orange juice.