Dark Promises (Dark #29) (17 page)

“
Someone
has to do it, and I don't shirk. You're a gorgeous hunk of male, but that doesn't matter. I won't have you biting me and bringing me to the dark side.”

His smile widened. He had white perfect teeth. Not, she noted, vampire teeth.

“I appreciate that you think I am a gorgeous hunk of male.”

She wanted to close her eyes to savor his voice, his accent, but it was just too dangerous. Everything about him was dangerous. His hair was very long and very black but salted with streaks of fine silvery gray. She always thought men with long hair looked a bit silly, but on him, his hair didn't detract for one moment from his ultramasculine features. She was fairly certain he had a tattoo that crawled up his back and moved over his shoulders and down his arms, but it wasn't like any tattoo she'd ever seen and in the faint light streaming in through the windows she couldn't be certain.

“It will make you happy to know that I am no vampire. I hunted vampires for centuries, but stopped a very long time ago.”

She blinked. Her gaze dropped to his thick, heavily muscled chest. Then to his flat—like twelve-pack—abdomen. Serious muscle there. She swallowed, trying to school her gaze to keep from looking any farther down his body, but there was no stopping her wandering eyes. Damn. The man was fine. She was fairly certain he had a fine ass, too. He just hadn't turned enough yet.

“If you aren't a vampire, how can you float in the air and sleep in the
ground?” she demanded. Her mouth was watering a little looking at the man's body.

His gaze drifted over her face. Then her body. She felt the touch right through her clothes to her core. The core that gave a convulsive spasm. He was waking up things best left alone. There was possession in his gaze. Interest. Not just any interest, but sexual interest, and she
so
wasn't going there, no matter how fine he was.

His feet touched the ground just in front of her. He waved his hand, a graceful movement that sent a myriad of notes dancing in the air between them. Immediately he was dressed. A thin black shirt stretched across his amazing chest. His trousers fit him snugly. He wore sandals on his feet.

He looked pretty darn fine in clothes.
Really
darn fine. This killing-him thing wasn't going so well. And now he was close. So close she could feel his heat. She was cold so his heat felt good. Too good.

“I am Fane. Keeper and guardian of the monastery.”

In her life, Trixie was rarely at a loss for words, but she could barely breathe. Up close he smelled good and his music blended with hers. She could hear the song and knew it was beautiful and it was right. How could he be a vampire when he had a song so perfect? It didn't make sense. The notes made their way inside of her, just as they had before. They settled, all silver and gold, in those lonely places, and this time they didn't retreat. They stayed. And they brought him with them. Her body began to tremble and she stepped back, tripped on the vampire-hunting box and started to fall.

Fane caught her, gripping her forearms to steady her, bringing her in close to his body. To his heat. Holy cripes. He was hot. He had to notice she was shaking like a silly teenager. She was an old lady,
well
past her prime. He had to stop looking at her with those hungry eyes. If they were just hungry for her blood, well, she could take that. She could fight for her life. She had the feeling he was hungry for something altogether different and she didn't know how to process that.

She put up a hand to ward him off. She wasn't tall and she wasn't short. She was a woman with curves, but he made her feel small. Her hand looked a little silly there, a slim defense against him. He stepped even closer so that her hand rested against his chest. She could feel those delicious muscles
there. She felt his heart beat, part of the rhythm of his song. Did vampires have hearts that beat? She thought they were dead.

“Lady. Tell me your name.”

He gave the command in a low, deep voice. Husky. Raspy. Caressing. She had to find a way to pull herself together and stop her body from responding to just the sound of his voice. She was no teenager to get lost in a man. He was weaving a spell. Because. He. Was. A. Vampire.

“If I give you my name, doesn't that give you power over me?”

His smile flashed again and he shook his head. “
Sívamet
, you do embody the meaning of the word
cute
. I never much liked that word until this moment because I did not get the meaning. The meaning is a woman who thinks I am a vampire but still asks me questions thinking I would help her out. A vampire would kill you immediately. Or he would nearly drain you dry and then torture you before finishing you off. He is wholly evil. There is no conversation with a vampire. And these things you have brought with you are useless against him.”

Well. That wasn't good at all. Not. At. All. She sighed. “I'm tired and I'm going to sit down, so if you aren't really a vampire, just give me a few minutes to rest. I've been hiking all day and most of the night and I'm not so young anymore.” She thought it best to point that out to him so he'd get that really hungry look off his face. She was a dried-up old prune and had no idea what to do with a man as fine as he was. Well, she'd read enough books to know what to do with him but since she didn't have any practical experience, she knew that wasn't going to happen.

Suiting action to words, she sank down onto her sleeping bag and began gathering up her vampire-hunting tools. At least she wouldn't have to carry the stupid heavy box around with her anymore, because none of it worked on him. Not one single thing. A waste of money, and if she ever got home she was putting up a one-star review and blasting the seller. That was for
certain.

F
ane studied his woman's features as she sank to the ground. She looked exhausted and was hiding scared. She had beautiful skin. That had been the first thing he'd noticed. Soft as a rose petal. A beautiful, dark, almost chocolate color that made him want to run his fingers over her skin. She had a
lot
of hair. It was long, reaching her waist, and was in small braids that wrapped around the sides of her scalp to the back where it was gathered by a tie of some sort and the braids fell in a thick stream down her back. Beautiful. Unusual.

He hadn't seen in color in well over a thousand years. More. He hadn't felt anything at all. At first, it was difficult to assimilate just what he was feeling, but he was a patient man and elation was at the forefront. She was human, and she clearly had ideas about what was and what wasn't going to happen between them. He didn't bother to disabuse her of any of her very wrong ideas. She was his lifemate. His reward after so many centuries of keeping the world a safe place.

He was still able, after so many centuries, to keep a cloak of civility around him and that had landed him the position of keeping the other ancients there in the monastery in check. He wasn't a man who argued or
lost his temper. Looking at his lifemate, he was fairly certain he was going to need those traits.

He crouched down beside her, his fingers catching her chin so she was forced to look up at him. “Your name, my lady.”

She scowled at him and for a moment he thought she might defy him. He would be forced to take the information from her and he didn't want to frighten her any further. She was holding it together by a thread.

“Trixie. Trixie Joanes. I'm from the United States, and I've come here looking for my granddaughter Teagan.”

Teagan. He should have known. Fane had felt a strong connection to Teagan, Andre's lifemate, from the moment he'd first met her. She was related to his woman.

“I have met Teagan. She is safe.”

Her eyes lit up. She reached out and caught his wrist. “Are you sure it was her? When did you see her?”

“Last rising.”

She frowned, and he realized she was of the modern world and human. “Last night,” he corrected. “She is with Andre and he will keep her safe.”

Trixie drew in her breath and shook her head, dropping her hand to look around for her pack. “I have to go, to get to her. She doesn't know the danger she's in and neither does this Andre.”

“Tell me.”

“I came up the mountain with a group of crazy men. Fanatics. I left them in the middle of the night. They're with a man from the local village, a man by the name of Denny Jashari. I overheard him describe Teagan and a man she's traveling with. He persuaded the men I was with to hunt and kill her. They have all kinds of strange weapons with them, and I knew they planned on killing me after I led them up to this monastery and to my granddaughter. Fortunately, they didn't realize Teagan is related to me.”

“They know,” Fane said. “There is a society of humans who hunt those they consider vampires indiscriminately. They have killed several of my people over the years, but I doubt if they have ever come across and successfully killed a vampire. Evil feels and smells different. They wouldn't recognize that stench because . . .”

“They smell and feel the same way,” she finished for him. She looked down
at her hands. “I'm sorry I tried to kill you. I should have known you weren't like them.” Her gaze jumped back to his face. “But you were in the ground.” She was very confused. His song confused her. That and the fact that he rose out of the ground and was looking so fine when he should have been a really ugly, scary corpse, and that he seemed to make sense when really, he didn't.

“How did you get through the safeguards?” he asked.

She tried to pull her gaze from his, but his eyes held hers captive. His voice was gentle, but instinctively she knew there was nothing gentle about the question. It was a demand. He wanted to know. He was just a little bit scary, and that kind of set her temper on edge. She was too old to be scared by a man.

Now that she had a good chance to really look at his face—without the distraction of his naked body—he looked hard-edged and beautiful, but very bossy. She didn't do bossy. She
was
the boss. Just to be on the safe side she took a better grip on her stake gun.

“Would you mind giving me back my holy water and the two stakes I fired at you?” She was proud that she managed to sound matter-of-fact and maybe a little snippy as well. After all, he had her things. She'd bought and paid for them.

“You want them back?”

She scowled at him and narrowed her eyes to show him she wasn't a woman to be trifled with. “I feel very strongly about this. They're mine.”

He looked at the vial of holy water and then reached up to his arm and casually removed the dart. Blood dripped down his shoulder. She bit her lip. She hadn't thought the little stakes were still in him and that they'd actually hurt him. She felt bad about that. He seemed too invincible for her tiny little stake gun to do much damage. Secretly, she was just a teensy bit elated. Her money wasn't a complete waste.

Fane's gaze never left hers as he removed the second dart and more blood appeared, dotting his immaculate shirt. That didn't look good.

“I've got a first aid kit,” she volunteered, although she wasn't certain she wanted to touch his muscles again. Just touching his chest made her go weak at the knees, and for a dried-up old prune, she had responded in areas of her body she had given up all hope on too many years earlier. “I could let you use it.”

His steady, focused,
unblinking
stare made her nervous. It was the way he looked at her, as if he might devour her.

“You're actually bleeding a lot,” she pointed out. “We aren't anywhere close to a hospital and if you don't stop the bleeding . . .” She trailed off.

“You will supply the blood necessary. You are my lifemate. And put that silly weapon down. You are liable to shoot me again by accident.”

She tried her sternest look, the one that made her girls quake and run to their rooms. It always worked. “It wouldn't be an accident. Don't try bossing me around. I am not intimidated by you.”

A slow smile curved his mouth and softened his features. Did he have to be so beautiful? She had never been able to stand seeing anyone hurt. And she'd been the one to do it. Still. He came out of the ground. Naked. And he floated. And put clothes on without actually getting dressed.

Her fingers closed harder around the gun. It wasn't loaded and she needed to try to get to the other stakes. When she put up her one-star review she was going to mention how the gun really needed to carry a full six rounds. You obviously couldn't bring down a real vampire with one or two mini-stakes. You needed a big gun.

“I am reading your mind,” he announced softly.

“I don't believe you. No one can do that.”

“A bigger gun? Are you thinking of staking me again?”

The amusement in his voice annoyed her. “You need to take me seriously,” she snapped. “I've got the gun, not you. And I'm not afraid to use it.”

“You closed your eyes when you shot it. Your hand jerked and that sent you off target twice,” he pointed out. “And then you forgot to take the stopper off the vial of holy water.”

She glared at him. “It isn't very nice to sound arrogant and amused when you're pointing out a couple of minor mistakes. I'm certain I'll improve with practice.”

“Lifemate. You have enough attitude for ten women.”

“Exactly.”
She was more than pleased he saw that. That should send him screaming for the hills and respecting her vampire-hunting kit, even though it was kind of lame and needed a few improvements, which she intended to see to.

He was standing close one moment and the next he was there. Right
there. In her space. The gun was in his hand and he tossed it away. She hadn't even seen him move. She'd blinked and there he was. All gorgeous, a hot, hunky mass of muscle in her space. Touching her. She raised both hands to ward him off. Her palms landed on his chest and she closed her eyes, feeling the muscle definition there.

“I like attitude,” he whispered, his mouth against her ear.

She felt the brush of his lips on her ear and a multitude of tingles moved through her body on a real rampage. There was no controlling that reaction. Pushing against the wall of his chest wasn't an option, not when his mouth moved against her ear and his tongue touched just behind it in a small, delicious swipe that sent a little tremor through her body. Waking her up. She couldn't be woken. She'd tamed that monster a long time ago. She wouldn't know what to do with a man like him.

“Don't.” One word. That was all she could get out. Her mind was sort of fraying around the edges. His mouth was hot on her skin. Seductive. She thought to resist. She knew better than to play with fire, but her body suddenly wasn't her own anymore. She felt too weak to move.

Are you saying no to your lifemate?

She heard the words in her mind, not aloud. She thought she heard them. But his mouth was at her neck, his tongue sliding over her skin, over her pulse, and she didn't want him to stop. She
needed
him to stop, but she didn't want him to.

Te avio päläfertiilam
.
You are my lifemate.

She had no idea what he meant by
lifemate
, but he sounded serious. She tried to concentrate, but his mouth was on her neck, teeth scraping back and forth, and it felt erotic.
Very
erotic. She loved the way it felt, although her brain continued to try to function properly and protest.

Éntölam kuulua, avio päläfertiilam
.
I claim you as my lifemate.

His voice was so sexy, with a deep timbre. She loved his voice. But she loved his mouth on her neck more. She even turned her head to give him better access. Whatever the lifemate business was, just this once she might put up with it just to feel his mouth on her.

Ted kuuluak, kacad, kojed. I belong to you.

She liked that he belonged to her. Just for that moment, of course. She was no young girl with dreams of a future. She knew men didn't stick around,
especially not at her age. Especially when they looked like him. She was beginning to think she was caught in some kind of dream. If so, she was quite willing to stay asleep a little longer.

Élidamet andam. I offer my life to you. Pesämet andam. I give you my protection. Uskolfertiilamet andam. I give you my allegiance.

Oh my. She had never had anyone offer their life, their protection or their allegiance. She felt the honesty of his words and her eyes stung with tears. Truly, this was some kind of weird dream. Gorgeous men didn't rise up from under the ground and proclaim they would offer their life for you.

His mouth burned at her neck. Right over her pulse. Her
pounding
pulse. Her heart had accelerated until she was afraid it would burst out of her chest. Her breasts actually ached. She didn't know what to do with that.

His teeth sank into her pulse and her head fell back. Her body arched in his arms, and she heard a soft moan escaping her throat as a bite of pain gave way to pleasure. No. More than mere pleasure. Fire rushed through her veins straight to her core. She felt as if she might be sleeping beauty, asleep for decades and now awakened by the bite of a master.

Sívamet andam. I give you my heart.

His voice. That voice. Sexy. Tempting. Raspy. Perfect. She could listen to it forever. And she didn't want his mouth to ever stop working against her neck.

Sielamet andam. I give you my soul.

That was so beautiful, the tears in her eyes trickled down her cheeks. She had thought she couldn't be moved by anything anymore. She was past her time to dream, but here she was, caught in a dream, and it was more beautiful than she could ever have hoped. She found it rather creative and amazing of her that she could dream up a man as gorgeous as Fane. His name. His accent. His looks. And he wasn't even a brother. How weird was that? After her daughter's experience she
never
let her gaze stray. Okay, maybe that wasn't altogether true. Some men just looked good in a fine pair of jeans cupping their ass just so perfectly.

Lifemate. You do not look at other men's asses, and not when we are saying our vows. You pay attention to your man.

Whoa.
She
wasn't saying vows. No way. She was remaining silent and just letting the dream unfold. He was bossy and arrogant and liked to use
that tone. So okay. The tone was all right, even though he did sound bossy and arrogant. It was hot. And in her dream, she was okay with hot.

You do not want me to stop saying our vows.

There it was again. Bossy. Arrogant. So freakin' sexy a woman couldn't help but get all fired up, even when the engine hadn't worked for ages. So no. She didn't want the dream to end. His mouth on her neck was so amazing, sending streaks of pure fire spreading through her body like the blood in her veins.

“No. Don't stop,” she murmured.

Ainamet andam. I give you my body.

She sincerely appreciated that gift, although she didn't have the first clue what to do with it. It had been too long. Decades too long. She was an all work, no play kind of girl as much as she didn't want to admit that to her dream man.

His mouth took one last pull and he reluctantly lifted his head, his tongue swiping over the spot so that she shivered. “You taste exquisite, lady. You are like a drug in my system. Addicting. I will never get the taste of you out of my mouth, nor do I want to.”

His shirt seemed to have disappeared and her hands were against pure steely muscle and hot skin. She turned her head and nuzzled him closely. There was a part of herself that seemed separated from her, looking on, a little shocked at the gesture. That wasn't at all like her. Still, he smelled delicious. He felt even better. And she liked that he called her lady when no one else ever had and she'd tried to make herself into one for her granddaughters.