Her Vampire Mate (6 page)

“I do. But that’s a story for another time. Less than a week after I poisoned this young man, a vampire arrived on my doorstep, more distraught and enraged than I’ve ever seen a vampire, before or since. He told me he knew I was the one who had killed the young man and that I would pay. Apparently he’d been grooming the young man to become a vampire.” He remembered that whole evening like it was yesterday. Reliving it wasn’t fun but for her, he needed to. So she’d understand.

“The vampire turned me. It was bloody and painful as hell. Then he kicked me out on the street in the falling light of dusk and yelled to everyone who could hear that I was a vampire. I didn’t even comprehend what had happened to me and already men were gathering pitchforks and torches and chasing me through Florence. I barely made it out alive. I’m still not quite sure how I did it.”

He squeezed her hand. “My sire is still alive and he still hates me. He has tried to kill me many times and failed over and over. For someone so emotionless, he’s carried this grudge across centuries.”

“When we first met, you said you were a special case.”

“Yes. I’m different from the other vampires, so they do their best to avoid me. My sire has blocked any chance I might have had of rising in the ranks. So I hover about the edges of vampiredom and continue to practice the art of poisoning.”

“Art, is it?”

“It is. The right mixture of herbs and other substances applied in just the right way will produce the desired effect. The wrong mixture, the wrong substances, the wrong application, and you’re sunk. It’s as much an art as a science.”

“Like cooking,” she said.

“No, not like cooking!” It hadn’t escaped him that her hand still lay beneath his. She hadn’t moved an inch as though content just where she was. He liked that.

“It’s sounds a lot like cooking—a pinch of this, a dash of that…”

He slipped his hand under hers so they were palm to palm and closed his fingers around hers. “Anyone can cook.”

“Yes, and anyone can throw rat poison in someone’s food. I’m not saying that’s art. But a chef, a culinary genius, sounds a lot like what you’re talking about.”

No one had ever described his art quite that way. Most people didn’t see it as art at all. And yet everyone who came to him with a job had special needs, particular desires, and they all expected him to deliver. Jennalynn was the first to describe it with respect.

He loved that. Could he love her? Maybe she’d let him kiss her and find out. “May I kiss you?”

“How on earth did we get from cooking to kissing?” She pulled her hand out of his.

“Don’t pull away, caro.”

She tucked her arms around her waist and kept her gaze on the apartment building door. “I don’t know what to do with this. Vampires and werewolves are enemies.”

He badly wanted to touch her but her body language screamed to stay away. “I’m not most vampires. They purposely have kept me out of their plans. So why should I accept their enemies as my own?”

She dipped her head. “My people won’t accept you.”

He had to fight to keep from reaching toward her. “Perhaps. That bothers you.”

“Of course it does.” She raised her head, resting it against the backrest. “Unlike you, I hold a prominent place in my pack.”

Did she, now? At once, he found it surprising and yet not surprising. “I would have thought they’d send an underling out for a task like this. Like me.”

“Why would you think that? This is an important task; Darius would want to send out our best, not some untried pup.”

“Darius, is it? You’re chummy with the North American Pack Alpha?”

She was silent for a moment, then two. He was about to speak again when she finally said, “I’m chummy with my brother.” She took a breath. “You wanted to know my last name. It’s Bishop.”

Shit. The sister of the North American Pack Alpha. No wonder the idea of being mated to a vampire had her twisted up. He dredged his mind for what little he could remember about the Alpha’s family. “As I recall, you hold a high rank yourself,” he said carefully.

“Fourth.”

Double shit. He was sitting next to the fourth-ranked werewolf on the continent. And she might be his soulmate. The Vampire Council would have a cow.

He watched her face carefully. She continued to gaze out the window, so her face was mostly in profile yet he could see a lot, every little twitch of her facial muscles, the flutter of her eyelashes, the motion of her throat as she swallowed. “I can see why the idea of being mated to me has you upset.”

Her head whipped toward him. “
Upset?
I’m going to have to give up everything. My life will never be the same again. ‘Upset’ doesn’t begin to cover it.”

“I thought wolves were ecstatic when they found their mates.”

“Sure, when their mates accept them.” She stretched her leg out, hitting the inside of the car with her foot. “You seem willing to fuck me but then what? You don’t want anything long-term. When you leave, I go mad.”

Her crude language jarred him. He had no doubt that had been her intent. “And if I don’t leave?” he said softly.

“Then I get kicked out of the Holding and lose my rank and everything I’ve spent years working for.”

“But you’d get your mate.”

She clasped her hands in her lap, her gaze focused on them. “Yes.”

He couldn’t hold back any longer. He traced his fingers down the hair alongside her face. She jumped at his touch. “Would that be so bad?” he said.

“No,” she whispered. She took a ragged breath. “It’s cruel of you to tempt me with something I can’t have.”

“What if you could have it?” She was right; he shouldn’t dangle this in front of her when he wasn’t sure. If he knew for certain that she was his soulmate, he’d pursue her to the ends of the earth. But what he was doing now was mean. And he couldn’t make himself stop.

Jennalynn studied him. “I don’t even know you.”

“And what you know, you don’t like. Is that what you’re saying?” His heart pinched. And yet she’d praised his poisoning as an art.

“I hate that you flirt with every woman who comes within twenty feet of you.”

He choked, then coughed, trying not to laugh. When he could speak, he said, “That’s jealousy and you know it.”

“It’s jealousy to want my mate to only love me?”

“I don’t love them.” But there was the rub—he didn’t love her, either. And if she turned out to be his soulmate, he didn’t know how he’d act. Could he give up a lifetime of flirtation, turn a blind eye to all of the beautiful women in the world, and just focus on one woman? “Other than that, what is it you don’t like about me?”

“I wish you weren’t a vampire,” she said.

“Not much I can do about that. What else?”

She stayed silent for a while, gazing at the apartment building door. He realized he hadn’t looked at it in quite a while. He was doing a great job at staking the place out.

Finally, she spoke. “Nothing, I guess. But isn’t that enough? You’d—you’d want to drink my blood, wouldn’t you?” She didn’t ask it as a question but stated it instead.

Of course he would. He wanted to right now. The sharing of blood was as intimate as sex, if not more so. “Is that a problem?”

***

Jennalynn shifted in her seat. “Yes.” And even though she didn’t want to talk about it, she knew she had to.

A glance at Antonio showed him sitting sideways in the passenger seat, gazing at her. Did he have to look so eager? So delicious?

Would it really hurt to touch him?

Without giving herself time to think about it, she reached out and took his hand, feeling an extra zing of desire rush through her as soon as her skin touched his. Maybe she should just sleep with him. If she was going to go mad, at least she could give herself the pleasure of having sex with him first. It wouldn’t make a difference one way or another.

Antonio squeezed her hand. “Why?”

It took her a moment to remember their conversation. The blood. She sat up a little but kept his hand in hers. “Something happened when I was a kid.” She knew that wasn’t enough explanation. She owed him more.

He squeezed her hand again. “Tell me what happened.”

She let herself go back in her memory to a time she didn’t like to remember. “I was eight. Our family had gone to New York City to some conference my Dad needed to attend. It was at this big hotel and there were thousands of people there, all different races.”

She took a breath and then continued. “My brothers and I weren’t supposed to wander off but we did and I ended up separated from them. I remember looking at some weaponry that was hundreds of years old. There were lots of displays and booths and things. It was supposed to be a way to learn about each other.”

She shifted in her seat. Antonio looked rapt. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to see his face when she told him the next part.

“So I was looking at some daggers with beautiful jeweled hilts when someone grabbed me from behind. I was eight. I had some training in fighting but…I was eight. I was small.” Tears gathered in her eyes and she did her best not to look at him so he wouldn’t see.

He squeezed her hand.

“He must have dragged me into an alcove or hallway or something; I don’t remember. I just remember his fangs piercing my neck and the pain and the blood. I screamed. I tried to fight but I kept feeling weaker and weaker.”

His hand tightened around hers.

“Then he was gone. Some pack members dragged him off. I heard later that there was a huge fight between the pack and the Vampire Council about it. At the time, I just remember my mother holding me and crying.” She stopped. That was enough.

“I would never force you. Ever.” His voice sounded rough. “Was he staked? He should have been staked.”

“No. That’s why they were fighting. The Vampire Council wanted to shrug it off and say ‘vampires will be vampires’ and my father, who was Pack Alpha at the time, wanted restitution and punishment for the vampire. In the end, we got an official public apology and a small amount of money in my name. As far as I know, the vampire who did it was never punished.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know. They would never tell us his name and none of the witnesses recognized him. He’s still out there.”

“Some vampires like children. It isn’t pedophilia exactly. It’s…” He swallowed. “The flavor of the blood.”

“I figured as much. The problem is, I can’t think about giving you blood without thinking of that incident from my childhood.”

“Of course you can’t. What happened to you was like being raped. The sharing of blood is intensely intimate. Forcing it is an abomination.” He brushed his fingers down her cheek. “But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

She shivered. “I don’t know how to get over it.”

“How would a rape victim get over a fear of having sex? A little at a time, by talking it out with people she trusts, by being gentle with herself. Which makes it sound easy but of course it’s incredibly difficult. But it isn’t impossible.”

Still. It would have been much easier if her mate hadn’t been a vampire.

Chapter 7

Antonio tried to keep his hand from squeezing Jennalynn’s too hard while he worked through what she’d told him. The rage he felt eclipsed any he’d felt before. He wanted to hunt down the animal who’d hurt her. At the same time, he wanted to take her somewhere and keep her safe.

“Antonio,” she said softly, the words whispering over his skin like a caress. “There’s Kent.”

Damn it. He’d almost forgotten the reason they were there. He wished he could forget it and just stay locked up in this car with Jennalynn.

“I say we let him get inside and then approach him when he’s in the apartment,” she said.

“Maybe I should go up the fire escape so he doesn’t try to go out the window on us.”

Her chin tipped upward as she looked at it. “You’ll have to pull the bottom part of the ladder down. Even if you can get to it, it’ll make a racket.”

“Vampire.”

“What?”

“I’m a vampire. We’ve got that cool levitation thing going on.”

Her lips opened and then closed. “Oh, right.”

“Forgot, didn’t you?”

“Forgot that you could fly? Yeah, I forgot.”

“It’s not really flying—”

“Yeah. So, you take the fire escape and I’ll go in the front. He’s probably in there by now.” She pulled her hand out of his.

“I guess we should go then.” This wasn’t right. He didn’t want their heart to heart to end like this.

As she opened her door, he leaned across and pressed his lips against hers for an instant, moving back just as quickly in case she planned to retaliate.

Instead, she sat for a moment, the door open two inches, her palm on the handle. He got out of the car and she slowly followed giving him a speculative look.