His Lover's Fangs (4 page)

He remembered… so much. So many smiles, so
many laughs. So much love. So many dreams. All of it replayed in
his mind, and he wondered if that was what people meant when they
said their lives flashed before their eyes when their lives were in
danger.

Olivia’s fangs were just inches from his
neck. Her weight was pinning him down, but he could easily have
thrown her off him. Doing so, however, would have required that he
let go of the stake, or at least shift his grip on it, and he had
no doubt that his stake and the threat it represented were the only
things stopping her from killing him. It pressed against her chest,
precisely over her heart. All he needed to do to save himself, to
fulfill his promise to her, the same promise she had made to him,
was to push the stake up. If either of them was to become a
vampire, they had long ago agreed, the other would be the one to
kill them.

He just couldn’t do it.

Blind panic coursed through him, the kind of
fear he had never experienced before. It wasn’t the first time his
life had been in danger, far from it. But to this day, he had
always fought with one clear certainty at the back of his mind:
Olivia was there, close enough to help him if he needed her.

And now… She was there, like always. But she
was also the reason why he was in danger.

He knew he would die if he didn’t kill her
first. She had attacked him and so given him the right to kill her.
But having the right to kill her and the opportunity to do so, did
not mean he could do it. He had loved her too much.

He had told her earlier and it had been not
only stupid but also dangerous, but there was no denying it. He
still loved her. That promise had been a mistake.

Time passed. Long seconds ticked away by the
slowing beats of Logan’s heart. Olivia’s hair had slipped free of
the ponytail and was falling like a curtain over her shoulder.

He didn’t press the stake upward; she didn’t
bite him.

“What are you waiting for?” she sneered,
almost mocking. “A last goodbye? A last kiss before I tear your
throat out?”

Despite the threatening growl in her last
words, she wasn’t moving, either. Poised above him, she seemed to
be waiting. Waiting for what, he wondered? For death? Why would
she—

The thought struck him out of nowhere and
left him dazed and breathless. She hadn’t hurt him. They had
fought, and he had put all his strength, all his skills into each
blow. He knew he had hurt her. Through it all, though, she hadn’t
really hurt him. Oh, he would have bruises come morning, but
nothing that would last more than a few days, nothing that could
have truly incapacitated him. He had received worse while training
before. Not only that, but at no moment had Olivia tried to pick up
a weapon. She had passed the crossbow when she had first rushed in.
She had run past the knives in the kitchen. She could have grabbed
a sword from the dining room after she had stopped him from
entering it. Any of those would have helped her kill him faster, or
at least allowed her to incapacitate him if she wanted to finish
him with her fangs. And those, the one weapon she had, she didn’t
use.

He finally understood, and the realization
made burning anger course through his veins. He shoved his hand
up—hitting her shoulder with his fist rather than the stake,
pushing her off him and rolling away from her.

“Damn it, Liv! How dare you do this to
me!”

She sat back against the wall, feet flat on
the floor and knees in front of her chest. All the emotions he had
seen on her face tonight were gone. The anger, the threats, the
hunger, and the desire had disappeared. All that remained was an
immense weariness.

Logan pulled away until his back hit the
opposite wall. His right hand was still clenched over the stake,
and he breathed in deeply to try to calm his raging heartbeat.

“Why?” he asked when he trusted his voice not
to waver.

Olivia gave the smallest of shrugs, her eyes
avoiding his. “I was just trying to make it easier on you.”

“
Why
?” Logan said again, shaking his head in
disbelief.

Olivia smiled, but the warmth that usually
radiated through her entire face was absent. She had never looked
so sad, and something twisted inside Logan. He wanted to reach out
to her, draw her into his arms, but he was still too mad for that.
All he did was drop the stake, and it clattered on the wooden floor
between them.

“Because I can’t live like this,” she said
with a sigh. “You know I never wanted to.” She finally looked up
and met his eyes. “And it had to be you, lover.”

Jumping to his feet, he shook an angry finger
at her. “You selfish—” He pressed his lips tightly together rather
than letting out an ugly word. He’d never called her names before
today. As angry as he was, he still didn’t want to. “I can’t
believe—”

He gritted his teeth and pushed the heels of
his hands hard against his prickling eyes. He wasn’t going to cry.
He refused to. He had cried enough when he had lost her, he wasn’t
going to start again now. Not when he was realizing that, maybe, he
had just found her again.

He heard her come closer to him. She took his
hands in hers, gently pulling them away from his face. He snatched
them free and tried to push her back, but she slipped closer to
him, kneeling over his legs, and wove her arms around him. She
pressed her face against his chest and breathed in deep, like she
had done a hundred, a thousand times before.

Logan’s mind was a mess, with too many
contradictory thoughts bouncing through his head. His body, on the
other hand, recognized the pattern. Without thinking, he wrapped
his arms around Olivia and held her tightly, pressing a kiss to her
temple. Her skin was cool, but it was as soft as he remembered.

“Are you going to do it?” she murmured
without looking up at him. And then, a little louder, she added,
“You promised, Logan.”

“Are you killing?” he asked and tried not to
hope too much.

Olivia met his eyes for a second before
dropping her gaze to his chest. She grimaced. “I didn’t have a
choice, the first couple of nights. My Sire was watching me pretty
close. She threw these people at me, and I had to—”

Logan wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault,
wanted to ask if she felt guilt, but something else was more
important. He had been hoping for a reason not to kill Olivia, and
he might just get it.

“And since I killed Ann?”

* * * *

Should she lie, Olivia wondered, or should
she tell the truth? If she lied, she’d probably get what she
wanted—peace. If she told the truth, it might be easier for Logan
to hear, but where would that leave them?

Time trickled by while Olivia considered the
now calm and regular beat of Logan’s heart. Sometimes, she had
trouble remembering her life before she had met him. He had been
her partner, in all senses of the word, for close to ten years.
They had learned their job together, had learned to love it as they
learned to love each other. They had saved each other’s lives. They
had laughed and cried, argued and made up, held each other and
guarded each other’s backs. Never, though, had Olivia lied to
him—not until this night. She didn’t like to lie. She didn’t want
to do it anymore.

“No,” she finally answered, her voice barely
louder than a murmur. “I haven’t killed a human since you killed
her.”

“Then you can control yourself?”

An immense hope filled his words and twisted
Olivia’s guts. She shrugged, putting all her resignation into the
gesture. “So far. It doesn’t mean I’ll always be able to.” How
could she explain to him the hunger gnawing at her, the call of
blood, and how hard it was to be so close to him when the cuts from
their fight released the scent of what, to her, was now pure life.
She couldn’t promise him anything. She couldn’t even promise
herself she’d never hurt him.

“There are other ways for vampires to feed,”
he insisted. “You don’t need to kill.”

There was such expectation in his eyes
that Olivia had to look away. It would have been so easy to let
herself be seduced by his words. So easy to follow him on this
path, even though she knew how dangerous it could be. How dangerous
for
him
.

“Even so…” She sighed. “I never wanted—”

“You never wanted to be a killer,” he
interrupted her, laying a finger across her lips. “And it looks
like you still don’t want to be. So where’s the problem?”

She shook her head and tried to pull away
from him, but he wouldn’t let go. “Did you hear what I said?” she
sighed. “I killed—”

“Tell me this,” he cut in again. “Would you
have killed them if she hadn’t made you?”

Olivia thought back to those first nights, to
those humans cowering in front of her and her Sire, and to the
thrill of the hunt that had pulsed through her in place of the
heartbeat she had lost. “I…” She lowered her gaze to the floor and
swallowed hard. “I don’t know.”

Logan cupped her cheek into his palm and
gently made her look up at him. “I do,” he said, his voice shaking
with intensity. “You wouldn’t have killed. You haven’t changed a
bit.” Lowering his hand, he grinned. His eyes were sparkling,
already warning her that he was about to tease her. “You’re still
the same idiot.”

Olivia narrowed her eyes at him, giving him
an exasperated look. “Hey, a bit of respect for the vamp who could
rip out your throat.”

“Could you?” he said, clearly incredulous.
“Really? Nothing is stopping you. Why don’t you?”

He spread his arms wide, angling his head
and baring his throat as though to invite her—or maybe taunt her.
And he called
her
an
idiot?

With a quiet growl, she lunged for his neck.
She expected the scent of fear to rise from him, but seconds passed
and his scent didn’t change. His heartbeat did not stutter. He did
not try to push her off. All he did was close his arms around her
again and hold her tighter. Part of her wanted to berate him, bite
him with blunt teeth, hard, and give him a lesson he’d never
forget: she was dangerous. He couldn’t afford to trust her. Not
ever. She could kill him.

But all she did was kiss him, a light brush
of her mouth against his pulse point.

Logan’s hand moved up her back until he was
cupping her head in his palm. He held her close. “I was hoping so
hard,” he murmured. His other hand ran up and down her back,
soothing away her fears like nothing had changed. “I knew I
shouldn’t be. The Academy warned us not to. I knew what I’d have to
do. But I couldn’t help just hoping still.”

You shouldn’t
have
, she wanted to tell
him.
I could
have killed you. Turned you. And then what?
But when she raised her head, when she
looked at him, no words came to her lips. Instead, she caught
herself staring at
his
lips. She
had wanted that last kiss so much, and now nothing was stopping her
from taking it. Nothing was stopping her from asking for more than
a kiss.

And there was no reason for any of it to be
their last time.

She laid her mouth against his, soft and
caressing, and slipped her tongue along his bottom lip, then the
top one, licking gently without slipping past his lips.

Logan pulled away and grinned at her, his
eyes sparkling. “You don’t need an invite for this, too, do
you?”

She crashed her mouth back onto his and
proved to him that she didn’t.

* * * *

Logan could hardly believe this was
happening.

He had almost killed Olivia, only to realize
that was what she wanted. He had finally managed to convince
himself that he had lost her, only to have her come back to him
like this.

Any second, now, he was going to wake up and
it would all be a dream.

Any second, he would wake up and lose her all
over again.

He held her tightly, more tightly maybe than
he would have dared if she had been human and breathing. She only
kissed him harder still, her hands framing his face at first, then
sliding down to caress his neck, knead his shoulders and biceps,
clinging to him as she always did.

Finding the hem of her shirt, he tugged it
out of her pants and pulled it up. She protested when they had to
break apart so that he could pull it off her, the sound low in her
throat, almost like a growl. Logan shivered. As he finished
divesting her of the garment, she grabbed his shoulders with both
hands and tugged him away from the wall against which he was
resting, pushing him down until he was lying on the floor. She tore
his t-shirt off him. The sound of ripping fabric filled Logan’s
mind when she plunged for his neck.

He waited for his body to tense, for fear to
flow through his veins like blood and ice. But the shiver that
coursed down his spine all the way to his balls wasn’t due to fear
or how cool her lips were. Instead, need made him arch against her
and offer his throat to her. He had done as much so often before
that it was hard to remember why it could prove to be a terrible
idea.

At the feel of her mouth, his eyes closed.
She wouldn’t hurt him. He knew she wouldn’t. And when she sucked
hard on his neck, the mark she left was no different from the many
hickeys she had left on him before. He’d always teased her about
it, joked she had an oral fetish. It didn’t seem like a joke any
more.

When she lifted her mouth to admire her work,
her hair spread on either side of her face and tickled him. He
grabbed her waist and twisted, rolling their bodies until he was on
top of her. He took hold of her wrists and held them above her
head, gathering them in one hand. She could have broken free
easily, but she kept her arms in place as he kissed her temple,
then her cheek, then slid down to her neck. The bite marks that had
made her what she now was were healed but easily recognizable under
his tongue. She bucked and moaned when he scrapped his teeth
against them.