Kiss of Crimson (26 page)

Instead, he marshaled his mental strength and used it to cut the lights in the bathroom, plunging the space into a more comfortable darkness as he waited the long eternity that seemed to pass in those moments of answering silence. His eyes burned like embers. His fangs were ripping farther out of his gums, echoing the swelling ache of his arousal.

―Sterling... are you home?‖ she called again, and his ears were so attuned to her presence that he could detect her little sigh across the span of his apartments and through the solid panel of the door. He knew her well enough that he could picture the tiny frown that was certain to be creasing her forehead as she listened for him, then, finally, decided he wasn‘t there after all.

Chase stood stock-still, silent, waiting to hear her footsteps retreat softly down the hallway. Only when she was gone, the scent of her fading with her departure, did he release his pent-up breath. It leaked out of his lungs on a deep, miserable howl, vibrating the darkened mirror in front of him. Chase let it go, focusing his frustration—his damnable torment—on that rattling sheet of polished glass until it shattered off the wall into a thousand razor-edged shards.

Dante stroked his fingers over the soft skin of Tess‘s bare shoulder as she slept. He lay in bed next to her, spooning the back of her naked body against the front of his and simply listening to her breathe. Around them, the room was quiet and dark, as peaceful as the wake of a passed storm. The persistent calm was strange, the sense of comfort and contentment something entirely unfamiliar to him.

Unfamiliar, but... nice.

Dante‘s body stirred with interest as he held Tess in his arms, but he had no intention of disturbing her sleep. They‘d made love tenderly after he brought her to bed, at a pace he‘d let her set and control, letting her take whatever she needed from him. But now, even though his body was awake with arousal, all he wanted to do was comfort her. To simply be with her for as long as the night could last.

A shocking revelation for a male unaccustomed to denying himself any pleasure or desire.

But then, as far as this evening was going, shocking revelations were practically a given. It was not unusual for a Breedmate to have at least one extraordinary or extrasensory ability—a gift that also typically passed down to her Breed offspring. Whatever the genetic anomaly was that made the rare human‘s womb capable of accepting a vampire‘s seed and her aging process halt with the regular ingestion of his blood, it also made her something more than her basic
Homo sapiens
sisters.

For Dante‘s mother, the talent was a terrible precognition. For Gideon‘s mate, Savannah, it was psychometry, the talent to read the history of an object—more specifically, she could also read the history of the object‘s owner. Gabrielle, the Breedmate who‘d only recently come into the Order‘s fold as Lucan‘s woman, had an intuitive vision that drew her to vampire lairs and a strong mind that made her all but impervious to thought control, even by the most powerful of Dante‘s kind. For Tess, it was the amazing ability to heal a living creature with her touch. And the fact that she had been able to heal Dante‘s leg wound meant that her restorative talents extended to those of the Breed as well. She would be such an asset to the race. God, when he thought of all the good she could bring—

Dante clipped the idea before it could take shape in his head. What happened here didn‘t change the fact that he was living on borrowed time or that his duty was, first and foremost, to the Breed. He wanted Tess shielded from the pain of her past, but it seemed unfair to ask her to leave the life she was building for herself. Even more unfair was what he‘d done by taking her blood that very first night, linking them inextricably to each other.

Yet, as he lay there beside her, caressing her skin, breathing in the cinnamon-sweet scent of her, Dante wanted nothing more than to scoop Tess up and carry her away with him, back to the compound, where he knew she would be safe from all the evil that might touch her topside.

Evil like the stepfather who‘d given her so much anguish. Tess worried that killing the bastard had made her as bad as him, but Dante had only respect for what she‘d done. She‘d slain a monster, sparing herself and who knew how many other children from his abuse.

To Dante, Tess had proven herself a warrior at that tender age, and the ancient part of him that still subscribed to things like honor and justice wanted to shout to the entire sleeping city below that this was
his
woman.

Mine,
he thought fiercely, selfishly. As he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her delicate shoulder blade, the phone in her kitchen began to ring. He blasted the device with a sharp mental command, silencing the ring before it could wake her completely. She roused, moaning a little as she murmured his name.

―I‘m here,‖ he said quietly. ―Sleep, angel. I‘m still here.‖

As she drifted off again, nestling tighter against him, Dante wondered how long he had before dawn would drive him away. Not long enough, he thought, astonished that he could feel that way and knowing that he couldn‘t blame his feelings on the inconvenience of the blood bond he had unintentionally forced on them both.

No, what he was beginning to feel for Tess went a lot deeper than that. It went all the way to his heart.

―God damn it, Tess. Pick up!‖

Ben Sullivan‘s voice was shrill, quivering, his entire body shaking uncontrollably from trauma and a fear so intense he thought he might pass out from it.

―Fuck! Come on—
answer.
‖

He stood in a nasty pay phone booth in one of the worst areas of town, the chewed-up, crustedover receiver gripped in his bloody fingers. His free hand was clamped at the side of his neck, sticky from the horrific bite wound inflicted there. His face was swollen from the savage pounding he‘d taken, the back of his head screaming with pain from a goose-egg-size lump he‘d gotten from the window of the SUV.

He couldn‘t believe he wasn‘t dead. He had thought for sure he would be killed, based on the fury with which he‘d been attacked. He‘d been stunned when the guy—Jesus, was he even human?—ordered him to get out of the vehicle. He‘d thrust the photograph of the kid he was looking for into Ben‘s hand and let him know that if this Cameron, Camden, whatever, turned up dead, Ben would be held solely responsible. Now Ben had been enlisted to help find him, to make sure the kid got home in one piece. Ben‘s life depended on it, and as much as he wanted to hightail it out of town and forget he ever heard the word
Crimson,
he knew the lunatic who attacked him tonight would find him. The guy had promised he would, and Ben wasn‘t about to test his rage in a second round.

―Damn it,‖ he grumbled, as the call to Tess‘s apartment went into voice mail.

As bad off as he was now—as deep in the shit as he‘d landed tonight—he felt a moral obligation to warn Tess about the guy she‘d been messing around with lately. If his buddy was a psychotic freak of nature, Ben was betting that the other one was just as dangerous.

God, Tess.

When the voice-mail greeting left off with a beep, Ben rushed through the night‘s events, from the surprise ambush at his place by the two thugs to the attack on him a short while ago. He blurted out that he‘d seen her with one of the guys the other night and that he worried she was risking her life if she continued to see him.

He could hear the words spilling out of him in a breathless stream, his voice pitched higher than normal, fear edging on hysteria. By the time he‘d gotten it all out and slammed the phone back down onto the chipped cradle, he could hardly breathe. He leaned back against a graffiti-tagged panel of the phone booth and bent over, closing his eyes as he tried to calm his rattled system.

A barrage of feelings came at him in a giant swell: panic, guilt, helplessness, bone-deep terror. He wanted to take it all back—the past several months, everything that had happened, everything he‘d done. If only he could go back and erase things, make them right. Would Tess be with him, then? He didn‘t know. And it didn‘t fucking matter, because he couldn‘t take any of it back.

The most he could hope to do now was survive. Ben dragged in a deep breath and forced himself to stand. He pushed out of the phone booth and started walking down the darkened street, looking like holy hell. A homeless person recoiled from him as he cut across the road and hobbled toward the main drag. As he walked, he dug out the picture of the kid he was supposed to look for.

Glancing down at the snapshot, trying to focus on the bloodstained image, Ben didn‘t hear the approaching car until it was nearly on top of him. Brakes screeched and the vehicle was thrown into an abrupt stop. The doors opened in tandem, a trio of unfamiliar bouncer types pouring out.

―Going somewhere, Mr. Sullivan?‖

Ben jolted into flight mode, but he didn‘t even get two steps on the pavement before he was seized by all of his limbs. He watched the photograph land on the wet asphalt, a large boot trampling it as the men started carrying him back to the waiting car.

―So glad we finally located you,‖ said a voice that sounded human but somehow wasn‘t. ―When you failed to show up at your meeting tonight, the Master became very concerned. He‘ll be pleased to hear that you are on your way now.‖

Ben struggled against his captors, but it was no use. They stuffed him into the trunk and slammed the lid, plunging him into darkness.

CHAPTER Twenty-four

T
he early-dawn colors seemed brighter to Tess, the November air crisply invigorating outside her apartment as she finished up her short walk with Harvard. As she and the terrier jogged up the stairs of her building, she felt stronger, lighter, no longer weighed down by the awful secret she‘d been carrying all these years.

She had Dante to thank for that. She had him to thank for so much, she thought, her heart throbbing, her body still humming with the sweet ache of their lovemaking.

She‘d been hugely disappointed to wake up and find him gone, but the note he‘d left folded on her nightstand took away most of that sting. Tess dug the piece of paper out of the pocket of her fleece track pants as she pushed open her apartment door and let Harvard off his leash.

Strolling into her kitchen in need of coffee, she read Dante‘s bold handwriting for about the tenth time, her broad smile seeming permanently stuck on her face:
Didn’t want to wake you but had to
leave. Have dinner with me tomorrow night? I want
to show you where I live. I’ll call you. Sleep tight,
angel. Yours, D.

Yours,
he‘d signed it.

Hers.

A wave of fierce possessiveness swamped her at the thought. Tess told herself that it meant nothing, that she was foolish to read anything into Dante‘s words or to imagine that the powerful connection she felt toward him might be mutual, but she was practically giddy as she set the note down on the counter.

She glanced at the little dog who was dancing around her feet, waiting for his breakfast. ―Well, Harvard, what do you think? Am I getting in too deep here? I‘m not actually falling for him, am I?‖

God, was she... falling in love?

A week ago she hadn‘t known he existed, so how could she even consider that her feelings might go that far this fast? But somehow they did. She was falling in love with Dante, maybe already had, judging by the sharp tumble her heart was taking just thinking about him now.

Harvard‘s eager bark snapped her out of the emotional free fall. ―Right,‖ she said, looking down into his furry face. ―Kibble and coffee, not necessarily in that order. I‘m on it.‖

She filled her Mr. Coffee machine with Starbucks grounds and cold water from the tap, hit the button to start it brewing, then went to retrieve a bowl and the dry dog food from the pantry. As she passed her kitchen phone, she saw that the message indicator was flashing.

―Here you go, baby,‖ she said, pouring a serving of Iams into Harvard‘s dish and setting it down on the floor.
“Bon appétit.”

With more than a little hope that the message might have been from Dante calling while she was out walking his dog, Tess pressed the play button and put the voice mail on speaker. She waited anxiously, punching in her pass code and listening as the automated greeting announced that she had one new message, time-stamped from late last night, and began playing it back to her.

“Tess! Jesus Christ, why aren’t you picking up
your fucking phone?”

It was Ben, she realized, her disappointment over that fact swiftly draining into alarm at the odd tone of his voice. She‘d never heard him sound so panicked, so unglued. He was breathing hard, panting, his words spilling out of him. He wasn‘t merely afraid. He was terrified. Worry clutched at her with icy talons as she listened to the rest of his call.

“—needed to warn you. The guy you’re seeing,
he’s not what you think. They busted into my place
tonight—him and some other dude. I thought they
were going to kill me, Tess! But it’s you I’m afraid
for now. You’ve got to stay away from him. He’s
into some fucked-up shit... I know this sounds
crazy, but the guy he was with tonight... I don’t
think—ah, Jesus, I just have to say it—I don’t think
he’s human. Maybe neither of them is. The other
guy took me away in an SUV—I should’ve tried to
get the number off the plates or something, but
everything was happening so fucking
fast. He drove
me down to the river and he attacked me, Tess. The
son of a bitch had these huge teeth—they were
fangs, I swear to God, and his eyes were lit up like
they were on fire! He wasn’t human. Tess, they’re
not... human.”