Passion Bites: Biting Love, Book 9 (22 page)

“No.” His gaze met mine, and his lips clamped.

“Yes. I’m still conscious, which means I only got a quart in you.” He must have used considerable willpower not to drink me dry.

“I can move. It’s enough for now. For this.” He took my injured wrist and raised it to his mouth, the gold flecks in his eyes seeming extra-large.

“What are you doing? If you won’t drink, we should rest.”

“We will. This first. It will hurt—I’m sorry.”

“What are you…ow!”

He tore into the gash in the lateral portion of my hand, right over the injury. There was an instant of shock and pain like jagged lightning.

As my blood welled, he raised his own palm to his mouth, slicing it on one fang with quick efficiency.

Then he grabbed my wrist with his torn hand, blood to blood.

It was like he’d injected analgesic. My pain subsided to throbbing.

“It’s better.” My wonder filled my voice.

“Not done.” He lifted his hand. The cuts were gone, both from his palm and my wrist. He gazed at his forefinger—it wavered. He touched the misty index finger to the lump of sprain or broken bone—and his distal phalanx sank in, the pointer to the first knuckle.

I gasped, surprise as a flood of warmth released. Loud crackles, like unwrapping cellophane, came from my hand, but uncomfortable, not painful.

He removed his fingertip. It was solid again.

But more, my hand was healed. Broken bone or sprain, the lump was gone and as I tested it with a circle, the wrist worked normally. “That’s a miracle.” I knew vampire blood healed, but experiencing it, the intimacy, the healing, was amazing. I gazed up into his face in wonder and gratitude—and realized he’d gone gray. “You have barely two quarts of blood in your body. Can you afford to lose even drop?”

“We can function with minimal circulation. This is the least I can do for your saving my life. Besides, it’ll take both of us working together to escape.” He went to the water fountain and drank deep. “Ahh.” His color improved almost instantly. Apparently even fluid that wasn’t blood had some restorative affect.

“Well, thank you for healing me.”

He gave me a small smile. “Let’s lie down where you can thank me properly. And I will thank you.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

“If you mean what I think you do, I don’t think this is quite the time. Not only is an insane vampire about to try to break down our door, you should know I hid my friend and her daughter away. I think they’re safe for now, but I want them completely safe sooner rather than later.”

“Yes. But the thing between us…I can’t think straight. All I can think of is this.” He lay on one of the cots, and to my shock, opened his arms to me.

I shook my head. “We can’t.”

“Please, Alexis? I…I need you.”

That plucked a string inside me. My head-shaking slowed. “Well…”

“Just for a little while. It will help me heal.”

For him? How could I not? Besides, I had no idea what this need really was, blood, companionship, sex…

As I approached, he scooted over to accommodate me. It was cramped on the cot, but something about him, his smell or his feel or the way he snuggled against me, turned cramped into cozy.

It started slow. He hugged me. Pressed his lips to my hair. Caressed my cheek with one thumb.

I turned my face, eyes closed, up for his kisses. He dropped them, butterfly light, on my forehead, eyelids, nose, cheeks. I sighed and reached up with my lips.

His mouth found mine. We kissed, less in desire and more from a need to connect, lips sealing our breath together, essences mingling in the heat of our mouths.

I wanted to be closer. I slid my hand along his skin. My blood had helped heal him, at least on the outside; the charred swatches and weeping blisters were gone, his skin smooth and unbroken. Overjoyed that he was whole again, I caressed up his ribs, feeling the breadth of him, the long slide of muscle, the broad span of shoulder.

His hands found my skin as well, sliding under my top, scooping knit silk up my ribs and over my head. He shucked my shirt as I freed my arms and then we were clasping each other tightly, skin to skin, only my bra between us.

Shockingly, that skin-to-skin contact fired an inferno of desire in me. Lust, but more, I wanted to connect with him, as deeply and completely as possible.

I threaded fingers in his blond hair. Looked him in the eye. “I don’t want to hurt you. But I want you.”

“You won’t hurt me. And I
need
you.” He kissed me, deep, mouth open, tongue working until I yearned.

His hand slid down. A pop and zip and that warm, agile hand was inside my pants giving me pressure and heat exactly where I desired the connection most.

A mini-explosion rocked me. I released a loud, “Uh!”

“Shh.” He kissed my mouth as if he could drink in my cry. “I disrupted the feed to the cameras, but Luther can still hear through the door.”

“Sorry. I’ll scream quietly.”

He chuckled.

Softly, sweetly, he caressed me until I was naked against him, writhing on the cot, the plastic cool at my back and him blazing hot along my front. My nipples pressed into his rock hard chest as he partially turned us, moving mostly under me to part my thighs and drape them over his hips.

Snuggling closer, my sex met his straining, full erection. I shifted my hips, rubbing my swollen labia against him, a slow glissando that stroked him even fuller.

I was so empty. So needy. I lifted my hips, his cock springing eager below me, then settled myself until my sex gave his glans a wet, open-mouthed kiss. He groaned, a soft release of pent-up breath, in anticipation of what I was about to do.

A long slide took me down his shaft. It was thick and good the whole way down.

He sighed. I rested my cheek against his chest for a moment. His heart kicked under my ear in pleasure.

I ground myself into him at the bottom. His fingers found my buttocks, kneading me like a satisfied cat. I flexed my hips, licking back and forth against him.

With a throttled groan, his fingers bit into my haunches, and he used the leverage to forge up into me. Began surging, over and over. I raised my head and pushed against him as he thrust, breasts and hips and most of all, swollen pussy. Each banging impact sent an explosion of sensation cascading through me, showering sparks like fireworks lighting up my flesh.

Our soft panting sighs blended as he thrust faster. Deeper. I leaned down again, this time arching my neck near his open mouth. Near his glinting fangs. His breath billowed hot against my throat. “Bite,” I said softly.

“Can’t,” he hissed. “Too much…”

“Don’t care.” I grabbed his head and kissed him, kissed everything I could reach. Kissed his fangs.

On one sharp, sharp tip, I nicked my lip.

Climax thrilled through me, high and keen. He swiped the cut on my lip shut with one rough lap of his tongue and pounded harder up into me, his fingers gripping so tight they dented flesh.

Excitement rose again, soaring higher, a tingling flush up my chest, my nipples so tight they sang. “Bite me.” I whispered it fiercely. “
Bite.
”

I grabbed his head with both hands and pulled his mouth into my breasts. The large globes flowed around his face like water. He sucked in a shocked breath—but his cock thickened inside me and surged in excitement.

I shimmied against his face. “Bite me, Luke. Let me feel the sharp edge of your pleasure. Of our pleasure.
Bite.
”

“Alexis, no. I want you too much. I can’t—”

“Well, I
can.
” Jamming my nipple into his open mouth, I pressed myself up. My flesh embedded on the sharp tip of one fang with a tiny pop. A deep shudder passed through me.

He went motionless, except for his erection throbbing hard inside me; even his breath stilled against my breast.

And then he groaned, softly, but from the pit of his being—and bit down.

Electricity spiked through me, waking every nerve in my body. I choked off a shriek. He surged up into my sex once, twice, the third time thrusting to my very core, and came. Hot climax pumped into me, searing me, triggering me to rise yet again, like lightning streaking through a heavy summer thundercloud. Lust billowed hot and full in my belly.

He bit again, fangs in flesh, tongue lightly laving my tight nipple. I shredded from tip to toe—and burst.

Orgasm thundered through me, bolts of pure pleasure tearing from my spasming sex along my primed nervous system to my brain, filling my body in torrential bursts of primal energy.

He pulled his fangs from my breast and licked the pierced skin closed, his purr rumbling madly. Licking my breast, he continued to pump more climax into me, pushing my orgasm, prolonging it, spreading the waves through my body. He lapped through the aftershocks, the amazing flush of endorphins that, with him, felt less like chemicals and more like love.

I collapsed on his heaving chest.

We lay like that, connected by more than flesh. I was at peace—happy even. We were one thin door away from a vengeful vampire and a sadistic human. I had no plan.

But anything seemed possible, as long as Luke was with me.

Raising my head to say something sweet and mushy and heartfelt, I decided against it—anything I said would be so much less than what we had already said with our bodies—and brushed a kiss against his chiseled cheek instead.

That was when I felt the tears, coursing down his skin.

“Luke,” I whispered, mindful of the possibility that Luther or Owun were nearby. But I had to know. “What’s wrong?”

“That,” he said. “Sex with you.
Love
with you. It’s perfect.”

Not what I expected him to say. I gave a little laugh. “Why does ‘perfect’ sound like a bad thing?”

He was silent for a long moment. Too long. My heart pumped hard waiting, and I counted every beat.

Finally his chest heaved. “Because I need you—but I can’t protect you.”

“You don’t have to protect me.”

He took my face in his hands. “Alexis, I’d love to think we have a future together—but
I can’t protect you.
I’m too weak. My history with Adelaide…” His words stopped. That one name, and his hands fell and his eyes closed like he’d died.

“Wait. Just…wait.” I closed my own eyes while I tried to sort it out. He’d said something about a future? And he used “we”, like a real couple, but somehow it was a bad thing. A hurtful thing. Spikes of joy crashed against waves of fear, creating turmoil and wreckage in my breast. One big reason I mistrust emotions—they make no sense.

It wasn’t like I had oodles of time to tease the sense out. Any second the assault would begin on that door. It would creak against the weight of superhumans, begin to slide open…

But Luke was hurting and I owed it to him, for his dealing with
my
worst, to try to understand. So I tried, I really did. I reached for the name that seemed the root of it all. The name I didn’t know. Was afraid of the most.

Adelaide.

His wife? Whoever she was, she was important to him. A tiny part of me was jealous, but deep down, I knew if I was ever again to feel this sense of connection with him, I had to know about the name he spoke with such a heartfelt mix of adoration and pain. I opened my eyes and asked.

“Who’s Adelaide?”

He went still—that horrible stillness from pain so darkly hurtful, he needed every drop of his immense willpower to keep it from showing. A tiny, terrible tremble hinted at the depth of his misery.

“Luke, please.” I kissed his cheek. A fresh red tear trickled silently along the plane. I touched lips to his eyelid, scrunched tight, which had squeezed it out. “Please tell me.”

“No. It does no good. It doesn’t change anything.”

I’d learned enough from Lizelle to realize he’d never tell me simply to ease his own burden. So I made it about me. “It might help me understand why I feel this way about you. For me?”

His body under me quieted. Not relaxed, but not the stillness of tightly reined will either. “Maybe…maybe I could, for you.”

Treacherous hope rose in my chest.

Then he added, “Some day.”

Another reason why I mistrusted emotions. I wilted.

We were silent, both thinking our own thoughts. I missed my backpack. Neat and orderly, it contained my tools to handle a crisis. More, that kit embodied me as a doctor: cool, calm, rational and worlds apart from a woman whose simple name made a powerful predator’s eyes leak red tears. Everything I required to treat a cut or bruise, even that naloxone for drug overdose poisoning…and a way out of this occurred to me.

I said, “Luther has men, you know.”

“Yes. Believe me, I’m considering all options.”

“Are you? He’s got men, but he’s the leader. The head. We capture him, the rest will do what we want.”

“Maybe. But first I have to get to him. He’s surrounded by vampire and human minions, and whatever that Owun is. I have techniques that can better the odds, but then what? Frankly, though my training makes me more than a match for him, I’m not so sure of the outcome with me injured and alone and him at full strength with minions and underlings.”

“That’s not what I’m suggesting.” I took a deep breath and broached the solution I’d come up with. “I worked with my sister on her husband’s…v-problem.” With Luther potentially listening through the door, I couldn’t say “vampire poison”. For the first time I was grateful for the stupid euphemisms my friends and family insisted on. “I think your brother—” I nodded my head toward the door, so he’d know I meant his evil twin, not Logan, “—has a private supply.” A poison was somewhere onsite that took down vampires. And Luther was a vampire.

“What?” His eyes narrowed as he got it. “No. Out of the question. We have no idea where it is—”

“Don’t we?” The first room I saw, where Una was, with its locked cabinets and refrigerators, was ideal.

He actually paused and considered it, a tribute to how highly he regarded me, because, his protests aside, he really was a product of his patriarchal times. “How would it be delivered?”

I mimed an injection.

He frowned. “Even if you find the, um, solution, I’d have to get up close to deliver it. We’re right back to the same objections as before.”

“Yes. For you. But not for me.”

The old-fashioned male returned. “No! You will not go anywhere near—”

“It’s the only way,” I said before he spouted who I wasn’t to go near. “Think. I have practice. I can do it smooth and fast.” I mimed jabbing a needle. “And I—” I pressed a fainting heroine hand to my forehead, “—won’t be considered a real—” I mouthed the word threat, “—so it’s more likely I can get close enough to do it. All you have to do is be a distraction to give me a chance.”

“You’re not risking your life—”

“You’re not risking yours
alone—
”

“I’m the protector here!” he roared.

“Fine!” I sat up, crossing arms. “But know this. You can’t stop me. You can only help me.”

“You
dare
try blackmail?” The snarl in his voice matched the red of his eyes and the length of his fangs.

Predator.
Every hair on my body stood up, but I only said calmly, “Not blackmail. Simply stating a fact. Now. I can try to do it on my own or you can help. If you protect me, I’ll be in no real danger.”

“No real danger?” His mouth dropped open, fangs disappearing, but his eyes stayed red. “No, no, no. History shows that is a bad, bad idea.”

“History? You keep talking about the past, but it’s in the past. I’ve seen you in action, Luke. You’re more than capable.”

“When it doesn’t really matter, maybe. But when it does?” His eyes cooled and filmed with a sheen of wet. “All right, I’ll tell you about Adelaide. You have to see what a bad idea this is.”