Take Me (14 page)

He gazed outside.

“I asked you a question. And tell me what happened to Beth.”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“What do you mean you’re not sure? Where was she found and what did your brother do to her?”

Finally he looked at her. Only when she breathed a sigh of relief did she realize she had been waiting for him to look at her again. She didn’t like it when he wasn’t. God, she was so screwed.

“Vas found them at Luc’s place. Said Luc was getting heavy with her. Vas grabbed Beth and took her home.”

Felicity dug her phone out of her book to check for messages. Beth hadn’t even called her back. What the hell?

“What does ‘getting heavy’ mean exactly?” She stiffened thinking of pounding fists and blood. It wasn’t a pleasant picture.

His eyes darkened into
the look
as he raked his eyes over her breasts then lingered between her legs. She pressed her thighs together to keep from squirming.

“What do you think it means, Felicity? We just shared a taste of it in my office.”

She swallowed hard and turned away.

The night had started strange, but before she knew it, Dominic Blackmoore had his hand in her pants, and she’d come twice. Lucas Blackmoore had supposedly gotten heavy with Beth. Really nothing could have surprised her.

Oh, how wrong she was.

Chapter 8

He could still smell her luscious scent on his hand. Fuck, he wanted to suck his fingers clean.

Screw it. He did it.

Even as Felicity’s eyes flared at him from the seat next to him, he watched arousal grow in her eyes. She was such a perfect woman for him. She liked what he just did, and judging by the flash of hunger in her eyes it turned her on too.

One hell of a woman.

A woman he wanted in his bed. Not just for one night but every night so that he could learn every inch of her body. Learn what she liked and how she liked it. Until he knew everything about her.

Everyone had their limits. It looked like he’d have to find Felicity’s. He understood her trepidation, really. But Julianna was nothing to him. A political pawn. That’s all. He and Felicity had something unique. Something he couldn’t remember ever feeling. He’d been crazy for Helena, but that happened ages ago. He’d grown since then, hardened. What he and Felicity had between them was different from what he felt about Helena. What they shared made him feel urgency and raw hunger.

It wouldn’t be easy but he’d find a way to convince Felicity. He would have to tread carefully. If he started flinging around the word mistress, she might never forgive him. He grinned. He hadn’t had this much fun in a long time. Hell, maybe in forever. Felicity was a treat he planned to slowly unwrap and savor.

“So your brother stole my best friend, took her back to his place and was making out with her?”

Dom shrugged. “I don’t know how or what happened exactly.”

“You said they were ‘getting heavy’. Your words not mine.” She glared at him as her patience waned.

He glanced at her before resuming his perusal of this part of the city. He didn’t come south very often—at all. He found himself curious, very much so, to see where she lived. He also planned to find a way into her house tonight. Strange but he wanted to see where and how she lived. Had she decorated her house with her own personal flare? He could see her living in such style. He’d seen her portfolio with her work; she was quite good.

“I was merely relaying what Vas told me,” he said.

His lips twitched with a grimace as they pulled into a poor looking neighborhood. Buildings had boarded up windows sprayed with neon graffiti; cars were low-end and looked like they didn’t run. One even had a missing tire. In the distance sirens blared. A tall man standing at the corner of the block under a broken street light glanced their way, pocketed something in his hoodie, and then ducked his head and kept walking.

Dom ground his jaw. “You live around here?”

It took her moment to answer. “Yes.”

She answered so quietly, almost shyly, that he looked over at her. She had her arms crossed and anger written across her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said.

His own anger surged. She would not ignore him. Something was wrong and he’d be damned if she’d disobeyed him.

He opened his mouth to speak, then slammed it shut. He heard it first, caught the roar of a car engine. Dom’s eyes swung left as they came up at an intersection.

The car was already barreling straight for them. This car wasn’t a dump. This one had an engine and nothing he could do or say could stop the impending crash. Dom had little time to react.

He flung himself over Felicity, wrapping his body around hers just as the car slammed right where he’d been.

Horns blared. An ear-piercing crunch of metal slammed again his eardrums. Their car jerked then lurched across the pavement in a head-whipping spin. The putrid odor of smoke and rubber tires filled his nostrils. He glanced and saw his driver, a human servant, crushed beneath the front end of the car that hit them. They stopped moving just as quickly.

Felicity shook beneath him like a twig. He didn’t waste any time. Someone just made an attempt on his life. That thought wasn’t even what made him fling their car door open, shove her out and he next as he rounded the cars to the passenger seat of the car that had hit them. That car that had
intentionally
hit them. It’d been waiting. That meant someone was watching him and Felicity. Someone knew he was coming this way within the last hour and had planned this on short notice.

Someone wanted him dead.

None of that mattered.

What made him tear off the driver’s side door one-handed, pull out the
were
who was slumped dazed over the steering wheel and pound his fist repeatedly into it was the fact that Felicity had been in the car.

Someone had almost hurt Felicity.

Dom didn’t just see red, he breathed it.

If someone would have asked him in that moment if he’d ever been angrier he would have said no. He’d never felt this heart-pounding fear before for another person’s life. Now that he had he knew he could never forget it. Never forget the intense, gripping fear that she might have gotten hurt because of him.

The son of a bitch he held by the collar was going to pay.

“Dom, stop it! Let him go! What the hell are you doing?” said Felicity. She came up beside him, frantically running her hands through her hair.

Crunch. Snap. Plsssht.

His knuckles didn’t even hurt even as the
were’s
face didn’t look like a face anymore. He had to punish him. Make him go away. He tried to hurt Felicity. He wanted to kill her.

“STOP IT!” she screamed.

Dazed, Dom turned to meet her wild eyes. His fist opened and the
were
dropped to the ground. The bastard wasn’t dead...yet.

Pulling out his phone, he dialed his brother. “Grayson, I need you at...” he spotted the address of the intersection and relayed it. “Make it fast. There’s been an attempt. Yeah, yeah, I think so too.”

He snapped the phone shut then pulled Felicity along. “Which one’s your house?”

She was breathing hard, only a few seconds away from panicking. “What?” Even as he steered her away from the wreckage, her head turned back to look at it.

He jerked on her arm, pulling her into his body and forcing her to look up at him. “I asked you where you live.”

She pointed a shaking finger down the block. Dom didn’t bother trying to walk her there. He just bent down, grabbed her, and lifted her up into his arms. She gasped as her arms went around his neck and a blush crept over her cheeks.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m taking you home.”

“We were just in a wreck! We have to go back. Why were you beating the hell out of that man?”

Anger rose hot and swift inside him. “That wasn’t a man. It was a
were,
and he’d been waiting for us which means we were being watched earlier. This was a setup. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get us both out of the open.” He started running.
Weres
could run just as fast but it’d still be better than idly strolling down a public street.

“There, that’s my house.” She pointed to a small brick home, probably a rental. It was quaint, and no way good enough for her.

He took her keys, opened the door, and shoved them both inside before locking it tight. “Stay here,” he ordered, and then set off to go through her house.

He used all of his senses to catch anything off.

“What are you looking for?” she asked, sounding peeved.

“Making sure no one’s in your house.”

Bathroom, clear. Living room, clear. Bedroom...smells just like her. Great, now he was hard. All rooms clear. He came back to her. She had a raised eyebrow, a cocked hip, and a taunting look on her face.

He wanted to kiss it right off her but now wasn’t the right time.

“My brother will be here soon.”

“Good then he can explain about Beth.”

Dom shook his head. “Not that brother, my brother Grayson.”

Both of her delicate little eyebrows rose. “Well, you have too many brothers.”

A smile curled at his lips. “Couldn’t agree more.”

“So, Grayson’s from...a different mother?” she asked hesitantly.

Dom’s smile was tight. “Yeah, he runs a protection service.”

“As in bodyguards?”

“Exactly but he doesn’t work with humans. His service caters to
weres
and vampires. It’s a niche market but one that’s quite profitable.”

He liked this, he thought. Just talking to her in her own home. A home much, much more plain than he’d anticipated. In fact, her couch was thread-barren and cheap. Her kitchen table served as her dining room table since her house was a one-bedroom one bath. The wood chairs at the table were scratched and beat up. The board to one of the chair legs hung off, broken.

He had the need, right this very second, to get her the hell out of his dump and buy her a new house.

She caught his gaze and he quickly schooled his expression. Too late, her face paled and she took a step back. She looked almost in pain.

“I don’t want you here.”

“Why?” Need roared inside him to go to her, to pull her into his arms and never let her go. He couldn’t though.

She threw her arms out with a disgusted laugh. “Because this is how poor I am. This is how I live. Maybe now you’ll stop touching me.”

Hearing the pain in her voice made his chest squeeze tight. “What are you talking about?” He didn’t want to stop touching her, he wanted to buy her a new a fucking house. That’s all. Maybe a car too and anything else she could want. A small island, no problem.

“You and me, we don’t mix. Two completely different species of people.”

“We’re both vampires, Felicity.”

She glared at him. “You know what I mean. They take pictures of your family for magazines. I have to feed off a friend when I’m out of blood.”

She’d gone hungry before. The pain in his chest twisted until it became difficult to breathe. He vowed then she would never go hungry again.

“Felicity...”

She held out her hand. “Don’t, just don’t. I’m fine. I’ll earn my own way. I work hard and I’ll earn my keep. But this,” she said waving her hand to indicate her home, “is the difference between your opulent home and my shitty house in the city. Okay?”

“As if I care—”

Her eyes flashed, nostrils flared. “Don’t you dare lie and say you don’t care. I saw the way you looked at my house. It may not be much but it’s
mine!
I worked for every little piece of furniture I own. It’s mine! And I won’t have you sully it with your high-brow bullshit.”

Dom cooled his expression as he took her in.

She was quite livid.

And it only made her more beautiful.

In that very moment with her cheeks flushed, eyes glowing in anger, and her hair standing out, he wanted to shove her right up against the wall and fuck the living daylights out of her until she was screaming his name like she’d been born to do it.

Only after they each came and she grew weak in his arms would he take her into her small bedroom and fuck her six ways from Sunday until their scents embedded her sheets like perfume.

However...he didn’t think she’d consent to any of that right now. Women, they were tricky business. A man had to step carefully lest he find himself in a pit of despair, longing after the one he wants and getting nothing but scorn in return.

What was it about her that drove him so crazy? He’d never had such a wild and instantaneous reaction to a woman before.

Dom’s phone beeped in his pocket. He had it pressed to his ear in the next second. “Yeah? Right. Coming.”

Dom hung up, never taking his eyes away from her. “You need to pack.”

She her shoulders stiffened. “Why?”

“Because you’re coming to stay with me.”

She laughed, took a step back. “I don’t think so.”

Dom turned the handle of the front door. “You don’t have a choice. They know where you live and they know I’ve been with you. You’re a target now. Get packed.” With that, he left. Grayson was inspecting the car crash and unconscious
were
on the pavement when he got there.

Grayson looked bad. Well, he always looked bad but today he looked worse than normal. Dom pitied the man. He’d mated a fine woman many years ago, but as time went on and they lost not one but two children to miscarriages, his wife had taken to drink. And drink she did, lots of it until she was shaking, slurring, and unable to stand up right. Grayson had been living with it for years. He’d tried everything from forcing her into rehabs, tying her up to keep her away from the booze, everything he could think of. But she’d weasel out of it someway and always returned to the drink. She needed it now more than him. Grayson was miserable but he loved her. He wouldn’t let her go.

Dom loved his brother and loved Gray’s bond mate, Anita, but he didn’t envy the man. Not one bit.

Gray looked over the scene with a grim eye. “You figure it was Zeke?”