Born In Blood (Born Hunter Book 1) (12 page)

              Aiden watched her with keen interest as she gracefully moved through one meditative pose after another. She handled the curved blade as skillfully as any of the celebrated masters. She was as lethal as she was beautiful. The fact that she seemed completely unaware of her appeal made her even more alluring. She knew she was homicidal. She knew she was deadly. She knew she was stronger, faster, and better with a blade than most. She had every confidence that she could go up against any opponent and emerge victorious. But she didn’t know the steel gray of her irises coupled with the almond slant of her eyes was mesmerizing. She didn’t know her soft feminine curves, the petite swell of her breasts, the supple tightness of her backside, were tantalizing. She didn’t know that having her in view and not being able to reach out and touch her was excruciating. The sound of Rafe’s thickly accented voice broke him from the trance.

“Who the hell do you think you are Hunter? Coming in our training room and taking over its space. You hunters are all the sa-.“ His voice was cut off by the dagger that embedded itself in his throat.

              “I advise you not to interrupt me when I am meditating,” Cara warned him. It was a part of her daily waking routine and she needed them to keep her balanced. “It helps me toe the line between reasonable homicidal bitch and irrational psychotic murderer. Interrupt me again, and you might find yourself on the wrong side of that line.” Cara gave him her best psycho smile.

              Rafe yanked the dagger out his throat and the wound knitted closed. He glared at her. “You and I are due for a rematch.” He hurled the dagger at her.

              She caught it, blade first. “Sorry. I don’t fight people whose asses I already kicked once. It kind of sucks the fun out of it. You know, knowing the outcome at all.”

              Rafe scowled at her one final time before exiting the room.

              Dorian devoutly remained where he was standing when she entered. She looked at him. He stared back at her. He took a step in her direction. She tensed in anticipation of a fight and leveled her sword.

              “Dorian!” Aiden barked out. “Check for any updates from Asad.”

              He turned to Aiden. They held each other’s gazes for a moment, communicating via a mental link. Finally, he stiffly tilted his head to Aiden and left.

               
Alrighty then
, Cara thought to herself.
I’ll have to watch my back around that one.
She returned to her meditation. Mere seconds later sun-kissed skin stretched tight across a bare, muscular chest and chiseled abdominals blocked her view.
Argh!
She wanted to scream. “What do you want?” she asked Aiden.

              His eyes seared into hers. “You.”

              She purposely kept her voice flat. “I’d rather die first.”

              Cara saw mischief in his stare and his smug, arrogant smile all but confirmed it. “Care to make a wager?”

              “About what?”

              “You said you’d rather die first then come to my bed. I don’t believe you. We never did finish the fight from the alley. Don’t you wonder if we didn’t end it in a draw, who would have won?”

              Cara wondered that indeed. So she kept listening.

              Aiden leaned in closer to her, allowing his lips to graze her ear. “How about we pick up where we left off. Only this time no draws. We fight to submission. My terms are the surrender of your body or death. What are yours?”

              Cara took a minute to think about it. What would pain His Darkness the most to lose? It was a shot in the dark, but she thought she knew. “This island,” she said, “or your head.”

              A nerve ticked in his jaw.
Yup
, she had been right on the money. Aiden loved the private island almost as much as he loved himself. Though why, she did not know. Surely, he had enough money and influence to buy ten more of these. But Isla Verde was special to him. She felt it the moment they landed on it.

              “Agreed.” He stuck his tongue out and trailed it along the length of her ear.

              Ashamedly, she shivered. Instead of shoving the vampire away as she might have done in the past, she slanted her neck to the side, exposing her throat. She lowered her lids and looked up at him through hooded eyes. Aiden’s attention jerked from her ear to her neck as Cara knew it would. He dragged his nose along the length of it, inhaling her scent as he did so. Cara reached out with one hand crushing his face to her neck. As she did so she used the other hand to thrust the katana she held through his chest. The sharp blade slid into Aiden as if he were butter.

Aiden, momentarily stunned looked at her in confusion then down at the blade poking into one end of him and out the back. “That was a dirty move.”

              Cara moved her shoulders in an unapologetic shrug. “You should know by now I don’t fight fair. It’s the quickest way to get dead.”

              Aiden lasciviously smiled at her. “Good, then I won’t either anymore.”

              By the time the words were out of his mouth Cara was pinned to the wall behind her. An unseen force had literally picked her off her feet and pushed her backwards into it. Aiden remained in place with the katana sticking through one end of him and out another. Red bloomed around the blade’s entry point as gold rimmed his eyes.  He closed his hands around the hilt of the blade and yanked it out of his chest in one smooth, powerful motion. He deliberately let it clatter to the floor, sending Cara the message that in this fight he would need no weapons other than himself. Aiden looked at her arms pinned to her sides as tightly as she was to the wall. The same unseen force raised them up and pinned them to the wall above her head. Aiden took one slow, methodical step toward her after another.  He was a predator coming to claim his prey, prey that had well and truly been caught in his trap. Cara was as fearful of what he would do next as she was anxious. She had just run a sword through the Prince of Darkness’s’ chest. Surely no one did that without the remainder of their now very brief existence being laced with agony. Aiden came close enough for their noses to touch. He crushed his body against hers and wedged one hand between them. He tore the cotton tank she had put on to train in away from her body with a flick of his hand. Her chest was left bare but for the small scrap of black lace bra she wore underneath it. Cara silently cursed and simultaneously thanked herself for not putting on the unflattering black sports bra she normally trained in when she dressed for the evening. Aiden braced his hands against the wall on either side of her head, ensnaring her more thoroughly. The short throwing knife she had strapped to her inner thigh unseated itself and wedged itself between them. Its sharp point pressed into the soft flesh below her left collarbone with enough force that would have made a grown man wince. But Cara was a hunter. She was bred and trained to stand strong in the face of pain. She met Aiden’s stare head on. She would not show an ounce of weakness, especially to him. Cara thought she may have seen approval flash in Aiden’s eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by a combination of something much more dangerous. Cara saw her imminent torture reflected back at her. She had finally gone too far. The Prince of Darkness intended to pay her back in kind for the blood she had drawn. The knife’s edge slid from her collarbone across her chest and stopped at the swell of her breast. It pushed into her flesh with enough pressure that a tiny red droplet beaded at its tip. The blade moved on its own accord away from Cara’s breast to Aiden’s lips. Without ever taking his eyes off her, he licked the blood from it then cast it aside with little more than a thought.

              When Aiden finally did break their stare it was to lower his head to the very breast the blade had pierced. He fangs instinctively elongated to razor sharp points. Cara’s breath hitched and her heart began to beat erratically in her chest. The gravity of the position she was in finally sunk in and whatever Reiya may think, she did have a few self-preserving instincts. She was literally trapped, completely unable to move or defend herself, and at the utter mercy of a vampire who was infamous for his lack thereof. He could sink his fangs into her, drain her dry and tear out her heart and she would not be able to do a thing about it. She did not know how the hell it was possible for Aiden to do it, but he had rendered her utterly helpless and vulnerable with a simple thought. Cara had never heard of a vampire in history who possessed such powerful telekinetic abilities. She had the feeling that she had just been let in on a very closely guarded secret, which did not bode well for her. She was now officially a loose end that would need to be tied up whenever her and Aiden concluded the business they had with each other. Aiden’s fangs grazed across her breast and in spite of the imminent danger they represented, her body involuntarily shuddered. Every inch of skin his fangs made contact with became aflame.
Gods what was wrong with her? Did she really have as much of a death wish as everyone else assumed she did? How messed up was she that in the face of her impending doom she was turned on by the very being who would be the harbinger of it?

             
Aiden looked up at her with a sinister smile in place and dipped his head toward her breast once more. Cara closed her eyes and held her breath in anticipation. She opened her eyes and looked down at him more than a little confused. She felt the soft flick of his tongue across her breast instead of the sting of his bite. He was using the healing enzymes in his saliva to close the wound made by the knife rather than using his fangs to further penetrate her flesh.

              Aiden’s eyes met hers again. The blazed gold with heat. “I believe I won our wager Hunter. We both know I could have torn into your heart just as easily as I healed the flesh covering it. We both know I still can.” Aiden pointedly looked at her hands still pinned above her head.

              “You hustled me,” Cara hissed at him. “Where the hell does a vampire get those kind of telekinetic abilities from?  It was a completely unfair fight and you know it. I want a rematch,
without
your newly revealed strength
.
”

              Aiden ignored her request. He had no intentions of granting Cara a second chance to best him or somehow renege on their wager.  Instead he pressed his body into hers, forcing her legs apart to accommodate him between them. “I may not have won fair and square
but I still won.
You should know I don’t fight fair. It’s the quickest way not to win,”
he threw Cara’s own words back at her. “I always win Cara and I
always
get what I want.” Aiden deliberately pressed his waist into hers leaving no room for misunderstandings as to exactly what it was he wanted.

              The feeling of Aiden’s rigid length against her core set it aflame. Moisture embarrassingly pooled between her legs. The self-satisfied smug on Aiden’s face left no doubt that he could sense her arousal. A better man would not have done what he did next, but Aiden never claimed not to be an ass. He placed his hand over her beating human heart. “Complete surrender, Cara. Those were my terms and you agreed. Which is it? Your body or your heart?”

              Cara almost took the easier way out. The words had already formed in her mouth and sat waiting on the tip of her tongue to be released. But as they were leaving her lips the words she uttered were completely different from the ones she intended to. “My body. I surrender my body,” she said to her utter shock. Even Aiden momentarily appeared stunned by her response. However, never one to miss a beat he quickly recovered.

              His licentious smile returned. “I have some business to attend to but I’ll see you at dawn. My room is on the 4
th
floor adjacent to yours. Come in something sexy… or nothing at all.”  Aiden turned and walked away.

              Out of pure habit Cara unsheathed the twin partner to the throwing knife Aiden had used against her and launched the blade at the back of his skull. The cocky bastard didn’t even bother to turn around. He simply deflected the blade with a wave of his hand, quietly chuckling as he exited. Belatedly Cara realized that she was no longer pinned to the wall and wondered exactly when and for how long had she regained control of her own limbs. Aiden had demanded either her body or her heart and Cara conceded her body. Ironically, Cara thought, her heart was still not safe. Giving her body over to Aiden would eventually lead to her giving him her heart. She knew this deep down in her soul as an irrefutable fact. It was the main reason she fought against her unwanted attraction to him so fiercely. It was going to be damn near impossible to offer Aiden her body and withhold her heart. But Gods she would try with every ounce of strength that she possessed. Because if she didn’t then Aiden would doubly win. He would take her body and soon after have her heart. And eventually he would crush it and her along with it because that is what happened when you loved someone. The love broke you and delivered a blow worse than any physical strike even the Dark Prince himself could deliver at his most lethal.

Twenty

             
C
ara stood outside the large French doors that led into Aiden’s personal suite. She was a nervous wreck. Her palms were sweating, her heart was racing and her breaths were coming in erratic pants. She closed her eyes and willed herself to relax. She was paying up on a lost wager and nothing more. It did not have to mean anything and it would change nothing between them. He would still be an insufferable, arrogant, pain in the ass vampire that grated her nerves and he would still probably kill her after this was all over and he had used her for all she was worth. She knew too much, had gotten too close for him to let her live.
Yeah keep telling yourself that,
a pain in the ass voice whispered in the back of her mind.
Shut up,
she told it. Cara sucked air into her lungs on a deep inhale and expelled it on a slow exhale. After several rounds of the breathing exercise she was calm enough to announce her presence. Before her fist connected with the closed door it opened. Aiden stood in the middle of the doorway wearing a pair of dark grey joggers and a solid black cotton tee that clung to and accentuated every muscle from his torso upward. His feet were bare.

              “I’m surprised you showed. Thought you might refuse to pay up or be somewhere planning my certain death just so you wouldn’t have to,” he teased her.

              Cara cocked her head to the side and placed one hand on her hip. “You know I hadn’t thought of that.  But now that you mention it, let me go grab a few dozen blades and a small militia. I’ll be right back.” Cara took a step backward as if she were turning to leave. Aiden’s arm shot out and curled around her waist. He pulled her inside the door, firmly shutting it and pulling her flush against him.

              “Oh no you don’t. You sealed your fate the moment you knocked on my door.”

              “Technically you never gave me the chance to knock. But I have a feeling my fate was sealed the moment I didn’t take you out in that alley Vampire.”

              Aiden’s eyes twinkled with facetious mirth. “I should be the disgruntled one Hunter. I’m pretty sure it is I who was irrevocably changed that night.”

              Confusion marred Cara’s face. “How so?”

              “It’s not important at the moment,” Aiden shook his head. “Are you hungry? I can order food,” Aiden offered more so to change the subject than anything else. James was impeccable in his duties to the house and treated every guest with the utmost hospitality.  Cara would want for nothing while she was there. James probably had food prepared and available for her at least 6 times a day when the normal human only needed to eat about half that much.

              Cara shook her head no. “James must think I’m either a glutton or have a parasite living inside me. He has more food prepared a day than any one person could eat in a week.”

              Aiden finally released her and walked over to the minibar that set in the corner of the room. They were standing in a sitting area as large as the one in her room across the hall. There was a mini bar to Cara’s left stocked with top shelf liquors, vintage wines, and expensive champagnes. To her right was a marble-lined fireplace that blazed with warmth. In front of the fireplace lay a large, plush mink rug that probably cost a small fortune. An oversized vintage chase sat against the far wall and an antique chandelier hung daintily from the ceiling. To call the room beautiful would be an understatement. It hinted at extravagance and wealth yet lacked gaudiness. Its decor was elegant and tasteful. It made Cara wonder if Aiden had had a hand in its decoration or if someone else had done it.

              “1942 Chateau Margaux?” Aiden held up one of the vintage wines.

              Cara eyed him suspiciously. Did he know it was one of her favorite reds? She was tempted to ask but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. “Yes, thank you.” She moved to where he stood and took the glass he poured for her. She could never pass up a glass of ’42 Chateau Margaux.

              Aiden poured himself a glass as he watched Cara wrap her lovely full lips around the rim of the crystal. He never thought he would envy an inanimate object as much as he did in that moment. He had traveled the world and sampled the most beautiful women, human and vampire alike, it had to offer. But not a single one of them could compete with the Hunter before him. He barged into her life with one intent and now found himself wanting to remain in it for an entirely different reason. His hunter was a walking conundrum. She was just as beautiful as she was deadly, as strong and she was fragile, as fierce as she was feminine, as cunning as she was loyal. He’d set out to seduce her. A quick fuck to rid himself of the need he felt to possess her, to dominate her, to feel her lush curves beneath him as he pounded into her flesh from the moment he witnessed her taking the head of a vampire three times her size in that back alley. He did not admit it to himself at the time, but he had held back when he fought her that night. He moved a little slower, struck a little softer, avoided vital organs by mere nanometers. He had started that fight with every intention to kill her, but something within him refused to extinguish her fire from the world. When he couldn’t kill her, he settled on a different path and decided to screw her along the way. He thought one good time would be all he needed to reduce her to another meaningless conquest. A name and face that would quickly blur together with all the rest quickly after their association ended. Now looking at her standing in the middle of his personal quarters on the private island that was his own personal sanctuary, gifted to him by his long dead mother, he knew he had been a fool.  He could never forget her. That morning she wore her hair down, allowing her thick auburn curls to cascade down her back in a messy but sexy mane. Their contrast against her graphite-colored eyes was breathtaking. She had etched her way into his very soul. A raging wildfire that set the darkness that normally resided there ablaze. She made him want to keep the monster that lurked beneath the surface at bay.

              “Your eyes are turning gold,” Cara informed him more than a little breathless. She was stating the obvious but it was all she could think to say to break the uncomfortable silence that settled between them. The way Aiden looked at her was too intense to even begin to process. It stole her breath away and made her feel as if he was staring into her very soul. It made her think about and yearn for things she knew she would never have. It was all consuming and made her entire body burn from the inside out.

              Aiden sat his glass of wine down beside him. “That tends to happen when we feel any kind of strong emotion. Normally I can control it, but I was lost in thought,” he said flatly.
Snap out of it,
he harshly reprimanded himself. He had to keep the feelings he was developing for the hunter at bay. They would only complicate things and make it harder for him to do what he must in the end. She had a purpose to serve that was far greater than what he might feel for her.

“What were you thinking about so intently?” She asked him tentatively.

              His eyes zeroed in on the red button down coat she wore. “You must be rusty in the intimate department. How long has it been Hunter since you last had a lover? You do know we are in the Caribbean not the North Sea?”

              His jeering words shook her free of her uncharacteristic timidity. She fixed him with a scathing glare. “First, you arrogant ass, a near blind man could look at me and know I do just fine in the intimate department. That is something I have never had a problem with. Second, unlike many of the brainless twits I am sure you are accustomed to, I have a brain and I know where we are. It is a
rain
coat. We are on a Caribbean island for Gods know how long. It likes to rain sporadically in this part of the world and I had to put on
something
to go from my room to yours. I certainly was not crossing an open hallway in this!” Cara threw open her raincoat to reveal delicate black lace lingerie trimmed in red silk.

              Her perfect, luscious petite breasts were practically spilling out of the material. Something Aiden would not mind at all happening. In fact, he wickedly thought, he might even help her with that. All it would take was a thought and the lacy material would be in shreds on the opposite side of the room.
Then again
, he thought as he started toward her with a predatory gleam in his eyes
, it would be much more fun to tear it away with my bare hands.

             
Cara let out a small little
yelp
when Aiden collided with her. He made quick work of sliding the raincoat down her arms and casting it aside. He took a step back to admire her without the offending thing on. His gaze traveled the length of her body. She wore a matching bra and panty set. The bra was a low demi-cut that just barely covered the top of her nipples. She had the toned physique of an athlete. The benefit of years of combat training no doubt. Yet her lush curves and smooth, delicate skin added a softening, feminine edge. The planes of her stomach were flat and smooth and her exposed thighs were lush and ample. She sported a pair of black leather stiletto boots that traveled the length of her legs and ended just above her knees. They complemented the bra and panty set perfectly. She was his personal femme fatale. The bulge in his joggers hardened to near painful proportions when he thought about what he would do to her in those boots. He would strip her bare of every stitch of clothing except them. Then he would bend her over a chair, or chase, or whatever the fuck was closest to them and claim her in the most carnal of ways. He would fuck her hard and mercilessly until she came a part just for him and her entire world shattered. He filed the vision away under the mental ways to fuck Cara list he was keeping. At the rate he was going, if she lived for the rest of eternity there still would not be enough time to see them all through. He would start on the list soon, but not yet. For the moment, he had other plans.

              The way Aiden looked at her, like he was a starved man and she was his only meal, sent shudders throughout Cara’s body. It made her feel self-conscious and emboldened at the same time. No one had ever looked at her with the intensity that he did. Then again, she had never done this for anyone before either. She had not lied to Aiden. She did okay in the intimacy department. When she wanted to get laid she had no problems doing so. Yet Cara always approached sexual encounters with an sense of detachment. She didn’t get too close. She didn’t feel too much. She kept things light and casual. She got what she needed in the moment and that was it. She never, ever gave more of herself than absolutely necessary and she never let anyone past the barriers she had erected so long ago. But Aiden was different. He made her feel things she should not and want to do things she previously thought laughable. Try as she might to treat him with the same level of detachment as she did near every one else in her life, she could not. He got under her skin against her most fierce protests. Worse, he was barreling through every barrier she had ever constructed. He made her feel more of everything. When she was pissed at him she was consumed with barely contained rage. She wanted to rip him apart and rain destruction down upon his head. When she was turned on by him, she was engulfed in uncontainable passion. She wanted to tear his clothes off and explore every inch of him. She wanted to completely consume him and be completely consumed by him. She had come dressed as she did because she wanted him to feel as utterly out of control as she did around him. Cara knew Aiden did not expect her to actually adhere to his demand to wear something sexy. So she did exactly the opposite. Her aim was to startle him with something so provocative and unexpected that he didn’t know what hit him. From the looks of it, it was working. Well it was until about a minute ago when Aiden’s expression changed from starved to painful.

              “What’s wrong?” she asked him.

              “You,” he told her plainly.

              “Come again.” Cara narrowed her eyes. She would murder him.

              “You,” he said again. Only this time he caught her around the waist and pulled her to him to prevent any acts of violence on her part. He ran his hand along the length of her spine and allowed himself the gratification of using the other to cup her perfectly, round supple ass. “I did not expect you to be such a gracious loser.” He swept her hair to one side and drew his nose along the length of her exposed neck. She smelled of freesias blowing in the midst of a summer storm. It was intoxicating. He forced himself to put some distance between them. “I am not as cruel as you think I am Hunter. I have never forced a woman to my bed and I will not do so now.”

              “But the bet,” Cara started but Aiden quickly cut her off.

              “Was exactly what you called it. A hustle. I never thought you would uphold your end of the bargain so thoroughly. I only wanted you to acknowledge whatever this thing is that burns between us. I wanted to force you to admit your attraction to me. That you want me to sink myself between your thighs as much as I want to, which you admitted when you conceded me your body over your life. You are a born hunter, Cara. You
never
stop fighting. If you truly did not want me, you would have willingly gone to your death. Still…” Aiden’s words trailed off as he took another step away from her. “There is no question that I want you Cara, but not like this. When I finally have you, I want it to be because you came to me of your own accord. Not because I conned you into doing so.”