Darkness Burning (15 page)

“I’m not a puppeteer. You have free choice. Follow your heart. I’ll go to Natalie and let her know about her mother.”

At the door, Alex glanced back, catching a look on Simon’s face that deepened his own churning emotions. Simon seemed tense, his bearded Templar’s face set in stone. “We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?”

This time Simon’s smile was full, a generous flash of white…and genuine.

A
low
,
ominous growl rumbled from the shadows beneath the two-lane bridge spanning a narrow bayou. Almost at the end of the bridge and ready to turn and follow the dark
,
empty street toward a destination she couldn’t quite recall
,
Miki felt her heart thud dully in her chest.

She walked faster
,
trying to keep her steps muffled
,
but the growling grew
,
slowly building to an ominous resonance that whittled at her courage. Turning onto the sidewalk beside the street
,
she spied a distant streetlamp
,
fixed her gaze and hopes on it
,
then freed her hands from the pockets of her jacket
,
her blackjack held tightly in one fist.

Closer now
,
the light was a golden beacon
,
but a scraping sound—no, several
,
like sharp claws digging at the pavement—came from behind her. The low-pitched growl
was now an ear-piercing whine. And the sounds were getting closer.

She broke into a run
,
all thought of slipping silently past the menace fleeing as she raced forward. She couldn’t look back
,
couldn’t waste the precious second it might cost
,
didn’t want to trip
,
didn’t want to really know what sped after her.

When it barreled into her back
,
she fell forward
,
the weight of her pursuer crushing her into the dirt. Then they were slipping together down the muddy side of the embankment toward the murky swamp water. Her attacker slid past her
,
his body splashing loudly
.
Then, pivoting sharply despite the muddy depths
,
he turned to lunge toward her.

She had time only to roll onto her back and meet him
,
her arm raised.

Jaws opened
,
burrowing between her shoulder and her head. She battered his skull with the hardened leather weapon
,
but she couldn’t dislodge him. Fangs sank into her neck
;
a steel maw opened and bit deeper again—jaws so long and wide that she knew she had seconds to live as blood spurted from her neck and soaked his fur.

Weakening
,
the sounds and knife-edged pain faded around her. Then something unexpected happened. Heat burst
,
singeing her from the inside out
,
flaring at the last moment, and she saw the beast’s glowing eyes widen—

Miki bolted upward from her bed, drenched in sweat, the last remnants of her dream lingering in her mind so damn vividly that she still had the scent of singed fur in her nostrils.

The dream was getting stronger. It was filled with lurid details, which no longer crept back to hide in her subconscious when she wakened.

The details she recalled now made no sense at all. Sure she’d woken on the side of that embankment, but she hadn’t been savaged by an animal. She’d had no wounds whatsoever, just an empty place inside where her past had existed. The circum
stance that had brought her to that ditch, naked and shivering from the cold, was still undiscovered.

She was beginning to think her dream might be symbolic. Something her mind devised to replace the true horror she’d experienced.

With her heart still racing, she crawled out of bed, headed to her bathroom, and pulled another bottle of water from the box underneath the sink. She pulled her nightgown over her head, poured part of the water onto a washcloth, and blotted her face and chest to remove the sweat and soothe away the heat. The room was stifling hot.

She eyed the closed window. The screen had been removed when the plywood had been nailed over it to protect the glass, but she hadn’t bothered replacing the screen when the plywood had been taken down. If she slid open the large plate window, she risked being eaten by insects. A few mosquitoes seemed a less uncomfortable choice at the moment.

Miki rummaged beneath her sink for a Citronella candle. She lit it and set it on her nightstand. Then she stepped toward the window, lifted the latch, and slid it to the side to open it halfway. Humid air gusted inside. Not much cooler than the air in her room, but fresh and moving. She stood naked in the darkness, closing her eyes as the breeze wafted over her.

The movement of the air sliding over her breasts felt like wicked little fingers, gusting against her nipples, slipping between her legs. Miki shivered, opened her eyes, and let the night’s debauchery sift through her thoughts again.

Her intimate flesh was still sensitive, still abraded. She didn’t dare slide a finger between her legs or cup a breast without hissing air between her clenched teeth. Instead, she lay down on her cool sheets, opened her legs, and stretched her
arms out to her sides, letting the breeze soughing over her skin cool and soothe her to sleep again.

Should she dream of monsters with gnashing teeth or blood-sucking horn-dogs who fed their hungers on her flesh and blood? She touched her lips, slightly swollen from her lovers’ passionate kisses, and drew the memory of Alex in the garden around her like a comforting blanket before she drifted back to sleep.

Alex landed on the windowsill, slipped his legs over the edge, and sat on the wide ledge while he folded his wings back into the slitted pouches between his shoulders.

Beneath him, stretched across her bed, lay the woman who called herself “Sarah.” With moonlight silvering her bed, he watched her long legs shift restlessly in her dreams, gliding closed and apart. His cock stirred, filling to press ruthlessly against the stiff fabric of the fresh jeans he’d donned before seeking her out.

Her slender legs tensed, relaxed, then folded outward, teasing him with the thought that if he stood at the foot of her bed, he’d clearly see the soft folds he’d plundered. Instead, all he could see now was her soft, furred mound. His gaze swept upward, over the swell of her belly, the hollow beneath her ribs, the rise of her breasts, and the soft, round discs cresting at their centers.

With her arm outstretched, her pillowy breasts lay like small milky hillocks, and his palms itched remembering the softness of her skin and the way her breasts had quivered when he’d bounced against her bottom.

He eased to the floor, stepped out of his shoes, and walked
around to the foot of the bed to gaze raptly at her open cunt.
His to take
,
to own
,
to love.

Looking at her now, he felt so different from how he’d felt when he’d shunted her into the car, thinking he’d never see her again. He’d been ready to forget her, only a little regretful he wouldn’t have been the man to wake up to her every day. He’d enjoyed the vibrancy of her skin, hair, and body—and the curiosity that had shone in her soft eyes.

Now, knowing he’d filled her womb with his seed, a swell of possessive heat expanded his chest and filled his loins. What was done was done, no turning back. Fate had given her to him. A crazy, free-falling sensation buzzed through him at the thought that now he could let himself drown in her gaze and ease his body and his mind inside her embrace. There was true freedom in having all his options narrowed to one.
One woman.

But how would he keep her safe? Lock her away in his little cavern for the rest of her days, spending stolen moments with her?

Again, it was all about him. All about being the Born male. Born to rule. Born to be miserable and make anyone who truly loved him the same.

How was any of this fair to her? She hadn’t known that the cost of receiving his seed would be her freedom and, ultimately, her life. If she had the choice, would she even want him? He’d treated her badly. Abused her fragile, human body. How he wished he could start afresh with her.

The last time they’d met, she’d thought he was a human man—an average Joe. How he wished he had kept up that pretense. If he’d had the power, he would have turned back time
to undo that last, revealing bite and woo her as any human man might, with flowers and attention—after he’d assuaged the unnatural desires raging in her body. She would have been grateful, embarrassed for a time, until he’d convinced her he’d been meant to find her, to meet her in that garden and rescue her—be the knight to slay her dragon of lust. How delightful a slow courtship would have been, giving them time to know each other, to discover their souls before he would ever have been forced to introduce her to the other half of himself.

The thing he’d always craved—human connection—had been there for him to nurture, his to have, if he hadn’t been selfish, hadn’t been afraid to try. His subconscious had acted on his desire, turned him from his duty for those brief, blazing moments when he’d entered her and marked her forever his.

His glance cut around the room, wanting to discover more about the woman who would be his consort. The room was functional, Spartan, without photographs of friends or lovers—immaculate except for the trail of clothing on the floor that she’d worn that night. A New Orleans calendar with a picture of Jackson Square was pinned to the wall above a white, builtin desk. He padded toward the desk, ignoring the laptop with its closed monitor and dangling cord. Instead, he reached for the neat stack of yellow legal pads.

Notes annotated with the dates since the onset of the storm contained short, graphic descriptions of everything she’d observed and experienced. The preparations by the building’s tenants as they’d awaited the storm, the celebration when it had brushed past, and their growing horror as the water had risen, cutting them off from the rest of the world.

He flipped through the notes, looking for the previous day,
but her careful descriptions ended with the morning and a sketchy plan to check out the Quarter during curfew.

She hadn’t made an entry since he’d spotted her in the alleyway. He wondered what she’d write about that.

But why the copious notes? His detective’s instincts kicked in. He shuffled through envelopes in her in-box, where he found one with a local magazine’s return address in the corner and cash inside. Was she a reporter, then? It would explain her curiosity and cagey reply when he’d questioned her about her interest in vampires.

Alex tossed the envelope back onto the top of her in-box. Her profession might be inappropriate for the life she would enter, but it was over as of now.

She shifted on the bed again, sighing, drawing his attention back to her. Her toes curled, stretching to point, then relax. He followed flexing muscles up her trim calves, past firm thighs. His gaze snagged on her open sex and the moisture that glimmered there like a thin layer of crushed pearls, iridescent and scented with her musk.

His body throbbed, his blood heated, rushing south, filling his cock, stealing caution from his mind. Returning to the end of her bed, he reached down and slowly wrapped his fingers around her ankles, succumbing to the ravenous demon inside him, again.

Miki’s eyes slammed open to find the man in her dreams at the foot of her bed with his large hands slowly sliding open her legs. “A-Alex?” she stammered, recognizing him despite the shadows that painted his features in sinister darkness. Her startled glance swept his naked chest and the soft, faded blue jeans that hugged his trim hips like a lover. A carved, polished
stone lay at the base of his throat, glinting dully in the moonlight.

“Your name,” he rasped. “I want your real name.”

“What?” she bit out, trying to close her legs and quiet her panic. Trying to think. “You didn’t just decide to ransack my purse and check my driver’s license while you were breaking into my apartment?”

“I’m not a thief.”

“But you are a liar.”

His head canted, his eyes narrowing.

“That bite you gave me…,” she said, realizing that maybe she shouldn’t be blurting out every thought. Especially when he reacted so strongly. “You said…you weren’t one of them,” she finished haltingly.

His body went still, but his hands tightened painfully around her ankles.

“Ouch! Psycho much?” she gasped, trying again to pull her feet away, trying to hold onto her shock and fear at finding him here. Her traitorous body, however, was already melting inside, inspired by the heat of his low-lidded gaze and taut features.

He released her ankles, but before she could heave a sigh of relief, he was pressing her to the mattress, moving so fast that she hadn’t seen the motions, could only gasp for breath at how quickly he covered her. Her nipples beaded instantly against his lightly furred chest.

“You shouldn’t have remembered that,” he growled. “If you were human, you would not. Even vampires can’t resist that suggestion. Who are you,
Sarah
? What are you?”

She twisted her lips into a bitter smile. “I don’t know what you tried to do to me besides fuck me raw, but the memories I have, I intend to keep.”

His forehead wrinkled as though trying to grasp her meaning.

She tried to start again, to find a way to ease the suspicion crowding into his tight expression. If she could just get him to behave reasonably, maybe he’d let her go. “My name’s Mikaela Jones, Alex. I assure you, I’m perfectly human—
unlike you
. Now, will you get the fuck off me?”

His chest expanded, deepening the pressure against her sensitive breasts. “I’m not leaving. Not until we’ve talked…
Mikaela.
” He said her name as though savoring it, his voice roughening, rasping over the syllables.

Miki drew a shallow breath, forcing her breathing to remain even, hoping her body wouldn’t heat in kind with the passion she saw entering his taut cheeks and jaws. The flair of his nostrils as he drew in her scent made her fiercely glad she’d washed away his and every other aroma she’d accumulated that night. “Miki,” she bit out. “I prefer Miki.”

“I know a little about your preferences,
Miki.
Shall I remind you?”