Hot Licks (11 page)

And climbing a tree wouldn’t help. If the vampire looked up, they’d be sitting ducks.

Rome suddenly veered to the right, finely tuned to the pounding of Gwen’s heart, her jagged breathing. Her fear only added to his anger. He had to fight the instinct to stop and tear apart those who were causing it, because as long as they lived, they were a danger to Gwen and his family.

As much as he could take on all five men by himself, it was the vamp that held his beast in check. If anything happened to him, Gwen would not survive. Or if she did, she would wish she hadn’t.

A snarl of rage threatened to erupt and he pressed on, knowing he was pushing Gwen to her outer limits. She would never make it at this pace to the jeep. They needed a diversion, or, barring that, someplace to hide. Maybe the old cabin. The stone and wood, along with the wind and rain, might be enough to cover the scent of her blood. Her jeans would protect her legs, but it was her hands he worried about. She’d need to grasp the top plank, and if she cut herself or reopened her wound on the rough, splintered wood, it would defeat the whole purpose of using the structure as a hiding place. If only they had a pair of – .

Gloves! Rome might have smacked himself on the forehead if he wasn’t busy ducking and running. He’d seen a pair of leather gloves in her pack when she’d pulled out the first aid kit to slap a bandage across her palm.

The band aid! Lord help him. Evidently his brain
couldn’t
function at top speed along with his feet. He stopped so suddenly that Gwen slammed into his back. He caught her before she could fall, and without a word or warning, found the edge of the band aid on her palm and ripped it off.

Her mouth opened on a startled exclamation and Rome covered her lips with his before any sound could escape. Thankful he’d gotten his anger, and fangs, under control, he dove his tongue deep into the warm recess of her mouth, her taste a heady distraction that could blind a man to all manner of dangers. And while Rome wanted nothing more to lose himself in her taste, he had a more important goal in mind. That of her safety.

“Put on your gloves,” he grated out when he forced himself away. “Quickly.” He turned from her and bounded several feet off to the side, never once keeping her out of sight. He buried the band aid, thankfully containing several drops of her blood, in the midst of a small tree, a small smile playing about his lips. Gwen probably thought he’d lost his mind, yet she kept her mouth shut and, he was pleased to note as he strode back to her, obeyed his command.

Slipping her gloves on, her breasts heaving as she sucked in air, she managed to say, “You want to tell me...”

“Not yet. We need to get to the cabin.” Those breasts were enough of an enticement in any other circumstance, but with adrenaline propelling in a heavy rush through his system, he found it nearly impossible to tear his gaze away.

“You ready?”

A flash of resignation flitted across her face. Small rivulets of sweat trickled from her temple and with a quick wipe of her short sleeve, she nodded.

His chest tightened at her fortitude, thrilled beyond measure at the strength and endurance this woman,
his
woman, possessed. Fully aware they had only moments before the blonde showed, he paused long enough to press his lips to hers. “Just a few more minutes, baby, and then you can rest.”

Though she didn’t appear to believe him, she neverthe-less tightened her fingers around his hand and made every effort to keep up as Rome raced over the muddy ground.

Praying that the band aid would lure the vamp away for a few precious seconds, Rome nearly let out a sigh of relief when they broke free from the forest. Knowing he would have to boost Gwen up the side where the roof was missing, he guided her to the far side of the cabin.

“Up,” he said, bending down as they came to a halt. He twined the fingers of his hands together to make a cradle.

The moment her booted foot touched his palms, Rome lifted her high and fast so she could grasp the top railing and pull herself up.

“What about...” Before she could finish her sentence, Rome had jumped up and eased himself on the precariously thin board. It groaned beneath their combined weight. In less than a blink of the eye, Rome had his arms full of curvy female and jumped from the wood precipice.

Muddy water sprayed in every direction when his boots hit the ground on bended knees. He looked down to see Gwen staring up at him with wide eyes.

“How did you...”

“Shh.”

Her dark eyes narrowed into mere slits, her breasts a soft weight where they pressed against his chest. Mindful they weren’t yet out of danger, Rome reluctantly let go of an increasingly irritated Gwen and stepped back. He looked up at the top wood plank to see it now slanted inward, several cracks running along its length. But it still held together and was high enough that no one, except those who knew the building inside and out like Gwen, would be able to spot it as their entry point.

Next, he peered about the dim interior walls until he found what he needed. To the left of the front door, where a window was boarded up, were several tiny gaps where the wood had worn away. Turning in a circle, Rome spotted well over two dozen more of those minute holes. If the roof had been intact and the sun out instead of the dark clouds of another impending storm, those holes would probably light up the interior like a hundred laser beams.

He walked over to one of the gaps, having to take a huge step up from the large hole dug by those men out there with shovels. Rome didn’t believe there were two sets of treasure seekers running amok and destroying his forest.

“Shouldn’t we call for help?”

He held up a hand at her whisper as movement at the edge of the clearing caught his eye. “No time. They’re almost here. In fact, turn off your phone. If it rings, we’re dead meat.”

It was her soft gasp of alarm that made him wince at his words. “Which is why I should text for help at least.”

“And tell who what? That several armed men have entered the reserve and we’re stuck in the cabin like cornered prey?”

At her silence, he glanced over to see her phone in her hand, her expression priceless. “Well, yeah.”

“Babe. It’d be thirty minutes before help even got here.”

“At least it’d get here,” she hissed at him.

And have those men harm his family? “No.”

Gwen shook her fist at him. “You. Uh. Doesn’t matter, I’ve got no reception anyway.”

“Phone off?” He asked, never taking his eyes away from the cautiously approaching blonde.

“On silent.”

Good enough. “Come here and be very, very quiet.”

“Why? Are we hunting wabbits?” She muttered so low he barely heard her.

Rome almost let out a surprised chuckle. Damn if Gwen didn’t get to him on every level. Even in the midst of danger she had her dry wit about her. Eyes sparkling, he motioned for her to come next to him and keep mum. Then, making sure her gloves were still on, he pointed to one of the other gaps next to the one he was currently peeking out of, only lower in the wall.

Almost any other female he would have told to stay in the middle of the room, but as his mate, Gwen belonged at his side. And while she didn’t exactly see the world through rose-colored glasses, there was more to the world than what she knew. If the vamp out there went, well, vamp, and she saw it, that would pave the way for Rome to tell her about his family.

He never once considered the possibility she’d run screaming from him.

Rain began to fall in soft drops as the blonde made his way to the middle of the clearing. Pausing, he lifted his face to sniff the air. Rome could almost hear Gwen’s frown of confusion, and though he ached to take her in his arms and comfort her, he didn’t let a single muscle so much as twitch.

Instead he put every detail of the blonde vamp to memory.

The slight build and thin face was deceptive. Rome knew vampires had the strength of ten men. His eyes were an eerie light blue surrounded with a darker ring of blue. His skin wasn’t pale, but not quite tan either. Rome knew vamps didn’t explode in the sun, which he thought a pity.

And while he knew it was wrong to make judgments about an entire race due to the actions of one or two bad apples, Rome once again felt the snarl of revulsion rise in the back of his throat.

“What the fuck is going on, Brett?” Two of the men Rome had seen earlier appeared from the forest, gasping for air, obviously having run after the one called Brett. It was the white male with the backpack that was yelling. “We don’t have time to screw around.”

“And now it’s raining. Perfect.” The black male with the rifle shook his head in disgust.

“I smelled something.”

Backpack man – dark blonde, brown eyed, stocky build Rome noted down – squatted. “Then you should have told us instead of taking off like that. You’re worse than a fucking dog.”

With only a few feet separating Rome and Gwen’s hiding spot from the place Brett stood, it was impossible to miss what happened next. In profile, Brett turned to the man who’d insulted him and hunched over in an attack stance.

The sound of the fierce growl of anger that emerged was only a little less startling then the instant color change of his eyes, the blue to full black. No white showed at all. His face grew longer, the bones in his face starker. Add in the way his lips peeled back over a set of sharp fangs, and voila.

There was the vampire.

A nanosecond later, Rome had his hand over Gwen’s mouth, intercepting her gasp before she even realized what she was doing.

Gwen gripped the wrist attached to the hand covering
her mouth and blinked up at Rome in shock. Never,
ever
, in her whole life had she thought, or even believed possible, what she’d just seen.

A vampire? A
vampire
?
Seriously
?

Staring up into Rome’s face, it took her moment to realize his dark eyes weren’t full of the same dumbstruck horror she knew had to be in her own.

He’d ripped off her bloody band aid and tossed it as a
distraction. That meant Rome had known. Known not only
that this type of creature lurked in the world, but had known
what this particular male was from the get-go.

The realization floored her almost as much as witnessing the blonde male outside sporting a pair of lethal looking fangs and snarling like a beast.

Gulping, she nodded at Rome’s silent question. She wouldn’t scream. She might lose control of her bladder, but she wouldn’t make a sound while doing so.

Rome traced her lips with his thumb, his heated gaze on her mouth, making her forget for a second that her world was turning on its axis. Then his eyes locked with hers for another mind-numbing second before he turned his attention back to the drama unfolding mere feet away.

Gwen took a deep breath and shook out her arms.

Then she too was pressing her eye back to her hole in the wall. She couldn’t see the other two men now, but the blonde...
thing
...must have moved away from the building because he was striding back.

“What are you doing?” One of the men called out.

“Checking inside.”

Rome and Gwen shared an
oh shit
look.

“You don’t have the key, dumbass.” A new male voice called out, making Gwen wonder just how many people were outside.

“I don’t need a key,
dumbass
.”

Flipping to press his back against the wall, Rome sidled close to the door. An eerie silence swept over him, the quivering stillness of a deadly predator waiting for its prey to come into view. His face emptied of all emotion, yet his eyes began change right in front of her. That strange yellowish-green began to seep into the brown irises, sending a shiver down her spine.

What the hell? Was Rome like the blonde? But she’d seen him in daylight. Unless vampires really could run around in the daylight. Or was it just the sunlight? Yes the vampire was out and about, but thick, dark clouds obliterated the sun.

Did that mean crosses and wooden stakes wouldn’t kill it?

And what was she thinking?

Armed men were outside, an attack – and possible death – was imminent, and she had the oddest feeling that the most dangerous of all was the male locked in this building with her.

A mighty roar suddenly filled the storm scented air, making Gwen jump. She turned to look back out the peephole, keeping Rome, who had also moved to another gap at the ear-splitting sound, in her peripheral.

A whispered, “Ooohhh,” escaped her lips before she could clamp them shut. Luckily it didn’t matter because everyone’s attention outside the cabin was focused on the huge jaguar snarling at them from the east edge of the clearing.

Gwen felt a thrill of excitement. She’d been right! She
had
seen the cat all those months back, and he was magnificent. Vibrant orange, yellow and midnight black rosettes shimmered over bunches muscles, its fur standing on end as it roared out another challenge. Gwen feared for the giant cat. Though she knew how deadly they could be, she didn’t understand why it was standing there, facing off with several men armed with guns.

“Run,” she urged it in barely audible tones, reigning in the urge to scream for the cat to flee to safety.

Next to her she heard Rome breath deep, his whole body one long line of tension. “Damn fool. What is he thinking? He’s gonna get himself hurt and then I’ll have to kill him.”

Gwen straightened and arrowed a sharp look at Rome.

“Wait, don’t shoot it,” a dark voice called from outside, prompting Gwen back to her peephole. She didn’t know about her co-hider, but she was getting mighty tired of trying to see the outside world through a frigging hole smaller than a dime. She was half tempted to rip the door open, which she couldn’t do because it was locked. From the outside.

“Why not? He’d make a nice trophy. And it’s just standing there.”

“You’ll only piss it off and then we’re dead.” Another argued.

“No.” Brett again, one arm out in a halting gesture and seemingly oblivious to the rain as it began to pour down harder. “Something’s off. If it were going to attack, it would have all ready.”

Trying to keep the blonde, and the jaguar, in sight, Gwen edged over to another gap as Brett cautiously put one foot in front of the other and inched along the exterior.

When her booted foot sank into the piled up muddy dirt that lined the interior, she barely caught herself from colliding into the wall. Rome was at her side the next instant, one large hand wrapping around her arm to steady her, his gaze level and irritated. She had the urge to flip him off, because frankly, the last ten minutes pretty much finished her. She was ready to be forked, she was so done. Instead she leaned down to peer through another gap.

Outside the cat roared again, its thick tail swishing angrily from side to side as it faced off against the men.

Brett turned a speculative look to where Rome and Gwen hid, even took a step in the direction of the locked door, when a sudden and extremely loud boom filled the air, jolting Gwen from her half bent stance. In the next second, everything went quiet. Eerily quiet. The jaguar froze in a half crouch, Brett cocked his head in a listening pose and Rome stopped breathing.

Gwen opened her mouth to ask him what that sound was when the ground beneath them began to move.

Her startled eyes mirrored his and they both said, “Oh, shit,” as the men outside all started yelling.

“It’s an earthquake!”

“Run!”

“Stay in the clearing!”

“The ground’s splitting!”

“The tunnel’s caving!”

“I’m not dying for no fucking treasure!”

Gwen heard all this as she looked up at the shaking wood planks. They were trapped.

Rome snatched her in his arms. “Wrap your legs around me and hold on, baby.” Terrified, she had no problem doing as he said. Not only did she band her legs about his waist, her arms were like a vice around his neck, her face buried in his neck.

With one strong arm holding her tight against his torso, Rome crossed to the open end of the cabin as the remainder of the roof began to tremble and fall behind them, the shaking earth causing his steps to falter. She didn’t know what he could possibly do, but found herself trusting him far more than herself at this moment. He bend down as if to jump, and then the sodden earth simply fell away from under their feet.

Gwen screamed against Rome’s throat, his hand a protective shield at the back of her head as they half fell, half slid down, down, down into the earth. After what felt like an eternity, Rome landed with a jarring thud, miraculously on his feet, then he jerked forward onto his knees. He let out a pained grunt and something hard scrapped along her shin. Then they were rolling over the hard ground. Nausea threatened and she clamped her mouth shut as they continued rolling until they hit something solid as wood, stone and mud rained down in the open pit.

When the earth finally stilled, Rome lay over her, his weight a solid barrier against the debris that had fallen from above. Gwen didn’t move, willing her tummy to settle to non-critical levels. Above her, Rome didn’t so much as twitch and, terrified anew, she wasn’t able to force her limbs to unlock around him. Heart still pounding so loud in her ears it drowned out all other sound, she pressed her lips to the pulse at his throat, nearly crying with relief at the strong beat.

Her backpack dug in painfully and her shin felt on fire.

But it could have been so much worse. She managed to turn her head enough to open one eye. The rain was coming down much harder now, the thick black clouds turning the day into night. Underneath a gaping hole she could make out piles of dark shadows that, as her eyes adjusted to the dark, slowly formed into the broken pieces of what was once the cabin.

Rome had protected her from all that. Not only had he somehow landed on his feet, he’d had enough wits about him to keep them from being buried alive from all the debris that followed them down.

Rome, who still lay above her, a dead weight that was beginning to crush her, and cause panic to clench her heart like a vise.

“Rome.” Fear made her voice break on his name and she went to press a hand to the back of his head, only then realizing she still wore her gloves. Ripping her right one off, she threaded her fingers through his thick hair, checking for wounds as she called his name again. “Wake up.”

He finally let out a soft groan just as her roaming fingers located a small bump. It wasn’t sticky so she figured he wasn’t bleeding, but it was still worrisome. “Am I in heaven or hell?”

The knot of dread in her chest uncoiled at his question and she nearly sobbed with relief. “Depends on your definition. You have a lump on your head. Can you move at all, because if so, could you get off me? I can’t breathe.”

With another groan, Rome rolled off her and lay on his back, allowing Gwen to suck in a greedy gasp of air. After a minute she eased into a sitting position, pulled off her backpack and unzipped it.

“Are you okay?” His hand shot out and swept along her back. “Are
you
hurt?”

“Other than not wanting to encounter another ‘oh shit’

moment ever again, I’m good.” Her seeking fingers located the small flashlight and she pulled it out.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to get light.” The flashlight wouldn’t turn on, and when she gave it a shake, the rattling sound told her why.

“Only it’s busted.”

Rome sat up next to her. “Why do I smell blood?”

Gwen raised her head to stared at him. “You can smell that?”But his face was on her leg. “Dammit, you’re hurt!” And then he was on his knees, his hands all over her. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

She’d just run for her life from a group of men with guns, saw a mythical creature become a reality before her own eyes, fell dozens of feet into the earth because of an earthquake, her back hurt and her leg burned, and it was Rome’s wandering hands that took her breath away and made her belly tremble, not in nausea this time, but in excitement.

I’m going insane.

She let out a soft moan that wasn’t all from pain when his probing fingers encountered the bruise on her back.

“Hell, woman. Your back hurts too?”

Reluctantly, Gwen told him, “From the backpack.”

Rome looked up at the hole and then back to Gwen.

“We’re gonna need help getting out of here.”

“You think?”

His lips curved. “That’s the spirit,” he said before those lips brushed against hers in a lingering, gentle kiss. “Let me have your phone.”

A little dazed by the unexpected touch, her hand automatically moved to her hip, and found nothing. She trailed both hands around her in a frantic rush. “It’s gone.”

Rome pushed to his feet and looked around the cavern. “I don’t see it, and mine’s gone as well.”

Gwen groaned and waved a hand in disgust. “It’s probably buried underneath all that crap.” With no way to call for help, they were stuck until someone decided to come looking for them, which could be hours. Hours, in the dark, alone with Rome wasn’t a bad thing, but she was wet, muddy and in pain, and that took all the fun out of it.

“Rome! Ramon!” A distressed male voice shouted from overhead and when a dark figure moved over the edge of the hole, Gwen sagged in relief. She knew that voice. Santos.

“Jesus Christ, Rome. I thought you were dead! Are you okay? Where’s Gwen?”

Rome grinned up at his brother and shifted so Santos and Gwen could see each other. Gwen blinked, then squinted her eyes at the sight of him. Using him as a focal point, she realized the distance they tumbled was maybe twenty feet. Oh. And that he didn’t appear to have a shirt on.

“You are a fucking beautiful sight, bro. We need some help here.”

Dirt fell from the edge of the hole and Santos moved back. “My phone’s soaking wet. Yours?”

“Both of ours are gone.”

Santos paused and looked around the pit. His eyes lighted on something and he said, more in surprise then anything else, “Are those steps?”

Rome and Gwen looked off in the general direction he pointed. Gwen could make out a thick shadow in the far corner and along one wall. The tunnel or pit or whatever they fell in seemed to be about fifteen feet across. From her seated position she couldn’t tell how long it was. It was too dark and the broken material of the cabin, along with heaps of mud, blocked her view.

Rome moved off toward that thick shadow with a grunt of bafflement. “Huh. Yeah. Stone steps, but the top is still covered by the ground above. We won’t be able to reach you.”

Santos didn’t look pleased and let out a curse. “I’ll need to leave you to run back to the house. Get rope and the horses.”

Rome didn’t say anything for a moment. “I know. But the sooner you go the sooner we can get out.”

Still seemingly undecided, Santos shifted above them and Gwen made out a bare hip. In disbelief, Gwen squeaked out, “Are you naked?”

Rome crossed back over to Gwen, blocking her vision with his big body. She tried to peer around him but he only shifted again, giving her a disapproving glare before turning his face back to Santos.

“Why do I smell blood?” Santos called down, effectively ignoring Gwen’s question, only to give her something else to think about.

How in the world could Santos smell her blood? This day had turned into a mass of fear, confusion and shock, and she really wanted the world to right itself again. Maybe a reboot was in order.

“Gwen’s hurt. She’s got a gash on her shin and some bruising on her back.”

“And you?”

“Yes,” Gwen narrowed her eyes at him, seeing the rip of his shirt from shoulder to mid-back. “Other than your head, are you hurt anywhere else?”