Hunger Aroused (3 page)

He breathed in the rich heady scent of her orgasm, his knees almost buckling beneath the sexual weight. She couldn't have any idea how alluring she was as she stared at him with those beautiful wild eyes, her cheeks flushed, her chest still heaving. Corin still saw in his mind's eye how erotic she became during the heat of her pleasure. And when she grew angry during his questioning, she fueled his ardor.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

There. Just like that. When indignation rose in her voice.

“We don't have a lot of time. You need to get to your sire, and I need to know who he is.”

She twisted, exposing her delectable ass, to grab the sheet and throw it over her shoulders. “Look here,” she said as she twisted again, bringing more of the sheet across her lap. “I don't know who you think you are, but I suggest you start walking before I call the police.”

Now? He'd just held the most intimate part of her body, and she was worried about calling the police now?

“What would you tell them?” He bit down on his cheek to keep from grinning. That cute blush grew brighter as the anger in her eyes reached nuclear. If she had the power to harness laser beams, he would have been toast. A beat of silence passed before he became serious again. “We don't have a lot of time before the pain you were suffering comes back. This time a hell of a lot stronger than before. I need some answers before that happens. Why don't you start by telling me your name?”

“Jasmine,” she snapped, her bottom lip quivering. “Seriously, thank you for
that,
but get the hell out. I don't have anything worth stealing—”

“Jasmine—”

“God,” she muttered. “I can't believe I just handed over my name to you. What was I thinking?”

“You're wasting precious time. You don't have to believe what I'm telling you or trust me with more than just your first name, but listen to me now.”

Corin watched her mind struggle to accept her situation, a tiny hint of fight leaving her eyes.

“What's happening to me?”

Something within him tripped at the sight of her distress. At the scent of her fear. “You met someone recently, maybe even someone you know. He would have seduced you, brought you to an incredible height of ecstasy—”

“No.”

“Once you were there, he would have marked you. Pierced your skin with his teeth, and the feeling would have swelled, unrivaled by anything you have ever known. And in the meanwhile, you would have surrendered yourself to him. Your life, your soul—”

“No!”

“You gave him yourself and he took it. In return, he let you taste—” Corin ducked as a pillow flew across the room, pelted in his direction.

“I don't know what you mean. I have no idea what you're talking about!” Her words were strangled, her voice wavering. “Who are you? What have you done to me?”

“Not me, Jasmine. Your sire. I would have never done this to you. Not like this.”

“I don't understand,” she said miserably. “Nothing like that happened. Nothing.”

The rims of her eyes were red, water-filled. If a single tear managed to track down her face, despite his many years of killing, the centuries of hearing fledglings beg for their new lives, Corin knew without a doubt he would be done for. Something about this woman, about her innocence and sensuality, called to him. Made him remember that long before he was an executioner, he was a man.

He edged closer to the bed, wary of this pull she had on him but unable to keep his distance any longer. “During the height of passion, it would have been easy to bite you. An out-of-control lust you might have ignored.”

She choked out a dry laugh. “I haven't had sex in over a year. What you just did…that's the first time in a long time someone's hand other than my own touched me like that.”

His heart picked up speed, his mind supplying him with the image of him entwined with this woman in countless sexual positions. He didn't want to go there, but damn, now that he had…

“You said physiology,” she continued. “What did that mean? Why did I feel that way before and close to normal now?”

Gods, where to begin? If she spoke the truth, and he had a strong suspicion she did, nothing about any of this made any sort of sense. There was an order to turning a vampire, and she was defying all of it.

“You know of vampires?” he asked finally.

“Vampires? You mean…like garlic-hating, cross-avoiding, destroyed-by-sunlight vampires?”

“Truth.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “Vampires, as in Bram Stoker and the like.”

“Are you trying to tell me,” her eyes narrowed, “that someone bit me and I'm becoming a vampire?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“I see.”

Corin could almost hear the wheels of her mind spinning. Definitely anticipated the way her body tensed. In her position, he expected nothing less. When she vaulted from the bed, he was already two steps ahead of her.

The first thing he realized as he wrapped his arms around her waist and hauled her against his body was how incredibly soft she was. The second thing, as pain exploded against his side, was how determined she was to get away.

Jasmine threw her elbow against him, again and again, ramming into him with the strength of a Mack truck. “Fucking lunatic!” she screamed.

More pain centered in his shin, where she used the heel of a bare foot to deliver a bruising kick. Ignoring the throbbing, he maneuvered around her and made her turn, putting her chest against his. Feisty little thing. If he thought her anger turned him on before, this side of her just about brought him to his knees…literally.

“Wait!” He wrestled one arm behind her back, doing his damndest not to hurt her, but quickly about to lose if she didn't stop wriggling. “Gods damn it, wait and let me explain.”

“Instrument of death, my ass,” she ground out between clenched teeth. Somehow Jasmine managed to slip her hand between his shirt and skin to dig her nails into his flesh.

Oh, he liked this woman
a lot.

Wrenching her hand away from his abdomen, possibly losing inches of meat in the process, he rushed forward. Together they slammed into the wall, Jasmine taking the brunt of the impact. It wouldn't break any bones, but it would stun the hell out of her.

Breathing harshly, he hissed into her ear. “Listen to me. Cool your ire now.” When she began to thrash, Corin pulled back and slammed into the wall again, eliciting a grunt from her. “Get your emotions under control or you'll regret it in a matter of minutes.”

“Tough guy, huh?” she panted out. “Gonna hurt a woman half your size?”

Already the cinnamon scent began to waft from her pores. “Physiology, remember that?”

Her breath sawed in and out of her nose. “Yeah?”

“Oxytocin and endorphins. Pleasure hormones.” She still struggled, but with a little less force. “The change—yes, you are being transformed—is like fire inside you. Oxytocin or endorphins are like water. You keep letting your fear or your anger ratchet up, and the endorphins I helped you generate will dissipate, and you will burn from the inside again. Calm down.”

She'd been wearing medical scrubs before and he prayed it meant she had some knowledge of human anatomy and physiology. With her arms behind her back, her delicate wrists locked in his hand, he thought he felt some of the fight leave her body. His cock had been like steel from the moment he pleasured her, and now it came surging back with a vengeance. If he didn't get himself under control as well, things would become very complicated later on.

“Why me?” she muttered after a few moments. “How did this happen to me?”

Corin took a chance, released her wrists and stepped back. She glared at him, but didn't charge. “Sometime recently,” he explained, “in the past week, you encountered a vampire. And he or she changed you.”

“Is that what you are?” She inclined her head, studying him.

“Yeah.” He resisted the urge to lift his lip to show her the evidence.

“It's daylight.”

“Most of the fiction out there is untrue. Some of it is very true, however. What you need to recognize and accept is that you are becoming one of us. I need your help in figuring out how that happened.”

Jasmine dropped her head, her gaze now landing on the floor, and wrapped her arms around her waist. “You said you're the instrument of my death. What did that mean?”

Swallowing hard, he took another chance. Moving closer, he reached out and stroked her face. Her soft skin temptation. “You don't want a life like mine, Jasmine. This isn't for you.”

She glanced up to pierce him with another one of those death looks. “You don't even know me.”

“You're right.” His voice was shakier than he would have liked. “In another lifetime, I would have liked to have known you. In this one, I can't. Help me find your sire and in three days, I'll reward you with a swift, clean death.”

Jasmine figured she took the news rather well. No crying. No hysterics. Just matter-of-fact analysis of the impossible. Vampires.

Really?

She was absolutely horrified by her earlier behavior with Corin but didn't have the
cajones
to look back on her actions. She just watched him now. Looked for any signs of the mentally deranged. Figured—the first good-looking guy to come along and rock her world would be some insane serial killer. Even now he gave her a dangerous smile, and she hated herself for liking it.

“Why should I believe you? You don't even sound like you're from around here. That accent…”

“English isn't my first language. Some habits die hard.”

“I suppose you're going to tell me you're a hundred years old and sleep in a casket at night.”

He snorted. “Hardly, but I am a vampire. Get your mind wrapped around that.” When she continued to stare at him, his jaw tightened. “You don't believe me, do you?”

“You think?” she replied, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

“What would it take to convince you?” His smile broadened.

“More than…” Despite being only a foot away from him, she took a step closer. Her height gave the perfect vantage point for seeing exactly what he wanted her to see.

No one had incisors like that.
No one.

She ran her tongue along the bottoms of her own teeth, looking for any that might be just a little bit longer than the others. Teeth that might signal she would soon look like Corin. Her heartbeat stuttered when she encountered two that hadn't been like that before. She was sure of it.

Whirling on her feet, she pushed past him to run into the bathroom. Skidding to a halt in front of the vanity mirror, she opened wide. Jasmine angled her head to stare at two small new deformations within her mouth. He couldn't be right. This didn't make sense!

“Soon, they'll elongate and sharpen,” Corin said softly from behind her. She lifted her head to capture his reflection in the mirror. “Once they do, piercing the skin will be easier.”

“But—”

“The part about drinking blood is true, but I assure you it's a very sensual experience. One that brings pleasure to both the giver and the receiver. We wouldn't have survived all this time if it were any other way.”

She used her fingertip to graze the porcelain end of one, and then whispered, “You're not lying to me.”

“No. I'm not.”

“And you're going to kill me?” Her voice withered.

“It's what I've been sent by the vampire council to do.”

Limp legs refused to hold her upright, and Jasmine half-stumbled, half-collapsed onto the closed toilet seat. A bagel consumed first thing in the morning, along with a cup of coffee, tumbled within her stomach, choosing now to consider making a reappearance. She bent over, forcing her face between her knees, and tried to steady her collapsing mind.

Okay. Breathe. Think through this.

Except nothing about her day made any sense, so why should this? She left the familiar humdrum of her job because she felt like death warmed over. She, who had more leave time accrued than anyone else, dared to leave early. When she'd gotten home, she thought she was on the verge of dying. Hovering right outside of Death's grip until a stranger entered her home and gave her a screaming orgasm as a cure. Now the same man, her knight in shining armor, told her she was well on her way to becoming a vampire. Oh yeah. To top all that off, he would be killing her in three days.

There were no friends to mourn her loss after he killed her, other than a few co-workers from the clinic. No family except a few estranged cousins from her father's side. When she lost her parents over a decade ago, she'd thought then that she was heartbreakingly alone in the world. Right now, the truth of that statement struck her.

Apples and cinnamon invaded her nose, and she looked up in time to see Corin lower himself to her seated height. “Whoever did this to you has a responsibility to keep. He's also broken one of our laws. I can't find him without you.”

“What kind of responsibility?” She felt bone-weary. Ready to lie down and just sleep the next hundred years away. She was shaking all over, the threat of an imminent death taking her by more surprise than she thought possible. While she didn't fear dying, knowing it was so close at hand made her stomach roll.

“You shouldn't go through the transition alone.” A pained look crossed his features, but vanished just as quickly.

“Is it so bad?”

“The time before you've matured is very uncomfortable. You experienced some of its effects earlier.”

“The endorphins, right?”

“Yeah. I can smell the change on you now because they're wearing off. Do you feel it?”

Jasmine tensed, her mind whirling, because she did not want to feel it. She did not want a repeat of earlier when her body was not her own. When she would have gladly ripped the skin from her flesh if only to ease some of the ache.

But dear God, there it was. The slow build in the center of her belly. The pace of her breathing increased. “What do I do?”

“There's nothing to do. Wait for it to arrive, and then pass.”

“You said it'll get worse.”

He nodded somberly. “It will.”

No—she couldn't handle worse. She couldn't stand this at all. What had she done to deserve the torture? Where had she gone wrong in her life? “Can my sire make it go away? The person who did this to me…that's who you're looking for, right?”

“He can't make it go away, but he can guide you through it. He can comfort you when you can find none anywhere else.”

“But I don't know who it is.”

Corin rose, staring down at her with rage-filled eyes once again. “Jasmine,” he said with a warning note.

“I swear I don't. I don't know how he did it. I don't know who it is.” Her anger rose, the menace she felt from him fuel for her own helpless grief. “If you're going to kill me, why not do it now? Before I have to go through that again.”

At once the tenderness was back, then blinked away in an instant. “I only execute vampires and you haven't become one yet. You're still very much human. Besides, how to let you handle transition is not my decision to make.”

“Whose then?”

Gripping her upper arm, he made her rise. “Teaching you is not my responsibility.”

The heat began to throb. She jerked her arm from his grasp. Chest rising and falling, she called forth every ounce of venom she could muster. “Then
make
it your responsibility!”

Tightening her abdomen did little to help the pulse in her womb. The flood of moisture building between her thighs. Hands clasped against her belly, she doubled over and staggered out of the room.

This was worse. So much worse than before. Oh God, it had only just begun and already she didn't know if she could stand it.

Each step sent a streak racing through each leg. There was pain, but so, so much more there too. The hunger grew, the taste of something she couldn't name hovering just outside the reach of her tongue. Teeth that hadn't elongated yet, hadn't yet fulfilled their purpose, throbbed with insistence.

“Help me find him,” Corin said gently. She felt his presence in the bedroom again, larger than life and just as intimidating. His persistence that she name this mysterious someone almost drove her over the edge.

“I don't know who he is.” Every word turned into a pounding pressure that began in her belly and ricocheted outward. As much as her distracted mind would allow her, Jasmine tried to think of something unusual. Anything like Corin had described. But wouldn't she remember something like that? No matter how she probed her memory, nothing came.

Jasmine dragged air into her lungs, pulling oxygen in with the desperation of a drowning woman. “Oh God…” She collapsed face-first onto the bed, crawling with the last of her waning energy to the soft down pillow, pulling it hard against her stomach, looking desperately for relief.

“It will only get worse.”

Tears pricked the backs of her eyes, and she was horrified by their presence. Hated that this pain could bring her to this point. Corin stood at the foot of the bed, his face emotionless and dispassionate against her agony.

“I hate you,” she groaned.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. “You're not supposed to like me.”

When she got up, when she managed to drag herself out of this misery and get herself in striking range of Corin again, she was going to kick him in the dead center of his balls.
Dead center.
For now, she curled her lip at him in disgust. The short-lived gestured morphed into a moan seconds later. “Give…me some…clue. Help me…damn it.”

Calmly, he said, “Any new boyfriends?”

“No.”

“Lovers, hook-ups?”

They'd already been down this fucking road! Jasmine found the will to raise her middle finger at him.

Corin sighed. “Fine, then something not nice. Assaults?”

“No.”

“Nightmares. Night terrors.”

“No,” she gasped. Rubbing her thighs together made it both worse and better.

“Dreams. Erotic fantasies—”

“Goddamn it, no!”

She couldn't help the way her back arched off the bed, her breasts heated points, full and heavy. This was too much. She had to relieve the pressure. The pain.

No longer caring if he watched, if she exposed herself before this stranger, she thrust her hand into the waist of her panties, slid past the curls of her mound and sought her clit with two fingers, desperate for relief. The bed shifted, and hands stronger than hers grabbed her wrists, yanking away the temporary cure to her problems. Kicking at him, she cried out when Corin wrenched her hands above her head, his body outstretched over hers. “Not yet,” he all but growled. “Think, Jasmine, and I'll help you.”

Thrashing, fighting him with everything she had, Jasmine writhed, gasping as she tried to push down the ache and free herself from him. “Nothing, I swear…God, please…”

Corin shifted, his pelvis crushing against her clit and sending a jolt straight into the midst of the firestorm in the middle of her body. She could have wept with relief. Then, just as quickly, he removed the harsh brush of his body from hers.

“No!” she cried out.

“Help me, and I'll help you.”

If she bit down any harder on her lip, she'd draw blood. That realization brought an instant discovery of pleasure with it. A subtle calming.

She sucked in her breath. Held it.

Just before starting to exhale, some instinct told her to hold on to her precious air for just a moment longer.

As swiftly as it had risen, the feeling washed away. So did the need. Darkness hovered so close and she relaxed, waiting for it to bring her into its warm embrace. She glanced up, stared into Corin's handsome face. Looked upon lips she had the sudden desire to lick into submission. Lingered on the strong pulse beating on his throat.

“Don't hold your breath! Jasmine, breathe—”

So sweet, this pull.

Stronger, better than the ache and the pain. And Jasmine let it carry her into darkness.