Jared (36 page)

“Which means she’s going to be cooking all night.”
Jared shook his head, settling his hat on his head. “That’s not just cruel,
that’s evidence of a mean streak.”

“It’s not my fault the woman has a competitive
nature.”

“Just your fault that you feed it.”

Raisa closed her eyes as the banter continued. The
hunger was growing. Her defenses were weakening. It was only a matter of time
before Jared noticed.

“Well,” Caleb tipped his hat back. “It was either that
or tie her down, and I don’t have the stomach for the fuss she’d kick up if I
tied her.”

“Hell,” Jared agreed. “No one has the stomach for
that.”

Caleb waved at the screen. “So who is the pretty
lady?”

“A complication,” Jared answered, catching Raisa’s
arm, preventing her from moving away—from Caleb and from him. Not for the first
time in her life, she wished she had more strength, the strength to fight
physically instead of mentally, because frankly, she was fresh out of ideas,
and all it would take for the Johnsons to learn what they wanted to know was
for the two of them to combine their psychic powers. With her link to Jared to
open up a chink in her armor, they’d succeed.

Providence came in the form of pain. Deep, cramping,
blessed, there-is-a-God pain. She wrenched away from Jared, taking two
stumbling steps before she was swept up in someone else’s arms. Slade was too
far away, which only left Caleb. She opened her eyes to see him staring down at
her, his expression concerned. “You’re hurting.” He studied her for a split
second before clarifying, his mind brushing hers. “You need to feed.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Why is it you women always say that when you’re
hungry?”

“We’re worried that you’ll see us as gluttons?”

His laugh was a surprise. So was the way a smile made
him look so approachable.

“Now, you remind me of my wife.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You do that.”

He carried her over to Slade’s worktable. She caught
her weight on her palms as he sat her on the edge. With a sweep of his hand he
sent papers flying. The expected protest from Slade didn’t come. The next pain
did. Hard and vicious, doubling her over. She would have fallen off the table
if Caleb hadn’t caught her. He laid her down easily, catching her head before
it could thunk to the cold steel.

“The thing you women never seem to realize is that no
amount of pain is fine with us. Jared?”

“Right here.”

“When’s the last time you fed?”

“Two days ago.”

“When’s the last time she fed?”

“Before we left.” He came over to the other side of
the table.

“And before that?”

He slipped his hand under her head, supporting her,
blessedly familiar, infusing her with the illusion of strength. “Before we
rested.”

Caleb’s head whipped around. “She pregnant?”

Her “No” coincided with Jared’s.

“No need to bite my head off. It’s a valid question.”

“Just an invalid conclusion,” Slade murmured.

Raisa glanced to the left. Slade was busy at the
computer, frowning at whatever he saw on the screen.

“That, at least, explains why I was able to pierce
your shields,” Caleb said to Jared. “You’re giving her too much.”

Was he? Raisa studied Jared’s face as Caleb placed his
hand on her stomach, absorbing the next contraction of her abdominal muscles.
He did look a little pale, but it could be the lighting as much as blood loss.

“Have you been giving me too much?”

“No.”

Jared turned to Slade, “This is like what happens with
Allie.”

Slade tapped some more on the keyboard. “I know.”

He didn’t look away from the screen. Raisa had a
strong urge to throw something at him.

She caught Jared’s eye. “Some help he’s turning out to
be.”

He was watching Slade very intently. “Give him time.”

“I don’t have a lot of that.” She balled her hand into
a fist and bit back a whimper.

“You’re going to have eternity.”

Saying it didn’t make it so, the same way wishing away
the agony of hunger didn’t make it stop. The pain clawed inside her, ripping
through her control, her reserves, leaving her nerve endings raw and
hypersensitive. She couldn’t bear the touch of her clothes, the weight of
Caleb’s hand, or the brush of Jared’s fingers over her cheek. She tugged at
Caleb’s wrist. It didn’t do her any good. Like Jared, he was big-boned, heavily
muscled, and as stubborn as a mule. And he believed he was helping her.

“Why is it the same?” Caleb growled at Slade.

“If I knew that,” Slade answered, “I’d pretty much be
in the position to solve all of life’s little problems.”

“We don’t need a solution to all of them, just this
one.”

“Then you are going to have to wait . . .” He hit
three keys in rapid succession. “Until I find it.”

“Shit.”

Raisa echoed the sentiment. Another wave of pain came
at her. She braced herself for its arrival, she blinked when it came to her in
a soft echo of its usual force. Above her Caleb flinched. The muscles in his
arms jerked. She blinked again. He was diverting the pain. The ease with which
he did it spoke of familiarity with the process.

She didn’t take her hand from his wrist. “Does Allie
hurt like this, too?”

“Not anymore.”

“How did you stop it?”

“By giving her what she needed.” He pressed his wrist
into her thumbnail. Jared’s growl filled the room, a real and mental warning.
The scent of blood wafted around her. Fresh and powerful. Wrong.

She turned her head away.

Caleb’s eyes searched her face as his mind skimmed
hers. “Just like Allie.”

“Allie doesn’t like your blood?”

He smiled, showing even white teeth. “She likes my
blood just fine.”

He stepped back, closing the wound on his wrist.

The hunger burgeoned past the barricade he’d left
behind. She might not be able to drink Caleb’s blood, but the scent did serve
to remind her of what she was missing. With succinct brutality.

“I hate this.” It was an empty protest against the
inevitable.

Jared rolled her toward him with a hand on her hip.
“What’s there to love?” She placed her palms on his chest as he lifted her up,
panting through the worst of the pain before shaking her head, too aware of the
men who watched. “Not here.”

He tugged his shirt open. Two of the buttons hit the
table in light pings. “Now is not the time to get finicky.”

“There’s no getting. I’m already there.”

“You might as well save your breath, Jared.” Caleb
observed, looking away from the screen that held Slade mesmerized. “You’d have
better luck getting her to undress in public then to get her to feed in
public.”

“You’re my brothers.”

“They’re not mine.” Raisa growled, annoyed at how
dense he was being. Feeding was as much sexual as anything else. She was not
doing it in front of another man.

“You will if I say so.”

She shook her head, wrapping her arms around his neck,
stroking her fingers across his nape as the hunger rose to a roar and his scent
encompassed her in its perfect embrace.

Right.

His big body went rigid against her as the need arced
between them.

This is private between us.

He didn’t argue, just lifted her up and headed for the
door. “Then, sunbeam, let’s get you to private.”

“And you, Slade,” Caleb said behind them, “can tell me
about the lovely complication on your screen.”

COLD night air nipped her nose. Raisa shivered. Jared
hitched her higher.

“Where are we going?”

“The house.”

The house where Allie was baking and presumably weres
and others gathered. She pressed her fist into the knot in her stomach. “Isn’t
there someplace more private we can go?”

If her head exploded later, she did not want to take
anyone with her.

Jared stopped dead, his body going hard against hers.
Flames licked the edges of his gaze. “Just how noisy are you planning on
being?”

It took her a second to realize he wasn’t talking
about the big bang during which her head exploded. Images spilled from him to
her. Images of the two of them entwined, his mouth on her breasts, her head
tipped back, an expression of complete carnality on her face as his body
blended with hers.

She gasped. “I do not look like that!”

“The hel . . . heck you don’t.”

Heat burned up from her toes as more pictures poured
into her mind, images of all the ways he saw her, all of them of a woman she
never saw in the mirror. A lushly sensual woman she never thought she could be.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m too old to blush.”

She would have smacked him for his immediate grin if
it wasn’t so engaging to see him smile.

“But you do it so charmingly.”

The only way out was to bluff. “You do realize that
that’s a very old-fashioned expression?”

His path angled to the right. “Lucky for you, I’m an
old-fashioned guy.”

She tucked her hands inside his shirt, finding the mat
of hair, sliding through it until she found his nipple, which was so
intriguingly different from hers, yet so similar. She flicked it. His gasp was
music to her ears. “Why does that make me lucky?”

His drawl was noticeably thicker as he answered.
“Because you’re an old-fashioned girl.”

“Woman.” Some of the changes of the last few centuries
she highly approved of.

“My woman,” he elaborated.

She didn’t have an argument for that. At least that
would hold water in light of the way she was stroking him. They stopped in
front of a quaint log cabin.

“Where are we?”

“One of the guest cottages. I think you’ll find it
private enough.” He leaned over, chuckling as her blush intensified to searing.
“Open the door.”

She did. He flipped on the lights. She blinked as her
regular vision came into play. The bright, cheery southwestern flavor of the
decor soothed her. “I never get used to it,” she confessed as he set her on her
feet.

“What?”

“Night vision. I miss the color.”

Like how bright the green of his eyes could be or how
the blue flecks added depth to the intelligence and strength she saw when she
gazed into them. “I love color,” she gasped, grabbing the back of a couch with
one hand and her stomach with the other as the next spasm of hunger built.

“Me, too.” Jared held her arm for a second. “You
okay?”

“Peachy keen.”

The quirk of his lips could have been impatience or
amusement. “It’s almost dawn. I want to secure the place before I take care of
you, because afterward, I doubt I’ll be thinking at all.”

There was no mistaking his meaning. She took her hand
off the couch for the split second it took to wave him on. “Safety first.”

He glanced at her face. She could feel the sweat
gathering there, could only imagine what she looked like. “Maybe you’d better
sit down.”

Where she was, was fine. Standing with her feet
spread, her back bowed, and her fist pressing into her gut seemed to be
soothing the beast for a minute. “This is working.”

The glance he shot her added the “for now” she’d left
off. With one last hesitation, he headed off. She followed him with her senses,
relying most heavily on sound. She could hear shutters being drawn in and
locked. Doors being opened and then shut. Too many doors for such a small
place. He was checking the closets? A spike of alarm shot through her.
Immediately, his energy stroked over her with the comfort of a touch.

I’m the cautious sort.

Logical and cautious with a tendency to grin. His
personality didn’t add up unless she factored in the trauma of his conversion.
He hadn’t wanted that. Being converted against his will by a brother he
obviously adored would have left him, as they said these days, conflicted. He’d
obviously reconciled with his brother by shifting the blame, and he dealt with
the betrayal by being determined not to trust again, but where did that leave
her?

“Waiting for me?”

He stood in the doorway, his shoulder leaning against
the jamb, one booted foot crossed over the other, his shirt half undone, gaping
to showcase the broad expanse of his chest, letting her peek at the washboard
perfection of his abs. Beneath his hat his eyes glittered with promise, and
below the shadow cast by the brim, his mouth quirked in a sensual grin.

“Yes.” She had been waiting for him, this lifetime and
the last. Before she’d been turned she’d envisioned him as her knight in
shining armor, the man she’d hoped would come into the fragmented hell of her
life and sweep her out of the debris because that’s what women did in those
days. Hoped, prayed, or finagled for a man to save them. After she’d become
vampire, she’d only known the restless aching hunger for more than what she
had. A need to fill the emptiness inside her. She’d thought it was because she
couldn’t find a proper diet, but now, seeing him standing in the hall, his
shoulder propped against the doorjamb, his energy stroking around her, she
realized the truth. She straightened and held out her hand. “And I think you’ve
kept me waiting long enough.”