Vampire's Companion (11 page)

Take my blood, Cia. Agree to be my companion.

Israel’s arms surrounded her, enfolded her in warmth. “Do you want me to say the words? Will it make what happened more real for you?”

He grasped the medallion, knuckles pressed to her skin.

Her pulse rapped against him in a pounding demand to close this door completely or thrust it wide open and accept what was behind it.

Israel rubbed his cheek against her hair. “Terach told me he had no intention of making you his companion—at least not that night anyway. But once you were in his bed, he knew you were important to him, that you were the right choice for him.”

“And what I thought didn’t matter?”

“You would rather have died?”

No.

No. She wouldn’t lie to herself.

Israel’s mouth brushed her ear. His tongue darted out to touch and trace and thrust, sending a rush of neediness to her breasts.

“Are you going to deny you’re attracted to him? That it didn’t make you hot to walk in and find him going down on me?”

She trembled and swallowed a moan. Refused to answer and he laughed, husky and oh so confident.

“Pleading the fifth, Cia?”

His hand settled on her abdomen, palm touched to bare skin.

Her clit stiffened to became an obvious target.

His grasped it, stroked and teased her through the clinging material of her bikini bottoms until she shivered from heat instead of chill.

“Done questioning?” he asked, tracing where suit met skin along the inside of her thigh, wetting his fingertips with arousal.

Yes. No.

One thing remained unchanged. She’d awakened naked in Terach’s bed, her body well-loved.

What if she hadn’t been as badly injured as it appeared?

She could stretch her beliefs to include mind over matter given what she’d witnessed Skye do. She could accept that strength of will coupled with hypnotism could speed recovery.

And the rest of it?

Israel slipped his fingertips beneath the suit’s elastic, stroked swollen, flushed labia.

Her buttocks clenched. Her hips canted in a silent urging for him to slip inside her. She wanted to forget everything else in the pursuit of pleasure. She wanted to ignore that this man she’d spent hours with, like any other couple at the beach, who’d touched her and stolen kisses as he taught her to surf, might fit in with the pierced and black-clad crowd at Fangs.

We can work it out.

“Let’s go back to Tessa’s,” she said.

But nerves got the better of her at the car. The sight of the shotgun and personal gun were a reminder of what that night at Fangs had cost her. She should have been cleared to return to duty by now.

“I want to stop by Chloe’s father’s house.”

Israel sighed. He knew her well enough not to be surprised by the reversal, though the ache in his balls and throb in his dick grew with each mile in the wrong direction.

He understood what Cia was doing—running. And he could sympathize. Before he’d known the truth about vampires, he’d been in too deep.

Only Estelle hadn’t saved his life. She’d stolen it.

He shifted in the seat, tugged on the jeans he’d changed into, not that it gave him any relief. The only way he’d manage that would be to unzip and take himself in hand.

He laughed silently. One day Cia would view that show, but it took no observational skill at all to know she wouldn’t appreciate it now.

They parked in front of the apartment they’d visited earlier. A light was on inside.

“Looks like luck is with us,” he said.

Cia got out.

Heat and hunger surged through him, so intense his hips jerked upward and he vise-gripped his cock to keep from coming.

Terach.

The slightest mental touch gave and took information on timing and location.

Cia leaned down to determine what was keeping him, blushed at seeing the savage grip on his cock, though her lips parted.

“With you in a minute,” he gasped, finding amusement in the situation once he was able to peel his hand from his dick.

She was at the door when he caught up to her.

“What can I say? I’m a guy.”

Her laugh was quickly stifled. So soft he might not have heard it except for the blood connection they shared.

He smiled. Enough time in his company and he bet he could make her forget she was a cop for days at a time, not just minutes or hours.

The door was opened by a brunette in her mid to late twenties, not the barely legal shack-up Sonya had implied.

“Mindy?” Cia asked.

When the woman confirmed it, Cia introduced them and explained the reason for the visit, asking if Chloe or her father was there.

“No, neither of them is here.”

“Do you have a minute?” Cia asked.

Mindy shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t have anything to offer. Really. I’ve been out of town for the last week. Robert told me the police had contacted him about Kadence running away. I’m sure he told them everything he knows.”

“Does Chloe have a bedroom here?”

“Yes.” She stepped fully into the doorway, anticipating what Cia would ask next. “I don’t feel comfortable letting you search it, not unless you have a warrant. I’m sorry but… Things are a little tricky, with Chloe, and between Chloe and Robert because of his leaving Sonya.”

Mindy’s right hand moved up and down on the doorjamb. She glanced over her shoulder as though conscience warred with guilt.

“Can you give us anything?” Cia asked. “Anything at all? Kids Kadence’s age think they’re invincible. They think they have all the answers. But I’m a homicide cop, and before that a street cop. I’ve seen what happens to runaways.”

Mindy’s hand dropped from the doorframe then returned as if she didn’t know what do with it. “It might be nothing…”

You don’t believe that.
But he remained silent, letting Cia work it.

“Let us decide if it’s useful or not.”

Her use of
us
had warmth sliding through his chest.

Mindy rubbed the doorframe, harder this time. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t let on that I told you this.”

Cia nodded rather than give a verbal promise.

Mindy sighed, hand dropping to her side again. “Chloe is…difficult. Neither of her parents wants to be the heavy, and it’s not my place to be. I mean, I’m just the girlfriend.”

Her voice trailed off. Cia said, “And kids that age can be hard to deal with anyway.”

“Exactly. I know I was. If Chloe is asked to do a chore, she’ll either ignore the request or argue about it. But…”

“Please, let us decide if what you’ve noticed is useful or not.”

Mindy’s exhale sounded shaky. “Okay. Okay. For the last few months Chloe has been volunteering to get the mail. She and Kadence will show up together. They’ll hang out, then say they’re going to the game room or to check out the pool and would I like for them to stop by the box.”

“She doesn’t have her own key?”

“No. She’s asked, but Robert hasn’t gone to the rental office and arranged for her to have one.” Mindy shrugged. “So I let her use mine. There’s no reason to say no.”

“And when they come back to the apartment?”

“They’ve just got our mail. I’ve watched them get into Chloe’s car with boxes and packing envelopes before coming inside. It might be nothing. I mean, Robert and Sonya don’t say no when Chloe wants something. They’re her personal ATMs.”

Cia probed for several minutes without gaining anything new. In the car he said, “Definitely something to pursue. Tomorrow.”

He moved in as close as possible, an arm going around her headrest, his body turned toward her. She stiffened, the prickly cop returned.

Did he dare poke at her the way a camper might a porcupine? He grinned. Why not? That was but one glorious aspect of his returned freedom.

He waited until close to Tessa’s house, to Terach, heat and hunger intensifying with proximity.

“Shall we continue the conversation on the beach?” he asked.

“No.”

“What about this?”

He cupped her breast and was rewarded by the stab of her nipple. By a moan that belonged to him alone, by the scent of aroused woman.

“I’m thinking the answer is yes,” he said, anticipation building.

They rolled to a stop in front of Tessa’s house and Terach rose from a chair on the porch. Cia’s breath caught. Her heart hammer-beat against his palm.

“Going to keep hiding from the truth? Going to run from it?” He gave her nipple a sensual twist before releasing it to snag the house keys in the console tray. “Or you could just join us.”

He got out of the car and jogged to Terach, foregoing the immediate gratification of a kiss in favor of unlocking and opening the door, preventing complication with the necessary invitation. “Come on in.”

Terach’s smile was match touched to gasoline. Incendiary lust made hotter by Cia’s following him to the house rather than driving away.

“No greeting for your devoted slave?” he asked, and it had the desired effect.

Terach jerked him forward, cock to cock, rough hands in his hair.
Is this what you want?

Hard lips claimed. Plundered. Waged a war that ultimately would have only one end, a shout of pleasure and searing rush of semen.

Oh yeah, this was what he wanted. Or part of it anyway.

He touched his tongue to Terach’s canines, daring their descent into fangs. He reveled in the jerk of Terach’s hips, the grind of his cock and the pain that followed when Terach’s hands tightened in his hair in preparation for yanking his head backward to feed.

Need scorched through him. Unrelenting ache magnified by the day spent with Cia and intensified by the feel of her gaze on them.

He wanted to open his jeans, to open Terach’s.

In a minute
, Terach said.

A minute is too long.

Terach’s cock throbbed in reaction to the desperate hunger in Israel’s voice. He struggled to end the kiss, the images in Israel’s mind near compulsion because they echoed his desires so thoroughly.

Impressions of Cia lying beneath Israel were a velvet fist around his cock. He shuddered, left Israel’s lips on a groan to turn his attention to his companion.

Her nipples were outlined against the front of her shirt, fueling fantasies and his hunger for her. “He tastes of you. He smells of you. Did you let him love you?”

She blushed, forcing him to hide a smile.

“We didn’t go all the way.”

His laugh was a husky promise. “That’s something I’ll have to set to rights then.”

Her shoulders squared. “You hypnotized me that night.”

He admired the way she made the accusation without flinching or dropping her gaze from his. “Only to heal you, Cia. I didn’t make you desire me.”

He felt that desire through the bond. It lapped against him like a heated tongue, though he needed no coaxing when it came to his cock. If not trapped by the jeans he wore, it would already have pulled away from his body as if to go to her hand, to make its own plea for her lips.

He felt her confusion, her desire, her lingering resistance despite having been intimate with Israel.
What did you tell her?

Israel sighed, a soft sound rather than a putout one.
In the end, nothing. But she knows what happened. She just refuses to face it fully.

He glanced at Israel.
You’re sure?

Positive.

He trusted Israel’s read. He could argue it changed things, and that because she continued to wear his medallion and had allowed Israel to touch her, Gian’s edict to court her no longer applied.

He could claim that Syndelle’s gift, alone, and the need to ensure the safety of The Masada, took precedence over easing Cia into the world she was now a part of. But he knew too well the rage and pain of having another’s will forced on him, so he did nothing to compel her into facing and accepting the truth.

He stepped into the house, there to stay unless Cia revoked Israel’s invitation. With the close of the door, his cock banged against his zipper in a demand to get out. The smoldering sensuality in Israel’s eyes, the throbbing awareness that Israel needed to come, begged the question—push Cia and risk her retreat? Or allow her time in their company.

Israel took the decision from him, dropping to his knees and creating a surge of lust. Terach’s hands went to his belt, need sharpened by the parting of Cia’s lips, the scent of her arousal.

She remained in place, held prisoner by the same desire he felt. The button gave, then the zipper. His cock burst free of its confinement, only to be captured by Israel’s hand, imprisoned in a firm grip.

Pleasure lanced through him. His buttocks clenched and arousal escaped to bead on his cock head, invitation enough for Israel’s lips and tongue.

A moan was wrenched from him at first contact. A second came with a heated swirl over his crown, the dart and delve and lapping away of precum.

Cia’s scent deepened. Her heart raced in pounded temptation.

He fought the descent of fangs. His gaze dropped to Israel and possessiveness gripped him.

Israel’s fisted hand drew more blood downward, heightening the hunger to feed.

Ecstasy shuddered through Terach with the tight clasp of lips around his cock head. Slow sucks and heated licks had him gripping Israel’s hair, fingers buried in it to hide the sharp threat of talons capable of tearing an enemy’s heart out—or opening a vein for a lover’s lips.

He let nails elongate in sexual threat, the prick of them against Israel’s scalp both warning and demand.

It gained him inches. And those inches buried in Israel’s mouth became a demand for more.

He thrust, attempting to drive his cock deeper, to the back of Israel’s throat. But Israel was too well versed in how to pleasure another man to let him rush to release.

Hands and tongue, the tightening of lips and the warning of teeth, Israel countered with a demand for total surrender, and that surrender was inevitable.

Control deserted Terach, his thrusts becoming savage, wild. His pleasure escalating with Cia’s quickening breath and the rise and fall of hard-capped breasts.