What Rough Beast [Blood Oath 1] (12 page)

She curled into him, equal measures sated and exhausted.

He smiled at her.
"Don't sleep, love. Stay with me."

She sighed his name, her eyelids unbearably heavy.

Luc jabbed at Garrick's hip with an angry elbow. “Will you please get off my ward now?"

"You know what must be done.” Garrick stroked her hair. The comfort of his body warmed her, reassured her.

Luc shrugged. “You marked her before. Nothing has changed."

"To leave it unfinished, after she's tasted me twice now and so thoroughly... I cannot."

"If she doesn't accept you when it's done, your life is forfeit. Have you forgotten? You'll die, Garrick."

"Without her mark, I'm dead already."

She blinked the numbing effects of fatigue away. “Garrick?"

"Don't be afraid.” He tipped her head up with a finger under her chin, skated a kiss across her lips. “I need to be yours. I must be yours.” He flashed a stony glance at Luc. “Even having fed so richly, she's little to spare. I won't take much."

His mouth teased hers with playful, nibbling kisses, but she stiffened in his arms, eyes widening with sudden alarm. “You won't
what
?"

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Luc held her hand, toyed with her fingers. “You've taken his blood, his mark. He must have yours."

Kate's frantic gaze focused on Garrick. Her heart beat a rabbity staccato against her ribs. “You're going to bite me?” She pinned Luc with the same horrified stare. “And you're okay with this?"

"You haven't fully recovered from David or the transition. You should've been stronger. He—” Luc sneered at Garrick's glare, but he amended himself nonetheless. “
We
should have been more careful.” Luc shrugged a stiff shoulder. “But he's right. You've taken his blood twice. Your vampyr has chosen. Interfering with the pair-bond would be dangerous. Without your blood, I won't be able to control him."

She squirmed beneath Garrick's heavy weight, so pleasing and wonderful before. Ominous and frightening to her now. “Don't bite me, Garrick. Please."

"Remember how it felt when your teeth sank into me. The thrill of me in your mouth, filling you, inside you."

She shivered, because she did remember.

"It was the same for me. The pleasure you felt at the taste of me, I felt as well. Your mouth was so voracious I was drunk with it, so much I didn't notice Luc's approach. Delight in you stunned me and staggers me still. Do you not feel my body trembling?"

She felt it. Oh, how she felt it, and the delicious quiver taunted her. But tears welled in her eyes just the same because she remembered the agonizing stab of incisors into her skin as well. Luc thought she'd forgotten, and truthfully, she couldn't remember much.

Thank God.

But that, she recalled. With perfect clarity.

The horror.

The bone-melting fear and torturous pain.

Over and over and over again, the dark master had sunk his teeth into her, and she'd prayed for death that had cruelly escaped her.

Tears burned her eyes.
"It hurt."

Luc winced at the sickening flash of memory. “He's dead, bebe. He will never hurt you again."

"David's bite was an abomination, a rape of what should have been beautiful."
Garrick's tongue whirled over her pulse, coaxing, seductive. “Feeding from Luc, you've shared his care and comfort, but with me...” He shuddered. “Biting is natural for us, a pleasure. Sexy. You shared it with me."

His teeth scraped lightly over her skin, and she gasped, desires stirring in her. Fear warred with need.
"I'm scared."

Luc kissed her fingers. “You'll like it. I promise."

"Trust me."

Trust him?

Sure.

Why not?

She choked down bitter laughter, but really, what choice did she have?

What choice had she ever had?

"You are vampyr, an unmated female. You alone have the power to draw us, to summon and command. Do you believe I would survive if you turned me away? That I'd want to?” Garrick's lips skated along the line of her jaw, and he chuckled when she shivered in response. “The power is yours; the decision is yours. My life is yours."

Kate's head swam.

That was it?

This was the mysterious power she yielded?

If she blew Garrick off, she killed him?

What kind of sick choice was that?

"There's more, much more."
Luc squeezed her hand.
"But for now, yes, you hold his life in your hands. Is that not enough?"

She didn't want it, this so-called power. She hadn't wanted any of it, but she was a powerless to prevent Garrick from taking her blood as she'd been to stop David from making her a vampire to start with. To stop the others from pursuing them. Command? If any of this had been hers to command, she'd have ordered the bloody vampires—
all
the bloody vampires—to leave her the hell alone.

But that wasn't going to happen, so she turned away, leaving her neck bared to his mouth, deliberately vulnerable. Her muscles coiled tight. She held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the torturous jab of invading teeth.

And waited.

And waited.

Instead of stabbing his incisors into her throat, he danced his lips to her ear and sucked her lobe into his mouth to nibble sensually.

The intimacy of his hot breath shocked her.

Her eyes flashed open.

He traced the shell of her ear with his tongue. “Your ears are your weakness, love. I hear the quickening kick of your heartbeat when I touch you here,” he whispered and kissed the sensitive flesh behind her dangling lobe.

Pleasure streaked through her.

"I can scent your blood rushing below your skin. Right here.” He nipped lower on her throat, not breaking the skin, but arousing her unbearably instead. “You smell of woman, my woman. Of me."

She gasped his name.

He licked at her neck. “You're shaking. Part of that's fear. But another part, an increasingly larger part of it, is anticipation."

When Garrick brushed his lips over her pulse point, she couldn't stifle a soft moan. Her fingers threaded into his hair—to hold him there or yank him away she didn't know, because as soon as her hands filled with his soft, dark curls, she could think of nothing beyond petting him, stroking him.

Tingling want skittered through her. Her hips shifted restlessly, rubbing against his rigid cock.

He stroked his cheek against her skin and purred against her throat like a well-fed cat. “Your vampyr needs to mark me, Kate. Craves it. Do you?"

She didn't know what she wanted.

She just knew that she did. “Please."

His mouth opened over her neck. His tongue traced a lazy trail over her skin so that her flesh burned for him. So that she burned. Her back arched, bringing her body close to his, seating his dick against her wet pussy—where she most wanted him to be.

She hated the stupid clothes she'd insisted on. They should be gone. She needed them to be gone so she could feel him against her, feel him gliding hard and deep into her.
"Rick."

He groaned.
"I love you, Kate."
He sucked the tender skin of her neck into his mouth.

He was so hot and so hard, his lips unbearably soft. Kate's mind spun past her. Drunk on sensation, she couldn't think, couldn't think—

His teeth slid into her.

She cried out.

"Bebe?"
Luc leaned over Garrick's shoulder, hovering over them both. Concern sparked in his dark eyes.

She sucked air into her lungs, panting through parted lips as Garrick sipped at her. Where she expected pain, she found desire. Mind-numbing, soul-consuming desire that ate at her far more rapaciously than Garrick's gentle sampling.

Cradling Garrick's scalp in her fingers, she shoved his mouth hard against her throat.

Garrick needed no further encouragement. He growled once, low and deep, then gulped from the wound he'd made.
"You feel it too. The passion, the power. There is nothing we cannot be together."

"Ease back, Garrick. Her body can't afford this,” Luc said, but his voice sounded far away and at the moment, unimportant.

"Say yes. To me, to us."

She whimpered at the licks of need that pulsed through her every time his ravenous mouth drew at her neck. The pleasure built like a flash fire, intense and violent, catching her up in its heat, destroying her.

"Listen to me, Garrick. Listen and heed me. You're killing her."

"Say yes."

Darkness crushed in on her, flirting with her vision so the urgent lines grooving Luc's face blurred. Her fingers felt cold and awkward in Garrick's hair. Her lashes drooped and shuttered her eyes.

All that mattered was his husky voice in her head, the insatiable pull of his mouth on her throat.

"Kate?"

"Do you understand me, Garrick? Release her. It isn't time!"

She smiled.
"I don't want you to stop."

"Your vampyr is very strong."
He chuckled against the punctures he'd made.
"But Luc's right. I'm killing you."
Garrick kissed the wounds, sending another frisson of pleasure through her, but Kate was too drained to shiver or sigh.

"That wasn't so bad."

"I have my moments."

Kate curled in a chair in the rooms she shared with Luc, trying and failing to read Jane Austen while Luc studied squiggling loops of topographical lines on the map he'd stretched over a desk. Luc had discovered the bundle of maps and other assorted papers at their door shortly after waking. Heavy red ink traced the swamp's entry points, the most accessible exit routes in green—

Garrick's escape plans.

In case Krystiyan or the others tracked them to Louisiana.

Luc penciled notes directly on the map and sometimes scrawled on scattered sheets of parchment surrounding him.

The scratch of lead jangled Kate's fraying nerves.

Stupid vampires.

Stupid bloody war.

"He's hunting, chere,” Luc said without glancing up. He leaned over the map instead. “You'll be more at ease once he returns."

Kate scowled at her guardian.

Tried to focus on her brand-spanking-new Kindle.

Though she probably should've started on the new Susan Elizabeth Phillips instead,
Pride and Prejudice
was her favorite of the classics. The Bennett sisters never disappointed.

But Kate couldn't concentrate.

Her skin felt too tight for her body.

Her pulse raced.

She'd shivered inside Garrick's sweatshirt only yesterday, but even the plain black T-shirt and plaid boxers Luc had fetched from Garrick's rooms upon waking that evening felt oppressive and sweltering.

Luc sighed. “The wait would be more comfortable if you'd change into the clothes his weres procured for you."

When they'd returned from the library the night before, her closets had been stuffed full. Hangers had been draped with midriff blouses and flowing skirts in every color of the rainbow, sheer fabrics and stunning silks. When she'd lifted her fingers, tips skating over the filmy material, her heart had skipped a giddy beat at the decadence.

But...

When Kate had slid one of the dresses free, she'd gaped at the provocative cut.

Her cheeks heated.

Though the soft cotton of Garrick's T-shirt abraded her skin and the loose fit of his boxers felt too binding, she wouldn't so much as look at the sultry dresses and skirts. No matter how much the smell of him lingered on the clothes she'd borrowed or how greatly that scent taunted her.

Kate refused to wear the other clothes.

Any of them.

"You've been sealed, bebe. You can't run from that forever."

"I'm not running.” She tossed her Kindle aside. “I'm just not cooperating."

He arched an eyebrow. His mouth curved. “You can't defeat millennia of biological evolution either."

She rose from the chair, crossed her arms, and glowered at him. “Maybe I'm a fan of intelligent design."

"All right.” He laid his pencil aside. “Then you were both intelligently designed to mate once your bite transferred your mark to one other."

She sniffed in disdain.

Kate didn't understand this marking business, and she didn't particularly want to.

Luc sighed. “The virus adapts to our bodies and our unique histories over time, but even in the beginning, minor mutations operate as a signature that allows us to distinguish between each other. Though Garrick and I spent two hundred years hunting together, and though I fed from him often, his vampyr remains very different from mine. Those differences allow us to speak to one another.” Luc tapped his temple.

She raised her hand. “Don't start."

"You must learn and accept.” Luc's lips thinned. “The virus operates as a filter in our minds, only allowing us to link with those of our kind with whom we are most intimate—vampyr we've shared blood with."

She stepped back when he rose from his seat, her heart abruptly stuttering in her chest. “I mean it, Luc. Stop it."

"Mating increases the intensity of the link exponentially. When you tasted him, his virus became part of your body, but the bond was fragile. If I had run with you then, Garrick would have followed, but without your virus in him to cement the link, we might have evaded him. That is no longer possible. You've fed too deeply. We've no other course except to allow your mating to proceed."

"So that's it? I don't have any choice about it?” She considered throwing the damned Kindle at him. “I'm stuck with a guy I don't even know if I like until I die, which just for kicks will be,” she said, angling her head to the side in mock contemplation, “a hundred gazillion years from now.” Her lips curled to a tart smile. “Wonderful. Peachy. Thanks."

"Temporarily, yes, you're stuck with him. I told you that biting triggers our mating instincts and warned you to go nowhere near Garrick.” Luc glared at her. “Instead of, for instance, rolling around on the couch with him like a hormonal teenager the moment my back is turned."

Kate scowled. “There were extenuating circumstances."