Vampire Mistress (Vampire Queen #5)

He knew all that, but he was here now. That was what mattered. What had she said before? Just this moment. Maybe he understood what she'd meant.

Forcing his mind to shut up, he found her human blood in the refrigerator, measured it out in a quarter cup. He hurried, because when he'd moved away from her cell, the convulsing of her body, her struggles against the manacles, grew twice as bad. Another indication that Anwyn was still in there, the woman who hated and feared being restrained.

When he returned, he steeled himself to do what needed to be done. Opening the cell, he moved quickly toward her. He made himself tune out the animal sounds, far too reminiscent of demon possession movies.

Keeping his arm well out of range of her fangs, he gripped her hair to still the movement of her head and forced the cup to her lips. The smell snapped her attention to it immediately, thank God. Vamps didn't like refrigerated blood, as Daegan had said, but in this state she would take it. She gulped it down, the excess running sloppily over her chin, but this time he didn't bring his fingers close enough to catch it for her. Her gaze was fastened on the artery in his throat, because he knew she could hear the pumping of blood through it. She snapped at him when he took the cup away and let go of her hair.

“Your wrist,” she demanded in an eerie rasp. Shaking his head, he turned on his heel and left the cell, forced himself not to falter as her howls became hideous wails.

Daegan had been right. He would give anything not to be here. He was sure she felt the same way.

Going into her bathroom in the main living area, he found a basin and washcloth beneath the sink. As he let the water heat and filled up the basin in the sink, he noted the eye makeup she'd left out, the tube of lipstick. Female things, normal things. The blouse she'd been wearing was draped over the vanity chair.

Lifting it to his nose, he smelled her sweet scent from the bath.

Returning to the cell, feeling a bit calmer, he double-checked that her arms and legs were still firmly secured to the wall. Now she was making low, plaintive growls, like a frightened lioness. Occasionally, she'd break off into harsh whispering to herself, her red gaze clocking around as if expecting a threat from any direction. That gaze had latched onto him as he reappeared. He didn't meet her eyes, and kept his movements calm, deliberate, as he brought the chair up close. Close enough that his knees were pressed inside her spread thighs when he sat back down. She made a strange noise and he responded with a quiet, soothing murmur.

The positioning of the manacles at the ankles was wide enough the T-shirt rode high on her thighs.

Gently, he began to clean off the blood and vomit. She was fine while he worked on her legs, but she got agitated again when he worked on the shirt. He decided to pour the warm water over it to rinse out the blood. She was still sweating, so he knew it would feel good.

“You have no right to touch me, human,” she snapped abruptly, spraying him with bloodied saliva from her split lip. “I am an untouchable. Chosen to lead other untouchables . . .” Her diatribe descended into gibberish, interspersed with foul combinations of words he wasn't even sure Anwyn, for all her vast sexual experience, knew. Terrible, crude things a male might say. A sibilant lisp exactly like Barnabus's voice came through, gripping him with cold fingers. This wasnot normal.

She slammed her head back, so hard he let out an oath, hearing the stone crack and seeing her eyes glaze over as if she'd given herself a concussion. But when he tried to slide his fingers to the back of her skull, to feel for damage, she almost got his arm, and he yanked it back again. She laughed, those red eyes glinting.

“You fear me. I fear nothing.”

He made himself focus not on those red eyes or unnaturally long teeth, but on the toned length of her legs. The nip of her waist beneath the shirt. The column of her throat and the delicate holes in her ears where she'd been wearing diamonds earlier.Would those close up? he wondered. Some older scars did, when a vampire turned. How about the place on her back where the stained glass had cut her?

As he cleaned her slim arms, he saw she'd rubbed her wrists raw against the manacles. While he knew they would heal as well, he had to fight the unwise desire to put his mouth on them, sooth the fragile pulse pounding beneath the skin. He studied her toenails again, each cuticle a translucent white and each nail embellished with one precise silver stroke over the polish.

The prostitute who'd made him soup had had scarlet nails, yet on one of the big toes, she'd had the tiny emblem of a teddy bear. For her kid. He didn't know if she did it to remember him when she had her feet locked around some john's shoulders, or to amuse the kid when they were together. Probably both.

A lot of shit happened to everyone in the world. The only thing that kept anyone going was knowing someone out there might need them. Someone who might give a shit what happened to them.

He gave a shit what happened to Anwyn, and hell, he'd already admitted he had a pathetic need for her.

So he kept sitting there, cleaning her as best as he could, until she was back down to hissing and spitting.

Holding on to the picture of the woman she'd been last night, her urgent desire in the tub, the game of Twenty Questions they'd begun, he set the basin and cloth aside.

When she was coherent again, he'd ask her about this playroom. Ask if she'd had a lot of guys here.

Piss her off by going places she hadn't given him permission to go. Ruffle those beautiful feathers.

Slowly, deliberately, he placed his face against her abdomen, the damp shirt, his crown pressed to her breasts. Her heart beat fast, a rapid thunder. He ignored the smell of blood and stroked her sides with gentle fingers. He murmured to her, soothing, nonsensical things. To Anwyn, the woman inside this beast.

And God help him, though she continued to hiss and mumble like something from an 80s horror flick, he felt . . . something. Something that was Anwyn, reaching out and holding on to him, using him as her anchor.

Yes, she was becoming what he killed, as Daegan had said. But in some ways, he wondered if they were even more alike now, because often the face he saw in his mirror had become what he most hated.

He'd come to Atlantis because the reins had been close to snapping. Just like her manacles, if they gave way, he wasn't sure what destruction he'd commit, if he became that which he most feared.

“It's all right.” He pressed his mouth to the slope of her sweet stomach. “I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here. You're safe.”

The cycles were going to intensify, but the chains were strong. If she needed him to do it, he'd lock himself in the cell with her and toss out the key. She might drain him, but she wouldn't get anyone else.

He just couldn't leave her in there alone if she begged him to stay, because he couldn't detach himself from the woman desperately fighting inside her own body. Just as it had been when she'd pressed the razor edge to his throat, his life was literally in her hands.

She would have had coffee with him; he knew it.

Daegan might call him a fool, but she could have thrown him back into the street, given him nothing when he was at the end of his rope. He wouldn't do the same to her.

13

HENRY Barnabus and his pair of made vampires weren't hard to find, though they were holed up much farther out of the city than Daegan had expected. The few times the trail got confusing, street people clinging to the shadows through which he could safely pass during daylight filled in the blanks. He suspected they saw something in his eyes that told them it wouldn't be wise to wheedle bribes out of him.

Being left with their life and limbs intact was payment enough for the information.

As he retrieved his BMW with its specially treated windows from a private garage and headed for the outlying industrial town his quarry might have chosen as their falsely defensible position, he cursed fluently. Every minute was one minute too many.

To get authorization for a kill, he called it in to his Council contact before it happened. He discarded that idea now. He wasn't risking any delays. He was given a certain latitude for the more obvious violators of Council directives, after all. He'd get the sire's blood and exterminate the whole nest before they killed too carelessly and attracted more widespread human attention. Because of a recent uprising by made vampires, the Council, most of whom were born vampires, still had prejudicial attitudes against their manufactured brethren.

Unfortunately, he would have a different problem with the Council when this was done, which was another reason he wasn't going to notify them. Barnabus had walked right into Club Atlantis's front door and asked for him by name. No one had that information but the Vampire Council.

He had a good idea which Council members had been stupid enough to expose him. Even though the Council was currently harsher on the infractions of made vampires, they'd duplicitously attempted a more egalitarian approach, expanding their numbers to allow two made vampires to serve on the Council, with limited voting privileges.

Political correctness for vampires. It gave Daegan a throbbing pain behind his left eye. Vampires worked best as an aristocratic oligarchy based on power and control. Their fucking politics had destroyed a part of his life he'd foolishly believed was beyond the reach of what he did for them.

Hours ago, Anwyn had been in his arms, confident and sexy, his face buried in her thick hair, her body arched with sensual strength and will against his hands. He recalled the soft gasp as his cock pushed deep into her. Her eyes had said things she would never say with her mouth. It was the way of it, with vampires as well as humans. They never said what they should, when they should. Everything had changed for her, but maybe if he'd ever said straight-out how he felt about her, she'd have had one more thing to help her through this. Or it might have never happened at all, as Gideon had said, as ruthless as an arrow.

She'd never believed she could be completely vulnerable around him. She understood far too well the relationship between humans and vampires, ingrained in his blood. It seemed he knew everything about her, how she would react to every situation, and yet still her heart did not lie trusting in his hand. Even if he'd marked her three times so she could hide nothing from him, not her nightmares or dreams, he wasn't sure he would have had the essence of her. Taking knowledge was not the same as being given it.