Covet
Authors: Melissa Darnell
Dangerous to be together.
Painful to be apart.
Savannah Colbert knows she broke up with Tristan Coleman for the right reasons. Most of all, to keep from killing him with her new vampire abilities. But try telling her heart. Now, lost in a sea of hostile Clann faces, Sav tries to come to terms with what she’s becoming and what that means for her future. And that someone is doing their best to bully her into making a terrible mistake.
Tristan can’t believe Sav won’t even talk to him. If being apart is her decision, fine. Just don’t expect him to honor it. But even as he prepares to fight for the girl he loves, forces beyond their control take them both in directions neither could have foreseen or prepared for.
A reckoning is coming...and not everyone will survive.
I really was dying this time.
I grabbed the counter, shaking so hard I was afraid I would fall down. What was
wrong
with me?
“Sav? Sav! What is it?”
I could hear my friends’ voices, distant, muffled. I shook my head, my focus turning inward. What was going on with my body? Was this a sign that the bloodlust was about to take over completely or something? No, it couldn’t be. I’d felt the bloodlust before. It hadn’t felt anything like this.
“What’s wrong with her?” Michelle asked in a high voice.
“I don’t know. Get a teacher,” Carrie ordered.
Anne moved toward the door, but I grabbed her arm to stop her. “No, wait. It’s not...” I closed my eyes and mentally searched for the source of the pain. “It’s not me. I mean, I’m okay.”
“Then what’s the matter?” Anne said, crouching down in front of me.
I shook my head again. “I don’t...”
And then I knew. “Oh, God. It’s Tristan,” I whispered.
* * *
Praise for
CRAVE,
Book 1 of The Clann.
“An enticing mix of forbidden love, magic, betrayal, and heartache, this romance will leave you craving more.”
—
Mundie Moms
“Melissa Darnell has written a beautiful love story centered around the supernatural world. There is nothing sweeter than forbidden love.”
—
Realm of Fiction
“A spellbinding, compelling, and completely enjoyable debut,
Crave
had me flipping pages until there were none left to flip.”
—
Electrifying Reviews
Books by Melissa Darnell
from Harlequin TEEN
The Clann series in reading order
Crave
Covet
and coming in 2013
Consume
The Clann
COVET
Melissa Darnell
To the moms (in order of appearance in my life): Joyce, Janet and Judy, for showing me so many different ways to be a strong woman, mother and wife.
To my dad, Joy and my father-in-law, Mack, for showing me the many sides of being a father and a husband with such honesty, wisdom and humor.
To Dawn: thank you for being the older sister I’ve always wanted!
And to the real-life grandmas who inspired the character of Nanna: Mamaw and (in memory of) Nanna.
I love all of you guys!
Contents
CHAPTER 1
SAVANNAH
The vampire council’s private jet, a giant cocoon of white leather and exotic wood trim, hummed a false lullaby around us, trying to lure me into sleep. But even though I was warm and safe within the arms of the only boy I’d ever loved, I couldn’t give in to the exhaustion dragging at my body. Not yet. There was so little time left to enjoy this doomed illusion of peace and perfect happiness. I needed to fight the urge to sleep as long as I could.
Beside me, Tristan Coleman had already lost that battle. He sat slumped in a corner of the sofa we shared near the rear of the cabin. Though his chin with its dusting of three-day-old whiskers rested awkwardly on his chest, a slight smile deepened the corners of his lips, and his arms, so solidly wrapped around me, never budged. Trying to protect me even while he dreamed.
I should have been protecting him instead.
Despite the soft leather beneath us, Tristan had to be uncomfortable. After all, unlike me, he was human and his body could only take so much abuse. When his eyelids had first begun to droop hours ago, I’d tried to convince him to move to one of the reclining chairs or to at least take the entire sofa for himself so he could stretch his long body out properly. But Tristan had refused, insisting on sleeping upright so we could continue to sit close together.
Knowing what was coming for us, I’d given in. Selfish though it was, I didn’t want to let go of him yet, either.
One stray golden-blond curl, rebellious like its owner, flopped over his forehead. Carefully I reached up and smoothed it back, forcing my eyes to look past the sharp contrast between my pale skin and his rugged tan.
In a few hours, even the right to that small touch would be lost forever.
I tried to memorize every detail of his face, normally so hard with determination or blinding everyone nearby with one of his infamous grins, now softened at the edges by sleep and his mistaken belief that everything was okay. He had no idea what sacrifices I’d made to get the vamp council to release him after they had used him and his powerful, magic-laced Clann blood to test my self-control. Handcuffed to a chair in a cement-lined interrogation room next door, he hadn’t heard the torturous promise I’d made to that circle of cold beings. A race I was slowly but surely turning into.
I could have told Tristan the truth after the council released us from their Paris headquarters. But I hadn’t, partly because I was dreading his reaction, but mostly because I wanted to be with him, as happy as possible, every last second that we had left together.
The muscles in my chest tightened, refusing to let my lungs expand fully, and another tear slipped down the side of my nose. Stupid tears. My eyes hadn’t stopped leaking for more than a few minutes at a time since Tristan and I had safely exited the council’s underground labyrinth of tunnels.
Knowing what I had to do for Tristan’s own safety once we returned to our hometown in Jacksonville, Texas, I feared the tears would never stop.
There were so many perfectly logical and good reasons why I was all wrong for Tristan, why I
had
to do as promised and stop seeing him. My mind understood. Why couldn’t I make my heart agree?
Dropping his head back against the sofa, Tristan sighed and snuggled me closer. And though I knew I should move away, keep him safe by putting physical distance between us, I gave in one last time to my heart. Closing my eyes, I nestled my forehead where his neck and shoulder met, a curved space of heat and strength that seemed to have been sculpted especially for me. Drawing in a deep breath, I could just make out the lingering crispness of his aftershave left over from Friday morning, the last time he’d had access to a razor. And beneath that, the barest hint of the precious and oh-so-forbidden Clann blood he had been forced to shed for my test. A test I almost hadn’t passed. A test that had nearly cost him his life.
Swallowing hard, I pushed that dangerous memory away.
Soon. I would keep my promise to the council soon. Just…not yet. A few more hours while we were escaping the laws of gravity and the Clann and the vamp council in this plane together, a few more precious memories to make before we were grounded once more so I could be sure I would remember how it felt to be held and loved by him. How it felt to wrap my arms around his waist, feel the press of his hard chest against my cheek, hear his heartbeat pounding beneath my ear. To feel the illusion of safety while cradled within his arms, his strong hands on my hip and back cupping me as if I were a precious treasure instead of the monster that I truly was…
“Savannah,” a familiar voice whispered like an annoying mosquito near my ear.
“Mmm,” I mumbled, wanting that voice to go away. Only one male’s voice was welcome right now, and that one wasn’t it.
“Savannah, wake up,” Dad insisted, his whisper slightly louder but still far too soft for Tristan’s human ears to hear.
Scowling, I cracked one eyelid open.
“We are an hour away from the Cherokee County Airport, and the pilot warned that we will be landing in bad weather. You should call your grandmother and mother and let them know.” Dad held out a black cell phone stamped For In Air Use Only in gold letters.
I took the smartphone, and Dad returned to his recliner at the front of the cabin.
Worried my talking would wake Tristan, I tried to ease out of his arms, intending to move closer to Dad’s end of the plane. But as soon as I moved, he woke up.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “I need to make some calls. Go back to sleep.”
“I’m all right.” He tugged me back onto his lap, brushing his nose against mine in a too-familiar, silent request for a kiss. At the last second, I turned my head so his lips touched my cheek instead. He leaned his head back to search my face, his heavy-lidded gaze hurt and confused.
“We shouldn’t…not until we land and you can draw some energy.” Thanks to the demon Lilith, the creator of my father’s race of hybrid vamps, I could drain energy with a bite or a kiss, a fact I had only recently been reminded of. As long as we were away from the ground, my kiss could kill Tristan, despite his being the son of the most powerful family of witches in the Clann. His ability to pull energy from the earth through direct contact with the ground was the only thing that had saved him a few days ago after too long a kiss with me and a fight with his fellow Clann member Dylan Williams. If I hadn’t been able to drag Tristan over to some nearby grass where he could draw replacement energy, Tristan might have died that night.
He frowned but nodded, letting me slide over to sit at the other end of the short couch. As soon as I was settled again with my legs curled up between us, he rested a hand on my ankles below the cuffs of my slacks. His unusual need to maintain constant physical contact with me over the last few hours made me wonder. Did he somehow know what the council had made me agree to? Or had the council’s test simply left him on edge and worried about me?