Danger Calls (24 page)

He locked the van, pocketed the keys and returned to the dirt road, following it back to the parking area. When he arrived, Melissa was sitting on the chair. Diana and another man stood before her. As he approached, his sister rushed up to him and embraced him tightly. “Are you okay?”

“I am, but Ryder needs a little help.” He inclined his head in the direction of the road. “Up a ways. He's in his van.”

Melissa was seated and giving her report to a tall blond man. Sebastian noted the NYPD Detective's shield and assumed it was Peter Daly, Diana's friend. A moment later, a local sheriff approached, his pad in hand.

Diana chose that time to excuse herself. “This is
your
collar, remember. I need to go.”

Sebastian handed her the keys and she walked off.

Daly watched her with interest. A decidedly interested kind of interest, Sebastian thought. When the other man's gaze accidentally collided with his, a flush came to his cheeks. “Detective Daly, I presume,” Sebastian said and offered his hand.

“Sebastian Reyes. You look a lot like your sister,” the detective said. “Are you as stubborn?”

Sebastian chuckled and kneeled by Melissa. When she smiled despite her bruises, he knew she would be fine. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“I'm fine, thanks to you. Are you okay?” Melissa reached up and brushed back a lock of his hair, exposing the bruise and cut at his brow. She winced.

“I'll be okay once we know Sloan won't be bothering us again.”

He glanced back to the stable, which by now was engulfed in flames despite the efforts of a number of men with hoses. “He ran back in there.”

Peter tracked his gaze. “If he's in there, he's toast.”

“Could he have made it to the woods?” Melissa asked.

“We have men searching the area now,” the sheriff interjected and immediately launched into a series of questions.

Melissa slipped her hand into Sebastian's as she answered, and he knew all was right with them. Gazing back up the road toward the van, he hoped all was well with Ryder and Diana.

D
iana cradled Ryder in her arms. He was still bleeding and although healing, weak from his injuries. Very weak. From what she could see, at least four bullets had struck him. “I can help,” she said, brushing back a lock of dark hair plastered to his pale forehead with the sweat that came whenever his system was taxed.

Ryder shook his head. “There's some medicine—”

“You know that's not what you need.”

Gently she eased him up, a little afraid of what she was proposing, but undeterred by her fear. While she held Ryder with one hand, she moved her hair to bare her neck.

“What if I can't stop?” he said, his voice lower with the edge of the animal in its tone. Despite his question, he nuzzled the side of her neck and took a deep breath as if inhaling her scent.

“You've stopped before.” She twined her fingers through the hair at the back of his head, bracing herself.

“Once,” he replied, and licked the side of her neck, tasting her. “I had more control then. Not like now. Now…”

Diana didn't get a chance to reply as he sank his fangs into her. Searing pain blazed along her nerve endings. She gripped the back of his head tightly and called out his name. The pain was gradually replaced by a strange and wondrous languor that travelled along her veins and spread throughout her body.

“Ryder,” she murmured again and clung to him. Passion replaced the pain, tightening her insides with need for him.

Ryder fed on the sweetness of her, drawing her life's blood into him, merging it with his. Her warmth spread throughout his body, recharging him with its energy. With each sip, he felt stronger, experienced a sensual charge. With each sip, her body grew more limp. He battled the desire to keep on sucking until there was barely any life. Until he could offer up his own life's blood and make her like him. Bind her to him forever.

He ripped away from her, stared down at her pale face and wide unfocused eyes. Licking her blood from his lips, he switched positions so he now held her gently, embracing her until the effects of his bite ebbed and she stirred.

“Ryder?” Diana sat up and gripped her head with her hands as she wobbled a little from the loss of blood. Taking a deep breath that steadied her, she ran her hand over the bullet holes in his shirt. Beneath the holes there was nothing but smooth perfect flesh. On the floor by his feet were the bullets his body had expelled during the healing process. He picked one up and handed it to her.

She examined it for a moment before meeting his gaze again. “Will it always be like this? This complicated?”

Ryder wished he could tell her that it would be different. That things would one day be simpler. But as much as he wanted to do that, he couldn't.

Just as Ryder recognized that Melissa couldn't tell Sebastian that their lives would one day be different. Be normal.

As Diana slipped her arms around him, seemingly in acceptance of their fate, Ryder hoped Sebastian would be as strong.

 

After much protest, the doctor in the E.R. released both Melissa and Sebastian, although he made an issue of telling them their leaving was against medical advice.

Detective Daly had hung around, waiting to make sure they were fine and to tell them that Sloan had never gotten out of the building. When the doctor let them go, the NYPD detective was kind enough to drive them back to the apartment.

As Sebastian followed Melissa in, he wondered if Ryder was okay and if Diana was upstairs with him. If everything was all right with them.

As if anything could ever be all right in the crazy world into which both he and his sister had landed. He must have paused, for Melissa turned and looked at him. “Are you okay?”

He tightened his hold on her hand and said, “This is what it will always be like, isn't it?”

Fear clouded the blue of her eyes. She slipped her hand from his. “Yes.”

He took a step closer to her and cradled her cheek, knowing what she was thinking. “I was scared today. So scared.”

“So was I,” she admitted. “But Sloan is dead. Detective Daly said no one could have survived that fire.”

“But the journal is still missing. And Ryder is alive, which means—”

“I'm still his companion and no closer to finding out what my father had discovered,” Melissa finished. A heavy sadness stole into her at that realization, at the possibility that Sebastian also finally understood the nature of her life and all the hardships it presented. She wrapped her arms around herself and walked away from him. Better to leave of her own accord before he broke it off.

Sebastian tenderly grasped her arm to stop her flight. “I know you don't need a hero—”

“You
were
a hero today,” she said.

“No, not today, Melissa.”

Melissa gave him a confused look and Sebastian continued. “Today, I was just a normal guy doing what was expected of him. What any normal guy would probably have done in the same situation. But all those other days—the everyday days when your hours are long and things are tough, when I'm by your side and make you smile…. That's when I'm a real hero.”

She did what Sebastian had hoped she would. She smiled. A bright, gleaming smile that brought a rich, deep sapphire color to her wondrous eyes. She finally understood that he was there to stay. “You saved me when you came into my life,” she said.

“Then we're even, ' cause you saved me, as well.”

Sebastian didn't wait for her answer. He scooped her up into his arms and took her to the bedroom.

Melissa slipped her arms around Sebastian's shoulders as he lay beside her on the bed. She ran her hand tenderly over the purplish bruise over his brow. Below it, two stitches held closed the ragged cut inflicted by Sloan's blow. “That's going to leave a scar.”

He brushed his lips against hers and said, “Adds to the whole bad-boy mystique, don't you think?”

She smiled, and peace replaced the earlier sadness that had gripped her. With this man by her side, they could handle anything. In between kisses, she managed to say, “The E.R. doctor said we should wake each other every couple of hours.”

He eased away from her, his grin broad. The dimple along his cheek deep. “Sorry, no can do.”

Puzzled, Melissa asked, “Why?”

Sebastian said nothing, just rolled her beneath him.

He didn't plan on letting her get any sleep.

Melissa could think of no better way to celebrate the start of their new life together.