Darkest Desire of the Vampire: Wicked in Moonlight\Vampire Island (Harlequin Nocturne) (23 page)

“Luana.” As he crossed the clearing, something seemed to break inside Luana as she heard Marcus’s voice. She began to sob, falling limply in Sloane’s arms. Isla didn’t trust that the vampire wasn’t trying to trick them. Neither did Sloane, it seemed, who kept his hold tight.

“I have nothing left.” When Luana lifted her head, Isla gasped with alarm—blood tracked down the vampire’s cheeks, striping her golden skin with crimson. Sloane saw her alarm.

“Vampires cry blood.” He tensed, seeming ready for her rejection. After everything that had just happened, tears of blood were not as shocking as they could have been.

Marcus didn’t appear to even notice the exchange between the pair. His pale eyes were focused entirely on Luana, and his face reflected incredible patience and love.

“You have me.” As he spoke, Isla saw why he had been following the vampire so diligently—to protect her, yes, but also to save Luana from her own destructive insanity.

Lifting his wrist to his mouth, Marcus tore the skin open with his fangs. His blood, dark and thick, welled to the surface.

“Can you please hold her mouth open for me?” Marcus’s voice was soft, his eyes focused on Luana.

“What are you doing?” Isla was still ready to be attacked. Her stare was riveted to the viscous vampire blood.

“Vampire blood acts as a sedative to another vampire.” Sloane loosened his hold on Luana with one arm, reaching over her jaw to open her mouth for Marcus. She shook her head before he could hold her lips apart.

“I’ll do it myself. I won’t hurt Marcus. I’ll do what he wants.” Parting her lips, she lapped at the blood in Marcus’s wound, cleaning the cut with her tongue.

His skin healed within moments, the incision from his fangs shiny and pink. “I’ll take care of her now. You two go now.”

Isla still couldn’t quite believe that it was over, not even when Luana sagged in Sloane’s arms and was passed off to Marcus, who cradled her gently.

This woman—this vampire—had given birth to someone long ago in Isla’s family tree. No matter what she had done to Isla, she was glad that the vampire hadn’t been killed.

“Why would you do this?” Sloane only relaxed once the drugging effects of the vampire blood had taken hold on Luana. Striding across the small space that separated them, he caught Isla in his arms, not unlike the way that Marcus held Luana. Strange new strength or not, she was only too happy to be lifted off her feet and pressed against his firm chest.

Marcus looked down at the now unconscious vampire in his arms. His smile was bittersweet.

“I have loved Luana for a long time. Her relationship with Lucian has never bothered me. And you don’t stop loving someone when they become unwell.” He lifted his head and cast a level look at the other couple.

“I have cleaned up after her and Lucian for centuries. It is what I will do again now. But you need to go—it is not safe for you here anymore.” As if coming down from an extreme high, Isla felt fatigue washing throughout her entire body. She sagged against Sloane, aware that the two men were conversing but not able to follow the conversation.

Still, she had one lingering question.

“You said that vampire blood acts as a sedative to other vampires. I—everyone seems to think that I’m a natural vampire. So why didn’t my blood drug Sloane?”

With the unconscious vampire cradled in his arms, Marcus looked back at Isla and shook his head. “There aren’t enough natural-born vampires to know. The last one I heard about was born centuries ago. I do not know why you still breathe, where your strength came from or how long you will live. I am sorry.”

Isla murmured when Marcus left with Luana and Sloane lifted her completely off her feet and ran jaggedly to his boat. It was so strange to think that it had been so close all this time.

Setting her down on the lower deck, Sloane moved swiftly to the control panel, his movements no longer restricted to what she now saw must have been an attempt at appearing human. Soon they were chugging away from the beach, picking up speed as they went.

“I should take you home.” Isla shuddered at the thought. She would have to confront her mother at some point—the mother who had kept her vampire ancestry from her deliberately, who had made her feel unloved her entire life because of it—but she needed some time first.

“No.” Her voice was panicked. She had known of the existence of vampires for mere hours. She couldn’t imagine having a discussion about them with her mother.

Not yet.

“Where should I take you then?” Isla hadn’t even heard Sloane approach—she was asleep on her feet. She eyed him warily, not sure what answer he wanted her to give.

“Well, logistics first. That’s what I’m good at, after all.” And she now saw that who she was wasn’t that bad, after all. “My passport is still in my cabin at the resort.”

Sloane smirked. “A perk of being a vampire, of living so long, is connections with shady individuals who can obtain legal documentation. We’ll buy you a new passport. It’s not a problem.”

“Well, then.” Inhaling deeply, Isla told Sloane the truth.

“I want my damn vacation.” Sloane barked out a laugh, and she couldn’t help but join in.

“Any requests?” The smile that played over the vampire’s lips was one that she wanted to see for as long as possible.

Isla bent forward and pressed a kiss against his chest, then splayed her fingers over the place her lips had just touched. She hadn’t noticed before, but there was no discernible heartbeat there.

“Yes, someplace as different from here as possible. Like Iceland.” She shuddered lightly before her laugh dissolved into Sloane’s.

No matter how crazy her life had gotten in the past few days, she wouldn’t have gone back for anything.

She had Sloane.

For the first time in her life, she was truly happy.

Epilogue

I
t was an entire week before either of them discussed what had happened on the island. In that week they talked, ate, made intense love and put as much space between themselves and Vampire Island as possible.

They would go back someday, she knew. Isla wanted to talk to Marcus and wanted to ask questions about her heritage.

As long as Luana was far away while she did.

They had just docked in a harbor in Maryland—they hadn’t quite made it to Iceland yet. Sloane had left the boat just long enough to procure crab cakes and locally made root beer for them both.

Like a couple who had been together for years, they wanted nothing more than a quiet night.

“I want you to turn me into a vampire.” Sloane had just bitten into his crab—Isla had been fascinated to learn that vampires enjoyed food as much as humans—when she finally said what was on her mind.

Sloane eyed her narrowly, chewing and swallowing before he replied.

“You
are
a vampire, Isla.” Isla inhaled deeply—she had her speech all planned. But what came out of her mouth was not rehearsed.

“I want to be with you. Forever. We don’t know anything about me, about my condition. I still breathe. I still have a pulse. So I might still die, and I can’t handle the idea.”

Sloane sipped at his root beer, then reached over and pulled Isla into his lap. She buried her face in his chest.

She had already decided that she wasn’t going back home. She would rebuild her relationships with her family once she’d had some space and was strong enough not to buckle beneath their pressure.

She didn’t know what she would do for work, but she had enough savings for another week or two. So far Sloane hadn’t let her pay for a thing, muttering something about being the head of a major company and wanting to share everything that he had with her.

“I can’t do it, Isla.” Sloane stroked his hand over her thigh, teasing with the hem of her sundress. She shook her head vehemently at his words, even as she arched into his touch.

“Please.” She was haunted by nightmares in which she was bound and helpless and Lucian drank her dry. She wanted to be fully vampire so that she was never that helpless again.

“I understand now that it wasn’t my specific bite that made Luana insane. It’s been an enormous relief not to carry that guilt around anymore.” Sloane stroked the same patch of her skin over and over again.

“But I have no idea what would happen if I tried to do what you’re asking to someone who is, for all intents and purposes, a vampire already. I won’t risk it. Once I thought that I loved the girl Ana was. But what I felt for her is pale, pale pink compared to the crimson that I feel for you.”

Isla shivered at the words. The bond that was between them was, so Sloane had told her, a vampire mating bond. Still new, still forming but very much there.

It connected them on a level so deep that if one of them were to die, she wasn’t sure what would happen to the other.

“That strength that you found in the woods...I noticed you haven’t tested it this week. You’re afraid of it, and that’s okay for now. But you need to accept that, despite the difference, you are as much a vampire as I am.” Furrowing her brow, Isla turned to look into his face.

Those golden eyes were set and serious.

“You might die in sixty years. Given how quickly you heal, I am inclined to think not, but you might.” Isla gaped at Sloane’s brutal honestly, not liking where he was going with it.

“I don’t want to leave you.” Sloane nuzzled his lips into her neck, and she felt frustration and sadness move through her.

“You won’t, Isla. We are mated now.” He didn’t sound nearly as upset as she thought he should, and she glared at him.

He sighed with exasperation.

“One vampire cannot outlive their true mate. Luana and Lucian—their relationship was not that of mates. It was twisted. Ours, though, is the rare and real thing. When one of us dies, the other will, too. We will pass on to the next world together. And though I still think you’re going to live a very, very long time, if you don’t, I will have been happy to have lived as many years as possible with you.”

Sloane kissed her fingers, and a surge of emotion washed over Isla. The unknown was terrifying, but she had lived her life without the promise of immortality. She would wrap her head around this. And they would know within a few years, after all, whether she was immortal or not.

She would age, or she wouldn’t. They would deal with it then.

Swamped with love, she threw her arms around Sloane’s neck and smothered him with kisses. The small kisses turned into one long, heated press of the lips, and his fingers surged higher under her skirt, to the heat of her.

“I take that to mean that you still want me.” Sloane’s laugh was breathless as she straddled his hips, rocking her pelvis against him.

He sucked in a breath when he found that she wasn’t wearing underwear.

“Oh, I want you, all right.” Isla pressed herself into his touch, smiling and breathless.

“I want you forever.”

* * * * *

We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Nocturne story.

You harbor otherworldly desires….
Harlequin
Nocturne
stories delve into dark, sensuous and often dangerous
territory, where the normal and paranormal collide.

Enjoy two new stories from Harlequin Nocturne every month!

Visit
Harlequin.com
to find your next great read.

We like you—why not like us on
Facebook:
Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks

Follow us on Twitter:
Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks

Read our blog for all the latest news on
our authors and books:
HarlequinBlog.com

Subscribe to our newsletter for special
offers, new releases, and more!

Harlequin.com/newsletters

ISBN: 9781460313749

HARLEQUIN BOOKS

WICKED IN MOONLIGHT
Copyright © 2013 by Tabitha Bird

VAMPIRE ISLAND
Copyright © 2013 by Lauren Hawkeye

All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical,
now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

www.Harlequin.com