Eternal Captive: Mark of the Vampire (18 page)

“This isn’t about the Order, Pops,” Nicholas said with venom. “This is about you. Do
you
know where Cruen is?”

Titus looked away, but his voice was level. “Ridiculous. If I did, I would inform the Order.”

Alexander sneered. “See that,
Duro
? The way our father won’t look us in the eyes?”

“He’s lying, covering his ass,” Nicholas said with a bitter chuckle. “He doesn’t give a shit about Lucian. Never did. Or he’d tell us where to find Cruen.”

Alexander pinned Titus with his glare. “Maybe it’s time we go to the Order with our suspicions. They might be interested in helping us learn what he’s hiding.”

“I’m all over that,” Nicholas said with a false bright smile. “And hey, we’re right here at the Hollow. No time like the present to send Daddy dear down the river like he did Lu—”

“Fine! You want Cruen so badly,” Titus interrupted fiercely, his eyes too large, his fangs dropped low, “why don’t you ask your little friend Dillon to take you to him?”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, Titus went as white as the small patches of snow still littered in the grass at their feet.

Alexander grabbed him by the throat. “What did you say?”

“I…must go.”

“You’re not going anywhere!”

But Titus was gone in an instant, flashed away from the Hollow of Shadows, flashed out from under Alexander Roman’s vise grip.

“Duro…”

Alexander whirled around to face his brother, whose black eyes were heavy with confusion and concern.

“What the hell is going on?” he said. “What did he mean by that?”

Alexander shook his head calmly, but his insides were a raging sea of anxiety. Why would Titus mention Dillon? How would he even know her name? “Let’s get back to our mates.”

“D.”

It was the last thing they uttered before flashing from the caves, the Hollow, and the memory of their brother’s face as he went to his fate.

D
illon rarely slept anymore.

If she did, if she managed even a thirty-minute down for the count, there was no true rest in it. Problem was, she dreamed. And it was the heavy, awful kind—and always the same. A black forest, so thick with trees she couldn’t see five feet in front of her face. Even her keen eyesight and sense of smell were lost there in suck-ass dreamland, and all she wanted to do was run. At first the sprint would seem pointless; as if she were after nothing, or running from nothing. Then everything shifted. The trees would begin to sway dauntingly, the color of the forest would fade to a deep purple, and in her cells and her veins, a feeling, a sensation so concentrated, would creep up her legs, her stomach, her chest and neck.

It was the sensation of being prey.

In the moment when the feeling hit her tongue and
nostrils, her eyes would pop, her skin would shake, and her speed would go almost bionic.

She always outran the unseen monster, but every step of the way, every inch, an unseen voice warned her to stop, to hide, to give up before it was too late. Instead, she woke up, breathing heavy, distrusting everyone and wishing she could go back to sleep in peace.

Kind of like now.

Like this very moment.

If she could just sink deeper into the mattress, closer to the warm body beside her, and drain her mind of all thought, she would know contentment. But instead, she sat up and grabbed her clothes off the chair beside the bed.

“Where are you going? Don’t go.”

The warm body had a warmer voice, and Dillon was quick to respond. “I have to meet him.”

The mattress creaked. “Where?”

“The airport.” Dillon glanced down at the clothes in her hand, attempting to mentally shift gears, from lover to bodyguard.

The sigh behind her was audible and spoke volumes about its owner’s disappointment. “Are you both staying here at the house tonight?”

Dillon stood up and put on her pants. “The senator will be here.”

“I could insist that you stay as well.”

Dillon tried not to react, tried not to pause or flinch at the sweet, almost pathetic sound. Senator Bisset’s wife, Abigail, could be a dictatorial bitch at times, but right now her words weren’t a demand; they were a question laced with longing. To Dillon, longing was an
altogether vile and unattractive emotion—especially when outwardly displayed. She needed to take off, like, now.

“Hey there.”

Her shirt over her head, Dillon yanked it down and glanced over her shoulder. “Yeah.”

Abigail grinned at her. She was a beautiful woman—no doubt—but it wasn’t her features that drew Dillon to her. It was never looks that got Dillon’s rocks off with either male or female lovers. It was a quality, something rare, something she found devastatingly attractive and impossible to deny herself when she encountered it.

The lure of someone else’s property.

She grinned. The adrenaline rush of having something that didn’t belong to her made Dillon feel alive and impossible to touch. A total high. An addiction she never deviated from. Well, except for the one moment of idiocy that she engaged in with Sara’s brother, Gray, a week ago on the night she rescued him from the Paleo and the fangs of the Order. But hell, that was just amped-up adrenaline and maybe a teaspoon of concern for the Impure’s sister—shit, how would Sara feel if her little brother came home blood castrated by the Order?

Dillon was able to help him out and she did. No big deal—not the rescue, not even the lip-on-lip, tongue-in-mouth action they’d shared in the shower—or the blood she’d let him suckle right out of her neck before she told him to get lost.

Her hand went to the spot on her neck where the imprint of his fangs still subsisted in its way…the tiny holes still open.

Lounging on the bed she shared with the senator,
Abigail’s baby blue eyes beseeched her charmingly. “You’ll be safe out there?”

Dillon nodded. “Sure.”

“Because that’s all I want for you, darling,” she said, rolling to her back, the covers over her breasts. “To be safe, to come back to me.”

Dillon wondered if the woman meant it in any other way but sexual. Then again, did that really matter?

Wasn’t that the point?

Her cell buzzed on the bedside table and she grabbed it, stared at the readout. Alexander. Again. Why couldn’t the Romans get the message already? She’d paid her debt—she was out, done. And though she would always have a soft spot for Sara, they weren’t her family, no matter how many times the thought had crossed her warped mind. She had no family. Only conquests.

Grabbing her bag, she slung it over her shoulder. “I’ve got to go.”

“Wait a second.”

Only slightly irritated, Dillon raised an auburn brow. Of course there would be a demand. “What?”

The grin was slow and seductive as Abigail dropped the sheet covering her naked flesh and moved catlike to the edge of the bed. “Kiss me good-bye.”

Dillon leaned in and was about to kiss her on the cheek, but Abigail turned her head and laughed. “No, no—not like that. Like this.” Her mouth was soft, her kiss not exactly hungry, but in it there was a point to prove. A predatory point as she ran her tongue across Dillon’s fangs.

Dillon pulled away. She didn’t have time for this, wasn’t going to play the vampire game with Abigail right now.

She headed to the door. After all, it was time to go and protect the woman’s husband.

Lucian had only one thought as he came to—finding relief for his painfully hard prick. He had never felt such a base need to screw something, anything, in his life, and the scent that hovered near his nostrils made him growl and lunge forward.

Female heat.

Attack
.

Take
.

Fuck
.

But he felt the bite of steel dig into his skin. Fury blasted through him; he couldn’t get to it, get over it, sink inside of it. Why couldn’t he get to it? He couldn’t reason it out; he needed to sink his cock into some slick female heat.

He dropped his head back and keened. It was as though he could smell the female’s very insides, her bones, her tongue, the tight passageway of her cunt…

And he wanted it, wanted to consume it—fill it.

“Lucian?”

Shudders rippled through him at her voice. He gasped in pain, and his cock swelled.

“Can you hear me?” she asked. There was a pause. “Do you think he can hear me?”

“I don’t know, mistress,” came another voice.

Male
.

Lucian surged forward, his mouth open, his fangs bared. He would kill that male, rip out his voice box and feast, but something contained him, held him back.

His head twisted and turned. He couldn’t control it, couldn’t control anything.

Where was the female? He wanted her. Only her.

“What can I do?” she said, her voice so pained. “What should I do?”

“Nothing to do now. He has turned.” The male again. Lucian growled, something dripping from his fangs—what was it…blood?

“Just try and keep him calm,” the male continued. “He seems to respond better to your voice than to mine. And if he will take the blood that’s been given that should help.”

“The blood is from the Order?” she asked.

“It should tame him some.”

Kill
.

Lucian’s whole body spasmed, racked with the need to fight and leap and taste and maim. Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he reach that male and tear into his flesh?

“Lucian?” It was her again. Her voice moved through him, making him hungry and lustful—yet she made him able to breathe. “If you can hear me, please open your eyes.”

Sensation moved through his veins, pulsed, ached—then something happened without his consent. Light assaulted him. Not daylight, but active, moving. He squinted against it.

“That’s right,” she said encouragingly. “Look at me. Can you see me?”

He blinked, blinked back the terrible light. It was like seeing the world through a kaleidoscope of blazing color, and it was painful as hell. Like he’d been born again into a frame he didn’t recognize and couldn’t escape.

A face shifted into his line of vision. Dark eyes, long hair like an animal’s…“Do you know what’s happened to you? Lucian, do you know where you are?”

It happened without his thought, again without his consent—but it couldn’t be helped. The scent…the scent was too good to resist.

He reached out, grabbed her arm, and pulled her in.

“Lucian! No!”

But it was too late. His fangs had hit skin, then vein, and her hot, sweet blood was cascading down his throat like a waterfall. Her whimpers did nothing to halt him, yet did everything to raise his pulsating cock to new heights.

Stunned and still shaken up, Bronwyn blew on her wrist for the fourth and final time, then sat back against the wall—the wall the guards had dragged her to when Lucian had gone mad with bloodlust a few minutes ago. Inside her, everything was shaken up, loose, even her skin didn’t feel connected to her bones and muscles.

She closed her eyes for a moment, saw the battle that had raged when Bel and his partner had attempted to free her from Lucian’s iron grasp. The guard had nearly been killed, while his partner had been tossed like a rag doll against the door. The poor male was unconscious on her bed, suffering from several broken bones and a deep gash in his neck.

“I did warn you, Princess. Now do you believe me?”

Her eyes flew open. Lucian. He was awake. After
Bel had knocked him out with a strike to the head, he’d lain there on the floor, unconscious, her blood dripping from his full lips. And now, here he was, sitting up, alert, his almond eyes almost…almost—eased? Was it possible? Did he actually appear alert? Concerned?

“Lucian?” she whispered, his name feeling different on her tongue somehow.

“Yeah. I’m here. I don’t know how, but I’m here. And I feel like a bastard.”

“You feel?” She leaned forward, keeping her voice low so she wouldn’t wake Bel, who slept near the fire. “What do you mean, you feel?”

He opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head. “I am a Breeding Male. I know this, and yet…something has calmed inside of me.”

He still wore the clothes she’d fetched for him at the house in SoHo, but they were pretty tattered now. The shirt was torn open in the front, the buttons gone, no doubt scattered about on the floor somewhere, his chest revealed to her gaze. She swallowed tightly, the smooth, pale skin stretched over hard, tense muscle momentarily reminding her of their time on the island, of his chest, his belly against hers. Her gaze lifted, hoping his eyes didn’t hold the same fire, but his face, even with all the hard angles, appeared the calmest she’d seen him in a while.

She asked, “You don’t feel the hunger, the lust anymore?”

“Not like I did.” He regarded her with a solemn look. “Not as a rabid animal would.”

She wanted to get closer, look deeply into his eyes, but she didn’t dare. Not yet. Not until she was sure he was stable. “Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know. Shit, I don’t know anything, except—” His gaze slammed into hers. “Except that I hurt you, that I scared the shit out of you. I should be gutted for such an act.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You were not…you.”

For a long moment, neither one of them moved, just sat there across from each other as Bel snored near the fire and the sound of night birds landing on the nearby loch stole in from the open window.

“Do you think this sanity will last?” Bronwyn asked, breaking the thoughtful silence with the hopeful sound in her own voice.

“I don’t know,” he said, shifting his position as much as the chains would allow.

The questions that flashed inside Bronwyn’s mind were almost too many to contain. Perhaps the
paven
before her wouldn’t have to be chained forever; perhaps he was not the beast he had been minutes ago. A seed of hope lodged in her chest. “What could’ve prompted the change?” she asked, glancing around the room as she thought out loud. “The hit on the head, or maybe it’s your natural body chemistry—maybe it’s rejecting the gene?”

“Your blood.”

She lifted her head and found his gaze burning like it had when he’d taken her blood on Cruen’s reality. “My blood?”