Found, a Vampire Romance (3 page)

The moment was perfect, almost too perfect, and too relaxed. Dorian knew it couldn’t last, but he couldn’t help but savor it for now.

Afraid any movement on his part would break the spell, he did nothing for a moment, said nothing.

Quiet fell around them, comforting... healing. He could feel the monster in him retreating further.

He closed his eyes and lowered his forehead to her shoulder. Her hair brushed his face, releasing more of her jasmine scent, and warmth radiated off her body.

She was so real, so human, so alive.

How could he let her die?

After a moment, she stirred, forcing him to pull back emotionally and become guarded again. But he didn’t move his body away from hers. He couldn’t bring himself to do that.

“Do you have a phone?” she asked.

Her practical question, when he had been so lost in the moment, startled him. “No.” His answer was abrupt and harsh, and she stiffened again.

He cursed himself for the slip, for losing the bit of trust he had built.

“There’s no service here,” he replied, more softly.

“Oh.” She pulled away so she was facing him with a foot of space between them.

Instantly, he missed the contact, but he knew forcing her to stay beside him would only reinforce any doubts she had. 

Humans could be tricked and even put in thrall, but all of them possessed a certain amount of survival instinct that tickled at their brain when a vampire was near, recognizing in some small way that what appeared to be a human was actually a predator.

Successful vampires, like his father, knew how to overcome that.

“Oh.” An exclamation this time. She placed her hand on her temple and squeezed her eyes shut.

“It hurts,” he said.

She nodded but wouldn’t meet his gaze.

He hesitated, unsure if the pain she felt was a sign the effects of his blood were wearing off or if it was her instincts warring with that blood, trying to overcome its hypnotic qualities, telling her to run. 

“We can’t leave until you are stronger,” he murmured. It was a true statement, but he also didn’t want to leave. In this cave with her, he was in control of his monster. But away from it, away from her, what would he become?

If he took her to that road and watched her walk away, would he immediately sink back into the tormented creature he had been before finding her?

He stared at her, noting the way her hair fell forward on her face, covering one cheekbone, like a veil obscuring his view of a treasured painting.

He clenched his fists.

He couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t let her go, not yet.

But returning to her world was what she wanted most. And he could use that. Using a human’s desire was what any smart vampire would do to get what he wanted, what he needed.

More blood would make her stronger, but it would also tie her more firmly to Dorian.

His brother’s judging face flashed through his mind, but Dorian quashed the image. Cameron’s solution would be to let her die and thus seal Dorian’s death too.

How could that be right for either of them?

He reached for Nancy’s free hand and pulled it into his lap. Then, staring down, he stroked his thumb across her palm.

“Your skin is smooth,” he murmured. His words didn’t matter. His touch and its hypnotic rhythm did.

“Thank you. I…”

She seemed to lose her train of thought. That was good.

“You need to trust me, Nancy. Can you?” He looked up then, willing her to do the same, willing her to meet his gaze with hers.

Slowly, her head rose.

Her eyes were blue, crazy clear blue. His were blue too, but ice blue, cold. Whereas hers were warm like a tropical sea.

His fingers tightened around her hand, but, her gaze locked onto his, she didn’t react.

“Do you trust me now, Nancy?”

Her lips parted. He could see logic and the pull of the vampire blood she’d consumed battling. He said her name again, softer.

The ploy worked— the sound of her name from his lips pushed her over the edge.

She nodded. “I—”

“What?” he edged closer.

“I want more.” He could see that she didn’t know what that meant, didn’t know what she wanted or needed.

A tiny finger of doubt scratched at his conscience. She should know. She should make this choice herself.

Cameron again.
His
words in Dorian’s mind.

Dorian was sick of it. Sick of his choices being someone else’s, his father’s, his brother’s, but never his own. Every decision he made was led by one or the other’s opinions or demands.

And he was tired of it. Right or wrong. Mistake or miracle. It was time to make a choice of his own.

His fangs lowered, and with his mouth closed, he pierced the inside of his lower lip. Blood coated his tongue.

Then he leaned forward, and he pressed his lips to Nancy’s.

Chapter 4

The pain in Nancy’s head had subsided to a dull, rhythmic throb. She lowered her hand.

Dorian was staring at her. He leaned forward. She did too. Then his lips touched hers.

Deep in her mind, a voice yelled,
Stop! Pull away!
But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Instead, she leaned closer and placed her hand lightly, almost tentatively, on his shoulder. His lips moved over hers, soft and questioning, asking rather than demanding.

Desire roared through her, and any hint of fear or worry dissipated.

She clung to his shoulder and parted her lips. His tongue darted into her mouth, and, despite the hunger threatening to consume her, its touch was still gentle.

A tang of something metallic seeped into her awareness.
Blood
, her mind whispered, but her body was too engaged, too caught up in kissing this man she’d only just met, for the concern to harden. With both of her hands grasping his shoulders, she brushed all apprehension aside.

She’d known she needed something, and now she realized it was this— Dorian’s touch and Dorian’s kiss.

A new feeling of power swept through her, a high as if she’d just finished a 10k or beaten her athlete brother to the top of a fifty-foot-tall rock wall.

She was walking on a high wire, and she had never felt more alive.

Her tongue met Dorian’s and moved past it into his mouth. The taste of blood was stronger there, and she savored it. The metallic tinge was gone; a rich earthiness replaced it, like truffles and dark chocolate.

Again, she wanted more.

Dorian’s hands moved to her sides, and his thumbs traced the underside of her breasts. She leaned forward until he was forced to lean back, until she lay on top of him, pushing him down onto the cave’s dirt floor.

Her tongue warred with his. His fingers wove into her hair, against her scalp, holding her face to his. She kneeled over him, on all fours. Tension built inside her. She wanted to tear at this stranger’s clothes and then tear at her own.

She was known for taking risks and being bold, laughing at other people’s fears, but this wave of feeling and complete lack of inhibition was intense even for her. Maybe witnessing death, coming close to it yourself, did this to a person. She didn’t know the reason for her sudden liberation from propriety, and she didn’t want to. She only wanted to embrace this new freedom and use it to help her forget her friends, sitting broken and dead in her car.

Dorian murmured her name. She replied with his and moved her mouth from his face to his neck. He smelled of the canyon and wood smoke, made her wonder how long he had been here, why he was here. Then his mouth moved too. He nibbled on her neck. Each tiny bite, each prick of his teeth, sent frissons of desire shooting through her.

She lowered her body to his and rubbed against him like a catnip-crazed cat. Her body ached, not from the pain of injury now but from need and desire. She needed Dorian to—

She grabbed his shirt in her fists and arched her back so her breasts pressed against his chest and her face rose above his. Her hair fell like a curtain around them. And she stared down at him, willing him to do... something. She wasn’t sure what.

He mumbled a denial of some type.

Not what she wanted to hear. She tightened her grip on his shirt and lifted him off the ground, an impossible feat considering how she had felt hours earlier and proof that she needed what was passing between them.

He didn’t resist her aggression, and when her lips touched his, he returned her kiss, hungry and unyielding this time, telling her the same pent-up need and rage that roared through her body filled his too.

His hands moved to her back, and he pulled her down against him. She fell and he rolled, pinning her between the packed dirt floor and his hard masculine form. He kissed her again, but briefly this time. His lips moved to her neck, and in a soft, rough voice, he cursed. She held still, afraid to move, afraid any twitch or even a breath from her would stop him from whatever he was about to do.

Then he bit her.

Bit her
.
Really and truly
. She felt his teeth pierce her skin and knew there was no other explanation for the pain that followed.

But her alarm was fleeting, immediately replaced by a swell of pleasure. She gasped, and her core tightened. Her breasts ached and tiny moans escaped her lips.

Dorian lapped at her skin, and her body tightened more. She pulled on his shirt until buttons pinged onto the rock walls, but he didn’t move his mouth from her neck. She moaned, and he only shifted her weight, so her sex lay more fully against his.

Unable to stay still, she squirmed, moving her body against his, wishing she could feel his skin bare beneath hers but unwilling to stop him from whatever he was doing now.

He ran one hand down her spine, stroking her, calming her. She closed her eyes and savored being with him. Pleasure spiraled through her. She could feel herself lifting, moving, as if she was floating away, leaving what had happened and all the pain that came with it behind.

She couldn’t make what had happened go away. She couldn’t undo what she had done, but she could deal with both. She could find Rachel and make sure she was okay. And she could go back to her sorority and be different, prod less, support more.

“Nancy,” Dorian murmured, calling her. Immediately she was with him again. His tongue swirled over her skin, and he sucked at her neck.

Her body tingled and tightened. She whispered his name; then she rose up on her elbows and shifted to the side, lowering herself before she could think or acknowledge what she was about to do.

Then she bit him too.

He stilled, and, shocked and surprised by her own actions, she did too, but as the heady, earthy taste of blood touched her tongue, she forgot everything except filling the need for more.

His hands moved to cradle her head, and he held her face to his neck. New waves of pleasure rolled through her, and her body tightened again, then again. She floated overhead, but stayed with Dorian too.

Aware, but happy. Connected, but not weighed down.

She was happy and filled with certainty that everything would be okay. 

Then her orgasm hit, and she forgot everything again. Her mind went blank of everything except Dorian and her and whatever strange magic had just happened between them.

o0o

Dorian stroked Nancy’s hair. After they had exchanged blood, she’d fallen asleep. A normal reaction that he’d helped along by putting her into a bit of a thrall— for the sleep, nothing more. He hadn’t forced her into letting him bite her. He’d tried to resist the temptation.

But the hunger in her had been too strong. It had ignited his own, and unlike his perfect brother, Dorian was weak. He always had been.

His hand stilled, and guilt lanced through him. If he hadn’t been holding the sleeping woman, he would have stood and smashed his fist into the cave’s rock wall.

But that was what he always did— took out his inadequacies on nearby furnishings, cars, trees. And it never helped. It never fixed whatever screw-up he had created. He closed his fingers into a fist. His knuckles turned white. The bones of his hands shone through his skin.

His anger and inability to control it only added fuel for his critics. Only proved they were all right. He was nothing and never would be anything. He had zero potential and even less realized value.

The truth was harsh, but it was there, real.

Nancy stirred. Her lips moved as she muttered a name. “Rachel.”

Her friend, the one Cameron had taken to safety, the one Dorian had wanted to attack.

He swallowed, sick at what he had become and what he had always been. The canyon made him into a monster, but what he was before that, weak and worthless, was no better, no more tolerable.

Cameron was right. Damn him. He was always right, but it was time for Dorian to shut off his resentment for that fact and work to use his brother’s example to improve his own life.

To make his own life.

“Nancy.” He brushed hair out of her face.

When her eyes opened, her pupils barely dilated. It was dark in the cave, dark in the canyon too. A human’s eyes should have dilated, but Nancy had now sampled his blood twice. She was taking on a vampire’s strength, but with strength came weakness.

He had to get her away from him before he was tempted to repeat what had happened the night before.

“We need to leave,” he said.

She
needed to leave. Dorian was resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t be able to go with her. Yes, he could try and leave the canyon, but he couldn’t keep Nancy with him. And once she wasn’t by his side, calming him, the monster would surely return.

Chances were good that whatever life destined for him would be here, in this canyon, for eternity, or until he got his brother Cameron to end that life for him.

“You heard someone?” She sat up. Her gaze still cloudy with sleep, she shook her head and looked around.

“You’re stronger now. We can make it to the road. Someone will find you there.”

“Us. You mean us, right?” She rubbed at her arms as if chilled.

“Are you cold?” He had no coat or blanket to give her, and he knew touching her would be a mistake. He held back, uncertain.