Lisa Renee Jones (5 page)

But his race had evolved, the days of sunlight intolerance and daily blood intake long gone. Blood had become more a necessary monthly supplement.

Fifteen minutes later, they sat at her wooden kitchen table with girlie floral cushions on the back of the chairs. Between them sat a large cheese only pizza, two diet Sprites - because diet Sprite was all she kept in the house - and two plates.

“So do you love Paris?” he asked, sprinkling extra cheese on the two slices lying on his plate.

She swallowed a bite of pizza and looked down at her shirt. “I did until my parents retired there last year.

I miss them horribly.”

“Any siblings?” he asked.

Her expression darkened, and even so, he couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was without even a lick of makeup on. “I had a sister,” she said.

“Had?”

She set her pizza down. “I guess this is where I give you the same kind of full disclosure I wanted from Troy. This case is more personal to me, than not. My sister died ten years ago. Her and several other university students were all killed by a janitor working at the school. Five of them total, died before the police figured out who the killer was. The truth is, I survive the memory of losing my sister by doing my job and doing it well. I try to stay all business, and most of the time, I succeed, but I have to admit that this case is just a little too similar to my sister’s to not feel an abnormally strong connection to it.” For the first time in years, Aiden let himself see the memory of his parents, and his younger sister, lying lifelessly on the ground in front of their home, murdered by a vampire. That same vampire would have killed him and his brothers if not for Marcus saving them and turning them into Wardens. It wasn’t a place he visited. Ever. He didn’t like how it felt. He didn’t like how vividly he could recall their lifeless expressions after so many years.

“You were right about the hunt for Andres being personal to Troy and that’s his story to tell or not tell,” he finally said. “But there was a woman, a betrayal, and a whole lot more there. It isn’t a pretty story.

He’s messed up over the whole thing and he believes wrongly that Andres will somehow give him answers, and I don’t even know to what. He knows better than to get personally involved in a case, and he can’t even see that he is. It’s dangerous Kelly, for him and for you. You can’t help anyone if you aren’t here anymore.”

“I know,” she said. “I do. I’m a logical thinker, a facts person, but even so, sometimes, my past finds a way inside my head.”

“I do know,” he said. “I know because Troy’s story, my story, starts long before Andres. When we were much younger, Troy, myself, and our older brother Evan, came home to find our younger sister and our parents dead.”

Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God, Aiden. How? Who? Why? Oh…I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry. Forget I asked. But was this before or after you got into law enforcement?”

“I wouldn’t have brought it up if I wasn’t going to tell you about it but there isn’t a lot to the story. And it was before, and it was the reason we decided to take on the jobs that we do. They died in what was a random, senseless act of violence.” Which wasn’t a lie. A vampire with bloodlust didn’t chose victims any way but the easy way – whoever was in their path. “My point in this is that I’m going to get you out of this alive, but stay that way. Stop playing detective, or become one so you have a partner to watch your back.”

She studied him a long moment. “Thank you. I should have said that already. I’m glad you were at the bar and I’m glad you’re here now.”

Their eyes locked and held, a charge crackling in the air, their attraction getting stronger, nearly impossible for him to escape. And he wanted to. He wanted to escape because of the very conversation they were having. His world was about pain and death, about hunting monsters he didn’t want her anywhere near. He needed to get this conversation back to the basics, to talk that amounted to nothing, to the basic shared hunger for food. Not the more primal hunger growing inside him for this woman.

He picked up his slice of pizza. “Tell me about Paris.”

She started talking, telling him stories, of poorly spoken French and lost luggage that made him forget the idea was to put small talk between them. Instead, he was laughing at her stories, feeling more and more connected to Kelly.

When they stood up to head back to the bedroom, he grabbed the empty pizza box and put it in the trash inside her pantry, while she put the plates in the dishwasher. They turned toward each other at the same moment, and he reached out and caught her to keep them from colliding. The touch was hot, electric, consuming. He didn’t even consciously think about what came next. One minute they were staring at each other and the next he was kissing her, or more like devouring her. He lifted her, removing the barrier of his height, allowing himself to deepen the kiss, to taste her more fully. Her legs wrapped around his waist, his hand finding her backside where the shirt had lifted, where a tiny strip of a thong did nothing to cover her. He groaned with the realization, and he knew he should stop now, before he couldn’t think straight, before this went too far. Her hand slid into his hair, caressing his neck, the gentle hunger he felt in her arousing the animal that was his vampire. He could smell her arousal, almost taste the sweetness of her blood again. His gums tingled, and he knew he was in trouble.

Aiden set her down on the counter, intending to pull away, to end this now, but somehow his lips traveled the delicate curve of her neck, his hands the curves of her high, full breasts. His fingers found the stiff peaks of her plump nipples against her thin shirt. She gasped at the intimate touch and then moaned as he tugged the delicate peaks.

Hunger roared inside him and he kissed her again, desperate for an outlet to release the heat building inside him, the need to taste her, the need to drink from her. Sex would satisfy him. He’d lived this. And sex was only sex. It meant nothing. He knew this, he’d lived this so long, maybe too long. But in the far reaches of his mind, he knew Kelly was different, that she was already more than sex. He rejected that idea, and shoved her shirt up her body, then tugged it over her head, and tossed it aside.

Her hands went to the counter behind her, the position lifting her full breasts higher. He pressed her thighs apart, his gaze ravishing the little spec of silk in the V of her body. He leaned into her, his hands went to the counter beside her, their eyes connecting. “You’re beautiful,” he said, one of his hands caressing a path up her stomach, over one of her breasts, teasing the stiff rosy bud of her nipple.

Her lashes fluttered, dark half moons, on pale, perfect skin. “Thank you,” she whispered.

He almost laughed at the polite prim words as she sat in nothing but a black thong on her kitchen counter, and he might have teased her, if not for the urgency growing inside him. His gaze slid over her full red lips, then raked over her lush breasts and puckered nipples, his hands following the same path. He dipped his head, brushed his mouth over hers.

He reached down and slid his fingers over the wet silk between her thighs. “Tell me to stop,” he told her, shoving aside the material and caressing the wet heat of her body. “Tell me to stop before we both forget why this is a bad idea.” He pressed inside her, caressed her.

“I don’t normally just hop on a kitchen counter for a man I just met,” she said breathlessly. “And since I really can’t think right now,” she paused, rocking against his hand, then moaning softly. “Why exactly is this wrong again?”

He kissed her, fingers delving deeper insider her, moving with her. She grabbed a hold of him, buried her face in his neck. She smelled like lilac, and female, and he knew she tasted even better, he knew how erotic tasting her would be, how pleasurable it would be for her. And how much he didn’t want to bite her and be forced to erase her memory, defy her trust. He was shaking when she stiffened and then began spasming around his fingers, shaking because he wanted inside her, shaking because he wanted every bit of her, in every way possible, like he hadn’t wanted in a lifetime it seemed.

She laughed nervously, as he slid his fingers out of her. “I think I should be embarrassed that I just, um, had an orgasm in my kitchen.” She ran her fingers over his erection, tilting her chin up to shyly look at him, “Even more so that you didn’t. I want to fix that.” His cell phone vibrated with a text message loudly enough that her gaze went to his hip where it rested.

“Troy?” she asked urgently as he removed the phone and glanced down at the message. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” Aiden said, but he knew it might not have been. He’d let down his guard, compromised her safety.

He scooped up her shirt from the floor and handed it to her. “He’s just checking in.” He hesitated, feeling the temptation to carry her into the bedroom and forget everything and that made him angry. At himself, and at her, for reasons he couldn’t quite identify. All he knew was he was headed for trouble, and he had to put space between them. “Remember when you asked me why this was a bad idea?” Her face paled. “Yes.”

“Troy was just checking in this time, but that might not have been the case. It could just have easily been the bastard who gave you an orgasm and got you killed, and I can’t be that, Kelly. I can’t protect you while I’m fucking you.”

Her jaw dropped, shock and hurt bleeding into her face. That made him want to pull her into his arms and apologize, which was exactly why he wouldn’t, why he couldn’t. She was far safer with Aiden the asshole, who wasn’t a distraction, who wasn’t going to make a stupid mistake like what he could have tonight. She didn’t know it, but he did.

She struggled to get off the counter, hugging the shirt over her breasts. He reached out to help her.

“Don’t,” she ordered. “Don’t help me.” She jumped down and gave him her back, pulling the shirt over her head. It was a cold shoulder he wouldn’t ever forget, no matter how much he deserved it.

No matter how much he didn’t want to deserve it.

She headed out of the kitchen without giving him another look, and he followed like the dog he felt like.

She climbed into the bed, turned out the light, and covered her head.

Aiden settled into the chair in the corner where he would sit and guard her, wishing he was in bed with her.

Kelly blinked into the sunlit room, memories of the night before, of Aiden and her in the kitchen rushing back over her. She squeezed her eyes shut again. What a fool she felt like when he’d declared he couldn’t

‘fuck her and keep her safe’. And that was last night. The morning after a stupid mistake was always worse by a good hundred percent. She wondered if he was still in the chair in the corner, or if he’d gone somewhere to sleep. She inhaled and decided just face him and be done with it. Dread would only make matters worse.

She sat up, her gaze going to the chair, which was empty, then around the room, to find she was alone.

Her nostrils flared with the scent of coffee, followed by a moment of bliss, thinking of a cup of caffeine she didn’t have to make herself. That was, until she realized said ‘cup’ would be in the kitchen, and she really didn’t want to be in the kitchen where memories of last night lingered. She glanced at the clock, appalled at the eleven o’clock hour. She never slept late. Never. There was too much to do to spend her time in bed. Well, unless she was spending it with Aiden, and now that she knew he was a jerk, even that wasn’t tempting. Only…she wasn’t so sure he was a jerk. He took his job seriously, he took protecting her seriously. She didn’t fault him for that, but his delivery of his message of duty had left a lot to be desired.

She threw off the sheet and pushed to her feet, deciding she needed that coffee far more than her pride, considering she’d slept half her Saturday away. Good thing she’d anticipated a late night and cancelled her new Saturday morning yoga habit that her, and one of the neighbors, had started several weeks back.

Kelly headed towards the kitchen, rounding the corner to find more than she’d bargained for. Aiden, and Troy, sat at her table, with everything from her box of Captain Crunch, to her Saturday morning paper, between them.

Both men looked up when she entered the room, and she immediately crossed her arms in front of her chest, wishing for a robe. It wasn’t like there was anything Aiden hadn’t seen at this point, but Troy was a whole other story.

“I thought you two were trying to be discreet,” she said, feeling Aiden’s eyes on her and refusing to look at him. He’d changed clothes and shaved at some point, his light blue t-shirt now a black one. She wondered how she slept through so much activity when she was supposed to be scared for her life. “I’m not one to have a man stay over, let alone, two men.”

“I snuck in before sunrise,” Troy informed her. He’d changed the leather for denim himself, and it made him a little less edgy and intimidating, but not much. “So we’re not worried about a daytime attack, I assume? I should consider myself safe and without the need of bodyguards?”

“You should consider yourself safe because you have bodyguards,” Aiden replied.

Her gaze met his, and she wished she hadn’t. Her stomach somersaulted like she was some sort of shy teenager, and he was the Captain of the Football team. It was ridiculous. Men didn’t make her feel like this. But then, she didn’t spread her legs and pant, on top of her kitchen counter for most men either.

“And,” Troy added, holding up some sort of remote control looking devise, “because I have state-of-theart surveillance equipment set up, complete with silent alarms.” He set the gadget on the table. “Anyone steps on a piece of grass too close to the house, we’ll know it.” He held up the cereal. “Breakfast?”

“I’ll settle for coffee and you two telling me what I’m supposed to do now.” She didn’t move. Somehow, the idea of walking around in her t-shirt, felt very, very wrong now that Troy was here.

Aiden pushed to his feet and walked to the counter, grabbing a mug from her cabinet. “You do what you normally do.” He filled the mug, and then removed her favorite creamer from the fridge. Suddenly, he was in front of her, blocking her from Troy’s view and handing her the coffee. He opened the creamer and started to pour. “Say when.”