Primal Instincts (26 page)

She went on. “He went into the marines as soon as we graduated. He was the son of hippies whose hobby was making candy, but he always wanted to be in the military.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Why did you pretend to be someone you aren’t with this Patrick? Didn’t he deserve the truth? Why do you want to be mortal?”

“How many questions do you want me to answer at once?” she demanded. “You asked about my mortal lover; I’m telling you about him.” She swallowed the aching urge to cry. “I know you deserve to know about him. But all these other things are more than I can deal with right now. And I don’t want to be mortal,” she answered. She closed her eyes but couldn’t keep the tears from leaking out. “Maybe I did pretend to be one for a while, with him. We were married in Las Vegas just after he got his first posting. My family wasn’t invited. His wasn’t, either.”

“Your Matri accepted that?”

“I never told her. Besides, as long as he never tasted my blood, our being together meant nothing to her, at least for a while. If we’d had more time together, I would have told him. But since I could never let myself bond with him—”

“Females can’t bond with mortal males,” he said, interrupting. “It’s not biologically possible.”

She laughed softly. “A couple of days ago, no one admitted that female vampires and werewolves can bond, but look at Sid and Joe. I don’t know if I could have bonded with Patrick—”

“You were born to bond with me.”

He was so sure of himself, of the truth of what he said. His hands moved possessively over her. His lips touched her throat, his tongue
flicked over her pulse. She felt a brief caress of fang, a few sharp pricks. Pleasure reverberated from him, through her, and back to him. The erotic cycle was like nothing she’d felt with anyone else.

“See what I mean?” he asked.

Primes were so damn romantic.

And maybe he was right. Maybe the Über-Prime was the only one the Bitch Queen Flare could share her life with.

“I don’t know if we can bond with mortals,” she said. “I do know that we don’t dare.”

“Survival of the species.”

“Lie back and think of the next generation, as we’re taught in vampire school.”

He laughed at her bitterness. “No vampire female ever just lies back.”

He kissed and nipped a line across the top of her breasts. It felt so very good. She tried to stay still, but her breathing quickened and her craving body rose to meet his skilled touch.

“All right, we enjoy sex,” she admitted. “Do you want to have sex or talk right now?” she asked.

Because she could not do both at once, especially
not when the subject was Patrick. That she could talk about Patrick with this Prime and also want to make love to Tobias amazed her. This moment had been impossible to imagine a few days before. She was happy for this moment, and that too would have seemed impossible before now.

There was a glow of lust in the big brown eyes that gazed into hers, but he tamped down the hunger. His expression became calm and steady, though the lust wasn’t completely gone. From either of them, Francesca acknowledged.

“Ever,” he said. And they both laughed. “Tell me what Patrick has to do with your war with your mother,” he said when they were serious again.

She discovered that she was dying to explain this to him. “You’re a casualty of our war yourself now. I can’t apologize for that.”

“No need. Because I’m no victim. Was Patrick?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Not really. I made the choices about our relationship, and I was happy with them. With him.”

“Could it be that you were a little too much in control with your mortal?”

Francesca winced, but she answered honestly. “Probably. I didn’t think about it at the time, but we Clan females are used to having everything our way, aren’t we?”

“Not with me.”

Time would tell. A bonding usually ended up as a relationship between equals. The battles in between would be interesting. But before they could work through the future, Tobias deserved to know about her past.

“I moved in with him off base when he was assigned to train on helicopters at Twentynine Palms—”

“He was a jarhead, eh? Good for him.

She stroked Tobias’s cheek. “Damn it, I did not want to be attracted to another war fighter.”

He turned to kiss her palm. This simple brush of lips sent lightning through her.

“How am I supposed to tell you anything if you keep making me want to mate?”
And stop looking so smug!

Patrick and your Matri. Show me.

Her memories opened to him without any more prompting.

Francesca had no memory of putting down the phone, but there it was on the table, buzzing at her like an angry wasp. The light outside the windows was fading. Odd. It had been noonday bright when she answered the ringing phone. She hadn’t put it down, had she? She’d dropped it. She put her hand on the phone, and it all came back to her.

“Your husband’s been in an accident. Two copters crashed into each other on a training flight. He’s hospitalized with a broken neck and third-degree burns.”

Why hadn’t she known? Why hadn’t she felt it happen to him?

Why had her being filled with hopeless grief and everything else gone blank around her? How long had she been this way? She had to get to Patrick! She had to help him!

A knock came on the door as she snatched car keys out of her purse. She knew who was there before she flung the door open on Primes. They’d never approached her, never spoken to her, but these Reynard Clan Primes had been shadowing her for years, guards assigned to protect a precious female. This time she was glad to see them.

“We have to get to the base hospital,” she told them. “Something awful has hap—”

“Come with us, Lady Francesca.”

They stepped forward, blocking the door. Their senses were tightly guarded, their presence suddenly ominous. One grabbed her arm when she tried to dodge around them.

One of them held a thickly padded envelope out to her. “From Matri Anjelica.”

She didn’t give a damn. “Let me go. Let me out of here. I have to get to Patrick!”

She fought the Prime holding her, but her mother
had picked her guards well. There was no getting away from this one.

“Don’t you understand? He’s dying!”

Shouting didn’t do any good. Telepathic orders did no good. They showed no sympathy for her tears.

The one with the envelope finally ripped it open. A folded piece of paper and a ruby ring spilled out onto his palm.

Francesca saw the ring through her tears. It belonged to her mother.

Oh, shit.

The Prime took her hand and made her take the ring, forcing her fingers to wrap around the horrible thing. It was heavy and cold—with symbolism and threat.

He unfolded the paper. She caught a glimpse of her mother’s handwriting as he did. He read, “ ‘By order of the Matri’s Ring, I, Anjelica, Matri of Clan Reynard, require that Lady Francesca Reynard return immediately to Citadel Reynard to accept her duties as heir and daughter of the Clan.’” He let this sink in, then read on. “ ‘I mean it, Flare, or I wouldn’t have sent the ring. It’s time for you to pick a Prime and give me grandchildren.’”

“No! Patrick!”

She wasn’t going anywhere except to her husband.

But the Primes held her. They forced her out the door and into the back of a car. They held her down
while the car drove away. She screamed and thrashed, bit and clawed. But it did no good.

“To this day she swears her calling me to the Citadel as Patrick was dying was a horrible coincidence and that those damned Primes exceeded their authority.” The memory of the life she’d been forced to abandon clawed at her soul. “Goddess damn it, I hate that woman.” Her voice came out raw from her aching throat.

“You’ve been screaming.” Tobias’s voice was close to her ear. His breath brushed her cheek, and he wiped tears from her face.

He was stretched out beside her, his arms around her. His size and warmth comforted her as she worked her way back to the present. She stared at the ceiling and breathed in reality. Reality was Tobias. His touch. His presence, physical and psychic, equally strong, equally seductive.

This is now
, he whispered in her mind. His hands moved over her, not gently, not comfortingly, but stirring hunger stronger than the pain.
Live in the now. With me.

He wasn’t promising to take the pain away, not offering an alternative or a perfect future. He was simply offering himself.

It meant everything in the world to her.

All right
, she answered.

Francesca turned into Tobias’s embrace and sank her fangs deeply into his flesh.

At least she wasn’t cold. She was scared, exhausted, totally pissed off, but Saffie was no longer freezing cold now that they’d switched from the helicopter to the private jet. The helicopter ride had been hellish; the Prime pilot was a cackling crazy, riding the storm like it was a wild horse. She’d crouched on the cold metal deck and wrapped herself up in a ball until they landed on an airfield beyond the storm front. There’d been heavily armed Primes pressed in all around her, but worst of all was that Greg stayed close beside her with his hand on her shoulder. She’d wanted to jerk away from him and burned to rip him to shreds.

But she was a mortal surrounded by hostile vampires. She’d been carefully taught that in such a situation the best thing for her to do was to stay passive, keep silent, keep her head down, her manner hopeless, and give absolutely no indication she might have
some skills.
I’m just a helpless little mortal female, lalala . . .

The Primes other than Greg completely ignored her. She appeared to ignore him even though she was acutely aware that he had possession of her backpack with all the gear that held Dark Angel intel. He was a smart one and knew what he had. What exactly was his role in this? During the helicopter flight she suspected he was also a prisoner, even though Dragomir didn’t have this other Tribe Prime restrained in any way.

She recognized her kidnappers’ leader as Dragomir, the Prime master Greg had asked her about. Greg gave no indication of knowing the mercenary leader. It was all very strange. She was dying to find out what was going on, and now that she’d been brought into the luxurious main cabin of the jet along with Greg, Dragomir, and a couple of bodyguard types, she hoped to find out information she could use to plan her escape as well as feed her curiosity.

She got pushed into a seat on the side of the cabin. Dragomir gestured for Greg to join him at seats around a table. After the jet took off one of the guards set drinks down on the table for them.

“We are on our way to California,” Dragomir told Greg. “The weather is much nicer there.” He took a sip from his glass. “Blood vodka. Have you tried it,
Gregor of the Minotaur?”

“And why are we heading to California?”

“Business, of course. My principal has need of Harpy Primes’ expertise.”

Saffie hid a smile. She hoped their destination was Los Angeles. The Crew was there. Dad was there.

Greg took a sip of the pale red liquid, making it look like a ritual. “Pleasant,” he said. “Thank you—Lord Dragomir?”

The Master Prime laughed, a deep, booming, falsely cheerful sound. “That’s right, we haven’t been introduced. I am Dragomir, and I have heard about you. I was glad to hear that your former Master sent you to retrieve my property.”

Saffie pressed her lips together hard to keep from gasping at the word
property.
She didn’t doubt Dragomir was talking about her. She wanted to demand to know what he was talking about, but she kept her mouth shut.

Greg asked the question for her. “How is the female your property? My Master told me to bring her to him.”

Dragomir’s smile didn’t go anywhere near his eyes. “So that she could be returned to me. Your former Master called to tell me she still lived. Since I was passing through the neighborhood, I decided to reclaim her myself.”

Still lived?
That hit her like a punch to the stomach.
What did he mean by that?

As much as she wanted to know, Greg didn’t ask. “My
former
Master?” he asked. He looked more curious than concerned.

Of course the Tribe boy was going to turn the conversation to himself.

“I’ve heard that you are smart and an opportunist. Your former Master doesn’t appreciate your talents the way I will. You can work for me, or you can die. Yes or no?”

Greg lifted his glass in a toast. “Happy to be on board, Master.”

Another false laugh from Dragomir. “Welcome, Gregor. Tribe Harpy is always looking for qualified Primes.”

Because you’re a bad leader who keeps getting your boys killed
, Saffie thought. Her father would never have put the Crew at risk with that crazy helicopter stunt. Apparently there was some personal vendetta involving her, but you didn’t put your troops in danger for your own private agenda.

Of course she hoped Dad wouldn’t see rescuing her from this bunch as a private matter. She’d be perfectly happy if he brought the whole Crew along, despite the teasing she’d get for having to be rescued. If she didn’t think of a way out of this on her own first.

Nothing she could do but listen until the plane landed.

Francesca had never been so happy. She couldn’t imagine anything better than to be where she was right now, or anyone better to be with.

Tobias’s body covered her, a hot, hard-muscled blanket that kept Francesca pinned to the bed, and she didn’t mind it a bit. Blood and sex had come together so perfectly between them that she didn’t know where she ended and he began, and didn’t care. Her body was so sated she was ready to melt into the bed. If this two-ton boulder of a male wanted to sleep the night away on top of her, she was happy to oblige.

She rested her hand on the base of his spine, pressing him even closer to her. There was something so endearing and enduring in the way his head rested on her breasts. It was where he belonged.