Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) (3 page)

Again the vacant nods and from the back, the big one he had tossed around started to whimper again.  It didn’t look like he even knew he was making a sound.  Suddenly, Philip wasn’t enjoying himself anymore.  He just wanted them gone.  His head was starting to pound and he was starting to think about his chat with Caroline again.  He didn’t want to waste any more time on these sickos.  He just wanted them to go somewhere else.

“Good.  Now get the hell out of here.  Go on, get.”

They ran as fast as their legs could carry them, all shoving each other and tripping every few steps.  Philip watched them go with a tired kind of disgust.  He waited for a few moments to make sure that none of the three would get it into his head to double back for some heroic last stand, and when he was completely sure that they were gone he walked slowly towards the dumpster.

He could still hear the girl’s rapid breathing, smell her sweet perfume mingled with fear-tinged sweat.  He didn’t want to make her any more afraid than she already was, but he did want to see that she was OK.  After all, it had been in the interests of saving her that he had involved himself with those low lives in the first place.

He still couldn’t explain to himself why he had done it and that made him feel like he had to see her.  He was hoping it might make him understand and, if he was being honest with himself (something he wasn’t all that interested in doing at the moment), he was so drawn to her that the idea of
not
getting a look at her was almost painful.  He approached slowly, God only knew if she had fashioned herself some kind of a weapon while she was holed up behind that dumpster, but there was no way he wasn’t going to see her.

“Hey.”

It was such a nonchalant response that he had to laugh.  He wasn’t easily caught off guard, but that was the best way he could think of to describe his feelings about his current situation.  And it wasn’t just the fact that he had played vigilante justice with those meatheads or this girl’s strangely calm response to his approaching her after they fled.

She was also the most phenomenally beautiful woman he had ever seen.  She was petite but with the kind of body any man in his right mind would stop to take a second look at.  She had soft, supple skin the color of fresh cream and thick dark curls piled up on top of her head in a messy bun (made was much messier after her recent ordeal). 

Wide, intelligent green eyes peered up at him with an expression he couldn’t possibly begin to read and her perfect bow of a red mouth quivered so lightly that a less perceptive being would never have noticed it.  But Philip did.  He noticed everything about her.  He wanted her, more than he had wanted anything in a long, long time.

CHAPTER TWO

“Hey.”

God, it was such a stupid thing to say, but what exactly was she supposed to say?  Thank you for stopping those three assholes from assaulting and then probably killing me behind this dumpster?  I’m sorry and I’ll try to be more careful next time?  Somehow those things just didn’t seem like they would cut it and she didn’t know how else to handle what had just happened to her, and so she said the first thing she could think of.

She knew the man standing before her probably thought it was weird, but so what?  She thought he was pretty weird, too.  He had already come out and said as much to those men, and unless he was just a very good actor, she was pretty sure this handsome stranger had the potential to be a mass murderer if he were in the wrong kind of a mood.  Not that she wasn’t grateful for his help because she was, she just wasn’t too worried about what kind of a first impression she was making.

“Hey yourself.  Let me help you up.”

“Help me up?”

“Yes, help you up.  That ground is dirty and the water is soaking you through.  Even with the warmth of this spring air, you’ll catch a chill if you just sit there all night long.”

Megan Wright looked down and was somehow surprised to find herself still sprawled on the concrete behind the hulking dumpster she had been thrown behind.  Her legs had gone completely numb from being sat on for too long but somehow it still hadn’t registered that she was the one sitting on them.

Shock,
she thought,
you’re in shock, that’s all.  And there could be a concussion as well.  That was a pretty hard fall you just took.

Fall.  A pretty hard fall.  She smiled to herself disgustedly for having thought about it in those terms.  She was only making excuses, trying to make things appear nicer and less grotesque than they really were.  She hadn’t just taken a little spill while she was being careless.  She had been attacked, for Christ’s sake.  There was nothing wrong with admitting it to herself. 

Actually, she thought it could be dangerous if she didn’t.  Not only would it make it harder for her to deal with and get over what had happened, but it would only help her to convince herself that it was OK for her to keep paying so little attention to where she was going and what kind of danger that might put her in.  If tonight had proved anything, it was that she needed to stop thinking of herself as invincible.

Even a tough person could be taken out if the situation was bad enough.  She thought that the situation tonight had been close to that, close to being too bad to walk away from.  She had no idea what would have happened if the odd man towering above her hadn’t shown up but she had a feeling of almost complete certainty that it wouldn’t have gone in her favor. 

She was grateful to him for helping her, but she hated the fact that she had needed help at all.  It made her feel weak and she thought that was incredibly dangerous as well.  She wasn’t always going to have some dashing stranger to help her when she needed it.

She didn’t want to grow dependent on the idea of relying on someone other than herself when she knew she would rarely have that option.  She had learned at a young age that relying on outside resources was a fool’s recourse.

“Here, please.”

His large, strong hand was extended down to her in direct defiance to her thoughts of self-reliance.  Still, she couldn’t help it.  She took the hand being offered and upon doing so felt a jolt of electricity shoot through every inch of her body.

“Oh!”

“Are you OK?”

“Yes-I’m sorry, yes.  I’m fine.  Thanks.”

She was fine, that much was true, but she felt so strange!  It really had felt like electricity, that reaction her body had to his touch, like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket and was now paying the price.  His skin felt unlike any she had felt before.  It was tough, as tough as the strongest stone, and smooth like marble.

It was cold like marble as well and she wondered how a person could be that cold and look as comfortable as he seemed to be.  Weren’t people supposed to be a certain temperature just to survive?  She knew that was true and although she couldn’t remember what that temperature was, she would have been willing to bet money that this guy’s internal body temperature was below it.

But that wasn’t possible
, she told herself,
there was no way that could be true.
She didn’t really have time to think about it because he was pulling her up through the air with such force that she almost toppled forward.  She would have fallen right back to the ground if he hadn’t been there to catch her, so instead of hitting the concrete again she ran head long into the strange man’s chest. She found that it was just as stone solid as his hands.

His arms closed around her and held her close until she was once again steady.  It felt like time had stopped.  For the moment it felt like all there was in the whole world was her and this man, and she didn’t even know his name.  All five of her senses were consumed by him.  The feel of his tough hands on the small of her back, the feel of his fine cotton shirt brushing roughly against her cheek.

The smell of him was intoxicating.  She could smell the richness of the earth on him mingled with spices she could not identify but that made her heart speed up none the less.  For a minute she struggled to remember how she had come to be in this position.  It felt as though her mind had been wiped clean and nothing that had come before her being wrapped up with this man mattered anymore.

But then something occurred to her, and it was enough to pull her out of her weightlessness and back into the harsh reality.  Even with her face pressed up against his chest, she couldn’t hear a heartbeat
.  Was that normal?
 
You always saw in movies or read in books that a person could hear, could even feel the heartbeat of another. 
Maybe that was all just sentimental bullshit to achieve a particular dramatic effect, but Megan didn’t think so. 

Something about the absence of heartbeat in this man struck her as strange, as wrong.  It was enough to make her take a quick couple of steps back and really look up into his face for the first time.  Not that doing that really helped her at all. 

He may not have had a normal heartbeat thumping in his chest, but he was absolutely gorgeous.  Like the kind of handsome you only ever saw in a magazine or on the silver screen.  His skin was as white as the moon, whiter than hers, which she hadn’t really thought was possible before actually seeing it. 

He had dark brown hair with hints of red threaded through it that made it look like it was lit from within and a five o’clock shadow that also showed that red.  His eyes were an icy blue and the features of his face were so defined that they could have actually been carved by a master sculptor.  He wore simple yet perfectly tailored and probably very expensive clothes and the overall effect he achieved was daunting, to say the least. 

“Is something the matter?”

“Um, no.  No, I’m sorry.  Was I acting like something was?”

“Not really,” he said with a little smile that made her heart speed up even more, “it’s just that you were staring at me.  I thought something might be the matter.”

She had been staring at him.  Great.  Perfect.  Somehow talking to him made her feel even more vulnerable than she had felt with those terrible men who had fully intended to have their way with her.  He was just completely disarming in a way that she didn’t feel like people really were anymore.  She couldn’t figure out why, but there was something about him that reminded her of a Jane Austen movie and that was definitely not the kind of guy she was used to interacting with. 

“I’m sorry, I, I-”

“Philip.”

“What?”

“Philip,” he smiled again, “my name is Philip.  I figured that if we were going to have such an uncomfortable exchange we might as well exchange names.  So my name is Philip Smith.  And you are?”

“Oh!  Megan.  My name is Megan Wright.  Sorry, I guess I’m a little bit flustered.  But thank you.  I just realized I haven’t said that yet.  Thank you for stepping in for me.  I know a lot of people wouldn’t do something like that.  Especially in a city like this.”

“In a city like this, huh?  Are you not a fan of New Orleans?”

“Oh, well, I don’t know.  I guess I haven’t thought about it before.  I like part of it, but it isn’t a very forgiving place, is it?”

“Forgiving.  Interesting choice of word.  No, I don’t suppose it is.  Although sometimes forgiving isn’t the most important thing.  Would you agree?”

Would she agree?  Would she?  She didn’t know.  She wasn’t sure that she really knew anything right now.  She wasn’t even completely sure what they were talking about at this point.  For that matter, she wasn’t sure why she was talking to him at all, or why she was still standing right beside the dumpster she had been forced behind.  Did she think she was safe now?  Did she really? 

True, this guy Philip had gotten rid of the guys who had accosted her, but that didn’t mean he was safe and she would be an idiot to think that he was.  She was still standing in an alley with a guy she didn’t know at all in a less than desirable part of town.  In the dark. 

Let’s not forget that part.  She had started her ill-fated walk at dusk, which was her favorite time of day and when she liked to walk and clear her head, but it was well past dusk now.  It was pitch black outside and the moon, which had been a promising one, must have gotten shy because it was currently completely shrouded in cloud coverage.  The only light to see by was the garish light dispersed from the sporadic and only sometimes working street lamps, and it made everything look distorted and foreign. 

She needed to get out of here.  Now that she had started to think about what had happened to her and what she was doing, she couldn’t
stop
thinking about it and she could feel a blind panic taking root deep inside of her gut and radiating outwards like a sickness.  He must have been able to see it on her face, too, because he took a small step back from her, giving her a wider circle of personal space and holding up his hands palms out to show her that he meant no harm.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, his voice melodic and very nearly hypnotic in its soft tones, “sometimes I ask questions I probably shouldn’t.  I have a curious mind and I don’t always wait to get to know a person before trying to pick her brains.”

“No, don’t be sorry.  You didn’t do anything wrong.  I just need to go, that’s all.  I think I really need to get out of here.  I’m sorry.”

She was already on the move while she was talking, trying very hard to get around Philip without him really realizing what she was doing.  Because now that she had decided that she needed to move, she was painfully aware of the fact that he was standing in between her and her only escape route.  She was like a caged animal, very much at the mercy of Philip’s whims.

“Wait!  Please, just wait a moment.”

“No really,” the panic was rising higher and she was almost certain she was going to start screaming, “I think I need to just go.  Please, just excuse me.”

She thought that he wasn’t going to move and she knew without a doubt that if he didn’t want her to move, she wasn’t going anywhere.  She had watched him pick that huge man up like he didn’t weigh anything at all.  He had to be a million times stronger than her and close to a foot taller.  And then there were the other differences, the ones she couldn’t articulate or even really quantify, but that she knew deep down inside of her bones were there, regardless. 

But why?  What did he want from her?  If he had intervened out of a desire to play the part of the Good Samaritan, his job was done.  She was (relatively) safe and all she wanted was to get home.  If he wanted something other than that, she had no idea what it was.  She just wanted to be somewhere else than where she was. 

She tried to slide past him, figuring that maybe if she caught him off guard she could make a break for it.  But his instincts were far more refined than hers and she had hardly moved at all before one of his massive hands was wrapped around her upper arm.  He wasn’t trying to hurt her, she knew that somehow, but he had a firm enough hold on her that she wasn’t going to be able to pull herself free.