She pulled away from him and bolted off the floor as if she’d been stung. Her lips were swollen from his kisses. Her hands moved back to reconnect her bra strap. She wanted to look into his eyes to see what was there. Lust? Anger? Hunger? Or would he just look like the predatory animal he was? But she didn’t. She didn’t trust him not to enthrall her.
She could understand why he’d done what he’d done with Linus. It had been for her safety. But this world was too new for her, her life too fragile to carelessly put it into the hands of someone like him.
“Charlotte?”
He moved toward her, his hand reaching for her shoulder.
She sidestepped him. It was practically choreographed.
“Stop playing with my emotions.” She was proud her voice had come out steady, calm, as if he hadn’t just done some weird vampire thing. Some weird vampire thing he’d failed to explain to her. “If you enthrall me, I’ll never trust you again.”
She chanced looking into his eyes and saw pain.
“I can’t read your mind now; it’s not as easy to know the right thing to do where you’re concerned. I was trying to take some of your pain away. If you’ll let me, I can make this better.”
She assumed he expected her to go running back into his arms, easily forgiving his indiscretion with the biting and pain and fear and almost death. Since it was an accident, all was easily forgiven? She knew he never would have done it in his right mind. Right?
He hadn’t meant for it to happen. Not the amnesia or Linus or the bite he’d yet to explain. It didn’t change that it had happened.
“I could erase it. I could replace the memories with something more . . . palatable.”
Hadn’t she just thought the same thing? The temptation had been there for a moment. But she couldn’t stand the idea of living a fake life.
“No! Don’t mess with my mind.” She held her hands out in front of her, as if she could ward him away. Her eyes drifted to the cross still on the other side of the room. She wanted to line the guest room with crosses to keep him out. He could mess with her mind with the best intentions. The little place inside her that hated him grew a tiny bit more.
He held his hands up, placating. “All right. I won’t. I just wanted to fix what I did.”
“Too late.” A tear slipped from the corner of her eye, and she swiped it away. She wasn’t going to start that again. There were more important things to deal with. “What do you mean you claimed me? What were they talking about before they left?”
He crossed to the overstuffed chair Callie had been lounging in moments before, putting some much needed distance between them.
“Vampires being immortal do not often mate. Some do, some swear by it. But eternity is a long time, and few want to be tied down in that way. When two vampires decide that’s what they want, there is a bite and mingling of blood that bonds them for eternity. It’s taken very seriously because once blood is mixed, it can’t be unmixed, anymore than you can unmake a vampire.”
Charlee had moved to the couch. Her fingernails dug into the soft leather as he spoke. “And this means what for me?” Was she stuck with him until she died? A man she almost loved but definitely hated, who she’d never forgive.
“I don’t know exactly. It’s a vampire mating ritual. Vampires don’t generally claim humans.”
“So let me get this straight. You took my memory, then you returned that but took my life instead?”
He didn’t respond. What could he say? She almost felt bad for making him feel worse. Almost. His hands began shaking.
“Anthony?”
“What?” He looked down.
“What’s happening?”
“It’s the bagged blood. My body’s rejecting it.”
For the first time since the claiming, Charlee could feel the invisible link, like a strong multi-strand twine that stretched between them, and it was pulling her to him. She would have been angry, but Anthony wasn’t pulling on her mind; it was the link calling out to her to help him. And the part of her that had almost loved him responded.
Before she had time to think about what she’d done, she was sitting on his lap. His fangs grazed her neck, and she tensed.
“Shhhh,” he whispered. “This won’t hurt.”
She didn’t really believe him. But he was right, it didn’t hurt. Inexplicably she never felt his fangs slide into the column of her throat. He growled softly, the sound reverberating against her skin, causing her body to respond in places far more interesting.
One of his hands had slipped under her shirt. She was about to protest, but he wasn’t undressing her. Instead, his cool fingers rubbed soothingly over her back. From the angle she was seated on his lap, she could feel the effect her blood was having on him as his erection pressed against the side of her hip.
It wasn’t as if a similar reaction wasn’t taking place in her body. Still, she resented him. She tensed as he sealed the wound with his tongue. It was a vastly different experience from the first time, or the second time. This time had been . . . Oh hell, in any other set of circumstances she’d be on her back for him by now. But she couldn’t pretend the events of the past several days hadn’t happened.
He pulled away to look into her eyes and she averted her gaze, afraid that in his current state the temptation would be too great to bring her mind in line with her body’s desires.
He sighed deeply. “You’re never going to trust or forgive me, are you?”
She remained silent. It was a small relief that he couldn’t read her thoughts anymore, that she’d regained some measure of privacy from him. No, she couldn’t see herself trusting or forgiving him. And that knowledge frightened her more than if she could. Because either way she was stuck with him now, and there was no happy future unless she could forgive him.
There would be no other men. Somehow she couldn’t picture Anthony being okay with that. Her entire life had closed off, and there was nowhere to run. So no, she couldn’t forgive him for that. Not ever.
“Charlotte, if I could undo the chain of events that led us here, I swear to you I would. We’re never going to have that easy way between us again, are we?”
“I don’t think so, no.” Those days were gone.
Anthony stood in Charlotte’s doorway, barred from entry as she slept blissfully unaware of his presence. At the first opportunity, she’d grabbed the cross and slipped the silver chain around her neck. Then she’d had the nerve to break one of his kitchen chairs.
At first he’d thought her intent was to attempt to stake him, but she’d taken some duct tape and lashed two strips of wood together into a makeshift cross. Then she’d found a way to prop it up in her doorway. He hadn’t protested because it was what she needed to feel safe, and it hurt too much that he’d done enough damage to warrant this reaction.
Although a cross would burn him no matter what, it didn’t have the repellent force that nearly drove him to the other end of a room, except with extreme faith behind it. Charlotte had that kind of faith. Another thing he admired about her.
He’d been sure the moment she reached unconsciousness the cross would go back to being nothing more annoying than a hot kitchen stove. He’d been mistaken. Her breathing had regulated in sleep, yet the cross guarded her more savagely than a large protective dog.
He found he was more relieved than angry about that. She’d come to him in her own time, and until then, the claim plus her faith would keep her safe from others of his kind. He made his way down to the lobby and gave stern instructions using a blend of suggestion and threats regarding who got keys to his penthouse.
By the time he exited the lobby, he was sure he smelled the acrid scent of urine on the terrified night clerk. Good. The message got through. He didn’t care who they said they were or on what authority they were demanding a key, no one was to be given access to the penthouse floor or his suite. The place had gone downhill in the last fifty years. Replacing the guardians at night with humans merely to cut costs was poor management.
He could work up no guilt over his behavior with the clerk. This was his mate’s life on the line. Dammit. His mate.
He’d never planned nor intended to take a mate, vampire or otherwise. The fact that he’d now taken a human was an extra layer of complication for his bid for coven leader. Linus was right. The coven wouldn’t be happy about it. They viewed humans as lesser beings, not only because they were food, but because they showed such poor loyalty and displayed such consistent weakness.
He’d absently started moving toward the park. Paul was waiting for him when he got there, his legs splayed out as he sat on a manual merry-go-round. He spun a little to one side then the other, causing the metal to creak as the disc turned.
“Took you long enough,” he groused. “Where the hell have you been the past couple of days?”
Anthony laughed. Paul was an impertinent little fledge. Young, cocky, but entertaining as hell. Vampires were only allowed to turn a certain number of people for obvious survival and food supply reasons.
Anthony had doubted he’d ever use up that allotment or turn even one human, but when a twenty-something boy had saved his life, he knew he owed him something in return. Learning Paul had been dying only reinforced the choice to gift him with eternal life.
“I ran into a little problem.”
It wasn’t standard practice for a vampire to let his fledglings in on his personal plans and goings-on, but Paul was a friend. Anthony briefly filled him in on the events from biting Greta to siphon the poison, to Charlotte holed up in her room with anti-vampire protections in place.
“Damn, Boss. When you fuck shit up, you fuck it up.”
Anthony growled, but there was no menace behind it. “I wish you’d stop calling me that. It makes it sound like I hired you to work for me at the Piggly Wiggly.”
The boy’s brows scrunched up. “What’s a Piggly Wiggly?”
“Never mind.”
Paul shrugged. “I guess you don’t need to feed then.”
Anthony grimaced as his mind flashed to his earlier feeding with Charlotte wriggling on his lap, the air so heavy with the scent of her arousal he’d nearly drowned in it. They’d both been on the edge of throwing caution to the wind for a good old-fashioned animal fucking. But her fear and the manners he’d somehow developed where she was concerned, had put it to an abrupt halt.
Which was probably for the best. The night before the tournament wasn’t the wisest time to be indulging in such things. He needed to stay focused.
“Hey, Boss?”
Anthony looked up.
“Have you considered withdrawing your name from the competition?”
He’d considered it about forty times since putting the claim on Charlotte, but if Linus won and Anthony didn’t at least compete to try to stop it, he’d never forgive himself.
Linus would end their kind and all the progress they’d made. It would celebrate the worst of them and leave the weakest for the picking by junior Van Helsing or Buffy wannabes stalking the night with crosses and holy water.
“You know I can’t do that.”
Paul nodded in understanding and fell back into a fighting stance. The younger vamp was no match for Anthony’s strength, but he had a different enough fighting style, the elder vampire believed he was gaining some benefit from the sparring.
Paul fought dirty. Being young, he just about had to. Even taken under Anthony’s wing, there were times when things got ugly. Anthony was betting Linus would be fighting dirty as well, so for once he was learning from his fledge instead of teaching.
“Why do you want to lead the coven anyway?” Paul asked an hour later. He appeared wiped out, not yet having developed quite the standard level of vampire stamina. “If it was me, I’d take the girl and run.”
Anthony grinned. “I wish it were that simple. She’s tied to me now. If I run and Linus wins, then we’re always running, for at least the next century. More, if whoever wins after Linus is someone he’s groomed for the position.”
The state of the vampire race had grown restless. A small faction was tired of hiding and heavily supported Linus and his policies. Anthony felt they were short-sighted, and Linus would drive them further into caves and crypts. Whereas now, cloaked in secrecy, they existed alongside the human world without incident.
There were too many young vampires who didn’t remember a time when the world knew they existed and hunted them when they were most vulnerable. It would have been so easy for Charlotte to kill him in his sleep. Some of the coven didn’t fully comprehend the problems that would come their way if they went back to being the horror-movie creature that lurked in the night.
“Someone’s coming,” Anthony said, pulling Paul into the shadows.
“Who’s that?”
He realized he was growling. “Jane. Gregory’s girl.”
Paul scented the air. “But she’s human.”
Anthony chuckled. “Yeah, that seems to be going around.”
“She smells good.” Paul’s eyes flashed and glowed, his fangs extending.
“Easy there, sport. It’ll piss Gregory off.”
The fledge turned with a toothy grin, his fangs flashing in the moonlight. “So? Do we care?”
“I knew there was a reason I turned you.”
Paul chuckled and went to hunt his prey.