Bound by Night (The Moonbound Clan Vampires) (16 page)

Nicole was pretty certain Hunter would refuse. So she was totally shocked when he stepped back and said, “You have my word. Riker will take care of you. Speaking of which, Rike, while you were showering, I had a chamber prepared for her. Down the hall from yours.”

For one glorious moment, relief gave Nicole a new lease on life. Hopefully a chamber of her own meant a shower and a bed.

Then she glanced over at Riker.

He looked both troubled and pissed, and once again, she wondered just how long she had left to live.

R
IKER WILL TAKE
care of you
.

Yeah, Riker knew exactly what Hunter meant.
Taking care of
humans had never been a problem for Riker before. And it shouldn’t be a problem now. But son of a bitch, Nicole had gotten under his skin.

She’d saved his life, shown vulnerability and remorse over Terese’s death, and charmed him with her odd origami habit. And in return, like an idiot, he’d told this female things he’d never told anyone. No one in the clan knew that the baby Terese had carried wasn’t his. No one knew she’d killed herself.

Somehow, despite all the trouble Nicole had caused him, he’d confided in her. He’d laughed with her. And he’d gotten hard for her.

“Are we done here?” Riker asked Hunter.

Hunter gave an almost imperceptible nod and swung around to Grant, letting Riker know he was dismissed. “Nicole,” he said, almost as an afterthought and in a cheerful voice that made Riker’s hair stand on end, “I look forward to having a more . . . in-depth session with you.”

Before she could reply, Riker took her by the arm and hauled her out of there. She went willingly. Eagerly, really.

“Thanks.” Her boots thumped softly on the stone floor as they walked down the hall, her slender legs in perfect sync with his long strides. “Things were kind of tense back there.”

Kind of?
Hunter was in one of the worst moods Riker had ever seen. Oh, he’d seen Hunter angrier, in full-blown, unreachable rages. But this was Hunter at his worst—or best, depending on which side you were on. The cold fury that started with Neriya’s abduction and ended with Lucy’s kidnapping was gathering deep inside him. It was the kind that rolled over everyone, including those he cared about.

Riker did
not
want to be in his path.

He steered the conversation away from his clan chief. “Did Grant bother you?”

“Not really. You were right about him—moments of confusion punctuated by spurts of lucidity.” Her hair, full of soft waves, brushed her shredded turtleneck as she shook her head. The wild, windblown bob looked good on her. Much better than the severe, straight, hairsprayed-to-hell way she’d had it when he took her from her mansion. “It was your chief. Intense guy.”

So much for his attempt to not discuss Hunter. “Talk about your moments of confusion and spurts of lucidity.”

“Seriously?” She rubbed her arms, and he made a mental note to get her some warmer clothes. He also made a mental note to stop staring at her breasts when she did that. “He’s unbalanced, too?”

He waited to speak until a trio of females passed them in the hallway. “Some might say so, but nah, he’s the sanest male I know. He just has a tendency not to take things as seriously as some think he should.”

“Some. Like you?”

She’d hit that stake on the head. For a human, she was pretty astute. He didn’t answer that, though; clan business was none of hers.

“How are you feeling?” He didn’t like that she still hadn’t regained all the color she’d lost when she’d gotten ill in the cave. “Is there anything specific I can get you to eat or drink that’ll help your condition?”

“Oh, um, yes.” She stepped toward him to avoid being flattened by two males tossing a football as they ran through the passage.

“Hey, assholes!” Riker barked. “We have a common room for that. Not to mention a million acres of forest.” As the guys sheepishly offered apologies, Riker turned back to Nicole. “Go on. What can I get for you?”

“Low-iron, low-carb foods. As the iron builds in my blood, my pancreas is going to get wacky with the insulin.” She chewed her lip a little. “There are other issues that the medication handles, but they’ll take a lot longer to kill me.”

This was a complication they didn’t need. The sooner they got Neriya, the sooner . . . what? The sooner Nicole would be released so she could use the knowledge she’d gained to destroy them? Or the sooner they’d kill her to protect themselves?

Fuck.
This was a lose-lose situation. He thought back to his military days and all the no-win situations he’d been thrust into. Somehow he’d come out of them
alive. But not everyone had. No-win scenarios always resulted in someone’s death.

Like Jesse and Steve, both of whom he’d been close with since basic training. They’d all been together when they’d walked into the building at Fairchild Air Force Base for what he’d believed would be a briefing. Instead, they’d been sedated with drugged water and fed to vampires. Riker would never forget the next couple of weeks of torment as his body changed, his muscles, bones, and organs altering painfully fast. Gnawing hunger had nearly torn him apart as he threw up everything he’d been given to eat. The first bag of blood someone had thrown into his cell had been the best thing he’d ever tasted.

Until he threw that up, too.

But the worst . . . the worst had been finding Jesse dead on the floor, his body cold and contorted in agony. He hadn’t survived the turning, and Riker’s sorrow had been magnified by the fact that Steve had survived, but he wasn’t himself. Vicious and angry, Steve had been almost uncontrollable, ’roid rage times a million.

A year later, he’d died, too.

At Hunter’s hand.

“Riker?” Nicole tapped on his shoulder. “You okay?”

Right. They’d been talking about her diet. “I’ll get one of our cooks on it,” he said brusquely.

“You have cooks?”

“Everyone here has a job. Just like humans. And we eat normal food. Just like humans.” Shrugging off her startled glance at his abrupt reply, he guided her to his quarters and pushed open the heavy wood door. “Welcome to my den.”

He wasn’t sure why he was welcoming her as if he was bringing home a date. Hell, he hadn’t brought a female here for anything but the full-moon feeding since his mate died. Even then, he sent the females on their way afterward, while he went through the misery of the lack-of-sex cramps by himself. His regular blood partner of late, Benet, had been open about her willingness to sleep with him, but every time he thought he could go through with it, his interest—and his cock—flagged the moment she touched him intimately.

Inexplicable irritation made him grind his molars as he strode through the doorway and turned to Nicole, who remained in the hall, lower lip trapped between her teeth.

“You waiting for a different kind of invitation? Because they’ll get less polite.”

Nicole entered cautiously, as if she expected to step into a bear trap. “This is your place?” She glanced around, gaze landing on the rustic furniture, the handmade sofa and dining table, the small kitchen off to the right, and the doorway to the bedroom. “I didn’t expect . . . I don’t know . . . a home.”

The irritation veered to anger. “No doubt you thought we’d live in dirt holes lined with leaves, like wild animals.”

She inhaled sharply. “It’s not that. It’s just that I didn’t expect such modern conveniences.”

“No? What do they teach you in your vampire courses? That we cook over fires made by rubbing two sticks together? That we use dishes made of human skulls?”

A soft pink blush spread across her cheeks as she
turned away, and yep, he was right on target. Although, truthfully, there were clans like that. With the help of human sympathizers, some clans had built permanent habitats, villages like this one, with all the trappings of modern human society, including electricity, phones, and even vehicles. Others clung to the old ways, living in the forests or city sewers with only loose ties to any particular territory. Still others were loners, scrounging out a life however and wherever they could.

Nicole looked down at her feet as if ashamed, but when she looked up, there was fire in the green of her eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve had a mistaken view of how you live. I’m sorry I expect the worst from you. But you know, you’re doing the same thing to me.”

As much as he liked the way her temper stirred his blood, he didn’t like what she’d said. She was dead wrong.

“No, it’s not the same thing.” He shed his jacket and tossed it over the back of a chair. “Your family owns my kind. Your family literally built a business from our blood and created the vampire industry. You’re the CEO of a company that’s responsible for more vampire deaths than all the others combined. A company that killed my mate. So no, it’s not the same thing.”

Instead of responding right away, she wandered around the room, touching his aircraft prints, running her hands over the guns mounted on the walls. He could no longer fire them, but being a sniper was in his blood, and he doubted that would ever change.

Nicole’s hand skimmed along the barrel of his M-16, and abruptly, his body hardened and his skin grew clammy. His cock stirred as she caressed the cold
steel he himself had handled with such care, and he nearly groaned when she took the trigger between her forefinger and thumb, testing the gentle curve. Christ, what a turn-on. Terese wouldn’t go near his collection of weapons.

He drifted closer to her, drawn by Nicole’s curiosity, her strength, her beauty, and the glow of life that radiated from her. Whatever else he might think about her, she was a survivor, and that was a turn-on all by itself.

“When I was little,” she murmured, “I overheard one of our servants talking about his home. At the time, it didn’t make an impact, but I guess now I can see what he was talking about. He lived like this, I think.” She started toward the bedroom, and that fast, his lust veered to panic.

Leaping in front of her, he slammed the door to the bedroom closed. At her blink of surprise, he growled, “That room is off-limits.”

She sniffed. “I’m happier about that than you can imagine.” Her expression shuttered, she crossed her arms over her chest, closing herself off to him. Why that irritated him, he had no idea. “Why are we here, anyway?”

Cursing, he swiped his cell phone off the desk. “You’re going to call your company, and you’re going to arrange an exchange. Neriya for you.”

“Gladly.” She snatched the phone, and he wondered if she suspected at all that he was lying.

N
ICOLE DIALED CHUCK’S
number with trembling fingers. Her brother would get her out of this mess, and if she could just explain to the board why she’d missed the meeting—

“Charles Martin speaking.”

“Chuck!” Nicole turned away from Riker, who was watching her like an eagle. Such an apt comparison, given that both were striking. Formidable. And deadly. “Oh, my God, it’s good to hear your voice.”

“Nicole?” There was a crash and a curse on the other end of the line, probably Chuck jumping up from his desk chair and knocking crap over. “Shit, Nicole, is that really you? Where are you? Are you okay? Roland’s dead, but there was no sign of you. Where are you?” he repeated, clearly rattled.

She took a deep, bracing breath. Hearing his voice was a soothing balm to her seriously frayed nerves. “I’m fine. I’m being held—”

Riker snared her arm in a vicious hold and shook his head, a warning to not reveal anything that might
hint of her location. She jerked away from him. She didn’t know where she was, anyway.

“I’m being held by vampires.”

“You’re what?” Chuck roared. “Where?”

She slid a covert glance at Riker. “I can’t tell you that.” She was so lost in these woods that she’d never in a million years be able to find her way back to the clan stronghold. “I need you to arrange to have a female vampire named Neriya set free. She was taken from the forest outside Seattle two weeks ago by bounty hunters.”

“You know it’s illegal for individuals or companies to capture wild vampires.” Chuck’s voice had gone flat. Lifeless. Guilty as hell.