Bound by Night (The Moonbound Clan Vampires) (22 page)

Her sharp inhale humiliated him even more. “That’s . . . wow. Twenty years.”

“Thanks for doing the math.”

There was a long pause. Finally, she said quietly, “You really loved her, didn’t you?”

Tilting his head back, he squeezed his eyes shut and searched his brain for an answer to that. But the dark recesses of his mind offered only silence.

“Yeah.” But he hadn’t loved her enough to keep her safe or keep her alive.

“I’m sorry.” She sank down on the edge of the mattress. “How long were you mated before . . .”

“Before she killed herself,” he finished bitterly. “Five years. But it wasn’t a love match.”

“How did you meet?”

“Jesus, is this an interview for
Vampire Times
, or what?” When Nicole crossed her arms over her chest and gave him an expectant stare, he sighed. “It wasn’t a meet as much as it was a battle.” He threw on his shirt. “She was from DreamDevour, a clan in California. They were taking her to mate with ShadowSpawn’s
leader. We ran into them on the edge of our territory, and a fight broke out. At the time, ShadowSpawn had far fewer numbers, and we were at war with them. They’d just killed the mate of one of our warriors, and Hunter figured what better revenge than to take one of theirs, especially a high-ranking female who was supposed to go to their leader.”

“And you stepped up to the plate?”

“It was my idea. We’d captured her during the battle with DreamDevour, and Hunter wanted to hold her indefinitely, force both clans to bargain for the best deal. My idea was to mate her to someone in the clan and make an ally out of DreamDevour while sticking it to ShadowSpawn. Hunter figured that since it was my idea, I got to take the bullet for the team.”

“And Terese was willing to mate with you?”

He snorted. “She had no desire to be mated to anyone from ShadowSpawn, let alone the male she was promised to.” The bastard was a sadistic, brutal son of a bitch who reportedly whipped one of his daughters nearly to death. “But I terrified her, too. At first, anyway.”

He’d never forgive himself for that. He’d been angry at the turn of events that had given him a mate he didn’t want, and while he never took it out on her, he hadn’t given her any reason not to be afraid.

“Obviously, she came around.”

“We both did.” He paced the length of the room, wishing he were outside, where he could open up and run for miles before the postfeed cramping started up. “She was really timid, like a fawn that lost its mother. I had to learn to tone it down around her. I think that
between her trying to please me and me trying to keep her calm and safe, we grew close.” Close, but like friends, not lovers. He turned to Nicole. “You said you loved her. You must have spent a lot of time with her.”

“I did.” Nicole smiled fondly. “If it’s any consolation, she was treated well.”

Treated so well that she killed herself
. He resisted the urge to point that out again. Nicole had a child’s view of Terese’s life, and Riker had done enough to destroy her world already.

“Riker . . .” Nicole rubbed her thighs, and he wondered if she’d be folding origami birds if there were more paper nearby. “I still don’t understand why this happened between us. And then didn’t happen.”

He didn’t really understand, either. But for the last twenty years, he’d been unable to bring himself to sleep with any female. Terese’s death had left him empty inside. Cold. There was far more to it than grief, but he’d never been able to dig deep enough into himself to figure it out, mainly because it had never mattered to him before.

Or maybe because he didn’t want to face the ugly truth.

He hadn’t loved Terese the way he should have, and she’d paid the price for his neglect.

“Let’s just forget about it, Nicole.”

“Really?” she said softly. “Are you really going to forget about it? Because the way I see it, we just did something that brought a whole lot of crap to the surface, and unless you deal with it—”

“Don’t pull some psych shit on me.” He shot a
deliberate glance at her throat. “How much did therapy help
you
?”

She swallowed.

“Exactly.”

“Don’t be an ass.” She tucked her legs under her on the bed. “You know what helped? Crazily enough, being here has helped me more than twenty years of therapy.”

“Glad we could be of assistance,” he said dryly.

“What did I say about not being an ass?” She huffed. “At some point during these last few days, I opened myself up to learning about vampires from your point of view. I let you in, Riker.”

“I’m sure you’ll regret that eventually.” Clearly, he wasn’t listening to her complaints about being an ass.

“I’ll never regret it,” she snapped. “Because somehow I feel like I’ve finally healed.”

“What are you saying? That if I open myself up, climb into bed with you, I’ll magically get better? I’ll forget how your family destroyed someone I cared about, someone I was charged with protecting?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. In fact, let’s try sex again.” She leaped to her feet and tore open her jeans. “Maybe my magic vagina will cure you of all the traumatic acts my family has inflicted on you.”

“Dammit.” He snared her wrists to stop her from stripping. “Nothing you do will ever make me forget that.”

Fury blazed in her eyes, so full of green fire he expected to find scorch marks on his skin. “You know, I’ve learned that not all vampires are the same. So why
can’t you open your eyes and see that not all humans are the same, either? Oh, wait—you
can
, you just don’t
want
to. You’d rather hold on to your hatred and make everyone around you put up with your bitterness and guilt.”

“You know nothing about me or the people around me,” he bit out. “You’ve known me a few days, and you’re an expert on my life?”

“Am I wrong?” she shot back. “Or do you wield your venom like a weapon, poisoning everything around you?”

Her swipe at him hit so close to home that it was almost a physical blow. His temper swelled, fed by his own self-hatred, which had been encapsulated by hardened layers of denial. Now the capsule had cracked, leaking toxic anger that Nicole didn’t deserve but was going to feel the brunt of anyway.

“You have a death wish, don’t you, human?” He surged closer to her once more, tempted to take her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. The kind of sense that would teach her to never taunt a vampire. To never
tempt
a vampire.

She lifted her chin stubbornly. “You said you wouldn’t kill me.”

“And you believed me?” He bared his fangs for emphasis. “Me, a vampire?”

She cringed, almost imperceptibly, but he also caught a whiff of anxiety, so yeah, she wasn’t 100 percent sure she was safe, and he felt like a fucking heel.

He’d come here to satisfy a primal urge for a female who had captivated him from the moment he touched her, but even as those raging hormones rushed through
his body, he’d calmed in her presence. She’d admitted to being frightened and confused, lost in both her world and his, and all he’d wanted to do was to comfort her. Now he’d made her feel trapped again, like nothing more than a sheep awaiting slaughter in a pen.

He drew in a breath, hoping oxygen would clear his head and magically give him the right words for this situation.

Apparently, neither magic air nor magic vaginas existed.

There was a pounding on the door, followed by Hunter slamming it open and crossing to the bedroom in a matter of a heartbeat. He stood in the doorway, his gaze sweeping from the messy bed to their disheveled clothing, and Riker knew he was in for a first-class dress-down later.

Awesome. Because it wasn’t enough to have Myne up his ass about his involvement with Nicole.

“There’s something you need to see,” Hunter said grimly.

Riker shifted his weight, crunching a shard of broken glass beneath his foot. “Give me a few.”

“Now,” Hunter countered. “Both of you.”

If there was anything Riker knew how to do, it was take orders, even if he didn’t like them. In sullen silence, he and Nicole followed Hunter to his office, where his television was on, the picture paused. He punched a button on the remote, and a reporter standing in front of Daedalus’s headquarters started speaking.

“Dr. Nicole Martin, billionaire heiress and CEO of
Daedalus Corporation, is still missing after being brutally kidnapped by vampires, igniting a cry from some to eradicate vampires once and for all, and counterprotests by the Vampire Humane Society demanding freedom for vampires that Daedalus has played a large role in capturing.”

The camera panned to a woman holding a sign that said
VAMPIRES ARE PEOPLE, TOO
. “Nicole Martin got what she deserved!” the lady yelled. “You reap what you sow. Free the vampires!”

A man across the street shot the VHS chick the finger and then shouted, “Vampires are abominations! They must be destroyed, or this kind of thing will keep happening.”

The reporter’s too-perfect face came back on, and Riker wondered if the guy had been the recipient of antiaging vampire juice. Riker would love to drain the
human
juice right out of the man.

“Charles Martin, Dr. Martin’s brother, has sworn to stop at nothing to find her.”

Yeah, right,
Riker thought. But next to him, a faint smile trembled on Nicole’s lips, relief that her brother intended to come through for her. But as she’d pointed out before, she wasn’t stupid. She must know, deep down, that her jackass of a brother wasn’t going to lift a finger to help her.

Charles came on the screen, and a dozen microphones were shoved in his face. “The evil creatures that did this to my beloved sister will be caught and executed. We’ve learned that these vampires escaped from one of our South Seattle facilities after being set
free by vampire activists. Consider these creatures to be very, very dangerous, which was why they were locked up in the first place.”

Riker frowned. “We didn’t escape from the facility. What the hell is he talking about?”

Charles continued. “As a precaution, and to prevent incidents like this from happening in the future, we will close down the facility, which was a vampire rehabilitation center, and all vampires will be destroyed. We now know that it’s far too dangerous to give these animals the benefit of the doubt.”

“Oh, my God.” Nicole’s voice trembled. “He’s lying to cover up for whatever is going on at the B-lab he mentioned. I’ll bet he knows there’s going to be an attempt to rescue Neriya, and he wants to make sure we don’t even have a chance.”

“Fuck,” Hunter snapped. “How long do you think we have?”

Charles looked directly into the camera, as if he’d heard Hunter. “Effective tomorrow.”

N
ICOLE STOOD IN
the bright, early-morning sunshine outside the Daedalus lab grounds, Riker at her side. The sunglasses on her face were borrowed from Katina, the top borrowed from Benet, whom Nicole felt bad about thinking was a skank. The sneakers were actually new, given to her by a female named Caris, who had shyly handed them over with a quiet whisper of “Good luck.”

Nicole hadn’t the heart to say that it was Neriya and Riker who needed the luck, because truly, they were the ones Nicole was putting in danger with this plan.

“I hope to hell this works.” Riker, dressed in jeans and an olive-drab long-sleeved T-shirt under a matching trench coat that concealed weapons, slid her a sideways glance.

“It will.” She tugged the jacket of Riker’s that she’d failed to return more tightly around her. “It has to.”

Riker studied the building looming before them with detached calculation. They hadn’t spoken about what had happened in her room, and now, she
supposed, there was no point. The chances that both of them would come out of this intact were pretty slim. He could be caught and killed, and she could be arrested for any number of offenses. If not for the deaths of the vampires in the lab she was responsible for, then for breaking into the lab in front of her and conspiring with vampires to do it.

Then there was the uncertainty of her fate if, by some miracle, this
did
all go down without a hitch.

“We won’t kill you,” Riker said, and there went his mind-reading thing he claimed not to have again.

“I know,” she said, and she meant it. Riker wouldn’t let anyone harm her. “But you can’t let me go free, either.”

“True. But we can keep you with us. You’ll be safe.”

Katina had said something similar. Nicole smiled sadly. “Keep me. Like a pet. Or a slave.”

His head whipped around, and although she couldn’t see his eyes through his sunglasses, she felt the weight of his burning stare. His jaw was clenched so tight she was surprised she didn’t hear the crack of teeth.

“I don’t think I can live like that,” she murmured.

Then you’ll know how all the captive vampires feel
. She could practically hear Riker speak the words, even if he had the decency not to say them out loud.

“Before we go inside, I just want to say that I’m sorry for everything my family has put you and your people through.” She started walking, not wanting him either to reply with some lame
it’s okay
bullshit that wasn’t true or to cast her apology back in her face by accusing her of
too little, too late
.