Authors: Rebecca Trynes
She was totally on board with that.
“Are you forgetting that her blood is more appealing to me than any in existence? That now that I have tasted it, I crave it like no other?” He looked at her then, his light grey eyes darkening ever so slightly. “How can I protect her when all I want to do is drain her to the very last drop?”
A shiver of delight travelled down her spine. No one had ever looked at her the way he did. That it was lust for her blood didn’t seem to matter.
“You’ll be fine,” Knox said lightly. “The only reason you drained her the last time was because you were drained yourself. As long as that doesn’t happen again, I’m sure your iron control will keep you in check.”
“And if it doesn’t, we’ll be here to whack you over the head with a frypan,” Lucas quipped.
* * *
Sienna was bored. The vampires were all off training again and she had been left to fend for herself once more.
When she’d first arrived at the mansion, she had been excited at the prospect of being in Greyvian’s presence twenty-four seven, but as it turned out, when Greyvian wasn’t training with the others, he was hidden away in one of the rooms all by himself or outside somewhere.
It seemed that he’d decided to keep himself in check by making sure he wasn’t around her. Ever. That made it kind of hard to start working on breaking down the barrier he had erected around his emotions.
She’d tried to find him the first two days, working her way through the many rooms of the mansion one by one, lingering a while in what she suspected was his bedroom—but it had all been for nought. If he was inside, she couldn’t find him. If he was outside, he could be anywhere—the grounds were extensive.
On the fourth day, she finally decided that she’d had enough of waiting around for them all to finish. They trained several times a day for an hour and a half at a time, so that left her with too many hours of wandering around looking for things to do. In her own apartment she would have had a hundred things to do, but here? Not even Greyvian’s extensive collection of books could hold her attention.
Maybe it was the fact that she knew exactly where Greyvian was right at this very moment that stuffed her concentration.
She had it bad.
Once upon a time, she had thought that the kind of intense attraction you only read about in romance novels was all a load of crap, but now she knew better. Now she knew what it felt like to want someone so badly you could almost taste it. She almost longed for the days when men had been only a think-about-them-a-few-times-a-day kind of thing, not a can’t-go-one-minute-without-thinking-about-them kind of deal.
Almost.
Making her way toward the gymnasium where the vampires were doing their Kung-Fu—or whatever it was—she squared her shoulders and told herself not to take ‘no’ for an answer.
As she approached the door, she could hear grunting and the sounds of feet shuffling around on the floor followed by the occasional slap of body parts meeting in violence. When she opened it, she was greeted by the intensely sexy vision of Greyvian going all Jet Li on Knox’s ass. The blonde was holding his own—barely—but that was quite the trick considering who he was fighting. Grey was so fast! His limbs seemed to move in a blur, making contact with Knox’s torso or legs more often than not, until, with one final swoop, his leg swept around and knocked the half-breed off his feet.
She barely had time to admire his lethality when he looked straight at her and demanded, “What are you doing in here?”
Reminding herself not to be a chicken, she strode into the room with purpose.
“I’ve come to join in,” she said, standing next to Jacob, ignoring her friend’s sharp intake of breath and the way he quickly turned his head away.
“Out of the question,” Greyvian replied, a ring of finality in his voice.
“Why shouldn’t I?” she demanded. “Apart from you, vampires are not super beings. They don’t have super strength or speed—they’re just regular people, so to speak. If I can learn to kick some ass, then I’ll have a better chance of surviving, won’t I? I mean, I can’t rely on you lot to keep me from harm’s way all the time, can I?”
“Just because you learn how to fight does not guarantee that you will beat your opponent.”
“I don’t expect to,” she assured him, “but if it means that maybe I can kick enough ass to then run away, isn’t that better than having nothing in my arsenal at all?”
Greyvian stared at her, expression neutral, as he thought it over. No one else said a thing. Whether they agreed or not, it seemed they were too chicken to chime in. Either that or they were smart enough to know that silence could be their friend.
Seconds ticked by. She wished he was more expressive. She really couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
Finally, he nodded once, and in a clipped voice, said, “Fine.”
She couldn’t believe it had been that easy.
Suddenly Greyvian looked over at Lucas, some unknown emotion gleaming in his eyes. What came out of his mouth was a shock to everyone.
“But you’d better have that frypan ready.”
* * *
Good idea or not, Greyvian struggled through that first session with Sienna. He hadn’t trusted himself to spar with her, but he’d given her the rundown on correct technique before letting her go at Lucas. Fortunately, she had taken a few self-defense lessons in the past and was already familiar with the basics. She just needed a little fine-tuning. Thankfully, nothing that he corrected her on needed him to actually touch her. If he’d had to do that, he might not have made it through the hour.
As it was, time seemed to drag as he watched her spar with Lucas—the only one of them he fully trusted to maintain his control with the female. Perhaps it was the male’s relaxed attitude to everything in life, but more likely it was the fact that out of all of them, Lucas was the only one who had been able to keep his eyes off her neck ever since they’d met her.
The half-breed didn’t disappoint. The two of them sparred back and forth for a good thirty minutes, both of them working up a sweat as they traded and blocked blows with one another. Lucas was taking it easy on her, being her first session, but she didn’t take it easy on him. If she had been a small woman, training would have been useless against the vampires that would come at them—all of them strong male’s built for violence—but she had muscle tone and a surprising amount of strength in her body which was evident every time she landed a punch or a kick and caused Lucas to wince or grunt. With the proper training, she might even be a force to reckon with. Especially with the added distraction of her scent.
When it looked as though Lucas had had enough, it was with mixed emotions that he called an end to the session. Having an excuse to watch her so closely was both a blessing and a curse.
“Not bad,” he told Sienna, motioning for the two of them to join the others by the sidelines. “The technique is fine, if a little slow, but that will come with time. Tomorrow will be harder. There will be no holding back.”
Sienna raised an eyebrow at Lucas, who simply shrugged a shoulder. Greyvian hoped that did not mean she believed Lucas had been at full strength. She couldn’t possibly be that naïve.
“For now, rest,” he said. “You’re going to need your strength.”
Heading for the door, he longed for the solitude of the forest that surrounded his house—the only place he could ever truly relax now that his home had been invaded by Sienna’s scent—but was chagrined to find that they were all following close behind him. They continued to do so until he realised that they were not going to let him slip away as per usual. Why they wanted his company was beyond his comprehension, but he decided it was probably easier to accept the inevitable, and finally led them into the kitchen. Perhaps if he plied them with food, it would keep them from speaking too much?
Not a chance, as it turned out.
“How many do you think will come for me?” Sienna asked in a conversational tone of voice, her lack of fear towards the subject an irritation that got under his skin. Had she no regard for her own safety? And yet, it was that lack of fear that had attracted him from the very beginning.
“My father will most likely bring three for every one of us,” he said, forcing his mind off the subject of attraction. “Perhaps more where I am concerned. He will want to be sure that he has the numbers before he comes at us.”
“Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taking him this long,” Katarina said with a frown. “He has some very talented individuals on retainer and I can’t be certain that I’ve been one hundred percent religious with taking the battery out of my phone in time before reaching the mansion. He’d surely have some idea by now where we are.”
Greyvian was impressed that the female had even thought about it to begin with. She must have experience with hiding from the male.
“I, for one, am happy that he hasn’t,” Knox said, dipping his hand into a packet of corn chips, the foil crinkling loudly. “It’s given us time to round up some reinforcements. If Kobus is expecting five of us, we’ll give him ten instead.”
“Won’t he be expecting that?” Jacob asked dubiously. “I mean, from what I’ve been told, he’s some great warrior. Won’t he know that we’ll call for backup?”
Katarina snorted. “My father knows every full-blood vampire in the country, and is well on his way to cataloguing the world’s population, so he knows who would and wouldn’t help us to stand against him and will have them under surveillance. Since we won’t be calling on any of them, he will expect one or two more unknowns at the most, but that’s it. The only half-breeds still alive that he knows of are those two,” she said, waving a hand towards Knox and Lucas. “Well, three now, with you. The rest are too good at hiding, I guess. Or not so good at fighting, and have been wiped out already.
“I never would have suspected more than a handful existed in this country if I hadn’t discovered Greyvian’s been helping them transition.” His sister looked at him with a small smile on her face. “Father would have kittens if he ever found out about that.”
Greyvian cared little for the male’s reaction.
“Who have you called?” Greyvian asked Knox, feelings mixed with regard to the whole idea of having backup. His natural inclination was to face his father alone, but Sienna’s life was at stake. He had the feeling he would need all the help he could get when it came to keeping her safe.
That was, if they even made it to a showdown. With all the training they’d been doing, Greyvian found himself in need of blood much sooner than was usual. It was needless to say that having Sienna and her scent around wasn’t helping the situation. Regular people food wasn’t helping his craving for her blood.
As if she knew that he was starting to struggle with it, he noticed her start to edge away from him and felt his gums tingle in the tell-tale way that they did when his fangs came out. He had to grip the bench to keep himself from going after her. Looking over at Jacob, he noticed his son was in a similar state of discomfort.
“You probably wouldn’t know them, apart from Rafe,” Knox said in answer to his question, dipping his hand back into his bag of chips. “But it was pretty easy getting them. I just told them that Kobus was coming for us and they asked where and when—didn’t even need the details. They’ll be here first thing in the morning.”
Twelve hours had never seemed such a long time.
Knox stared at him as if waiting for praise, but then looked over at Jacob. His eyes flicked between the two of them, and then found Sienna who was still slowly edging her way to the other side of the room.
“Jacob,” Greyvian said without looking at the male, “perimeter run. Now.”
Jacob didn’t need to be told twice.
18
“Sienna, I’d like you to meet Marcus Gleeson,” Knox said, entering the lounge room with a tall, shaven-headed male who was dressed in dark blue jeans and a white singlet that showcased broad shoulders, a slim waist and a heavily muscled physique like nothing short of nakedness could. “Marcus and I have known each other since childhood if you can believe that.”
Sienna smiled and stood, nodding at the attractive half-breed and trying not to stare. It was hard, as there was a lot to stare at—his muscles for one, his face, another. He was a very good-looking male, with a strong jaw, full lips and thick black eyebrows that framed the prettiest green eyes she’d ever seen—even prettier than Knox and Lucas’s, which she wouldn’t have thought possible. It was those eyes that really caught and held her attention, as they were a green so vibrant they almost seemed to glow.
But it wasn’t just the colour that demanded attention; it was the way in which they captured and held her gaze, connecting the two of them together as if he was seeing straight into her soul. Something in that gaze spoke to her, promising things that could never eventuate because she was with Greyvian. If it had not been for the Poker Faced King, she would have happily accepted the invitation in them, but the grey-eyed male had gotten to her first, so Marcus was out of luck.
In a blink, the moment passed and the world returned to normal as Marcus drew in a sharp breath, his eyes darkening suddenly as his pupils expanded, dimming the glow and cutting the connection.
“You weren’t wrong about the scent,” Marcus breathed, looking her up and down with a flick of his gaze. “But you downplayed her attractiveness,” he added with a wink and a smile as his pupils shrunk back to a more normal size, returning the colour to their former shade of vibrant green.
It was tempting to flirt with the male, but she restrained herself and chose a safer subject instead. “Gleeson. As in son of Glee?”
Marcus laughed—a husky, sexy sound—and shook his head. “God, I hope not. If that
is
my father’s name, then I can understand why he didn’t stick around. Too much of a legacy to live up to, if you know what I mean. I’m assuming he was a full-blood, so that could also be the reason, but I actually have no idea who he is—my mother was human and a cranky bitch at that. The most I could ever work out about my father was that he came and he went—pretty much that literally.”
Sienna shook her head, smiling crookedly. “You know, I’m beginning to think that full-blood males don’t make for very good fathers.”
“More like sperm donors, you mean?” the male laughed.
She inclined her head in agreement and then looked past him to the doorway where Lucas was entering the room with another unfamiliar face—a male with slightly wet-looking dark hair that was pushed off his forehead and curled around his jawline in that rock band, a little too cool for school, kind of way.
“Ah, Sebastian McFay,” Knox said as he saw who she was looking at. “I met Sebastian only twenty short years ago in Ireland. I believe that’s where you made up your surname, isn’t it?”
The newcomer shrugged a shoulder, his guarded gaze flicking from Knox to Marcus and finally to her, where it lingered.
“So this is the human?” he asked, his voice as dark and mysterious as his eyes. He took a deep breath and then let it out slowly, remarking, “She smells alright, I suppose. Better than your average human.”
That sparked an argument amongst the other males, who couldn’t believe that he could only think of it as ‘alright’.
Sienna stayed out of it. She felt a little intimidated in his presence. Maybe it was his shadowed, heavily-lidded gaze that caused a shiver to travel down her spine, or the way that he looked at her with such mistrust and suspicion, as if he were waiting for her to rob him blind at any given moment. If it weren’t for that look, she might have thought him attractive. His nose was thin, his lips even thinner, but there was a sexy, bad boy attractiveness about him that was set off by the five o’clock shadow that darkened his strong chin and jaw.
Damaged.
The word sprung into her mind and wouldn’t go away as she tried not to look at him. Whenever she failed and her eyes met his, she felt as if she were drowning. Best to avoid eye contact.
“So Kobus wants to kill you all?” an amused voice sounded from the doorway. The lounge room was certainly filling up now. It was a good thing this was Greyvian’s mansion and not her modest sized apartment. They never would have all fit there. “I told you that hanging out with Greyvian was a bad idea.”
Sienna looked over to see two new faces entering the room. The hair of the one in front was the first thing to catch her eye. It was a few inches long and stood straight up on top—defying gravity—and was a very dark auburn in colour that glinted blood-red in the light from overhead. His vibrant blue eyes drew her attention next, the amusement within them telling her that he was going to be good value.
Glancing past him, to the male half-hidden behind him, she saw just enough to notice that this one had similar features to the former—but nothing like the could-be-twins resemblance that Knox and Lucas, or Greyvian and Jacob, shared. Perhaps they were mere brothers, not father-son? Maybe with two half-breed parents, instead of one human and one full-blood sperm donor? There was no way to tell how many years separated them—being permanently stuck at the age of twenty-five made it kind of hard to distinguish that kind of thing—so it was impossible to tell just by looking at them if there were years, decades, or centuries separating their births.
Smiling, Knox waved the two over, gesturing for everyone to take a seat. She, for one, was quite happy to sit down. Normally, she would’ve been all too happy to be in a room full of good-looking men, but these weren’t men. She was all too aware of the fact that they could, and possibly would, kill her just to taste her blood, and standing around twiddling her thumbs wondering who to, and—more importantly—who not to look at, was a tad disconcerting.
Now it was just a matter of who to sit next to. Knox seemed the safest option, so she planted her ass next to his and played table-tennis with her eyeballs, bouncing them from one male to the next so that she didn’t linger too long on any one.
“Where is the infamous male, anyway,” the spikey-haired one asked after he had plonked himself down into an armchair across from her, “I’d love to finally meet him.”
“He’s around,” Knox assured. “He and Jacob are feeling a little peckish, so they thought it wise they keep their distance.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, his laughing eyes locking onto Sienna, seeming to drink her in. “The human who is Aware and smells delicious. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I am Xavior. The living statue behind me is my twin, Rayven.”
Sienna glanced up at the male standing behind the armchair in which Xavior sat, finally getting a good look at him. Like Xavior, he was tall, solidly built, with masculine features and dark auburn hair that, unlike his brother’s, was a little longer all over and a bit unkempt—like it hadn’t seen a brush in a while. Instead of vibrant blue eyes like Xavior, this male’s eyes were jet-black as he stared at her with an expression that reminded her of Greyvian—completely neutral. Except with this vampire, there was a sense of nothingness when she looked into his eyes—like there was absolutely nothing there. A living statue, as Xavior had described him.
If she’d had a sense of drowning when meeting Sebastian’s eyes earlier, she felt like she was falling as she looked into the inky darkness of Rayven’s.
“You’ll have to excuse him if he doesn’t talk much,” Xavior said, drawing her gaze back to his. The former vibrant blue of his eyes was now a winter chill with a depth of pain and sorrow that immediately made her want to hug him. “He’s not quite right in the head since his transition.”
Glancing back at his brother, Xavior suddenly reached up and poked the male in the belly. “Aren’t you, Ray?”
Rayven slowly looked down at his belly and then over at Xavior. In the deadest voice she had ever heard, he said, “Yes, Xavior.”
With a roll of his eyes and a return to his former high-spirited self, Xavior shrugged his shoulders as he looked at her. “I said he doesn’t talk much. Not that he can’t talk.”
Unsure of what to say or do, she simply sat there and looked at whatever innocuous object she could find—the coffee table, a lamp, the threads of the rug in front of her.
“Well, this is awkward,” Marcus said wryly, getting to his feet. “I think I might take a look around. Seb, you wanna come with?”
Sebastian nodded briefly and followed the male out of the room, leaving her with Knox and the two brothers. She would have actually preferred if Sebastian and Rayven took a walk, but what could you do?
“So, who else is coming to this shindig?” Xavior asked, lifting a leg and resting the ankle on his knee, a picture of comfort. “Did you invite anyone who can actually fight?”
The wolfish grin on his face said he was just teasing, so Knox ignored that comment. “Just Rafe.”
Xavior looked incredulous. “That’s it? Seven of us and Greyvian against Kobus and his jarheads? Are you insane?”
The blonde raised an eyebrow. “I believe there are ten of us in total. Don’t forget Katarina and Jacob.”
Xavior’s expression turned to surprise and then to one of consideration. “I hadn’t considered Katarina turning against her father, actually,” he said, and then shook his head. “But we’re still down one. You can’t count Rayven in on this. He’s just as likely to kill one of us as he is one of them. When you tell him to kill, he does it indiscriminately. Believe me, I found that out the hard way.”
Knox frowned up at the black-eyed male. “Why’d you bring him, then?”
Xavior’s eyes went that wintery blue of sorrow once again. “He can’t be left alone for long, and I was hoping that Greyvian could try some of his wonder-blood on him. I mean, if it’s good for transitions, maybe it’s good for transitions that have gone wrong.”
Sienna wondered what Rayven had been like before his transition. If Xavior was anything to go by, perhaps the male had been more like his brother. The two must have been close to put that kind of despair in Xavior’s eyes. She felt sympathy for the both of them. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to lose someone so close to you and yet have their living, breathing body follow you around, a mere shell of what they had been.
Looking up into Rayven’s black eyes, she wondered what went on inside of his mind. Did he know that he was only half the male he used to be? Did he care?
Once again feeling as if she were falling, she averted her gaze and wondered where Katarina was hiding and why. Shouldn’t she be here to greet the new arrivals? Wasn’t she the least bit curious about them?
As if she had conjured the female out of thin air, Greyvian’s sister entered the room, took one look at Xavior and groaned.
“Oh, Christ. I should have known you two were pals,” she moaned, draping herself over the back of the couch in mock despair. Lifting her head, she glared at Xavior and asked, “is there anyone you don’t know?”
“It’s nice to see you again too, Katarina,” Xavior replied dryly. “As a matter of fact, I’ve never met your brother. Know where I can find him?”
Katarina made a face and shrugged. “Far away from Sienna, I imagine. He hasn’t eaten in a while and she’s getting rather tempting.”
The male smiled and looked over at Sienna with a curious gleam in his eye. “I can well imagine. She does smell utterly delightful, and what with him being the only human-blood-drinking vampire in existence, he must be having a hell of a time resisting.”
Sick of being reminded just how much discomfort she caused Greyvian, she forced a change of subject by asking, “How long have you known each other?”
Xavior got an amused twinkle in his eye at the same time as Katarina tried to look innocent but failed.
“Oh, Kat and I go wayyyyy back,” he said, the wicked gleam in his eyes getting brighter the longer he looked at the female. “So long in fact, that she was a mere sixteen years old at the time. Such an impressionable young lass, weren’t you?”
The female buried her head in her hands and groaned.
Sienna got the strong impression that their relationship had been carnal in nature. Especially when Katarina looked up again and locked eyes with the male.
“Katarina! Really?” Knox tutted and shook his head. “You actually find this mug attractive?”
“She never has been able to resist me,” Xavior replied with a smug smile.
Katarina sighed and rested her chin on her hand while she gazed at him like a love-struck teenager. “That is true,” she admitted with another sigh.
Sienna was confused. She thought Knox and Katarina had been disappearing together, but now this? Was this their way of playing down their involvement with each other? Or was this just what happened when you were immortal? Did you just rack up a long list of lovers without any serious commitment along the way?
“No luck with Rayven’s cure?” Katarina asked, all joking aside, as she looked over at the male in question.
“Not yet,” Xavior replied, that wintry chill of despair back in his eyes. “But I was hoping your brother might be able to change that.”
Katarina frowned. “Greyvian? How? Oh, I get it. His blood is gold for transitions so you think it’ll help Rayven.” She screwed her face up in disagreement and said, “I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”