“Ah, we’re here,” he murmured.
She nodded, forcing indifference as she turned to view one of Sydney’s Kings Cross nightclubs.
It appeared little different to the many others in the area. Seedy and unremarkable, the well-lit exterior of peeling paint and broken neon signs exacerbated its dingy interior.
She climbed out, aware of the many envious stares from passersby—tipsy nightclubbers, hard-faced hookers and sightseers alike.
His hand took hold of hers then dropped low to rest on the small of her back. She should have stepped away and brushed off his possessive touch, which shot an electrified thrill down her spine. She didn’t. His presence offered a comfort she’d never felt before. He was strong and self-reliant, and this once it was…nice to lean on someone whose force seemed as indomitable as her own.
Her senses started to buzz in the vicinity of two brawny bouncers who guarded the nightclub’s front door—vampires, the pair of them. As she approached with her escort, the muscled twosome stepped aside, sketching a bow as they walked past.
She frowned. Was this normal vampire practice? She knew so little about her own ancestry. Truth be told, she’d never wanted to learn the customs of nightwalkers and knew little more than what she’d observed since she’d started tracking down the Vampire Lord a little over three months before.
Oh, there had been things she couldn’t have helped but learn before this undertaking, self-taught experiences that’d began the moment she’d needed to drink blood. That a mortal’s memory lapsed after she’d fed had been one of her first realizations.
Being part mortal, it’d been many years before Kia had needed the nourishment of human blood. A diet including a penchant for red meat had sustained her for a little over seventeen years. Only when she’d reached sexual maturity—and satisfied that need—had she began to crave another. She’d hungered for blood with a ferocity that had left her weak and shaky.
Her mother might not have any vampire blood running through her veins—might even have utterly despised the race—but she’d understood Kia’s fundamental urges. She’d scrimped and saved to buy a small house set amongst the privacy of vineyards. To protect the daughter she could never turn her back on, no matter her origins.
It was here that she met her first lover, a handsome, strapping young man. He’d been the perfect candidate to satisfy Kia’s awakened vampire needs: hunger and sex…
Kia wrenched her mind back to the present. She had a feeling she’d need all her wits about her this night.
“This way,” he murmured. He steered her around the dance floor as techno music thumped, heat pulsing from the press of bodies writhing in time to its beat. He drew her toward the crowded bar, where a barmaid immediately took their orders.
Drinks in hand, they found a private booth where the music was a few decibels gentler. In a padded seat, she took a sip of her bourbon and coke, taking a look around.
She stuck to her human senses, enjoying the more muted effect. Noting vampires in the crowd, she wondered how they coped with their enhanced sensitivities; how they tolerated the din, the bright strobe lights and stale body odor.
The purebreds wouldn’t understand how much of an advantage she had over them at times like this. Nonstop superior sight, smell and hearing were all well and good as a rule, but overtax all three senses and a vampire’s logic and judgment became fuzzy and distorted.
But in human mode she was drawn to other vampires. They exuded a force field that was hard to resist—little wonder mortals became so helpless and transfixed within their radius.
Perhaps it was best a human didn’t recall willingly offering a nightwalker their throat. The saliva in a vamp’s bite triggered a chemical reaction in the victim’s blood, numbing their brain and clouding memory. If they happened to become a little groggy and weak afterward, then all the better.
That same saliva could affect an unborn fetus if the bitten woman was in the earliest stage of pregnancy. The more a vampire drank from a pregnant woman, the more saliva he transmitted, and the greater the odds were the baby’s genetics would cross over and mutate to vampire.
Kia would have been born mortal if her mother hadn’t been brutally attacked by a vampire in the early stages of her pregnancy.
Chantal hadn’t known she was pregnant when she’d celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday at a nightclub with some girlfriends. Suddenly nauseous, she’d rung her husband—Kia’s father, to come get her. And making her excuses to her friends, she’d stumbled outside.
Chantal’s husband, Jackson, found her in the car park some thirty minutes later. Raped, beaten and drained of almost all her blood, she’d barely clung to life. But with a hospital only a block away, the medics had been able to act quickly. A massive blood transfusion had saved her and Kia’s life.
Four years later, without any explanation or apparent reason, Jackson had walked away from his responsibilities as husband and father. He was never seen or heard from again.
“My name is Ronan,” the man by her side revealed abruptly, bringing her attention back to him.
Kia jumped, startled by the liquid-honey voice so near to her ear. He’d leaned close and she felt the brush of his knee a moment before his hand covered hers.
“Ronan.” She tested his name, enjoying the sound like a connoisseur would a fine wine. She inclined her head a little. “I’m pleased to know you.”
Oh, hell.
Was she really? He’d been her lover for one night…a nameless man who’d brought her great pleasure. And now he was
what
, exactly?
As if sensing her emotional withdrawal, his fingers entwined with hers. He stood and drew her to her feet. “Dance with me.”
It wasn’t a question, but she played along, concealing her desperate urgency to find the Ancient One. Her senses burned. She just
knew
Sean was within her grasp. And another opportunity to meet him may not eventuate soon enough.
The DJ ended his techno-music mix as she followed Ronan onto the floor. She saw him cast the DJ a look, who returned a nod. Then Ronan swept her fluidly into his arms, a slow melody piercing the air.
So he’d requested the song—so what? Right now she didn’t give a damn. Not with his body molded against hers, his large hands cradling her curves like he’d never let her go…like he
owned
her.
She’d never allowed this kind of liberty with any other man before, indeed, he’d have been inert on the floor had he even tried some of Ronan’s moves. But she wanted this man…
Ronan
, to touch her. She couldn’t quite explain why, except that he was unlike most men. Strong. Brilliant. Tantalizing. He enthralled her.
She looked up, scorched by the molten heat in his silver-gray eyes. “So—” her husky voice cracked “—this is the underworld crowd?”
He nodded. “Some of them, yes.”
Some? She sucked in a breath, so very aroused and frustrated all in one. Ronan was telling the truth, she’d have sensed Sean’s presence if he was here.
Shame Ronan was only human. Though he may well be connected to the secretive vampire network, he couldn’t possibly know they were nightwalkers—know Sean—could he?
Only one way to find out
.
She stood on tiptoe, carefully looking away from his throat as she spoke into his ear, “Is Sean Maximillus a regular here?”
He smiled when she sank back onto her heels, his teeth dazzling white beneath the slow movement of the strobe light. “Occasionally.”
Oh, my!
She stumbled, but his arms held her steady as she breathed, “Really?”
“Yes. He used to cause quite a stir. But now, pretty much everyone knows better, and leaves him alone.”
With Ronan’s body slotted so intimately against hers, Kia had the insane impression they’d barely scratched the surface of what could be physically shared. She squirmed. Last night their sex had been mind blowing. The best she’d ever had. By far.
She held his gaze. “So you’ve met him?”
The song reached its crescendo, and with an expert flourish, he twirled her once and dropped her backward, a wicked glint in his eyes as he kept her there, arched over his arm. His gaze raked her partly exposed breasts. “Many times.”
She quivered. Her nipples pushed against the flimsy silk of her dress, her sheer lace thong damp with arousal. Her body demanded one thing, her mind another.
She’d always enjoyed sex. It was integral to her genetic makeup to seek out a lover who could satisfy her needs—in more ways than one. Just recently, it had also helped to alleviate pent-up frustration from her mission.
He tugged her upright and then stepped behind her, bringing her close. His arms draped possessively across her body and felt all too right. She luxuriated in the oneness, the closeness, as she lolled in his embrace.
The DJ started up a frenzied beat and topless women—vampires—adorned with feather boas and headdresses, strutted out onto a stage in the far corner. Their eyes glowed red, a stirring of bloodlust, which was reciprocated by the vamps scattered throughout the room.
For a moment Kia wondered what the humans thought when they saw the vampires’ eyes, then guessed most of the mortals had imbibed too much to notice and were too aroused to care.
Oh, mercy.
Her own body responded with an intensity that was incredible. When male vampires swaggered onto the stage wearing nothing but studded leather thongs, she had to close her eyes for a moment and fight her skyrocketing need.
Ronan’s arousal nudged the small of her back, and he said hoarsely, “Look.”
She turned. In the crowd, a man—a vampire—had slipped a hand up beneath the miniskirt of a pretty human. When the girl sunk against his caress, his tongue slid across her throat before his eyes flashed, fangs glinting. He bit deep and drank, and the girl convulsed with pleasure.
Kia gasped with need, but fought it off as realization hit like a sledgehammer to her consciousness. Ronan
did
know about vampires. He knew only too well!
Suddenly the dancers were in the crowd, weaving across the dance floor as each one found and paired up with an avid human. Arousal filled the air, and soon after, the cloying scent of sex and blood.
“
Amore
,” Ronan groaned. “We should go.”
It was past time to leave. Through a tidal wave of desire and hunger, fury writhed within her like a snake uncoiling, an undiluted wrath that had her jerk out of his grasp and spin around to face him.
It might have been her vampire side causing her eyes to burn and her fangs to protrude on either side of her bottom lip, but it was her human side that saw her raise her hand, her open palm connecting to his cheek with a sharp crack.
Little could stop a vampire’s bloodlust. But incredibly, all motion froze. The DJ ceased play. And vamps with blood on their lips and lust in their stares, dropped their eyes and bowed their heads.
At some level, she recognized she’d broken some basic vampire code. Right then she didn’t care. All she saw was Ronan and his lie.
Anger bubbled within: at his duplicity, at her own idiocy, but mostly at the catastrophic waste of time, which may well affect her mother’s outcome.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a vampire?” she hissed.
With eyes shot red and incisors long, and his voice oddly calm, he said, “There is much you haven’t been told.”
Anger grew, vibrating through her chest to feed a savage ardor. “
What
?”
“Not here.” He offered her his hand. “You want to meet the Ancient One. I will take you to him.”
A murmur rippled through the onlookers. He quelled it with a look, and waited, hand outstretched. “Now or never.”
Bloodlust screamed through her body as they left the club. The display of hunger and sex, along with her fury at Ronan’s lies, brought her need to fever pitch, overcoming all logical thought.
Desire clouded thick and urgent in the air between them as they made their way to the limo, and with a sharp nod, Ronan dismissed the chauffeur to the driver’s seat. He thrust the back door open for Kia, and she clambered inside, anticipation firing her blood.
She waited, her pulses jumping, her senses razor sharp and fixated on Ronan. The club scene had been foreplay of what was to come, so it was no surprise when Ronan slid across the seat and dragged her into his arms.
In some distant part of her mind she bitterly accepted Ronan had deceived her, but she was all but lost in the moment, her predatory instincts and savage desire surging to the fore.
A tinted screen rose between the driver and the backseat. The car rolled forward, but Kia scarcely noticed. Everything centered on Ronan as his lips possessed hers, his tongue thrusting inside her mouth and between her fangs.
She quivered when the back of his knuckles brushed the delicate skin along her inner thighs, then gasped as he bunched the flimsy lace of her thong between his fingers and, with an effortless motion, wrenched the sheer fabric apart.
He tugged her dress up over her head and let it fall on the seat behind them. His eyes glowed without restraint as he pressed a splayed hand to her exposed mound, and then deftly massaged her sensitive nub.
She jerked her mouth from his and heaved a fitful sigh. Her legs fell apart, back arching while hot chills grew and intensified, then moments later crashed like a high-voltage wave to her scalp and toes and back again.
She released a shuddering breath as the mini-orgasm subsided. “My turn.” Reaching up, she yanked open his jacket and peeled it from his shoulders, thrusting it down his arms in record time. She fumbled a little with the buttons on his shirt and hissed impatience before she tore it open, exposing his ripped and muscled torso.
“
Dios
,” he muttered thickly as she ran her fingers over his chest and taut nipples. With jerky movements, he pulled off his remaining clothes. Then his hands curled over her shoulders and he pressed her backward.
With her shoulder blades pinned against the door, her bent knees brushing his thighs as he kneeled above her, she deliberately lifted a leg and draped it over his shoulder, exposing her wet centre to his hot gaze.
She scraped the heel of her stiletto along his shoulder blade and he growled low in his throat before moving into position. She looked up at him and smiled with half-closed eyes. There was no time for formalities. Just the here and now.
In one hard, fluent thrust, he filled her slick heat. Her head fell back, her mouth opening in a silent scream of rapture. He withdrew halfway, and then taking hold of her upraised thigh, he hauled her close and rocked forward.
He grunted out a breath, the veins on his neck standing out sharply and oh, so enticingly, as he grappled for control.
She whimpered. And when he rotated his hips, grinding farther inside her, she almost fell apart.
His chuckle trailed off into a groan when he leaned forward, his arousal dipping farther into her juices. Placing solid-as-a-rock forearms either side of her shoulders, he pulled out of her a little, then plunged deep inside.
She screamed. He muffled the sound as his mouth covered hers. Her vision blurred when he sucked her tongue and her lower lip. She shut her eyes for a moment, pitched so close to the dazzling edge she felt her pulses clacking like a runaway train.
Abruptly, he pulled out, his head tilting back. Her leg flopped onto the seat. Then, he flipped her around, her back and buttocks aligned to his chest and groin.
“I want to hear you scream again,” he rasped in her ear, his breath sending tingles down her spine and making her clench in need. “But this time I won’t stop you…this time I want to hear my name on your lips.”
She couldn’t respond. Not now. And especially not when he covered her completely, the head of his arousal kissing her moist center. And when he jerked forward, driving into her hard, she couldn’t think beyond the act that tore the air right out of her throat.
He held her hips, lifting her up and pushing her away, the sound of skin slapping on skin even louder than their heavy panting breaths.
This was no gentle seduction. This was decades, perhaps centuries, of experience and practiced skill. It was primitive and ancient and utterly vampire.
His breath tickled the skin at her throat as he reached down, pressing a forefinger against the delicate button between her thighs. She gasped as liquid heat immediately flared, exploding through her veins.
He thrust into her one last time, simultaneously sinking his fangs into her throat. He suckled, and white-hot bolts of pleasure crystallized in her bloodstream, curling her nerve endings before she shattered into a thousand juddering pieces, screaming his name while she contracted around him.
His head reared back from her throat, his fangs clacking against his teeth as he let out a roar, his seed pulsing again and again, deep inside her.
He pulled out, and immediately she felt incomplete, a little lost, somehow. The pleasure-pain sting of his bite quickly faded and the hum of the car engine was now background noise to the sudden, shrill quiet.
She released a ragged sigh, sensing that her every breath was noted, her every action and reaction, filed away. She lifted her head, but assaulted with a sudden bout of dizziness, she lolled back to her former position, with her head resting on her crossed forearms.
She shivered as though she could feel the lustful caress of his eyes as they slid over her naked buttocks and outspread thighs.
He leaned forward, his lips brushing the tender spot along her throat where his fangs had pierced. When he licked the puncture wounds to further encourage the healing process, a rash of goose bumps immediately covered her flesh at such an intimate and personal touch.
“Are you okay?”
She forced herself upright, stiff and shaky and oddly self-conscious as she recognized the feeling of vulnerability that stole over her. For a moment, it stole her breath. “I’m fine.” But she wasn’t. Not at all.
She’d never allowed anyone to drink from her before. She’d always been the recipient, the taker. But now that he’d taken blood from her, she couldn’t drink his—she wasn’t in any hurry to be blood bound to a vampire for eternity.
She blew out a breath. Even in bloodlust her body had never experienced anything quite so carnal, never responded so eagerly or savagely. Nor had she ever felt this oneness with a lover, this connection. Bloody hell. She didn’t want this. Not now. Not ever.
Ronan raised a brow. He collected her dress and passed it to her, his eyelids sweeping half-mast over his lazily approving stare as he stretched back against the seat.
Unashamedly naked, he watched as she tugged the gown over her head. The material fell gracefully over her breasts before pooling in her lap. She adjusted the excess, her hands shaky as she carefully fixed it to cover the top of her thighs.
Ronan frowned. Abruptly stooping forward, he opened the minifridge and took out a bag of blood. Hooking a fang into the corner, he ripped open the foil, licking off the droplet of blood oozing from the jagged hole.
“Here,” he offered.
She hesitated. She’d never drunk donor blood from a bag, had never needed to. Since drinking from the warm vein of her first lover, she’d learned seducing men and taking their blood had been only too easy.
Of course, those men had believed that what they shared was only sex—not their blood, too. It truly was a gift of nature that her vampire saliva ensured they remembered nothing of her sucking on their throats.
“Please,” he urged. “I’ve depleted your reserves.”
His frown deepened, and he shook his head with what could only be described as self-disgust. “I’ve never lost such control. I took what I wanted…when it was you who needed blood most.”
She didn’t—couldn’t—answer. Her nose quivered, her body screaming thirst. She snatched the bag from him, lifting it to her mouth and tilting back her head before drinking its contents. Blood trickled down her chin, but she couldn’t have cared less. A heady, hot rush zapped through her veins and filled her with euphoria.
Ronan bent forward. His tongue scraped across her chin as he gently licked away the blood. “Good, isn’t it,” he murmured.
She leaned farther back, squeezing out the last few drops from the bag like an addict. She flopped against the seat, inwardly floating and replete in every way. “Yes.”
Oh, yes
.
“It’s the rare AB blood type, particularly sweet and beneficial to your kind.”
She turned to him, satiated drowsiness fighting sudden alertness. “My kind?”
His lips curved into a lopsided grin. “Yes. The antigens complement both vampire and human genetics.” He shrugged. “AB is a complete supplement for any rare hybrid dhampire.”
She wrestled against the lethargic bliss pulling at her body. She knew it wouldn’t last long. Soon—minutes, hours, it all varied—she’d be like an overactive child who’d scoffed down too much red candy. It was a trait purebreds didn’t appear to share. “And just how is it you know so much about me?”
“An elder always recognizes one’s own kind, even if the blood is diluted.”
He retrieved his briefs and drew them on. With economical movements, he thrust his feet into his pants and shimmied them up around his lean hips. He zipped his fly and snapped the fastening, then drew on his socks and shoes. “With you, it was your distinct difference which drew me.”
Damn
. She truly knew next to nothing about their kind. She blew a breath, the hair on her brow lifting and falling before she closed her eyes, screening the bizarrely erotic vision of him dressing.
The limousine slowed and she opened her eyes. She swallowed. They were here.
He drew on his buttonless shirt and jacket. A half smile curled his lips, reminiscent of a cat who’d just been offered a saucer of cream. He took hold of her ripped thong and tucked them carefully into his pocket. “Are you sure you want to go ahead with this?”
“Yes.” More than he could know.
His smile dropped and he pushed a hand over his face, then idly rubbed his thumb at the sudden crease in his brow. “You do realize, once you cross the threshold, there’s no going back.”
A shiver of disquiet slid down the length of her spine. Was it possible this vampire liked her enough to care? “I don’t have a choice.”
He stayed silent as she turned away, and she was grateful for his insight. Vampires were glacial, hard. After centuries of life, she hazarded a guess that most suffered from world-weariness. And yet it seemed Ronan was different.
She peered out the window, the switch to vampire sight reflexive as she took in the bleak and derelict suburb, where cigarette butts and filth choked the street.
Dismay knotted her belly when the chauffeur pulled in beside a huge, desolate warehouse. “
This
is the dark lord’s hideout?” she asked, turning back to Ronan with dismay knotting her belly.
“Yes.”
Shit. Little wonder Sean had been so hard to find. For a vampire so obscenely rich, this place reeked of deprivation. Graffiti splattered the grimy brick walls and broken glass sprinkled the rutted asphalt like snow.
The chauffeur swept the back door open and stepped aside with a formal bow, as if they’d just arrived at Buckingham Palace. Minutes later, Kia watched as the limousine’s taillights retreated into the darkness.
She shivered. A chill breeze carried the smell of damp and decay. It snapped at her thin dress and tugged at her hair.
He reached out, the back of his hand trailing down her cheek. “You’re cold. If I’d known we’d end up here, I would have warned you to dress warm.”
Vampires—including rare part bloods—never fell ill. They did, however, feel the cold. All experienced pain the same way humans did.
“Here.” He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her shoulders.
Warmth enveloped her, a shield to the elements. “Thank you.”
She allowed him to draw her toward the warehouse, where he swept open a heavy steel door as if it were mere tissue paper. The place wasn’t locked, but then only a fool would go inside without permission.
Frankly, it boggled her mind that Ronan had the nerve to open the door without knocking or showing some identifying gesture. He really must have a close alliance with the Ancient One.
She dared not enter, but her eyes pierced the darkness that lay thick and heavy within like impenetrable fog.
Curtains covered the windows, obviously blocking out the sunlight to protect the hypersensitive eyes and skin of a full-blooded, nocturnal vampire.
Vampires might have the golden skin of a species who were eternally healthy, but they couldn’t tolerate the sun. Even she had to be careful outdoors, and stringently protected her skin, which burned very easily. She could only imagine how sensitive a pureblood’s skin would be to sunlight.
The building, one huge open room, was magnificent. If outside was dank and disgusting, inside was exquisite. A brilliant hideout.
Beautiful rugs, which looked to be Turkish, warmed a polished wooden floor. Antique furniture from across the globe created an eclectic and eye-catching ambience. A huge table with eighteen or twenty high-backed chairs took center stage at the far end, close to where a high-tech kitchen gleamed in chrome.
The Ancient One needed to eat? Obviously he entertained humans on occasion, fed them before feeding on them.
“Wow.” It no longer seemed so hard to imagine Sean really lived here.
Ronan chuckled. “I take it you like what you see?”
She summoned an answer, but before she realized his intention, he caught her hand in his and then tugged her inside behind him.
Breath whooshed from between her clenched lips.
No!
She swiveled toward him, her heart galloping at double speed. The fool had crossed the threshold—uninvited—into the great vampire’s lair.