He climbed the steel lattice steps effortlessly, and with a few strides carried her into a huge loft bedroom. Then he was pressing her down onto a bed, the cover fleecy soft and warm on her back.
She closed her eyes, indulging her vampire senses. His scent surrounded her, pure man essence of musk and cinnamon, a faint hint of champagne and whiskey on his breath. His heart thudded, and her mouth went dry at the blood pounding through his veins.
Her lids sprung open as she felt his thighs against hers. Hands either side of her head, his biceps bulging, he straddled her, and she couldn’t withhold a moan as his pelvis pressed suggestively against her mound.
“You like?” he asked thickly, and then ground his hardness against her again before she could hash out a reply.
Reawakened lust poured through her veins, her blood running hot. She swallowed. “Get out of your clothes.
Now
.”
He threw his head back and laughed sweet triumph, his fangs long and razor sharp. He looked back down. “Baby, I’m all yours.” Then he bent low, pressing another kiss to her mouth before saying thickly, “Undress me.”
Suddenly she was back in charge. Elation had her passion soar to an even higher and more urgent plane. Her gums tingled and itched, her fangs abruptly bursting through with a savage pop, her pulse leaping frantically.
Placing outspread hands on his chest, she shoved him back onto his haunches. His shirt gaped, and her hands slipped inside to feel his heart pound beneath his silken skin with its rasp of hairs.
She gripped the lapel of his shirt, thrusting it over his shoulders and down his arms. Vampires weren’t milk white and pale from lack of sun; they glowed with eternal good health and vitality. The Vampire Lord was no exception. His bare chest gleamed like warm honey in the darkness, inviting her touch.
They stared for a long moment, each reading the other. The temperature soared, awareness pressing their senses while silence drummed around them, the air thickening with their need.
Kia exhaled sharply. Bending close, she released the catch on his pants and lowered the zipper before tugging them down the sleek length of his thighs to his knees. His briefs followed, and she said, “No, don’t move,” as he shifted to remove them completely.
He stilled on his haunches, his erection standing to attention, silky, long and delicious. And she felt an ache deep in her womb to master him, have him beg her for release.
She stuck the tip of her finger into her mouth. When she trailed the moist pad across the head of his erection, he emitted a strangled groan, then sucked in a breath as she clasped his engorged length fully and massaged up and down.
He grabbed her hand midstroke. “Stop. Even I have limitations.”
For him to acknowledge such was a potent aphrodisiac. She’d brought him to his knees, literally. And she wasn’t about to give up such a heady rush any time soon.
She plucked his fingers from her hold and said, “Good to know.” Then she was climbing onto his lap, wrapping her legs around his hips until she straddled him and he was perfectly positioned at her entrance.
“Witch,” he breathed out.
“Scared I’ve hexed you?” she asked, and before he had a chance to reply, she dropped fully onto his shaft, taking him all the way in, her muscles stretching and shifting and hugging him tight.
Oh, mercy
.
He closed his eyes and hissed exultation. “Christ,” he uttered. Then his head fell back, his hands holding his weight as he bowed into an arch.
Her eyes burned and glazed over so that his form took on a brighter tinge of red, bloodlust now spiraling out of control. She smiled a wicked smile as he jammed his hips forward, causing her breasts to graze his chest, her hair to feather along his shoulders.
With him buried deep, she tried hard not to think, not to feel as her every cell pulsed with delight, threatening pre-orgasmic bliss. She didn’t want that yet.
She wanted to ride him long and ride him hard, test not just his self-control, but her own too. But she wouldn’t be mastered or manipulated. Her capitulation would be her own.
She moved ever so slowly up, his erection a delicious friction against her inner walls. His chest drummed under her outspread hands and her heart raced in unity with his.
Sinking back down, their breaths whooshed out together, a collective cloud of desire.
Her fangs caught her bottom lip as she set into motion the old-as-time rhythm. She watched him watch her, and it turned her on almost as much as the act itself.
That he chose not to use his considerable power to influence her mind while she was so mentally open—or even to touch her with his incredible hands in this position, was a stimulus she could no longer ignore.
She increased speed, riding him faster, harder, feeling the intensity almost overwhelm them both.
He groaned, the cords on his neck standing out.
Oh, dear
G
od
. Hunger combusted within her like an inferno, and she leaned forward and bit deep into his throat, his lifeblood spurting into her mouth, feeding her inner fire.
Power filled her, rushed at her senses, swept her away in a current of euphoria that had her back arch involuntarily, her spine pop, her muscles locking tight.
He roared something unintelligible as he climaxed, and she shattered an instant later, whimpering as she convulsed around him again and again.
Fangs disengaging from his throat, she sagged against his chest with a strangled gasp. She couldn’t fight the charge of his lifeblood. It zapped through her, pure and unadulterated, quickly gaining power and momentum until she trembled under the onslaught, their link an overwhelming rush of the senses.
With a despairing sob, she surrendered wholly to him. And like a hapless babe, when black oblivion hurtled toward her, she welcomed it with open arms.
Kia woke to darkness and the silky caress of Ronan’s hand along her upper thigh.
She sucked in a breath, fighting instant, raging need while the knowledge of what she had done went on a rampage through her mind. Oblivion may well have taken away her awareness some minutes—hours?—before, but no such luck now. Clarity hit her senses like wild aftershocks.
“How are you feeling?” Ronan asked, pressing a warm kiss to her throat just beneath her ear.
“Like hell.” She jerked away, flooded with need even while sickened by what had transpired. She was blood-bound to this vampire for eternity! She swallowed back self-loathing. Truth be told, she’d do it all over again if she had to. She’d risk everything to help her mother.
“Hell, hmm?” He rolled toward her so that his torso fit snug against her back and bare buttocks, the satiny head of his thickening arousal kissing her spine as he swung a leg over her thigh. “I doubt you really mean that.”
Her womb clenched in response. “And just how would you know?” she asked hoarsely.
“Because I’ve lived it,” he murmured. He released a ragged breath before he explained, “Hell is surviving war while your comrades don’t. Hell is losing every mortal you’ve ever befriended to illness or old age.”
She felt the tension in his muscles, as though the memories had caught him up and thrown him back into the past.
“But mostly,” he said harshly, “hell is seeing your best friend succumb to his dark side. Hell is having no choice but to impale him through the heart, watching as his life ebbs away.”
Kia turned in his embrace, her mortal heart aching for him even as a sense of apprehension shot down her spine. “You killed your best friend?”
“Yes.”
She had a sudden urge to help him forget the past, to kiss his rigid mouth into pliable softness, knead the tension from his shoulders and smooth the lines from his brow. She tamped down the compulsion and uttered, “Why?”
He brushed his thumb back and forth across her tilted chin. “I was left with no option after he attacked your mother.”
Her pulses jerked fitfully and she pulled back a little. “You killed my sire?” she whispered. “He’s dead?”
“Yes.”
Bittersweet emotion twisted her heartstrings and plucked them bare, leaving her feeling empty, bewildered. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” He kissed her forehead, his lips cool on her heated skin. “I know you hated him and wanted your own revenge. But he wasn’t always evil.”
With an effort that was almost painful, she pushed her mental shields back into place. She’d clearly been open to him, confused and disorientated as she’d been when she woke.
She should have known better—she’d discovered something close to awe from other nightwalkers with the Ancient One’s mind-reading ability—an ability matched only by his legendary blood-healing properties.
A fury that seemed always at hand around him had her clamber to her feet. “You know nothing!” she hissed. And not for the first time she wished she were just a normal human, with normal problems. “He attacked my mother—changed my life. If I could have killed him myself, I would have. Gladly.”
Silence thickened the air, then Ronan murmured, “Shad, was once a great friend, a great vampire. But bloodlust was his drug, his weakness, one he couldn’t control in the end. I’m only sorry he got to your mother before I made the decision to destroy him.”
Sick and miserable inside, she refocused her vampire senses to see him in the darkness. “So am I.”
In a millisecond he was on his feet, his hands cupping her face. “Kia, don’t misjudge me. I’m not sorry that his mistake created you, I’m glad. With every wrong there is a right. And you’re it.”
Her treacherous heart swelled, bringing stupid human tears to her eyes.
His stare glittered, and unbelievably, Kia’s body thrummed with anticipation. She slammed on mental brakes. She might be a dhampire, but it didn’t mean she had to be just like her sire and let her appetites rule.
He stepped away, a frown flickering over his handsome face. “I took the liberty of ordering you some clothes—” his lips twitched “—some underwear, while you slept.”
She felt her brow furrow, her heart quicken. “You did?” Then at his nod, “How long was I asleep?”
“Twenty hours and a few minutes.”
She gasped, horrified. “You should have woken me. My mother—”
“Would understand you were in no state to travel.” He studied her. “As it is, you’re doing remarkably well for one so recently bonded.”
She barely took in his words, her gaze darting around the room in search of the clothes he’d bought. Her throat dried as her senses clambered with anxiety. An anxiety eased only mildly as Ronan gestured to an inbuilt closet at the far side of the room.
“You’ll find a choice of clothes in there.”
Moonlight drenched the endless rows of the vineyard in palest yellow, but Kia scarcely noticed its beauty as she stared out of the limousine’s heavily tinted side window.
Nearly there
.
Her stomach lurched. It had taken almost three hours to reach her mother’s modest property set amid the Hunter Valley wine country. A trip made in silence.
Neither pretended idle chitchat would erase the awareness that radiated between them after last night’s profound joining and its ensuing spiritual bonding.
In truth, even before she’d drunk his lifeblood she’d been drawn to him. Now that bond was even more intense, a heightened perception to his mood, to the point where she could almost—but not quite—read the vibration of his thoughts.
“One day you will.”
She swiveled toward him, her eyes narrowing as she frowned. “What…what did you say?”
His sexy lips tilted at the corners. “I said, one day you will—read my thoughts. But not right now. To do so would be foolish. Dangerous.”
Oh. My. God
. “You’ve been
shielding
from me?”
“Of course.” His face turned thoughtful. “I cannot give you a total mind link. To do so would overcome even a vampire elder, send them mad.” He moved forward, thumb and forefinger stroking the side of her face. “I’ll ensure you have access a little at a time, until you’re fully acclimatized.”
She gathered her scattered wits. “So the entire time we’ve been together you’ve heard my thoughts?”
“Occasionally.” He frowned a little at her sharp inhalation. “Even with your upbringing—and your ability to shield—you must surely have heard how easily I can do this?”
There’d been whispers aplenty about the Ancient One, even before she’d sought him out. But his mind-reading skills were only the proverbial frosting on the cake. The rumors didn’t do him justice. There was so very much more to this dark lord than what she’d heard.
He grinned.
“You just read my mind, didn’t you!” She glared. “I thought—”
“You could shut me out?” he interjected, looking so arrogantly amused she had a sudden urge to wipe the smugness from his face. He raised a brow, and she realized he knew her thoughts.
Again
.
“I’ve yet to meet a vampire who could do so,” he said, expression matter-of-fact. “And now that we’re bonded, you could be a thousand miles away and there’d be nothing you could hide from me.”
She felt about as powerless as a newborn. But then anger rebounded with a vengeance as she hissed, “So you’ve been able to read my thoughts—known from day one my mission to cure my mother?”
“I probed a little.”
Damn him
. When had he done this? In bed, at the height of passion while she was distracted by other things?—or earlier, when he’d introduced himself at the party?
“I take the liberty of familiarizing myself with anyone I want to know,” he drawled softly. “And your mission intrigued me, your passion and your wish to help your kin—it was refreshing.”
The car slowed and pulled in to a driveway hardly noticeable from the road. “We’re here,” she breathed out. And suddenly she was indifferent to his ability to read her mind, indifferent even to his shrewd stare.
Right now there were far more important things to worry about.
The headlights picked out the small cottage ahead with its twin pots of herbs on either side of the front door. A huge gum tree overhung half the roof on the left, and weeds and grass choked a fenced-in vegetable garden on the right.
Kia expelled a fretful sigh. Even when her mother had struggled to get out of bed she’d tended to the plot she’d loved so much. This overgrown patch of weeds was a sure sign that her time was near.
Before the limousine had drawn to a stop, Kia was shoving open its door. Scrambling out, she sprinted toward the sagging front door. It was locked and it took her unsteady hands a minute to retrieve the key from her purse and fumble with the lock.
“Here. Allow me,” Ronan said from behind her.
Numb to her sudden clumsiness, she accepted his help, and he smoothly inserted the key and swung open the door.
A loud silence greeted her dash indoors, a closed-up, musty scent in total contrast to the fresh, vibrant lived-in smells she’d left behind a few months earlier.
“Mum!” she yelled, but it came out as a croak. With her heart in her throat, she raced into the main bedroom. “Oh,
Mum
.”
Chantal had aged easily a decade in the three months Kia had been searching for the Ancient One. Her bright green eyes were faded and sunken into their sockets, her once-lustrous hair streaked even more heavily with gray, accentuating her wrinkled face. Her frail bones looked like twigs that would snap only too easily.
Her mother didn’t acknowledge her. It seemed all her concentration and strength went solely into breathing, her chest rattling like dry leaves blowing across concrete.
Kia felt Ronan behind her, his hand coming to rest on her shoulder, imparting strength as she whispered, “We don’t have much time.”
Was she doing the right thing? She only hoped her mum could forgive her for turning her into the very creature that had attacked her years ago.
But Kia couldn’t lose her. She’d learn to live with her mum’s loathing if need be. The question was—could her mother learn to live as a vampire?
“She’ll come to accept her new self, given time,” Ronan reassured her. “But first, we have to focus on saving her.”
He moved to Chantal’s side, and then looked up at Kia, his smooth brow furrowed. “You might prefer to wait outside.”
“No.” She swallowed hard. “I’ll stay.”
He gave a nod and rolled up a sleeve. Without further preliminaries, he raised his wrist and opened his mouth. Baring long, razor-sharp fangs, he bit deep into his vein.
The metallic scent of blood immediately filled the room, and Kia instinctively growled deep in her throat as bloodlust surged. She as quickly shoved her hunger back, moving to hold up her mother’s head so she wouldn’t choke on his warm offering of hemoglobin.
If felt like hours, but it was just minutes before Ronan removed his wrist. When he raised his arm to his mouth she said, “Wait.”
He paused, his glittering eyes a little feverish, his skin washed out. Kia eased her mum’s head back onto the pillows, brushing her sweat-dampened gray hair off her hot brow before she moved around the bed toward Ronan.
“Allow me,” she said softly.
Taking hold of his hand, she elevated his wrist to her opened lips. And with one long sweep of her tongue, she sealed his bloodied cut closed with the special enzymes found in a vampire’s saliva.
She hissed her pleasure, closing her eyes. Oh, but the taste of his blood was excruciatingly delectable, like teasing a starving dog with a meaty bone.
Only, this wasn’t about her self-control or his recovery, even with his blood loss, which was the essence of a nightwalker’s power and vitality, he would heal quickly. Being the Ancient One, she imagined that process would be twice as efficient.
No. This act was a demonstration of her respect. Her commitment. Her
faith
.
He exhaled slowly, and she opened her eyes and stepped away, shaking inside. She couldn’t speak, could barely think about her feelings as she returned to her mother and numbly adjusted her blankets.
Heaven help her, she never expected to
feel.
To have any reaction at all except the one driving need to keep her mum from dying.
You’re grateful he’s here for you…for your mum. Nothing more.
Forcing calm, she leaned down and planted a kiss on Chantal’s brow. Was it wishful thinking, or was her mother already breathing a little easier; her skin a little cooler to the touch?
“Have you ever saved other mortals from this disease?” she asked, her voice amazingly steady.
“Yes. Twice before.”
She swung toward him. “My mother’s condition is that rare?”
“It is.” He took a few steps toward the window, his back to her as he looked out at the velvet and starry night sky. One curled hand tapped against his chin as he murmured, “Your mother was pregnant when she was attacked and raped, that in itself is a very rare offense from one of our kind.”
Translated: a crime punishable by death. Vampires strove to keep their identity a secret. And attacking and drinking from mortals before leaving them to die did not qualify as a clandestine or intelligent act.
“Especially if that mortal is carrying a child,” Ronan mused aloud, reading her thoughts as easily as had she spoken them aloud. “The altered hormones of a pregnant woman make her blood much more temptingly sweet—and predisposed to contracting a vampire-induced disease—as your mother did.”
Her jaw clenched. Her sire really had been a monster of the worst kind. And it had nothing to do with his vampire status.
“The fact that your mother was able to recall the attack makes me wonder if her body has the ability to produce the special antigens needed to negate a vampire’s bite.”
She frowned, thoughtful. For obvious reasons her mother hadn’t talked much about the assault, but she’d said enough for Kia to comprehend her terror. Later, when Kia learned a mortal couldn’t recall a vampire’s bite, she’d assumed the sheer violence of her mother’s attack had caused that memory to stick in her mind.
Ronan turned to her. “I suspect this same process worked in reverse, and Shad’s vampire bacteria lay dormant in her body for years afterward until something weakened her immune system, triggering this strain of disease.”
Oh,
hell.
What did he mean? That for each pregnant woman attacked, the outcome was unique—a different result almost every time? A different disease?
He nodded. “Yes.” Moving close, he drew her into his arms, his breath warm against the top of her head, his voice muffled. “In your mother’s case, she contracted an aging disease. Immortal reversal.”
Kia had already guessed as much, the proof had been right before her eyes. But for someone to put it into words was like being told for the first time the earth was indeed round. “What made it become active?” she asked, pulling back a little to look up at his somber expression. “She was never sick.”
“Are you sure about that?”
It hit her then. “Oh!” She shook her head. “She came down with her first-ever bout of chicken pox.”
“Ah,” he said.
And that one word revealed all she needed to know. Never in a hundred years would she have guessed such a simple virus could spark something so complex and deadly.
“
Kia
.”
At her mother’s voice, Kia spun to face her, only half aware that Ronan had released her and taken a step back.
Relief clambered within as her mum focused on her. And though Chantal appeared disorientated, physically she looked much better, her skin less pasty and pink tingeing her cheeks.
“Mum!” Kia dropped to her knees beside her. About to pull her into a hug, she stopped midway. Later was for hugging, when her mother wasn’t so fragile…when she’d be as strong as an ox and likely despising the reason why.
Chantal managed a weak, wobbly smile. “I’m so glad you’re back, sweetheart.” She grimaced, coughing fitfully for a moment before adding, “And you wouldn’t believe it, but I—I feel a little better.”
Kia chewed her bottom lip. Oh, she believed it all right. She just wasn’t sure how she was going to reveal the source of this sudden bout of good health.
Chantal drew in a wheezy breath, and Kia could see weariness hollowing out her face as she struggled to speak.
“I feel…different though, too,” her mum rasped. Then, as if sensing another presence, her dull eyes sharpened fleetingly before latching onto Ronan.
He averted his head, and Kia saw him retract his still-visible, blood-tipped fangs.
Too late.
Chantal’s face flushed outrage. And with a look of dawning horror she jerked her gaze back to her daughter. “
Kia
. What…what did you do?”
A burning flood of guilt poured through Kia’s veins, leaching scalding tears from the corners of her eyes. “I couldn’t let you die.”
“No.
No!”
Chantal almost gnashed her teeth with despair. “Better I die than…than—”
“What, Mum? Turn out like me?”
It wasn’t without good reason Chantal loathed vampires. But Kia suddenly perceived how her mother’s hatred had clouded her own perspective, infusing anti-vampirism right into the marrow of her bones, shadowing one half of her heritage and an otherwise bright childhood.
Chantal had wanted her daughter to grow up in as “normal” and “human” an environment as possible. Though vampire blood tainted Kia’s veins, she’d done everything in her power
not
to taint her upbringing too.
“That’s not what I meant,” Chantal fretted, white faced and clearly fighting to stay conscious.
Kia stroked her mother’s cheek, her brow, tears now running freely down her cheeks. “I know, Mum. I know.” But deep in her heart she knew otherwise.
Maybe her mother would eventually come to accept her newfound vampirism…then maybe she’d come to fully accept her daughter’s birthright too. She sniffled, swiping her eyes dry and feeling one hundred percent human right then. “Everything is going to be all right, Mum. You’ll see.”
Chantal managed a jerky nod, and with a fitful sigh she succumbed to sleep, her rigid body slackening ever so slowly.
Kia drowned between utter joy and wretched misery. “You’ll be alive and healthy for a very long time,” she whispered.
Forever
.
Ronan’s hand settled onto her shoulder. “Kia, leave her to sleep now and regenerate.”
She released her mother’s feeble hand, sucking in a shaky breath. “Of course.”
She followed Ronan’s broad back through the bedroom door, the laundry area and onto the back veranda. Cicadas chirruped a faint roar into the still night air. Pine needles, eucalyptus and the faint whiff of herbs created a pungent scent, and she filled her lungs with everything familiar.
“You miss being here with your mum?” Ronan asked beside her.
She turned to him, and couldn’t resist. “You need to ask?”