Love Bites (12 page)

He wanted to enjoy. Wanted to fuck her until his name was the only word she remembered how to say. But he couldn’t pretend he didn’t feel as he did, even if she was scared. “You’re my mate, Sydney. That’s a lifelong commitment. Casual enjoyment isn’t part of the scenario.”

“Casual?” She let out a purring laugh and rocked her hips upward, sheathing him with one slick undulation of her body. Moist heat surrounded him, impelling him to thrust. “Doesn’t feel casual to me.”

He gripped her hands beside her head and knotted their fingers together. His gaze hot on hers, he started to move inside her, raising and lowering his hips in a blur until she was arching and panting beneath him.

Her lips parted on a ragged moan. “Oh, yes. Kellan.”

He sliced his fangs along her lower lip until blood beaded on the plump flesh. He lapped up every drop, pumping harder, driving her back into the mattress with his surges inside her. She screamed, long, thin wails that raked over his skin like silk ropes.

“Come. Come.” The demand spilled out of him. “Let me feel it.”

Sydney reared up in bed and bit into his shoulder. “Oh, I feel—”

He cut off her gasp with his mouth and delved his fingers between their joined bodies to manipulate her clit. She was so swollen. So blisteringly wet.

“There. Right there.” Sydney started to shake. “Oh, God.”

Her reverberations traveled up the entire length of his cock. Speared straight into his balls. She pulsed around him, tiny explosions of intense heat. He shouted her name as he came again, pulling out then surging deep so she could absorb every bit of his scalding release. Before the last spasm stopped, he drew back to lift her legs up on his shoulders, bending her knees until she was totally spread open and exposed to him. He pounded into her again and again, swallowing her excited puffs of breath and needy cries while he sucked on her tongue.

She was his. Would be his for all eternity. And he wouldn’t allow her to forget that for even a moment.

“Kellan, you’re killing me.”

Her body thrashed under his, and her head whipped from side to side. Her expressions shifted from bliss to the brink of pain and back again, but her rhythmic hip thrusts and the liquid easing his thrusts let him know exactly how much she was enjoying herself.

Enjoying. What a hateful word.

He gripped her ankles and rocked against her, swiveling to reach every hidden spot. Her inner walls cupped him, contracting with each of his massaging strokes. When she whimpered, he changed the angle and ground the base of his shaft against her still-sensitive clit.

“Gonna come for me again?” He panted the question against her glistening red lips. Lips that had devoured his blood and his come in equal measure, so that each kiss burned with his own flavor.

She didn’t answer.

He moved faster. Harder. Pressed her for everything she had to give. Finally she imploded, showering him with her wetness as she threw her head back and moaned loud enough to shatter the windows. He followed right behind her, half-expecting his spine to snap from the violent force of his plunges.

Once the haze lifted, he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. That Sydney still breathed like a marathon runner beside him gratified him somewhat, but not much.

Only two thoughts resided in his mind. She didn’t love him. And she didn’t seem to care that he loved her.

He waited for her to say something, or to give him that look under her lashes that made his stomach clench with longing. Instead she adjusted her nightgown, hiding her breasts from him and lowering the hem to her thighs. Then she got up and walked out of the room.

“Fuck.” He punched the pillow still indented with the imprint of her head.

Now what?

***

Baby, I love you. More every minute
.

Sydney pulled at her hair and stared at her dazed eyes in the bathroom mirror. She looked like a woman who had been thoroughly plundered. Plundered and used and she’d loved every goddamn minute of it.

But that didn’t mean she loved him. It was too soon. She’d been locked up in this place for two weeks, barely waking long enough to talk to him while she sucked down her supper. They’d talked more at Pastry ’n’ Joe, for pity’s sake. She cared for him, of course, and she definitely wanted him—

“God!” She closed her eyes and shook her head. What the hell was wrong with her? For the first time since she’d picked him and Lucas up on the side of the road, she felt more like herself. More…normal. And now that she did, how could she even be considering having feelings for a vampire?

A goddamned vampire. The man she drank from as if he were her own personal sippy cup.

She braced her hands on the sink and leaned close to the mirror to examine her eyes. Not even a speck of red remained in the green. Maybe it was an aberration. Some horrible mistake. She’d just fallen in with a bad crowd. Somehow they’d used delicious, dirty sex to influence her into thinking she needed blood to survive.

She wasn’t a vampire, latent or otherwise. She wasn’t. Sydney Louise Langdon was a barista and a chakra and palm reader. That’s all.

And she was very much single.

The last thought roused her enough to smile. If tiny, gleaming white fangs hadn’t marred her expression, she might’ve actually felt better.

Okay, so the fangs were a little harder to explain.

On the verge of tears, she lowered onto the toilet and stared down at her flat belly. She felt stirring deep inside her, a shifting almost. Her hands trembled as she cupped her stomach. Could life grow there? Could it really be possible?

But when the cramps strengthened, she knew. Knew even before the white tissue came up streaked with red. As her cries finally broke free from her chest in shuddering sobs, she saw the tidy line of pregnancy tests on the counter.

***

When Lucas returned with his bookworm, Kellan was staring at the closed bathroom door. Sydney had been in there for over an hour, and he’d had to quell the urge to summon her out more times than he could count. Then again, maybe she’d fainted. He’d pounded into her awfully hard, especially since she’d only recently arisen from the transformation.

He clenched his fists. Had he hurt her? Then Luke and Emily arrived and he clenched his fists for a new reason altogether.

“Where is your fledgling?” Emily eyed the strewn bedsheets distastefully before perching on the leather armchair in the seating area. “Is she still capable of movement?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Kellan snapped.

He held up a finger when she again attempted to speak. “Let me warn you right now. I’m not in the mood to deal with any of your simpering questions. If you’re so bloody infatuated with the idea of vampires, why don’t you ask your—”

“Drink?” Luke questioned smoothly, nudging Emily’s shoulder. “We have Perrier or ginger ale, or if you’d prefer, a crisp Sauvignon Blanc. I picked it up on my travels to California last spring. The flavor’s robust, but subtle enough to—”

“Shut the hell up. Just shut up!”

Emily whipped out a small spiral notebook and stubby pencil from the messenger bag she wore across her body like armor. “Exhibits rage at slightest irritation. Demonstrates extreme lack of patience. What are your physical symptoms?”

“Right now? Only one. My hands are itching to encircle your scrawny throat.”

She smirked and continued to write. “Eyes are red. Fangs exposed. Shows insufficient level of control.”

“Oh, I have plenty of control. If I didn’t, you’d be lying drained on the floor.”

Luke shifted from foot to foot, clearly uneasy. “Kellan, come on. Seriously. Lighten up.”

“What he said. Besides, doesn’t sex usually relax your kind? The room practically reeks of it.”

“Sex relaxes your kind, too. If you ever had any, you’d know.”

Emily didn’t reply, but she pushed her pencil into the pad until the tip snapped.

Pleased to see one of his arrows had finally pierced her seemingly impenetrable shield, Kellan leaned back in his chair. “You’re a girl,” he said at length.

“Let me check.” To his utter surprise, she bent over and flipped up her plaid skirt as if to verify that fact. “Yep,” she said cheerfully. “Appears so.”

Good God, he couldn’t believe he was about to ask Emily, of all people, this question. But he was desperate. “If a man was in love with you, and told you so in the midst of—”

“
In flagrante delicto
.” She motioned for him to continue.

“Yes. How would you respond?”

She crossed her legs and tapped her short, unpolished nails on the arm of her chair. “I assume we’re talking about Sydney.”

“How much did you pay for that fancy university education?” At Luke’s pointed glance, he rolled his eyes. “Fine. Yes. I’m talking about Sydney.”

“She’s half human. Which means she may not subscribe to your vampire belief system. The love-for-all-eternity jazz.” She shrugged. “She might just like sleeping with you.”

“It’s hardly jazz. Do you understand that we are no different than animals who bond for life? I can name scores of them. And as such, once we find the one we recognize to be our eternal mate, there can be no other. For either of us.”

“For vampires, that may well be true. I understand that the vampire is closer to its animal nature than any human. But she’s not only vampire. Not only human. And perhaps that means that she doesn’t view mating the same way you do.”

Kellan hated to consider it, but her logic made a lot of sense. “So that means her human side must be taken out of the equation,” he said simply. “She must be turned into a full vampire.”

The bathroom door opened and Sydney emerged. Somehow she appeared years older than when she’d left him. Deep grooves lined her eyes, which only emphasized her unnatural pallor. Her eyes were a red-rimmed green and stared deep into his.

Her beauty, the quiet tragedy of it, tore holes inside him. They might as well have been alone in the bedroom, because the others simply ceased to exist. He saw only her. Transfixed, he almost didn’t notice the boxes she cradled in her arms.

“No need for these.” Her voice rang with false cheer. He could tell it was false because the expression in her eyes was utterly desolate. “Sorry you wasted your money.”

Without a glance for Lucas or Emily, she marched over to the trash receptacle in the kitchen and unloaded the pregnancy tests. Then she strode to the bed and began pulling items from the drawer beside the nightstand.

“What are you doing?” He spoke before the panic that threatened to dig its tentacles into his chest had a chance to take root. “You should be resting.”

“I’m done resting. I feel better. Thank you for taking care of me.”

Stay calm
. But the internal warning did nothing to lessen the growing anger that had begun to war with the fear. She thought she could just stroll out and leave him? As if he’d been some sort of caretaker rather than the man she’d just fucked to the brink of madness?

He rose and without removing his gaze from Sydney, threw out a command. “Lucas, Emily. Leave us.”

For once Emily didn’t make some snarky comment. Nor did she wait for Lucas to make her exit. Kellan was willing to bet the two of them had been eager to escape.

He waited until he was sure his voice would be steady. “Where are you going to go?”

“Home.” She piled her clothes on the bed, then snatched at the canvas bag he’d used to carry her belongings. She hadn’t had much. “I called Tate and my apartment hasn’t been rented yet.”

“I told the landlord—”

“I lived there three years. Apparently he couldn’t find someone to move in that quick, even after you bought out my lease.”

He wouldn’t let the rage overtake him, not yet. She had to be confused, and she was in a fragile, weakened state.

Most importantly, he loved her. There could be no doubt about that. And because he did, he wouldn’t overreact. Wouldn’t scare her and possibly irreparably damage their relationship.

“Who is Tate? And how did you manage to call anyone, let alone a man?”

“Tate is my boyfriend.” She didn’t say
ex
-boyfriend, though he waited for her to tack the prefix onto the phrase. But no. She stared at him, openly daring him to challenge her. “We’ve been together two months. He wants me to come home.”

She’s afraid. Out of her element. She has no idea what’s she’s doing
.

Kellan closed his eyes. Whatever his rationalizations, he didn’t think anything could subdue the torrent of feelings inside him. Even his bones seemed to rattle with his building fury.

“You slept with me, with us, numerous times. What kind of relationship must you have with him?” He could not, would not, speak his name. “And I repeat: how did you call him? There isn’t a phone in the bathroom.”

“You left your cell in the pants hanging on the back of the door. And speaking of which, I know you’ve had my phone all this time. Hard to worry about things like cell phones when death seemed imminent, but now? I want it back.”

He cursed under his breath. While he’d been worrying about her, she’d been whispering on the phone to her boyfriend. And she had to have been whispering while he’d been yelling at Luke and Emily, because he would have heard her otherwise.

Lucky thing. If she was scared now, ripping the door off the hinges probably wouldn’t have helped.

“Yes, I kept your phone for safekeeping. And I called your job to let them know you’d had an emergency and would contact them once you’re available to work again. Which I really don’t think is a good idea. Ever. Now that you’re one of—”

She held up a hand. “Don’t go there, buddy. Not even hearing it.”

“I understand you’re frightened.”

“You understand?” She barked out a laugh as she zipped the bag. She hadn’t bothered to pack the clothes he’d hung in his closet, but she seemed more interested in speed than in gathering everything. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you can fathom even a glimmer of what I’m going through.” Her eyes glittered for a moment, then she blinked and they were clear once again. “You picked up a plaything on the side of the road. We played. Now I’m leaving, just as soon as you give me my goddamn phone.”