Slowly, Cole drew her hand away from his mouth, lifting it between them. His eyes left hers long enough to glance once at the wound on her finger and the welling rivulet of crimson. When his eyes came back to hers, love welled in his chest for this brave, precious woman.
Just as slowly, just as deliberately, Cole guided her hand back to his parted lips. Before she could react, he drew her finger into his mouth and suckled, drawing the heady flavor of 254
her blood into his mouth. The warm sweetness of it trickled down his throat, so innocent, so pure.
He wanted more. He
needed
more. He sucked harder.
A new sensation raced through him, wildly erotic, completely provocative. Alex’s blood, willingly offered. She gasped and stared at him through half closed eyes, unable to look away, and he knew she was getting her first, albeit tiny taste of a Vampyre
Kiss
. All too soon, Cole released her finger from the suction of his mouth.
He held her finger up for her view once more. The blood was gone, but the wound remained. Before her astonished eyes, Cole licked her wound, and as his tongue withdrew, the wound was no more.
Not a hint of the puncture showed.
Yet Cole’s eyes still glowed, brighter than ever, and his fangs remained extended, seeming to have grown in size. The flavor of her blood lingered on his tongue. It surged through his system like an intoxicating elixir, rushing heat and life to every nerve, every cell in his body.
She tested her finger, lifting bemused eye to his, and nearly brought him to his knees with the passion and love…the acceptance…in her eyes.
Cole reached for her then, unable to stop himself. He pulled her against him, not roughly, but firmly enough to let her know he was the one in control this time. His lips descended, claiming hers in a kiss that drained away any lingering uncertainty. Her tongue slipped inside his mouth to duel with his for control. She traced the edges of his fangs. He groaned aloud.
Cole let the kiss stretch on, but when Alex pressed against him full length, he took her firmly by the shoulders and set her from him, determined to get everything out in the open. He wanted no more secrets between them. After all, it 255
wasn’t everyday a woman found out the man she’d been making love to—the man she’d fallen in love with—was Vampyre. He needed her to understand exactly what he wanted from her—
exactly what he wanted to have
with
her. He wouldn’t risk losing her again, later.
“Wait.” He ground the word out through gritted teeth, his voice husky with forcibly suppressed desire. “We need to talk, and if you keep kissing me like that, it’s going to be a long, long time before we get around to words. You need to hear all of it.”
Alex allowed him to set her back on her heels, her eyes burned with desire, but she nodded.
Satisfied she wasn’t going to run from him, screaming in terror, Cole strode across the room to put a little distance between them, hoping to clear his mind a little. Turning to face her, Cole tilted his head, searching for the right words.
“Your tattoo—the
Odhroerir
… Why did you choose that particular symbol?” He’d asked much the same question before, but she’d been too afraid of her answer to respond. “I… I don’t know. It just…called to me, I guess,” she replied haltingly. Then a frown creased her brow. “Why do you have all those weapons in that case, Cole? Why are they all from the same period in history? And why do they all have the same markings? Where did you get them?”
Cole stared at her a long time. His answer would be a shock, but he refused to lie to her.
“They are my history, Alex. They’re mine.”
“I know they’re yours now, but…” Then his response took on a completely new possibility.
She frowned, tilting her head to the side. “What do you mean, they’re
your
history?” Before he could respond, her eyes suddenly widened. Her 256
words rushed out on a hoarse whisper. “How old are you, Cole?”
“Old,” he replied with a wry smile.
Barely a second passed before she pressed,
“How old?”
His bark of laughter was short and blade sharp…fang sharp. His female was entirely too smart for her own good. His smile was grim. “I was born in the year 811 AD, Alexandra, in a small village on the western shores of Norway. I was a Viking warrior. The sword and shield…all the weapons in that curio cabinet…they’re
mine
.” His heart lurched inside his chest as the color drained from her face and she swayed on her feet.
25
Alex blinked, sliding down onto the side of his bed, trying to wrap her mind around the fact Cole was well over eleven hundred years old. Then, before she could draw breath, he was kneeling before her, grasping her hands in his, peering up into her face with a fierce frown.
“Stop doing that!” Alex snapped. One minute he’d been across the room, the next he was kneeling before her. It was…unsettling.
“I’m sorry,” he offered, though he didn’t seem certain why he’d apologized. “Are you all right?
You just went white as a sheet.”
“I’m not sure yet,” she answered. Her hands trembled in his. She stared hard at him, recalling her first initial assessment of him—the brazen, sword-wielding Viking on the storm-tossed longship. Shaking her head at how close she’d hit the mark. “So, those weapons in the case, they really were…yours. You were a Viking?”
“Yes.” He gripped her hands tight. “I’ve lived many lives, sweetheart, but that was the first.” So many questions raced through Alex’s mind. She didn’t know where to start. Dismayed, she asked, “How did you become Vampyre?” Letting his breath out in a long sigh, Cole rose from his knees and sat beside her on the luxuriant king-sized bed. He slid back across the duvet, the black silk rustling against his jeans.
He pulled her back with him until they lay side by side.
Alex cuddled full length against his side, in 258
the protective circle of his arms, her head cradled on his shoulder. He did
feel
the same. Everything she’d learned about him so far had left her troubled and confused, but, oddly enough, the one thing that still held the power to give her comfort was the feel of his strong arms around her, and the thud of his steady heartbeat beneath her ear. His heartbeat…
There was another question. Vampyre weren’t supposed to have beating hearts. They were supposed to be cold, the undead. More questions swirled forth.
The reassuring thud beneath her ear, the warmth of his skin contradicted what she knew of Vampyre lore. Then again,
he
was supposed to be nothing more than myth, yet here he was—
very
flesh and blood. Somebody really ought to notify Hollywood… They obviously had it all wrong.
Cole’s voice was a husky rumble against her cheek when he spoke at last. He told her of his life before that fateful voyage, of being a favored son of a wealthy raider. And he told of the girl he was to have married upon his return, Dagna. Alex suffered a razor sharp pang of jealousy, hearing the note of fondness and regret in his voice as he spoke of his long lost intended. The realization the girl was over a millennia gone, didn’t help much.
He glossed over the uncharacteristic winter raids of 840 and 841, how he’d amassed a small fortune on those endeavors. Then his voice grew distant as he recounted that final, fateful raid near the mouth of the Garonne, and the carnage that was his rebirth. She cringed as Cole told her of the monster they encountered on those far away shores.
“I’d been one of the first off the longship. The woods where we landed…where we were to meet 259
the others…were empty, oddly
silent.
The…beast…greeted us with taunts as we walked into a small clearing in the forest, jeering at us as though we were…cattle. My boyhood friend, Errik and I approached it with arrogant confidence. We were the first to fall. I think Errik died instantly.
My wounds were…severe. I fell as the others charged it…but I wasn’t dead, not yet.
“The beast cut down every last one of these fearsome warriors I’d grown up with, raided with…l
oved as my own brothers…without
remorse or hesitation. I lay on the cold ground, waiting for death to claim me. Praying for the halls of Valhalla before the monster returned to finish his work. I caught flashes of motion, glimpses of this beast…savaging those I knew and fought alongside.” He shuddered in her arms, turning his face away and closing his eyes for a moment. Alex waited in silence as he mourned his fallen comrades one more time.
When he spoke again, his voice was harsh, roiling with turmoil. “The monster possessed phenomenal speed and unrivaled reflexes, was far more lethal than a berserker full gone with bloodlust. Its eyes glowed through the darkness with an unholy light as it gorged itself on their bodies where they’d fallen.” His voice dipped, torn with emotion, as he whispered, “All around me, my brothers lay in mangled shreds, torn to bloody ribbons.
“I was horrified when I first realized it wasn’t just…defiling their corpses, ripping them to pieces. The beast lifted their still steaming corpses and drank their blood right before my eyes. I would not lie there, waiting for it to get around to finishing me off. I don’t know where the strength came from, but I managed to push myself to my feet. I knew not what the beast was, 260
only that I stood alone against it.” He paused, his fingers gliding through the length of her hair.
“As soon as I began to move, it crawled forward, dragging a limp body in its massive fist.
It sat back down, putting the corpse—the body was too mangled to identify—to its lips while it watched me struggle to my feet.” The hand not slipping through her hair covered her hand where it rested on his chest, giving it a gentle squeeze before pressing it tight to the steady bump of his pulse. “It seemed…curious. Maybe surprised, I couldn’t tell. I lifted my sword—hadn’t bothered with the shield as I knew it would be useless—
and I screamed a war cry.”
He chuckled then, startling
her.
“In
retrospection, my fearsome war cry probably sounded a little…feeble at that point.” His hand fell away from her hair to trail over the contours of her back. “Anyway, the beast finally stood, dropping the corpse on the ground at his feet, like an empty wineskin. It laughed. The sound of that evil laughter struck fear into my heart as nothing else I’d seen that night had. It came at me then, taunting me for my frail Human body…even as it commended me for my courage. In the shape I was in, the face-off should have lasted mere seconds. But it toyed with me…only the gods know how long.”
He shifted in her arms, his troubled eyes met hers as shadows fell across the room. “Are you sure you want to hear this, sweetheart. It’s not pretty.”
His gaze remained steady on her. His memory of that beast, an ancient evil that chuckled and praised Cole for his courage even as he cut him down…an evil who’d been so impressed with Cole’s valor, that he’d autocratically bestowed upon Cole a primordial curse of bloodthirsty 261
immortality…wasn’t something he’d ever shared with anyone else, she could see that. That he would share it with her touched something deep inside.
“I want to know what happened to you, Cole.
All of it.”
He searched her face for a long moment, his fangs gone now, but his eyes still glowed. At last, he went on. “I fell to my knees, too weak to stand any longer, cursing the monster with my dying breath. Searing pain stabbed my neck, and, at first, I assumed it had taken a sword to me at last. But I’d forgotten…the monster carried no sword. The only weapon it possessed was its fangs.”
“Oh, Cole,” she breathed, forgetting herself.
Patting her back, he pressed his lips to her forehead. Consoling her. He was silent for a long moment, and then he murmured, “Things sort of went…dark after that for a while. I recall feeling a warm trickle against my lips at one point somewhere in there. When next I woke, alone amidst the cold remains of my fallen comrades, I knew nothing but for the burning thirst.” She was positive he’d edited—liberally—that last bit for her benefit. But she got the picture, and it was horrific. The beast had brought Cole to the brink of death, only to pull him back with sip of tainted blood. He told her of crawling from the carnage, a monster in his own right, with hungers he could little comprehend, and of wishing to the gods that he’d died along with his fellow warriors.
His newfound thirst had both disgusted him and left him with inexplicable powers. His strange existence on the shores of a foreign country and his struggle to survive had helped to shape the Vampyre he was today.
Where the telling of his transformation had 262
been done in tones of detachment and varying shades of anger, his triumphant, yet ill-fated return to that small village of his birth and the woman he’d loved tore at her heart for the sadness lacing his voice. She cried for him as he told her of his intended’s reaction to what he’d become. She’d been so terrified of him—of what he’d become—that she’d taken her own life, leaping into an ice-clogged fjord rather than letting him near her.
Cole’s voice was raw when he spoke of plunging into the frigid waters to retrieve the girl’s lifeless body, and how the other members of his village had driven him from their midst with glowing torches. His own younger brother’s vengeful face had led that mob. That last, startling bit of his tale, told her far more than she’d ever thought possible, about the male at her side and the pain he’d suffered. Alex couldn’t contain the tears that seeped from her eyes and soaked his chest, tears for the man who’d lost everything because of one cruel stroke of fate, because of something he’d neither asked for, nor wanted.
Yet that stroke of fate had led him to her. At length, Cole explained his abilities to her. He told her of his strengths and his weaknesses, helping her sort through the myths to find the truths of his race. He also explained that within his particular race, something called mated pairs—
provided the female was still Human—actually possessed the ability to conceive and bear offspring. Mind-boggling. At her bemused stare, his mouth opened, but snapped closed, as if reconsidering. He fell silent.
His fingers traced idle circles around her knuckles, his body relaxed as Alex lay quietly in his arms. He waited in silence as she processed 263
all she’d learned about him.
“And you’ve kept the weapons and armor all this time.” Her voice held a quiet note of wonder.
“I guess they were reminders of…
me
,” he stated in a pensive tone, and then he gave a cryptic shrug. “I had the
Odhroerir
carved on each piece as a reminder to myself to search for wisdom rather than rushing into the moment with blind arrogance.”
Silence captivated the room for a long time then.
At length, she asked, “Do you ever wish you could be mortal again?”
“I did at first,” Cole replied. “But then, after a while I guess I adjusted. I came to realize that wishing to be anything other than what I am is pointless.” He shifted her against his shoulder and stared down into her eyes, his brooding gaze unfathomable. “There is no miracle cure for what I am, Alex. There is no way to go back. I am what I am. Nothing’s going to change that.” Somehow, Alex understood. Then she thought of the tattoo on her back.
As if reading her mind, eyes filling with conviction, Cole declared, “It was fate that brought us here, Alexandra. You bear my mark…” Alex stiffened in his arms, modern woman that she was, balking at the implication of being someone else’s possession. “I’m not a thing, like your sword or your helmet, Cole, and I won’t be treated as such.”
In a move so swift, it left her head spinning, Cole flipped her over, pinning her beneath him.
The features of his face sharpened with his anger.
His eyes flashed with offended insult, his tone harsh. “Don’t you think I know that? Odin’s teeth, female! Sometimes I swear, if alcohol could affect me, you’d drive me to take up the bottle.” 264
He drew a deep breath then, visibly forcing himself to calm down. “I won’t lie to you, there’s still a large part of me that’s very much the possessive, conquering raider. But, sweetheart, I would never view y
ou as anything other than what you are—an intelligent, self-reliant,
desirable woman. Gods, you’re so much more than that…”
His voice trailed away, his words going a long way toward soothing her temper. Drawing another breath through flared nostrils, Cole stared down at her, as though his next comments would either complete him, or leave him devastated. His voice—already tugging seductively at her heartstrings—turned dark and smoky, sending shivers of want down coursing through her body.
“There’s one more thing you need to know, something you need to understand.” Inexplicably nervous, Alex stared up at him, her eyes riveted to his, unable to do anything more than jerk a tiny nod and force a swallow.
“To Vampyre, there’s nothing more revered—
nothing more cherished—than the one he takes the Vows with, the one he shares his immortality…his very soul with. His Bride.” Cole paused, frowning at her with a strange intensity.
He traced the back of his fingers across her cheekbone, over her jaw, down the ivory column of her throat, as if unable to stop touching her.
His voice dipped again,
deeper, seducing her. “It’s a very special, very extraordinary
bond.
Sensual…physical
and emotional…all
encompassing. It’s a commitment a Vampyre can only make once in his Immortal lifetime.” Cole paused, and Alex’s brow creased as she began to make the connections.
“A Vampyre can go his entire existence and 265
never find his Bride. But when he does, Alex…” Cole stopped, dragged in a deep, fortifying breath.
His burning gaze pierced her. “When he does, he will do
anything
—whatever it takes—to possess and protect, to honor his mate. The bond is unbreakable. They literally share one heartbeat, one soul. What one feels, so feels the other. Not even death can separate them, for the very moment one dies—so dies the other.” Alex’s mouth went dry as she followed his speech. But his next words stole her very breath, made her heart thump against her ribs with panic and thrilled fascination.