Quinn's Undying Rose (Scanguards Vampires #6) (20 page)

“I hate you!” she yelled.

He tried to subdue her, grabbing her arms, but she twisted from his grip, her hands searching for any weapon she could find. When her fingers encountered the texture of wood, she wrapped her palm around it. Without looking she knew what it was: one of the broken legs of the chair.

With more force than she thought her body could muster, she plunged the makeshift stake into his chest.

A sound at the door coincided with her driving the stake through Wallace’s heart. As he disintegrated into dust, the door shut, making her snap her head toward it, ready to dispatch whoever else was threatening her.

A man leaned casually against the door. She didn’t know why, but instinctively she recognized him as a vampire.

“Saved me from having to kill him. Had a bill to settle with him,” he drawled.

Still gripping her stake tightly, she jumped up.

“Who are you?”

One side of his mouth lifted. “Let’s just say, we have the same enemies.”

Rose glanced at the floor where the dust settled. In front of the fireplace, the dead girl lay like a ragdoll. Nausea suddenly overcame her, but except for dry heaving, she produced nothing.

“Ah, your first kill,” the stranger commented. “It’ll get easier.”

She shook her head. Never. She never wanted to kill again. What she needed now was someone to hold her.

“Quinn, oh God, Quinn,” she murmured. She had to find him. He would help her.

“You know his prodigy?”

Rose raised her head, looking back at the vampire without really seeing him. “I need him now.” Lifting her eyes, she begged, “Help me, Quinn, please help me.”

A moment later, strong arms prevented her from falling. They shook her back to consciousness. “You can’t go to his prodigy.”

“No, I need Quinn. I need him now.”

“You don’t understand!” The vampire’s voice became more insistent. “If he finds out you killed his sire, he will kill you.”

“No! Quinn loves me!” He had professed so only a short time ago.

“He has no choice. It’s the duty of a prodigy to kill his sire’s killer, no matter who this person is. It’s an instinct, as ingrained as the lust for blood. Once he knows what you did, he won’t be able to resist the urge. The pull will be too strong. It’s a duty bred into us.”

“But he loves me . . .” she whispered.

“It won’t matter. If you stay here and let him find you, you’re as good as dead.”

Her heart clenched. Had she been on her own, she would have let it happen, let Quinn find and kill her. But there was Charlotte. She still had to protect Charlotte.

“Help me,” she begged the stranger.

Rose blinked the tears away. She stood outside of Quinn’s bedroom door on the second floor of the B&B, battling with herself. He deserved to know why she hadn’t come to him all these years and why she had faked her own death. It had been the only way to make sure he wouldn’t look for her.

She was done lying to him, hiding from him. And now that Quinn knew what was at stake if Keegan got his hands on the flash drive, she was certain he would continue protecting Blake even if he had to take his revenge on her for killing Wallace. Blake wouldn’t need her anymore. He would be taken care of.

Her heart beat into her throat, which was dry as sandpaper. Her pulse raced uncontrollably, and her palms were damp. A pearl of sweet made its way down her neck and into her cleavage.

Rose tried to raise her hand to knock at his door, but her body didn’t obey her mind. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t move. She stood there like a frozen statue, her feet rooted to the floor, her body stiff with fear.

Yet, strangely enough, the sensation that filled her wasn’t fear of losing her life if she told him the truth about what she’d done, but of losing his love. It overrode everything else. The thought that wherever she was going, be it heaven or hell or any place in between, she would be going there without his love, was unbearable.

She was a coward and a wimp—simply not strong enough to do this—even less now than right after Wallace’s death. Because even after two hundred years, she loved Quinn with the same intensity as the night she’d given him her virginity. If anything, the years apart had cemented that love.

Disappointed in herself, she turned on her heels, and her heart stopped.

Only a few feet from her, Quinn stood watching her. Now he advanced on her, putting himself within arm’s length.

His hazel eyes shimmered golden as he ran them over her in slow motion. Then he locked eyes with her.

“I missed you, my love,” he murmured

No, if she told him the truth now, she would never see that look of love in his eyes again.

22

Quinn stroked his fingers over her cheek. He’d watched her as she’d stood in front of his door, clearly torn whether to enter or not. It told him everything he needed to know. Rose wanted a second chance. As did he.

He’d been angry with her only hours earlier when he’d found Keegan’s message and discovered her deception. But the longer he thought about it the more he understood why she’d hidden that fact from him. He hadn’t behaved like the man she knew back then. He’d coerced her into sleeping with him as payment for his services, and this display of power had given her the wrong impression. She’d had to assume that he had changed, so how could she trust that he would do the right thing and not try to steal the data from her to use it for his own purposes? He had given her no reason to trust him.

It would change now. He would set his pride aside, forget the last two hundred years and woo her again, just as he’d done in the ballrooms of London. Only this time his wooing would include passionate lovemaking of a more intense kind than he’d been allowed back then, when she’d been an innocent.

“I’m so sorry for the things I said to you,” he murmured.

“Quinn, I—”

He slid a finger over her lips. “Shh, my love. Hear me out. Whatever happened between us, I want us to forget about it. I want a fresh start. A clean slate. I know I’ve been acting like an ass. I was angry and hurt. But I’m also grateful, grateful that you’re alive. And that’s the only thing that counts. For whatever reason, I’ve got you back, and I’m not going to let this chance pass me by. Rose, please forgive me for whatever I’ve done. Just let me love you again.”

Seconds of silence passed.

“I’ve never stopped loving you,” she replied, her voice heavy with unshed tears. “But the things I’ve done . . .”

Her eyelids dropped to half-mast.

Sliding his fingers under her chin, he made her look at him. Was she alluding to the fact that she ran brothels? In his eyes she’d done an honorable thing by protecting those women even if others wouldn’t see it that way.

“I love you no matter what.”

Rose was still pure. To him she was still the young woman he’d left behind to go to war.

Reaching past her, he opened the door to his room and nudged her inside, following her closely. Once inside, he locked the door, making sure nobody could simply walk in and interrupt them.

Rose’s gaze snapped to the lock, then back to him; a second later it landed on the bed.

Quinn followed her gaze before looking back at her. “I’m not going to force you to do anything this time. Whatever happens here will be because we both want it. You can walk away anytime, you can say no to anything.”

“ . . . or I can say yes to anything.”

The suggestive look she graced him with shot through his body like a bullet. It was how he remembered her: playful and receptive.

“Will I have to wait much longer for a kiss, or would it be too forward for a lady to steal one?”

Her coquettish smile melted his heart.

“I would never make a lady wait.” No sooner had the words left his lips, than he pulled her into his arms. “But I always make a lady come.”

Crushing his mouth to hers, he unleashed the passion he’d kept bottled up for two centuries.

With one arm around her waist, he pulled her into the hard planes of his body, as he buried the other hand in her golden tresses, angling her head for a closer connection. Her lips were inviting, her tongue tantalizing him with gentle strokes, urging him to delve deeper into her delicious mouth.

The soft press of her breasts against his chest shot a thrill through his groin, the knowledge that she was here out of her own free will and not because he was forcing her, only intensifying the feeling. Rose wanted him. Everything she did attested to it: her hands that caressed his nape, making him shiver, her pelvis grinding against him, letting him sense her heat, her fangs that had lowered fractionally and now presented an altogether different temptation.

Unable to resist, he stroked his tongue over the tip of one of her fangs, making her jolt instantly. The unexpected movement made her fang pierce his tongue, just deep enough to draw blood, which seeped from it instantly.

Rose yanked her head back, interrupting their kiss, a horrified expression on her face.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Despite the apologetic words, her eyes were transfixed on his mouth, her nostrils flaring in the process.

Pulling her back to him, he parted his lips, letting her see the drops of blood he could taste on his tongue. “I’m not. Sorry, that is.”

His lips hovered over hers as he allowed her to inhale the scent of his blood. Too soon, the tiny wound would heal by itself, shutting off the flow of blood, but before that happened, he wanted one thing from her.

“Taste me.”

Her eyes widened, interest and horror colliding within them in a battle of equally matched opponents. It was unclear which side would win. But Quinn had never been one to play by the rules when it came to women. He knew how to press his advantage, how to turn the tables in his favor.

Sliding his hand down to the round curves of her backside, he gently urged her closer to him, wanting to make her aware of the effect she had on him.

“Do you feel that, Rose? Just the thought of you tasting my blood makes me harder than granite.”

Her next intake of breath brought with it a moan that reverberated deep inside his chest. A moment later, her lips were on him, her tongue forging ahead, swiping over his to collect the blood that was waiting there for her. When she swallowed, his heart beat into his throat, waiting anxiously for her reaction.

All of a sudden, her heart beat against his in an excited rhythm, as deep and melodic as a drum, yet as rapid as a jackhammer.

“Quinn,” she whimpered, releasing his mouth for a split-second.

Had he not been so busy recapturing her lips, he would have smiled. Knowing that she loved his taste, that she’d taken a small drop of his blood gave him hope: they would work things out between them, remove whatever obstacles remained. This time, they would make it work.

His need for her spiraling, he let his hands wander over her body. As he palmed one breast through the fabric of her top, her sounds of pleasure vibrated against his lips, making them tingle pleasantly.

He growled, impatient now to touch her naked skin. As if she knew what he wanted, she dropped her hands to the seam of her shirt, pulling it upwards.

“No, please,” he whispered. “Let me do that.”

He couldn’t think of a greater joy than to unwrap her, to lay her bare like a present on Christmas Day.

Obediently, she let go of her shirt, placing her hands on his chest. Her nimble fingers instantly went to the buttons of his shirt, popping one after the other open.

“Tit for tat,” she said.

Chuckling, he tugged at her top, pulling it up and making her interrupt her own activity as he pulled it over her head. While he tossed it on the floor, his eyes were already drinking in what he’d laid bare. Her lace bra was practically see-through, leaving nothing to his imagination.

In awe he lowered his head, bringing his lips to the nipple he could clearly see through the wafer-thin fabric. Snaking out his tongue, he lapped over it, tasting the rosebud. Yes, this was what he’d missed all his life: a taste of Rose.

Rose’s hands working his buttons instantly stilled and instead gripped the lapels of his shirt as if holding on for dear life.

Continuing his sensual assault on her nipple, his hands went for the bra straps, sliding them quickly over her shoulders, allowing him to push the fabric away from her breasts. When his lips and tongue met her flesh, he sucked greedily, the nipple in his mouth having long ago turned hard.

Not wanting to neglect her other breast, Quinn switched sides, licking and sucking the other nipple in the same way while kneading her flesh with his hand. The aroma of her skin intensified, filling his nostrils with the sweet smell of aroused woman. Her skin tasted of rose pedals, engulfing him in an English garden filled with hundreds of rose bushes.

Knowing there were more places on her body he needed to taste, he continued to undress her, his hands making quick work of the button and zipper of her pants, then shoving them over her hips. Pulling them down her legs, he dropped farther down, leaving her breasts, and instead bringing his head to the apex of her thighs. As she stepped out of her pants, having discarded her high heeled sandals moments earlier, he steadied her with his hands on the back of her thighs.

Rose swayed for an instant, but he pulled her toward him, pressing his face into her center, where her panties hid her sex. As delicate as the wings of a butterfly, the fabric clung to her, hiding his view, yet her scent escaped.

At the next intake of breath, he filled his lungs with her delectable aroma, feeling how it did things to him no other woman had ever managed: his heart softened, the walls around it cracking for the first time in two centuries.

Her fingers dug into his shoulders. “Stop.”

He raised his head to look at her, surprised at her command. Had she changed her mind? When he met her look, he noticed her smile.

“I want you naked too.”

Quinn rose, his fingers jerking the last button of his shirt open in the process, then shrugging the garment off his shoulders.

“Better,” she approved, then she motioned to his jeans. “Now your pants.”