The Vampyre Legal Chronicles - Marcus (16 page)

Since his legs
had turned to water he collapsed on top of her.

Gasping for breath
Marcus rolled onto his back and took her with him, turning her to
lie on top of him.

His hand pushed
back her hair as he stared into her beautiful face.

Still pale, and
apart from her eyes, almost back to normal, thank God.

He held her
tight as she burrowed her hot face into his neck.

"Speak to me,
my wee darlin’."

"I hate you,"
she muttered.

Relief had
Marcus close his eyes tight as he stroked the silky soft skin of
her back.

"That’s fine.
That’s good."

Very gently he
patted her bottom.

"Why did you do
this to me?"

Her muffled
voice, came from under his ear.

Ahh, the one
thousand dollar question. The temptation to lie was almost
overwhelming but he took a deep breath.

"You and me, we
are destined."

Silence reigned
now.

A silence that
went longer.

And longer.

Eventually she
sniffed.

"I have no idea
what that means and I don't care. For as long as I live, I will
never, ever, forgive you for this."

Well, he could
hardly blame her could he? Since it would be a long time before he
forgave himself for putting her through hell.

After another
endless silence that seemed to last for hours, Anais raised her
head and leaned sharp elbows on his chest.

"I didn’t know
it would be so bad, darlin’," he said, lifting his hand to gently
tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

 That
comment earned him a cold, hard stare out of blood-shot eyes.

"What do you
mean you didn’t know? Are you trying to tell me this is the first
time you’ve done this?"

Marcus frowned
at the disbelieving tone in her voice, in her eyes.

"I’ve never
taken the vein of a woman while making love to her."

Her eyes stared
right through him, as if she was trying to gauge the truth of his
statement.

With difficulty, Anais
rose.

She thrust away
his helping hand, grabbed the first thing she could find, his shirt
and pulled it on. All the while keeping a wary eye on Marcus as he
tugged on jeans and a T-shirt of black cotton.

Brain spinning
and her heart pounding too fast against her ribcage, Anais sank to
the edge of the bed and carefully took stock of her condition. The
wound on her hand was burning and swollen. Her guts felt as if
they'd been scrubbed raw with a wire brush. Every single muscle,
every single bone in her body hurt. But worst of all was the way
her jaws, her teeth, ached. Last year she'd suffered the agony of
an impacted wisdom tooth. But this was beyond agony... her gums
felt swollen and bloody. Her bottom lip was puffy, almost twice its
normal size. But what really freaked her out were the black talons,
lethally sharp, that had replaced her fingers, her toes.

She flexed
them.

Oh God, how
could this be happening to her
?

The room swam
as her eyes stung.

In her mind,
the part of her that was still... her, was screaming in her head.
While the rest of her mind was strangely, eerily, perfectly
calm.

Perhaps she was
losing it?

Perhaps he'd
given her something, drugs?

Perhaps this
was all just a bad dream?

But then a soft
voice in her mind had her jolt upright.

'There is
nothing to be afraid of, little sister. I am here with you. I have
always been with you.'

Marcus now sat
on the edge of a chair, long legs spread, elbows on his knees. And
he was watching her like a hawk.

Okay.

So, now she was
hearing voices.

Yep, she was
losing her frigging mind.

The soft voice
in her head laughed gently.

'We are
vampyre.'

We?

'Yessssss. You
are me and I am you. We are one.'

She was no
longer human?

And if not
human, what?

What on earth
was she?

"Are you going
to make me drink blood?" she said, forcing the words past the
horrible fist of loss in her throat.

"I am not going
to make you do anything. You may feed from me, or you can feed from
scientifically manufactured hemoglobin with extra vitamins and
minerals added." The way he said it, as if what had happened to her
was No Big Deal, had her shaking her spinning head.

"Does your
vampyre
talk to you?" Anais asked Marcus as she lifted her
hand and gingerly touched a claw to her head. "In here?"

He shrugged.
"Yes. I was born like this. For me it is normal to talk to my
beast."

Beast?

Now she leaned
forward.

"You regard
yourself as a beast?"

He winced and
shook his head.

"No. Bad word
choice. I am a man. But I am also vampyre. He emerges if he feels
threatened."

"So your..."
Finding it hard to believe she was even having this conversation,
Anais took a deep breath, "vampyre... felt threatened by me?"

A softness
entered his eyes as Marcus jerked his head to the trail of mass
destruction on the ceiling.

"You weren't
quite yourself at the time."

She narrowed
her eyes at the intimate look in his.

"So you say
you're a vampyre. Okay. Let's just say that for the moment, and for
the sake of argument, I believe you. How do you feed?"

There was one
thing she just knew she'd never be able to do and that was to cause
harm or drink blood from a human. Even if he put a gun to her head,
she'd never do it. She'd die first.

"Our scientists
have developed synthetic hemoglobin. These days it is forbidden to
feed from humans."

Yeah right, and
she believed in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, too.

"So all that
stuff about Dracula is nonsense?"

"Yes and no.
It’s complicated."

"You’re telling
me," she muttered. "Why did you bite me?"

His eyes went
warm again with something like affection.

"Because," he
purred in a way that made Anais want to punch him right in the
mouth, "you are my mate. We are now bonded."

"So you bit me
because you wanted to have sex with me? A bit extreme don't you
think, even for you?"

He smiled and
she didn’t smile back as he continued, "And since we are sharing
secrets, truths. To be absolutely accurate,
you
are not one
hundred per cent human, either. It appears you have the DNA of our
species." He nodded again to the damage on the ceiling. "As we can
see."

He started to
smile, and sobered instantly at her stony stare.

"There was one
fundamental thing you didn't do, Marcus." The way he blinked at
her, baffled, only added fuel to the fire of indignation burning
deep in her belly. "You did not give me a choice. You decided to
take what you wanted as if you had the
right
to do so. No
one has the right to change someone's life, without even a
discussion, without warning. And for that I will never forgive
you."

Overwhelmed,
she closed her eyes and dropped her throbbing head in her hands and
felt the claws flex. If everything that had happened to her was
real, what the hell was she going to do?

Well, it wasn't
often he found himself on the receiving end of a spitting
inquisition, and Marcus had to admit this inquisition wasn't going
well.

She lifted her
head.

Bloodshot eyes
found his and held the stare.

For a man who
was supposed to be one of the sharpest lawyers of his time, he
hadn't thought ahead, had he? Now he wondered, what he'd been
thinking? No wonder his brother James had been disgusted with
Marcus's lackadaisical attitude towards bringing Anais into their
world.

Now he
wondered, how on earth he was going to make amends?

His heart
squeezed as he watched Anais, just sitting there, with her hair,
that gloriously slippy hair, raining down the back of his shirt to
her tiny waist. She looked so fucking cute. If one overlooked the
fangs, the claws and the bitter hatred in her eyes... for him.

He chanced
another smile and prayed for a response.

Nope.

Nada.

"You..." she
finally said in a tone of utter loathing. "Are a pitiful excuse for
a man or a vampyre or whatever you
think
you are."

Anais struggled
to her feet and when he leapt up, she slapped away his helping
hand.

"Darlin’,
I..."

The look in her
eye made him close his mouth with a snap.

He winced,
feeling her pain, as she limped on bloody feet towards the
bathroom.

"Cut out the
darlin’ crap. Just stay away from me." She flung open the bathroom
door so hard it bounced off the wall of white marble. "God, I ache
in places I never knew existed,” she muttered under her breath.

Before he could
respond she’d banged the door closed and clicked the lock.

Lying flat on his back
on the bed, Marcus studied the destruction on the ceiling and came
to the conclusion that things might have been worse, a lot
worse.

He could have
lost her tonight.

Killed her
through sheer ignorance.

Anais was angry
and upset.

Who could blame
her?

The rush of the
power shower interrupted his thoughts as he rose, scratched his
flat belly.

They needed to
talk about the future.

Their joint
future.

Together.

When she was
feeling better and had calmed down.

Anais was a
reasonable, intelligent woman.

Once she
understood he'd had no choice, that she was destined to be his,
she’d understand that they would be good together in a way that
mattered between man and wife, vampyre and mate. After all, life
went on. Anais would realise it and accept things were what they
were.

A pounding at
the door of their suite interrupted those happy thoughts.

The cavalry had
arrived.

Typically, too
late to do anything worthwhile.

Marcus unlocked the
door and came face to face with the last person in the world he
wanted to see.

"Hello there,
lover boy." Saira Pattullo’s deep voice purred even as her full lip
curled. Dressed from head to toe in black leather that could have
been sprayed on her outstanding body, Saira certainly didn’t look
like a medic. And Marcus happened to know that her bedside manner
totally sucked. "Where is she?"

Rather than
wait for a response, she strode past him on long legs followed by
four huge Centuri medics dressed in black leather whose coloring
told him they were part of the Pattullo clan. Italian. And every
one a heart breaker.

"She’s fine
now," said Marcus in an optimistic tone. "She’s in the shower."

Saira turned
from surveying the damage to the ceiling, the plaster and the blood
on the carpet.

She pursed her
beautiful mouth and narrowed her spectacular chocolate brown
eyes.

"Uh huh. This
place looks like the scene from a slasher movie."

She swung
round, strode through the bedroom, raised her fist and broke open
the bathroom door.

At the lack of
a glass-shattering scream from his woman, Marcus followed right
behind.

From the corner
of the ceiling, Anais perched with big eyes, blood-red eyes,
glaring at them.

Then she
flashed her baby fangs in a pitiful attempt at a warning hiss.

Hands on her
hips, Saira turned to Marcus shook her head and shot him a hard
look.

"Seriously,
Marcus. You
spanked
her?"

Marcus had no
intention of justifying his actions to Saira Pattullo.

She might be a
medic but she was also a total pain in the ass.

However, he was
mortified to find himself shuffling his feet under her horrified
gaze.

"She attacked
me. It was the only way to restrain her."

"Did your
vampyre
do this?" Saira demanded. And his hot cheeks told
their own story. "Typical Neanderthal. You’ve probably traumatised
the thing."

Now Marcus's
brows snapped together.

His voice
growled deep and low in his chest as the song of Scotland rose to
the fore.

"Anais is not a
thing. She is my bonded mate."

Her response
was a sharp fingernail painted blood red poked into his chest.

Saira went nose
to nose with him.

Chocolate eyes
bored into his.

"Yeah? And how
much say did she have in becoming bonded to the great Marcus
Gillespie?" She didn’t wait for his response, didn't need to
because his guilty face said it all. Her brows rose. "Thought so.
Get her clothes. Close the door behind you and leave her to
me."

Two days later, Anais
lay on her back on a couch in the sitting room of their suite. She
kept her eyes closed and wondered if the whole experience had been
a weird and terrible nightmare. But the bad tempered mutterings of
her companions told her that this version of her new reality was
only too real.

One of the
shocking facts she'd learned, that she still couldn't get her head
around, was that all the partners in Gillespie, Pattullo and
Hindmarch, plus all their offspring, were vampyres. Vampyre
Princes? Who would have thought it? For six months she'd been
working right in the middle of a vampyre assembly, or whatever a
collective of vampyres were called.

A Molotov
cocktail of sheer terror, a roaring temper and dark unsatiated lust
swirled sickly in her emotional core.

She’d learned
the scary female vampyre, who could give GI Jane a run for her
money, was Saira Pattullo. And that Saira was a medic. She'd lived
up to the name of being a vampyre by inserting so many needles to
take blood tests that Anais felt like a pin cushion. A portable lab
had been set up in a spare bedroom and even now Saira's team were
liaising with a pharmaceutical company to work out why Anais was
stuck with her vampyre dominant instead of her human side.
Apparently she was an anomaly, a deviation from the normal, because
this had never happened before.