“Your skin is like chocolate. I loved watching your pulse under your skin as you ate. As you watched me and got turned on. As your body told me it wanted me.” He scraped his teeth against her jugular, the sting biting at her. A small whimper escaped before she could stop it. He chuckled against her throat, nuzzling the skin as if he was rewarding her for the sound before his teeth scraped again, deeper.
“Can you hear me knocking?” He mocked her before his teeth sank in. Pain exploded through her system. It was like twin knives puncturing her skin, and on each suck, they sliced through more.
She screamed. It was all she could do, flailing against his body like a butterfly held under the paw of a lion. She knew it was futile, but she still fought. She couldn’t die knowing she hadn’t tried everything she could to survive. The edges of her vision started to darken, her arms feeling as though they were moving through quicksand. She could feel her soul slipping away. In every sawing of his fangs, she felt more of herself disappear. Tears gathered in her eyes. She was too weak to stop the overflow, and she didn’t much care. In this moment, with her life fading to the concrete, she missed Jezzie, her only family left.
She wanted her crazy friend to pull her into her arms as she always did when times got rough. She didn’t want to know that Jezzie would be dealing with death all over again. She’d thought they both left that behind after the orphanage. Her gaze roamed until it found “their” star, Jezlina. They’d named it so long ago. Friends and sisters for life. Water thicker than any blood for them. I love you, girl, she whispered to the star in her mind, her mouth not wanting to cooperate. She prayed with all her heart it reached Jezzie as the darkness crept in.
A flash of blue eyes, so deep they rivaled the blues of the oceans in outer space, in the face of the biggest wolf she’d ever seen in her life, streaked over her. Brian’s weight was lifted, his teeth ripping from her neck as she watched him struggle with the wolf. She really couldn’t take much more of this.
He couldn’t hope to be as fast. The wolf darted in and out of his reach, snapping here and there until Brian was full of oozing wounds. For a moment, Zelina pitied him. Only for a moment, though. Then she was wishing for the wolf to take his fucking head off and use it as a chew toy. The thought made her feel like smiling, but she found she just didn’t have the energy. Z could feel her neck slowly bleeding out, but she didn’t have the strength to stop the loss, didn’t have the strength to try to save herself. The darkness crept in more and more. The loss of heat was sinking in, almost bone deep. In the last, all she could think of was not having had the chance to bury her face in that wolf’s fur and thank him. Silly, she knew.
Chapter Four
Tarquin had never seen a more beautiful, tragic creature in his life. Her skin was of the deepest chocolate, vibrant and alive despite her dangerous plight. Hair, wild and untamed, fanned around her on the pavement, silhouetting a heart-shaped face of angular features and a full, sensual mouth. It was then he saw all the blood his sensitive nose had picked up on the wind. The vampyre had done severe damage to her neck. She had angered the fiend, and he had punished her for it. A large, gaping hole was taken out of the side of her throat. It was ragged and angry, red splattering her flesh and streaking her hair with darkness under the stars.
Her screams told him the vampyre hadn’t even used a glamour to soothe her. He’d wanted her to be afraid, wanted to taste the fear in her adrenaline-laced blood crashing into his system. That told him the vampyre was rogue and that even his own clan would be calling for his death. As a whole, vampyres felt the others in their clans, traced by blood mother to blood child. Over this connection, when one fell rogue, all of them would immediately know and seek out the fallen child to execute him. It was not something he was sure they enjoyed, but he understood the necessity of doing it. Rogues were dangerous and psychotic, always looking for the next thrill kill. To kill was against every tenant of the vampyre, but Tarquin was afraid this one might just have succeeded with his chosen meal. Her skin was slowly turning ashen, and he feared he was been too late to save her despite his best efforts.
He padded over to her, his claws clicking on the street and echoing into the night. He could have shifted, it would be much easier to transfer her that way, but the wound on her neck would be better served by his saliva in his soul form. The healing agents most people joked about their dogs having in their saliva, he possessed in astronomical proportions. It would force the blood to clot, for the body to heal itself from the inside out. As he understood, in humans, the effect would make their bodies go into a near-coma-like state until they recuperated from being forced to do in minutes what they were meant to do in months, or not at all. He was positive she wouldn’t mind the extra sleep just to have healed much faster than she ever could have on her own. Lying on his stomach near her, he shimmed in until his muzzle fit in the crook of her throat and swiped his tongue over the gaping wound in her neck.
Everything in him froze. He’d come to her aid, scenting her from miles away, running full out until his heart felt close to bursting. Something had propelled him to search the scent out, and he could sense the danger surrounding it. Fear smelled cold, jagged, like chills running up his back in scent signatures. With the taste of her blood, now the reason was unmistakable: he had found his mate, the keeper of his soul, the protector of his heart . . . and he had almost lost her.
Working furiously now, his heart nearly breaking, whines leaking from his muzzle, he licked faster, healing the wound in a minute. He flashed from the massive black wolf to the man, the only thing remaining of what had been before the blue of his eyes.
Lifting her into his arms, he ignored the cool wind on his sweating six-foot-two frame. He was built with an internal temperature of one hundred four degrees. A little coolness was not going to bother him in the least. What he carried in his arms was more important. The most important thing in his life. He’d just have to convince his mate, his very human mate, of that fact—along with another few added complications, but they would get to that soon enough.
He lifted her higher on his shoulder, resting her face in the crook of his neck. The reassuring puffs of her breath told him he’d made it in time. The vampyre, now nothing more than ash after he’d ripped his heart from his chest, had not been able to take this light away from the earth. Had he succeeded, the Alpha of the South Texas clan would have never been the same. Tarquin knew his people, and his brother, for that matter, could not maintain without his governance.
Chapter Five