Alpha Trio 3: A Special Taste (3 page)

“That’s when you disappeared. He took you?” Cat’s tone was inquisitive, her face open and guileless, the expression in her eyes warm. Interested, but not pushy. Grig could see why she was such a good reporter. She made you want to tell her things.

Now Kall really did smile. “You don’t even know you’re doing that, do you? And if I wasn’t a vamp, I doubt I could tell. Wow.” She shook her head. Cat frowned.

“What? Doing what?”

“You’re... I don’t know what you’d call it... projecting, maybe? When you ask a question, you send out this little pulse of mental energy. It’s calming, makes the target feel relaxed. Guess that comes in handy at work.”

Cat blinked. Everyone else turned to look at her in surprise. Her cheeks flushed. “No, I didn’t know I was doing that.”

“What about you, Red? Got a little something extra? Are you really good at guessing people’s weights or finding lost things?” Kall’s tone was light, but Grig could tell by the intensity of her dark eyes that she wasn’t joking. They all could.

“It’s Cassandra. And I can read thoughts. Usually. But not yours.”

Kall hopped off the filing cabinet, pacing. Or attempting to pace. In the close confines, she could only take two steps before having to turn back around.

“No, you wouldn’t. That’s my little perk. I guess you could say I’m invisible.”

“I see you just fine.” Grig winked.

Kall snorted. “Not like that, wolfie. Not exactly. It’s like... you see that episode of Buffy where she gets the mind reading abilities and she tries to read Angel’s mind and he says it’s like the mirror thing? They don’t cast a reflection? It’s like that. I’m here, you can see me, but I don’t register on the psychic radar. That’s just the baseline though. I can push it out and...” She trailed off. Her fingers twitched at her sides and her shoulders tightened.

Cat gasped.

Drei barked, “What the hell?”

Em scanned the room, jaw hard as granite. Cassandra just cocked her head to the side.

Grig frowned, glancing from Kall to the others. She looked the same. Tense, a little white around the mouth, but otherwise exactly as she’d looked a moment before. “You’re really obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, aren’t you?”

Everyone’s eyes flew to him, but it was Kall’s that held his gaze. Wide, dark, amazed.

“You see me.”

Cat twitched at Kall’s words. Drei grimaced. “That’s really unsettling.”

Kall relaxed, closing the small distance between them, staring up into Grig’s face. “You saw me.”

“Uh. Yeah. You were standing right there.”

“She was gone, little brother. One second standing there talking, the next...” Cassandra shook her head.

“
That’s
why I can’t smell you,” Em said, exhaling what sounded almost like a sigh of relief.

Drei cracked his knuckles. “I just thought it was because she’s covered in Grig’s scent.”

“That’s why you can’t smell me,” Kall confirmed, though her eyes were still on Grig. “Vamps can’t either. When I was human, I just thought I was supremely unremarkable.”

Grig eyed her slender body, the pert curve of her breasts, the exotic beauty of her face. ‘Unremarkable’ was not a word he would ever associate with Kall. But his brother’s words confused him.

“What do you mean you can’t smell her?”

“You can? Does she smell like a vamp to you?” Drei sniffed. “Because right now I smell you, me, Cass, Em, and Cat, but no one else.”

Kall’s full lips turned downward. “You smell me? Not even Seren can smell me. He thought for sure he’d be able to sense me somehow, since he Made me, but he can’t. It drives him crazy. What do I smell like?”

Mindful of the others in the room, but suddenly uncaring, Grig encircled her arm with his fingers and lifted her wrist. He inhaled slowly, brushing his nose back and forth against her silky skin, drawing that soft, fresh, floral scent into his lungs. “Roses.”

“Oh great,” Drei muttered. “Leave it to our little brother to Mate with a vampire.”

Em chuckled. “Just imagine what mom’s going to say.”

*****

They sat in silence, the thick walls of the barracks at HQ blocking out all outside sounds. His mother, Elena Lupei, commander of the Alpha Trio, had cleared everyone else out when they’d brought Kall in. ‘For her protection’. But he knew it was because she didn’t trust Kall.

His mother’s treatment of the gorgeous vampire had set Grig’s teeth on edge, but he’d kept his mouth shut. After his brothers’ words at 5tM, he was hardly about to add more fuel to the fire of their ridiculous speculation.

On the bunk below him, he heard Kall sigh. The bed creaked, but she didn’t speak.

It had taken several hours for Kall to tell them everything she’d learned about Seren’s scheme while he’d had her in captivity, and then even longer to hash out a plan to take him down. Luckily for the Lupei brothers, and Cat and Cassandra, the skeletal vamp had only shared his mad plans with a small group of his fledglings.

The crazed vampire had known for some time, it seemed, that some humans possessed something more, ‘other’ as Cassandra referred to it. He’d suspected that if these special humans were turned, they would make powerful vampires with all kinds of extra abilities. He wanted to make an army of them, to rule over vampires and Shifters... and humans too, most likely. Basic world-conquering megalomania stuff.

But not all of these Others could be turned. In fact, of all the ones that he’d kidnapped and attempted to make into his army of super-vamp soldiers, only Kall had survived. Seren believed it was because she was young and female. That’s why he wanted Cat so badly.

Tonight, it would all come to an end. Kall knew where Seren performed his twisted experiments – she escaped from what he called his ‘lab’ only a week ago – and they were going to destroy it, and Seren. Grig should be going over the battle strategy, making sure they’d thought of everything.

Instead, he couldn’t force the picture of her face out of his mind, dark eyes wide, soft mouth parted as she whispered ‘You see me’ in wonder. And then his brothers’ words... Could he really be Mated to her? A
vampire
? It was wrong. And impossible.

Like being Mated to a human was impossible? They’d all believed that, until a few months ago. But both Em and Drei were proof that they’d been wrong. It did happen.

“Are we going to talk about it?” The words came out harsher than he’d intended. He didn’t mean to snap at her. But the muscles of his jaw were tense as he stared up at the ceiling.

Below him, he heard another soft sigh. Her fresh, sweet scent wafted up to him. His dick was instantly hard. He gritted his teeth, ignoring it, waiting for her answer.

“I...” She began, but trailed off. The springs of the bunk gave a piercing squeak as she shifted position. He heard her boots hit the floor. “It... might not be for the reason they think.”

Kall was up now, pacing. Grig swung his own legs over the side of the bunk and sat up. He watched the black silk of her hair shifting as she spun, her lips a bright crimson slash in her pale face. Pale, that is, but for two bright spots of color high on her sculpted cheekbones.

Was Kall blushing?

“What do you mean?” Grig curled his fingers around the edge of the bunk, resisting the urge to reach out, snag her and yank her against him. They were supposed to be resting up for tonight.

Kall shoved a slender hand through her hair. The gesture made her pert breasts jiggle. “This...
thing
... between us.”

“You can think of another reason we were all over each other within minutes of meeting? I hadn’t even seen your face,” he growled, angered that she would try and deny what was between them. The fact that he’d wanted to do just that a moment ago seemed of little consequence now.

She stopped pacing, twirling to face him, hands fisting at her sides. “But you’d tasted my blood!”

Each word slammed into Grig’s gut as if she’d hurled knives. “What?” He felt the blood drain from his face.

“You were dying.” Kall gritted the words out, eyes blazing. “You’d already lost too much blood. I didn’t know what else to do! I just acted. I dragged you into that basement and put your mouth to my throat. I cut my flesh and made you drink.” She took a single stalking step with each sentence, chin lifted. Her chest rose and fell in quick, panting breaths. Her nipples were hard, he saw.

Grig remembered awakening in the dark with the copper taste of blood on his tongue. He should be disgusted at the thought of feeding on a bloodsucker, but instead, her words made his blood heat. Tasting a vamp that way? The thought was abhorrent.

But tasting
Kall
? Taking her very lifeblood into him? He licked his lips. No, abhorrence wasn’t the word for how the thought of that made him feel.

“It worked. You healed me. You saved me.” His voice was gruff. Her lip lifted in a silent snarl, as if she’d expected him to argue more. Her fangs, sharp and white and wickedly curved, were lengthening.

Grig had been bitten by vamps before, while fighting them. He knew what it felt like to have those razor-like teeth slice into his flesh. It hurt like a motherfucker. Not so long ago, the night they’d discovered Cassandra’s mind reading ability in fact, he’d fought a poisonous vamp that injected venom with its fangs, like a snake. A glancing blow from one of those deadly teeth had left him sick and reeling. It had not been a pleasant experience.

Yet, the thought of Kall sinking her fangs into his flesh made his heart thud and his cock throb against the fabric of his jeans. He could picture her, long, pale legs wrapped around his waist as she rode him, licking his throat before piercing him with her teeth and sucking. He shuddered. Kall’s eyelids fluttered.

“So...” Her already raspy voice was a dry croak. She stood mere inches from him now, her small, lovely face even with his thighs. Her gaze dropped to his groin and she swallowed audibly before clearing her throat. “So that could be why we’re feeling this... um...” She licked her lips.

Grig imagined her lush, red mouth wrapped around his cock and almost groaned out loud. He tensed his jaw, biting it back. “Maybe,” he said, reaching out to touch her cheek, unable to resist.

The second his fingertips touched her skin, fire raced up his arm to his heart. Like sticking his finger in an electrical socket, only better. More pleasurable. “That might explain why I feel drawn to you, why I can see you and sense you when no one else can... though I think it’s a stretch.” He thought it was bullshit, actually, and he thought she did too. She was grasping at straws. “But it doesn’t explain your reaction to me.”

“Who says I have one?”

Grig snorted, sliding his fingers into the satin fall of her hair and tugging her closer. She reached up to grab his wrist, but didn’t attempt to pull away. And she could have. The strength in her slender form was apparent even now. So small, and yet so fierce. He ached to feel her lean, supple body beneath his.

“Oh, you have one, little girl.” He bent forward, gaze intent on the moist part of those cherry red lips. “I can smell your arousal.” Grig took a deep breath. “You smell like a hothouse flower.”

Kall bared her teeth, but the gesture did nothing to deter him. Quite the opposite, in fact. More blood pooled in his cock. Kall’s eyes sparked with dark fire as her gaze dropped back to his waist. Her pink tongue flitted out, laving her plump bottom lip.

“I can hear your blood... rushing, pounding.” Her free hand went to his knee, her fingers stroking. “It calls to me.” She lifted herself on her tiptoes, even as he bent further forward. Their mouths were almost touching. He could feel the warm rush of her breath against his cheek.

“Did you taste me, Kall?”

Her eyes still on the spot where his cock strained against his jeans, she nodded. “A little. You had blood on your face when we kissed.”

Fire swirled at the base of Grig’s spine at her words. “And how did I taste to you?” He tilted her head back, forcing her to meet his eyes.

“Amazing. Better than... like every delectable flavor, and nothing I’ve ever tasted. Like... like joy.”

With a groan, Grig took her mouth. Her tongue was small and sweet against his. Her hands tightened on him, one at his wrist, the other on his thigh. Her fingers dug into the muscle there, almost painful, as she lifted herself toward him.

She kissed him back as intensely as he kissed her, scraping teeth and eager tongue and lips. He felt the nick of a fang on the side of his tongue and inhaled in a quick breath at the brief, sharp pain. Kall moaned into his mouth, sucking on his tongue.

Grig kissed her again and again, unable to tear his mouth from hers for more than a second. He was light-headed with need and lack of oxygen, and still he kept kissing her.

Then he felt her palm skate over his painfully constricted erection and he nearly blacked out as every drop of blood in his body rushed to that single point of contact. She squeezed him through his jeans, making him shudder and moan.

“Kalla.” It meant beauty, and a more apt name for his deadly, gorgeous vampire Grig couldn’t have come up with.
His
. He growled.

She nipped at his lip, drawing blood, sucking it away. The sting was sweet, humming along his nerve endings. She tugged him closer to the edge of the bunk, fumbling with the fastenings of his pants, her mouth never leaving his.

Grig couldn’t have resisted her even if he wanted to. Luckily, he didn’t want to. Her determined yanking had his jeans open and down around his knees in a brief moment.

Finally free, his cock strained upward, harder than he could ever remember being in his entire life. He throbbed, the slick tip brushing his shirt as he bent his mouth to hers. Kall pressed a brief, deep kiss against his lips and then pushed him back until he rested his weight on his hands.

She licked her lips, tongue pressing against the glistening tips of her fangs. The sharp teeth receded into her gums at the touch. Grig wasn’t sure if the crashing of his blood was in relief or disappointment.

“Christ, wolfie. So big! And, ooh, lovely.”

They both moaned as Kall’s slim, cool fingers slipped around his shaft. She couldn’t close her fingers around his width, but she tried, squeezing him firmly. His flesh was flushed purple with the strength of his arousal. Grig’s hips bucked into the circle of her fingers.

She bit her lip, eyes intent on the movement of her hand as she stroked his length from base to crown, swirling her thumb over the broad head, wetting it with the slick of pre-cum there. Grig’s fingers dug into the thin pallet of the bunk.

“Kalla, please.” He’d never wanted anything in his life as much as he wanted this woman. Vampire or not, enemy or not. Whatever she was, he wanted her.

Her right hand stole up to cup his testicles, kneading gently as she raised eyes like smoldering embers to his face. “I hate that name. Always hated it. Stupid, girly.” Her left hand kept pumping, twisting, stroking him. Grig’s thighs tensed as he lifted in time with her caresses.

“Sorry,” he gritted out through clenched teeth. But she shook her head, midnight silk flying about her angel’s face.

“No. When you say it...” She licked her lips. “When you say it, I love it.” She inched a little closer, shouldering his legs wider apart.

Grig looked deep into her eyes, seeing the reflection of his bone deep desire in the liquid black of her gaze. “Kalla,” he said again, voice choked. “I need you.”

“Yes.”

And then she lowered her head and took his cock between her lips. Heat blasted through Grig’s every cell at the silken glide of her tongue as she swirled it around the flared ridge before prodding gently at the small slit in the spongy head.

He moaned, head falling back even as he tried to keep her in sight. The picture of her standing between his spread thighs, those candy red lips sliding down his shaft, was the most erotic thing Grig had ever seen.

Kall sank down on him, swallowing his entire length. The ripple of her throat around his cock had him crying out, his orgasm already so close, though she’d barely touched him. Grig inhaled deeply, his chest tight, trying to stave off the pleasure that whirled like a fireball in his gut. Not yet, he didn’t want it to be over yet.