Captiva Master - Vampire Warewolf Menage Six Feet Under Series Book 4) (14 page)

Dakota stood up, stretching. “Yeah?”

“Arian and I heard you and Dru discussing your virginity.”

“Dru said Maestru’s blood healed everything.” Dakota grabbed a cloth and started wiping the counter. “I was shocked from that familiar pain.”

“Do tell.” Renee rinsed their plates. “Who exactly took your
newest
virginity?”

Dakota’s thoughts drifted to Maestru’s dismissal, and her face burned. “Why does it matter?”

“Oh, girl, if the male had any vampire blood in him, it matters a whole hell of a bunch.”

“Explain.”

She walked over and cupped Dakota’s elbows, a deep line of worry marring her forehead. “A vampire who takes virgin blood claims the virgin as his Bride, his mate for
eternity
.”

“Adam did,” Dakota said, her teeth starting to chatter. “He didn’t know. I’ll tell him…not to worry about it.”

“Dakota, it doesn’t work that way!”

“Well, I’m not married to a vampire!” Dakota shot back.

Fresh worry etched Renee’s face. “I thought Maestru brought you into his house because he wanted you. I’m confused. Did he ever come on to you?”

“Yeah,” Dakota said sheepishly, “we had a random PDA moment. It stopped when he discovered - ”

“That you were a virgin,” Renee summed it up, her eyes rounding. “So he doesn’t know about you and Adam?”

“No, and so what?”

“What if Maestru was just giving you time?” Renee waved her hands in the air. “I mean – you worked fast, right. You slept with Adam the first day you were conscious.”

“Thanks, I feel bad enough.”

Renee urged her towards the back hallway. “Don’t feel bad. It happened fast for me, too. The connection between immortals and the females they want to claim is astounding. What I’m concerned about is Adam. Do you have feelings for him?”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have done that…I care for Adam a lot.” More than she thought possible.

“Adam left you here for a specific reason.” Renee stopped in front of a door and looked at her. “What if he goes to the meeting tonight and presents his claim on you? Maestru has to approve your vampiric marriage! And the way Maestru has shown his possession over you, I’m wondering what’s going to become of Adam.”

“I thought most of Maestru’s possession was due to me owing him a Blood Debt,” Dakota said, her nausea returning. “Maestru even averted a hunter, who scented I was a Donor, away from me.”

“You’re a Donor?” Renee lost her breath on a whispered, “Shit.”

Fifteen minutes later, Dakota found herself in one of Renee’s guest rooms, arguing. “You’ve gone haywire!”

Renee placed her ear on the door, listening. “Pipe down, this is an emergency.”

It sure was. Both could use a professional stylist about now. “Are you going to tell me why we’re dressed this way?” Dakota tugged at her black skullcap, tucking in a wayward lock of hair, and then looked down at her solid black leotard. “This is, like, fresh out of nineteen-sixties James Bond.” She slid her feet into the dark running shoes provided for her. Renee finished with putting camouflage over her own face and turned to Dakota. When she widened her moss-green eyes in her painted face, Renee appeared nothing short of freakish. “Geez, you look like a zombie.”

Renee snapped, “I look like somebody who wants to stay alive. Now, hand me that scalpel.”

“Do you realize the conundrum of putting those two sentences together?”

Slipping on her shoes, Renee muttered, “If you think that’s a conundrum, wait until this night is over.”

Dakota lifted the packaged scalpel from the side table and handed it to Renee. “By the way, do zombies exist?”

“How would I know?” she shot back, tearing through the plastic with her teeth.

Dakota stepped away from the blade. “You’re married to werewolves and a vampire, just asking someone who should be an expert by now.”

“I’ve learned to keep a blind eye to the immortal world, helps me sleep better at night.” Straightening, Renee took a step forward and held out her hand, palm up. “Give me your wrist.” 


“Fuck no!”

“I have a plan for you.” Renee shooed Scoopy off her bed, with a wave of the gleaming scalpel. “You don’t want to be captured by a freaky immortal. Believe me,
I know
.”

“You’ve been captured before?”

“So has Tatum.” She held up two fingers. “Twice. I wouldn’t be a true friend to you if I didn’t make sure you were armed and ready for battle. First step, you give me your wrist. Then, we’re going to fill a bowl with a minimum quarter pint of your blood.”

“Oh, sure, and while we’re at it, I’ll go wake up your husband and let him polish me off!”

“Keep your voice down,” she shushed, her eyes bugging freakishly in her camouflaged face. “Think carefully. Why would I let you die, if I’m trying to save you? I swiped some of Dru’s blood from his clinic.” She nodded at a small container of opaque liquid.

“It’s not red.”

“Some vampires don’t bleed red. Now, as soon as I take your little donation, I’ll pour his blood onto the wound. You’ll stop bleeding and regenerate without a scar.”

“You sound like you’ve done this before,” Dakota accused.

“Oh, I have,” said Renee, rolling her eyes, “and I’m about to show you how humans outmaneuver immortals.”

“You’d really risk yourself for me?”

“Yeah.”

A heavy lump formed in Dakota’s throat. She’d never had a sister or a brother. “Tell me why we’re breaking and entering into
Maestru’s
house.” Could anything be more stupid?

“Because, a few weeks ago, I overheard Dru talking about a particular weapon that Maestru has in his bedroom, a wooden dagger that can kill
all
vampires, including the most powerful.” 
 “Even Coven Masters?”

“Exactly,” Renee confirmed, “even those hunters. And we’re going to find this weapon before Maestru gets home.”

Could Dakota kill anyone? Probably not, but the thought of obtaining the ultimate weapon to defend herself was too alluring to resist. “And then what, I kill him?” She joked, holding out her wrist for Renee to slash and then quickly looking away. “Then how many more would I have to kill after him? Would it ever stop?”

“There you go sounding like a defeatist,” Renee argued as she spread Dakota’s blood on several bits of cloth resembling shop rags. “Your wrist closed up without my using Dru’s blood.” Renee tied the rags to her pets’ collars and opened the bedroom door. “Shoo! Go on!”

“The animals are taking my scent everywhere?” she asked in disbelief, wondering if the last feeding from Maestru had changed her body even more.

“Bingo,” Renee said, gesturing for her to follow. “And it won’t last long, if we don’t get a move on.” She put her finger over her camouflaged lips, in a shushing gesture, and Dakota stealthily followed. “If Dru wakes up and finds out…shit. I can’t think about that.”

Ten minutes later, they squatted behind Maestru’s home. Cold fingers slowly walked Dakota’s spine. Something was off. Maybe that creepy housekeeper had returned. “I, uh, Renee,” she trailed off, taking in the size of Maestru’s Captiva Island manse.

“Don’t chicken out now,” Renee pleaded, tugging her up Maestru’s back deck steps.

“You told me you were immortal,” she whispered back as they drew closer, both lowering into a duck walk.

“Yeah, so?”

Dakota hissed through clenched teeth, “Well, I’m not!”

“Dakota has a point,” a purely male voice dripping with acid said from above them. Dakota glanced at Renee and realized her friend must have closed her eyes, since her face went completely dark. She dared a peek up and was astonished at what she found. Up on his roof, three or four stories high, Maestru stood. His leather-clad legs shoulder width apart, his hands casually resting at his sides, his long leather coat firmly in place, and his dark-as-night hair blowing in the island breeze. “After all, mortals have such a short life span.”

He then stepped to the edge before he dropped – just dropped, all the way to the deck, soundlessly landing on his booted feet with his coat billowing around him. “Why would one, such as Dakota, want to risk her limited years by visiting a depraved vampire? You are
visiting
, right?” Leaning over, he cupped each of them by the elbow and pulled them out of their crouches. “I hope it doesn’t frighten you to know that I’m terribly parched,” he whispered for Dakota’s ears alone. Moonlight catching his flash of fang; she realized he’d bared it on purpose. After all, a centuries-old vampire knew how to guise what differentiated him from humans.

“It’s on me,” Renee admitted on a groan, though she didn’t say why they were prowling.

Maestru kept his eyes on Dakota, his grip on her arm tightening. “That I am sure of. Be forewarned, I will be discussing your behavior with Dru first light tomorrow.” Those obsidian eyes dropped to Dakota’s pulse point, her blood thundering with her escalating heartbeat. “Goodnight.”

A string of expletives left Renee’s lips but Dakota couldn’t muster so much as a grunt. This vampire was so dangerously mesmerizing that she nearly forgot to breathe. Blinking a few times, she had to wonder if any woman could resist a potent aphrodisiac, such as him. Nevertheless, she knew when to walk away from a seriously bad situation and Maestru was actually giving them an out. When Dakota attempted to follow a grumbling Renee, Maestru kept hold of her elbow. His lips touching the shell of her ear when he whispered, “You were not dismissed.”

Four words that carried a serious punch and so many possibilities, her knees nearly buckled with her marked trepidation and something darky erotic she refused even to consider after sleeping with Adam. Renee kept walking, leaving her in the dust, an action that didn’t match her character. This meant one thing. “You coerced her leave.”

When his eyes met hers once more with a combination of unbearable hunger and lethal seduction, he nodded. “Out of the two, only one stays. And that’s you.”

Dakota asked him, “Where’s Adam?”

A strong gust whipped the hair from his face, his cheekbones sharpening under his skin in a way she could only associate with vampires. “Adam is attending a Joint Faction meeting, still thinking he left you in capable hands.” With his free hand, he tore away her ridiculous skullcap and tossed it to the wind, her hair flying in all directions.

“No matter how much I want you.” Lifting her chin, Dakota watched the black cap spiral high into the night air. “I still want to fly away
from
you.”

Without another word, his arms slid around Dakota before his lips claimed hers. On a shocked gasp, her feet left the deck as he pulled her closer, crushing her breasts to his chest. He wasn’t wearing a shirt under his coat, and he was finely chiseled, his skin hot. She shaped her hands over him, stroking around his ribcage until her arms were buried beneath his coat. When she allowed his tongue inside her mouth, a sound left the back of his throat full of possessive need. Dakota knew she was falling short of her will. That she shouldn’t be allowing him this close to her, not now. There were reasons, so many reasons, the foremost being Adam. “I can’t,” she whispered against his insistent lips. Her hand slid away from his back, but not before a metallic blade sliced her. A weapon, he was weighed down with them. “Dammit, I’m cut.” Maestru wasted no time in pulling his lips from her mouth and wrapping them over her jugular, his body stiffening everywhere.

Fangs scraped her skin. “I will claim my Bride this night.”

Apparently, he still thought she was a virgin. “No!” Dakota pulled her bloodied hand away, pushing off his body. Blood wasn’t just dripping, but pouring from her. Pressing it beneath her opposite arm, she swore loudly and clearly, “Never!”

Briefly, he closed his eyes, sucking air between his fangs. When he again opened them, obsidian swallowed the whites. His body nearly tripled in size as his fangs lowered past his bottom lip. As he lifted his hands, claws shot from his fingertips. She took several cautious steps back, wondering why he even needed weapons and blades when he could turn into
that
. “T-this is what you look like?”

He stalked forward. One word left his lips, and when he said it, something changed infinitely between them. “
Mine
!”

A shadowy blur exploded from the side deck, charging for Dakota. The jolt caught her hard, sending her to the ground. She spun to the side just as Maestru released a startlingly primal hiss. In the same speed as the shadow, Maestru took his claws and raked them through the dark apparition, shredding it into chunky ribbons that fell to the ground between their feet. The oily pieces slithered around Dakota, and she tried to get up but her body refused to cooperate with her mind. Maestru’s eyes snapped to her, relieved yet incensed, as he lifted what remained of her shadowy attacker and tossed it into the marsh. With a loud crack, the grotesque ribbons sparkled and then disintegrated into air.

“W-what was that?”

“One of the countless reasons you must obey me,” he said in a voice laced by that same peculiar hissing sound. In the next second, she was over his shoulder, dangling high above the ground, and moving so quickly her stomach nearly tossed Renee’s knockoff Twinkie. Dakota may not feel malevolence coming from him, but Maestru was angry, so very, very angry.

In a blur, she was back inside his home, entering a glassed-in Florida room housing absolutely nothing – not a stick of furniture, not a single bloom in sight. Maestru lowered her to the floor, the heat of his anger kindling her fear, and shrugged out of his coat. “T-that wasn’t a shape shifter, was it?”

He swiped his thumb over a fang, creating a wound, and pressed it against her lips. She shook her head, refusing, instead showing him the unmanageable: Her hand, though covered in blood, had reknitted in literally seconds. “I seem to be healing…on my own.”

“I see.” He bared his fangs and Dakota’s heart bounced against her ribs in triple time. For the briefest moment, shades of white moved across his dark set eyes, oddly glazing them with silvery opal, as he smeared her bottom lip with his blood. “Do you still crave me?”

Dakota stood her ground, not backing away while fighting the urge to lick her lips. Oh, she wanted his blood, and he knew it. “Maybe.” He pushed his thumb past her lips, the blood such a deliciously rich wine, hit her palate, warming her. A silky fire moved down the length of her body, burning embers flickering right across her… Slowly, he curled his tongue around his right fang, moving the pink tip suggestively. “Mm,” she moaned around his thumb, sucking, grasping the burn, and climbing a pinnacle only reached with Maestru. He slid his thumb from her mouth before the heat of his blood sparked those devastating contractions inside her womb. Dakota ground her teeth. Pretending she was unaffected by his erogenous teasing, by the absence of his blood, was useless. He knew better. “You are truly wicked.”