Days of Redemption (The Firsts Book 6) (21 page)

“I’m not sure it is.”

“It’s fine.  Bryn is an old friend.”

“He doesn’t seem too friendly to me.  I think I should stay.  He’s pissed because I’m here with you, and I won’t let him take that out on you.”

“Ya need to go.”  Bryn’s statement was calm and cold.  But Lauren could feel the fury beneath it.

“Michael.  You need to leave.  Bryn would never hurt me. I’ll call you later.  Please.”

But Michael didn’t move.

Bryn surged forward
. 

Michael drew back a fist to protect himself.   “Come on, asshole!”

“I’ve had enough of this!”  Bryn grabbed Michael’s head and captured his eyes.  “Ya had a nice dinner, now ya go home.  She’ll call ya tomorrow.”

Michael blinked,
then slowly nodded.  He tried to speak, but Lauren came forward and shoved Bryn aside.  She threw him a pissed look, then took Michael’s face in her hands much gentler than Bryn had.

“Michael, I had a lovely time.  I will call you tomorrow.  Go home.”

Silently, he stared at her.  His eyes shifted to Bryn, and their eyes met again.  “Leave.  Go home,” Bryn repeated.

Michael turned and walked into the darkness.  Lauren heard the bus’s engine fire and then
fade into the distance.

She turned to face Bryn.

Big, sexy, angry, Bryn, who was breathing hard and had the decency to look abashed.

It took Lau
ren a moment to be able to speak to him.

“Uh, Bryn, what are you doing here?”

“I missed ya.”

What could she say to that?  Lauren walked away from him, towards the sea, her stomach rolling as much as the waves.  She didn’t have to look to know he followed her.   She turned back to him.   Her eyes scanned his oversized shape that seemed so out-of-place here in Indonesia.
   He looked good enough to eat.  Laying her hand on her belly, her fingers caressed the area, slid lower to just where her legs began.  There was that fire that she’d hoped to feel when Michael kissed her.

“I missed you, too.  But…didn’t we say goodbye a few months ago?”

“I seem to recall we did.”  Bryn moved closer. “It didn’t seem to take.”

He overwhelmed her.   Everything about this sexy man broke her apart. 

She turned and walked to the water until it covered her feet as it gently lapped the shore.

“I purged you, vampire.  I’ve understood that we don’t belong together and I’ve made peace with that.”

“I understand, lass.  But I want ya.  It’s that simple.”

“And that complicated.  I’m human, with only a few good decades left.  You’re a creature that belongs to time.  We don’t belong together.”

“We can do whatever we want.  I’ve tried bein’ apart from ya.  I don’t want that. I want to be inside of ya.”

Lauren dropped onto the moist sand, pulled her shoes off, and threw them further up onto the sand.

“No.  Bryn, you aren’t someone I can do casual sex with.  You’re magnificent, and should be with someone like you.”

Bryn lowered himself and sat beside Lauren.

“I only want to be with you.”

Turn
ing her head to face him, Lauren captured his gaze like he did with Michael earlier.  “So, what does that mean?  Do you want to change me?”

“I don’t know, Lauren.  I don’t know what I want except that it is to be with
you
.  Is it forever?  I don’t know.  I’m not ready to take a mate.  But I want ya in my life.”

“Oh, I get that. 
The sex was spectacular.  But that’s not enough to build a life on.  I’m trying to build a life, Bryn.  I can’t do that if you’re in it.”

He knew that.  Vampires and humans did not blend well.

“I could make ya my blood-bond.  Ye’d be young until ya didn’t want to be with me anymore.”

The moon was low enough now to kiss the horizon, its light creating a path from the sky to the land
across the water, and Lauren wished she could hop on it and walk away.  Without realizing she was doing it, she moved her hand out and took Bryn’s.

His large fingers curled warmly over hers and she dropped back onto the sand. 

God, he felt right
.

She’d closed her eyes, so the first moment she knew he had laid back was when she felt him pressed to her side.

His fingers slid into her hair.

“Lass, nothing has to be decided tonight.  Let me make love to
ya.”

When she opened her eyes and looked into his, just inches away, she knew she would never say no.

“I wanted to want Michael.”

“That man? 
The one at yer house?”

“Yes.  I wanted to want him.  He’s perfect for me, you know.  But with you here, that can’t happen.  I can’t see past you to anything.  You fill up my world.  You’re bigger than the sky to me, Bryn, and that’s a fact I can’t change.”

“I don’t want ya to.”  He paused.  “Make love with me, little scientist.”

She wasn’t going to beat this.  She wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her.  Sliding her fingers into his unruly hair that fell over his eyes, she tugged, hard.

“Here. Right now.”

Bryn groaned, and
in seconds, no human delay, they were naked. 

The moon smiled as he rolled on top of Lauren and kissed her the way she’d hoped Michael would have.  But this was magic, and fire, and moonbeams, and all of the shit that Lauren thought sex and love should be, and had decided she couldn’t have.  She knew vampires were extremely sexy, but she suspected it wasn’t just that he was vampire, but that he was Bryn
.  And more even than Michael, he just fit.

Although Lauren didn’t believe in destiny or fate, she thought that if she did, this man would have been the one she was meant to be with.

Just before Bryn lifted up to bury his cock in her, Lauren stopped him.  “It’s just a fuck, right?  Just sex, nothing more.  Right?”

He paused,
then lowered himself to her without entering her.  “It’s what it is, lass.  It’s wet, and wild, and beautiful.  It’s lust and love and whatever we want it to be.  I need ya, Lauren, and I don’t know what or why, but I don’t care.  I want ya, and that’s all that matters.  Is that okay with you?”

“Yes.  Bryn,
it’s okay with me.  Take me to the sky, vampire.”

He kissed her first, and grazed her neck as he had before, but he didn’t puncture it, then pushed inside of her, hard and fast, and rested, still, just buried.

“Ah,” he groaned.  “I’ve been lost these months and I didn’t know why. 
This
is why.  Now, I’m where I want and need to be.  We’ll work out the details, lassie.”

“Shut up.  Take
this home, Bryn.  Make me see those lights.”

He did.  Taking his time, he built up the pressure, both of their orgasms slow to build, then expanding like rockets on take-off. 

Oh, God, did she see the lights!

TWENTY

The sun blasted through the thin rice-paper shades that covered the front of Lauren’s little beach shack.  Well, calling it a shack was being kind to it.  It wasn’t much more than glorified paper boxes, but it served its purpose.

Lauren stretched, smiling, and placed her hand between her legs.  She was sticky and moist, so it was real, it had happened.   She and Bryn had fucked all night, on the beach, here, in this tiny bed, on the floor, on the porch. 
In the ocean!

He was gone now, she did not know where, but her shack would have been a death-trap
for him this morning.  Sometime tonight, she knew he’d return.

Rolling out of the bed, she slipped on a satin robe and cinched it around her waist. 

“Coffee, and quickly,” she said out loud as she barefooted her way to the hot-pot that she used to make coffee.  The place really didn’t have any cooking facilities, but she’d always made do.

While the little pot chugged away, she leaned up against the small grass-mat covered counter.

“What am I going to do with you?” she asked herself out loud.  But she knew.  She’d ride this man until he said he didn’t want her to ride him anymore.   Like he’d said last night.  It was simple. 
She wanted him.

The truth was, she was human and life was short.  Lauren was reminded of a phrase she’d seen long ago. 

Life is a long uphill climb.  Drop the rocks
.

For most of her life, she had picked up every freaking rock and carried it.  No more.  How could it hurt to make
love to that ridiculous sexy man with the child-like view of the world? 

All right, yeah, someday, when he was finished with her, he’d leave her with a broken heart.

So what?  So she lived her life carefully, not loving him, not making love with him, and avoid the pain? 

No.  She’d have every moment, and when it was over, her life would still have been grander for the time they had together.

He was so beautiful.  How could you say no to heaven?

Boiling away, the hot-pot announced she could have her coff
ee, so Lauren added a packet of instant grounds to a chipped mug, and carried it outside to sit on her porch steps.

Michael.  Ah, that was going to be tough today.  He’d still be a little muddled since Bryn had compelled him to go home.  He’d be confused.

She’d have to let him down easily.  He would remember the big man that hijacked his date last night, so Lauren would just have to tell him honestly that Bryn was an old boyfriend that she was getting back together with.

Besides, if she was going to do this, she would probably be going back with Bryn to his life, to Iceland or Scotland, wherever he made his home.

Shaking her head, she sipped the coffee and watched the view.  How crazy her life had turned out.  There was nothing normal about it, not for years now.  If people had any idea how crazy it really was out there, they would go bonkers.

Lauren took a moment to be real to
herself.  Was she in love with Bryn, or just in lust?  Lust, absolutely. 
Love?

“Honest, now, Anna,” she said to herself, using her new alias.  “How do you really feel about him?”

Her mind reeled and she sat silently sipping the hot beverage and watching the sea do its thing for a long time.

Love?
 
Maybe
.  If not now, she thought it would come.  Were they destined to be together like Cherise and David?  She doubted that.  But what they had was visceral and intense, and she really thought it was magical.  He’d come for her, that had to mean something.

The mug was empty and Lauren knew she needed to get dressed and get to work.  They were taking the mobile clinic to one of the poorest islands today.  From what she understood, they hadn’t had any medical care there for almost a year.  She would be needed today, but she
would let the director, Barbara, know that they would need to replace her as soon as she found out how Bryn expected this relationship to work.

Bryn had fallen asleep almost instantly, physically exhausted, but emotionally exhausted, too.  That surprised him.  He’d wanted Lauren almost from the day he’d let her go, so fucking her ten times last night to a delicious exhaustion made sense.  But the emotional part, he didn’t understand.  He should be happy and satiated, and he was, but his mind still suffered.  What did he need to do to get respite from this restlessness that had overtaken his life these past months?

At least this day he’d slept well, and awakened rested with a hard-on.  Grinning, he palmed it.

“I know what
ya want, ya wastrel,” he said, and rolled out of bed.

This hotel room was secure for his kind, so he wandered over to pour himself a glass of his Mars whiskey that he’d brought with him. 

He remembered every second with Lauren last night. 
God, how he’d missed that woman!

No point in entertaining the idea that fucking her so often had scratched the itch, he knew it hadn’t.  He wanted her just as much right now as he had after a night of sex. 
Which also surprised him.

Why did she bewitch him so?  He cared for her, he admitted that.  He’d protect her to the final degree of his ability, up to and including giving his life.  And that was
unexpected. 
Would he?
  Would he really be willing to trade his life for a human being?

For her, he would.

Something had changed.  Centuries ago, when he’d let himself fall in love with a pretty little human, and she’d betrayed him and spurned him, he’d settled on a course of pleasure with women since then, but nothing beyond that.

He wasn’t ready to fall in love.  Lauren was beautiful, and funny, and sexier than any woman he’d ever fucked, but he wasn’t in love.

He wasn’t in love, and he wasn’t going to fall in love with her.

Yet he couldn’t let her go, either.
  So what was he going to do? 

Would she want a commitment for forever?  That wasn’t anything he had to offer.  He’d never had a mate and had no desire for one now. 

This ruminating, it wasn’t something Bryn did.  He chose to do the things that pleased him, regardless of repercussions.  He maintained that the future could happen, but he had no interest in how the things he did now affected it. 

His cock was still erect.  Bryn looked down at it.

“
You
got me into this,” he accused.

There was only one thing he knew with certainty at this point.  He was going back to her and he wasn’t letting her out of his life until either one of them was good and ready. 

Fuck the future, as long as he was able to fuck Lauren as much as he needed.

Another
hour, and he’d be able to go to her.