Deliver Me from Darkness: A Novel of the Paladin Warriors (9 page)

She might not want to be, but she was aroused.

Hell.

Straws. Camels. Backs. Everyone had a point when they broke. Turns out his was his mate’s desire.

He closed the distance between them, lacing one hand behind her head in her curls as the other reached to set the empty glass down. It landed with a plunk on the butcher block. At the same time a small gasp of indrawn breath left her lips. Sweet full lips. One taste. Just one.

As he lowered his head, he told himself that if she fought him, if she pushed him back, if she so much as turned her head, he’d stop. He told himself this, but the truth was the desire for
this
once
had become a howling torrent of need racing through his body. He couldn’t stop if he wanted. So it was a damn good thing she didn’t ask him to.

His hand, now free, settled on her lower back, holding her steady as the other dug farther into the silken locks and tipped her head back farther for his attack. He bent closer. Their mouths met. The lingering burn of the scotch mingled with the sweet nectar of her blood that pulsed and plumped up that full, rosy mouth. He thought a simple taste would be enough to quench his thirst, to calm the wild beast of need. He was wrong.

With a growl he tightened his hold on her, pulling her closer, increasing the pressure of his mouth as his tongue stroked a path along the crease of her lips, demanding entrance. As soon as she yielded, her lips parting to allow him in, he knew: One kiss would never be enough. He wanted a lifetime of them with her. No, he wanted forever.

Roland deepened the kiss, taking everything, soaking up her essence, and giving in return the only thing he could ever offer her: mind-blowing pleasure. He had nothing else. The man he’d been, the Paladin, had been lost long ago. Long before she was born. Long before she was even a thought in her parents’ minds. She must have been in His, though. The One God chose the soul that would perfectly match that of the Paladin during the ceremony that initiated them into the order. Sometimes the bond mate would be revealed soon thereafter, but often it was decades, sometimes centuries, before the mate was sent down to earth for them. Only when the time was right, when the mate was most needed.

But Roland had needed his mate ninety-four years ago. Not now. Talk about a major FUBAR. The Big Man wasn’t known for His mistakes, but as far as mistakes went, this one was colossal.

Anger roiled through him, overshadowing his continuing need. Roland rallied against it, burning through it with the intensity of the kiss. So sweetly she yielded, how hot her tongue was against his, how erotic the little murmurs and gasps that rose in her throat. If he could be addicted to something, it was her.

Mine.

Only she would never be his. A vampire and a Paladin? No one would allow it. The council would do everything in its power to keep him from completing the bond. Like, say, calling
again
for the end of his existence.

Remember
this, remember me when you’re taken from me and the others are fighting over you. Remember and know that none of them can be to you what I am.

She jerked away, her hand flying up to her mouth.

He expected her to run now. Damn. She should run. All he wanted to do was drag her to him again. Instead she stood there, perfectly still but for the slim fingers that traced her swollen lips, as if she couldn’t bear the loss of sensation her abrupt withdrawal had caused. If hers burned with the same need as his did, then she probably couldn’t.

Her chest heaved. Her pupils were wide, their focus flickering between his own eyes and the mouth that had been crushing hers moments before. A pink tongue slipped out, tasted the bow of her top lip, then retreated with a guilty flush to her cheeks.

He couldn’t help but enjoy her obvious discomfort. If the colors swirling in her essence were any indication, she still didn’t know whether to run or throw herself into his arms again.

Her chin came up, her eyes narrowing dangerously. “What was that?”

God she was beautiful when she was angry.

He was unable to tamp down the smile that curved his lips. “That, my dear Karissa, was me being weak.”

“How dare you.”

Yes, how dare he? It was a good question. He dared because she’d been made for him and him alone. And now that he’d had a taste of the paradise she offered, God help—yup, Him too—anyone who said otherwise. He couldn’t tell her that, though, and she expected an answer. Besides, sometimes the simplest answers were best.

He arched an eyebrow in retort. “You didn’t seem to mind so much.”

Her cheeks went from baby girl pink to lobster red, and she folded her arms across her chest defensively. “I thought we had a deal.”

“Really…I don’t recall making any sort of deal with you.” No. There had been no deal. The only deal he was willing to make was to enjoy as much of each other as possible before he was forced to let her go, which, interestingly enough, he’d decided would be when he was dead.

She took a step back, as if deciding the three feet of space wasn’t enough. She was right.

“With the rooms.” She made a back and forth swishing motion with her hand. “Ships passing in the night and all that.”

He closed the distance, reaching out to finger a curl that had drifted down across her shoulder. Soft, silky. She drew in a quick breath. There was desire in her eyes hidden under the embarrassment, anger, and uncertainty. She couldn’t quite hide the want that made her drink in every plane and angle of his features.

He looped the curl around his index and middle fingers, leaned in, and brought his mouth down so it was mere millimeters from hers. “I think I like it better when our ships meet.”

She yanked her head back, pulling the curl from his fingers with a wince. “I don’t.”

He managed to tamp down his amusement, barely. He could smell her arousal. Whether she wanted it or not, her essence recognized that he was her mate. But he figured it was better not to give her a reason to attack him right now, not when the result would be them rolling around naked on the floor. She deserved a better initiation into the bonding process. Tender kisses, flowers, wine, and silk sheets. He wanted to court her.

If he stayed here, that wasn’t going to happen. Cold shower. Best idea of the hour.

Making a fist with his right hand, he brought his arm up across his body to cover his heart, giving her a formal little bow. She didn’t know what it meant, but he did. The promise of a bonded male to his mate: my heart, my body, my soul, for yours. “Then I shall give you a reprieve…for now.”

With a string of muttered insults and curses following him down the hall, he retreated to the bathroom. The door whooshed open at the touch of his palm, and he stopped short of the threshold. Seemed her tantrum of earlier had extended here.

He stepped gingerly into the bathroom and began to clean the mess. It was with amusement that he gathered up the tossed towels and shredded toilet paper and a wide smile that he began to wipe down the walls. It was there, among the many inventive insults scrawled in soap and shaving cream on the mirror above the sink, that one particular word popped out at him: Killer.

The significance of it and what it would mean to his sweet Karissa ripped him apart, reaching for the place where his soul should have been. Heart, body, soul. A man could not give what he did not have.

***

Tom signaled the bartender for another round. It was his fifth of the evening. The bartender—Greg, wasn’t it?—grabbed the Gentleman Jack from the shelving unit against the wall and with expert ease, he leveled off the shot glass without spilling a drop.

“Should I leave the bottle?”

Tom stared at the remaining four inches of amber liquid. At least five or six more shots left. Better not.

“Nah.”

Greg nodded, grabbed a twenty from the wad of bills Tom had placed before him on the polished oak, made quick change of it, and tossed back down a ten and four ones. Without so much as a nod, the three-quarters empty bottle was returned to the shelf and Tom was left alone with his dwindling pile of cash, the soon-to-be empty shot glass, and his dour mood.

Lifting the glass, he contemplated what it was that had his craw misaligned. The day had been like any other. He got up that morning out of the same too-big-for-one-person king-sized bed, brushed his teeth and took his shower in the same deco-modern master bath, took the same route to work in his souped up Mustang GT500, and pushed some papers around at the same boring white-collar job at the bank.

It was the bar, he decided, that was not the same. Normally he made a quick stop by his townhouse to change then headed downtown to where the streets were lit not by streetlamps so much as the glowing neon freak-show signs. Tattoo parlors, dance clubs, adult stores…This little sports den was like flat soda compared to the pop and sizzle of the places he was used to frequenting.

There was nothing going on here. No thumping music to show his moves to, no strobing lights to play off his cuff links, no shuffle of Benjamins for little white packets of pure king-of-the-world Xstacy…no pretty coeds to fuck. He should be there. Not here. But he hadn’t felt up to going out to his usual haunts tonight.

And why the hell not?

Because of those eyes. Glowing red eyes that still stared at him from his nightmares. It had to be nightmares. What he’d dreamed had gone down last night was too fucking weirded-out to be real. Sure, there had been a coed and a back alley. And before that there had been some liquor and some powder. But no way in hell had there been a fucking vampire. That shit wasn’t real.

And if it wasn’t real, then why the hell was he in here cowering rather than out doing what he normally did? Was he such a friggin’ pansy ass that he was going to let some impure X put him off his game? And that’s what it had been. Bad X. He should find the dealer who sold it to him and off the branded fucker. Better yet, spread the word that Tattoo Guy was selling inferior products and let someone else off him. Fewer repercussions that way. He needed to put the nightmare behind him, find a new dealer, and get on with his shit. Life was waiting, after all, and at thirty-nine he wasn’t getting any younger.

The sense of eyes boring into the side of his head had him looking down the bar to the right. The barkeep was staring at him uneasily, his hands drying and re-drying the same glass over and over again. WTF? What was the asshole staring at? He was a goddamn paying patron, after all. Tom’s anger bubbled, his hand clenching the shot glass. Some of the precious top-shelf splashed over the rim. The waste of the expensive shit pissed him off further.

Shit. The shot was half-empty but not because he’d drunk any. A quick review of the last couple minutes told him he’d probably been nodding and gesturing to himself like a fucking crazy person. And now Greg thought him the next candidate for the loony bin.

Well, he wasn’t. He wasn’t crazy. Crazy was seeing things that weren’t there. Crazy was thinking the fucked up dreams that came after an evening of binging were real. Crazy was letting said dreams fuck you over the next night too. Well, that wasn’t happening here. Nope. Tom was going to finish his shot, grab up his money—no tip for busybody Greg—get into his GT500, and do what a real man would do, which was do what he always did. He had at least another decade before his looks went to total shit, and his money couldn’t lure out the pretty coeds. He was a former all-star college athlete, a successful banker with a good crib and a better car. Yeah, he was still a player to be reckoned with. Red eyes or not, nothing was going to keep him from living life to the fullest.

With the decision made, Tom tossed back the shot—there was a reason they called it liquid courage—slammed down the glass, and pushed up off his barstool. Then, with a jaunty swagger, he made his way out the door into the parking lot where he stopped and took a deep breath of night air.

A smile cracked on his face, his body thrumming with purpose as he began to whistle on the way to his Mustang. The night was young yet and all his. Carpe diem and all that crap.

***

Roland examined the peeling linoleum floor, the pads of his fingers brushing over the dark brown stains that were layered over what must have been decades of other stains. Karissa’s home. Her sanctuary. The place where she should have felt safe, yet murder had occurred here. Recently. The blood was old enough to oxygenate but not so old as to leave no clues.

Killer.
The accusation, and the fear that he might let loose his frustration and rage on his best friend when Calhoun returned for his shift, had driven Roland into the night. He’d been able to trace the faint taint of death that still clung to her back to her Brooklyn home.

Karissa was right. He
was
a killer. And for this he would be again. Whoever had taken the life of the man who had fallen here would pay in kind. An eye for an eye. Death for death. So it would be.

Whoever the man was, he was a relation to Karissa. He could pick up enough lingering scent to know that. Someone had removed the body. Not the police either, for there was no blatant yellow tape, despite the obvious crime scene. Whoever this man was to Karissa—father, brother, uncle—his absence had only been noted by one.