Fury Calls (3 page)

He took the next step then, easing his jacket off. It fell to the floor with a jangle of chains.

Beneath the jacket he wore a black T-shirt that hugged every hard line of his lean body. Meghan found that she was suddenly impatient to see more.

She grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it up and over his head, exposing a body that looked to be sculpted from the palest alabaster.

He wasn't a tall man, barely inches over her own five-foot-seven height, but what there was of him was magnificently formed male. Broad shoulders, big enough to bear any burden, were thick with hard muscles that felt smooth beneath the palms of her hands. She measured the strength in them before trailing her fingers down his well-defined chest to his abdomen and then back up. She ran her fingers through the pale whorls of hair on his chest, which matched the arrogant color on his head.

“You really are a blond,” she teased, and stroked her index finger over the hard nub of his nipple.

“Are you?” he asked, and picked up his hand, trailed the rough pads of his fingers along the swell of her breasts exposed by the low neckline of the tank top and the push-up bra she wore. His actions got an immediate response as her nipples tightened in anticipation of his touch.

She looked up at him and curved her lips in what she hoped was a seductive smile. “You may have to wait a bit to find out.”

Blake laughed, her bravado stirring something deep within him. Something that couldn't wait a second longer to take their little interlude to the next step.

He reached for the neckline of her tank top and slipped his fingers beneath, pulling away both shirt and bra with a quick tug. He heard the snap of the bra strap and felt the give as her breasts slipped free of all the fabric.

Her creamy skin was a sharp contrast to her black clothing. A flush worked over her flesh at his perusal, tempting him to feel the warmth of it against his palm.

He cupped her, and the heat of her nipple seemed to burn a hole into his palm. Still, he didn't pull back. Instead he stroked her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

The action dragged a soft moan from her and she copied his actions, tweaking his hard male nipple with her fingers, jerking his erection to painful life.

Her gaze slipped there for but a moment before she leaned forward and closed her mouth over his nipple.

He shut his eyes against the sensation that rocketed through his body and focused on the feel of her breast in his hand, all warm and creamy. Her pulsebeat was loud in his ears and vibrated against his hand as it rested inches away from her heart, reminding him of what he was not.

Alive. Alive. Alive, drummed loudly in his head in the same beat as her pulse.

“You're cold,” she said, In response, he called forth a bit of his demon, driving away the chill in his body to allay her concern.

“Blake?” she asked, and he realized that he didn't even know her name.

“That's my name, and you're…”

“Meghan,” she said in a husky whisper, as he bent his head and took her hard nipple in his mouth.

She cradled him close, her hand snaking through his hair to keep him near as she arched her back.

Not that he was going anywhere, he thought. He sucked on her nipple and relished the soft mewl of pleasure that came from her.

He shifted his other hand upward, tugged down the rest of her shirt and bra so that he could pleasure her other breast with his mouth until it wasn't enough.

“Touch me, Meghan,” he almost begged. When she ran her hands across the width of his shoulders, he surged upward, wrapping his arms around her waist and crushing her tight to his body.

“Blake, what—”

He silenced her with a kiss and walked with her to the edge of the bed, but then he slowly eased her down
his body, the smooth hard tips of her breasts brushing along him, awakening fire wherever she touched. The sensation elicited a shiver from him.

“Has it been that long?” Meghan asked, surprising him with her sensitivity.

He shocked himself by admitting, “Since I felt something like this? Too long, love.”

“Why?” she wondered aloud, even as she tenderly ran her hands across his shoulders and then let them dip down to cover the muscles of his chest with one hand while she placed the other flat over his heart.

Her touch reached deep within him, to emotions he thought he had suppressed long ago. Covering her hand with his, he said, “Let's not go there tonight.”

He didn't think it was possible that the green of her eyes could get any darker, but with his words, her pupils deepened to almost black with emotion. Reaching up, she cradled his cheek, tracing the sharp line of it.

“Where would you like to go tonight?”

“To heaven,” he said, as he bent his head and took her lips with his once again.

“Heaven it is, then,” Meghan murmured as she accepted the gentle pass of his lips over hers. His touch was tentative, almost pleading. The emotions it roused sank its hooks deep into her heart, scaring her with their intensity.

She laid her hands on his shoulders as he effortlessly picked her up and placed her on the bed. When he joined her there, he lay beside her fully. Their bodies barely brushed, but it was enough to make her want more.

She cupped the swell of his pectoral muscle and ran
her thumb across the hard nub. A small shudder racked his body, emboldening her.

“Ah, love. That feels good.” He looked down at her hand where she continued to strum his tight nipple.

She smiled, filled with a bravado she hadn't known she possessed. In a playful tone she said, “Well, if it feels good for you, I imagine that it might feel good for me, too.”

He chuckled and met her gaze, amusement glittering in his crystal-blue eyes. With a cocky grin on his face, he passed the back of his hand across her breast, dragging a rough sigh from her at the pleasure that simple touch created in her core.

“Is that the sound of good, luv?”

“Yes,” she said with a sigh, then took his nipple between her fingers, rotated it gently. At their hips, where their bodies were closest, she felt the jump of his erection, a reaction that was echoed in the sympathetic pull between her legs. She twined her legs with his and he pushed his thigh upward, tight against the growing pulse at her center.

As she rode him, trying to assuage her need, he took her hard nipple between his thumb and forefinger. He pulled on it gently then gave it a playful twist, which yanked a moan from her.

He immediately seized on that sound of desire.

“So was that the sound of…even better?” he teased, even as he was bending his head and she was arching her back, offering herself up to him.

His lips closed over her nipple. He sucked the tip before circling the hard nub with his tongue and then teething it into an even tighter point. She cradled his head close and as he suckled her she thrust her hips against his.

He responded by increasing the pull of his mouth and insinuating his thigh ever tighter against her.

She rode him with growing need, but recalling his earlier playfulness and wanting to join in it, she said, “And this is the sound of un-freakin'-believable,” and finally released the low, long moan that had built within her at his actions.

Her words pulled a rough laugh from him and made his already full erection swell to painful proportions. He wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her. Nothing except possibly a taste of her humanity.

A bite of the life held tight against him.

Her heart beat furiously against his ear as he once again brought his mouth to her breast and suckled. The warmth of her—her mortal warmth—bathed his upper body with heat. The smell of her—all musky femininity—covered by the tight jeans that she wore brought sweet temptation.

The bit of vampire he had released earlier to warm her became a pool of heat at the center of him, growing ever stronger with each touch and taste of her. As she slipped her hand downward and covered his erection, a shudder ripped through him and the fire of the vampire flared across his body, breaking free and wanting dominion.

He fought the demon's control, fearing the strength of the emotion she had called forth. He feared it even as he acknowledged that he had never experienced anything like it in either of his lives.

She must have sensed the difference in him, since she urged him up from her breast and rubbed her lips against his. “I'm afraid too, Blake. I'm afraid of how much I like the way I feel with you.”

Her confession undid the last dregs of his humanity and released the demon.

“Forgive me, love,” he said as he gently eased her head to the side and bit down.

Pain seared through her neck, but immediately after came intense desire that made her entire body throb for fulfillment.

Meghan held him close, moaning and riding his thigh as desire gripped her hard, refusing to let go much like he seemed unable to release her. The pulse of her need beat through her body and seemed to echo from his, but little by little that beat grew weaker and erratic. Somehow she realized that the fading rhythm was that of her heart, failing slowly as Blake continued to suck at her neck until only a negligible thrum remained.

Cold enveloped her body. Weakness. Her extremities became numb and useless.

As Blake finally pulled away, she caught a glimpse of his face. Long, blood-stained fangs extended well beyond his upper lip. The ice blue of his eyes burned with almost phosphorescent brightness and called to her as her eyesight dimmed.

“Sweet Jesus, Meghan. I'm sorry, love. So sorry,” he said, but his words were growing distant, as if she was fading away. Maybe she was.

A part of her brain understood that she was dying and struggled to hold on. To not let go of what little life remained. That consciousness latched onto the feel of him cradling her. Of the wetness of tears on her face and then the saltiness of something warm against her lips.

“Drink, Meghan,” she heard, and knew that he was
offering her life. She didn't know how she knew it, she just did, as if something deep in her subconscious had elemental knowledge of what he offered.

All she knew at that moment was that she didn't want to die.

She was only twenty-one and she wasn't ready to die.

She opened her mouth and placed it against the flesh he offered. She drank of the warmth of his life's blood. With each pull of her mouth and each sip, strength grew in her body. She felt strength infusing each cell until she was able to force herself away from him.

With a brutal shove she drove him from her. As he rose from the floor beside the bed where he had fallen, he gazed down at her with eyes filled with tears, but they created no emotion in her other than hatred. Within her, fury rose with the realization that he had irrevocably changed her life.

She sat up and grabbed at her clothes, and when he would have reached for her, she slapped away his hands.

“Don't touch me. Don't ever touch me again.”

“Ever is a long time now, luv,” he said sadly.

“It
is
forever now, isn't it? You made me something other than human.”

At his nod, she said, “I'll hate you forever.”

He morphed back to his human form then and despite her statement, emotion rose up in her at the sadness in his eyes and at the words he uttered next.

“No need to waste your emotion, Meghan. I'll hate myself on your behalf.”

The Blood Bank, present day

E
ven before the knock on the door, Foley knew trouble had landed on his doorstep.

Not that he was unused to trouble. Running the Blood Bank included dealing with an underworld of both humans and vampires who thought trouble was just another word for fun. A night didn't go by when there wasn't violence of some kind in the club, not that he minded. A good fight with spilt blood always satisfied the darker aspects of his persona.

Amazingly, it was usually the vampires who were the easier ones to control during any kind of disagreement. They knew the rules and that the penalties for breaking
them would be swiftly enforced. Justice delayed was justice denied, he thought, as with a last suck he reluctantly pulled himself away from that night's plaything.

She fell away limply, her eyes unfocused from the blood loss. The bite mark on her neck was vivid against the flush on her skin.

Rising from the bed in the back room, Foley swept his gaze over the young woman's prone body. It was made for pleasure, he thought. He itched to join her once again and finish both feeding and loving, but another knock came at the door, more insistent than the one before.

That wasn't what got him moving away from his beautiful dinner companion.

He
is here, Foley thought, suddenly sensing the other vampire's presence and the growing anger. The last thing Foley wanted to do was to piss him off.

In a blur of vampire speed, he dressed and raced out the door to the small office he kept beyond the Blood Bank's well-known back rooms and beside a larger meeting space, where the vampires sometimes joined into a council to dispense their sure brand of justice.

Foley paused at the door and drew in a breath to steady his nerves. It had been nearly three years since the last time the Blood Bank's real owner had made his presence known. His visit today could only mean one thing.

Trouble.

Immediately upon entering the room, Foley felt the strength of the other vampire's power take hold of him. It roughly forced him down to his knees as the vampire said, “I don't like to be kept waiting.”

“I'm sorry, Sun Tze. I was—”

“Feeding. I can smell her blood. Come here,” he said, raising his hand and, with that movement, pulling Foley back up from his knees as if he were no more than a puppet on a string.

Fear so strong he almost wet himself slammed into Foley's gut as he obeyed and approached the other vampire. As he did so, he examined Sun Tze Lee, thinking that little had changed about him in the century since they had first crossed paths.

Lee's dark, almond-shaped eyes glittered with amusement at his dread, and a smile split his full lips, displaying perfect white teeth with a hint of fang that refused to go away. Lee had spent too much time in his vampire state for them to ever be normal again. The broad plains of Lee's ruthlessly handsome face had a telltale flush of color.

He had fed recently, Foley realized, but he also knew Lee intended to feast on him. Lee's dining would have nothing to do with satisfying his hunger. It would be all about reasserting the control he had claimed over Foley when they had run into each other during the Boxer Rebellion.

On a lark, Foley had headed to Beijing, then known as Peking, tired of the pickings in Dublin and intrigued by the talk of all the exotic delights he might find in China. He had arrived at the outbreak of the rebellion and realized that the time would be good for feeding and satisfying the demands of his body.

Sun Tze Lee had been there with a horde of fellow Chinese vampires—
kiang-shi
, as they were called—to drive away the foreigners exerting too much influence
on their homeland and to sate their bloodlust in the course of the battle.

The fighting in Beijing hadn't lasted too long—fifty-five days, to be exact. But in that time, Lee and the other kiang-shi had decimated not only the foreign civilians and soldiers in the area, but also thousands of Chinese Christians in the city and in provinces like Shandong.

Lee had come upon him as he was draining a beautiful Chinese girl just beyond the steps of the Catholic church to which she had been trying to flee. He supposed now, as he took the final step that brought him close to Lee, that he had been lucky in a way. Instead of ripping his throat out for being a foreigner, Lee had decided to feed from him and make him his slave.

For over a hundred years, Foley had done whatever Lee ordered, and so when he'd entered the office and Lee had said, “On your knees,” Foley had immediately complied.

The Chinese vampire now smiled and cupped Foley's face in his hands. With an almost tender touch he stroked his jaw with long, graceful fingers, urging Foley to bare his neck.

Foley did as he was bid, closing his eyes as a wave of desire skittered across his body, awakening unwanted passion. With a chuckle, Lee softly said, “Do not fear. We will get to that later.”

Which was just what Foley was afraid of. He whimpered and finally did wet himself as he recalled the last time Lee had taken him. The Asian vampire had been brutal and uncaring of how much damage he had done.

Dreading a repeat of that performance, Foley said, “Master—”

“Sssh, Daniel,” Lee began, using his given name the way one might a lover's, only Lee knew nothing of love. Only conquest and pain, Foley thought.

“You will enjoy it, Daniel. You always do,” Lee said, beginning to transform. The black of his eyes literally bled out and became glowing embers of red. The black of his hair receded, replaced by the palest strands of glistening white, making him look almost albino.

But it was his fangs that snared and held Foley's attention.

From the small buds he had noticed earlier burst shiny white and lethally long fangs that extended well beyond the lower jaw. Needle-sharp, they could easily pierce the toughest of hides, but what Lee clearly wanted tonight was him.

Before he could protest, Lee forced aside Foley's head and perforated the skin at his neck to sink his teeth deep into an artery.

The pain of the kiang-shi's bite seared along Foley's nerves and exploded in the center of his brain like a supernova. The explosion continued outward, tearing into every sensitive synapse in its path, creating fiery agony in each cell of his body.

Foley screamed, his harsh guttural cry resounding in the confines of his small office.

Against his neck, Lee's throaty laughter erupted. In his brain came Lee's insistent command.

Scream some more. I love it when you scream.

 

Blake noticed the way Diego's nose wrinkled in apparent disgust and how Ryder Latimer, the other co
owner of Otro Mundo, eyeballed him the way a father might a virgin daughter's first date.

“What is that smell?” Diego said.

The debonair vampire, chic in a charcoal gray suit that probably cost more than Blake had ever made in both his lifetimes combined, walked from around his large desk and stood beside him. Diego bent from his greater height, took another sniff and said, “Mothballs?”

“Is that getup for real?” Ryder asked. He motioned with his finger to the rather dated, dark blue polyester suit Blake had lifted from the Goodwill store earlier in the day.

Blake tugged at the lapels of the jacket and inched his head up defiantly. “Didn't think the chains and leather would make a good impression during an interview.”

“An interview?” Diego said with a sneer. He sat on the edge of his desk and across the way from Ryder, who lounged lazily in the chair beside where Blake stood.

Blake fought the urge to fidget beneath the probing glances of both vampires. With his head tilted upward at a defiant angle, he said, “Heard you were still hiring. Thought it was about time I had some gainful employment.”

“What you really mean is that you want to stalk Meghan up close and personal.” Diego crossed his arms, straining the fabric of the suit across his powerful shoulders.

“It's not a good idea, Blake,” Ryder added, his tone a trifle more friendly, but tinged with concern.

“Look, I know the little chit probably wants nothing to do with me—”

“‘Probably' being a major understatement,” Ryder said with a chuckle. Then he grew more serious and continued. “If I recall correctly, she spent the first year of her undead life trying to rip your throat out.”

“Or put a stake through your heart,” Diego added.

It was hard to argue with them when they were right, Blake thought. “Things have changed since then.”

“That's right, amigo. Things changed when you betrayed me to the man who killed Esperanza.” Diego rose from the desk and came to stand nose to nose with him, his posture more challenging than it had been before. “You do remember that you nearly cost us all our lives during that little escapade.”

Meeting Diego's gaze, he noted the telltale blossoming of neon green in his eyes that said the other vampire was battling to rein in his anger. Blake had no desire for Diego to lose that control. He was no match physically for Diego—or even Ryder, for that matter. But that didn't mean he would give up so easily or tuck his tail in like a whipped dog.

Rising on tiptoe until he nearly bumped noses with Diego, he said, “I saved your life and the little chit's.”

Turning to Ryder, he pointed to him and said, “And I've helped you and yours out of more than one scrape.”

Ryder surged from his seat, all earlier traces of friendliness gone, and came to stand beside Diego. “Which makes you an Eagle Scout all of a sudden?”

“All I want is a job.”

“And a chance to see Meghan every day,” Diego pressed.

True, not that he would admit it. “I won't bother her.”

“Why do I find that so hard to believe?” Ryder said, before plopping back down in his chair.

“Maybe because in the same circumstances, you wouldn't leave her alone, either,” Blake said, earning a chuckle from Ryder, who also acknowledged the statement with a nod. He pressed on, “Look, mates. I've had your backs and it seems to me you could use a few more friends to watch out for you, considering what happened the other night.”

With a surge of speed and power, Diego had him by the throat, his feet dangling off the ground. “What do you know about that?”

“Just what I saw from the alley afterward, but there's all kinds of rumors floating around about what happened to those two vamps,” he replied in a choked voice, all he could muster thanks to the force of Diego's grip on his throat.

Diego tossed him away and leaned on the edge of the desk.

Ryder faced him and in a calm voice asked, “What kinds of rumors?”

“Suicide pact. Murder. Humans wanting revenge. You name it.” With a nonchalant shrug, Blake continued. “So what really happened?”

Diego and Ryder exchanged a look, as if considering whether or not to answer, but then Ryder admitted, “We don't know.”

“You don't know? Isn't your little FBI friend—”

“Diana's out of this, Blake,” Ryder said, the tone of his voice growing harsh.

“Lover's spat?” he tossed out without a thought, but was sorry he did so at Ryder's reaction.

Ryder bowed his head and took a deep breath. His body grew frighteningly still the way the air turned dead before a storm. Diego reached out, laid a hand on Ryder's shoulder and asked, “Amigo, are you okay?”

Ryder nodded and then faced Blake once again, his eyes glittering with the harsh bright color of the vampire. A low rumble filled Ryder's voice and a hint of fang became visible as he spoke. “You want us to think you're honorable? That you understand friendship and respect—”

“I'm sorry, Ryder. I didn't mean anything about Diana.”

“We'll give you a job, Blake.” Ryder rose slowly from the chair, his hands clenched at his sides. He stood before Blake, his troubled gaze boring into him and his face fully transformed to that of the vampire. Considering that Ryder kept the vampire in check more often than any of them, Blake knew it was not a good sign. Ryder made his demands. When he was finished he added, “And we'll expect you to respect us and do as you're told. Understood?”

Blake hated the feeling of unworthiness that both men brought out in him, but he was determined to get this job and prove them wrong. He wanted to show all of them he was reliable and trustworthy. He wanted to prove to Meghan that he wasn't the no-account she thought him to be.

“Understood, mate.”