His Lover's Fangs (3 page)

The physical aspect of it was just as she had
expected: close combat, endurance and strength training, basic
weapons at first with the promise of being able to choose from a
few more advanced ones later on. She was pretty good at it; years
of martial arts helped—and surprisingly, so did the ballet training
she had only stuck with to appease her mother.

But she had never thought she would need to
read textbooks, attend lectures, memorize things, participate in
discussions, and actually write essays about what she learned.

She had always been terrible at
writing
essays
.

Up to their first graded essay, she was at
the top of her class.

After… she wasn’t anymore.

It wasn’t all that hard to identify the
candidates who were better at the academics part of things than she
was. It was a little more difficult to find someone who wasn’t too
snooty—or too boring—for her to approach. She first talked to Logan
when they were paired up for close-combat training.

“I need help organizing my thoughts for our
next essay,” she said, inches from his ear, while they were in the
middle of practicing a new move the instructor had just
demonstrated.

Logan chuckled, drawing a sharp look from the
instructor, and it was a few more moments before he could answer
without earning a reprimand.

“And I need to get a better aim when I shoot
a crossbow,” he said dryly.

“Done.”

Her reply seemed to puzzle him, but she
didn’t have a chance to elaborate as the instructor broke up all
pairs and reassigned the partners. The rest of the day passed very
fast. That afternoon, after they had been assigned another essay
topic, it was time for their daily crossbow practice. Olivia wasn’t
near Logan, but she was close enough to observe him closely.

After dinner that night, she took her notes
to the men’s dorms. Women were allowed there until nine thirty at
night as long as they signed in with the dorm master when they
arrived.

She easily found his room number and headed
there. When she knocked on the door, it took a few moments before
he opened it, and she understood why as soon as she saw him. His
hair was wet, a towel draped over his bare shoulders, and he was
tugging the drawstrings of his sweatpants tight at his waist.

He blinked several times when he saw her
there, then frowned. “Huh… Hi? Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” Olivia said with a grin.

She couldn’t help following a bead of water
with her eyes as it glided over the tendons of his neck and right
down the center of his chest. He crossed his arms, and her gaze
snapped back to his face.

“You drop your shoulder,” she said, returning
to the business at hand. “Every time you’re about to hit the
crossbow trigger, you lock your breath, and when you do your right
shoulder drops half an inch. That’s why your aim sucks.”

His frown deepened. “I do? Huh. No one ever
noticed before. Are you sure?”

Olivia nodded. “I watched you. Twenty-five
arrows, you dropped your shoulder twenty-two times. And the other
three times—”

His eyes widened excitedly as he understood.
“Were the three arrows I put in the center of the target. Wow. That
explains a lot. Thanks.”

“No problem. I can watch again tomorrow if
you want, tell you when you’re doing it right so you get a feel for
it.”

The frown returned, now cautious. “Thanks,”
he said again. “But why are you doing this?”

“I told you I needed help with my essays,”
she said, grinning. “And you said you needed help with your aim. I
helped. Your turn.”

The look he gave her was pure fish out of
water, complete with a mouth opening and closing again without any
sound coming out.

Patience had never been Olivia’s strong suit,
or at least it wasn’t when there was no good reason for her to be
denied what she wanted at the moment she wanted it. She looked down
pointedly at the books and notebooks she was carrying, then back up
at him. Eyebrows raised high, she asked, completely aware of how
this would sound to the people passing in the hallway behind her
and not caring one bit, “Are we doing this outside or are you going
to invite me in?”

* * * *

Pulling herself out of her memories, Olivia
forced a grin to her lips. “So. Are we doing this outside or are
you going to invite me in?”

Logan blinked very slowly, and she could tell
that he remembered, too. Of course he did. Back then, he had been
flustered when he had answered. Now, he seemed angry.

“If you think I’m going to sleep with
you—”

“Who said anything about sleeping?” she cut
in, her grin taking a predatory turn. “I was thinking a bit of a
fight.” Raising a hand to her face, she tapped her lips
thoughtfully with a single finger. “Although we could precede that
with a nice fuck. What do you say, lover? A last fuck for old
time’s sake?”

Logan’s cheeks darkened in anger. He had
always hated that word. Sometimes, though, there was no other way
to describe what they did. Olivia’s body remembered climaxes
wrenched out of her, frantic thrusting by moonlight, claw marks and
light bruises that no vamp had inflicted on them. They had often
been tender, but when the mood had struck them both, flesh could
take over minds for a few minutes, or even a few hours.

Without a word, he picked up the laundry
basket and turned away. As she watched him walk out of sight,
bristling with anger and pain, Olivia could only wonder what it
would have been like to sleep with him one last time. She doubted
she’d get to know before it all ended.

“Doing my laundry?” she called out, knowing
he would still hear her from the laundry room. “You were always so
thoughtful, lover.”

He didn’t reply, and soon she could hear the
low buzzing of the washing machine starting its cycle. It was a few
more minutes before Logan returned to the bedroom, long enough for
Olivia to wonder what he would do with her clothes after washing
them—what he would do with all her things.

“Did you call the Salvation Army, yet?” she
asked as he reappeared. “When are they going to come to pick up my
stuff?”

Logan started to shake his head, only to stop
himself short, but it was too late. If he wasn’t going to donate
her belongings, what was he going to do with them? He wasn’t going
to keep living like this, with reminders of her all around him, was
he? The mere thought made Olivia’s hands clench into tight fists,
her nails digging into her palms.

“It’s getting late,” Logan said abruptly.
“You going to stay there all night and let me watch you burn at
sunrise?”

Olivia forced a savage grin to her lips.
“Would it upset you if I did?”

“Upset me?” Logan snickered, but it sounded
forced. “It’d just save me from having to kill you myself.”

“Save you, huh?” She tapped a thoughtful
finger to her lips. “Now that’s an interesting choice of words. Are
you saying killing me would hurt you?”

Logan shook his head, but he didn’t reply.
She expected him to leave the room, get away from her, maybe even
call for backup; it was what he should have done the moment she
arrived, and they both knew it. Instead, he remained standing
there, watching her, hiding his pain so badly that it angered her
all over again.

“You should never have become a Special
Enforcer,” she spat at him. “You were always a weakling, always a
bleeding heart with a savior complex. Guess what, lover.” She
spread her arms out. “Here I am. The love of your life. And you
couldn’t save me, could you?”

“I tried,” he snapped back. “I told you to
wait for me. I ran—”

“You ran?” she interrupted him, laughing. “Of
course you ran. You ran away, you coward. Four vamps against two,
those were not odds you wanted to play, were they?”

His face reddened, and she could hear his
heartbeat accelerating. She knew him too well, knew exactly what
buttons to push, and—

“
You’re calling
me
a coward?” he shouted, incredulity and anger
equally thick in his voice. “Come here and say it to my face
if…”

For just a second, he looked just as
shocked by the words that had passed his lips as Olivia felt. She
had been almost sure that in the end he would come out to her, that
he wouldn’t be
stupid
enough to
invite a vampire in their—
his
home. She had been so sure of it, actually, that a flash of
rage ran through her even as she realized that she could now step
inside. She rushed in with a snarl.

Logan’s eyes flickered to the crossbow he had
left on the dresser, but she was closer to it. Turning on his heel,
he ran from the bedroom, and she knew at once where he was going,
just like she knew that she had to stop him before he reached the
dining room and the swords on the wall. The rest of their weapons
were in the trunk of the car or at the agency, and a sword would be
his best chance to hurt her without letting her come close enough
to hurt him.

Running as fast as she could, her boots
screeching on the tiles, she caught up with him just as he exited
the kitchen. She grabbed his t-shirt before he could enter the
dining room and flung him to the opposite side of the hallway into
the living room. He crashed into the back of the sofa, and for a
moment Olivia thought she had knocked him out. She froze,
hesitating, but then Logan stood again, stumbling backward and
putting the sofa between them.

She grinned at him, baring her fangs as she
approached. “Think you can hide?”

He shook his head. “No. I think I need a
weapon.”

She didn’t understand what he meant until he
grabbed the edge of the wooden coffee table and flipped it over,
then tore off one of the legs.

“Improvisation?” she said, mildly surprised,
stopping as she eyed the makeshift stake in his hand.

“You taught me well,” he replied, and didn’t
wait to finish before he launched himself at her.

She blocked his arm as he swung the stake
toward her and pushed him hard enough that he stumbled back,
crashing into the coffee table and completely destroying it. He
attacked again at once, but this time the swinging stake was only a
decoy. He kicked at her leg, wrecking her balance. She crashed into
the wall hard enough to leave a dent in the plaster. She glared at
him but didn’t say a word and attacked. It was his turn to parry,
counter-attack, defend, and they continued to move around the room,
circling each other, destroying the furniture, breaking a window,
chipping the tiles they had laid out together around the fireplace.
Neither of them was gaining the upper hand.

As she struck at him, Olivia kept having
flashbacks of the many hours they had spent training together. They
had sparred together at the Academy sometimes, but it had always
been by chance, even after they had started enjoying each other’s
company. The instructors paired the trainees up with different
partners for each lesson, and there were enough trainees that they
didn’t train with the same partner more than two or three times a
month.

After they had graduated, though, when they
had funded their own agency together, sparring had become part of
their daily regimen. Most sessions finished with kisses at the very
least, shared showers usually, and when they pushed each other to
their limits and beyond, they always ended things with a lot more
than kissing.

In the end, it wasn’t really a mistake on his
part that finally allowed her to trap him beneath her. Instead, it
was her intimate knowledge of how he moved and breathed, of the
rhythm his blows followed. She knew him just as well as he knew
her, and while he had always had the advantage of power over her,
she had made up for it with her speed and agility. Becoming a
vampire had accentuated her strengths, but it had also given her
more power—enough to match Logan’s. Hand to hand, with nothing but
a stake, he had been doomed from the start—just like she had been
when Ann had confronted her.

Had she really been trying to kill him, it
might not have taken her so long to take him down, but she couldn’t
afford to hurt him too badly.

Instincts drew her down until her mouth was
only a couple inches from his throat. She could see his skin pulse
with life, with blood, and it made her fangs itch.

The same instinct caused her to freeze when
she felt the tip of the stake press against her chest. Everything
inside her screamed for her to move back, away from that piece of
wood that meant death. Away from the man who had meant so much to
her. She forced herself to remain very still and waited. Moments
ago, she had wished for a last fuck before it all ended; now, she
could only regret that she would never get a last kiss.

* * * *

For years, the feel of wood in his closed
hand had been as familiar to Logan as the feel of his own skin. He
had staked vampires without hesitating, knowing that each of them
was guilty, knowing that each kill meant saved human lives.

But now… He couldn’t do it.

Memories assaulted his mind, freezing him in
a stalemate with the ghost of a woman he had loved—would love until
he died, whether that was that moments or years away.

He remembered the night she had shown up at
his dorm at the Academy. He had noticed her before, like he had
noticed the fifty or so other students in his class, each of whom
he had been paired with for training at one point or another. But
until she had stood in front of him, he had never noticed how clear
her eyes were, like perfect jade stones, almost translucent.

He remembered another night, just weeks
later. She had shown up at his dorm window that time, in the middle
of the night, and simply said he was distracting her too much
during class. Her solution was for them to sleep together—expulsion
risks notwithstanding—and get it out of their systems. “And don’t
pretend you don’t want me,” she had added with a wicked grin. “I’m
not blind, and neither are you.” It had only been the first of many
times they broke that particular rule together.