Hunter by Night (20 page)

He’d hardly drunk at all before licking the bite closed.

“You’re okay? You had enough?” Blood thundered between her ears even as aftershocks of her orgasm rocked her body.

He leaned down, pressing his forehead to hers. “I’ll never have enough of you. Thank you for your gift.”

“I’d…”
Anytime
, she had almost said. Was that the truth? Was she going or staying? Her blood was the only gift she had to give. If things were different, maybe she’d try to stay. She’d want to give him the gift of her, for real. But in the end, once this medical problem of his sorted itself out, he would need someone better, stronger than she was. He’d need another vampire.

As they pressed away from each other and the high of what they’d just shared lost its edge, she struggled for breath and faced reality. Really, that was the bottom line: he would always be vampire and she’d always be human.

She couldn’t deny that being with him like this made it harder to go. But could they honestly make it work between them if she stayed?

Above Alexia, Lee’s breath puffed harsh and ragged like hers. His fangs had yet to retreat back inside his mouth. Seeing his monster side so prominently only drove home the reasons she was so afraid to believe. If this was just some misguided sense of duty or his need not to fail… If it was about his blood…

Moisture leaked from her eyes. “Listen, this about-face is confusing. You always said you hated humans. I can stay a little longer if you just need more blood…” Her arm jerked. She wanted to wipe away the tears that ran along her jaw, but Lee had her arms trapped. Her emotions were running away without her, and she hated showing him this kind of weakness.

“It’s fine, okay? I don’t have any plans. I—I wanted to be gone before Isabel and the baby got settled so it wouldn’t be so hard.”
Before
I
got
so
attached
to
you.

His face darkened and his head came down, one forehead pressed to another. “You’re still not listening, Alexia.”

She tried to answer, but the words made her sputter and choke. She balled up her fists and pulled harder against the restraint of his body, not that she expected to get anywhere. She didn’t exactly have superior strength against Lee’s solid wall of muscle. Suddenly she went full-on panic spazz-out, like a million bugs crawled under her skin and she just had to get away from him. Had to.

“God, will you just—” Her throat tightened. Clogged with screams that couldn’t get out. “Please
let
go
of
me
!” She twisted and jerked, yanking her arms and pulling her legs to her chest, ready to use them as leverage.

The effort proved unnecessary. Lee released her immediately, rising onto his knees and backing away practically before she’d even begun to protest.

Still, Alexia’s body had pumped up the adrenaline. She jumped against the wall, while her heart kept doing wind sprints and she tried not to shrink down to two feet tall. She took a long, slow, deep breath. “I’m listening, I swear. My ears work perfectly fine. All those years spent in the party scene didn’t kill my hearing, I promise you.” Alexia giggled nervously but Lee didn’t move, didn’t quirk a smile, didn’t respond at all to her awkward little joke.

She used an embarrassingly shaky arm to wipe tears from her chin. “I hear you saying it’s gonna make me crazy if Nessa wipes my memories. You think I don’t understand. Thing is, I think what’s going on here is you are a truly honorable guy and you’ll feel responsible if I leave. But I don’t belong here, and you’re not responsible.

“I’m used to crazy. I’m used to emotions I can’t control or explain. I had a mom put in jail for shoplifting to support my drug-addicted father who wasn’t paying attention when some of his dealer friends snatched me out of my bedroom one night. Believe me, that kind of thing doesn’t exactly make life conducive to sanity.”

He didn’t respond, but his lips slackened in apparent surprise. His fingers clenched. “Lexi…”

When he moved to come closer, she pressed back against the wall, closing her eyes against the searching stare in his bottomless aqua eyes. “No, it’s okay. You know, some days are just fine. Some days I’m so intensely angry at the world and I can’t figure it out. Then I realize it’s right around the day they tried to take me. Some days I’m inexplicably terrified. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I run and dance and drink and all that other stuff to try and get tired. I hate to sleep.” Her head throbbed.

“It’s just—You think I might go crazy? That it’s more dangerous out there than in here? I’m in hell all the time.” She tapped her forehead, indicating the nightmares and memories trapped inside. “And the people who promised to love and protect me didn’t. So I mean it sincerely when I say I’m grateful for your intention, but you can’t give me any guarantees.”

Alexia pressed her hands against her eyes as the tears fell, unable to stand the despair and frustration on Lee’s face. She couldn’t make this okay for him. She didn’t even know how to make it okay for herself.

Gently, the back of his hand brushed along her cheek. “Lexi, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to hold you down just now.”

“You didn’t know.”

He tried to meet her eyes. She tried to count spots on the ceiling. Only those eyes were too blue and too hypnotic not to look into. “I remember a time when I tried to carry you over my shoulder and you got so angry you kicked me in the balls,” he said with a slight smile.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Anybody would’ve been pissed. It was embarrassing and demoralizing. I’m not five.” But she smiled some, too, in response to the beauty of his upturned lips. His attempt to understand.

He tipped his chin. “But that’s why.”

Alexia moved her head from side to side. “Yes.”

“Forgive me.” Words whispered so softly from this big Sherman tank of a vampire that she hardly heard them.

Alexia’s head fell forward against his chest. The apology melted her. For some reason she hadn’t expected it… not from him. “It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t.”

She shook her head. “It’s as okay as it can be, you know? I figure, all things considered, I function pretty well. Mostly.”

He breathed a laugh and kissed her then. Gently, softly, his lips brushed hers, and only for a moment did the tip of his tongue touch his bottom lip before he pulled away again. “I think you’re amazing. That’s a frightening thing that happened, and look how far you’ve come. Did they hurt you?”

She shook her head. “I mean it depends on your definition.” The pictures entered her head. Being shoved into a windowless van full of tools. The tools and what they might have done to her with them were the scary parts.

“Lexi…” His voice was low and dangerous. “Tell me.”

She shrugged again. As if it had all been no big deal. “They shoved me in a van. They hit me. They shot me up with… I don’t know, some kind of sedative. I was in there with girls—young girls—who were bloody and restrained, and… God, in the end I got so lucky. Compared to the rest.”

She swallowed hard. Her chest and throat ached, and it was hard trying to remember enough to tell the story without replaying it all in her head. “I had managed to distract one of them, and then I just started kicking and screaming. This one big guy tried to pin me down and pull my clothes off, but I was able to grab hold of some saw-type thing and hit him on the head. It was enough to get away. A couple of the other girls and I managed to hide out until we were sober. I never went back home.” The muscles in her neck and shoulders ached from the remembered tension of that night.

He growled quietly, nuzzling into the crook of her neck. His head shook like he wasn’t sure what to say, so she squeezed her fingers around his to let him know he didn’t have to say anything.

“The hard part was that I couldn’t save all the other girls. I wasn’t too messed up from the drugs yet, but some of them were stoned or high or just too scared, I guess. Some of them wouldn’t run and there was no time to wait.”

His arms went around her. “I am so sorry. I wish I could have protected you then, too.”

She couldn’t help but smile at this, but the ache in her heart was fierce. She’d never told anyone about that night. Not even Isabel. Not really.

Why she had told Lee, she couldn’t be sure. What was she honestly hoping that would solve? Maybe it was just time to tell someone she wasn’t paying for therapy. “It’s all right. I survived. I managed to build a life. It’s more than some of them got,” she said. And she said no more because remembering the ones who hadn’t made it out, wondering what had happened to them, tore her to pieces every time.

“God, Lexi,” Lee murmured into her shoulder. “Stay. Please stay. I want you to. I want to make all this shit up to you. Let me make things better. Please.”

It looked like Lee. It felt like him. Smelled like him. These just didn’t sound like words a gruff, badass anti-human vampire would say. Still, at the mere sound of them, her body had relaxed into his, ready to believe anything. God, she wanted to trust his sincerity. She wanted to give in. “I want to say yes. I’m
dying
to say yes. But you said yourself humans and vampires don’t work. How can we?”

He raised his head with a snarl. With one finger he stroked her eyebrow and then ran a hand through the strands of her hair. “I asked before about the color of your hair. You said if I could drink from you without getting ill, you would tell me.”

Sadness burned in her chest, but she decided not to call him on his abrupt change of subject. She could only take it to mean he didn’t have an answer to her question. “That night they tried to take me, I was told how I was so pretty. How lots of men would pay lots of money to fuck me. I swore,” she whispered, “I would never look in the mirror and see what they had seen. Ever.”

Before Alexia could blink, the mirror over her dresser had cracked and shattered. Lee’s knuckles dripped with blood. Heartbeats passed before either of them spoke. “Then fuck the mirror. You’ll be beautiful to me regardless,” he said.

***

Lee pressed his lips again to Alexia’s. He’d always hated to kiss. Awkward and tricky with his fangs in the way. With someone else’s fangs in the way. Kissing Alexia… perfect fit. He could hardly remember why he had so resisted this before.

He groaned, shifted, and pressed against her mouth. Her body. He wanted to wrap around her. Make promises. Find the men who had tried to carry her off to danger. Who had hurt and scared her. Promise her he would never be the one to cause her pain.

You
can’t make those promises, can you?
He also couldn’t let her leave.

Since the day she’d entered his life, Lee had tried to keep Alexia at a distance, convinced it was the best thing for all involved. Now he couldn’t let her go. Fuck if he knew how to make it work if she stayed, but the idea of her walking out into the daylight tore him apart.

“Your hand…”

“It’ll heal,” he said. “You gave me blood. It’s a minor wound.” He hardly noticed the sting over the pulse of his rage.

He drew her breath into his mouth. Even after their lovemaking, red wine and salty butter lingered. “You’ve been drinking.”

“Some. Siddoh showed up wrecked and chugging wine. I took the bottle so he wouldn’t drink it himself.”

Once upon a time, he would have gotten angry with her for imbibing. For having vices. He could see that tonight she’d been a friend. And fuck, he’d had vices, too. Before, there had been blood. And now her.

Lee
Goram, addicted to a human. Never say never.

The very thought made him want her—need her—all over again. His hand slid between their bodies. Down her stomach. He had to touch her skin again. Making love to her just then hadn’t sated his desire, but instead fueled his craving.

He paused, though, as his hand touched her thigh. “Is this okay?”

She nodded with a frown.

Lee understood her confusion. He hadn’t asked before, had he? He’d just… taken. He couldn’t do that anymore. “I didn’t know. About what had happened to you. I’m trying to be…” Gentle. Careful. He didn’t finish the sentence aloud, worried she’d be offended by the notion that he wanted to treat her with caution. Still, he needed the assurance of her skin against his again more than he needed to breathe.

So much was clear to him now. He didn’t want to act as if she was weak or fragile, but he’d been a complete dick. “Lexi, I’m so sorry. For what you’ve been through. What I’ve done.”

She sagged against the white-painted wall, her hands pressed flat like she didn’t want to touch him. “It’s fine. You didn’t know.”

Then
you’ll stay. Say it, Lexi
. He jammed his tongue to the roof of his mouth to avoid spitting it out like a command. Fuck him, but he was used to giving orders. “I hope so.” Females said they were fine when they were the opposite: angry. Angst-ridden. Plotting your demise.

He slid his hand along her shoulder.
Careful.
He’d never been so at odds as with Alexia. Since the morning he’d lost his mother and sister, he’d been decisive. Indecision got you in trouble. Got you killed. Now here he was with a human who turned him every direction but forward.

Finally, he understood her issue. She’d been on the run for so long. Still running from the men who had tried to take her, even though in all likelihood they were dead by now. Humans who lived those lives didn’t survive for long. Maybe she even ran from herself. Lee sure as hell ran from his own demons.

To Lee, making Alexia stay on the estate had been about safety. For her, it had been the same as being locked in the back of that van. She’d been trying to break out around every turn.

He buried his face in that gorgeous hair. “So many reasons the two of us cannot last. Still, it makes no more sense to withhold what I feel for you.” Not if it might save her life. Truly, she had no idea. She could stand there with defiance in her dark eyes and toss aside the idea that she’d feel his emotions for the rest of her life as if it was nothing. She didn’t grasp the implications. Right now, she had a frame of reference for what she felt when he stirred in her veins. With no recollection that he’d ever been in her life, it honestly would confuse her beyond sanity.

Alexia’s breath came in deep gasps. “But how…”

He skimmed his hand along her arm, wrapping around her shoulders. Drawing her close. “I don’t know. I’m so out of my element here. Right now I want to make love to you again. I want to hold you. I want to go back in time and kill those fuckers. I want to make it all better for you, and I don’t know how.” His body throbbed from head to toe. Hot and tight, despite the cooling moisture on his skin. His fangs remained long into his mouth. His primal side, desperate to devour her. Still, this couldn’t be about what he wanted.

She shook her head. “What do I do if I stay here? I’ve spent these last months getting in everyone’s way. Nobody wants me to go anywhere or do anything.”

He closed his eyes. It burned that she was right. “I concede that we’ve been overprotective. I have. Perhaps I can talk to Thad about giving you more daytime freedom.”