In Blood and Worth Loving (6 page)

“There isn’t going to be a next time!”

“That might be wise. The next vampire you trick into fucking you might not be so forgiving.”

“I didn’t trick you!”

He arched a brow. “Do you really think I drove up here expecting to find you waiting for me?”

She stared at him in silence while her eyes filled with tears.

He stared back for several moments before he turned and jerked the bedroom door open and left the room. Moments later, she heard the front door slam and a car engine start.

Chapter Four

Brandi gulped and blinked. The tears spilled down her cheeks. She impatiently wiped them away. Rayna had warned her that he had a temper. But she hadn’t done or said anything which justified his going from gently caressing her after sex to storming out and leaving her stranded.

She gave an angry shake of her head. This is what came of behaving like an alley cat in heat the moment her grandparents were cold in their graves. Her mother’s parents had been loving, but very old-fashioned. How many times had her grandfather told her men didn’t respect girls who gave it up freely or easily? And she could almost hear her grandmother’s refrain that it was just as easy to fall for a decent man as it was to fall into lust with a bad one who would lead her astray and never marry her.

To please them and in an effort to repay them for raising her at a time when they should have been enjoying their golden years, she had studiously avoided dating anyone they might consider unsuitable for a good girl.

Even after their deaths, she might have continued to date men like her ex, Doug if she hadn’t met Rayna. Brandi and Rayna had quickly become friends. They had soon discovered a shared interest in the possible existence of vampires. Rayna had suggested several sites which had occupied Brandi for countless hours.

Three months after their first meeting, Rayna invited her out to dinner. During dessert she had casually mentioned that her uncle was a vampire who had a thing for plus-sized black women. Brandi had looked into her eyes and believed her. Two months later, she had agreed to spend a weekend with
Adrian
.

Brandi sighed. Sometimes life seemed so unfair. She had met her fantasy male only to have him reject her after one fuck. Perhaps her grandparents had been right. The key to happiness lay in settling down and marrying a dependable man. Her mother had married a bad boy and both had overdosed on drugs.

Her thoughts turned to Doug Myers, a tall, dark, gentle college professor whose proposal she had twice refused. Perhaps it was time to reconsider. Doug didn’t excite her passions or inspire her to fantasize about nights of unbridled lust, but he respected her. She could never imagine him suggesting all he wanted from her was a weekend of sex. If she married him, she’d always be sure of him.

And never again feel the passion she had shared with
Adrian
.

She shook her head. What was wrong with her that her treacherous body and heart preferred an insulting vampire who probably didn’t even know the concept of love to a sweet, gentle man who would cherish her forever? Doug had always been a kind and considerate lover.
 

Yet, it was
Adrian
she longed for. She closed her eyes on a fresh rush of tears and curled her body on her side. Recalling his reaction to her second attempt at seduction, she decided she’d given up too easily. Come hell or high water, she was going to spend at least one night with him. Crying wouldn’t get her very far with
Adrian
. She wiped her tears away.
 

Filled with rage,
Adrian
drove well above the speed limit. The moment he slowed down, a vision of Brandi Knight’s dark eyes swimming with tears imprinted itself on his mind. He had little patience with women who cried at the drop of a damn hat. Hell would freeze over before he put up with waterworks from any woman other than Rayna.

Once he dragged his thoughts away from her tears, he found himself remembering those first few moments of sliding inside her. His cock hardened against his thigh as he relived the pleasure of her pumping up and down on him. She’d enjoyed fucking him as much as he’d enjoyed fucking her.

He shook his head.
Snap out of it, Redwolfe. You’re too damned old to behave like a teenage boy who’d just been seduced and fucked by an experienced older woman.
He was no boy, but damn if she hadn’t seduced him as effectively as if he had been one. Walking away from her had been difficult, but he’d probably saved himself a lot of grief by doing it.

When he arrived at the mainline estate he shared with Rayna and his brothers, he glared at the large water-color of a pretty, full-figured black woman which hung on the wall opposite the entrance door. She had been jerking his chain since the moment he saw her. But he’d finally had enough.

He flashed up the wide, winding staircase on the right side of the foyer. “Rayna!”

There was no response. When he reached the second floor landing, he tossed the door at the top of the staircase open and stormed inside. “Rayna!” Her lush, cream and lavender four-room suite was empty. Where the hell was she?

“Let me guess. Your slender, blond superhoe turned out to be black, plain, and full-figured?”

Adrian
turned and stalked across the room to stare at his twin who leaned against the wall near the open door. “If you knew that why didn’t you warn me, Conner?” He demanded.

 
“You’ve spent nearly fifty years spoiling Rayna rotten and now you’re shocked and appalled to find that she’s a spoiled brat determined to have her way?”

He sighed. Finding the crying infant outside the gates of their mansion nearly fifty years earlier one warm June night had changed all their lives forever. He had intended to call the police to report an abandoned baby. But the moment he bent down to pick her up, she’d stopped crying and reached out to wrap her tiny brown fingers around one of his.

He’d gazed down into her dark eyes and felt a protective instinct so strong he’d instantly known that he wouldn’t call the police. His brothers would raise hell, but he was determined to keep her and raise her as his niece. To his surprise, neither Conner nor Jay had protested. They had crowded around and she had reached out to each one of them.

Conner was fond of saying Rayna was a gift from the spirits. After just a week of learning how to care for her, she had quickly bewitched and enchanted them all so that they made no real effort to locate her parents. Anyone who tried to take her from them would have incurred the wrath and unbridled fury of three full-blood vampires prepared to kill to keep her.

Admittedly they had all spoiled her and never allowed her to want for anything. And now they were reaping the rewards for having overindulged her.

“What the hell has that got to do with anything, Conner? Besides you’re the one who became feral and threatening if Jay or I even hinted that her disobedient ass needed even a slight slap. If we’d have tried to spank her, we’d have risked your tearing us apart!”

Conner shrugged. “Spare me your shit,
Adrian
. Like you or Jay would have actually laid a finger on her. The moment either of you lifted a hand or raised your voice, she’d bat those beautiful brown eyes at you and tell you how much she loved you and how lucky she was to have you in her life and it would be Redwolfe brothers zero and Rayna 5,089. Besides, I’m not the one she suckered into driving two hours to meet one of her nice but plain friends.”

Adrian
frowned. “What makes you think she’s plain?”

“Isn’t this Brandi as plain as the rest of Rayna’s friends?”

He’d certainly thought so at first. He shrugged. “She’s not a traditional beauty,” he hedged, strangely reluctant to call her plain.

“By which you mean she’s plain as hell.”

“I didn’t say that!” No one as sensual and passionate as Brandi Knight could be called plain.

Conner frowned. “Have you ever wondered why a girl as beautiful as Rayna only has plain-Jane friends? Do you think we raised her with some kind of complex or is there something else going on?”

“I’m not in the mood for a theoretical discussion about Rayna’s friends. Besides, how old do you have to be before you realize looks aren’t everything?”

“Excuse the hell out of me, Mr. I like-them-thin-and-blonde-and-supermodel beautiful-and-white.”

The response infuriated
Adrian
. “I don’t have to explain my preference in women to you or anyone else.”

“Too true. If you like white women, you like them. Personally I prefer a woman with darker skin and more curves.”

Then Brandi Knight would be perfect for him.
Adrian
frowned, wondering why Rayna hadn’t set Conner and Brandi up with a weekend of sex. “You can like who the hell you like, Conner.”

Conner’s nostrils flared. “So can you, but judging by the scent of you, I’d say you’re going to have some ‘splainin’ to do when Rayna learns you fucked her friend and then left her stranded at the cabin.”

He narrowed his gaze. “Who says she’s stranded?”

“She did when she called here looking for Rayna. She was practically in tears.”

Detecting a hint of accusation in Conner’s tone,
Adrian
narrowed his gaze. “You know human women. They’re manipulative and get weepy at the slightest imagined… slight.”

“Ahhh. Imagined slight? So this Brandi Knight imagines things and isn’t your type?”

“No she’s not.”

“Hmmm. Skin too dark for you?”

“I did not say that!”

“No you didn’t. Tell me,
Adrian
, how many times did it take before you knew that?”