Kissed by a Dark Prince (Volume 1) (26 page)

“Busted,” Kyter muttered and Loren glared at him.

He held his hand out to Olivia. She came to him, leading the way with Sable ambling along behind her, but didn’t take his hand. She sat on the stool beside him and settled against the bar, her profile to him. Kyter pushed the glass of coloured liquid to her and then slid one over to Sable when she finally reached the bar.

Loren barely leashed the growl that rumbled through his chest.

Bleu moved, grabbed one of the bottles of alcohol in front of them, and took a swig from it, and then another. Was Bleu irritated by the attention Kyter showed Sable?

Loren was more than irritated by the attention the male jaguar showed to Olivia.

But Olivia was annoyed with Loren too. He had been looking at those females and she had seen him, and she thought he was attracted to them. He could feel it in her.

What could he do to show Olivia that she was the only female he desired?

Being in the club with her, where she had been with that other male, a male who had hurt her and made it hard for her to trust another, and seeing so many other men looking at her was driving him crazy. He wanted to erase the demon from her heart and wanted to stamp his mark on her in front of all these males.

It was becoming impossible to resist touching her, even though he knew that she was still fragile and was still intent on fighting him, and that things were still precarious between them.

He hadn’t won her yet and this evening had made him feel he wasn’t even close to achieving the victory he fiercely desired.

Perhaps Kyter was right, and Bleu had chosen the best recourse.

He needed to dull the edge of his temper. If he were lucky, it would dampen his need for Olivia at the same time.

Loren picked up the bottle of beer, brought it to his lips and drank it down in one go.

O
livia wasn’t sure what happened. One moment Loren was standing beside her and the next he was on his knees, growling dark things in his language. She looked past him to Bleu, who stood frozen with his beer in one hand and his eyes locked on Loren.

“Holy fuck.” Bleu awkwardly slammed his bottle down on the bar. It rocked and then fell, spilling the contents.

The nice man behind the bar swore too.

Loren’s ears went very pointy and just as Bleu stooped to help him up, he shot to his feet and shoved his hand into Bleu’s face, sending him flying backwards into an unsuspecting group of people. The two males pushed their females behind them, their eyes flashing red at the same time. Vampires.

The blond male in the group shoved Bleu aside and bared his fangs at her. A corona of gold fire and blue ice edged his crimson irises and elliptical pupils.

Olivia stared into his eyes, lost in the strange sensation of falling and the growing haziness that swept through her, heating her from head to toe.

A feral growl shattered the hold the male had on her and she shook her head, trying to recall where she was and what was happening.

Loren stood before her, his gaze locked on the blond male. A vampire or something else?

The two females had moved out from behind the males, their dark gazes narrowed on Loren and her. The one closest to the brunet male muttered something about taking Loren down with a kiss.

Succubus.

Olivia growled now. No succubus bitch was going to sink her claws into Loren when she was around.

Bleu got to his feet and faced the vampire males, his black blade at the ready. The males stared at him for long tense seconds and then flashed their fangs and moved on, guiding their females away.

“Loren.” Olivia reached out to touch his arm and he whirled to face her, his fangs enormous as he growled and knocked her hand away.

He said something she didn’t understand, grabbed her cocktail and drank it in one go. He staggered forwards and dropped the glass, and she saw Bleu behind him, his hand on Loren’s arm, as if he had tried to reach for the glass. It smashed at her feet and she leaped back, bumping into a huge man who caught her and tossed her a wicked grin.

That did it.

Loren erupted, launching himself at the immense male and shoving her towards Sable. Sable caught her and they banged into the other women sitting at the bar. Olivia pushed out of Sable’s arms and tried to grab Loren before he could attack the man, but she wasn’t quick enough and neither was Bleu. Loren slammed a right hook into the man’s face and followed it with a left uppercut.

The dark-haired man snarled, all of his teeth sharpened and ram-like horns curled from behind his ears. He huffed and smoke curled from his nostrils and she swore he grew a few inches.

The man from behind the bar leaped over it and shot his hands underneath Loren’s arms, hooked them over his shoulders and pulled him back. Bad move. He had left Loren completely exposed to the demon.

Olivia rushed forwards to intervene but she was too slow again. Something collided with her cheek, the taste of blood filled her mouth, pain stabbed like a million hot needles across her skull and the room faded to black.

Cool.

Warm.

Hot.

Her cheek was hot. Her brow was cool. Her body was warm.

Noise. Disjointed. Pain. Fragmented. Intense.

Her cheek was hotter.

“Liv?” Sable.

“Olivia?” Loren. Warm. Sweet. Violent. Loren.

“What?” she murmured, wondering what they were doing annoying her when she had been having a really good dream about Loren.

“She’s coming around.” Sable again. Coming around? Had she not been sleeping?

Olivia opened her eyes and frowned at the three familiar faces hovering above her, and the one vaguely familiar one.

Loren looked, different. His purple eyes lacked focus and he had a really big bruise on his cheek. The same cheek as her hurt one. His fingers pressed against that cheek and the pain faded as he touched it, caressed it. The wound on his cheek worsened. The riot in her skull quieted.

“Loren?” she whispered.

“I am here, ki’ara.” He smiled at her but he didn’t look happy.

“What happened?” She looked at the four people and realised she was in Loren’s arms but was on a floor, in a loud flashing room.

“Turns out that Loren has never had booze before and there’s a bloody good reason for it.” Sable grinned when Loren and Bleu scowled at her, and then Loren’s face fell and she could feel his shame flowing over her.

“You were hurt because of me... again. I am sorry, ki’ara. I do nothing but hurt you.” He released her and stood, and she reached for him on instinct, afraid he would disappear again if she let him. She wrapped her hand around his ankle and held on to it, and he looked down at her but remained with his back to her.

She refused to let him go. It was coming back to her now and he wasn’t solely responsible for what had happened this time, just as he hadn’t been solely responsible for all the other times.

She had been the one who had acted like a child when she had seen him looking at those other women. She had been so jealous and angry, and they had been so beautiful. She had felt that he hadn’t been interested in them. There had been a marked difference in the constant quiet flow of feelings that came through the link between them when he had gone from looking at them to looking at her. She hadn’t been able to get it through to her heart that he hadn’t been lying when he had said he only wanted her though and didn’t want any other female, and had ended up shunning him and drinking instead.

And he had done the same.

If she had known he would react as he had, she would never have pushed him. She would have done things differently.

“Loren,” she said and lost her courage.

He looked back at her again and then sighed, stooped and helped her onto her feet. She closed her eyes when he gathered her into his arms and wrapped one hand around her head, holding it to his chest.

The pain was gone but she could feel it in him. He had taken it from her again and that was why he sported a bruised cheek now. Olivia drew back and swept her fingers over the dark mottled flesh.

“You didn’t need to do that,” she whispered.

“No, what he really didn’t need to do was make a mess of my joint.” The man from behind the bar sounded as pissed as hell and she looked back at him and then around the busy club.

Oh. My. Loren hadn’t frightened away all of the patrons but he had done a rather nice job of rearranging everything within a few metres radius. Broken barstools littered the area around her and there was a huge dent in the black bar top that looked as though Loren had tried to drive the demon’s head through the thick wood, and had succeeded.

She looked for the demon and found him sitting on the floor a few metres away to her left, leaning against the black wall. The female from the bar tended to the wounds Olivia could see beyond the slashes in his black t-shirt. Olivia looked back at Loren.

He diverted his gaze to the floor off to his left. It still lacked focus and he didn’t seem completely stable on his feet. Because of the alcohol? He had never tasted it before.

“Bleu.” Olivia turned a scowl on him. “I thought it was your duty to protect your prince? You knew what would happen if he drank, didn’t you?”

He looked sheepish and raked his fingers through his overlong black hair, confirming her suspicions.

She still wasn’t sure what had happened. She looked back at Loren, staring up at his handsome face until he finally brought his eyes back to her.

“How come the beer made you crazy and not Bleu?” She touched his cheek again and he flinched. She gentled her touch, lightly caressing the bruising.

“I have had no exposure to it.” He didn’t look as though he was going to elaborate.

Olivia looked back at Bleu.

“It is something we have to become accustomed to slowly because of our metabolism. It took me many years to handle more than a sip,” Bleu said and Olivia pieced the rest together for herself.

Loren had drunk a whole bottle of beer and then the remains of her rather potent cocktail. It explained the unfocused look in his eyes and his lack of balance, and also his earlier outburst.

“You’re drunk,” she stated it in a voice that left him no room to argue.

Loren shrugged and smiled, and it hit her straight in the middle of her chest and made her heart miss a beat. The twittering of females drew her attention away from him and she glared daggers at them all. They scurried into the crowd and Olivia grabbed one of the remaining barstools, set it down where Loren had been standing before getting instantly drunk, and manoeuvred him onto it.

He was still almost as tall as she was.

“Idiot,” she muttered and smoothed his black hair back. He had a few nasty cuts in his hairline that were bleeding and his lip was split too. Someone needed to take care of him, and her heart said to let it be her.

Loren parted his knees and she didn’t resist him when he claimed her waist and pulled her closer. His purple gaze turned hooded, focused on her lips. He leaned towards her and she pressed her hands against his chest.

“No. I’m not kissing you when you’re drunk.” It seemed like a reasonable excuse.

Sable arched an eyebrow at her. “So you have been kissing him before tonight then?”

A fierce blush surged up Olivia’s cheeks but she ignored it and continued checking Loren over. The demon seemed to have come off worse than he had, but she couldn’t see the rest of his body. His armour hid it from her eyes and she wasn’t going to ask him to let her see his chest because the irritating women hadn’t gone very far and he was liable to do something stupid when under the influence of the booze. The thought of other women seeing him in all his glory had her squeezing his shoulders and glaring at him.

His black eyebrows rose and a confused edge entered his eyes. Now he thought she was mad at him. That probably wasn’t a bad thing.

He tried to kiss her again.

“Loren!” She pushed him back and Bleu stepped in to help her. He shoved Loren a little too hard, or Loren was more drunk than they had thought, because he ended up falling off the stool and landing in a heap in the broken glass and spilled drinks.

Bleu growled something dark in their language, picked Loren up and set him back down again. Bleu’s black armour peeled away from his arm and she gasped when he turned his wrist towards him and sank his fangs into it. He released his wrist, his lips and fangs bloodied, and shoved it against Loren’s mouth.

Loren tried to get away from it but Bleu held firm, forcing it past his lips. When it became clear that Loren was going to refuse to drink, Bleu snarled at him, grabbed the nape of his neck and tipped his head back. Blood dripped down into Loren’s mouth. His eyes shot wide, the edges of his purple irises flashed brightly, and his torso violently arched forwards.

Bleu snatched his hand back and licked the puncture wounds. “Keep an eye on him.”

Before she could ask where he was going, Bleu disappeared. Olivia stared at Loren, her heart racing in her chest as he breathed hard, leaning backwards over the bar with his wide eyes locked on the grotty ceiling.

“Never seen that before,” the man from behind the bar said and scrubbed his dirty blond hair. “Are they, uh, involved?”

Olivia shook her head.

He shrugged, leaned forwards and peered down at Loren. His heart still rushed, driving hers wild too. What had Bleu done to him?

Finally, Loren blinked, sat up and looked around him in a way that left her feeling he wasn’t sure where he was or how he had gotten there. His eyes eventually fell on her, he groaned and buried his head in his hands.

“Loren, are you okay?” She rubbed his back and he shook his head. “Do you feel sick?”

He shook his head again and she caught a single muffled word. “Hangover.”

Bleu reappeared holding a small elegant blue glass vial. Loren lifted his head to look at him, dragging his fingers down his face.

“You might need this.” Bleu held the vial out to him and Loren slowly reached for it, took it, and popped the leaf-shaped lid off with his thumb.

He drank it before she could ask what it was and crushed the bottle in his fist.