Wicked Lord: Part One (5 page)

Adam was startled at the yellow, animal-like
glints he'd seen in Lord Baptiste's eyes in that one moment when
he'd looked back. He wondered why these men were out in the woods
as if they knew some deadly deed was occurring and knew it before
it had happened. However, most of all, the thought of something
bloody up ahead terrorized him.

"Beth!" he began to shout. "Beth!"

"Here," Lord Baptiste called, coming to a
halt ahead of them. "But be prepared," Lord Baptiste growled,
halting next to Christian as he looked back at Adam.

They are yellow beast eyes
, Adam
thought in alarm, nearly backing away from the entity that was
Baptiste, who had growled his words like an animal.

"Control yourself!" Christian shouted, and
Adam watched Baptiste's features contort as Baptiste stretched his
neck toward the moon, then back down again.

"’Tis the blood," Baptiste snarled.

"I know, brother," Christian uttered,
grabbing Baptiste's shoulder. "Fresh blood is the hardest. But we
will resist."

Hardest what
, Adam wondered? Resist
what? He growled himself in scared frustration and plowed between
both strange men, until he saw what was on the other side of
Baptiste.

"Oh Lord, no! Oh Lord!" Adam cried,
crumbling to his knees in horror before the bloody and torn apart
remains on the forest ground before him that had once been a
woman.

"Lady Ariel!" he cried at the blonde hair he
saw, but more the tattered pieces of lavender silk.

Chapter Five

Beth didn't know how she stayed upright, but
the vicious and snarling voice kept howling at her to, "Run!"

It came from her left side, and then it
stalked her from the right side. Suddenly it snapped right behind
her and she could feel scalding hot breath wash over her bare
buttocks. She knew the beast was playing with her. It meant to kill
her. Its intentions loomed over her like its black shape. The more
she screamed and panted, the more the monster howled and she was
running out of breath and strength.

She could barely see through the wildness of
her long hair to keep from running head long into trees. Branches
jabbed her flesh. The fact her gown was torn from her body, along
with her petticoats, leaving only a half corset covering her waist,
mortified her as much as terror gripped her.

She was going to die.

Trinity caught the flashes of alabaster skin
off to the left and in front of where he ran through the brambles.
The woman's screaming had stopped many minutes ago, and he had to
guess the foul beast hunting her had nearly run her to ground.

He veered his headlong sprint towards the
glimpses of pale flesh he kept catching sight of through
thickly-grouped trees surrounded by scattered bushes. His timing to
reach the young woman before the vile monster leapt to kill her was
too close to think he'd make it. The threatening roar he released
was of a maddened vampire reverberating through the night air. The
abhorrence would recognize his thundering challenge.

He heard the woman cry out … in pain this
time. Instantly he smelled blood, as he bellowed, "No!" Then his
large body crashed through a small opening in the foliage.

He realized too late he was moving much too
fast to halt his forward motion, when suddenly the woman was there
… as if pushed forward toward his unchecked momentum. He only had
seconds to react and he grasped her against his body. Her long
black hair whipped around them as he turned to take the brunt of an
inevitable fall. He landed on his back with the woman piled on top
of him. Then he heard the triumphant howl of escape from the foul
beast fading into the distance.

Trinity held tight to the voluptuous young
woman as he arched his back and shouted his anger at losing his
chance to kill the abhorrence. "I
will
find you!" he
bellowed.

He became aware of the woman screaming as
she thrashed on top of him. More powerful than her ineffectual
attempts at breaking his hold, while she screamed shrilly into his
ear, were the scents of her fresh blood, choking him. It was a
quality of blood scent he'd
never
inhaled before.

His savage and barely-controlled inner
hunter snarled to life. Fangs punched past his lips as twin
weapons, gluttonous for the smell of pure virgin’s blood pumping
from cuts on the woman's struggling body. Ravenous hunger clogged
his throat as he'd not felt since he was a young and uncontrolled
vampire. Then, before he had any hope of exerting his willpower
over the sudden monstrous cravings, his body turned, flipping the
woman onto her back. He landed, pouncing over her. His fangs ready
to strike, while the veins in his body throbbed for the blood he
could smell.

Why was her blood so fucking potent?

The animalistic snarl that lunged from his
throat clashed with the woman's frightened sobs, and her wide eyes
gazed up at him with horror polished in their depths. Her small
hands pounded against his upper chest as her bare hips and legs
thrashed, trying to push his body off. His hard erection beneath
his britches pounded for her submission, ordering his hips forward
to press the rigid length down into her soft center, crushing her
lower body's struggle to a halt.

The woman whimpered in fear. Then she cried,
"Oh no! No!"

The strangled animalistic sound he made
choked the woman's cried words into panting silence, as if she
believed halting any motion would make the vicious animal set to
strike her miss.

Beth couldn't stand the predator's gaze of
yellow eyes with red glints slashed in the centers. She whimpered
with sheer terror, jerking her gaze to the side, clenching her
eyelids. She'd seen the long white fangs and she'd heard the
animalistic snarls that came from the beast surely set to kill her.
First, a monster hunted her and now another apparition held her
captive. Yet the powerful menace against her felt like a man with
hands, arms, legs, and a heavy chest. She felt men's trousers along
her bare legs, and she felt a jacket fallen open over her breasts.
Was it a man?

Why didn't it strike
? her mind
wailed, as her breath heaved. Was this the beast that chased her?
She thought not. But her questions and abject terror paled in
comparison when she felt a hardened length pressing into her core …
and what that foretold, nearly caused her to fall into
hysteria.

"Don't move!" The commanding voice was a
tense baritone with the aftereffects of a growl.

The appearance of human words so surprised
her panicked state, she jerked her gaze toward the sound as her
body quaked in reaction. Had someone come to save her?

"Don't,"
the beast above her
commanded, "Move."

To hear the semblance of a human's voice in
the world gone so mad made her hopes flare unrealistically. Yet
they did all the same. She wanted to live.

"Trinity!" a man's voice shouted from the
forest surrounding them.

The beast's head jerked upward to look over
her head and away from stalking her with its blazing and vulturous,
yellow eyes.

"Stop, brother! Don't bite her, Trinity!"
the voice rang out from the distance.

Beth felt the air she held suspended leave
her lungs as her hands flattened on the chest above her.
Bite
her?
She cringed.

"
Virgin's
blood," the beast-man above
her snarled viciously. "So potent you can smell it.
Never
felt this hunger before!" His voice growled, making her whimper and
squirm against him with the intense need to run.

"Trinity! Brother!"

"I
will
fight it, Church," her
beast-man vowed, half snarled, half shouted as his chest heaved
into her chest. "Move away!" he yelled.

"For our mother!" the voice, called Church,
returned.

Beth didn't understand anything that had
happened that night. How could she end up nearly naked beneath a
primal man-beast? So many things were beyond the comprehension of
her innocent life. However, she did understand — or perhaps she
wanted it so badly to be true — that the man called Trinity,
imprisoning her, was trying to fight the urge to strike her. He
couldn't be the one that had chased her through the night forest
because that presence held a livid and evil malevolence toward
her.

"I will rise upward and give you my jacket,"
the creature called Trinity said. His voice held strange
inflections through the large fangs extending from his mouth. It
also seemed he promised the action as though to convince
himself.

Beth tensed more, trying to slow her panting
breath, halfway certain he wouldn't win the battle as he began to
rise upward. Then, with his arms locked on either side of her, he
stopped moving, but his other worldly eyes didn't stop traveling.
He looked over her face, and then he looked downward toward her
bare chest. She gasped a squeal of embarrassment chasing her fear,
as caution be damned, she jerked her arms between them to cover her
breasts.

"You are very beautiful," his tense voice
emitted lowly. His hand rose and she would have flinched away, but
his gaze held her immobile. His fingers touched her cheek and they
felt cold as he curled them and he stroked over the curve of her
cheek with the back of his knuckles.

"Please," she begged for her life, and the
red glints in his eyes seemed to dull within the yellow. His hand
lifted to her temple and he did the most extraordinary thing. He
wrote a cross upon her temple with his fingers.

"For my mother," he growled lowly.

Beth could feel the incredible tautness in
his body above her. He nearly quivered with tenseness, and then he
continued to rise off her lower body, until the cold night air
flashed across her nakedness.

It was the most unheard of position she'd
ever been in. She'd never so much as shown her ankle to a
gentleman. To be nude was horrifying as she laid there shaking with
mortification. Then a warm jacket fell on top of her and she
snatched it against her body … overwhelmed.

"Put it on," the man's hoarse voice ordered
from the darkness above her.

"I-I," she mewled, her body quaking.

"
Don't
make me touch your skin
again," his voice demanded.

Then it seemed to Beth as if her body was
held by strings he pulled. She sat upright even though she thought
she couldn't. Next, her arms jerkily lifted to turn the coat behind
her and put her hands through the sleeves.

Her hair was a rampant mess around her and
half was caught beneath the jacket, but she didn't care. She
hurriedly buttoned it, to cover herself, buttoning from the bottom
to the top, but the last two buttons wouldn't close over her bosom.
It seemed extremely important to her that they should close and
tears burned her eyes again that she couldn't get them shut.

Trinity held himself rigid against striking
and taking the virgin's blood, even as it pounded in his veins with
the demand to do so. Never had the demand for a human's blood been
so strong. He'd never experienced a test as severe and he knew it
was about to get worse as he sensed the rapidly beating heart in
the tender, nude virgin at his feet.

He wanted to howl as he lifted his face,
flipping back heavy wedges of his long hair. He breathed in the
cold night air as his mind went through a mantra he used when he
trained his body to fight. A minute later, some of the tenseness
left him as he silently intoned the mantra. He
was
stronger
than his urges. He willed his fangs back and his fingernails to
recede. He knew the yellow predator in his eyes cooled.

"I will
not be
a foul beast that
hunts without morality," he rumbled from deep inside.

He had to get the woman out of the woods to
safety. There were many problems with all that had happened within
the hollow hours of morning and the consequences of it all touched
his thoughts. Nevertheless, he focused on the immediate need, and
he wondered once he picked the woman up into his arms and he
started to carry her from the woods, where the hell was he going to
take her?

Something about it angered him and when he
bent down there was fiercer growling in his voice than he intended.
"Grasp my shoulders. I will take you out of these woods."

The woman made a feminine yelp of fright and
she scooted away from him with pale, shapely legs showing and his
hunting jacket losing the battle to cover her large, plump breasts.
At that moment, it seemed as though scattered moonlight through the
lifting fog chose her naked breasts to gleam upon. He could feel
the hot blood pumping through her veins, the virgin cove between
her thighs, and his erection's interested lust for her ripe,
curving body. It posed a three-way attack against his willpower.
Why this virgin?
This had never happened before
.

"I do not have the prudent time to hold out
and calm your sensibilities, maiden," Trinity snarled as he strode
to the girl, and then he grasped her arms with his superior
strength.

"Just let me go!" she cried, and then she
squealed as he swung her upward and planted her struggling body
over his shoulder.

"And just where would you go in these dark
woods with that foul monster trying to kill you, maiden?" Trinity
mocked her ridiculous pleas as his wide hand clamped over the
creamy-textured flesh of her outer thigh.

His eyeteeth pricked as the cloud of her
temptations worked to overpower his resolve again, and she
responded with crying accusations. "You are the monster!"

Incensed with more than fury, he growled
like the beast he could be as he started forward swiftly through
the woods. "I've not hurt you, have I?"

The girl was frantically trying to hold down
his jacket over her bare ass upended over his shoulder, while her
other hand was clutched like a claw of nails through his shirt and
into his back.