A Vampire's Claim (17 page)

“You were in the war,” she said.

Given his age, it would have been odd for him not to have fought, unless he’d had an exemption for running his station to meet the war’s supply needs. But she’d also seen scars on him other than the self-inflicted ones. Possibly bullets, or shrapnel, scattered over his torso and limbs. One rather harrowing mark, high on his thigh.

“Don’t want to talk about that.” His short comment had the same warning note as hers about her mother. She respected that.

However, as she anticipated, it dredged up thoughts that slipped under his shielding.

Had she said there was a stillness in him? As the tranquil cloud at the surface of his mind shifted, she dropped beneath it and found herself in a maelstrom, a swamping, choking sea of emotion, riddled with blood and screams, gunfire and bombs. Images of soldiers and battles that had been savage struggles for every yard of ground. Tedium was a horror all its own. Waiting and waiting, nerves snapped to the breaking point, looking for the enemy in the jungle shadows. Constant guerrilla fighting, muddy trails where the boots sank in to the ankles.

He’d done the most dangerous scout work, taken some of his opponents out with his bare hands and a rage in his soul to kill, kill, kill. Every confrontation fueled by the last images he had of his son and wife. So much blood, his wife naked and torn. That beautiful sable hair he’d brushed had been used to choke the life from her, probably as they’d raped and beaten her to death.

The stark image was so desolate. It was the fear of every living thing, to end life helpless and terrorized, in horrible pain . . . He hadn’t been there. He was the husband, the father, the head of the house. It had been his responsibility to protect them or die trying. Instead he’d been the one to dig their graves, a punishment straight from hell. Clean and arrange their bodies, see every mark of violence, every violation.

It was all connected, one memory flowing to another in rapid succession, just a flash through his brain she saw all at once, like a mud slide into her consciousness. But after their deaths and before the war, there’d been one more prong to add to the barbed wire cinched around his heart. The murder of the men who’d done it.

He’d tracked them, nearly been killed taking them down, three to one. Jesus, he was barely more than a kid then, but apparently the rage of angels had fueled him, guarded his back. The scar high on his thigh had come from that fight, not the war. He hadn’t killed them slow, the way he’d dreamed of doing, but he’d cut their lifeless bodies apart with the hatchet he still carried in his pack.

When he was done, he’d been drenched. It had been night, and dingoes had gathered, a circle of shining eyes in the darkness, called by the blood. But as he walked off, passed through their ranks as if they weren’t there, they shied away from him. Though he’d been covered in blood, their animal instinct knew he was the most dangerous predator in the bush that night.

Oh, God, Dev.
Perhaps the architects of human justice would say he had no right to go after his family’s murderers, but seeing the image of the two people he’d loved so much, what had been done to them, she knew no male of any moral substance would have done differently.

As she moved out of those images, she realized that, while he resented her taking the choice from him, he didn’t really care about her being in his mind. To him, what he kept behind the gate of that stillness was a barren field. The history lingered there, but he had no expectation that it would again hold treasures or secrets worth keeping.

“I’ll get you to your station, stay around a bit,” he said, breaking into her thoughts. Danny realized her fingers had tightened on his knee, and he’d put his hand down on it, apparently thinking she was goading him for an answer. “It’ll be your choice on whether or not we share a bed, but once you start sharing it with another, I’ll be off.”

She looked up into his resolute face as he continued. “I know you’ll say I have no claim on you, and maybe that’s true, but I don’t share a woman.”

He was oblivious to the dynamics of vampires, but she held her tongue. She liked the idea of him being in her bed, very much.

More than she wanted to let on. But she did owe him some honesty, and gave it now. “I won’t force you to serve my will, but I can’t let you defy it more than once, either. It’s our way. You’ll learn more when we get there, and then see if you can stand it. If you can’t, you’ll be free to go.”

Her fellow vampires would call her a young fool, but while she demanded loyalty and a certain level of obedience from the humans she claimed, she had no desire to force them to serve her against their will. Though like all vampires, she was capable of it.

“Fair enough.” His hands had worked out the tangles, and it was now a smooth, silken mane again, such that she closed her eyes as he kept combing it for her pleasure, and maybe his own. Deep, easy strokes that massaged her scalp, eased some of the tension in her shoulders.

“I never knew a man’s hands could feel so good doing this. I may never go back to having a maid.”

“Well, my lady, as long as you don’t want me to wear one of those little white caps, I reckon I can help you brush your hair. Bathe you, rub you down with those soft lotions you girls like so much . . .” As he leaned in, his breath teased the side of her throat so she tilted her chin, giving him better access. “If that’s what you’re looking for from a station manager. Easier than managing sheep.”

His arm slipped beneath hers, and his large, capable hand cupped her breast, bearing its weight, his fingers tracing the outer curve, leaving the nipple taut, begging for attention.

He was almost as insatiable as she was. Swallowing, she increased her grip on his leg, though she had enough of a mind to avoid bruising him. For now. “It’s getting close to daylight.”

“Maybe I’ll give you a thing or two to dream about.”

“You’re a very confident man, Dev.”

“Out here a man’s either good at the things that matter, or he’s dead.”

“Oh.” Her lips curved and then pressed into an aroused, straight line as his lips found her throat, brushed the large artery and scored it with his teeth so that her grip went beyond consideration into demand. Now he had both arms around her, his thumbs making a single, too brief pass over her nipples. In another moment she was going to shred his shirtfront and sling him to his back, mount him in a single movement and ride them both into near unconsciousness. She didn’t want to rush it, and the fact she could, but fought her own desire to do so, only spiked it, as if the sun were burning inside her, immolating her vital organs.

“And what use is this particular skill . . . out here? Thought you said . . . only the roos gave you affectionate glances.”

“An unsatisfied roo is a deadly creature, love.”

She snorted on the unexpected laugh. “You dill.”

But then the amusement died out of her as he turned her in his arms and she looked up in his face. Kneeling between his knees, with both of his hands now cupping her face, she was conscious of what a searingly sweet, romantic position it was. The expression in his eyes was tender and thoughtful, the poignant pain of his past and his desire for her in the present combining in a way that held her.

So many had cast a careless, distasteful eye over the landscape beyond this cave, seeing a few shrubs and craggy-armed trees, the blistering sun that could boil the unprepared traveler to death within a couple days. But she’d always looked at it and seen why it was said that God had created Australia as a unique gem, something that couldn’t be found anywhere else. There was always far more than could be seen on one glance, or even a thousand. And so it was, looking into Dev’s face.

She’d never been in love. It was such a startling thought, she almost pulled away from him, but she stopped herself, falling back onto a vampire’s innate ability to mask deep emotion or reactions. She certainly wouldn’t fall in love with a human. No sensible vampire would. Or was it that no sensible vampire would admit it?

Maybe she was an odd vampire. Or maybe she was normal. Vampires didn’t talk about such things among themselves. Maybe that’s why they had humans, to give themselves permission for vulnerability, since humans weren’t a threat the way their own kind were.

Like how humans loved a pet, she thought, gaining confidence with the analogy. They believed they’d do anything for their beloved mutt, but if the human was trying to get out of a burning house, and the dog was trapped in a back room, the undeniable survival instinct would kick in, claim superior value. That human would cry bitter tears over her dog’s loss, agonize over the creature’s inevitable pain and fear in those final moments, but she’d save her own skin. No one else would castigate her for it, as they would if she left a human the same way.

Well, that was a pretty crook thought. Maybe others wouldn’t castigate her, but what if her conscience knew the pet was a far nobler creature than the faithless master? God, she was out of her element here. Best to be straight up about the things she
did
know.

“I can’t love you, Dev,” she said, more harshly than she intended. “You can’t hope for that.” Her voice faltered, though, as his mouth hovered a few inches above her lips, which were already parted, not only with the words, but her eager need.

His green eyes never left hers, but his thumb swept her temple, a gentle reproof. “That’s all right, love. I can’t love you, either.

You’ll have what I can offer, though. I won’t hold back on any of it, as long as I’m with you.”

Her eyes closed, accepting that as the heat of his mouth closed over hers. Circling his neck with her arms, she rose on her knees as he slid down and met her, bearing her back to the cave floor, his weight pressing into every curve of her body with lean, sun-toughened skin and corded muscle. His mouth took over her tongue and lips, making her body strain up against him, her legs rising to clasp his hips. A sound between a growl and a plea clogged the back of her throat as his enormous cock pressed between her legs, a promise indeed of what he could give to her. Her core was already aching for that sweet split between pleasure and penetrating pain.

Indulging herself, she pushed his open shirt off his broad shoulders. She liked his aborigine tendency to wear clothes as a second thought only, at least his shirt. His heat burned beneath her fingertips, the dampness of his nape, the brush of his abdomen. A silken spear of hair arrowed down it, the mink pelt of an animal against her own hairless body. As if matching the direction of her own thoughts, his fingers, having opened her trousers and now playing inside them, smoothed over her mound, the crease of her thigh.

“This isn’t shaved, is it, love?”

His voice was husky, filled with lust in that rough, male way that made her tremble and be glad she was female, able to enjoy the benefits of it.

She shook her head. “Vampires only have hair above the throat.”

“It makes your skin so smooth . . .” He got the trousers and knickers off her so he could continue tracing her with his fingers. A feathery touch slid along her inner thigh now, down toward her knee, then drifted back up. Shifting onto an elbow, he leaned over one of her thighs, pinning it there as he eased the other one outward. His eyes glowed with green fire once he’d settled his gaze fully on what he’d spread open before him. She watched, somewhat discomfited by his piercing regard, but unwilling to admit it and be anything but the sophisticate she was supposed to be before this uncultured bushman. She couldn’t even imagine him as the bookish Oxford scholar right now. He looked far readier to ravish her body, take over her senses and then leap up and fight off an army than settle down with sonnets.

Bending, he pressed his lips to her inner thigh, so close his cheekbone brushed her vulva, making her hips twitch, jerk. He turned his head, slowly nuzzling her, inhaling right up against her flesh. Closing his mouth over the entire area, from clit to the perineum, he pushed her legs wider to accommodate him. His tongue made a long, thorough lick that managed to penetrate and sweep between the lips, finishing with a light swirl up over the clit.

Young vampires, those under fifty, never had carnal relations with a human without another vampire present. It was a protection for the human. Not only to keep from sucking him dry during hungry passion, but to avoid the possibility of cracking the spine with the force of desire. She had to remind herself of that now, forcefully, as her leg lifted to clamp around his back. Instead, he caught it, guiding it back down, a gentle pressure, but one that fired her inclination to possess, dominate, control. She had to close her hands into fists to quell that. When he took one, drawing it down to his mouth, raising his head enough to kiss the white knuckles, he spread the fingers out the way he’d spread her legs. She speared them through his hair, tangling in the red mane, finding the tendons at the back of his neck and gripping him there with bruising pressure despite her struggle with herself. Catching her wrist, he lifted his gaze to hers.

“Don’t force me, love, and I promise you won’t regret it. I’ll make it that much better. Let me savor you.”

She nodded, a quick jerk. Releasing him, she put her palms back at her sides, dug her fingers into the rock and gave herself over to his mouth.

Holy God, what a mouth
. He knew the way to dance his tongue over a woman’s clit, how to ease his fingers inside her, curving them forward in that lovely come-hither motion that sparked the sensitive place inside her. In no time, her hips were lifting to his mouth in an insistent rhythm, her head beginning to toss from side to side, making a tangled mess he’d have to work out for her again.

God, here she was, the least ambitious vampire in the world, intending to reclaim her station, put her mother’s consort in his place, and then address the problem of a Region Master who’d overstepped Council rules. Even though she’d be far happier living in this cave for a while, enjoying the adventure of learning how he lived out here, letting him take care of her needs as they made love and explored the desert in the night . . .