Grinding his teeth, Ripper considered Dean’s argument. When his silver eyes cut to Rage, they should have sliced her in two with his anger. “I’ll give you a second chance, Rage. Kill the human before the rave. Defy me again and the Offspring will feast on you both.”
To Shade, he ordered, “Take him to the clan house.” For one moment Ripper gave Rage a backward glance, and the next he was gone, moving so fast only the sudden breeze remained to prove he had once been there.
Purposefully rough, Shade hoisted up Caden and tossed him over his shoulder. He took a second to gauge Caden’s weight then sprang straight up to the roof where he disappeared from sight.
“Damn,” Dean mumbled, flopping onto his back. He covered his eyes with the crook of his arm. “That ass is going to be a Kinsman soon. How bad does that suck for you and me?”
Rage crouched down next to him. “Have you lost your mind?”
He raised his arm enough to peek at her. The green shards of his hazel eyes sparkled like emerald chips. “Why didn’t you just kill him?”
“I don’t answer to you.” Her voice wasn’t as harsh as it usually would have been, but she couldn’t bring herself to tear at him with her words after he’d risked his life to help her.
“Then answer to my broken bones.”
She sighed. “I don’t know. Just stupid, I guess.” He hissed when she touched his side, finding the ribs under his muscles broken severely enough to cause an indent in his otherwise perfect chest. Rage winced in sympathy.
“Stupid like you.”
A wicked grin tugged at his gorgeous lips as his gaze fixed on something below her. His eyebrows arched and his eyes widened. A relaxed, rapturous ease gentled his masculine features. Suddenly, she realized he was looking up her miniskirt. She twisted away to block his view. “Don’t you ever stop?”
Dean laughed.
“Fishnet thigh highs, a black garter and no panties.
Shade owes me another five bucks. He said you’d wear a thong. I told him, not our Rage. She goes bareback.”
“Oh, that’s just the last straw.” Rage stood up. “Find your own way home before sunrise.” She started to stomp off as angrily as one could in heels and not twist an ankle.
“Wait!” Dean reached for her and then cried out as the movement shifted his battered ribs. Panic laced his voice as he gasped, “I’m sorry, okay?”
Stopping, Rage closed her eyes. She should leave him, let the sunlight sizzle him into a great big strip of over-fried bacon, but she couldn’t. She kept seeing the look of panic on Dean’s face when he thought Ripper would kill Caden. The look had nothing to do with the vampire nature. Why would he do anything for her at all? It just didn’t make sense.
Rage opened her eyes and turned to face him. Dean sprawled on his back, one arm extended on the asphalt toward her as if he’d been reaching for her and had grown too tired. His other arm tucked to his wounded side, cradling it. One knee was bent while the other leg extended in what would have been a perfect pose for an advertisement photo for the jeans that conformed lovingly to his long, toned legs and butt. He watched her, resignation on his face as though he expected her to just walk away.
She came back and bent next to him, careful not to flash him again. Certain she’d regret it
later,
she hooked his good arm around her shoulders. “I don’t know why I’m bothering with you. I’ve been plotting your death ever since we met.”
Together, they got him to his feet. “
Geez,
thanks. You really know how to make a guy glad he helped you out.”
“Please.” Rage tried to frown at him, but couldn’t quite manage it. Not with that damn infectious smile of his trimmed with an edge of pain. “Why did you help me, anyway?”
He walked slowly, leaning heavily on her as if each step rocked new shoots of agony up into his chest. Between suppressed noises of pain, Dean joked, “In the vain hope of getting you to sleep with me.”
“Dream on.”
“Damn.” When she glanced up at him, his grin widened into such an open and charming smile it warmed her against her will. “At least I got to see up your skirt.”
She laughed with him, despite herself. It was one of the war-weary laughs that try to snatch a moment of relief before the battle resumes. Whether or not she came to her senses and killed Caden, Ripper would make her pay for her defiance.
Oh, how she would pay.
Chapter Three
The width of the walkway between the plants in the glass-enclosed moon garden allowed just enough space for Rage and Dean to walk side by side. He clung heavily to the metal tables on his good side. Rage was careful not to bump his hurt ribs with her body. She steadied his arm in place around her shoulders and supported him with an arm hugged around his narrow hips. More than anything else, the fact that he didn’t tease her about her
hold
on him proved the seriousness of his injury. He didn’t want to risk her abandoning him if he did.
“Morgana?”
Rage called, disturbing the eerie quiet. The vines that reached into the walkway brushed against them as they passed, like weakly clinging fingers.
“Back here, Rage,” Morgana called from the back of the greenhouse conservatory.
Dean struggled harder now, gasping for every breath through his mouth with soft sucking moans. Each step dragged slower than the last. His head hung forward so far that his chin rested on his chest. When his chestnut bangs shifted, Rage saw his eyes squeezed closed. He trusted her to guide him. Ripper really hurt him this time.
She guided him to a circle of lawn furniture where Morgana sorted through dried flowers. Rage settled Dean gingerly on the cushioned lounger by the open door leading into Morgana’s private apartment. He rolled onto his back with a hiss, gripping his side.
The Kinsman healer hurried to the Offspring. Her long golden braid, glistening like woven silk scarves, swished against the back of her thighs as she moved. Like some of the older vampires, she never kept up with the latest fashions. Her straight, white dress trimmed with thousands of strings of beads swishing over it was vintage 1920s. When a new fashion trend caught her eye, she’d adopt it, but for now the twenties still roared in her walk-in closet, if nowhere else. By her youthful face and the lilt of her voice she could easily be mistaken for twenty instead of the more accurate fifteen hundred years she’d lived.
“Another one?
Ripper again?”
Rage nodded.
“What pissed Ripper off this time?” Gently, Morgana moved Dean’s hands aside so she could examine him.
Dean mumbled, “Rage.
Again.”
“Rage, help me here.” Morgana left Dean while she rummaged through her leather doctor’s bag. “Get his shirt off for me.”
Frowning at the amused grin growing on Dean’s handsome face, Rage bent over him. “Oh, you
are just loving
this.”
Dean watched her, dark hazel eyes under dark lashes, mouth slightly parted, fangs just showing. Breathy, he murmured, “Strip me, baby.”
“I’ll strip you of your skin if you don’t shut up,” she said without conviction. He was so damn aggravating with his wisecracks that he made her smile against her will. Rage hated that, even though she was finding hating Dean tougher and tougher. For reasons she couldn’t fathom, she felt herself softening toward him for the first time since she’d met him. The emotional sensation was like a relaxing fist, sore from having been closed so tight for so long.
Rage hooked her fingers inside the neck of Dean’s muscle shirt and ripped the thin fabric down the center, exposing his sculpted body. Biting the inside of her cheeks to keep a neutral expression, she resisted the urge to trail her fingertips over the bulges and ripples of his muscles. Dean was the worst kind of sexy, with an easygoing personality that could be mistaken for charm and a body made to be licked. The kind of sexy that made women
stupid,
and Rage had already tried the stupid thing. She wasn’t about to make Dean
mistake
number two.
An evil-looking purple bruise reached around the entire right side of his chest. Tearing her eyes from his body, Rage ripped through the inch of fabric at each shoulder and left the destroyed shirt beneath Dean. She stepped back to allow Morgana access to him.
The Kinsman didn’t need a stethoscope to listen to Dean’s breathing. She just cocked her head slightly and listened. “Punctured a lung this time,” Morgana chided. “If you were a Kinsman I’d leave you to heal on your own, but since you’re not…” She raised a huge syringe. “We have to take care of this the old-fashioned way.”
Dean coughed. “Oh. Goodie.”
“Rage, hold his hands. He might try to fight me and I don’t want to risk more damage.” Of all the Kinsmen, only Morgana gave a damn about the clan Offspring. The rest embraced a “survival of the fittest” mentality and would have abandoned Dean to die a painfully lingering death as he suffocated inside his own body.
All the Offspring adored Morgana. Compassion wasn’t a common Kinsman trait, but Morgana was one of the eldest of the clan and no one valuing the arrangement of their internal organs dared question her. When provoked, Morgana was efficiently savage, knowing exactly how to kill her opponent without an excess of carnage. Rage had witnessed her in action only once, and the Kinsman who crossed her died before the insult had fully left his lips.
Positioned at Dean’s head, Rage accepted his hands when he reached for her. He had strong hands, but at the moment they were cool even for a vampire’s. And they trembled. She gripped them harder. When Morgana inserted the needle between his ribs, Dean arched and screamed through his clenched teeth. Rage fought to keep him still.
“Easy now,” Morgana soothed, perfectly calm in her ministrations.
She withdrew the plunger of the syringe and set it aside. A whistle of air escaped as the dead air pocket drained, allowing Dean’s lung to reinflate. “There. That is better now, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Dean croaked. His ragged breathing came in more relaxed intervals. A single tear slipped from the corner of Dean’s eye. Rage released his hands and, without forethought, she cupped his face in her hands. Looking down from above and behind him, her fingers curled gently under his jaw. There were chemicals in tears that relieved stress. She’d read that somewhere. With the soft pad of her thumb, Rage smeared the tear and smoothed it across his cheek so his incredibly smooth skin could absorb it.
Dean watched her face, his brows gathered together in confusion. His lips parted, a question obviously on the verge of being asked, but he said nothing, only questioned her with his expression.
Because he said nothing, Rage did something she’d always wanted to do.
She finger-combed his bangs away from his eyes.
In the low light the hazel hues blended into a rich, glittering gold full of pain and gratitude.
Feelings so long unexperienced she’d nearly forgotten them, Rage bent and placed a lingering kiss to Dean’s forehead. His eyes closed and a soft sigh escaped him. Reaching back, he cradled the backs of her upper arms so softly Rage almost didn’t feel it. When she drew back, his fingertips trailed down her arms until she’d withdrawn from him completely.
For once he made no passive-aggressive wisecrack, and for the first time in her vampire life, Rage felt affection for someone. Their bond, forged by virtue of their shared master and common blood, deepened in their silent regard of each other.
Morgana noticed and pretended not to. Only a phantom of a smile confessed her approval.
Clearing her throat, Rage crossed her arms. Leaving Dean to Morgana’s care, Rage stood back and watched the Kinsman bandage him up. Seeing Caden again had done this to her.
Changed her.
Drained her of her fury.
Why and how, she didn’t know.
Morgana glanced up at her with sparkling eyes that were greener than a cat’s. Her easy smile held no judgment, no expectation. “Shade said you would come to kill the human. Did I waste my time with him?”
For a long minute she’d said nothing. When she spoke, the emotion choked her. “Was he hurt
bad
?”
Morgana hesitated. “Not bad. I gave him a mild sedative. His body armor was in ruins though. Had he not been wearing it, he would have been shredded.”
Taking a deep breath, Rage thought about Caden. He was as good as dead. Either by her hand or by Ripper’s, he would not leave the clan house alive. She knew she should be the one to do it. She could make it quick, just a snap of his neck and it would be over. As much as he’d hurt her, as often as she’d daydreamed about doing it, Rage didn’t think she could ever bring herself to torture him. Could she?
How had he come to be here like this? The Caden she knew wouldn’t have believed in vampires, much less gone out hunting them. He’d been too busy sailing or skiing or carousing around to notice. The endless supply of family money paid for his high-tech toys and extreme vacations to godforsaken locations to mountain climb or dive with the sharks or whatever took his fancy from one reckless moment to the next.
She’d thought him exciting and passionate back then. How she loved kissing him, as if feeding off his vitality. She should have known someone like him would never be able to settle down with the unsophisticated girl she used to be. Such domestic dreams she’d entertained.
Home, family, and in Caden’s case, money.
The money had been a nice perk of dating him, but she couldn’t have cared less if he’d been a poor beach bum. She just loved basking in his light, in his loving personality.
God, how he’d fooled her.
With Morgana distracted with Dean, Rage silently retreated. Clenching her hands, she passed through the garden that always gave her the creeps and back into the mansion that the Blood Runner Clan called home. Rage breezed past the guard posted at the cellar door with little more than a nod of acknowledgement. Walking on her toes, Rage kept her heels from making excessive noise as she descended the creaking wooden steps. The Offspring hated the cellar. Too many of them died while imprisoned down there. The stale air reeked of dust, despair and death.