Authors: Madeline Pryce
Dante thrust his tongue between my lips and took possession
of my mouth. Oh wow. At the first licking caress, my insides went liquid and I
melted. He slid his large palm from my waist to my ass, squeezed. I lifted
higher onto my toes and wrapped my arms around his neck to deepen the kiss.
After he thoroughly explored my mouth, he pulled away and rested his forehead
against mine.
“I’m into you, Hannah, more than I should be,” he said on a
soft pant. He lifted his head and used his thumb to swipe my moist bottom lip.
“I wasn’t rejecting you earlier, only refusing to use you like those other
pricks you’ve been sleeping with. You pulled away from the driveway and I was
so fucking furious with you for leaving it took me several minutes to realize
there was a pool of brake fluid in my driveway. Are you okay?”
“I got the car to the side of the road okay. And if you’re
into me, why’d you tell me to put the coat back on?”
He held me tighter and shook his head. “I told you to get
dressed because you naked—and sexy as fuck, I mean seriously fucking
sexy—spread out on my bed was almost more than I could take.” As if validating
his words, the hard, steely length of his erection pressed into my stomach.
“I’ve got a lot of self-control, but I also have my limits. When in the hell
did you get a tattoo?”
Ella’s piercing voice popped my happy bubble. “You have a
tattoo? Where?”
I looked over my shoulder, glanced at my sister’s raised
eyebrow and tapping foot.
“It’s on my right side and I got it a few weeks ago. But I
was high and probably drunk at the time so the details are fuzzy. I barely
remember getting there, telling the guy what I wanted. I passed out almost
straight away. When I woke up, it was done.”
“Let me see it!” Ella demanded and tried to shove Dante out
of the way. She had a better chance of moving a mountain.
“I’m naked under here.” I batted her hands away when she tried
to pull the lapels of the coat apart. “You want me to flash the entire
freeway?”
Dante’s eyes narrowed. “No one except me is seeing you
naked.”
His words, all fierce and protective, heated my blood. I
pulled my lower lip, the one that still tingled from his thumb, between my
teeth. Speaking of no one else seeing me naked…
“Dante, someone was watching me, us, at your house. It’s not
a coincidence my brakes went out.”
His body stiffened with anger. “Come again?”
Ella stepped up to my side and took my hand in hers. The
simple contact gave me strength. If I weren’t wearing these stupid shoes and
about a foot taller than her, I’d have rested my head on her shoulder.
“Hannah,” Ella narrowed her eyes at me, “apparently has a
stalker she didn’t tell anyone about.”
A dark look crossed over his face and I could see why
Castro, a sexy, smoking-hot demon lord who Dante called boss, kept him around.
“One of you better start explaining,” he demanded.
At Ella’s squeeze, I opened my mouth and let the words
tumble out, desperate not to feel afraid, to have someone I knew could protect
me completely, know everything.
“This guy, I call him Mr. Restricted because that’s how his
number comes up, has been calling me non-stop for the last few days.” The more
I spoke, the angrier my not-so-gentle-lion got. Even though I knew he’d never
hurt me, I scooted closer to my badass vampire-hunter sister. “I thought it was
a prank or something, but tonight after my brakes failed and I wrestled the car
to the side of the road—”
A muscle in his jaw ticced at the mention of my brakes. The
muscles in his arm bulged when he lifted a hand and ran it through his hair. He
looked from my car, parked on the side of the road, then to me. “You sure
you’re all right?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. After it happened and I pulled over,
Mr. Restricted called and asked if I was having car trouble, like he saw the
entire thing. If that wasn’t bad enough, he started talking about watching me
in your room when I got naked and crawled on the bed. God, I think he was jacking
off…”
Rage manifested in Dante’s eyes and spread out from there.
Heat licked from his skin like a furnace and even Ella was smart enough to take
a step back in case a giant lion sprouted from his skin. Linked to Ella by the
hand, I went with her.
“I’ll kill that motherfucker.” Venom dripped from his every
word.
I knew in the pit of my stomach that he was serious, that
he’d kill to protect me. That thought should not have excited me.
“I hung up on him and that’s when he showed up here, at my
car. I heard a scratching noise on the passenger side and while I was looking
that way, someone tapped on my window. After I turned, there was something
painted on the glass and I could see him walking away. Then he vanished.”
Dante hooked a hand around the back of my neck, ripped me
from Ella’s grasp, and pulled me into a tight, suffocating hug. The strength of
his arms sheltered me from everything. Where my head pressed against his chest,
his heart hammered. I inhaled, let the subtle scent of his soap and something
else that was just Dante, soothe my nerves.
After a long minute, he lessened his hold and closed his
hand around mine to keep us connected. “Show me.”
We walked the few feet to the car and I teetered on my heels
in my effort to keep up with his long strides. He stopped at the driver’s
window and studied the finger painting. Dante bent and sniffed the crude
drawing of a dripping heart.
He straightened and shot a hostile glare at my sister.
“Smells like vampire to me.”
My stomach clenched and little stars danced in front of my
eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that! I didn’t do it,” Ella grumbled.
“Hannah, you say he vanished? It could be a master vampire who’s able to phaze
in and out.”
Ella chewed on her thumbnail and I could practically see the
thoughts spinning around in her head. She was hiding something from me. Once
again, I was the fragile glass doll who couldn’t handle any pressure. She paced
the length of my car. With every step, her long dark hair danced from the cars
zooming passed us. She stopped, looked up at Dante and I.
“Julian’s been having problems with a few of the old
vampires who no longer want a monarchy.”
Finally! Information. “Is that why he came by tonight?” I
asked.
She nodded. “They’ve been creating fledglings and building
their own armies. Even though we don’t work for the Shadow Agency anymore,
Micah, Eli and I have been neck-deep in vampire ashes. Julian has five of the
sacred eight, himself included, accounted for. That leaves three rogues still
out there and a number of other master vampires who were never a part of the
court.”
“Just what the world needs, more fucking vampires,” Dante
mumbled. He handed me off to Ella and walked to the front of the car.
“What are you doing?” I asked and shivered when a gust of
wind nearly ripped my coat open.
He bent, the bulk of his body eclipsed by the car. His words
drifted in the wind. “Seeing what went wrong with your car. I’ll be able to
tell if the brake line was tampered with.”
“Don’t you need to jack it up?” I asked.
As I spoke, Dante lifted the front of the car off the
ground. I quirked an eyebrow and looked to my sister for confirmation that he’d
just picked up a damn vehicle. Her mouth dropped open. We both looked back to
Dante. Still holding it up as if it weighed nothing, he peered at the
undercarriage.
“Or not,” I muttered.
“Wow.” Ella fanned herself. “That’s kinda hot.”
I nodded, imagining all the other things Dante could do with
his big, strong arms. “Totally hot.”
“Fuck.” Dante lowered the car. He wiped his hands on his
pants and left a dark-black streak in its wake. “Someone punctured your brake
line.”
Something cold slithered down my spine as I started
connecting the dots. If I hadn’t know exactly what to do, I could have very
easily hurt someone, or worse, killed myself. “Not a coincidence then.”
He shook his head. “No. The hole isn’t in a crease, just
smack-dab in the middle of the flex line. How long were you at my house before
I came out of the shower?”
“Five, maybe ten minutes,” I said.
Dante curled his upper lip to expose slightly elongated
feline canines. “So he tailed you to my house. Then followed when you left.”
Ella looked down one side of the road and then the other as
if she were waiting for vampires to start popping up at any moment. “We need to
get her out of here and somewhere safe.”
“You got a change of clothes?” Dante asked.
“Backpack in the front seat.”
He opened my car door, reached inside and gathered my stuff.
He took me by the hand and led me to his truck, away from my sister. “I’m
taking her home to get dressed, and then we’re going to the Vault.”
Ella narrowed her eyes and trailed after us. “She’ll be
safer with me.”
“Dante, wait.” I dug my heels in and he pulled me behind him
anyway.
At the truck, he stopped and set me inside despite my
half-assed protests. He was taking control. The small glimpse of his dominance
made me feel more secure than I had in a long time. Dante faced off against the
vampire queen.
“Safer, maybe. Saner, no. That house you moved into is
fucking with her head. She hates it there and I’m not forcing her to go back.
Until this guy is caught, she ain’t leaving my side.” He crossed his arms over
his chest, his words respectful, but final.
Ella mirrored his posture, a lot less respectful, and
growled, “You don’t get to decide what’s best for her.”
“The hell I don’t.” His shoulders stiffened and widened. If
possible, he appeared larger, more serious. “A woman gets naked in your bed—you
get input on what’s best for her.”
“God, you sound just like Micah,” Ella shouted. “You turned
her down!”
Dante dropped his hands to his side and curled his fingers
into a fist. He yelled right back, “She deserves better than a quick fuck.”
I shook my head and gingerly got out of the truck, mindful
of both my heels and the fact I was naked under my coat. “How about I decide
what’s best for me.” Neither spared me a glance. Anger simmered.
Dante raged on. “You concentrate on finding out who the
creep is that tried to kill her and I’ll focus on keeping her safe.”
Ella looked at him for a long moment before shifting her hostile
gaze to me. “Is this what you want, Hannah?”
How nice of them to realize I had opinions, jerks.
“The sooner this is over, the better. Honestly, I’m not sure
if I could survive another session with a homicidal vampire. I’ll be okay with
Dante.”
My sister pulled me into a tight hug. “I love you. Call me
if you need me. Don’t shut me out, not anymore, okay? We talk everyday at
sundown. Got it?”
I nodded.
One-half of Ella’s mouth curled up and she lifted onto her
toes to reach my ear. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “When you have sex
with him, I want details.”
“I can hear you,” Dante rumbled, seeming amused.
I cracked a smile, glanced at Dante. My cheeks heated in
direct correlation to the naked hunger in his gaze. To my sister, I shooed her
away and said, “We’ll talk later. Go. Micah is probably ready to murder someone
right about now because you’re away from him.”
“You’re probably right. Keep her safe, Dante, or I’ll tie
you down, cut off your balls and shove them up your ass.” Two seconds later, Ella
poofed away.
Dante frowned. “Your sister has such a lovely disposition.”
On the short, silent drive back to his house, I stared out
the window and watched the landscape pass me by. Instead of stopping in the
driveway, he pressed a button on his rearview mirror and the rumbling vibration
of his garage door opening thrummed through me.
Headlights cut through the darkness and illuminated a tidy
workspace large enough for two cars. Workbenches topped with shelves and dark
oak cabinets lined the walls. In neat little organized trays, there was
everything from screws to copper wiring. Tools hung from corkboards. Tucked in
the back corner was a stainless steel washer and dryer. It was so masculine and
responsible, nothing like any of the guys I’d dated in my pre-kidnapping days.
“I’ve got wards around my house, it’ll be safer if we park
here,” he said.
His words sank in—park in the garage so Mr. Restricted
couldn’t tamper with Dante’s truck. Holy hell. I could have died tonight. My
stalker, most likely a vampire, could have ripped open my car door and dragged
me out if he’d wanted. I would have been defenseless.
The garage door closed after Dante pulled in and shut off
the motor. He killed the headlights and for an awful moment my helplessness
joined with the pitch-black. I’m not sure how long I sat, utterly frozen, until
Dante was there to pull open my door. The cab light flashed on and with it, the
terror abated.
I unclipped my seatbelt, grabbed my bag and accepted the
hand he held out to help me down from the truck. Once inside his kitchen, Dante
flipped on light after light, bringing his house to life. Hand in hand, I
trailed behind him like a lost puppy.
Dante guided me into his bedroom and did a quick scan for
danger in the closet, under the bed and in the attached bathroom. Once he had
the all clear, he shut the window, locked it and pulled the blinds closed.
He turned to me. “Why don’t you get dressed and I’ll start
dinner. You hungry?”
My insides cramped but I didn’t think I could stomach any
food. “Not really, but you should eat. Go ahead, I’ll be out in a minute.”
“You look a little pale. Do you want me to stay with you?”
I shook my head. I needed a minute to freak out in private.
“I’ll be fine,” I lied.
He pressed a quick kiss to my lips before exiting the room.
The second the door shut and I was alone, the panic crept in. I tried to fight
through it. My hands trembled when I unbuttoned my jacket and let it drop to
the floor. From my pack, I pulled out wrinkled, mismatched clothes. My fault
for packing without paying attention.