“I can understand,” his voice lowered, and the tension in the room crested with the promise of sex.
“But I’d like to see your homeland someday.” She turned away from his werewolf perfection, his arctic eyes smoldering with carnal possession, and faced the wall. Isla knew he could smell what was dampening her panties, but she’d committed to working and they’d only been at this an hour. “What now?”
“You have to get past your bad habits, before you move on to form two.”
“Which bad habit in particular?” She already exhibited so many, Isla had no idea what he was talking about.
Terje tapped the top of her head. “When you’re being chased, never look over your shoulder.”
“But I have to know how close my attacker is,” she argued, spinning back around to find a vampire had replaced Terje. And he was six inches from her throat, his fangs gleaming under the fluorescents. She screamed until she turned dizzy.
He placed a gloved hand over her mouth, cupping the back of her head with his opposite hand. “Now that you’ve gotten a good look at me, you’re drained and dead.”
She knew Terje wouldn’t leave her alone in the room with him, if he weren’t a wink-wink safe vampire. But still…He was too big, too powerful, and far too frightening. He was the whipping live wire, and she was standing in a puddle of rain.
“Fight the human urge to look over your shoulder. Pull from your Were side, Isladora Harris.” He took his hand away from her mouth, but kept the other at the back of her head.
She saw the fear in her eyes reflected from his dark glasses, and Isla hated her weakness more than she hated him. “Okay, okay.” Taking a deep breath, she shook off his hold. Only because he let her. “Looking over my shoulder is a moronic move.” She watched him slip his glasses down his nose, and rays of sunshine stared back at her. Oh, my…she swallowed roughly. “G-got it.”
“I am Oycher Evdokimov.”
What was she supposed to say, that she was pleased to meet a vampire? She wasn’t. Instead, Isla studied his fine skin, the perfect porcelain associated with vampires. It was warm milk on a sleepless night, a dream of creamy shadows and muscled planes. And his face, yeah, such dreaminess any woman would love to lick and kiss, if she didn’t know he was an insatiable blood drinker or possibly a killer. His long hair, the color of mahogany, draped over one mammoth shoulder. On the left side, beads dotted a few simple braids, glinting like his fangs under the fluorescents. Isla remembered seeing braided haired warriors sketched in a few of her history books, but they weren’t the size of him. God, he was incredible. But weren’t they all? How better to lure their prey? Without taking those peepers off hers, he put his glasses away in vampiric speed, dropped his long coat where he stood, and moved deliberately step by step. Towards. Her.
She jutted her chin. “Don’t crowd me.”
He speeded up, or maybe she did. Isla tended to move quickly when anything upset her. The next thing she knew, her back hit the cinderblock wall. He pressed his forehead to hers and the scent of danger, sky, and male wafted beneath her nose.
“Funny,” he said in a rumbling voice that curled her toes, “for someone who is supposed to be afraid of vampires” — a blast of power left his body and wrapped around hers — “I smell just about everything from you, Nevesta, except fear. I’m thinking the scent is revulsion.” He stared down at her, way down. He had to be well past six and a half feet, closer to seven, actually. With that big coat he’d dropped and commanding demeanor, she figured he was another Vojak like Sage. “You are exquisitely beautiful.”
Heat burned her cheeks. “I get it. You’re trying to shock me.” She feigned left, but headed right.
He brought his knee out, pressing it against the wall. His hands landed on either side of her shoulders, his leather-clad fingers spreading across the wall. “Why would you agree to be used in such a manner?”
Every cell in her body lit up. “Uh, what?”
His fangs slid over his bottom lip. “Have you not already walked through a life of hell with the Habalines? Why work for werewolves?”
“Listen, I made that decision.” He leaned down, his eyes burning holes through hers, but she turned her head. “Dax didn’t press me into taking this position.” Another blast of power encircled her body, pushing against her skin as if it tasted her. “He offered. I accepted.” Her mouth dried, the urge to bite him in the way she’d longed to bite Dax Jordan hit her like a hammer. “What’s it to you, anyway?”
When he pressed his mouth against her ear, his breath caressed the side of her face. “I was one of many vampires who hunted you.” One hand slid down the wall, cupping the side of her face. “I stormed Habaline strongholds, one after the other, risking my life to find you. Though I didn’t even know you.” His hand slipped from her face and moved to her shoulder.
She fought the urge to lean into him. This, whatever this was, wasn’t right. “I didn’t know, but thank you.”
“I didn’t know, either.” His breathing kicked up, the intoxicating pants making her trickle with more moisture, forcing the rushing blood to her pelvis. “Exactly what I was fighting for,” he whispered as another blast of danger and sky warmed her nose. “The hunt was so different from any other.” He stayed still but she couldn’t stop wiggling.
“Why’s that?”
He made a sound in the back of his throat as he closed the tiny distance between their bodies, going flush against her. Something woke inside Isla, a pulling she’d encountered when shaking Terje’s hand.
“Why’s that?” he echoed, “Fate, my sweet Nevesta.”
She was in some sort of bubble where there was nothing but this vampire pressing his body against hers. Inhaling deeply, she brought the scent of him inside her, and for the first time in…forever, she relaxed. A strange vibration started in Isla’s chest, forking out to her limbs. She lifted her hand between them and noticed nothing, it wasn’t visible even to her keen perception. Then a valley opened up between her legs, and all she wanted was for him to drive his sex deep inside her. “Oh!” she gripped his neck as burning embers flew up her body.
“Relax.” He spoke calmly, smoothing his hands up and down her arms. Isla’s knees gave out, and she would have dropped to the floor if he hadn’t gripped her upper arms. He picked her up and placed her on a pile of padded gym mats.
A sensual fog swirled inside her head. “What’s happening?”
His hands caressed her ribs, moving along her waist. “I think humans call it chemistry.”
“Isladora,” Terje whispered gently, misting in next to her. He tucked a chunk of hair behind her ear. He’d showered and changed into white jeans and a white and black graphic tee layered by a snow-white hoodie. With his winter blonde hair, he looked like an ice prince from a modern-day fairy tale.
“Terje,” she said warily, as Oycher’s glowing irises absorbed the whites of his eyes. His skin shimmered as though he held himself back. Had he scented her Donor blood? Did he want to feed from her veins? When Oycher backed away from her, she claimed, “I think he’s doing something to my head.” She’d been around enough vampires to know what they could do. And his touch was just as much a drug to her as her blood was to him.
“No, he’s not. I would never let anything happen to you,” Terje claimed, his canines lowering and his eyes burning nearly silver. “But you’re spicing up this place, that’s for sure.” The backs of his knuckles trailed her perspiring forehead. He glanced carefully from Oycher back to her. His shoulders tensed somewhat. “You okay?”
No, she wasn’t. The undercurrent of fear started overriding the intimate part of her that was slick and needy. “I think I need to rest.” Whatever was going on inside her mind and body, a vampire wouldn't be privy to it. “Can you get me out of here?”
“Okay.” He lifted her in his arms, his strength and scent a welcoming cocoon. He started for the door. “By the way,” he said in an everyday tone. “Oycher is the Commanding Vojak for this entire continent. He and Dax oversee our Donor operation so… we have several matters to discuss before he heads back to Captiva Island.”
Oycher’s gloved hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. Then he lifted his coat, sliding it back over his massive body. “If you think I’m not telling my Nevesta what she is to me -”
“What is he calling me?”
Terje pursed his lips. “Not my native tongue, sorry.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and studied him. “How old are you again?” Isla asked when they moved into the corridor. Werewolves learned various languages naturally, even easily changing their dialect from century to century, country to country, to assimilate smoothly into human society. Terje was lying.
“I’m twenty-two.”
She spotted Haley, a glimmer of hope on the heels of a frustrating day, headed their way. “So you’re considered a Youngling by Pack standards.”
“I surpassed all tests administered by Alpha Jayce Jordan himself.” Terje said proudly. “You’ll find out soon enough what that means for you.”
Oycher gave him a look, opening his mouth to say something when Haley interrupted, “I came to see you and I heard congrats were in order!” She squealed, hugging her fiercely, though Terje didn’t allow her much room while keeping a tight hold on her body. “What’s wrong?” She patted Isla’s forehead, making a face after her fingertips came back damp. “Ugh, the heat zapped you.” She winked at Terje. “Big guy knows how to fix that.”
“Leave,” Oycher demanded of her.
She turned to Oycher, and her eyes bugged out. “You!” Haley fumbled with her phone. “It’s you!”
A wave of trepidation passed over him before he resettled his features into the fierceness that separated men from warriors. “You wouldn’t have primed your camera phone, by chance.”
“Guilty!” She held it up, waggling it between her fingers. “The girls will die, just die, if I get one of you.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“I hate the word please,” he whispered silkily, stepping in her personal space and waving a hand over her phone. “It suggests I should give satisfaction to the one begging me.”
Haley’s mouth dropped open, her fingers flying furiously over her screen. “You drained my battery.”
“Be glad that’s all I drained.”
Instant terror burned Isla’s chest, her body tightening at his choice of words, the Commander’s implied threat. “Let’s go, Terje. Anywhere but here will be worlds better. I admit defeat today. Maybe, tomorrow we can start with a new vampire.” She sifted her hand through her hair, pulling down her second ponytail of the day. “Haley, you coming?”
“No, she’s not,” Terje answered for her.
“I have to work anyway.” Haley ran her hand up Oycher’s arm, smoothing her fingers over the black leather. “That is, unless the Vojak wants to make me late.”
He removed her from his arm. “I don’t do groupies, mixed blood. You’re interrupting us. Leave.”
He’d called Haley mixed blood, but Isla was also a mixed blood and Oycher had referred to her as Nevesta. “Haley, would you know what Nevesta means?”
Three things happened at once. Oycher smiled. Terje tensed and blared at Haley furiously in a language Isla didn’t understand, and Haley answered, “Bride.”
“Bride,” Isla repeated, the tendons in her spine popping in a row.
Haley shrugged. “It’s Slavic, I think or close to it. Why?”
Muscles stretched around Isla’s ribs, pulling and crackling. “Yes, why,” she asked Oycher, “would you call me that?”
Haley gaped before a curious smile formed on her lips. “He’s…you’re his…Oh, shit!”
Isla insisted, “Haley, stop blabbering and explain.”
A warning growl left Terje. “Haley, zip it and leave.”
“Don’t you get the irony of it all,” Haley went on. “She despises his kind and he’ll have to” - With two fingers, she pantomimed fangs at her jugular — “when completing the cere -"
The collective hiss of a thousand rattle snakes blasted Isladora’s ears. The sudden intensity of attention Oycher placed on Haley was nothing short of frightening. All eyes snapped to him — the creature that jumps out of the closet, when he said to Haley, “Weigh the consequences of what you’re about to say. Ask yourself how many ways I can make you regret it.”
Flynn appeared out of nowhere. “Normally, I don’t abide by any vampire threatening our females. But you’re hurting Isladora, Haley. Let’s go.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt her,” she said, blowing a kiss to Isla and mouthing sorry. “It’s just shocking.”
Flynn tugged her. “Off you go.”
Isla pushed at Terje’s chest. “I need down.”
“I don’t know about that. Your body’s giving off all sorts of vibes to my werewolf.”
“I need to breathe.”
Terje put her down and Oycher glided closer. She hated the way vampires moved, rolling and well oiled. In a tender voice devoid of the creature that’d just threatened Haley, he suggested, “Let’s discuss this privately.”
Privately? She’d had enough private time with this vamp. “Are you telling me that Haley was on the money? I’m really your Bride?” She took a step back, noticing a small crowd had gathered in the hall. “I know what that means in the human world, but what exactly are we talking about here?”
“You understand that Terje is your mate.”
“I understand it.”
“In the vampire world, apart from Dynasty Vampyrs and Undead, we’re given a predestined Bride we find by happenstance or fate.” He pressed a gentle fingertip on her breastbone, right where her heart was galloping. “Depends on your faith.”
She knocked away his finger. “I’m your m-mate?”
He nodded.
Arrows of fire went up her legs, her body trembling with rage and shock. Her bones snapped, the joints crackling like tissue paper. A sudden urge to run hit as a blue haze curtained her vision. “No!”
Hands curled around her upper arms, but she slipped out of them, slipped through them. As she wound around the hallway, werewolves stepped aside for her. Eyes widened in astonishment.
An Alpha yelled, “Catch her!”
Another growled, “She doesn’t know what she’s doing!”
Isla headed for the door, but her legs took her straight for the stone fireplace, rustic and rough. She tried to stop by straightening her knees and digging in her heels. Instead, she picked up steam.