CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

“He didn’t sense me,” Karen said to Michel as the two of them sat together on opposite sides of Tristan’s bed more than a week later. She couldn’t come up with any other reason why she’d been able to take Jean Luc Davenant wholly by surprise. “I’m not one of the Brethren, so he wasn’t even aware of me. He couldn’t sense my presence.”

“He was too busy focusing on revenge,” Michel said, his expression fraught with guilt and remorse as he watched Tristan sleep.

“He’s my son,” Michel had told Karen at the Trésor, an admission so frank and unexpected, she’d nearly keeled over in shock. “He doesn’t know. Mason does, but no one else, not in the entire clan. If Jean Luc Davenant figures it out…” His voice had grown strained, and he’d paused for a long moment as if composing himself again. “Please,” he’d whispered to Karen. “Help my sons.”

He hadn’t had time that horrific night to explain to her more fully than this, but during the long days that had followed, during which Tristan had languished, comatose and unresponsive, in the compound medical clinic back in Lake Tahoe, the two of them had had ample opportunity to talk.

Tristan had been injured so badly, had he been human, in all likelihood he wouldn’t have survived. A chest tube had been inserted to ease the burden on his right lung, which had been punctured by his broken ribs and subsequently collapsed. Severe brain contusions had resulted in prolonged unconsciousness and intracranial swelling. He’d also suffered moderate renal injury and a dislocated hip and shoulder. Michel had personally performed the numerous surgical procedures needed to repair these injuries, plus try to restore eventual functioning and strength to Tristan’s shattered arm.

He’d kept a faithful vigil at the younger man’s bedside, leaving only to check on Mason. Although badly beaten, Mason had a far better prognosis than Tristan. He’d spent only two nights at the clinic before Michel had discharged him, and he’d been in earlier that morning to show off a set of prosthetic teeth that had been fitted to replace the fangs Jean Luc had so viciously excised.

“I’ve got my everyday pair,” he’d said, flashing Karen a grin that might have been handsome, had it not been for the healing bruises and abrasions still apparent on his face. “And these”—holding out his hand, he’d shown her a removable bridge fitted with a pair of long, gold-plated canines—“for more formal occasions.”

“You saved Mason’s life,” Michel murmured, looking across Tristan’s bed at her. His voice was soft and somewhat strained, as if he hovered on the verge of tears. “And Tristan’s too. I can’t thank you enough.”

Karen shook her head. “There’s no need.”

“Yes,” Michel replied. “There is. I’ve seen the way Tristan looks at you. I’ve sensed his thoughts, the conflict he feels inside.” A soft smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Just as I’ve sensed your own.”

“I love him,” Karen said. It felt good to admit this aloud—and to Michel of all people—right somehow in her heart.

“I know,” he said. “You may find this hard to believe, but I’ve been in love before, enough to recognize it when I see it. A long time ago, before we left Kentucky, my father had a slave girl named Rachel who worked in the kitchen. She was exquisite, quite possibly the most amazing creature God ever saw fit to grace upon this earth. Of course, things being how they were in those days, I’d have been no more free to love her openly as a human than as a Brethren. So I loved her in secret, and for her part, she loved me in return.” His gaze became distant and he fell momentarily silent, glancing down at the bed, and Tristan’s fingers, laced loosely through his own.

“Was that what made you think of the pair-bonding concept?” she asked, making him smile.

“Who told you about that?”

“Mason,” she said, and he chuckled.

“I might have guessed. Yes, she’s the reason. Or the inspiration, I guess you could say.”

“Did you feed from her?”

“Like a glutton. Whenever I could.” He laughed again. “She never minded for it, said it aroused in her a sort of wildness for me, made her damn near insatiable.” Cutting her a sheepish look, he said, “Though I suppose you don’t really want to hear about that.”

Karen shook her head. “I don’t mind. What happened to her?”

His smile withered. “She died. I guess as all of us must at some point. But when she did, it left behind an emptiness inside of me. Something dark and hollow, hurting. I didn’t think I would ever love again…not like with Rachel.”

Again, his attention turned to Tristan, and he drew his thumb lightly against the unconscious younger man’s knuckles. “But I was wrong. When my oldest son, Phillip—you’ve met him, haven’t you? Once or twice?—when he was wed to Lisette Giscard, when I set eyes on this delicate, gentle flower of a woman for the first time, it felt like a punch to my heart, as if all of the emotions, the attraction, the desire I’d once felt for Rachel were instantaneously resurrected. She was extraordinary.”

Again he smiled. “She would play for me for hours on the piano. Mon Dieu, I could never tire of listening to her play. She’s the one who taught Tristan, you know, although she’d have told you he was the more talented between them. Phillip always found it trifling, and he seldom paid mind to it…or her. She suffered a miscarriage, their first child, and he all but shunned her after that. She was his first wife, but he’d relegated her in his regard to less than any of the others, incompetent somehow. An inconvenience to him. She turned to me for comfort and affection, and I’m ashamed to admit it, ma chérie, but I gave it to her willingly, gladly.”

“What about Arnaud?” Karen asked.

His expression shifted, growing ashamed. “He hardly knew her. By that point, his alcohol abuse was out of control. I could count on one hand the number of days I found him sober in that year alone. It was Lisette’s idea to say they’d had an affair when she became pregnant. She remembered the fire of 1815, and all of the infighting that precipitated it. She was terrified that if I admitted to being the father of her unborn child, it would all start again, creating a schism in the clan from which we’d never recover.” Shaking his head, he heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe she was right. But agreeing to that—denying her and Tristan—was the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life…and one I still question and regret to this day.”

From the bed, Tristan uttered a soft sound, breathless and hurting, his brows lifting in his sleep as he moved his head restlessly. Karen and Michel sprang to their feet in unison, both of them leaning over the side rails.

“Easy, petit,” Michel murmured, smoothing Tristan’s hair back from his brow. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.” When he looked up at Karen, she saw tears swimming in his eyes, gleaming with reflected light. “I love him too,” he whispered.

She smiled and reached for him, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. “I know.”

****

“He needs to feed.”

Michel had told her this before excusing himself from the bedside. “I got your voice mail, by the way,” he’d said. When she’d looked at him, puzzled, he’d added, “The one you left me from Las Vegas. Part of it, anyway. The reception must have been terrible. There was too much static on the line for me to make it out clearly.”

She’d remembered. I just think it’s best if I go, she’d told him, part of a three-step plan she’d pretty much forgotten since then.

“Was there something you needed?” Michel had asked, pausing in Tristan’s doorway. He’d given her a pointed glance that had let her know nothing had been wrong with her message to him; he’d received it loud and clear and was offering her the chance to take it back. “Something you’d wanted to say?”

“No.” She’d shaken her head. “Never mind. It wasn’t important.”

Tristan continued that agitated fidgeting after Michel had gone. With his uninjured hand, he pawed weakly at the chest tube leading out from a small incision site between his ribs, beneath his arm, and she caught his fingers to keep him from pulling on it.

“It’s all right,” she said, trying to soothe him.

“He has to be in terrible pain,” Michel had lamented. “The more quickly he heals, the better. It would help him to feed.” He’d offered this last with a long, pointed look at her. “Although I suppose I could get a blood bag, hang an NG-feed for him.”

She glanced around the room, then leaned over to dig through one of the bedside dresser drawers. When she found a small lancet inside, the kind used when checking blood glucose levels, she pulled it out. Pulling off the plastic cap, she studied the small, squat needle for a moment. Then, without giving herself time for hesitation or reconsideration, she plunged it deep into the pad of her index finger. It hurt, sharp like a bee sting, and when she yanked it back, wincing, she saw a bead of blood, dark and glistening, well up at the point of puncture.

Michel was right—Tristan needed to feed. Even the scent of this tiny droplet was enough to stimulate him, despite his lack of consciousness. He squirmed in bed, tangling his fingers in his sheets, moving his legs restlessly. His eyes still closed, he turned to her, gasping for breath, nearly panting, his face glossed with sweat. Beneath his upper lip, she could already see the telltale swelling as his fangs began to instinctively descend.

“Here,” she murmured, pressing her finger lightly to his lips. When he opened his mouth, she slipped her fingertip inside and felt his tongue push against her skin as he struggled to suckle the blood. His teeth descended further, forcing his jaws apart, and his eyes flew open wide, the green-gray irises completely swallowed by his enormous, swollen pupils. His eyes looked like doll’s, all glossy and black, and he sat up despite the tangled web of intravenous lines and oxygen tubing draped and arranged around him and the bed.

She didn’t know if he was awake or not, not fully, anyway, or if he was reacting out of physiological reflex. Clasping her hand between his own, he drew her finger from his lips, then tugged against her, pulling her near. She fell into his shoulder, her head cocked to the side, her throat lay bare and exposed. His breath was hot against her skin, rapid-fire and fluttering, and she felt the prick of his teeth, twin points digging into her skin.

I’m not afraid, she thought, closing her eyes, even though her heart was hammering, and her own breath came in quick, staccato hiccups. I’m not afraid, not of this, not of Tristan. Not ever.

There was a moment of pain as he sank his teeth into her flesh, but then the analgesic enzymes in his saliva kicked in, making her numb to anything but pressure as his fangs extended further, delving deeper. When they met their mark, puncturing her carotid artery, he uttered a low, gravelly moan and pressed his mouth fiercely against her skin, forming a tight seal.

She closed her fingers in his hair, suddenly and acutely turned on, not only by the sensation of his lips against her skin, but the soft, muffled sounds as he fed from her. As his rhythmic sucking increased in tempo, so, too, did her arousal grow, and now she was the one squirming, wriggling, panting for breath.

“Please,” she whispered, because it was as if he was making love to her, touching her, caressing her, moving her to climax without using his hands, without as much as undressing her. “Tristan, please!”

She came, an orgasm more visceral, explosive, and powerful than she’d ever felt before—without having a finger laid against her or within her. Jerking against him, she tightened her fingers in his hair and cried out his name in breathless release. His mouth slipped away from her neck, and she felt a rush of light-headedness sweep over her from the amount of her blood loss. With a soft moan, she crumpled forward, her cheek settling against the socket of his shoulder. She felt weak, tremulous, and lay beside him. The side of her throat felt slightly damp as the blood flow from her wounds oozed to a stop.

Closing her eyes, she listened to the frantic pounding of his heartbeat as it slowed once more from its own excited, lust-fueled peak. She wanted to raise her head, look up at him, see if he’d lapsed back into the unconsciousness from which he’d only murkily emerged, but felt too exhausted, too frail for even this meager effort.

Instead, she waited. Mason had said that once the Brethren fed from the human to whom he or she was pair-bonded, an infallible mental rapport was born. She waited for this to happen, this uncanny awareness of one another, but nothing seemed to occur. Her perception of him remained—undeniable, inherent, and strong—just as it always had.

“Because it…must not matter,” Tristan murmured, his voice coming from fathoms away. His eyes were open now, heavy lidded and somewhat dazed, his pupils constricting back to more normal circumferences.

“The feeding must not matter,” he said again. “Because I’ve always felt bound to you. Right from the start. I think Michel must’ve been wrong.” With a small, crooked smile, he added, “And God, please let me be the one to tell him. Can’t wait…to see his face.”

She laughed, and reaching up with his good hand, he touched her face, a clumsy caress. “He’s my father,” he whispered.

She nodded, turning her cheek into his palm. “I know. He told me.”

“Davenant said he knew it right away. How could he tell in less than five minutes, and in all of these years, I had no idea? No fucking clue.”

He looked stricken, confused, and she kissed his forehead gently. “Don’t do that to yourself,” she whispered. “You couldn’t have known.”

“All along, Davenant was after me,” Tristan said. “Because he knew. A brother for a brother, a son for a son, that’s what he kept saying. And Michel knew that all along too. That explains him taking my car keys away, his big freak-out the other day.” He managed an unhappy laugh. “One of them, anyway.”

She moved to kiss his brow again, but he tilted his head, meeting her lips with his own. “Stay with me,” he said, pulling lightly against her, trying to get her to lie down in the bed.

“Tristan, no. I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. He was on the mend, but not even feeding could fix his broken ribs so quickly.

“You won’t,” he said. When she still hesitated, his brows lifted. “Please. I want you here. I…I need you, Karen.”

He looked up at her, vulnerable and pleading, and she relented. Closing her eyes, she settled in beside him, resting her head gently against his chest. “Are you okay?” she asked, with a worried glance up at him.

He’d closed his eyes, resting again, but managed a smile. “At the moment? I’d say I couldn’t get much better.”

Me, either, she thought as she smiled back. Snuggling more closely, she closed her eyes again, letting his heartbeat lull her to sleep.

# # #

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

“Definitely an author to watch.” That's how Romantic Times Book Reviews magazine describes Sara Reinke. New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards calls Reinke “a new paranormal star” and Love Romances and More hails her as “a fresh new voice to a genre that has grown stale.” Dark Thirst and Dark Hunger, the first two books in The Brethren Series^TM of vampire romance are available from Kensington/Zebra Books, while the third installment, Dark Passion, is available from Double Dragon Publishing. The series continues in 2011 with Dark Passages and Dark Vengeance, from Bloodhorse Press, and in a free online graphic novel, Dark Interludes, available at: www.sarareinke.com.