“What are Savages?” she asked.
“Killers.”
“I’m pretty sure you did your fair share of killing back there!”
Bricks pressed against her when she backed herself into a wall. She immediately sprang away from it and started edging away again. He followed her with measured steps while he idly pulled off the electrodes from the EKG machine still attached to his chest and tossed them aside.
She couldn’t stop herself from drinking in the sight of his bare chest and chiseled abdomen. Black hair ran across his chest and encircled his nipples, but he wasn’t overly hairy and his stomach was mostly bare of it. She nearly licked her lips when her eyes fell to the ridges carving the ten pack of his stomach before dropping lower.
The jeans he wore hung low on his hips to reveal the solid V of muscle there and the black trail of hair leading from his belly button to his waistband. Every inch of him was as finely honed as a knight’s sword. She’d never seen a man as large or solidly built, at least not in real life.
“I should have said that, unlike me, the Savages are killers of innocents,” Aiden said. “They slaughter humans or other vampires who live in peace. They’re monsters who must be hunted and destroyed. That’s what I do.”
And you can keep me from becoming one of them. Aiden kept that thought to himself. She looked panicked enough right now without him throwing more wood on the fire.
His words tore her away from her intense and ridiculous perusal of his body. She should be plotting her escape and staying as far from this creature as she could. She should not be wondering what it would feel like to have that body pressed against hers as he thrust into her.
“Well, good for you,” Maggie replied. “Is that why they’re after you?”
Aiden ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t see how the Savages could have known he was a purebred or working with Ronan, but maybe they’d somehow discovered that. They’d come after him with enough numbers to make him suspect they knew who and what he was.
“I’m not sure why they’re after me,” he admitted.
This was all way too much to deal with right now, Maggie decided as she stared at the man before her. All she wanted was a long, hot soak in her tub, a giant glass of whiskey, and to forget any of this had happened.
She’d especially prefer to forget the delicious taste of his blood on her tongue. She couldn’t stop herself from licking her lips before she jerked her gaze away from the frozen trickle of blood on his wrist.
What is wrong with me?
Her heart beat faster in her chest, and her knees quaked. She’d only ever backed away from one other, and she’d vowed never to do so again, yet she continued to edge away from him. She didn’t think he’d kill her. His bite had only been a pinprick of pain compared to what that other bastard had done to her. This man could have drained her dry by now if he intended to kill her.
She was fast, tough, and fully prepared to claw the eyes out of someone if necessary for survival, but she’d never encountered an aura of power like the one emanating from him. If this man chose to be the windshield, she would be the splattered bug.
No, she didn’t continue to back away from him because she feared he would attack her, but because of the way he made her feel all disconcerted yet strangely whole in a way she’d never known she could be. She’d never been normal, but until this man rode her ambulance, she hadn’t realized she’d been missing something.
“Roger!” she blurted as the reminder he’d been in her ambulance made her recall the events of earlier. Forgetting her uneasiness of this man, she rushed toward him. “We have to go back to Roger! We have to help him! Those things were everywhere!”
Aiden caught her around her waist before she could bolt past him. “He’s fine,” he assured her as he pulled her back. “The arrival of the police and more ambulances chased off the Savages.”
She flailed in his grasp for a minute before going still. “Then I have to go to the hospital to see him.”
“Not tonight. The Savages are hunting us.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“You’ll have to trust me.”
“Trust you!” She snorted. “I don’t even know your name!”
“I wouldn’t lie about Roger’s safety; you would only learn the truth eventually. If you’d like, you can call whatever hospital they took him to and find out how he is. My name is Aiden Byrne, and you are… Maggie May?” he asked, uncertain if that was her name or a nickname.
“Maggie May is a song. Roger calls me that sometimes.” Lifting her hand, she rubbed it over her heart as she recalled that thing sitting on Roger’s chest, feeding on him. “Are you sure he’s okay?”
“He was still conscious when I last saw him, and the humans were with him when we left. I think he’ll survive what happened to him.”
She glanced longingly at the end of the road. “Let me go.”
Knowing that it would be a small step toward gaining her trust, Aiden reluctantly released her. “If you’re not Maggie May then you are?” he prodded when her attention remained elsewhere.
“Magdalene Doe,” she murmured absently, more focused on her concern for Roger than Aiden.
“As in Mary Magdalene?” he asked as he pulled the last electrode off his chest and tossed it aside.
Her eyes shot toward him. “It was never proven she was a prostitute. Just because someone writes it down or states it at some point in history doesn’t make it true!”
It surprised her how easily she slipped back into a defensive stance about her name. Some of the numerous schools she’d attended had been far less fun once the kids learned who Mary Magdalene was in history. Many of those kids chose to forget Mary Magdalene was also a saint and focused on her possible sordid past when it came time to tormenting Maggie.
She’d spent most of middle school denying she was a prostitute, and part of high school throwing dollar bills back at asshole teen boys who asked her for lap dances. Then, during her junior year and at her final school, she’d realized she was throwing back perfectly good money and pocketed it.
They’d stopped throwing the bills afterward and started waving them in her face. One day, having had enough, she’d knocked Ray Jessup on his ass with a roundhouse punch to the face. She’d bashed out two of his teeth and taken the ten he’d been waving at her.
Afterward, there had been no more catcalls, and the boys in that school had given her a wide berth when they saw her in the halls. She’d never had a lot of friends, but after that incident, almost everyone avoided her. She may have been a sickly baby and child, but she’d outgrown that period of her life to become strong and unruly enough, so the kids in most of the schools she attended became scared of her.
Aiden grinned at her, pleased to see the fire back in her eyes instead of uneasiness as Magdalene glowered at him. “I never said anything about her being a prostitute, and I like the name Magdalene,” he told her.
“I don’t care,” she retorted.
His eyes shot beyond her when something cracked behind them. He stepped forward to clasp her elbow and draw her closer. “We have to keep moving,” he said briskly.
Maggie tugged at her arm, and he released her as he stalked deeper into the shadows. He searched around them as he scented the air, but all he detected was the briny smell of the ocean and the feral aroma of nearby rats.
“Are you a vampire?” Maggie blurted as she walked beside him.
“What do you think?”
“I think you bit me! And it was a dickhead move!”
Aiden winced. That never should have been the way he first tasted her blood. He could take the memory from her, but the idea of messing with her mind in such a way made his gut clench. He would have to make it up to her, somehow, once he got them out of this mess.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I was weakened by their first attack on me, and I needed blood to fight them again. Without it, we’d be dead.”
Maggie frowned at him before leaning back on her heels to inspect his injury. Her breath hissed in through her teeth. His flesh was still raw and bloody, but where a human would have been on the ground, unable to move, and crying, he strode relentlessly forward. Not only would a human be in the fetal position, but their spine would also still be visible. However, Aiden’s muscle had already knitted closed to cover the bone.
“How is that possible?” she whispered.
Aiden didn’t have to ask what she was talking about; he knew what she meant. “I heal fast, and your blood helped speed up the process.”
Maggie tore her gaze away from his back. The hair on her neck rose as some of her mother’s rambling words floated back across her mind. Monsters. Red eyes. Vampires. Monsters! Monsters! Monsters! Take your blood, take your body! VAMPIRE!!!!
Maggie gulped as she recalled that last word being screamed at her while she’d hurried from the institute where her mother resided.