Chapter Thirteen

“Hmm. Blood pressure and temperature are both normal. I wonder how she got these cuts and bruises on her neck and shoulders. Looks like she’s been in a fight. Strange these marks aren’t healing at the rate they should for a healthy female vampire,” Carin wondered aloud. All she received was an oh-so-articulate “uhn”.

Turning slowly, she shot a black look at the massive lump of vampire sitting on a stool next to her. “Geez, Alaan, that grunt was so helpful. How ‘bout helping me get some answers rather than sitting there staring at this woman?”

The needle of a loaded injection gun disappeared into Sher’s neck. Alaan didn’t even blink, just continued to stare intently with his mouth tightly drawn and the muscle at the base of his jaw ticking madly. Even his eyeballs seemed tense.

“I’m giving her a modified cell reconstruction serum. It’ll accelerate her body’s natural healing abilities. Wounds like this on a normal vampire would heal in a day. If my calculations are correct, she’ll be fine in a matter of hours. I’ve mixed a sedative in with the serum for the pain, otherwise these bruises around her neck will hurt like hell when she wakes up. But even with the meds, she’ll be lucid so we’ll be able to get some answers.”

Another grunt. The man was seriously getting on her nerves.

Carin sighed tiredly. The flight to London had been hairy at best. Bustling a grumpy, sleepy toddler and the equipment needed into the helicopter to create a lab-like atmosphere had been no easy task. Even if Bix had done most of the work, she so didn’t need this grunting crap from the man sitting there like some kind of nitwit.

“So why are you here, Alaan?”

He looked up with dark puffy circles under his eyes. Evidently he was as tired as she was. His usual topaz blue irises were more of a weary blue-gray. The lines around a tightly drawn mouth turned down into a fierce frown, covering his handsome features underneath a blanket of worry. Turning his attention back to the woman on the gurney, Alaan shook his head and finally spoke.

“I’m not sure why I’m here. I guess that’s what’s bothering me, Carin. Part of me wants to be sure Sher is okay, but…”

“But the other part would rather be knocking boots with Tameth.”

“Damn it, Carin, do you have to be so…so…?”

She just loved to make him blush, even when he was pissing her off.

“Be so what? So real? Yes, I do. I don’t know how to be anything other than straight up. Maybe you should try it sometime.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

Why did the man bother playing this game with her? They were family. More importantly, they were friends. And she was his empathic friend. If anyone could dig into his emotions, she could, and he knew it. Damned man.

“Alaan, why don’t we do this a little differently? How ‘bout you tell me what’s really bothering you, baby-love?” She put a little bit of old grandma impersonation into her voice, knowing it made him wince every time she acted like the older sister.

Still grumbling, he cooperated.

“Fine. I want to be here for Sher but only because I feel obligated to make sure she’s okay. No other reason. She doesn’t move me anymore.”

They both gazed at the still, pale body of the woman who used to cause the sun to rise and set in Alaan’s world.

“She doesn’t move you at all, Alaan?” Carin asked, as she stepped closer and leaned into his side, careful not to touch him with her sterile gloved hands. “Not even a little bit?”

“No, not even a little. Bottom line is I’m in love with Tam.” Cheeks bellowed on a huge exhale of frustrated breath. “God, I’ve wasted so much time chasing Tameth with my dick, I didn’t pursue her with my heart. It’s more than just the bond allowing me to feel her emotions, to hear her thoughts. Much more. I really care for her, Carin.”

“So what the hell are you doing down here then? Talk about mixed signals. Poor Tameth must be reeling.”

She shook her head, fully aware that if Alaan’s connection to Tameth began like her and her husband’s had, Tameth hadn’t missed Alaan screaming “I love you” into her soul while his actions proclaimed Sher as number one.

And why the hell was he looking at her as if he expected her to answer her own damned question? Geesh, the man deserved a smack in the back of the neck. If there’d been even the slightest chance she could get away with planting her fist in the middle of his face to knock some sense into him, she would have gone for it.

“God, you can be so dense sometimes, Alaan. But…” she sighed. “You’re my brother and I love you dearly. Idiot.” Then another thought popped into her head—maybe she’d call the Matriarch, fill her in on what was happening and let her chew a new hole in his ass. Nah, Tameth would never forgive her if even the smallest piece of Alaan’s perfectly muscled butt went missing. Oh well…

Besides, she could feel her brother’s pain, feel it spike to heartbreaking proportions. To hell with the sterile gloves.

Carin wrapped her arms around Alaan’s waist, hugged him close, and promised it would all work out all right. Funny, he was so much taller it was like hugging a big blond tree.

“Well at least you’ve told her, right? I mean, I’m sure Tameth is glad to know you love her, especially since you’re sitting down here at almost four o’clock in the morning with your unconscious ex.”

“I, uh, I haven’t told her yet. And stop giving me that dear-God-my-brother-is-an-idiot look. I’m going already.”

Carin smiled when one of the most handsome and deadly men she’d ever known leaned down and planted a tender kiss in the center of her forehead. Alaan had never made her so proud as that moment when he walked out of the makeshift hospital room, leaving his past behind. His pace quickened the closer he got to the door. He didn’t look back. Not once.

Carin stood there a second after the door snapped quietly shut. A slow smile spread across her lips. She knew exactly where he was going. Snatching off the blue examination gloves, they landed in the trash as she chuckled and grabbed a clean pair.

“Tameth, girl, I hope you’re ready for the determined prime male coming your way.”

As for Sher, this whole situation felt wrong.

“Bix?” she called across the link to her husband.

“I’m here, baby. Need me?”

“No, I’m fine. I’ve given Sher a sedative and planned to start analyzing the blood samples I took from her.”

“I still can’t believe she’s alive and here in London after all this time.”

“Yeah, me either. Key words are ‘can’t believe’. This is fishy, Bix. Of all the times for her to appear out of the blue, it happens to be while Alaan is in town hunting the rogue that supposedly took her out?”

“I agree. Alaan told me that Kenoe scented a Hatsept on a trip to the museum. Interesting that it was a dark-haired, small-boned female vamp.”

“Yeah, kinda like the one lying here in this bed.”

“My thoughts exactly, baby. Hey, when are you coming up to bed?”

“Up to bed? The question is, when are you coming in from outside?”

“I never could get much past you.”

“And don’t you forget it, handsome.”

“Listen, Jaidyn understands the situation here and knows we don’t have an estimate of when we’ll make it back to the vacation house, so no worries on getting back to the baby. Also, Higgins put us on the second floor, third door on the right. There’s a key for you hidden on top of the doorframe.”

“Alaina…?”

“Higgins just vid phoned me to let me know he checked on her. The little imp is snoring like a Marine who’s been on duty for thirty-six hours straight. Thankfully the man put us in a two-room suite so she can rattle the walls without keeping us up.”

“My baby does not snore.” The ice-cold snap in her voice was followed by a chuckle. “Sher will be knocked out for hours.”

“You sure you wanna stay up and mess with blood samples? I haven’t had my dose of chocolate today.”

She loved when he called her his chocolate. A shiver worked its way from the top of Carin’s head, across every square inch of her milk-‘n-cocoa colored skin, and down to her painted toenails. The link with her bondmate hummed with Bix’s freaky anticipation. She never had figured out how he made her physically experience the caress of his thoughts.

“The Seekers here have everything under control. I’ll race you to the bedroom, baby. Last one in bed gets a spanking.” Bix’s thoughts caressed the tips of her nipples. In seconds they went hard as pebbles under her lab coat.

“Dayum! In that case I’m moving like a little old lady in a too-tight pair of four-inch high heels!”

“So what about the blood samples, beautiful?”

Blood samples? What blood samples? Morning was soon enough to begin analysis. After some good loving and a few hours of sound sleep.

In spite of the serious implications of Sher’s unexpected arrival, Bix’s laughter poured over and through Carin. Her eyes went wide as his telepathic question was followed by a mental image of his big, strong hands making delicious contact with her bare ass at the same time his impressive cock sank into her weeping pussy. Oh, he was such a naughty vampire.

“Cut it out. You’re making me sweat, damn it,” she half-heartedly complained. Carin placed the vials of blood into a medical grade portable cooler, then bustled over to her patient. After tucking the blankets a bit more snugly around the woman, she turned off the lights and eased out the door.

Hopefully Tameth and Alaan were deep into the same kind of blazing memory-making lovin’ that she was headed to with Bix.

“You’ve got one minute, beautiful.”

“Get out of my head, Bix!”

“I will, after I’ve stripped you naked and gotten into someplace else.”

God, she loved her man.

 

 

 

Tameth lay perfectly still, with the exception of the hand slowly easing towards the blade underneath her pillow. There’d been no sound but someone had entered her room. Relaxing her fingers from around the hilt of the specially treated long knife, she relaxed as the scent of spiced ginger floated to her nostrils. Alaan.

She cracked an eye open and looked up at the shadow looming over her bed.

“Alaan, what are you doing here? Better yet, how did you get in?” For a moment she wondered if he was going to say anything.

He answered with a sighed question. “Do you want me to leave?”

“Don’t answer my question with a question, Alaan.”

Forcing herself to ignore the slither of his uncertainty pressing down through the bond, she arched a brow in the darkness. Huh. The man wasn’t bothering to shield his thoughts, quiet his mind or control his emotions. No, he just let it all hang out, laid bare for her to see. And his heart was filled with remorse and soul-deep longing…for her.

When she’d climbed into bed alone tonight, he’d still been downstairs with Sher, clearly where he wanted to be. So Tameth had taken her desire for him, along with the knowledge that he was one of few men she could bond with, wrapped them up together and stuffed them in a box in the depths of her heart. But now his raw emotions dug down into her secret place and plucked at the ropes and chains tied around that box.

Her determination to forget about him wavered.

“I was downstairs with Carin while she examined Sher.”

“And you’re here now because?”

The dark outline of his body knelt down on the floor, reached forward and clicked on the lamp. Her mouth fell open at the blond mountain of a wreck on one knee next to her bed. His hair stood on end like he’d spent the last couple of hours yanking on it. His typically vivid, lively blue eyes were dull and tired. The second she tilted her head to the side in wonder, his spine snapped tight into a rigid column, effectively stilling the questions now stuck in her vocal cords.

“I’m here because I’d rather be with you, Tameth.”

Had she heard correctly? “But what about Sher?”

“Tameth, get this through your head for the last time.” He flashed up off his knees and sat down next to her. The blankets pulled tight around her body. His large hands clenched into fists, but he didn’t touch her.

“Sher is my past. I felt responsible for her death, but here we are six years later and she’s alive. I don’t know what happened to her, or where she’s been, but it doesn’t matter. I want you. Only you.”

Raising a hand to her cheek, she pulled it away with a bit of surprise at the moisture there.

“Aw, damn,” he rasped. “Don’t cry, Tam. I can’t stand it when you cry.”

But the tears escaped before she could stop them, welling up and spilling over in a torrent of pent-up emotion—happiness at Alaan’s unexpected presence and declaration of love. Then her thoughts strayed to Kenoe. Immediately, pain and rage welled up inside of her on his behalf. Alaan picked up on it right away.

“Let me wipe it from your mind, baby. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, let me love it away, Tameth. Please.”

Alaan Serati had never said “please” to her in all the years she’d known him. Any words between them had always been either a command or…hell, that was all. Commands and orders. But tonight his patient plea—along with the fact he could have simply plucked her concerns right out of her thoughts without asking—shattered the rest of her resolve.

How could she resist this man? The bond vibrated and hummed between them and overflowed with his sincerity, genuine care and downright craving for her.

Throat clogged with a barrel of tears, all she could do was nod her head.

 

 

Alaan leaned down and kissed the woman he surely didn’t deserve on the tip of her nose.

“Be right back. Running to the bathroom.”

A quick shower was definitely in order. After being down in the hospital room with Sher, there was no way he would go to his woman with even the slightest essence of his past clinging to his skin.

He turned off the bathroom light and stepped out into a room of shadows. Tameth had turned down the lamp until only the faintest glow reached from the nightstand out into the darkness. Keen hearing picked up the soft rustle of fabric as she scooted across the bed to make room for him.

But he’d had some interesting revelations as he sat next to Sher’s prone body as Carin examined and treated her. He’d spent so many years keeping every woman, including Tameth, at arm’s length because of Sher. Tameth could have had anyone she wanted, yet she’d committed herself to the Seeker corps and, whether he’d wanted to acknowledge it or not, to waiting for him to pull his head out of his ass long enough to realize how much his soul called to hers.

Even tonight, he’d let his shock get in the way of rational thinking. How many times had Tameth insisted he still pined after Sher? After all his denials, the woman showed up and he’d gone running after her…just like Tameth said he would. Worse, he didn’t care for Sher anymore. Yet, off he’d gone. And Tameth was still willing to forgive him.

And if they never shared blood as mates, never completed the lifebond to tie their lives together, the link would always be there. Even if she gave her heart to another man, when in her presence, he would always have a glimpse of her heart. He had no right to ask for anything more than she was willing to give.

The second his naked backside hit the cool sheets, his arms were full of a warm, equally naked, fragrant woman. Easing her onto her back, Alaan whispered against her lips.

“I do believe I’m in love with you Tameth Serati-Cole. I know you love Kenoe…”

“But…”

“It’s okay, baby. I don’t care if you still love him. I won’t even ask you to mate with me if you don’t want it. All I want is for you to love me just as much, just as hard, as you love him. Can you do that?”

And if she couldn’t, he would just have to deal with it.

“Yes,” the whispered words were laced with tears. “Yes, I can do that, Alaan.”

An abundance of care soaked through the uncompleted bond and wrapped around the depths of his soul.

“Alaan, listen to me. Kenoe and I have never been lovers in the way you’re thinking. And while I love him, it’s as a close friend. But that’s all, I promise. Okay?”

Awed by the depth of his own feelings, and more than a little relieved, he vowed right then that one day the bond they shared would be completed. Whatever it took to convince her that he belonged to her alone, he would do. She had to believe in him, believe in their love. If this thing wasn’t heartfelt and genuine, she could bite him all day long and the bond wouldn’t close.

Easing his mouth down to hers, he was gifted with a kiss so sweet it almost brought tears to his own eyes. Though he didn’t deserve it, the woman was so responsive, so giving, so his. Strong, steadfast, yet so feminine and beautiful in her passion. God, how he loved her.

He made love to her slowly, gently easing inside her body with a reverence that took his own breath away. He even refrained from taking her blood, and resisted the mind-blowing sexual rush of pure energy that came with the act. And with every loving caress of her mind, every gentle touch of her fingers along his skin, each welcoming arch of her back, Alaan fell more in love with her.

Hmm. Love. As much as he’d resisted, now he couldn’t imagine a single day without it.