Morgan hated to admit it, but Ramirez had good taste in bait.
Beth Chase was tall and slim, with a delicately pretty oval face and big brown eyes balanced by an erotic mouth. Her dark hair frothed around slim shoulders, drawing male attention to the plunging V neckline of her silk nightgown and the sweet double curves of her cleavage. The whole damsel-in-distress effect was heightened by the bruises on her slender arms and the vampire bite purpling the long, slim column of her throat.
All in all, she brought every one of his protective instincts to quivering attention. That didn’t really bother him; it was to be expected.
The problem was, his dick found her equally fascinating.
It was the first time Morgan had felt this kind of arousal since Elena’s death, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t have time for women right now. Once Ramirez was dead, things would be different, but until then he had far too much to atone for.
Yet as the girl described meeting Ramirez, Morgan still found himself much more aware of her than he liked.
His gaze dropped to her swaying backside under the soft silk of her nightgown. When he inhaled, he breathed her scent, delicately feminine and spiced with arousal. She wanted both him and Garret, though he wasn’t sure she was aware of it.
“She reminds me of Elena,” Garret said in their link. He’d joined them after Ramirez had made his escape.
“Too thin,” Morgan said shortly. Elena was a voluptuous seductress, not leanly muscular like this girl. Why the hell did she appeal to him so?
“But there’s something about her.”
“She’s a fighter. Elena was a fighter.” That was all it could be.
Beth turned to face them, raking both hand through her long, tangled hair. Unable to hear their mental conversation, she was describing the events leading up to her abduction. “I’m not sure when he realized I was Kith, but after my gallery show, he started trying to seduce me.” As if unconsciously, her fingers dropped to gingerly explore the fang punctures in her throat. “We went out a few times, but I broke it off when I realized something about him made my skin crawl.”
“You have good instincts,” Garret told her.
“He reminded me of Ridgemont.” She turned to pace again, the full silk skirts of her gown kicking out around her long legs. “He had the same kind of slick surface charisma with something nasty underneath.”
Morgan frowned. “Ridgemont?”
“Edward Ridgemont, my brother-in-law’s sire. He kidnapped me a few years ago as part of a sick game he was playing with Cade and my sister.”
Garret’s brows rose. “Is getting abducted a hobby with you?”
Beth grimaced. “Does seem like I should have used up my quota. I mean, what are the odds that I’d be taken by vampires twice?” She sighed, shaking her dark hair back from her fine-boned face. “So this jerk -- your jerk, I mean, Ramirez --”
“He’s not our anything,” Morgan growled.
“I hear that. Anyway, after I refused to see him again, he kicked down the door of my apartment and snatched me right in the middle of a phone call with Val.” She stopped and stood staring at the floor, her mouth tight. “He brought me here, bit me, and forced me to drink his blood.” Brown eyes brooding, she looked up at them again. “That was night before last. Last night I didn’t see him at all -- evidently he was off leading Val and Cade on some kind of wild goose chase, with a couple of assassins thrown in for good measure.”
“That does sound like Ramirez.” Garret frowned, contemplating his rapier and pulling a cloth out of his pocket. Slowly, he started wiping the drying blood from its length.
“My sister must be going nuts.” She headed for the end table and the landline phone that stood there. “I’m going to try calling her again.”
A sudden thought made Morgan frown. “Could Beth be working with Ramirez?”
Garret scowled. “That’s a bit paranoid even for you. Besides, if she was lying, we’d smell it.”
“Maybe. I’d feel better if we could touch her thoughts.”
“Well, we can’t. She’s Kith, so she’s shielded. We can’t get into her mind, and we can’t compel her the way we would an ordinary mortal. We’re stuck with doing this the hard way.”
Beth finished leaving a message on her sister’s cell and dropped the phone back in its cradle. “Val’s still not picking up.” Worry drew a line between her brows as she raked her fingers through her tangled hair. “What if Ramirez’s killers have gotten to her?”
“Don’t leap to conclusions,” Garret told her. “There are a lot of places on the planet that don’t have cell service. Knowing Ramirez, he probably lured your sister to one deliberately.”
“Jesus, it’s Ridgemont all over again.” She grimaced, dropping wearily into a chair. “And he’s bitten me.” Fisting her hands in her lap, she stared into space, her expression fearful. “I’m going to become a vampire.”
“No, actually, you’re not.” Morgan forced himself to meet those big brown eyes. It was best to be honest with her. “Considering the amount of time that’s passed since he bit you, you should be a lot sicker than you are. That you’re still relatively healthy means he hasn’t drained enough of your blood or fed you enough of his.”
Hope lit her face, stabbing guilt into his heart. “So I’m going to be all right?”
Garret moved to crouch at her feet, taking her hand in his. “No, sweet, I’m afraid not.”
Her eyes widened in alarm. “What do you mean?”
His grip tightened on her hand. “Ramirez may not have given you enough blood to turn you, but even a little can kill you.”
The blood drained from her face. “How long?”
“That depends on your immune system,” Garret said gently. “You’ll get sicker as your body fights the virus. None of us is really sure how it works, but Elena thought that in a partial transformation, the immune system turns against the victim’s organs. Eventually so much damage is done that everything starts shutting down.”
Morgan rested a hand on her shoulder and met her gaze. “The only thing that will save you is if Ramirez completes the process.”
She pulled her hand from Garret’s and sat up straight, her expression grim. “At which point I’ll be the bastard’s slave. I don’t think so. I can already feel him as it is, and I don’t much like what I’m feeling.”
Morgan came to attention. “What?”
She shrugged. “I can sense him. Evidently, we’ve already got some kind of mind link. Not all that strong -- I just get impressions, not thoughts.”
“What’s he feeling now?” Garret asked.
“Smug.”
The cousins looked at each other. “Yeah, that’s Ramirez,” Garret said.
“Could another vampire complete the Change?” Beth asked, hope and fear struggling on her face. “My sister, maybe?”
Both men simultaneously winced. “The process is a bit… sexual, Beth,” Garret pointed out delicately.
She grimaced. “I see your point. Even Cade… No.” She slumped.
Garret looked over at his cousin. “We could do it.”
Morgan stared back, incredulous. “Are you out of your mind? I feel sorry for the girl, but I don’t care to be linked to her for the next century.”
“Not even to kill Ramirez?” There was a speculative half-smile on his cousin’s lips Morgan knew all too well. Garret was cooking up a scheme. His gaze slid to the girl visibly fighting terror. They couldn’t let her die without lifting a finger to help. He sighed. “What do you have in mind?”
* * *
Garret watched hope and angry guilt war in Morgan’s dark chocolate gaze. He knew had to play this carefully. This girl could save them all, if only… he clamped down on his own emotions, knowing his cousin could sense them. “If we Turn her and she retains that link to Ramirez, we could use it to track him down.”
A muscle ticked in Morgan’s cheek. “Or he could use her against us, which is probably his intention. In retrospect, I think it’s more than a little suspicious that we happened to encounter the one mortal who knew where this place was at this particular time.”
“Morgan…”
Anger sizzled through their psychic link like heat lightning. “The girl is right -- she’s bait for some trap we don’t even see. Why else would he leave a half-turned Kith for us to find, especially when he obviously tried to make her as appealing as possible.” He jerked a thumb at her. She watched them warily, her pretty face cool with distrust. “Look at that dress -- hell, look at that cleavage. He might as well have hung an ‘eat me’ sign around her neck.”
Garret grinned. “I’ve got to admit, I wouldn’t mind taking a bite.”
“Except that apple is poisoned, coz.”
“How? How can he use her against us if we Turn her? We’ll be her sires --”
“We? I’ve never heard of a vampire having two masters --”
“And I’ll bet Ramirez hasn’t, either. He may be planning to use her against us, but if we both Turn her, there’s no way in hell he could overcome our control. Maybe we could even use her against him.”
Breath held, he watched Morgan weigh the idea, consider its consequences. “It might work,” his cousin said slowly.
“I appreciate the fact you guys saved my butt just now,” Beth announced into the silence. “But I still don’t know you from Adam’s house cat. And I sure as hell don’t know you well enough to let one of you change me into a vampire.”
Surprised, Garret looked over at her. “How did you…”
She shrugged. “My sister and Cade have these silent little conversations all the time. I’ve gotten good at guessing the content from expressions. And in this case, it’s not hard to put two and two together. I repeat, I don’t know you.”
Garret ground his teeth. He hadn’t expected opposition from her. “Do you have some other option you haven’t told us about? Your vampire relatives are God knows where, and you don’t know if you can reach them in time for them to save you -- assuming they’re still alive.”
Her stricken expression made him feel like a bastard.
“Even if you can reach them, Ramirez is very old and very powerful,” Morgan pointed out. “Freeing you is not going to be easy. Do you really want to involve them in a mental battle they may lose?”
Beth frowned at him. “I had the impression you were against this idea.”
“I was.” Morgan turned to look at Garret. “But maybe it’s time we all take a chance.”
She went still. Garret could almost see her mind working behind those remarkable eyes, could sense the fears warring in her: her fear of death against her fear of enslavement by two vampires she didn’t know. Her gaze flickered nervously between them. Garret wondered if she was imaging what it would be like to be taken by them both.
Long fingers crept to the bite on her throat again, then dropped. She squared her shoulders. “If I help you, will you help me find Val and Cade? Help them defeat Ramirez’s assassins?”
Morgan studied her thoughtfully. “Yes.” He shrugged. “Though we’d have gone after the assassins anyway. They’re Ramirez’s spawn. We can’t leave them alive.”
Beth took a deep breath, blew it out. “All right. If you save my sister, I’ll do whatever you want.”