Blood Hunger (An Adult Paranormal Romance) (Deathless Night Series #1) Read online

  Chapter Ten

  Nik bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at her. Actually, he found her innocence endearing. Old fashioned would not be a term he would use to describe himself, yet he thought most females these days were much too bold. And judging by the variety of colors she was turning, he could easily guess what she had been about to ask. “Yes, I can do that too.”

  “You can do what?” she asked all innocently.

  “I can have sex. That’s what you were wondering, right? I wasn’t lying when I talked about being in your pants before.” As she got impossibly redder, he couldn’t hold back his grin anymore.

  “That’s not what I was going to ask!” she exclaimed.

  “You’re lying again,” he countered.

  Clearing her throat, she swiftly changed the subject. “So, now that I know…that you’re a…what you are. What do you know about where Keira is?”

  Not wanting to upset her more after the shock he had just given her, he let her steer the conversation to safer ground. This time. “That’s what I need your help with.”

  Frowning at him, she asked, “Don’t you think if I knew where she was, I would’ve found her myself by now?”

  Nik studied her, sensing her frustration, trying to gauge how much more she could take in. Although she seemed to be recovering quickly from his big reveal, she still looked a little off. It might be a good idea to give her a minute before he laid anything else on her.

  Plus, although it didn’t bother him, the temperature was dropping, and she didn’t have a coat.

  “Why don’t we go inside where it’s warmer to continue our talk?” She glanced at him, distrust all over her features. “I give you my word that you’re safe with me. Have I done anything yet to make you think otherwise?” He gave her his most innocent face. It didn’t seem to help.

  “Come on. Let’s go inside. I promise to behave. And…” Standing up, he stretched his arms over his head. “I’ll tell you everything else you want to know.”

  It took her a moment, but his acting all chill must have worked. Standing up, she walked a bit shakily to her front door. Not waiting for him to follow, she went into the house, letting the screen door bang shut behind her.

  He watched through the screen as she turned on the lights, put her bag down and went into the kitchen to fill the teakettle with water.

  He waited for her to notice that he hadn’t followed her in. Other than not being able to go out in the sunshine, this was the second most frustrating thing about being what he was.

  Finally, she came back over to the door to find him still standing on the porch.

  “Why are you just standing there? You’ve been dying to come in here all night.”

  “Uh yeah, about that…” Sticking one hand in his pocket he reached up to rub the back of his neck with the other. “You need to invite me in,” he grudgingly admitted.

  Leaning back against the porch railing and putting his hands low on his narrow hips, he tried to make it look like this wasn’t weird at all.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You need to invite me in,” he repeated, casually surveying the area around him, looking anywhere but at her.

  “You mean you can’t come in unless I invite you?” Reluctantly, he raised his eyes to hers with a sigh. He nodded, and watched a gloating smile spread slowly across Emma’s face.

  “Well, well. Doesn’t this thicken the plot.” She frowned a bit as something occurred to her. “But you walked right into the bar tonight. How did you do that if you need an invitation?”

  “The bar is a public place, not a private home. I only need to be invited into personal residences. Unless it’s owned by another vampire, of course.” He held her gaze steadily.

  “Huh.” Emma leaned against the doorframe. “Maybe we should just continue this conversation from right where we are then.”

  She was laughing at him, now that she knew she was safe inside her home. “Come on, Emma. Invite me in.”

  He didn’t like her being out of his reach. It made him nervous. He chose not to dwell on the reason why.

  “What if I don’t?” she asked rebelliously.

  Starting to really feel antsy now, he told her, “I can make you invite me in, but I’d rather not. I prefer not to mess with your head like that.”

  He pushed away from the railing and walked up to the door. “And I don’t think you would appreciate it either.” With nothing but the flimsy screen between them, he silently willed her to stop with the games.

  But she wasn’t done yet. “How exactly does this work? Do I have to invite you every time?”

  “No. Just once.” His patience wearing thin, he resisted the growing urge to “suggest” to her that she just invite him in already, dammit, in spite of what he just told her.

  “Can I take the invitation back once I give it?”

  Nik pressed his lips together, and then grudgingly admitted, “Yes.”

  “Really? And how do I do that?”

  Looking her square in the eye, he admitted, “You can rescind the invitation.”

  “And you have to leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” he confirmed.

  She hesitated just for a moment. “Alright then. Come on in, Nikulas.”

  Finally!

  Nik took a relieved breath as he yanked open the screen door and stalked over the threshold, making Emma scramble back out of the way to avoid being plowed over.

  Marching around her and heading into the house, he told himself this weird protectiveness he felt only stemmed from the fact that he needed her to help him save his brother.

  He walked from room to room as she watched, checking the windows, looking in closets.

  “What are you doing?” She asked.

  Ignoring her, he continued to prowl around the lower floor of her home. When he reached the stairs, he didn’t hesitate, but started climbing them two at a time, paying no mind to her frantic “Hey!”

  He tromped around upstairs, repeating the same security check, until he heard her yell, “You’d better not be getting my rugs all dirty with those boots you’re wearing!”

  Not wanting to upset her more, he took a last glance around and then appeared at the top of the stairs, telling her, “I just wanted to see your house. It’s…nice.”

  He jogged down the stairs and walked right past her to head into the kitchen, where he pulled out a chair at the table and nonchalantly sat down, the picture of innocence.

  Emma stared at him like he’d lost his mind, and maybe he had. Giving him one last unsure look, she went to the stove to make that cup of tea. Putting the water on to boil, she grabbed a cup and a tea bag, and then went over to sit across the table from him. “I would offer you something to drink, but I don’t have any bagged blood here.”

  Nik held up a hand. “That’s ok, I ate before I came to see you.”

  “Oh.” The teakettle started to whistle, and she got up to pour the boiling water over her tea bag.

  Leaning forward and putting his elbows on the table, Nik looked down at his laced fingers.

  “So! Now that you know about me, do you think you could tell me now what really happened that night your sister disappeared?” He listened as she poured the hot water into her cup, and then dunked her teabag a few times.

  When she didn’t come back to the table, he raised his head to find her motionless, still facing the counter. “Emma?”

  He was about to get up to go see what she was about when she finally turned around, and he saw her hands were shaking as she walked back to the table with her tea. “I’ve already told you what I remember about that night.” Her tea sloshed around in the cup when she tried to set it on the table.

  Jumping up, Nik took it from her before she burned herself. “Here, let me help you.”

  Emma gave him a funny look, but let him set the tea on the table while she found her chair. “Thank you.”

  �
��You’re welcome.” Nik set her tea down and then went to get the agave sweetener out of the pantry. He grabbed a spoon and brought both over to her.

  “How did you know I like agave in my tea?” she asked him suspiciously, as she added some to her cup.

  Sitting down again at the other end of the table, Nik told her the truth. “I’ve been watching you.”

  She stopped stirring her tea, and her head snapped up. “Watching me? Here? When?”

  Feeling not in the least bit uncomfortable at how this was going to sound, he told her, “I’ve been hanging around outside your house every night for the past week. Watching. Learning your habits…” he shrugged as he trailed off.

  She started stirring again. “Why?”

  “I was trying to discern who you are, what you know…who you know…before I contacted you.” He looked at her, kind of surprised to find nothing but mild curiosity on her face, instead of the outrage he expected.

  “So you’ve been sitting outside my house every night?” He nodded, unashamed. “And what did you find out?” She seemed genuinely intrigued. He’d expected her to feel intruded upon, offended, creeped out, but he wasn’t sensing any of that.

  “I found out that you work too much, and you come home too late every night. You have the same routine every day…run into the house, shower, eat, tea, T.V. and bed. Same time, same order.” He paused, uncertain if he should continue. Ah, what the hell. “You’re a vegetarian, or maybe just a healthy eater? You wear an old, blue, ratty robe…probably because it’s familiar and it comforts you. Just like the routine you keep.” He paused again, and then said quietly, “You don’t like the darkness.” Hesitatingly, he then admitted, “Last night I stayed here so long, I was still here when you got up to go jogging. You ran right past me.”

  “I did?” She sounded horrified. Of what, he wondered?

  “But, I thought you can’t go out in the day?”

  “I can’t. Not the direct sun. But it hadn’t quite come up yet, and I’m really fast.” He grinned at her. “I hightailed it out of here as soon as you got to the road.”

  She smiled slightly, a pensive look coming into her eyes just for a second before she seemed to catch herself. “Your stalking doesn’t seem to have given you any useful information about me though,” she observed.

  “On the contrary, I’ve learned all I needed to know.” Thankful that she wasn’t freaking out on him again, he relaxed and sat back in his chair, stretching out one long, muscular leg.

  Raising an eyebrow, he asked her, “One thing though…Marilyn Manson? Really?”

  “I happen to like Marilyn,” she said indignantly, taking a sip of her tea. “Besides,” she murmured, “the music makes it go away.”

  “Makes what go away, Emma?” he prompted softly. He thought she was going to avoid his question, again, but then she started to speak.

  ***

  Looking down at her hands that she was warming on her cup, Emma figured there was no dancing around the subject anymore. Much as she didn’t want to talk about it, if Nik was legit, and she wanted to help her sister, there seemed to be no more avoiding it.

  But what if, in spite of his reassurances, he didn’t believe her? What if he thought she was crazy? The things that attacked them that night don’t exist in real life. She’d spent the years afterward in denial, nearly convincing even herself that they didn’t, that she’d made them up in her mind to deal with the trauma she’d been dealt.

  Then again, vampires like him weren’t supposed to exist either. Yet there he was, sitting at her kitchen table, real as could be.

  It was time to face reality. After a long silence, she finally admitted, “The nightmares. The music makes the memories of the nightmares go away.”

  He sat very still. “What are the nightmares about, Em?”

  Speaking very quietly, like she was afraid they’d hear her, she stared out the window as she told him, “They’re always the same. I’m with Keira, and we’re leaving the carnival. They hit all the little towns around here every summer, you know. It was a perfect summer night, and we’d had so much fun. We rode all the rides, played all the games, and ate every greasy thing we could find…and for once, no one had bothered us.” A wistful smile played around her mouth as she remembered the last time she’d been with her sister. “It was getting really late, so we decided to leave. We were chasing each other through the field, running to our car. We were laughing…”

  She stopped talking, lost in the memories that she’d tried so hard to forget, yet had so rapidly returned to her tonight. Intentionally recalling the details for the first time in years, her mind was recoiling against remembering what had happened next, trying to go back into self-preservation mode.

  But she struggled through it, and continued, “Keira suddenly stopped running, and I turned around to see why. She wasn’t looking at me, but past me towards where our car was parked right at the tree line of the woods. She was completely terrified. I thought maybe it was a bear or something; we have them around here sometimes. So I turned around very slowly to see for myself…”

  ***

  She paused, and tears started running unheeded down her face as her hands started shaking again. Nik could feel her chaotic emotions, the main one being terror. It radiated from her, across the space between them, and hit him right in the center of his chest.

  He didn’t want her to be afraid. Ever. The urge to go back in time and slowly, painfully, kill whatever it was that was making her feel so scared rushed through him without warning.

  His fangs slid down, and his lips pulled back in a sinister snarl. Emitting a low growl deep in his chest, his muscles tensed and thickened, instinctually preparing for battle. He knew his eyes would be glowing from the emotions rolling through him.

  Emma must have heard him, for her eyes flickered over to him from the window she’d been staring out of. She raised her hand to wipe the tears from her eyes, and he jumped up from the table before she could clear her vision, not wanting her to see him as he was.

  With a muffled, “Be right back,” he disappeared from his seat, rushing down the hall to the bathroom and locking the door behind him. In the state he was in, he’d forgotten to keep it at a human pace. He hoped he hadn’t startled her.

  Standing in front of the sink in the small half bath, Nik took several slow, calming breaths and tried to get a grip on himself. What the fuck was wrong with him? He’d finally, finally, gotten her to talk, and he had to go all Neanderthal just because he felt she’d been afraid seven years ago.

  Seven. Years. Ago.

  Hopefully, his little Flash imitation hadn’t startled her too much. She was dealing with enough tonight as it was. Upsetting her more was not going to accomplish anything. He had to find out the details of her sister’s abduction, if that’s what it was.

  Also, why had Emma been left alive to bear witness?

  When the news of Luukas’ capture had reached them, debilitating shock had rippled through the Council. There was no way anyone could overpower a Master Vampire, at least no one they’d ever known. And, unfortunately, they definitely knew Leeha. It was impossible for her to have overpowered him on her own.

  But shortly after Luukas had gone MIA, one of the guys had heard about Keira and brought it to Nik’s attention. Putting two and two together, he knew having a witch on your side was the only way to keep Luuk anywhere he didn’t want to be. A witch, if powerful enough, is the only other being who can overpower a Master Vampire. And Keira, he’d discovered, was a very powerful and practiced witch.

  Had she really been taken against her will? Or had she been in on it the entire time?

  Maybe they could’ve answered those questions if they could’ve found any trace of them all. However, Leeha had pulled the greatest disappearing act she’d ever done. Until now.

  One thing was for sure; his Emma was an innocent victim in all of this. They hadn’t even known she existed until just recently when they saw one of her missing person alerts. The
Council wasn’t certain how that had happened, as they kept track of all the witches in their area. How had they missed knowing about a Moss witch?

  But their focus right now was getting Luukas back. They’d worry about the information slip up later.

  His Emma. He really needed to stop thinking like that. She wasn’t his. And she never would be.

  Turning on the faucet, he splashed some cold water on his face, and checked himself out in the mirror. Back to his normal self, he was eager to return to the kitchen. Hopefully she hadn’t freaked out and withdrawn again. He didn’t know if he’d have the patience or the time to get this story back out of her of her own free will.

  He wasn’t lying earlier when he said he could mess with her head, he totally could. Human minds were easily manipulated when need be. But he also wasn’t lying when he told her he’d rather not do that. He didn’t like playing with people’s heads.

  If the guys ever became aware of how he felt about it, they’d hand him his balls on a platter. It’s bad enough that they busted him about his feeding habit.

  Opening the door, he made his way back to the table, at a more human-like speed this time. “Sorry about that. I, uh…needed a minute.” Pulling out his chair, he sat down, and pushed his hair out of his face. “Please, continue. What was it that you saw?”

  When she didn’t seem inclined to answer him immediately, but just continued to stare out the window, he tried to prod her along. “Was it a bear?”

  “A bear?” she repeated. “Um, no. It wasn’t a bear. It was, um…” Her forehead wrinkled in concentration. “It was…” She rubbed her temples, like her head hurt just trying to think about it. “It was…I can’t…”

  Dammit, what the hell had happened to her that night? Moving very slowly, he pulled out the chair between them and slid over next to her. He figured this move would go either really good or really bad, but he wanted to try to comfort her if she would let him.

  She lowered her hands and wrapped them around her teacup. She was shaking again, so hard he was afraid the porcelain was going to bust apart on the table. He carefully covered her cold hands with his to still them. “Emma, you’ve got to stop this. You’re going to rattle the skin right off your bones.”