“You’d rather die?”
“I died a long time ago, Daniel.” She turned her face up to the sky. The moon was gone. The first pink tinges of dawn seeped up from the eastern horizon. Already she could feel her skin prickling. Soon the heat would replace her never-ending thirst as the source of her misery. “But I’d rather not burn. There are…kinder ways.”
His face screwed up as her meaning sunk in. “You want me to kill you?”
“You’re already killing me. I’m just asking you to do it mercifully.”
“Jesus!” Daniel jerked his hand up to run through his hair, hit the end of the handcuff and winced.
He thought he’d planned for every contingency, taking care to hide the car and keys so she couldn’t kill him and take off on her own. So she needed him to survive.
How could he have known she wouldn’t want to survive?
Of all the vampires in Atlanta, he had to pick the one with a death wish.
He pulled her close. So close their noses nearly touched. Was her face already turning red from the sun?
“All you have to do is bite me, or cut me or whatever you do to get my blood.”
She said nothing, just stared over his shoulder at the blushing sky.
He pushed her to her back, straddled her, not really putting his weight on her, but pinning her down as he fished a penknife out of his pocket.
“Here, I’ll help you.” He flicked the blade open and, hesitating only a second, gouged his wrist. Blood trickled into his palm in a steady stream.
“Go ahead. Drink.” A drop of blood landed on the corner of her mouth. She pressed her lips together. “Drink, dammit! I know you want to.”
More blood splattered on her chin, her cheek. She whimpered, and threw her arm up, but it wasn’t to push his away.
It was to cover her eyes.
He glanced over his shoulder. The first bright sliver of gold shone from the horizon.
She writhed beneath him, struggling to turn away. He let her, sliding to one side, and she immediately curled into a ball on her side with her back to the sun. A spasm wracked her, then another, harder.
She covered her face with her hands, pulling his hand along, and his fingertips brushed her knuckles. They were hot. Cracking. The shell of her one exposed ear was raging red.
Christ!
He dove over her, wrapping himself around her, cradling her head. “It’s all right. It’s okay. We’re getting out of here.”
Taking only a second for one deep breath, he pulled his leather jacket up to cover her head, held the rest of her as close to him as he could, and pushed to his feet with her in his arms. Keeping himself between her and the sun as much as possible, he ran for the car.
Each step seemed to take an hour. By the time he reached her Jeep, the sun felt high and hot on his back. He retrieved the keys from the rock he’d hidden them beneath, then hurried to the Jeep parked behind a blackberry thicket, unlocked their handcuffs and settled her on the floorboard. He tucked his coat around her as best he could, then drove like a madman down the gravel road, dust and rock spewing up behind him like a monochrome rainbow. But where was he taking her? This had been his grandparent’s farm years ago, but the house and barn were long gone. There wasn’t a neighbor for miles, and even if there was—
“Hang on,” he yelled to Déadre, and wondered if she was still coherent enough to hear him. To understand.
He slammed on the brakes at the entrance to the old lane, which had once led to a two-story frame house with gingerbread trim, and skidded into the drive. The house might be gone, but there used to be a storm shelter. A dank and dark concrete hole he’d been afraid of as a kid. He’d told his grandma he’d rather blow away in a tornado than crawl down in that grave.
He rolled to a stop beside the crumbling chimney, all that was left of his grandparents’ lives. Twenty yards to his left was the split-trunked oak he used to climb. That meant the shelter should be…
There it was, the cement entry and wood doors nearly obscured by the overgrown grass.
He ran to the passenger side of the Jeep, pulled Déadre out and made a run for it. She was so hot he could feel her burning skin through the leather coat.
He kicked the door open and nearly fell down the stairs. He laid her in the shadows of the darkest corner and crouched over her.
Her chest jerked as she fought for breath. “The door.” She moaned. “Close the door.”
Cursing, he jumped up and grabbed the pull rope. The door banged shut behind him, plunging them into total darkness.
He felt his way back to Déadre, pulled her close. He couldn’t see her, but he could feel her. Her whole body was shaking, her muscles convulsing. He smelled singed hair and scorched flesh.
His heart pounded against his breastbone. Blood and guilt roared in his ears. What had he done? God, what had he done to her?
“Déadre? Stay with me, baby. Stay with me.” He rocked her gently but fiercely, afraid to hold her too tight lest he hurt her more. “Tell me what to do. How can I help? Can you hear me?”
She clutched at him mindlessly, clawed at him, practically crawled up his body, her fingernails scraping his shoulders and chest. Then she fell against him, panting, and knocked him back on his elbows, her hot face searing his bare skin.
Her tongue lashed out, swiped over one of the minor wounds she’d caused, and the touch was like a lightning strike in his blood. The heat transference was incredible. Every cell in his body sizzled.
She scraped him again, and again nuzzled the wound. He managed to string two logical thoughts together. “Blood? You need blood? Will it heal you?”
She didn’t answer. She was too busy. Her hands were as quick as her tongue. They roamed and glided, scraped and tweaked. Pleasure and pain blurred.
This was what she needed. He could feel her getting stronger. More aggressive.
His body was electric, jumping and twitching at the intensity of the sensations her recovery was causing, and when she swung one of her hips over his to hold him down, he couldn’t help but arch up into her as if she’d turned up the voltage.
He reached up to grab her, to pull her close, to hold her back, he wasn’t sure which. His blood pounded so hard he thought his veins might burst. His mind overloaded. She ground her pelvis down on his engorged sex and he grunted, thrust as if they weren’t separated by two layers of cotton and leather, his and hers. He found the hem of her shirt, slid his hands underneath and palmed her breasts, pinched the stiff nipples.
“Déadre, we’ve got to stop.” But they were beyond stopping. Far beyond.
Some part of his mind knew this was wrong. Accused him of betraying Sue Ellen. Betraying himself, his promise. Betraying Déadre, taking advantage of her when she was out of her mind with pain, with need.
Most of him didn’t care.
He bucked and she rode him. Heat poured out of her core and over his erection like a lava flow. Her greedy mouth left a trail of fire over his jaw, his neck. He tensed, as her mouth paused over his jugular, but she traveled on, down his arm, where she snatched his hand and lathed his wrist with her tongue.
His bloody wrist.
Her mouth latched on over the open cut and she sucked as greedily as a newborn. She rubbed herself against him, mewling as she drew down hard on him.
He fought the urge to resist. She needed this; he’d almost killed her. And he wanted this. It was the only way he could kill Garth LaGrange and free Sue Ellen. But now that the moment was here, panic swelled. He could feel the life force being drained out of him by the pint.
His head spun. He felt like a drunk on a three-day binge. The blood loss should have rendered him incapable of maintaining an erection, but he grew harder and thicker than ever and wondered if his stamina was a result of the thrall the authors of his research material had speculated about. The sexual excitement that stole a vampire victim’s senses, made him unaware he was being fed upon until it was too late.
If so, he could understand where vampires got their reputation as masters of eroticism.
They’d earned it.
His limbs went numb. His heart stuttered, restarted, stuttered again like an engine running out of gas. He was dying, and it didn’t seem to matter. He was almost there. Ready to climax.
Déadre was ready, too. He could feel it. Her thighs quivered on each side of his hips. She tilted her head back and took one long, last draw from his wrist, then dropped the limp appendage. With his blood smeared across her chin and cheeks, her jaw slack and eyes glazed in ecstasy, she sat down on him hard and pushed her pelvis forward, trapping his shaft in her body’s natural channel. Her upper body stiffened, hung suspended above him for a long moment, then fell forward, kissing him with a gusty sigh, and Daniel let go.