Forever Claimed Read online

  “Do you have a home?” she asked.

  He froze. Memories threatened to spill over the dam he had constructed. Natasha! But no, he could not allow that now. “What do you mean by ‘home’? I consider Paris my home. Do you mean where do I live?”

  “Where do you live? I mean, you must need a special sort of place during the daytime. Do you have a place that’s yours here in town?”

  He shook his head. “I make do. One can always find a place dark enough, especially in a city like this.”

  “So the rogues have no trouble, either.”

  “No. But if it snows, they’ll have a new set of problems to deal with.”

  “Why?”

  “Because not even a vampire can fail to leave tracks in the snow. The question is whether they’ll care.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because if they cared about those things, they wouldn’t be starting this fight.”

  She ate another few mouthfuls before speaking again. He tried not to watch.

  “So they don’t care if they’re discovered?”

  “The night is safe for them because they’re awake and they have numbers. No vampire can threaten them in the daylight, and they don’t really fear humans.” He paused as a thought struck him. “They clearly don’t want secrecy. They want to emerge from the shadows and achieve reality.”

  “But they are real.”

  “Of course. But living life as a legend that not even their prey believe in…well, that’s a form of unreality.” He paused again, thinking it through. “They’re tired of being fairy tales. Humans love a good vampire book or movie, but they don’t walk the streets afraid that one will leap out at them. They don’t accord us any respect.” He nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s part of it, I’m sure. They want to be known, to be real and to exercise their power. They want to gain respect through terror.”

  Dani put her fork down and pushed her meal away. “That’s horrible. I can’t even imagine wanting that. My pack…we prefer that no one is aware of us at all. We like the anonymity, the freedom to just be what we are. We avoid humans and vampires and other things that aren’t like us.”

  “You can make that choice. Unfortunately, the survival of my kind is intimately tied to the humans on this planet.”

  “You couldn’t drink the blood of something else?”

  “Not indefinitely.”

  She looked down and absently stirred her coffee. “What would these rogues do, if they killed off everyone?”

  “Oh, they won’t kill everyone. They know better. I’m sure they’d find enough humans they could turn into slaves.”

  Dani shook her head and now pushed her coffee away. “That can’t happen.”

  “It could, but we need to ensure it doesn’t. But the important thing right now is that we find a way to make you safe. If I’m with you every minute of the night, I’ll be no help to Jude. If I’m not with you, you might fall into danger again.”

  He rose from the table, desperately needing to put space between them. The pulse in her throat, her scent, her lips, her eyes…everything about her woke his most primal needs and desires. Much as she despised vampires, she had no idea of the pleasures he could show her, the absolute heaven that lay between life and death.

  But he knew, and it made him both restless and dangerous. The need for action filled him, the only antidote to desire.

  The room was too small to truly escape. Worse, he could smell moments of desire passing through her, too. They came and went like waves on a shore, as she battled them down. What was it about her? Since Natasha he’d never felt anything like this, nor did he want to.

  Maybe he was just emerging at last from the claiming. Maybe he was feeling what he had felt in the days before Natasha, and he just couldn’t remember it.

  He turned his back to Dani and reached for the cell phone Jude had given him. Jude gave them to everyone he worked with so they could be instantly in touch. More like a radio, he supposed, than a phone. Not that he paid a whole lot of attention to most modern technologies. He had no use for most of them.

  But this one was about to prove convenient. Jude answered immediately.

  “We need a better place for Dani to stay. Her apartment affords little more protection than a cardboard box, and the neighborhood is perfect for hunting.”

  He heard Dani’s gasp, but ignored it as he listened to Jude. When he finished, he turned to her.

  “I’m taking you to Jude’s office. Bundle up and pack a bag. It’s going to be cold at the speeds I’ll use.”

  “Now wait one minute,” she said, though her eyes looked more worried than angry. “I have a life. I have things I need to do.”

  “That’s just it, mon trésor. You have a life. We’d all like for you to keep it. Jude is going to locate a safe place for you to stay. In the meantime, I want you out of here.”

  “But why?”

  “Because if anyone, anyone, we can’t trust has found out what happened last night and that you survived, they’re going to want to finish it. Not even I can protect you against three of them.” He paused then added, “I may even have increased your danger.”

  She gasped. “How?”

  “By killing that one that came back for you. They know he’s missing. What if he told them he was going to finish you? If they went looking for him, they will know you were gone, too.”

  For a few seemingly endless minutes, she didn’t move. He watched emotions play over her face, but couldn’t read them all, either by sight or scent. It had been a long time since he had tried to read a human in more than the most basic ways.

  Whatever she was thinking, she made up her mind. “All right,” she said quietly. “But I want to make one thing perfectly clear.”

  “Yes?”

  “If I can’t escape this fight, then I want to be part of it.”

  “But why?”

  “Because these rogues must be stopped.”

  She rose and went to pack, leaving him to wonder what she hadn’t said. No one in their right mind would want to get into the middle of this fight if they could avoid it.

  That meant something else was pushing her and that could be cause for serious concern.

  The little home she’d made for herself wasn’t much, but Dani resented having to leave it behind with no idea when she’d return, if ever. Even less did she like having a bloodsucker take charge.

  But not even a certain innate stubbornness, the stubbornness that had caused her to leave her pack despite their objections and strike out on her own, could outweigh common sense. Maybe a few days ago it would have been different. But not after being attacked.

  As she jammed items into a duffel, enough to get by for at least a few days, she thought about irony. Life, she decided, was ultimately ironic. To depend for survival on the very beings she had been taught to abhor was irony enough for an entire lifetime. Finding herself incredibly attracted to one reached even beyond that.

  She paused in her packing and closed her eyes. Luc St. Just was right behind her eyelids, waiting for her. Just thinking about him made her throb deep inside, a feeling she wasn’t very familiar with. She’d been battling it since last night, and rather than easing, her attraction to him seemed to be growing.

  Not good. Damn, her pack would disown her.

  That thought should have pulled her up short, but it didn’t succeed. Instead, she continued to feel the simmering, unwanted yearning he had awakened in her.

  And she couldn’t even figure out what caused it. He wasn’t the most likable guy in the world. He hadn’t attempted to do even one thing to make her like him.

  Yet there he was waiting for her in her living room, promising protection she loathed having to need, and he just wouldn’t go away.

  But did she want him to go away? That question really disturbed her. She shouldn’t even be asking it.

  Her body seemed to have developed a mind of its own, one that yielded to no logic or reason. It insisted on feeling an almost s
moky desire, something intangible that wound thickly around her and made her pulse leap when he was near.

  “Damn,” she whispered and resumed packing. “Double damn.”

  Taking her cue from him, she changed from her work clothes into jeans and a sweater and boots. Then she pulled out a parka she had recently bought but had only needed a few times here so far.

  That parka struck her as a reminder of her difference. Her pack dealt with the cold by changing or by wearing wolfskin clothing. She had left her own skin and fur clothing behind because it would have aroused comment. But each time she put this new parka on, it reminded her that something was wrong with her. With each rustle of the nylon, she hated it.

  When she was ready, Luc shouldered her bag and they left the building together. Once they were on the street, she noted the way his gaze kept searching every nook and cranny around them, the way he tested the air repeatedly.

  Then he said, “You’re going to have to get on my back now.”

  “What?”

  “I smell another vampire, and I don’t recognize the scent. See those deep shadows over there? We’re going to walk to them and then I’m going to put you on my back. When I do, hang on tight because we’re going to be moving at top speed.”

  “The bloodsucker could be in those shadows!”

  “He’s not that close yet. But he’s going to be able to smell me if he hasn’t already. There’s no time to waste.”

  “Some protection,” she muttered as she followed him into the shadows. “Talk about me being a beacon. Why do I not feel safe walking in a haze of vampire scent?”

  He surprised her with a quiet laugh, then before she realized what was happening, he’d lifted her and slung her on his back, her duffel to one side.

  “Hang on,” he said.

  It was all the warning she got before the wind battered her face and the world began to pass in a blur. She had to press her face to his back and close her eyes against the bite of the cold wind.

  Almost instantly she wished she could lift her head and face that wind and the world that seemed to be passing like an insane carousel.

  Because now her awareness settled on him, on the powerful bunching of muscles she could feel through his jacket and hers, on the way her legs wrapped around his hips and how damn good it felt to have him between them.

  She sensed he had climbed but he didn’t pause long enough for her to look around and be certain. Not that she would have seen much.

  Her traitorous body now noticed one thing and one thing only: the heaviness between her legs, how open they felt and how hard she was beginning to throb. Nearly every movement he made applied a delicious pressure that deepened the ache.

  Oh, how she hoped the wind was blowing away the revealing musk and pheromones.

  In less time than she could believe, they arrived at Jude’s. He eased her from his back and turned to her.

  He’d smelled her arousal. She could see it in the way he smiled at her. He startled her by reaching out to touch a stray lock of her hair. His golden gaze captured her, and for the first time she realized that it seemed to make promises, promises of delights beyond imagining.

  She felt both a huge relief and massive disappointment when he looked away to press the buzzer. So that was how they did it, she thought almost dizzily. A simple look that seemed to promise a taste of Eden.

  Clearly she wasn’t immune, so she had to keep reminding herself that it was an empty promise.

  Except that didn’t work too well. Following him down the hallway to Jude’s office, she still felt slumberous with awakened passion, and even the brush of her jeans between her legs seemed like a teasing promise.

  Her skin had become exquisitely sensitive, responding even to the lightest movement of her clothes. She hurried to the couch without taking off her jacket and folded her arms and legs, trying to contain things she was sure she didn’t want to feel.

  Except she did. If she’d been feeling them for anyone but a bloodsucker, it would be different. They were so delicious, and they threatened to betray her.

  Jude and Chloe were in the office.

  “Where’s Terri?” Luc asked.

  “She works tonight.”

  Luc swore.

  “It should be all right. If she has to leave the morgue, she promised to call first. I can get over there fast enough to keep an eye on her.”

  “And if they don’t care?” Luc waved a hand, displaying more emotion than Dani had yet seen from him. “Don’t you see, mon ami? We have at least two chinks in our armor: Terri and Dani. Both of them smell of us now, and both of them will inevitably be noticed because of it. What is more, we have to divide our attention in order to protect them. Just how do you propose to organize against them or fight them if they cause your wife to go out repeatedly to visit their crime scenes? Eh? You will spend all your time protecting and none planning. If that is the case, I suggest we all leave town right now and come back later to deal with them.”

  “I’ve sent for help. Terri is arranging tonight to take the next week off. It won’t be easy, but they’ll let her do it.”

  “In spite of this crime wave?”

  “When someone in her position says she can’t handle it anymore, they let them take time. It’s better than having them break.”

  “Ah, but that leaves the little wolf here. I doubt she will find it so easy to leave her job and classes.”

  Dani spoke. “I said I wanted to help with this fight. I meant it.” Desire had trickled into the background and with the return of her strength, she stood. “If it’s necessary, I’ll quit my job and drop my classes tomorrow. Luc is right, you can’t have divided attention.”

  Had she just said that Luc was right? But he was. This was no exercise in fantasy, and she knew the threat better than anyone, having been nearly killed by four vampires who had clearly enjoyed her every scream and attempt to fight them off. However she had gotten into the middle of this war, she was squarely in it now. Stubborn, yes. But also determined. Luc’s description of these rogues keeping enough humans as slaves had stiffened her backbone completely. She had only to think of her fellow students and her coworkers to know she couldn’t stand back from this.

  Jude nodded. “I’m not sure what you can do, but we need to clear out of here for a little while. It’s no secret where I can be found, and I doubt it’s a secret that Terri is my wife. Regardless, we need to wait for some others to arrive. Creed has a place north of here in the woods and he’s working on it tonight to make it ready for us.”

  Luc stirred. “Creed is back?”

  “He’s most definitely back, and he’s worried about Yvonne, too. So yes, we have a place to go to ground until we can organize.”

  Dani spoke. “What if they follow us?”

  “I would much rather meet them in the woods than in town. No humans will get in the way.”

  Luc nodded but folded his arms and looked dubious. “And you, mon ami? Will you be able to live with yourself leaving this city unprotected for a few days?”

  “I will have to. I can’t do anything by myself. We know there are at least three. There will probably be more soon if there aren’t already.”

  “Babies,” Luc said harshly. “If they create newborns, we will have to act immediately.”

  Jude nodded. “I know. But at least we can leave the women in a safe place.”

  Dani spoke, filled with trepidation. “I can call my pack.”

  “No.” Both vampires answered her simultaneously.

  “We don’t want them in the middle,” Luc said. “What is more, they might not distinguish between us. Why should they? And how will you feel if they get hurt? This is not their fight.”

  “They’re strong. Strong enough to take down a vampire.”

  “I know,” he replied. “But a newborn is not just a vampire.”

  She didn’t argue. How could she? She had no idea why they seemed so concerned about newborns, other than that they were simply amped-up vampires. Bu
t they were right about one thing: this wasn’t her pack’s fight—they could get hurt, and she didn’t want that. What’s more, unless she told them what had happened to her, they would want no part of this mess.

  She pulled off her jacket, becoming uncomfortably warm now, and wondered just what she should do. Being stashed out of the way while Luc, Jude and their friends tried to deal with this didn’t suit her at all. Yet she could understand how she would be a distraction if they had to worry about her.

  Crap!

  The earthquake had happened. Not only was she worried about the gruesome death and terror that might be inflicted on humans, but she was worried about a couple of vampires. One in particular.

  Who would have imagined it?

  Chapter 5

  Jude picked Terri up from the morgue around three in the morning. She’d gotten her time off, and she announced as she came into the office, “It wasn’t a busy night. Only two bodies.”

  Jude and Luc exchanged looks. “It could be,” Luc said after a moment, “that the snow is keeping people indoors, making it more difficult to get at them. Or more difficult to find the bodies.”

  Jude nodded. “Or they’ve decided to change some of their victims.”

  “That we can’t know until tomorrow night at the earliest.”

  “Let’s pack and go,” Jude said abruptly. “We still have enough time to reach Creed’s cabin. We can await word on the gathering there and make plans just as well.”

  “What gathering?” Dani asked.

  “I’ve been contacting old acquaintances. Some may come help.”

  Another gathering of vampires. Dani almost shuddered.

  They drove through deepening snow, meeting almost no other traffic except plows that were trying to keep the main roads clear for morning. Their headlights bounced off swirling snow, but Jude, at the wheel, seemed to be able to see beyond it.

  Maybe he could, Dani thought. She closed her own eyes so that she couldn’t tell how fast they were moving when she could barely see ten feet in front of the car.