Bite. Part 32

"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 sh.e.l.l 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 Deadre, 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 gra.s.s.

He ran to the pa.s.senger side of the Jeep, pulled Deadre 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 Deadre, 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? G.o.d, what had he done to her?

"Deadre? 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 sc.r.a.ped 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, sc.r.a.ped 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 s.e.x 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, pinched the stiff nipples.

"Deadre, 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 Deadre, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand and lathed his wrist with her tongue.

His b.l.o.o.d.y 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 s.e.xual 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.

Deadre 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.

The last living things he knew were the fiery eruption of his body, the sound of her name in his throat, the taste of his blood on her mouth.

He managed to mumble four words against her slick lips. "Bring me back. Please." But in her fevered state, he wasn't sure she heard them.

Then with one final, shuddering pulse, his heart stopped, and his life ended.

Spent.

D eADRE woke up with a muzzy head and a bad case of cotton mouth. She couldn't quite figure out why she was awake at all.

It was daytime, even in the dark she could feel the sun in the warmth of the air, the dry heat of her grave.

Except this wasn't her grave. This place was larger, deeper underground, and she wasn't lying on the freshly turned earth of her homeland. She was sprawled across a broad male chest.

A still, cold, broad male chest.

It all came back to her in a rush of pain. Heat. Arousal.

Daniel.

She snapped upright. "Daniel?"

With her excellent night vision, she could see his pallor was gray as stone. Though his lips were parted, she could discern no

breath pa.s.sing through them. She couldn't hear his heartbeat or the blood swishing through his veins.

Terror clawed at her.

"Daniel?" She shook his shoulders, but got no response.

She'd killed him.

No, no, no, no, no. Yes.

He was dead. In her fever, she'd drank his blood until he had no more to give. None to sustain himself.

She'd murdered him.

She scrabbled backward until her shoulders. .h.i.t the rough cement block wall, and stuffed her fist in her mouth. She hadn't killed a

mortal since 1934, when she'd been made a vampire by the elderly gentleman down the row from her to whom she sold milk and

eggs twice per week.

One week, dairy and poultry hadn't been enough to satisfy his hunger. He'd taken her blood. And initiated her into the ways of the undead.

When she was strong enough, he taught her how to hunt, to feed. He'd picked victims for her that were weak so that they

wouldn't pose a threat, for she believed old Jonathan Rue had loved her in his way. He didn't want her hurt.

In her inexperience, she had taken too much from one old grandmother, a neighbor of Jonathan's. She hadn't realized the woman was bedridden and in frail health even before Deadre had slaked her thirst at the woman's throat. She hadn't realized she was killing her until it was too late.

Jonathan had comforted her, told her they all made mistakes at first, but Deadre would never forget the slack expression on the grandmother's face, the open mouth, as if she'd tried to cry out and couldn't. The lifeless eyes that looked just like Daniel's did now.

She could put life back in those eyes, or a semblance of it.

No. She'd never made a vampire. Wasn't sure she knew how.

It was what he wanted. What he died for.

Daniel, with the body to rival any Greek statue. Beautiful Daniel, with the body cold and gray as stone.

No. Yes. She had to do it. Had to try.

He'd saved her life. He'd fed her.

He'd hurt her. Almost killed her.

He'd come as close to making love to her as any man had in decades, since Jonathan had been staked through the heart by a mob

in '46.

She couldn't leave Daniel here to rot. It might already be too late. How long had it been? How long had she slept? She had no way to tell.

"Don't let it be too late," she pleaded to no one and crawled forward. Cradling his head on her lap, she extended her thumbnails

and p.r.i.c.ked her index finger, then squeezed a drop of blood onto his tongue, then another. "Come on, Daniel. This is what you