CHAPTER FOUR
The sorry bastard had bitten her. Though without the sharing of blood she was in no long-term danger, but Aiden was furious that she’d been hurt. He stepped closer to her. The scent of her blood, sweet and feminine, called to the vampire in him. The scent of her fear, her panic, called to the man. He positioned his body against hers, his thighs framing hers so that he blocked her from the sight of anyone who might enter the deserted hallway behind them.
His hands caressed her cheeks, bringing her gaze to his. “You’re going to be okay, Sweetheart. You have my word.”
“I’m bleeding. He…I don’t know what he did to me.”
“Let me look,” he urged softly, knowing what he would find, knowing there would be bite marks he should never have allowed to happen. He’d resisted playing with her mind, her memories. In turn, he’d almost gotten her killed. He’d given her a weak, too vague, compulsion to call him before acting on a lead.
She nodded, trust overflowing from those gorgeous hazel eyes. The significance of her trust in him, someone she barely knew, given to him after an attack by someone she had known, didn’t escape him. Given to him when he didn’t deserve it, when he shouldn’t want it, anymore than he should want the attachment he was forming for her. But he did, damn it to hell, he did in a bad way.
Aiden brushed the silky strands of her hair away from her neck, an image of that hair draped over his bare chest impossible to avoid. He wanted her. He’d wanted her from the instant he’d seen her. He tilted her head slightly to one side, dipped his head to the blood seeping down her neck. There was nothing as erotic to a vampire as blood. Hot fire bled through his veins. His tongue slid over the wound, the small droplets of blood teasing his taste buds and his senses with the sweet ruby wine flavor.
“Oh,” she gasped. “What are you — I…”
His hand settled on her waist, his lips moving from the sealed wound to her ear. “Kissing it to make it better,” he whispered, electricity charging the air around them. His cheek slid across hers, his lips lingering just above hers, every nerve in his body aware of her in ways he didn’t remember ever being aware of a woman. Voices sounded just around the corner, approaching quickly, jerking him back to his senses. He cursed under his breath at the distraction and grabbed her hand. “Let’s get out of here.” He didn’t wait for her answer. He’d almost gotten her killed once tonight, he wasn’t doing it again.
She tugged against him. “Wait. No. Aiden, please, I need to get that sample. I need-”
His senses tingled with warning and in one swift movement he drew his knife, whirled around to face the incoming attack, and slammed the blade into the chest of a vampire. The body dropped and it didn’t explode into ash. This vampire was free of bloodlust and that was bad, very bad. This drug ring that was going on was well plotted, and well organized.
He turned to find Kelly wide eyed. “You just…you…”
The backdoor burst open and Troy shouted behind him. “Incoming trouble! Move, move, move!”
Anything that got Tory, Mr. Bad Ass himself, this riled up was big and Aiden knew it. He sent Kelly a mental compulsion and put her to sleep. He had her in his arms, stepping over the dead vampire, before her lashes fully closed. He exited the club to find Troy’s truck parked at the doorway. Troy was driving the instant Aiden shut himself and Kelly in the back.
Aiden sunk against the seat, cradling Kelly in his arms when he knew he should set her down. He didn’t. “Talk to me,” Aiden ordered to Troy.
“Six against one. I wasted four of them. Two got away. The detective was one of the two and he’s no good guy. He’s a part of this. I heard the orders he was barking at those bloodsuckers.”
Aiden cursed, for all kinds of reasons, but the most important was lying in his arms. Kelly was in the line of fire. “He could have been undercover.”
“He was trying to kill me,” Troy said. “If that’s undercover, it’s too damn deep undercover to suit me. Mark my word, I saw enough to know that vamp is as high up in the mess as it goes—and that’s a direct path to Andres.”
Aiden went colder inside than he’d been anytime in the last hundred and thirty-two years. He knew his brother and Troy was too certain to be wrong. Kelly was a target of a vampire that was somehow wrapped up in the murder of six girls. And that vampire, was deeply entrenched in her world, which ensured she would stay on his radar. There was no wiping her memories and sending her back to her life, without putting her in harm’s way. Kelly was now in for a wild, bumpy ride and he had a feeling she was going to take him for one too.
CHAPTER FIVE
“He’s coming for her all right,” Troy said, as Aiden settled Kelly on the black leather sofa they’d rented at the same time as the downtown Victorian style house, they now stood inside. “You’re one hundred percent right about that. Either she’s too close to figuring out the secret behind his little blood cocktail, or he’s simply got his sights set on her.”
Aiden’s gaze lingered on Kelly a moment, drinking in the pale perfect skin, her pretty heart shaped face, before he glanced up at his brother. “Then we kill him now, tonight, before I ever wake her up.”
Troy plopped down in a leather chair. “Hey man, I’m always down with killing a few bloodsuckers gone bad, but this dude has been playing mafia and getting away with it. He’s working as a human detective, employing an army of vampires, and he’s now working a drug scheme with a werewolf. We can’t kill him, until he leads us to his minions, and to Andres, or Andres will just move on, and replace him with someone else.”
Aiden’s teeth ground together. “You let him go intentionally.”
“Hell yeah, I did,” Troy agreed. “We have to get Andres.”
“We don’t put innocents in the line of fire.”
“Every ‘innocent’ that crossed Andres’s path gets their throat ripped out.” He sat up, his elbows on his knees. “What’s up with you Aiden? You know the big picture.”
“Since when, is revenge against the werewolf population the big picture?”
“This isn’t about fucking revenge,” Troy spat between his teeth. “This is about saving lives, many lives, not one woman’s.” Troy narrowed his gaze, glancing at Kelly and then Aiden. “Don’t do it brother. Don’t go and get attached to a woman. You and me, we aren’t Evan. We don’t get the happily-ever-after. For us, it always, always ends badly.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Then act like it,” Troy said. “Wake her up and let’s talk to her. She’s the only link we have to Detective Wright and he’s the link to Andres.”
He was right again. Personal feelings got in the way of duty, they got people killed. Aiden pressed his hand to Kelly’s head, finding the memory of the man he’d killed in the bar, and wiping it. He didn’t need her morals, or her fear, getting in the way of keeping her safe. He’d learned his lesson. He followed the memory cleanse with a command to wake up. The instant she blinked, he stood up and walked to the opposite side of the coffee table, putting distance between himself and her, for good measure.