Dare to Believe (23 page)

As soon as he said it, he noticed Lark across the room at a banquette with another woman and four slimy-looking wolves in suits. Taran automatically considered any guy with Lark slimy-looking. These wolves looked like Eurotrash. Eastern European wolves ran drugs and weapons in and out of the country, and SIU suspected they’d expanded into the sex trade. Rich European werewolves frequented Le Monde.

Apparently Lark did, too.

She sauntered toward the bar.

“Shit,” he muttered.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ll be back in a second. Why don’t you mingle.”

“I can do that,” Denardo replied cheerfully.

“What are you doing here?” he growled softly.

Those words, that voice, just hours after the dream, freaked Lark right the hell out. She started so violently her perfectly chilled Cosmopolitan sloshed the front of her dress. Her nipples stood at attention.

He didn’t even notice.

She grabbed a handful of napkins. “Damn it, Taran, what—”

“Quiet,” he said fiercely as he stole her breath with a smile. He never smiled at her like that. He rarely smiled at her at all. She stared up at him, dumbfounded. He clamped a meaty paw on her elbow and dragged her away from the bar toward an empty table.

The dark blue pinstriped suit, a fitted European cut, and the custom-tailored, crisp white dress shirt looked great on his long, muscular frame. Taran didn’t live on his detective salary alone.

“Act like we’re having fun.” Irritable as always, he still wore that stutter-inducing smile. It stopped short of his luminescent green eyes. “Why are you here, and who are those wolves?”

“None of your business…” she grinned gaily, “…and I don’t know.”

A few golden strands of hair drifted across his eyes. He wore it halfway to his shoulders; HPD

grooming regulations exempted werewolves. She always itched to brush his hair aside. One day she’d do it, just to watch him react.

”I’m serious, Lark.”

“You’re hurting me, Taran.”

He let go instantly but continued to stare at her, knowing she’d answer him.

She heaved a dramatic sigh. “I’m here with my friend Eloise, who’s into some Euro werewolf whose name I don’t remember, and he’s with his bros, and they’re all creepy and boring, and one of them keeps trying to pick me up, and after you replace the Cosmo you made me spill, I’m going home. This just is not my night.”

“Are you driving?”

“No, I’m talking to you. Why? Do I look like I’m driving?”

He didn’t laugh. He never laughed.

“El drove. I’ll take a cab home. Where’s my cosmo?”

His sharp cheekbones and strong chin, and the pale, thin scar scoring his left cheek from his ear almost to his mouth, gave him a look of menacing power. That disappearing smile, though, made him look like a fallen angel. A hulking, six-foot-six fallen angel who could change in five minutes in broad daylight—the mark of a powerful alpha wolf.

“Don’t tell anyone you know who I am,” he ordered. “I’m working a case.”

“What kind of case?”

No reply.

“Fine, whatever. I won’t tell anyone I know you.”

He nodded and turned to go.

“Um. Hello?”

He turned back. “What is it?”

“You owe me a drink.”

He pulled a ten from his wallet and held it out, staring at her eyes as he did so. She snorted at the cheap shot power play, but it worked—a human couldn’t maintain eye contact with an alpha.

She looked at the bill in his hand. She didn’t take it. Instead, fueled with courage from her first cosmo, she put her hand on his outstretched arm and leaned in, her head grazing his cheek. Their bodies almost

touched. A werewolf’s normal body temperature was one hundred five point three; for the millionth time in ten years, she fantasized about snuggling up to his warmth.

Her pulse hammered in her throat as she whispered, “Taran? If you want people to think your cousin is a hooker, you could at least pretend I’d get more than ten bucks. Otherwise, go buy me a drink, you lazy bastard.”

He growled low in his throat. She peeked up at him. Taran meant “thunder” in Welsh. It fit him when he looked like this.

“Wait here,” he snarled before stalking off to the bar. The crowd parted for him by instinct, like zebras at a watering hole when the lion drops by for a drink. He returned with her cosmo.

“Thank you, cuz,” she cooed sweetly to his shoulder. New drink in hand, she steeled herself for another excruciating twenty minutes with Eloise and the Euro cheese. Would he watch her walk away? As if.

Think it’s glamorous being a vampire? Think again.

Called by Blood

© 2009 Evie Byrne

The Faustin Bros., Book 1

Alexander Faustin is ready to settle down. He travels from NYC to sunny Colorado to find his destined bride. His delicate mission: to explain to her that vamps exist, that he happens to be one himself, and that he’d like her to be one, too. But the moment he lays eyes on Helena MacAllister, talk is the last thing on his mind.

It’s not like Helena to make out with a stranger on her front porch, much less invite him into her bed.

Somehow Alex makes her feel safe, even while he’s dismantling her defenses. But in the wake of an accident, her faith in him is shattered. She learns her dream lover is a monster.

When a vampire betrays and terrifies his beloved, what can he offer her to make it up? Pancakes, of course. It’s a start, at least. And Alex has to think of the next step quick, because if Helena won’t take him back, he’ll never love again.

Warning: Contains graphic sex scenes, blood play, and one scene of voyeurism. There’s also a scary
part in the middle. The author and her lawyers remind you that this is a work of fiction. In real life, a one-night stand with a stalker is a bad idea, unless the stalker is a vampire, in which case it’s an amazingly bad
idea. (Note: No actual elk were harmed in the writing of this novella.)
Enjoy the following excerpt for
Called by Blood:

She hadn’t been able to concentrate all day. At an important lunch meeting she’d embarrassed herself by spacing out mid-sentence. More than once. After that she’d gone straight to the high school track. That seemed a safe enough place to run. But even running failed to do the trick.

Alexander Faustin just wouldn’t leave her thoughts. It was like she was in heat or something, and as her temperature rose, her intellect dropped by equal degrees. She didn’t want to tangle with him again, but another moonlight talk was tempting. Because as horny as she was, she was also curious. The journalist in her wanted to know more. Why would a man like that stalk her? She had good instincts—not for relationships, admittedly, but for strangers—and he honestly didn’t seem dangerous. If he didn’t mean to harm her, why did he lie to her? Was it a habit of his? Did he get a buzz from the risk? Maybe another talk would help her see the outlines of his subtle insanity. Then she’d feel better about turning him over to the police.

That morning she’d Googled his name, trying different spellings and came up with nothing. A Lexis-Nexis search revealed nothing about Alex or Alexander but did yield some hits on a Gregor Faustin who was some kind of nightclub impresario in New York. A small picture of a man in his thirties or early forties

scowling at a flashbulb accompanied one of the articles. All she could say was that their coloring was the same. A relative?

Hell, she didn’t even know if Alexander Faustin was his real name.

As soon as Lacey left, Helena stepped out onto her balcony and surveyed the back yard.

“Looking for me?”

She yelped. He was on the balcony with her, standing in the shadows.

Helena backed away. “How’d you get up here?”

He advanced, stepping into a pool of light. He wore the long woolen overcoat, the one that had rubbed against her naked body. It was open. Beneath, he wore a black turtleneck sweater, the chunky fisherman kind, jeans and expensive work boots. GQ Italy. He shrugged. “Ladder?”

What ladder?

Helena darted back into the house, slammed the sliding glass door shut and clicked the tiny locking arm into place, thinking that maybe this home-alone thing was not such a good idea after all. She picked up the phone, but didn’t call anyone. Instead, she returned to the door.

He stood just on the other side of the glass, smiling a crooked smile. What beautiful lips he had. Oh God, he was hot. Why did he have to be so hot? He drew his finger along the glass as if he could touch her face through it.

“Helena…” He spoke as if they knew each other, as if he’d been missing her for years. “You shouldn’t be afraid.”

“I don’t know you.” Helena’s voice wavered. She tried to strengthen it. “This is too strange. It’s just not right.”

Yet she wanted to touch him more than anything in the world. Instead she splayed her palm against the glass and he matched it with his own hand, so much bigger than hers. She had thought of those hands all day, how they held her breasts and circled her waist. She’d thought of his mouth on her throat, open and wet.

“It’s an unusual way to meet, I’ll give you that, but that doesn’t make it wrong. What do you want to know about me? I’ll tell you anything.”

The glass muffled his voice a little, made it sound like it was coming from a distance. She didn’t know what else to do, so she thought of a question.

“Well, where are you from?”

“New York. I live in the city.”

Ah ha
.

“What are you doing in Colorado?”

His dark eyes bored into hers, sincere, yet so forceful she lowered her lashes. “I came to meet you.”

“Why?”

“My mother told me to find you. That you’d be my perfect one.”

Mother? Like Norman Bates’s mother? Oh man, that was creepy. “Who is your mother?” she snapped. “And what the hell does she know about me?”

Faustin was a model of patience, standing out there in the freezing cold. It didn’t seem to bother him.

His nose wasn’t even red. And he didn’t seem to mind her shrewish tone either. “My mother’s name is Natalia Grigorevna Faustin.” He ground through those hard consonants like a real Russian. “She lives in Brooklyn. She…well…she dreamed about you, dreamed you and I were meant for each other. It’s sort of an old world thing.”

“And on the basis of her dream, you came here to find me?”

He lifted one shoulder and smiled, as if the whole thing was a little embarrassing, but unavoidable.

“It’s better than internet dating.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’ve had to resort to that.” Helena sniffed, imagining him striding around Manhattan with hordes of Sarah Jessica Parker types staggering after him in their expensive heels.

“My family, our traditions, they mean a lot to me, Helena. I’m ready to settle down and I want to do it in the old way. It worked for my parents.”

“They met by dream?”

He nodded and leaned his head on the glass. “I think my mother dreamed right, Helena.”

The longing in his voice stopped her breath.
His perfect one.
To think that such a thing might exist—a perfect mate. Two halves coming together to make a whole. Never lonely again.

That was delusional thinking. A good relationship was all about hard work, compromise and mutual respect—not magic destiny crap. That’s why happy couples were as rare as hen’s teeth.

She put the phone down and twisted her hands together, trying to think of something else to say when she had all of two brain cells firing. “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

“Two older brothers, Mikhail and Gregor.”

Gregor
. His name really was Faustin, and he really was from New York.

He slid his palm down the glass and straightened up. “Do you have any siblings?”

“No, I’m an only child.”

“Where are your parents?”

“They’re…they’ve passed on. A year ago. This is their house, actually.”
That’s it, tell him you have
nobody.

His brow creased in concern. “So you’re all alone? I’m so sorry.”

The empathy in his voice brought tears to her eyes. The hormones were surging again, making her sappy. Yes, it was hard to be alone. She loved her friends, but they were not family. Family had to put up with you no matter what. She wanted them back. Before she started bawling outright, she changed the subject. “You’re Russian. Your background, I mean?”

“Right. But I was born here.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I trade in foreign currency.”

Whatever that meant, exactly. Helena never had enough money to spare for investment or trading and so paid little attention to the subject. She imagined him sitting at a big table with piles of exotic coins stacked in front of him, even though that was retarded.

“Do you have a card?” she asked. Also retarded. But she wanted to see something solid, something that proved he had a life outside of hanging around her house.

His lips twitched in amusement as he reached in his jeans pocket and brought out a slender wallet.

“Do you want to see my driver’s license? My social security card?” He flashed these things at her, all legitimate looking. He showed her a couple of credit cards, a library card, a subway pass and a Borders gift card in there too, decorated with candy canes. Then he pulled out a business card and pressed it against the glass.

“FFS?”

“Faustin Financial Services. I also do some investment consulting.” He tucked the card in the door frame and left it there like a salesman. “What about you? What do you do?”

“I’m a freelance radio producer. I do a lot of work for NPR.”

“Really? I listen to NPR all the time.”

A public radio fan? Then he must be her life mate. Well, unless maybe he was Garrison Keillor’s life mate.

But he seemed interested, truly interested. “Tell me something you’ve produced that I might have heard.”

“Uh…” Helena’s mind went marvelously blank. It was hard to remember anything when he looked her straight in the eye. A warm fluttering started between her legs
. Oh, jeez.
“Uh, last week they aired a story about the little kid who rode his bike across America…”

“To commemorate his brother’s death? I heard that one.” He had the strangest look to him as he said that. Something like pride. “That was your idea?”