The Dark-Hunters (221 page)

And he would kill anyone who touched his Bride. No one would ever cause her harm. Even if she rejected him, she was still his mate, and he would spend the rest of her life making sure she had anything she needed.

As for Fang, he was safe under the protection of the bears. Vane had no doubt of that.

But Bride …

What should he do? He wished he could remove the mark from both their hands. Of all the times to find a mate, this wasn’t one of them.

If she were Katagaria, he’d only have to wait for her to decide to finish their union. Very few Katagaria females refused their mates. If they did, the male would remain completely impotent until the female died. The female on the other hand would be free to take as many lovers as she liked, but she would never be able to breed children with them.

That was why the males took great care to please their females and to woo them during the three-week mating period.

Although his knowledge of humans was limited, he didn’t think Bride would approve of him flashing himself naked in her bed and then offering himself and his eternal loyalty to her.

It might even scare her.

Not that he should even be thinking of mating with her anyway. He had no idea what kind of children they would produce. What would she do if she birthed a puppy?

At least his human mother had held enough decency not to kill them as pups. She’d cast them off on their father and vanished.

But then, his mother had been Arcadian. She knew and understood what his father had been. And she hated his father for it to this day. She hated all of them for it.

Not that any of this mattered. Vane had to go back and get Fury away from Bride. The wolf was unpredictable at best and deadly precise at worst.

Vane flashed himself into her shop, taking care to choose the closet in the back room where he doubted she would be. It wouldn’t do to frighten her.

He let himself out and went to the back courtyard where he found Fury outside the door in human form.

“What are you doing?” Vane growled. He’d never intended Fury to be human around her.

“Leaving?”

Before Vane could respond, Fury flashed into wolf form.

Bride came into the courtyard a second later.

Vane cursed as he was forced to zap Fury’s clothes into invisibility to keep her from seeing them.

“Oh good, you’re back,” she said with a smile as she closed the door to her shop. “I thought you had fallen in.”

Vane frowned. “Fallen in what?”

“Your brother said you went to the restroom.”

He was even more confused. “My brother?”

“Fury.” Bride looked around. “Where did he go? He was just here guarding the back door while I locked up for a few minutes for lunch.”

“Go with it, Vane,”
Fury said in his head.
“I couldn’t think of anything better.”

He glared at Fury.
“And just why were you in human form around her to begin with, Fury? You were supposed to be a wolf.”

“I panicked. Besides, I wanted to meet her.”

“Why?”

The wolf refused to answer him.
“You know, if I hadn’t turned human, she would have thought you ran off on her without saying goodbye. I can’t exactly speak to her as a wolf, not without her freaking out on both of us.”

“Vane?” Bride asked. “Are you okay?”

Vane narrowed his eyes even more. “Fury had to leave.”
And he better stay gone as a man if he wants to keep breathing.

Fury growled low in his throat.

“Oh,” She looked down and smiled at Fury. “There you are, sweetie. I was worried about you.”

Fury leaped up to put his paws against her breasts and lick her face.

“Yo, down,” Vane snapped, forcing the wolf back. “There’ll be none of that.”

“I don’t mind,” Bride said charitably.

Fury wagged his tail and smiled wickedly, then tried to look up Bride’s dress.

Vane caught him quickly by the neck.
“Stop!”
he snarled mentally to Fury.
“Or I’ll rip your head off.”

Bride frowned at them. “Don’t you like my wolf?”

“Yeah,” Vane said, patting him roughly on the head. “He’s my new best friend.”

“I’m your only friend, dickhead.”

Vane balled his fist in the wolf’s fur as a warning to him. “You know you have to be firm with wolves. Let them know who the alpha is.”

“Your father?”

Vane smacked Fury’s head.

“Ow!”

“Yeah,” Bride said. “That’s what my father says about all canines.”

“Your father?”

She nodded. “He’s Dr. McTierney, the leading expert in Louisiana on dog care. He’s a vet over in Slidell. You might have seen his commercials. ‘If you love your pet, neuter or spay.’ He leads that whole campaign.”

“Really,” he said, grinning at Fury. “Maybe we should make an appointment.”

“Yeah, right. Try it and die.”

Vane clenched his fists as he tried to hide his anger from Bride. He was only one step away from choking the wolf in front of her.

Bride frowned as she glanced at Fury. “Strange…” She reached for his back paw. “I don’t remember him having a brown patch there.”

Vane bit back a curse as he realized Fury wasn’t an identical match for him. Damn, she was observant.

“Maybe you just didn’t notice it before,” he said, trying to distract her.

“Maybe.”

Bride led them across the back courtyard. She opened the door to her apartment and let the wolf in. She paused in the doorway.

Vane leaned his hand against the doorframe above her head and smiled at her. “You’re nervous,” he said quietly. “Why?”

“I’m just not sure what you’re still doing here.”

“I’m talking to you.”

She laughed at that. “You know, I don’t exactly have a manual of etiquette on what to do when a gorgeous guy drops into my life one day, gives me an expensive necklace I’ve been dying for, then we have the best sex of my life, and you vanish. Then pop back in when I need a hero and pay more money than those movers probably make in six months just to help me out. You take me out for a great dinner and then spend an entire night making my head spin. I don’t know where to go from here.”

“I have to say this is a first for me, too.” He reached out and let his fingers rub against the lock of hair lying against her cheek. “What can I say? You’re irresistible to me,” he breathed.

It was hard to stay sane and rational when he looked at her like that. As if he were starving for a taste of her.

“And you’re even more nervous.” He sighed, then stepped back.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “It’s not you. Really. I’m just not used to things like this happening to me.”

“Neither am I.” He dipped his head and kissed her. He savored her taste until he remembered that they had an audience.

Opening his eyes, he saw Fury staring at them inquisitively.

He hated that wolf. Reluctantly, Vane pulled back. “Why don’t you close the store for an hour and take a real lunch with me?”

Bride hesitated, then nodded. Lunch with him would be wonderful. “I think I will. I have some leftover spaghetti in the fridge. We could walk to a store a block away and get some wine to go with it.”

He looked rather uncomfortable with her suggestion as he scanned the yard outside. Was he looking for his brother?

“That would be nice,” he said, but his body language belied the nonchalant tone.

For the first time in her life, Bride had a truly radical idea. She checked her watch. It was almost two-thirty and no one had come into her store for the last half an hour. Friday afternoons were traditionally slow for her …

“Tell you what,” she said before she chickened out. “Why don’t I close up early?”

His gaze heated with interest. “Can you do that?”

She nodded. “Give me a few minutes to do paperwork?”

“Take your time. I’m all yours.”

The look in his eyes told her
exactly
what he meant by that.

Bride bit her lip at his invitation. How often did a woman hear that out of the mouth of a man who looked like this one?

Bride returned to her shop and quickly counted down her register. She did her paperwork while Vane browsed through her shelves.

It was hard to focus on sorting receipts while he was there, distracting her. He had his back to her as he looked through her drawers of rings. He had the nicest rump that had ever graced a man’s backside. Worse, she could see his face reflected in the mirror.

And he could be hers …

Swallowing, she forced herself to fill out the bank deposit slip. He came up behind her as she was putting everything in the large zippered envelope. Bracing his arms on each side of her, he bent down and took a deep breath in her hair as if he were savoring her.

“Have you any idea what you do to me, Bride?”

“No,” she answered honestly.

Vane stood there, his heart pounding wildly. His body hard and aching.

His presence here was madness. He had covered his scent before he appeared here, but Stefan and the others were damned good at what they did.

It wouldn’t be long before they found him.

Of course, so long as Bride bore his mark, she bore his scent, and even if he left her, they were just as likely to pick up that and appear to her as they were to find him.

More so in fact, since Bride didn’t know to hide herself.

He was desperate for a taste of her and he knew she wouldn’t deny him. But he couldn’t take her again. Not unless she understood the full impact of that decision.

And the inherent dangers.

He shouldn’t be here, in human form. But unlike Fury, his stronger incarnation was that of human. It was how he could protect her best.

It also made him even more vulnerable to her.

Leaning over, he brushed the exposed skin of her neck with his lips. “I wish you were mine,” he breathed, inhaling the warm scent of her skin.

Bride couldn’t breathe as she heard the deep, growling tone of his voice.

She felt like this was some kind of strange dream. How could this be real? She leaned back against Vane’s chest so that she could look up at him.

The look on his face seared her.

A playful smile lightened the intensity of his stare. “We took things too fast, didn’t we?”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry for that. When I see something I want, I have a bad tendency to take it first and then think later about whether or not I should have.”

He moved away from her and headed for her door. “C’mon,” he said, indicating the door with his head. “I’ll escort you to the bank and we’ll get the wine.”

She slid off her stool and followed after him. Outside, there was a hint of a chill in the air. And an aura of danger around Vane. She had the feeling that he was paying way too much attention to the streets around them. Every time someone came near, he watched them intently as if expecting them to leap at them.

She made her deposit and then let him choose their wine after they crossed the street and entered a package store on Canal Street. When she tried to pay for it, she could have sworn he growled like an animal at her.

“I’ve got it,” he said.

“You know, I can take care of myself.”

He smiled at that as he took the wine from the clerk. “I know. Where I come from the only thing deadlier than a man is a woman. Believe me, I have a healthy respect for what a pissed-off woman can do.”

Was he talking about the commune again? For some reason she didn’t think so. “Where do you come from?”

“I was born in England.”

Bride paused at that, surprised. But then, Vane had a habit of constantly surprising her. “Really?”

“Aye, luv,” he said in a perfect English accent. “Born and bred.”

She smiled. “You do that well.”

He opened the door of the package store for her without comment.

“Funny,” she said, entering the store. “I never really thought of Englishwomen as particularly vicious.”

He snorted at that. “Yeah well, you never met my mother. She makes Attila the Hun look like a fluffy bunny.”

There was a lot of anger and hurt in his tone and face as he said that. His mother must truly not have much of a maternal instinct.

“Do you ever see her?”

He shook his head. “She made it clear a long time ago that she wasn’t interested in having any sort of relationship with me.”

Bride wrapped her arm around his and gave a light squeeze. “I’m sorry.”

He covered her hand with his. “Don’t be. My kind don’t have mothers like—”

Bride paused in the street. “Your kind?”

Vane stood there in shock at what had slipped out of his mouth. Damn. Bride was a lot easier to talk to than she should be. He was used to being on his guard around people.

“Lone wolves,” he said, stupidly borrowing Fury’s term.

“Ahh, so you’re one of those macho I-don’t-need-no-tenderness types.”

He used to be, but after spending time with Bride …

What he felt for this woman scared the shit out of him.

“Something like that.”

Bride nodded as she started back toward her shop. “So it’s just you and your brother, then?”

“Yeah,” he said, his throat tight as he remembered his sister. “It’s just us. What about you?”

“My parents live in Kenner. I have a sister in Atlanta who I get to see a couple of times a year, and my older brother works for a firm in the business district.”

“Are you close to them?”

“Oh yeah. Closer than I want to be sometimes. They still think they should all run my life for me.”

He smiled. That was how Anya used to feel about him and Fang. It brought a bittersweet pain to his chest. “You must be the youngest.”

“You know it. I swear, my mother still cuts my meat for me every time I go home.”

He was unable to imagine a doting mother like that. It must have been nice to know such love. “Don’t knock it.”

“Most days I don’t.” Bride frowned up at him. “Why do you keep doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Scanning the street like you’re afraid someone is going to jump out at us.”

Vane rubbed the back of his neck in nervousness. He had to give her credit, she really was observant. Especially for a human.