Chapter 6
Pissed off and frustrated by his own weakness where Vashti was concerned, Elijah made no attempt to hide his raging lust from either Vash or Salem.
Instead, he obstinately pumped pheromones into the air around him, permeating the Jeep’s interior until Salem cursed viciously and adjusted himself in his leather pants.
Vash had chosen to take a seat in the back, a mistake that guaranteed the smell of his need whipped across her face and through her hair, carried by the wind surging through the window Salem had opened.
“Cut it out, Alpha,” she shouted, punching her fist into his seat back.
He met her furious gaze in the rearview mirror, his own hard and brittle.
She was as angry as he was; he had made sure of it by reminding her that he’d hunted her kind, that he’d observed and studied their habits and places of congregation in minute detail so he could kill the ones who stepped out of line.
She deserved to be uncomfortable for putting him through this hunger, for making him want her more than he’d ever wanted anything. The moment he’d stroked his tongue across her skin, her taste had exploded across his senses with the force of an incendiary grenade.
There was nothing reasoned or calculated in his response to her. It was pure primal recognition of a unique and potent physical attraction. Lust at first sight, exacerbated by their heightened lupine and vampire natures.
He could still taste her, damn her. Smell her. His palms burned with the need to feel her. Inside, his beast howled with rage to be freed, forcing him to struggle in a way he’d never had to before. Because he…liked her. Crazy as that was. Crazy as she was.
Controlling his baser nature had always been as easy as breathing, but it was exhausting him now.
Wearing him down. Clawing at him from the inside and shredding what restraint he had left after a week of painful blows and savage lows and highs.
She’d witnessed those trials and, in her own way, been an asset to have around while going through them.
He growled. Vashti’s returning feminine hunger was eating at him like a cancer. As tough as she was, he now knew he could make her soft and submissive, and he wanted her like that. Wanted her limp and panting beneath him, completely at his mercy. He could accept nothing less.
The nearly two-hour drive to Shred ended up feeling like two years, and not just for him.
Salem unfolded from the Jeep before it drew to a complete stop and was through the thick metal entrance door in a flash.
Vash was fast on his heels, fleeing Elijah as if the hounds of hell were after her.
When the door slammed shut behind her, he barked out a mirthless laugh.
As if a simple door could prevent what was coming.
If only it were that easy.
Needing to get himself under control before he entered a vampire den, Elijah took his time locking up the Jeep and scoping out the exterior of the unobtrusive building for changes.
He surveyed the immediate area, refreshing his memory of the industrial properties on the periphery that had closed long before the party got started.
He took note of the armed vampires on the roof before they deliberately made their presence known.
They smelled him coming, and because he was spoiling for a fight, he lifted his hand and flipped them off.
One decided to oblige him, leaping agilely from the top of the three-story building and landing in a graceful crouch. The vamp was sleek and sinewy, his world-weary eyes and economy of movement betraying significant age. They circled each other slowly, baring fangs and canines, claws extended.
Neither of them looked away from the other when the door opened, and a masculine voice shouted out, “Dredge! Leave him alone. He’s Vashti’s.”
The vampress’s protection so enraged Elijah that his spine rippled with a partial change. He didn’t fucking need her to clear the way for him. He could damn well do it himself.
“Are you a pet, dog?” Dredge taunted, his amber eyes glowing. “Or a meal?”
Elijah’s mouth curved. “Maybe she’s a lycan’s bitch.”
Dredge lunged. Expecting the reaction, Elijah met the vamp’s incoming face with his fist, hurtling him backward across the parking lot and into the side of a delivery van, creating a massive dent that mimicked the shape of his body.
Shaking the sting out of his fist, Elijah turned toward the open door, his ears trained for the sound of a retaliatory ambush from the others on the roof. But none came, proving the extent of Vash’s power—her word was law for vampires.
Seeing the proof of it made Elijah’s dick impossibly harder, spurring his need for her, which had grown steadily over days of watching her run the show. She wielded power with the same control and skill that she used to wield her katanas, which turned him on as much as her body did.
Once inside the outer door, he encountered a second entrance.
It opened as soon as the first door shut, releasing a flood of pounding technopop music and the rich metallic smell of freshly spilled blood.
The scent of sex engulfed him in a steamy mist, spurring his ferocious mood.
He wanted to fight and fuck with unmitigated ferocity, and the need to do both increased with every second that passed.
Rounding a corner, he entered a massive room filled with writhing vampires.
Some were dancing, grinding their undulating bodies against whoever was close enough.
Others were feeding, their bloody mouths latched on to throats, wrists, and thighs.
Still more were openly fucking, like Salem, who was drilling a vampress from behind as she drank from the femoral artery of a woman spreadeagled in front of her.
The unrestrained hedonism bombarded Elijah’s ravaged senses, the thick humidity in the space almost suffocating him.
Maddened to the edge of insanity, he searched for Vash among the crowd, his beast lunging against the cage of his control, trying to batter its way out at the thought that she might already be spread for someone else.
Leaping onto a tallboy table, he roared, drowning out all sound.
The room froze, the music becoming glaringly loud in the absence of sound.
Then a slender blonde mimicked his leap and gained the bar top.
She ripped her shirt apart and exposed her tits, shaking them with wild abandon and screaming, “Fuck yeah!”
The crowd ignited into a frenzied mass. Drunk on endorphins, they resumed their carnal excess, the pounding bass of the music spurring them like a war drum.
Elijah vaulted onto the second-floor balcony, hunting for his vampress.
Vash entered the third-floor VIP lounge and scanned the room’s occupants with a sweeping glance. She was searching for someone in particular and found him.
He was long and lean. Blond. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his lounging pose was insolence personified.
His chest and feet were bare; his skin pale and smooth.
The antithesis of Elijah. But best of all were the piercings riddling his body—his ears, brows, nose, lips, nipples, navel…
She was certain there would be more in places she couldn’t yet see.
And the carvings in his skin. Intricate designs that had been sliced by a skilled blade and prevented from healing by application of silver-laced cream or shavings.
The man enjoyed pain. Sought it out deliberately and found beauty in it.
And she wanted to inflict pain on someone who could take it and wanted it.
Because she was hurting and infuriated by it.
Because she’d pushed her way through dozens of beautiful, desirable male bodies to reach the lounge, and none of them had moved her or stirred the hunger simmering in her blood.
Because she was dead to every male just as she’d been ever since the day Charron died… every male but one.
“You.” She beckoned her quarry with a crook of her finger.
He straightened with a slow, sensual smile and came to her with a leisurely, confident stride. Reaching her, he took her in from head to toe with a covetous glance, then licked his lower lip. “I was beginning to think you’d never come for me.”
Bored already, she raised her brows. “Oh?”
Tilting his head, he exposed his neck…and the tattoo that was written there with silver-tainted ink: vashti, bite here.
A shiver moved through her at the craziness of the act. They’d never met, yet he’d marked himself as her property.
Of all the men to meet her criteria for the night, she had to pick a groupie, one of the far-too-many minions who were aroused by the thought of being a blood slave to one of the Fallen.
She almost waved him away—there was enough crazy in her life as it was.
Then she heard Elijah’s roar, felt it vibrate through the walls and rattle the bloodstained glasses on the tables.
The fierceness of the desire that shot through her made her sway on her feet, as if she was hardwired to answer that dominant call.
She didn’t have time to be discerning. She needed blood to manage her desire for Elijah, and she needed it now.
Knowing she had maybe five minutes at most before the lycan worked his way through the crush of bodies on the stairs to get to the third floor, Vash shoved the vamp into a chair and circled him, grabbing his jaw from behind and yanking it out of the way to expose his neck.
She’d prefer his wrist, to keep it impersonal, but she needed to be quick, and nothing beat an arterial gush for speed.
Her fangs descended, her gaze riveted to the thick, pumping vein at his throat.
As her stomach gnawed in hunger and dizziness swept through her from the need to feed, the lounge door was ripped off its hinges and thrown over the balcony into the teeming mass of vampires below.
Elijah filled the threshold, his body big, hard, and virile. His irises glowed in the shadows cast by the muted wall sconces.