Beautiful Danger

Chapter 14

Hearing a knock at her back door, Lark shoved up from the kitchen table, her runny eggs and crunchy bacon finished, and rushed through the bedroom. Quickly she opened the door and, though she wanted to beat her fists against the idiot vampire’s chest for putting them both in danger, instead she received Domingos’s hug and they stood inside the threshold, silently holding each other. He folded her into his shadow with an ease that made her feel as if she were a natural edge to his darkness, and their bodies melded as if the earth’s magnetic forces demanded nothing but.

Was this love? Not so quickly. And certainly she did not have room in her bruised heart to love another so soon after...

Maybe? It felt different this time around, this relationship with a man. Not forced, though certainly strange. Who could know if she’d find love a second time? Or if perhaps she’d already stumbled into it.

“I told you not to come here,” she finally said. “The Order is watching me. Stupid vampire. I would have returned to your home. And the sun is out!”

He tapped the goggles around his neck. And he did have a hood pulled down low over his forehead.

“You can’t cover all your skin. And there aren’t enough shadows on the rooftops during the day.”

He revealed the back of his hand. The skin had burned red and blistered. “Worth it to be close to you.”

“Don’t say things like that, Domingos. My God, you are a masochist.” She pressed her head to his shoulder, just glad he was in one piece and close enough to hold. He was moving far too fast in the emotional arena. Or was she? “You’re not falling in love with me, are you?”

“I don’t think I know what love is.”

“What?” She studied his eyes but found no tease or coyness in them. “You must have been in love. At least once?”

He shook his head. “Yes, once, as a mortal. It was a yearlong thing. She dumped me for a guitar player. It’s always the rock stars who get the girls. But nothing like the love you had for your husband. Such a love must have been very strong for you to commit so many acts of murder.”

She didn’t like hearing it put that way. She had slayed vampires. That was not murder, but rather, removing a dangerous force from society. Someone had to do it.

“Everything I have done has been for him.”

Except when it came to getting her own needs met. Which she had indulged all day and last night. When had she decided to stop doing the right thing? It felt...not wrong.

Could the wrong she and Domingos had created possibly be right?

“You know he’s gone, Lark?”

“My husband? Of course I do. I told you I’d said goodbye to him while in the chapel. What are you implying?”

“Only that he doesn’t know what you’ve done for him. Vengeance doesn’t matter to anyone but you.”

“I can’t believe you said that. You can’t possibly know what I’m feeling. How my heart feels as though it was torn from my chest. How I’ll never, ever find the happiness I once had.”

“How if you speak the impossible sadness you felt, then it becomes ingrained in your being. You are making yourself unhappy, Lark.”

“Don’t give me psychological bullshit. I can’t believe this. An insane vampire is telling me how to think.”

He grabbed her by the arm. “Stop using your loss as a shield, Lark. Just let me inside you.”

She stepped back from him, defensive now, and eyeing the titanium stake she kept at her bedside. Yet the need for protection was a lie she immediately recognized. “I’ve done that already. Let you in. In more ways than one.”

“He’s still there, though.”

She nodded. “He—Todd—will always reside in my heart. We were married. I was going to have his child. Can you understand that? But I’ve started to let him go.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. It helps that you’re telling me these things, though. But you said you were going to have his child?”

Hell, she’d let that slip. Lark sighed. Hadn’t been a slip. She needed Domingos to know her truths, all of them.

“I need to tell you why I married Todd, even knowing he was a hunter.”

“You knew that about him?”

“Yes, he never hid his job from me. Though, it was difficult not to think him a wacko, initially. I mean, vampires?”

Domingos raised a brow.

“Come on, you’ve always been myth, legend. But I eventually believed Todd. How could I not when he’d come home with bruises and injuries and shown me the stake? Anyway, we’d been dating four months when I found out I was pregnant. I was on the Pill.”

“Ah.”

“He did the right thing and asked me to marry him. I didn’t want to marry because of that, but when you’re only twenty-four and pregnant, and the father of the baby asks you to marry him, it’s...a relief.”

He met her eyes, and she could sense his question.

“That’s an awful way to put it, but truthfully, that was my first reaction. Relief that I wouldn’t have to do the single mother thing. I did love him.”

Domingos leaned against the bed and bowed his head. “But you have no child?”

Lark breathed in deeply through her nose and forced out what she’d not spoken about. Ever. “I miscarried two months later.”

She couldn’t cry about it now. All her tears had been ransomed during Todd’s captivity. And that sweet little baby that she never got to hold was now with Todd in heaven, she felt sure of that.

“I was never prepared to be a mother, but I’d accepted it, and was looking forward to it. Had even bought a little green outfit with puppy prints on the toes and ears on the hood. I gave it to charity afterward. Had to get it out of the house.”

She sighed, remembering the pain that had made her shiver while standing in line to drop off the bag of baby clothes at the charity thrift store. Nothing like a kick from a vampire to the gut. That pain had been marrow-deep. It had scarred her, surely.

“It was easier for Todd,” she said, forcing the doors closed on that memory. “We never talked about it. And he immersed himself in the Order.”

“You two never discussed it?”

She shook her head. She’d never been good at feelings, and sitting down and looking Todd in the eye and discussing things that made her sad, or even happy, had been set aside. And he’d mirrored her reluctance, which had probably made it easy for him to push away his grief, or at least, not share it with her.

“I’m sorry,” Domingos offered quietly. “That child’s soul was not ready for this world.”

She’d not heard it put in such a manner, and for some reason, his simple explanation lightened her heavy heart. “You think so?”

“I believe in a higher power, Lark, that grants life and takes it away. The universe has a plan for us all. Doesn’t mean the plan isn’t sometimes going to suck, but, well, there you go.”

“Like you being turned to vampire?”

“I would never compare my misfortune with your loss, Lark.”

“Thank you.”

And that was all she needed. Buoyed by her confession, Lark stroked the bite mark on her neck. The scab was gone and the skin almost smooth. “Our lovemaking has become more than sharing torments, yes?”

“I had hoped so. I make love to you for pleasure, Lark. Nothing but.”

“Me, too. But you need to know, I...wasn’t using birth control that first night we had sex. I am now. But, uh...”

He nodded and shrugged. “Vamps can get mortal women pregnant.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t even thinking.”

“It’s all right, Lark. Really. If it happens...” He smiled, almost too big for a man who should be pissed at her reckless sexual slip. “We’ll deal with it then.”

“I want to have a family someday. But the right way. You know?”

“I understand. Me, too. I’d love a family.”

She took his hand, grateful for his understanding. “I’m just— It freaks me that you’d risk so much by coming here. I don’t want to lose you—” Too was the word she couldn’t say.

So much she had lost.

He nodded. “But I can’t promise it won’t happen again. If I could keep you with me all the time, then there would be no need to go looking for you. You left me a note.”

“I’m sorry, but I was hungry.”

“I’ll buy food to keep in the fridge for you.”

“I would appreciate that.” She gathered her hair with her hands and, pulling it into a ponytail, then released it over her shoulders. “So, we’re going to do the couple thing, eh?”

“Can we?”

“I’d like that. Does that mean you’ll allow me to accompany you when you track the rest of pack Levallois? I could be your sidekick. I pack a mean left hook, and there’s not a werewolf alive who can stand up straight after my kidney kick.”

“No.” He strolled toward the bed and with a jump landed on it, sitting. The vampire splayed out his hands before him in surrender. “I’m done.”

Lark lifted an eyebrow, her heartbeat thundering in anticipation. “You mean it?”

“You’ve shown me that there is no need to continue such a destructive path. I have so much to live for now. That is...” He winced and bowed his head, looking aside. “If you could commit to the two of us.”

Lark rushed to him before her training could stop her from doing something stupid with the perceived enemy. “I commit. I want us. I need us.”

“For more than what we get from each other,” he tried. “You know? We both feed a sort of twisted need for what you call is wrong. Right?”

She relented to agree with a nod. No way to put it in kinder terms. They were both damaged. The means they sought to soothe that damage were greedy and selfish. Yet beneath their quest for something better, something right, lay the roots of true need and trust.

“So let’s move beyond,” he suggested. “We’ve both been through a lot. We understand each other’s need for trust and acceptance. We also know to dwell in the past, and its horrors will never allow us to step forward. Can we stay in the pleasure we seek, and not stray back to the pitiful helping-each-other-ignore-their-torments stuff?”

“I like the sound of that.”

“We’ve put everything out there, yes?”

“Yes. You know all my truths now.” She pressed a palm over his heart.

“You know I can feel you touch my soul? I want to go soul-deep with you, Lark. Beyond the idiot revenge and surface labels of hunter and vampire.”

“Can you? Will the crazies in your head allow that to happen?” She tapped the goggles he wore about his neck. The sheers before her window let in subdued light, but she suspected the UVs couldn’t permeate as strongly and not to the distance where he sat on the bed. “Because if you can, I’m there for you.”

“That makes me happy. I need a happy.”

“We both do.”

“Then let’s figure out a new kind of happy that includes the two of us being right and not wrong.”

“Agreed.”

She kissed him soundly, lashing her tongue out to dance with his. Who would have thought this dark soul could lighten hers? She wasn’t going to question it anymore.

“And now we seal that agreement with some sex, yes?” Domingos’s eyes glittered expectantly.

“You’re wily, vampire, but I can’t think of an argument against some sheet twisting.”

Lying back on the bed, he pulled her down onto him. “You want to do this with the goggles, or can the curtains be pulled tight enough to give me darkness?”

“The goggles are kind of kinky.”

“You like kinky?”

She teased her tongue along her lower teeth, tilting her head in a wondering gesture. “I think I could do the kinky, but not so much if it brings up a screaming vampire. I’ll pull the curtains. But don’t toss the goggles, lover.”

* * *

After a delicious session of licks, tickles and moans on the bed, Lark preceded Domingos to the shower to warm up the water. She stood before the stream, the tepid water beating down upon her breasts, head tilted back and eyes closed.

She slicked her fingers between her thighs, soaping up the achy sweet folds that her lover took pleasure in worshipping. He’d grazed his fangs along the sensitive skin there and it had brought her to some kind of crazy, screaming orgasm. Because the fear that he’d hurt her had mingled with the trust that he would not, and once again, she had easily released, falling into his arms. The sanctity of Domingos’s darkness.

He’d bitten her once, and promised not to do it so often. The man was good on his word. But for the same reasons she still wasn’t clear on what freedom meant to her, she also felt being bitten wasn’t so awful as a knight should believe.

Suddenly over the drum of water she heard the thumping sound of a familiar melody. Domingos was humming something—the theme from Psycho?

He tore back the shower curtain and at the sight of the naked man standing there with goggles over his eyes, Lark let out a nervous scream, then punched him on the shoulder as her fear gave over to relief and laughter mingled the two of them together beneath the warm water.

“Scared you.” He tossed the goggles out onto the bathroom rug, then encircled her around the waist.

“I do not like horror movies,” she said. “They scare the crap out of me.”

“Yet being this close to a man with fangs does not?”

“I can deal with the movies about vampires and werewolves. They are—used to be—fiction. Something I know could never hurt me. It’s the serial killers and knife-wielding clowns that can show up on a girl’s doorstep any night and take her out that frighten me.”

“That is some amazing rationality.” He spread his mouth wide to give her a corny vampire snarl. “Not even a little scared?”

“No fear.”

“Right, only falling and apparently serial killers and clowns. I’ll protect you from the serial killers, but the clowns—eh—they freak me out, too.”

“Guess we’ll never go on a date to the circus.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Mmm...” She gripped his thick cock, which was hard as a fighting baton and no less a weapon when she considered how having it inside her utterly devastated her need to stay strong and not surrender. “I’m not afraid of this.”

“I should hope not.”

“It’s big and hungry. I like it when you shove it inside me and pump your hips fast. Let me show you how much I love this guy.”

She slid down to her knees before him and pressed his hardness aside her cheek, looking up at him with a sweet smile.

The vampire shivered. “Lark, you know how to make a man happy to be alive.”

Taking him into her mouth, she quickly brought him to orgasm, and then he sank onto his knees and pulled her to him. Beneath the rain, the vampire and the hunter cast all their fears aside because they knew that as long as they were together, nothing could harm them more than the damage they had already incurred.

* * *

“You didn’t find LaRoque?” Rook beat a fist against the desktop.

Gunnar Svedson did not flinch. That he’d been given this assignment because the Order’s best had failed had been an incredible coup. After a pitiful month of no kills, he needed to prove himself. And he would.

“He’ll come out tonight, I’m sure of it. I will not fail where the female knight did.”

Rook eyed him out the corner of his eye. The man had a way of looking at him that made Gunnar wonder if he could see things even he wasn’t aware of about himself. “You don’t like women much, do you, Gunnar?”

He wasn’t sure what Rook implied, but he wasn’t willing to provide too much information about the way he viewed the world. Women were meant to cook and clean, not slay. Never again would he make the mistake of trusting one enough to call his wife. He’d heard the rumors among the knights about his former relationship. He couldn’t deny them.

“I will show you who is the best,” he said. “I’ve got Pavel keeping an eye on Lark, as you requested. She’ll slip up.”

“Slip up? You suspect her of...?” Rook left the question hanging.

“I have to wonder why the Order’s best wasn’t able to kill one miserable vampire who is supposed to be crazy and certainly should not be able to hold his own against a skilled fighter.”

“She’s not involved with LaRoque,” Rook offered as if he knew it for certain. Yet the man looked aside, the muscle in his jaw pulsing tensely.

Never thought about that one until now, eh? Gunnar thought.

Well, he never missed an angle, and until this one had been proven wrong, he was going to stay on the female hunter’s ass. In fact, he was headed to her place right now. She would speak to him, whether or not she liked it, and he would get the truth from her, by fist or by blade.

* * *

“I like this,” Domingos said as he weighed the brass knuckles with the blade in his palm, then slipped them over his fingers. “I have to get something like this.”

“They’re actually made from silver, not brass. Excellent werewolf deterrent. You can have it. A gift to my lover.”

His eyes twinkled. Lark giggled. “And here I thought men preferred ties or sporting equipment.”

“I’ve always sucked at sports.” He pulled up his leather pants and threaded his arms through his shirt.

The knock at the front door hastened Lark as she pulled up her pants and tugged on her shirt. She shoved Domingos’s goggles into his hands as he was dressing, and pushed him toward the back door.

“Leave! Get out of here, quick!”

“You have no idea who is at the door. It could be a neighbor—”

“I don’t know my neighbors and I don’t have any friends.” She didn’t blanch at his pouting “that’s so sad” look. “It could be Rook returned, or even that bastard Pavel who’s been tailing me. If you care about us, then go!”

With a decisive nod, Domingos opened the back door. Evening had fallen and he didn’t need the goggles, which he strung around his neck. He grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her in for a quick but searing kiss. Lark slid a leg up his, holding him to her even as she wanted to push him away. His dangerous allure pushed her to risk everything.

And if not everything, then what was life worth?

“Don’t go to the roof,” she said. “I don’t want to risk a chase. Get out of here while you have a chance.”

She shoved him outside and closed the door.

The knock came again, pounding this time. Lark rushed to it, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she did. Removing all evidence of the vampire. Never could she erase him from her soul. They’d revealed all to each other and had accepted without judgment.

“He is my freedom,” she whispered with sudden clarity.

But she didn’t have time to linger on the revelation. When Lark opened the door, she saw the hand sweep forward with a dark cloth that landed on her face. She gasped in a strong chemical scent. Her brain dizzied and her eyelids fluttered.

* * *

Domingos tracked over the roof of Lark’s apartment building from the back to the street side. She should know better that he would not take the streets home. She should also know better that he wouldn’t leave until he could be assured things were well with his girl.

Something didn’t feel right. As he’d sensed her heartbeat while lying on top of the chapel, he sensed it now. It pounded too rapidly.

Scampering across the roof to the street side of the building, he crouched at the edge. A werewolf in human form emerged from the lobby of the building, carrying an unconscious hunter over one shoulder.

The wolf’s mangy scent curdled his gut. “Levallois,” he growled.

Leaping, Domingos landed on the ground solidly on both bare feet. Without pause, he swung his fist, clutched about the bladed silver knuckles Lark had given him, and put it deep into the werewolf’s neck. Hot blood sprayed his face.

The wolf dropped Lark onto the sidewalk and grasped his bleeding throat.

Domingos figured the limo they stood next to had been waiting to drive off with the wolf and his captive. He opened the back door, spied Principal Caufield’s horrified face, and shoved the dying wolf into the backseat.

“Next time I’m coming for you,” he said, and slammed the door. He didn’t need to attack Caufield. He’d just delivered the pack principal a nice juicy bit of horror.

Picking up Lark, Domingos ran down the street and made a running leap to land on a one-story rooftop. Behind him the echo of a werewolf’s howl punctuated the moon he ran toward. The silver had entered the wounded wolf’s bloodstream and had quickly rushed through, resulting in an exploded moon-dog. That was going to be hell to get out of the interior, not to mention all those little crannies like air vents and speakers.

Drawing Lark up to his chest, he scented the strange chemical odor on her breath. They’d chloroformed her.

Why would the wolves go after a hunter? They’d hired her. Had they intention to punish her for a job gone bad? That wasn’t their place; it should fall to the Order of the Stake to discipline their own.

Whatever was going on, one thing was clear: she wasn’t safe in the city. The wolves would not drop her scent until they were satisfied she’d been punished properly.

Sensing he was being followed, Domingos jumped to another rooftop and sought a dark neighborhood to lose the tail in.