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"Yeah, blood's like that, too. Yours is potent, wolf. But I want something else right now."
A strong hand, more powerful than twenty of the brawny hunter he'd fought, clasped his throat. It tightened just enough to shoot his attention to his cock and make him realize it was stiffening, despite his weakened state. The vampire put his mouth over his.
Rand remembered this. Just before he thought he was going to die. Demanding, uncompromising, unsympathetic. The vampire hadn't given a damn about his condition. He'd taken what was offered and given back. Enough that Rand grudgingly remembered a fleeting spark in his soul, a reaction to finding one damn thing to regret about leaving this life behind.
The vampire's tongue was teasing his, the fangs scraping his lip. Rand growled and tried to pull him down on top of him. He wanted to feel his body against him. But as he did, pain seared through him, like an iron shoved through his thigh and side. He clutched the vampire's bare shoulder, and a growl became a low snarl.
"Yeah, ease back. Might be a little soon to get that aggressive. But you're healing good. The second mark isn't as strong for self-healing as the third, but it gave you the edge you needed to put off death for another day. And I wasn't in the mood to link our souls for all eternity, no matter how great an ass you have."
Rand opened his eyes. They were still in the forest, though a sufficient enough distance from where he'd killed the hunter that anyone coming to look for the man wouldn't stumble on this camp. Not that he suspected that posed a danger to either of them. Between vampire and wolf senses, nothing human had a chance of sneaking up on them.
He vaguely remembered the vampire over him before. Jeans and hiking shoes, a dark-colored T-shirt. The smell of cotton and denim, the leather of his belt, faint soap smells over skin and hair. Earth scent was embedded in the fanged creature, telling Rand he was also a forest-dweller. Most vampires he'd heard about, or sensed when he'd been in the city, preferred to be a shadowy part of the human world to take advantage of the comforts of that civilization. Not this one.
Rand could paint a picture with scent alone, but in his human form he added to it with sight. It wasn't a chore. As he swiveled his gaze in that direction, he saw the vampire wore nothing, making Rand's already dry throat drier, particularly as the male rose and moved to the small fire.
He was tall, tall as Rand. Since all vampires were reputedly a seduction to the senses, it was no surprise to see he was pleasing to look upon. But the sharp need that jammed itself through Rand's balls and up into his cock like a railroad spike didn't want to argue about how much of the desire came from Rand, and how much from the vampire's effect on any humanoid that could feel lust.
He should be near death, with no thoughts to spare on sex. Yet he couldn't take his eyes from calves, thighs, ass, back and shoulders. The muscle groups were a twisting, flowing, rippling sculpture that made Rand want to dig into the clay. Mark it. There was a scar on the vampire's shoulder, an unusual thing, since their self-healing powers were absolute, as far as Rand knew. But it was as if a grenade had been shoved into an open wound and allowed to detonate. The scarring formed a splattering over his shoulders, circling that one deep, oblong scar. It looked like a sun throwing off scattered rays.
The vampire's clothes hung from a tree branch close to a small fire. The T-shirt was a darker shade than Rand remembered. Dampness. Since the vampire had moved Rand, he'd likely stained his clothes with blood, and they'd needed washing. Rand vaguely remembered the digging probe and fiery burn of a knife blade, and suspected the vampire had cauterized the bullet wound after removing the projectile.
He also remembered something odd... It was probably fever, but when the vampire had removed the bullet, he'd cupped his palm over the wound and there'd been something...an energy. Rand knew the touch of what others might call healing magic. This had been sort of like that, but not. He couldn't grasp it. He was still far too fuzzy.
No vampire he'd ever heard about had healing powers, or any magical powers at all. Not like a witch or sorcerer. Vampires seemed too arrogant a race to believe in the power of magic. They believed in their hunting skills; speed, strength, and some ability to entrance their prey, through seduction or other hypnotic means. And--referring back to the arrogance--they believed they were at the top of the food chain in the mortal realms. No argument from Rand...if that conversation didn't involve shifters.
The male turned away from checking the clothes. One glittering eye was visible under a fall of dark hair. It wasn't long, not even quite to his shoulders, but it had an unruliness to it that tempted touch. Rand remembered clutching it to draw him close.
"Mark me, hmm?" the vampire murmured. "So it's that way. Alpha of your pack, aren't you? Making everyone toe the line."
Dylef. Sheba. The pups. Maple, Cira, Teague...Shy.
The pain that stabbed him this time was ten times worse than the throb in his leg and side. A bullet and a knife couldn't compete with the loss.
"Thank..." He cleared his throat. The words were strange in his mouth. He didn't want them to sound human. But there was no other way to communicate what was needed.
"Good now. You can move on."
"Maybe you should say it the way you wanted to say it. 'Go the fuck away.' Right?"
The male came and squatted over him. With Rand on his back, it was a dominant position he didn't particularly care for. A human wouldn't know, not consciously. But from the flicker in this vampire's gaze as Rand stared up at him, the bloodsucker sure as hell understood the cues, and likely demanded submission from anyone that wasn't him. Yeah, that wasn't happening, even if he was wounded.
"Okay. Go the fuck away." He stumbled over the unfamiliar exercise of human speech, but he managed enough to be understood.
Fangs bared in a grim smile. One of them wasn't a fang. Well, it was shaped like one, but it was metal, a sharp, curved point, crudely but effectively wired to the adjacent ones. His inability to retract it was probably what gave his bottom lip the faint scar. It never had the chance to heal before it was cut again, and it had given up and callused over. Rand remembered the sense of it when it was upon his own mouth, an intriguingly different texture.
The vampire had daylight clear blue eyes. They were a striking contrast with the coal color of his brows and hair, dark as the forces behind those eyes, like the storm that had been closing in on them before the hunter came for his supposed prey. That was another reason the vampire might be drying out his clothes. Rand smelled the lingering scent of fallen rain.
His face had the same sculpted quality as his body. Strong, well-formed. All of it had persuaded Rand to touch, to stroke, do what he'd thought was going to be his last act on this cursed earth.
"That's why I said it was your fault you're alive. If you'd just puked up your guts and lost your bowels, like most dying bastards, I would have let you have your merciful end. But you decided to show me just how worthwhile it would be to keep you around."
"You're not keeping me at all," Rand said. He glanced down at himself. "I don't see any chains."
He was as naked as the other male, something that made his brainless cock even more eager, hardening against his abdomen. What the hell? In his current state, the damn thing was going to make him pass out.
The vampire's gaze slid to i
t. Vampires were known for their ambivalence about sexual preference, the sex itself the driving factor, not the gender with whom it was indulged.
Rand would have preferred that, because it could be another step toward treating the male's interest as purely physical, opportunistic. Easier to dismiss. But this vampire looked at him and kissed as if he had a distinct preference for his own sex. Just as Rand did.
"Chains are an intriguing idea," the irritating male commented. "Not out here, though."
Rand narrowed his gaze. "Am I your prisoner, vampire?"
"Not at all." He rose and returned to the fire. For the first time--proving how disoriented he still was--Rand noticed a pair of rabbits spitted and cooking over it.
"Know you prefer it fresh and raw as a wolf, but in your human form I suspected it was best not to take the chance of you getting sick off raw meat. Especially with you already running a fever from those wounds. Like I said, the second mark called you back from death, but it won't heal you without normal bumps in the road for mortal flesh. Though I don't know much about shifter healing ability; if it's any better than human."
"Faster. And our bodies can bounce back from a lot more punishment."
That intrigued look swept him again, and Rand felt more than fever warm him. "I'll keep that in mind," the male said.
At times, his voice was like the wind when it was strong enough to reach the forest floor, moving and twisting through the trees and foliage. At that deeper level, it passed over the fur and through the body, bringing all sorts of messages in its scent.
"You're not my prisoner," he continued. "You can drag yourself off into the woods, make things worse. I'll give you time to do it, prove to yourself how stupid you're being, before I catch up, re-treat your injuries and make you eat something."
