AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Before she could respond, Dante got off the big bed and walked toward the adjacent living room. From behind him, Tess couldn't help admiring the masculine prowl of his body, the sexy network of multicolored tattoos over his back and shoulders shifting gracefully with every rolling stride. He disappeared into the other room, and Tess heard a soft animal whine that she recognized at once.
"Harvard!" she exclaimed as Dante came back into the bedroom, carrying the squirming, adorable little terrier in his arms. "You saved him too?"
Dante shook his head. "I saw him running loose before I found you and brought you here. Once I knew you were safe, I sent someone back out to get him."
He set the dog down on the bed, and Tess was immediately tackled by the perky furball. Harvard licked her hands and face as she hoisted him up for a hug, overjoyed to see him after thinking she'd lost him on the street outside Ben's apartment.
"Thank you," she said, smiling through a sudden mist of tears as the happy reunion continued. "I have to confess, I think I'm totally in love with this little beast." "Lucky dog," Dante drawled. He sat down on the edge of the bed, watching as Tess's chin got a thorough, enthusiastic washing. His expression was too carefully schooled, too grave when her eyes met his. "There are... things we need to talk about, Tess. I had hoped you might never really be part of it, but I keep dragging you further in. After tonight, you need to understand what happened, and why."
Nodding in silence, she let go of Harvard and looked at Dante's bleak gaze. Part of her already knew where the conversation was going--uncharted territory, for sure, but after what she'd seen tonight, Tess knew that things she had long taken for granted as normal and real were somehow thrown off kilter.
"What were they, Dante? Those men who attacked me--they weren't normal men. Were they?"
His head shook vaguely. "No, they weren't men. They were dangerous creatures, blood addicts. We call them Rogues."
"Blood addicts," she said, her stomach lurching at the very idea. She looked down at her wrist, where a bite mark glowed red, but healing, on her skin. "My God. That's what they were doing, drinking my blood? I don't believe this. There's only one name for that kind of psychotic behavior, and it's vampire."
Dante's piercing, unwavering stare wasn't even close to a refutation.
"Vampires don't exist," she told him firmly. "This is reality we're talking about, after all. They can't really exist."
"They do, Tess. Not the way you might have been brought up to believe. Not as undead, soulless demons, but as a separate, hybrid species. The ones who attacked you tonight are the worst kind. They have no conscience, no capacity for logic or control. They kill indiscriminately and will continue to do so if they aren't brought under control soon. That's what I and the others in this compound are here for--to see to it that the Rogues are wiped out of existence before they become a pestilence unlike anything modern humankind has ever seen."
"Oh, come on!" Tess scoffed, wanting to disbelieve but finding it hard to reject Dante's outrageous claim when he had never looked or sounded more sincere. Or more deadly rational. "Are you telling me that you're some kind of vampire slayer?">"I'll be waiting." That incredible warmth was back, Tess mused from within the dark tide that held her. She stretched her senses toward the engulfing heat, toward the wondrous scent and taste of the liquid fire that fed her. Conscious thought seemed to dance just out of her reach, but her nerve endings clicked on like strings of tiny lights, as though her body was slowly thawing, coming alive inch by inch, cell by cell, after a long, cold sleep.
"Drink," a deep voice beckoned her, and she did.
She drew more of the heat into her mouth, swallowing it down in greedy pulls. A strange awakening began somewhere deep inside her as she drank from the source of that powerful warmth. It started in her fingers and toes, then spread up into her limbs, an electricity that hummed through her in undulating waves.
"That's it, Tess. Take more. Just keep drinking, angel."
She couldn't have stopped if she'd wanted to. It seemed as though each sip made her thirsty for another, every swallow only adding fuel to the fire that was building within the very core of her. She felt like an infant at its mother's breast, vulnerable and uninitiated, trusting completely, needing on the most basic level.
She was being given life; she knew this in that primitive part of her mind. She had been near death, maybe close enough to touch it, but this warmth--this dark elixir--had pulled her back.
"More," she croaked. At least she thought she had spoken. The voice she heard sounded distant and weak. So desperate. "More... "
Tess shuddered as an abrupt absence of warmth answered her demand. No, she thought, a dark panic rising with the loss. He was leaving her now. Her protective angel was gone, along with the font of life he' d given her. She moaned weakly, forcing her listless hands to reach out and search for him.
"Dante... "
"I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
The chill vanished as a heavy weight settled in alongside her. Heat warmed her entire length, heat from him as he pulled her up against him. She felt strong fingers at her nape, guiding her head closer to his voice, pressing her mouth to the firm column of his neck. Warm, wet skin met her lips.
"Come here, Tess, and drink from me. Take all you need."
Drink from him? Some fading part of her consciousness rejected the idea as nonsensical, unthinkable, but another part of her--the part that was still spinning wildly in the tide, grasping for solid ground-- made her mouth seek out that which he so willingly offered.
Tess parted her lips and sucked long and hard, filling her mouth with the roaring force of Dante's gift.
Holy. Hell.
As Tess locked her mouth down over the vein he'd opened for her in his neck, Dante's entire body went as taut as a bowstring. The hungry suction of her lips, the silky caress of her tongue as she drew his blood into her mouth and swallowed it, made his cock stand up at attention, a fierce, stone-hard erection like he'd never experienced before.
He hadn't known how intense it would be to let her drink from him so intimately. This was the first time in all his existence that he'd ever given his blood to another. He had always been the taker, feeding out of necessity and often for pleasure, but never with a Breedmate.
Never with a woman who moved him the way Tess did.
