Ascension Page 12

  She couldn’t feed. Couldn’t become the Dark Breed she’d been. It had taken years of agony to control the thirst, the agonizing addiction for living blood. She’d rather die than go through that again.

  “Drink, damn it.” He flexed his fist to make the blood flow faster. “It’s the only way.”

  Blood filled her mouth and spilled down her throat. She coughed against the burning taste of alcohol as her throat closed around the thick drink. She fought against him like a drowning victim fighting the waves for air. Years of suppressed need flooded her. Kyana gave in. She gripped his wrist in both hands and drank deeply.

  She didn’t know how long she fed with her gaze locked on his, his body swaying with each suckle. Her mind struggled to untangle his jumbled thoughts from her own. Between the pain and the thirst and the infusion of the booze he’d consumed making her head spin, she couldn’t make sense of anything she heard or felt. She gave up trying and simply let his blood begin healing her wounds.

  When she’d satisfied her need, she eased her grip. “Sleep,” he mumbled, to himself or to her, Kyana didn’t know. He covered them with the satin bedspread, lay beside her, and rested his arm over her waist. “Sleep.”

  For the first time in her Vampyric life, Kyana did as she was told without argument.

  The loving gaze staring back at Kyana in her dreams wasn’t that of a lover. It belonged to a father not born of blood, but of heart. As Kyana slept, Ryker’s blood soared through her veins, easing both her external wounds and the agonies she’d carried with her for centuries. The dream took her back to Istanbul and to her human body where Henry, her Sire, knelt beside Kyana’s canopied bed and fed her from his wrist. His black eyes locked on hers, screaming a silent apology for what he was about to do, as her broken, raped body lay exposed before him. He’d tried to cover her with his jacket, but the bitter winds had still ripped through her shutters and torn at her abused, twenty-year-old flesh.

  It hadn’t been the first night the sultan had raped her. No, he’d taken that liberty on their wedding night—Kyana’s fifteenth birthday. But this night, the rape had extended into the wee hours of morning and had left her all but dead. Henry had found Kyana in the stairwell outside Mehmet’s private chambers and had carried her so tenderly to her own that even now, while she slept, the tears of gratitude were just as real. Her own father had never been so kind, so tender. From that second, Henry became Kyana’s family, her heart. She would have thrown herself from her window had he asked it of her.

  Her dream filled with tension as the taste of Henry’s blood then mingled with the taste of Ryker’s now. The Lychen in her came alive. The Vampyre in her soul screamed out to feed. She’d fed and found revenge in one evening, leaving behind a carnage in Mehmet’s palace that had Turks everywhere speaking her name in fear for decades to come. She’d gone from a naïve human child to the bogeyman that had prompted children to sleep. The cautionary warning for young ones not to enter forbidden woods. The monster in their closets.

  “They know nothing of what you will be, my Kyana,” Henry had said. “I’m not merely Vampyre, Kyana. I am rare in my blend of bloods. That same blending now lives in you. Half Vampyre. Half Lychen. The beast in you will one day be tamed and they will still never see you for more than a monster. I will go to my grave sorry for what I have done to you.”

  “What you have done? You have given me life. True life. Where I will never be at the mercy of another. Henry . . . Father . . . you have given me freedom.”

  Henry’s long brown hair fell over his face as his worried gaze watched Kyana feed. “There is no freedom in what you have become. You will search until death has truly found you, Kyana, and unless you are far luckier than I have been, that search will prove fruitless and painful.”

  Kyana had smiled, had thought him to be foolish. “I am Vampyre. I will want for nothing.”

  “We are also Lychen. The restlessness of that half will never be content until you find the one meant for you. You will forever be prisoner to it. Do not delude yourself that you are free.”

  But Kyana hadn’t listened. Lychen or not, she’d never again become the property of another man. Not in the name of law, and most certainly not in the name of love. She took one last look into Henry’s eyes and reached for him, needing to hold him, to remember a father’s touch. But as her fingers drifted through his ghostly form, she bolted awake and stared wide-eyed at her bedroom ceiling.

  On trembling legs, she made her way to the bathroom, casting a glance over her shoulder to make certain she hadn’t wakened Ryker. He still slept peacefully, his rhythmic snores the only sound in the house. She locked the bathroom door, dropped her towel, and draped herself in her long, red robe before collapsing onto the edge of the tub. Her body convulsed as she realized what had awakened her.

  Fear.

  The expectation, the waiting, the dread of what was to come, kept her from leaving the room.

  What have we done?

  That dream had reminded her of the pain that had come with Turning, the agony of learning not to feed in order to tame the beast Henry had created that night. She was healed. She’d fed from Ryker, and by doing so, she had to have released the monster within her that had lain dormant for eighty years.

  She tried to focus on the horrible paisley wallpaper she hadn’t yet replaced, but the harder she stared, the more the walls threatened to close in on her.

  An image of Icky struck her like a fist to the gut. Deformed. Demonic. The most inhuman, unhuman thing she’d ever seen. That was what lived inside her. Diluted but there.

  Moving to the mirror, she checked her reflection. Her small canines still hadn’t elongated into sharp, piercing daggers. Her eyes hadn’t dilated to all black. She held up her hands. Her carefully trimmed nails hadn’t stretched and grown into long, deadly weapons. She looked exactly as she had for the last eight decades.

  It made no sense.

  She’d fed from human, Vampyre, Witch, even a demon or two in her one hundred plus years as a Dark Breed before joining the Order. Each time she’d taken blood, the change had been immediate. Each time she’d become stronger, faster . . . deadlier.

  She closed her eyes, remembering the last time she’d tasted warm, fresh blood. It had been three weeks after Henry’s death. The Van Helsing wannabe who’d taken Henry’s life had begged for his own. His request, much like the pleadings of her Sire’s, had fallen on deaf ears. She’d been left alone then, orphaned. So she’d joined the Order of Ancients and tried to make a new family within it.

  Working for the Order, even with its rules and dislike for her kind, gave her that peace she’d searched for when she’d gone after her Sire’s murderer.

  She’d made her vow to the Order not to feed again. She’d gone through months of the most painful withdrawal imaginable. It had taken charms and potions and a full year to tame the instinct to feed, and she’d sworn she’d never put herself through that again.

  Now that she had, what the hell was taking so long?

  Maybe it was the alcohol in Ryker’s blood. Vampyre couldn’t get drunk, but maybe they shared the effects when consuming blood from someone who was. Her head swam and her belly swirled and her mouth still tasted the strong booze he’d drunk before she’d found him. Maybe it slowed the change.

  Sitting back down on the edge of the tub, she wrapped her arms around her belly. Waiting. Dreading. Fearing.

  Hoping.

  Maybe it wasn’t the booze at all. Maybe it was just Ryker. He was a demigod, and she’d never fed off anything like him before. Maybe she was as immune to him as she’d been to Icky.

  Strange pinpricks danced across her skin. She rushed back to the mirror.

  Nothing.

  The pinpricks traveled up her legs and arms, making the hair on her nape stand on end. Ryker. She was feeling him. Sensing him.

  Kyana stared at the closed door. He’d awakened and was worrying about her.

  She rubbed her eyes, trying to block out his thoughts a
nd emotions. So the connection of feeding off him was there. Why this when none of the other changes had happened?

  His soft rap on the bathroom door made her jump. She didn’t move. Didn’t bid him entrance.

  He opened the door, knelt in front of her, and rested his hands on his knee. “You okay?”

  She forced a smile. “I will be.”

  “You’re not going to change, Ky. Come back to bed.”

  He sounded so sure, she couldn’t help but believe him. Relief made her knees tremble. “Thank you. For what you did, I mean.”

  He pulled her into his arms and guided her out of the bathroom and back onto the plush carpet of her bedroom. “I wouldn’t have had to do anything if I hadn’t put you in danger in the first place.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  He placed her gently on the bed and watched until she lay down. Once she was situated, he lifted the sheets and tucked them under her arms before collapsing beside her. He yanked her to his body, forcing her onto her side so he could scoop her backside against his hips.

  “What time is it?” She yawned, suddenly exhausted now that her worry had passed.

  “Probably around noon.” His breath washed over her hair and neck. “Rest until sunset.”

  “We really don’t have time—”

  “Feeling up to shifting to escape the sun already, then?”

  The sensitive skin of Kyana’s tender toes brushed Ryker’s bare foot. “Maybe not.”

  His hand rested lightly on her waist as though it belonged there, as though they really did like each other.

  “I do like you, Kyana.”

  Kyana scowled. “Get out of my head.”

  “Go to sleep, Dark Breed,” he said, his voice drugged with sleepiness, his insult soothed by the faint grin she felt pressed to the back of her neck.

  Ryker waited until Kyana drifted to sleep before he allowed himself to close his eyes. Instinctively, he tightened his hold around her waist and pulled her to him. Her dream had been as vivid in his mind as it had been in hers. The connection between them would fade soon, but he hadn’t just bitten her this time. This time, he’d fed her. By mingling their blood, he’d been given a taste of her past that made him ache to protect her as only one other being ever had.

  He’d felt Kyana’s Sire’s love for her. Had felt the fatherly affection. Had suffered Kyana’s painful thoughts regarding a true father who had terrorized her childhood until he’d sold her to the sultan to become wife number seventeen. The painful memory of the sultan’s acts of violence and the cruelty toward Kyana doled out by the other wives and the sultan’s mother.

  How had she lived through all of that and still managed to remain the strong, independent woman she’d become?

  The restlessness of that half will never be content until you find the one meant for you.

  Her Sire’s words were stuck on replay in Ryker’s head. He knew exactly what Henry had meant by that. Kyana’s Lychen half would never be at peace until it found its life mate, and from the moment he’d met Kyana, Ryker had felt that connection to her. It scared the shit out of him. His instinct was to run like hell and never look back. But running would accomplish nothing. He was bound to be with Kyana or die alone.

  The Fates had dealt him a sour hand.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The soft snore woke Kyana from a deep, fitful sleep. She pried open her eyes and stared into the darkness of . . . her bedroom. A moment of panic seized her as she tried to remember how she’d gotten there, in her bed, draped in her red robe and satin sheets. The snore sounding beside her brought a rush of memories that forced her eyes closed once again.

  Ryker. The sun. Ryker’s protection. The pain. Ryker’s blood.

  She jerked upright, eagerly searching her hands for claws, her tongue flicking over her fangs.

  Still nothing.

  She was safe. Ryker hadn’t lied. The change was not coming.

  “Praise Zeus,” she whispered, unable to fight the grin creeping onto her face.

  Ryker had managed to save her by feeding her . . . without Turning her again. Halle-freakin’-lujah.

  She tested her toes, her fingers, her arms. No pain. She was whole again. Strong again.

  She rolled over and placed herself nose-to-nose with Ryker and found his silver eyes staring back at her.

  “Hi,” she whispered, focusing on the thick, black lashes lining his eyes.

  “Is it sunset already?” He yawned and twisted to look out her window, but their shuttered darkness offered him no answer. There wasn’t a single clock in the room. The only way to determine the time was to push open the shutters and peek outside, or walk downstairs to find the clock. She was too cozy to do either; too afraid the slightest movement would send Ryker skittering back into hands-off mode.

  Instead, she reached out with her Vampyric senses, attempting to read the path of the sun. “Soon, but not yet, I think.”

  Ryker flopped onto his back and folded his arms beneath his head, studying the ceiling. “Nice place. Not at all what I expected.”

  The sudden absence of his hand on her hip and his breath on her face made her cold.

  “Expecting a graveyard?” she only half teased.

  She studied him, the cleft in his chin, his dimpled cheeks. “Maybe.”

  She tucked deeper beneath the blanket and tried to see her home through his eyes. She’d chosen the old bed-and-breakfast as her home because of the history she’d seen within it. It had reminded her of the eighteen hundreds when she’d been living it up as a hunting Vamp. She’d picked out the navy blue shutters that blocked the sun from every single window on the two-story structure as the charm of the house had given way to necessity. She adored the little home she shared with Haven.

  She smiled and raised herself up on one arm. “If it makes you feel better, it was a funeral home more than a hundred years ago. They used to stand up open coffins downstairs and place them in the windows so passersby could see the work they’d done on corpses.”

  He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, his brow raised. “Morbid.”

  Shrugging, Kyana lay back down. “Maybe, but it’s eccentric. Suits me fine.”

  He slipped his fingers beneath her arm and lifted it so they could both see. The flesh was pink like raw chicken, but the charred black scales that had covered it at daybreak were gone.

  “How do you feel?”

  As though it contained a mind separate from her own, she watched her hand lift and her finger trace the bridge of his nose. The gesture was so human, so normal, it was as though she hovered outside her body, watching herself do something so daring as to touch him so gently.

  “Pretty fantastic, actually . . . Ryker?”

  “Hmm?”

  Rather than brush off her touch as she’d expected him to, he closed his eyes. His dark lashes fanned out atop his skin, feathery and beautiful. Would they tickle the tip of her finger if she continued her daring ministrations?

  “What did you mean about me making you crazy?” She’d known the question was on the tip of her tongue. Known she was drowsy enough to voice it. Sadly, her confidence died the moment it flitted out of her mouth and drifted through the air toward his ears.

  He slowly opened his eyes to stare at her. The pewter shimmered as her question hung in the air between them.

  Darkness flickered in his eyes. “Go back to sleep, Ky.”

  She sat up and twisted to glare down at him. “Go back to . . . I just saved your life. The least you can do is answer my question.”

  “No.” He eased himself up against the headboard to watch her. After several seconds of intense scrutiny, he continued, “And I saved your life too.” He brushed a stray strand of her hair from her cheek. “But thank you. You risked yourself to save me and I owe you way more than a drink from my blood.”

  “Just not an answer to my question?”

  Ryker forced himself to keep his expression neutral as he waited for Kyana’s outburst. The moment
he’d awakened and found her in her bathroom, he’d remembered every drunken word he’d spoken and could have cut out his own tongue in regret. He was only surprised it had taken her this long to call him on what he’d said. Hell, his words weren’t the only thing he remembered. He remembered forcing a kiss on her too. And now that he’d linked with her after sharing his blood with her, he knew enough about her past to know why he’d seen the fear in her eyes.

  He was every kind of asshole.

  He’d struggled his whole life not to be like the father he’d hated. The father who’d swooped down to Earth to possess a young, faithful worshipper long enough to rape the young woman, who, shortly after, gave birth to Ryker. A mother who’d loathed her son from his first breath to the day his father came to claim him. He’d only forced a kiss on Kyana, but was he capable of doing more? Of being the same entitled prick as his father?

  When Kyana’s gaze fell to his mouth, his dropped to the crowns of her breasts peeking from beneath her velvet robe. He laced his fingers behind his head to keep from reaching for her. No, he wasn’t the same as his father. He knew his limits and would never reach out to take what wasn’t his. And as many times as Kyana might offer herself to him, she wasn’t his. Not yet.

  She flicked her tongue against the peak of her upper lip and his body tightened in response. Ten years was a long time to hold on to an obsession like the one he’d been carrying. If he didn’t put distance between himself and Kyana soon, it was going to become a do-her-or-die situation.

  “I make you crazy because you do want me, don’t you?”

  “I never said I didn’t.”

  But to take the brief affair she offered would make him no better than the men in her life who had used her for their own pleasure, then walked away . . . it would make him no better than his father.

  She stretched. “There aren’t many men who’d turn away from what I offered you.”

  “Sex, you mean.” Ryker rolled onto his side to face her, his long fingers tracing a pattern on her shoulder.