The memory of his voice rumbled in her mind. “You won’t die. I won’t let you!” Then his bared fangs had come toward her throat. Must have been her imagination, or maybe just the insanity brought on by dying, but she’d sure thought the man sounded scared then. Afraid, for her.
His jaw clenched. “I didn’t—”
“You played me all along. Lied to me! Tricked me! You were the one who set all this shit up, weren’t you?” Her hands jerked against his, but, he was stronger and he wasn’t letting up.
“Thinking like a human,” he muttered again. “Dee, calm down.”
She was so sick of people telling her to calm down, relax, or go easy. She was a vampire for f**k’s sake! She didn’t have a cold or a broken hand—she was a vampire! Dee rammed her knee up and caught him right in the groin. His hold loosened, a moment was all she needed, and she hurled him back.
He flew five feet and thudded into the wall.
Sometimes thinking like a human wasn’t bad.
She bent low and jerked her stake from her ankle holster.
He bounded back to his feet and shook his head. “You didn’t come here to kill me.”
Straightening, she tested the weight of the stake. “I want to know where the Born Master is.” If she had to get physical with him to find out the location, so be it.
A rough laugh burst from his lips.
Her fingers tightened around the stake. “Don’t push me.” Her control had begun to waver the minute she’d seen him.
But the man stepped forward and a hard smile curled his lips. “I made you scream for me. I took you and you came and you screamed for me.”
She’d screamed his name. A growl built in her throat. “The Born Master.”
The smile wiped away. “I got you out of that alley. Those vampires wanted to rip you apart. I got you out. I kept you safe.”
She lunged at him and closed the distance instantly. She shoved the stake right above his heart, not breaking the skin, not yet. But it would be all too easy to go in for the kill. “You should have let me die.” And let me stay dead.
His hands came up, moving in a fast blur, not to push her away, but to wrap around her wrist, and to hold that stake close. “I did.”
He’d said the same thing before, but this time, a shiver worked over her. “Someone else made me?”
His hold didn’t waver. “Don’t get it, do you? I thought Pak would have told you before he sent you out to hunt.”
The stake pressed into his flesh. “Told me what?”
His gaze tracked over her face. “It’s you. You. You were Born in that alley. You died—” He sucked in a sharp breath. “Right in my arms, but then you came back.”
And Simon almost died then because the roaring in her ears blasted her mind apart and the stake was suddenly so light in her hands—
He shoved her back. She should have fallen to the floor. She barely stumbled. “That’s bullshit.”
“No, it’s the truth.” That black gaze bored into her. “In certain circles, the truth about you has been known for a long, long time.”
“Certain vampire circles?” Her stomach rolled.
A slow nod.
“You’re lying,” she spat the words. Had to be. There was no way she was Born.
“What do you hear?” he asked and he didn’t advance toward her. A rivulet of blood ran down his chest. The scent was so ripe and rich, better than the strawberries she’d always loved and Dee wanted to slither closer, to taste. “What do you hear?”
“Your heartbeat.” The myths were wrong. The hearts of vamps still beat. They still breathed. Still f**ked. Still did everything that humans did. Because vampires only died for a moment of time, then they came back—they just came back different.
Wrong.
“What else?” he pressed.
“Cars.” Far away. Zooming on the road. “Insects.” Couldn’t focus on them or their buzz would drive her crazy. She’d learned that lesson in the first hour of her new life. Death. Whatever.
“And what do you feel?”
Hunger. Lust.
Looking at him, Dee knew she should hate him, but the need simmered below the surface. He’d lied to her, betrayed her, but the vamp inside looked out from her eyes and lusted.
Blood.
Sex.
Prey.
“You don’t feel the call, do you?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You don’t feel the pressure.” He sounded certain. “You don’t hear it, right? The nagging voice in your head, telling you to come, to listen, to heed?”
No, there was nothing in her mind like that. Just the lust and the need.
And the strong urge to rip the guy apart.
“The Taken are linked to the Born, you know that.”
Vampire 101. Every hunter learned that lesson early.
“You don’t have a link. If you did,” his hand clenched, “you’d be about to go as f**king crazy as I am because the Born we’re after is calling his vamps to him, calling ’em in a frenzy because the bastard is scared as hell.”
The Born we’re after? She could see the tension in Simon’s body. The faint sweat on his brow. She’d thought that was fear, fear of her. “You’re telling me that you’re linked to the Born who was in Baton Rouge?”
The barest of nods.
Her breath exploded, and for a moment, she saw red. Literally saw him in a wall of blood. Betrayed. Dee attacked. Not with the stake this time, but with claws and teeth.
She slammed into him and they staggered to the floor. She wrenched his hands down and her mouth went for his throat.
Her fangs scraped across his flesh.
It took a moment for her to realize that he wasn’t fighting her. His body was held too still, taut, like a wire, and he was just…waiting.
“Do it,” a rasp and he bared his throat. “This is why I hunted you, why I fought for you.”
Nothing was making sense to her.
“I killed for you, and I would have died. Died.”
The blood flowed so close, right beneath her teeth. Her tongue slipped out, tasted that flesh.
Should have stayed with Pak longer. Not ready for this.
But she’d never be ready for this.
“Bite me.”
The bite gave a vampire power. Why would he want to be weak?
That blood…so close…. She shuddered against him, fighting the beast she’d never known until now.
“I wanted you from the moment I saw you. I want you now. I fought like hell burning for you, don’t you see that? Woman, don’t you—”