The Forever Kiss, page 23
“You, on the other hand, are heroic, handsome, sexy, and disgustingly noble.”
Cade quirked a brow. “‘Disgustingly?”
“Seems to fit, given your obsessive dr ive towa rd selfsacrifice.”
“Do I detect a note of implied criticism?"
“It’s more than a note, and it’s more than implied.” Val looked him in the eye, determined to return his honesty with her own. “I love you, but you scare the hell out of me. I get the impression you’re not just willing to sacrifice yourself to get Ridgemontyou’d prefer it that way. It’s like, that’s the only thing that will erase whatever he did to your honor.”
Cade stiffened, the easy smile fading from his mouth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I have no intention of killing myself.”
“See that you don’t.” She looked him in the eye. “Because I’m not putting myself through all this so I can watch you die.”
Chapter Seventeen
Dressed again, they walked across the parking lot to the motel diner, where Cade made her order a big breakfast and bullied her into eating it despite her lack of appetite. She didn’t have to be encouraged to drink, however. Her throat was so parched, she kept the waitress busy filling her glass every couple of minutes.
As the woman topped it off one more time, she looked up at Val. “You okay, honey? You sure are pale.”
“Yeah, I’m…” She broke off, distracted by a slow, deep pounding. “Somebody needs to turn his boom box down.”
“What?" The waitress gave her a strange look as Cade glanced up sharply.
Val blinked and braced against the table as the room seemed to dip and spin. “I’ll never understand why kids feel the need to serenade the neighborhood with their car stereos. You’d think…”
“May I have a refill?" Cade interrupted, holding up his coffee cup.
“Sure, hon. Let me get my pot.” Giving her a last worried glance, the waitress hurried off.
“What’s her problem?" Cade leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “That wasn’t a boom box, Val. That was her heart."
"What?"
“That drumming. It’s her heartbeat."
"Get out.”
He shook his head. “I hear it, too.”
A chill rolled over her. “But why do I hear it?"
“I think you know the answer to that.” He met her eyes in a long, steady stare.
Val swallowed. The Change has started. “Yeah. I guess I do.” Now that she stopped to listen, she could hear another beat—slow, deep, steady. Somehow she knew it was Cade’s. “Isn’t it distracting?"
He shrugged. “After a while, you quit noticing it. It’s like the air conditioner or the refrigerator. Background noise.”
She started to ask another question, but shut her mouth as the waitress returned to fill Cade’s cup. The woman gave her a sidelong glance. High as a kite.
“I am not!” Val said, indignant.
“Why don’t you bring us our check,” Cade said as the waitress’s eyes widened. She nodded jerkily and retreated.
“Don’t answer questions people don’t ask,” he hissed. “She thinks I’m on drugs!”
He drew in a breath as if searching for patience. “Under the circumstances, that’s probably understandable. You’re not exactly yourself.”
Val bit back the hot words that gathered on her tongue and frowned. He had a point. She definitely felt a little muzzy, as though she’d had one glass of wine too many.
She didn’t ask if it was going to get worse. She knew it would.
After returning to their room, they made love again.
When they finished drinking from each other, Val draped herself over Cade’s chest and shut her eyes, trying to ignore the rapid revolutions the room was making around her.
It didn’t take her long to lose her grip on consciousness.
Cade’s injured arm wasn’t hurting anymore, and blood streamed down it from forearm to knuckles, pouring into the sawdust. Looking down, he watched the sword slide from his nerveless fingers. A scan with his vampire senses told him Ridgemont had hit something vital.
He was bleeding out.
Seeing Ridgemont about to leap for him, Cade managed to scoop up his opponent’s fallen shield with his left hand. But he couldn’t bring it up fast enough to block, and Ridgemont’s sword chopped into his breastplate. Something cracked. He hit the ground on his back and skidded in the sawdust.
Desperately, he struggled to regain his feet, but his legs buckled under him and the lights of the arena spun around his head. Cade fell back, then fought to rise again. And failed. He’d lost too much blood.
Numbly, he watched Ridgemont circle him, limping, his sword dangling in one hand. Blood smeared the side of the master vampire’s ribs; he too, was badly hurt.
But not badly enough.
Cade had always known it would come to this. The son of a bitch was just too powerful. He was going to die, and it was no more than he deserved.
Ridgemont grinned into his eyes. “You gave me a good fight, gunslinger. Hurt me, even. Rather badly. But it’s not enough to save you.” He tilted his head to one side and raised his sword. “I think perhaps I’ll cut out your heart and keep it to remember you by.”
Val jolted upright in bed and looked around wildly. Cade lay next to her, his eyes closed. For one panicked moment she thought he was dead. Then she saw the steady rise and fall of his chest and fell back against her pillow with a gasp of relief.
A dream. It had only been a dream.
No it wasn’t, insisted a small voice in the back of her head.
She frowned uneasily at the ceiling. What if the dream had been another one of her clairvoyant visions?
It couldn’t be.
And yet…somehow she suspected with a chill of horror that it was exactly that. She’d seen Cade’s future. Ridgemont was going to kill him. Unless she did something to prevent it.
Val stared at his sleeping profile and knew she couldn’t let him die. She had to help him kill the ancient first. And the best way to do that was to complete the Change as quickly as possible.
Sitting up, Val threw the cover off them both and looked down at him. His cock lay soft and curled in its nest of thick hair. “Now that,” she muttered, “won’t do at all.”
Cade woke to the mind-blowing sensation of a hot female mouth engulfing his cock. He groaned and stiffened, his back arching with shock at the sheer, searing intensity of his pleasure. Opening his eyes, he saw Val crouching over him, her pretty little ass in the air, her mouth wrapped around his shaft. Instinctively, he tunneled both hands in the thick red silk of her hair. “God!”
The long fingers of one hand rolled his balls tenderly as her mouth sucked with such raw power he thought the top of his head would blow off. He twisted helplessly in the sheets, for once totally in a woman’s power. Just as his cock reached its full, straining length, she lifted her head. He gasped. “No, don’t stop!”
“Oh, I have no intention of stopping,” she growled, sounding more determined than seductive. She sat up, straddled his hips, grabbed his shaft in one hand, aimed it, and impaled herself in one breathtaking swoop.
“Jesus!” He arched his spine, instinctively driving to his full length.
“Yes!” she said through clenched teeth. “That’s it!” Ruthlessly, she ground down on him, taking him deep and fast and hard, circling her hips as she rode him so his cock seemed to screw into her slick, tight depths. He grabbed her hips and held on as she plunged and bucked. She leaned back, arching her spine as she grabbed her ankles and forced herself up and down. She felt so incredibly wet and clamping he knew he had only seconds before he shot her full of his come.
Suddenly she leaned forward over him, still fucking him hard. A cool droplet of her sweat struck his face. “Give me your blood,” she gritted. “That son of a bitch is not going to kill you!”
In no mood to argue, he lifted his own wrist to his mouth and raked his fangs across it. Blood welled. He lifted the shallow wound to her mouth. She grabbed his forearm, pressed her lips against it, and drank, still grinding down on his cock.
The combined sensation of her mouth on his skin and her sex pulsing around his cock sent heat corkscrewing down his spine. He could feel the orgasm boiling deep in his balls, getting ready to detonate.
She dragged her mouth from his wrist and screamed. Her sex clenched on his cock as she came. “I love you!” Val gasped. “God, I love you! And I’m not going to let you die!”
“And…I…love…you!” he panted back, pounding into her with all his strength. Her mouth sealed over the small wound again as he ground his head into the pillow and let himself come. And come. And come.
And come.
She woke the next day with a pounding headache. Every joint and muscle ached, and her mouth felt dust dry. Before she could even croak out a request, Cade rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom, returning with a glass of water and a plastic pitcher. She drank it greedily, and he filled another one for her. As she downed that, he put a hand to her forehead. His skin felt deliciously cool.
She lifted dazed eyes to his, managed a whisper. “Fever?"
"You’re burning up. I’m going to go get you something to replenish your electrolytes. I won’t be long.”
“Ice,” she said. “Get some ice.”
He nodded.
Reading her need for mindless distraction, Cade turned on the motel room’s television for her and handed her the remote, then dressed and strode out carrying the room’s small plastic ice bucket. Five minutes later, he was back. He filled the pitcher with water and ice cubes, then handed her a glass and left her numbly channel surfing while he made for the nearest convenience store.
The thirst was worse than anything she’d ever known—so maddening it seemed to reduce her to the level of an animal. Cade did everything he could to soothe it, feeding her sports drinks and ice chips and his blood, but it still wasn’t enough.
To make matters worse, every muscle and bone in her body ached brutally. He tried to reach into her mind to control it, but he couldn’t get through her Kith shields. The hours wore past as she tossed in her bed, growing weaker, her strength draining with such speed it frightened her. She was dying, and she knew it.
Finally he reached for her mind again—and this time found weakness had eroded her barriers enough to allow contact. I think I can help you now, Cade told her mentally, breaking through her terror. Do you want me to get rid of the pain?
She nodded eagerly. He laid a large, cool hand on her forehead and slid into her mind more easily than he ever had before. He felt both familiar and alien, and she tried to pull away in fear at the depth of the connection. She found she couldn’t. But before her panic could grow, the pain began to drain away, sliding out of her joints and muscles like boiling water. The awful, racking chill of the fever ebbed, until for the first time in hours she was actually comfortable.
Instantly, she slid into sleep.
Cade maintained his connection with her, controlling her pain as she slept. He could feel the Change accelerating, the cells of her body taking on new structures and functions. Becoming vampire. Had it not been for his psychic help, the transition would have been agonizing.
As the hours went on, the sleep deepened into a coma, and he had to work hard to maintain his link to her deepest mind. Val didn’t want him there. In unconsciousness, her mind reacted with ferocity to his invasion, fighting to drive him out, to rid itself of his profoundly alien presence. Without even knowing what she was doing, she instinctively turned her own nascent psychic power against him, hammering against his consciousness with bolts of pain.
Cade knew if he released her to defend himself, she’d slip beyond his grip and die. So he endured, refusing to let her go, remaining deep in her mind. Keeping her alive.
Ridgemont, you bastard, he thought, teeth gritted as his skin seemed to blaze with the pain she inflicted, you never mentioned this part.
He thought he heard a ghostly laugh.
In self-defense, Cade wove the connections between them stronger, deeper, building a net of power through Val’s mind until at last he could force her to stop torturing him. She subsided against his psychic grip, but he could feel her subconscious mind raging at his invasion.
Gently he purred reassurance to her, telling her he loved her, that she was safe with him, that he’d never misuse the power he was gaining. Until at last her fury faded, replaced by trust.
When Val began to relax, he caught a flash of recent memory. Something about Ridgemont…. Frowning, he looked closer and saw the dream in her memory. “So that’s why you practically raped me,” Cade murmured. She’d thought the dream would come true, and she’d tried to prevent it in her own mind-blowing way.
Not that he minded.
Contemplating the dream, he narrowed his eyes. It took place in the arena at Ridgemont’s mansion, which he knew Val had never seen. But the events the vision described hadn’t happened—yet. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was a precognitive dream.
Val had thought she could stop the vision from coming true, but Cade wasn’t sure it worked like that. Then again, Ridgemont hadn’t actually killed him in the dream either; it ended before the ancient swung his sword.
He frowned. He’d always known his chances of defeating his sire weren’t good, even with Val’s help. And judging by the ancient’s injuries in the dream, it looked like she had indeed been giving him that help. Cade had never been able to inflict that kind of damage on his own. But if the dream was precognitive, it seemed he was fated to lose his fight with Ridgemont. Which meant that somehow, he had to make sure Val survived the fight without ending up at the monster’s mercy.
Unfortunately, he had no idea how to do that.
It took Cade another full day to teach Val’s human brain how to run her vampire body. Finally he decided she was past the danger point, her heart and lungs working in their new rhythm. As the coma became a natural sleep, he let himself surface.
When he became aware again, he was lying sprawled against the headboard of the bed, his chin against his chest, one hand resting on her forehead as she curled next to him. Slowly, painfully, Cade sat up, wincing as his stiff neck protested the change in position. Rolling his head on his shoulders, he stretched his aching muscles. It felt strange to be in his own body again, separate and alone. There was a sense of relief, but at the same time, he found himself missing her.
She lay next to him, looking so still and pale his heart clenched in his chest. Then his vampire hearing picked up the slow, steady bang of her heartbeat, the sigh of her breath, and he relaxed.
Frowning, he studied her. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and her skin looked drawn tight over her high cheekbones. Her auburn hair spread out over her pillow, damp with sweat. Her eyes flicked back and forth beneath her lids. She’d regain consciousness soon.
He’d better hurry. He had burned a lot of power guiding her through the change, and now he needed to find enough blood to feed both himself and her. As he rolled out of bed and went in search of his clothes, he felt the Hunger stir. But it felt… different. He stopped in his tracks, frowning as he analyzed it, trying to determine what had changed.
Instead of the familiar driving erotic need he knew so well, there was only a deep thirst. He had to have blood, but that was all. Ridgemont had mentioned this once—that the link between male and female vampires satisfied the sexual component of the Hunger.
Good thing, too. Cade doubted seriously he could have tolerated watching Val seduce some handsome stud. Feeling oddly light, he buttoned his jeans, stomped into his boots and strode from the motel room.
Out on the motel breezeway, Cade stopped to inhale the evening air with a sigh of pleasure. The sky was a deep indigo blue, with the brilliant reds of sunset painting the horizon. He wondered absently how many days it had been since the Change had begun.
Looking toward the road, he saw a short, bearded man walking past. “Hey, buddy!” The man stopped and looked over at him—and was caught. The Hunger stirred and flexed. Cade said softly, “Come here a minute.”
Val woke to a raging thirst, worse than anything she’d ever known even in this interminable illness. Her mouth was so dry, her tongue felt like a piece of cracked and swollen leather. With a groan, she turned over and fumbled for the water pitcher beside the bed, but only succeeded in knocking it over. Nothing spilled; it was empty.
Moaning in frustration, she tried to roll out of bed, but her arms and legs felt like inert hunks of wood. She whimpered at the rise of helplessness.
Big hands closed around her shoulders, lifted her until a strong male body could settle behind her back. Her head lolled, but fingers gently caught her chin and lifted it. A blessedly cool glass pressed against her lips, tilted. The scent of water filled her nose. Desperately she began to gulp at the life-giving liquid, welcoming even the wet chill as some of it dribbled down her chest. She drained the glass and managed to croak, “More!”
“Sure, darlin’,” Cade’s deep baritone said, his chest rumbling under her back, his breath puffing against her ear. “Just wait a second.”
She opened her eyes and watched with desperate intensity as he filled the glass from a plastic pitcher. As he brought the tumbler to her lips, the rim knocked against one of her incisors. It gave. She lifted a hand and weakly pushed the glass back as she probed the tooth with her tongue. It came out in her mouth.
Horrified, Val straightened and doubled over to spit the bloody incisor into her palm. With the movement of her mouth, another tooth came loose, and she spit that out as well. “Oh, God, Cade, what’s happening to my teeth?” she moaned.
