Sarah pressed her body into him, feeling his hard muscles through his clothes, feeling it press back against her own soft form. She pushed back against him when his hand came up to squeeze her ass.
"Don't you need to go talk to Jason?"
He kissed her again in response, his hands not resting as he explored her body. Sarah's skin lit up in her mind, sending sharp signals of pleasure wherever he touched.
She was just paying for his services. Paying for the safety that only he could provide, the only way that she knew how. She wouldn't admit that it was pleasure, that she wanted it as much as he.
His kiss grazed her neck, a soft brush, and then it was gone, and his mouth had moved lower, kissing her exposed collar bone, kissing down the low neck of her shirt. He exposed one of her breasts and claimed it in his mouth, the heat and the sharp, electric pleasure mixing and merging and driving Sarah mad.
This was nothing like the last time she'd been with a man. He had left her bored and she'd let herself believe that it was no better than spending quality time with a dirty book and a vibrator.
This was something more, something that got deep into her mind and twisted her core, tying knots in her stomach that she wanted nothing more than to let him undo.
"I…" He let out a long breath and stepped back. "Now isn't the right time. We've got—"
He stopped when they heard footsteps coming up to the door, pounding the ground hard, like someone running. The door burst open a split-second later.
"We've got trouble." Jason looked more serious than she'd ever seen him. Whatever 'trouble' meant, she didn't want to have to find out if it scared a monster hunter this much.
She only heard the sirens a moment later, only registered their meaning a moment after that. What did the police want with her apartment? It was only when a loudspeaker came on instructing her to come out with her both her hands visible that she realized. They were here for her.
Why were the police here for her? She hadn't done anything wrong. Even with the strange men that they'd left behind in the alley, she hadn't done anything. It had all been the two men in the room with her now. A voice pulled her out of her stupor. A voice she didn't recognize until later.
"You have one chance to escape, Miss Lincoln. You can come with me, and your friends here will be spared, or you can resist, and they'll both be dead before they hit the ground."
She turned to face the speaker. He was in her bedroom, stepping out of the deep shadows and into the main room where the overhead light provided dim illumination. A well-dressed man, a man who looked as if he came from not-inconsiderable wealth.
How had he gotten in? There was no ground access to the fire escape outside her window, and he wasn't wearing a policeman's uniform.
"Come with me, and I promise, everything will be fine."
She heard the words come out of his mouth and realized with a jolt that he was right. There was nothing that she could do, but if she went with him—surely Isaiah and Jason had been wrong. Whatever the situation was, he certainly wasn't a vampire. He wasn't going to hurt her.
The hand around her arm, yanking her away, brought her suddenly to the realization that she'd already started moving towards him. Jason's hand was tight, like a vice, and he pulled her along behind. The well-dressed mystery man moved to follow with surprising speed, but Isaiah took a long step and stood in his way.
"You'll leave her be," he growled. Was that a note of… protectiveness?
Sarah's heart fluttered. Why was he risking his neck for her? Why, when the man had promised not to hurt her if she came quietly? When he'd promised that Isaiah and his partner could get away safely before their identities were revealed?
The knife flashed again in Isaiah's hand, his hand moving as quick as thought towards the mystery man's chest. The other man's hand shot up and grabbed the blade, twisting it out of Isaiah's hand before he could do anything to stop it.
"Now, that could hurt someone."
The smell of cooked meat, like sizzling bacon, filled the room, just enough that Sarah noticed it before Jason kicked through the door and pulled her along with him. They wouldn't have much of a head start, she thought. Not if Isaiah didn't hold the other man off for a very long time.
Now that she was out of the room, into the cold night, she realized what had just happened. That, she realized, wasn't any normal man. He wasn't a ghoul, either.
That had been Victor Reagan. She'd seen him on TV once, years ago. He'd looked no different then than he did now.
He was a vampire, she knew with a startling certainty. He'd been faster than anyone she'd ever seen, and from the way that he'd torn the knife from Isaiah's hand she knew he must have been very strong.
He was built to hunt and eat humans, an apex predator that was supposed to be nearly unkillable.
And she and Jason had just left Isaiah alone with him to die.
2
"He's a big boy, he can take care of himself."
Jason's voice was hard and icy, as if he didn't have any feelings at all about the partner they'd both left behind. Once they'd hit the ground, he'd thrown Sarah over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and she was still trying to wriggle out of his grasp. She only stopped when he finally put her down in a large room that looked for all the world like an abandoned warehouse.
He was breathing hard, but that didn't stop him from grabbing her before she could make it to the door when she immediately bolted. He turned her over easily and his hand came down in a hard slap on Sarah's bottom. The sting sent a shock through her entire body, leaving behind a pleasant buzz between her thighs.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
She didn't see his face when she spoke, but she did feel the second hard swat that came down.
"You think that he'd want you to go get yourself killed? Over what? Over nothing. We wait here. Once the smoke has cleared a little, and once we have looked into why this bloodsucking piece of shit is so interested in you, then we can start thinking about what to do next. Stop acting like a child."
The hard edge to his voice was strange. She'd only been with the pair of them for an hour or so, but she hadn't seen Jason show much in the way of emotion. He was too distant, too sarcastic. Now he seemed angry with her, when all she did was try to see if she could do anything for Isaiah.
"What's your problem?"
"What's my problem?" He exploded in anger. "I have to sit here, babysitting you, instead of doing my job. There's no way that Victor should have come after you again. It makes no sense at all, so until we can figure out what makes you so fucking special, I can't go help my partner!"
He took a deep breath and finally let up just enough for Sarah to wriggle her way off of his lap. She thought about making another run for it. He seemed to have calmed down enough that maybe he thought she'd learned her lesson. If he thought that, then maybe he'd let her slip past.
He seemed to know what she was thinking, though, and shot her a look that said all he needed to say, so she leaned back against a steel girder and watched him. It didn't take long before his expression shifted back to its usual disinterest.
Sarah couldn't catch her breath. "Why is this happening to me?"
"Because after thousands of years roaming the earth, Victor Reagan thought you had a great rack," came Jason's reply. It had an edge of bitterness to it, but the sad smile the stretched across his face seemed to be almost laughing at his own joke, whether it was funny or not. "I don't know. I would like to go find out, but I've never had a vampire follow a girl like that. You ever been fishing? Usually once the fish figures out that there's a hook behind the bait, they leave it alone. Once we show up, it's game over, and they stop for a few days at least. Long enough for us to pick up a new lead."
"Then why did you come after me so soon? You could have had him, from the sound of things, if you'd just followed those weird guys back to wherever they were going."
He looked as if he wanted to say something but thought better of it. "Well that's not what we did," he growled. "Are you complaining?"
The breaths that she hadn't been able to take finally came, and she gulped them down hungrily.
"Cut that out. You're going to give yourself—"
The world started to go black and Sarah was just conscious enough to feel herself slipping away from the girder and to the floor. She tried to brace for the impact that she knew was coming, but her body wouldn't move. She couldn't stop herself from falling.
She never hit the ground. Something caught her on the way down.
"I tried to tell you," said James's voice. He was close to her, too close. She could feel his body, could feel the heat of his touch. She could almost reach out and just… her fingers traced the lines of her face as her vision slowly started to return.
"I fell," she said dumbly. The world seemed to come back at the same time as her memories and she realized what had happened for the past hour. "Jesus! What if Isaiah couldn't get away somehow? What if he's—oh God, it's all my fault."
James kissed her and the panic that had been setting in again slipped away. The only thing that she could think of was how much she wanted—she couldn't put her finger on it. Sex, but something more. Something she knew that he could give her.
She pulled away. "James…"
He leaned back in hungrily kissing her, and then whatever she had been about to say was gone. She let him pick her up, his kisses tracing a line along her collar bone, suckling gently and sending sweet pleasure across her skin. This was the second time that night.