It had been a long time—decades, really—since Riker had been sucker-punched. Now it all came back to him . . . the moment of stunned confusion, the pain that left you reeling, the sudden absence of breath that made the lungs tighten into shriveled husks.
With a few words that came out of left field, Nicole had laid him out like no blow ever had. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak.
All he could do was walk, zombielike, out into the night.
Chapter 10
Nicole felt like a heinous bitch. She was starting to understand Riker’s bitterness toward her and her family and toward humans in general, but she was so protective of Terese, and he’d completely dismissed how Nicole had felt about the vampire.
And she still wasn’t sure what happened the night
Terese died. All Nicole knew was that she’d heard his angry voice and had seen him holding a knife to Terese’s neck while she pleaded with him. The memory still cut deep, still had the power to reduce her to tears sometimes.
“Please, Riker. Don’t do this. Please.”
The male vampire had Terese pressed against the shed, his hand covering hers, and both of their hands were wrapped around the hilt of a dagger that was digging into Terese’s throat. Tears dripped down Terese’s cheeks as she pleaded with him. A single drop of blood welled on her skin where the knife blade rested.
Nicole searched her brain for a way to stop that vam- pire from hurting Terese, but Nicole was so little, and he was so . . . huge. She tried to scream, but only a squeak came out, and for a heart-stopping moment, Riker shifted his gaze in her direction. Terror froze her to the ground. Could he see her?
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t until he turned back to Terese that Nicole was able to scramble from her hiding place in the bushes and make a break for the stables. Legs pumping as fast as they would go, she burst into the horse barn, where Uncle Paul was saddling a polo pony for her cousin Ted.
“Help! Uncle Paul!” She paused to catch her breath.
“A wild vampire. At the shed. He’s going to kill Terese. Help her!”
Uncle Paul hit an alarm on the wall. A siren screeched, and the horses went crazy. “Stay here,” he told her and Ted.
He grabbed a pitchfork and raced out the door.
She never saw him alive again.
Hours later, her father found her and Ted crouched in the hayloft. Someone came to get Ted, but her father stayed with her, holding her against his chest as he broke the news that Uncle Paul had been killed, and so had Terese. The vampire who murdered them both had gotten away.
Nicole’s heart banged painfully against her ribs at the memory, and a dizzying wave of nausea made her sway. She’d wanted revenge on Riker for so long, and now that she had him in her grasp, she’d saved his life.
And then she’d honed all her stored-up anger into a razor-sharp verbal blade and had sunk it into his heart as deep as she could get it.
The pain in his eyes when she told him about the attempted abortions had been raw and real, and with a clarity she couldn’t explain, she was sure that even if he had been responsible for Terese’s death, he was as haunted by it as Nicole was.
Now she had to clean up this mess she’d just made. She was still a little dizzy as she exited the cave, and she welcomed the brisk, cool air when it hit her face.
A fine mist fell from a low, featureless cloud layer that swallowed the tops of the trees, but Riker didn’t seem to notice the droplets of water clinging to his hair and skin. He was crouched on his heels, forearms draped across his knees, head bowed.
“Riker—”
“Was what you said true? Did Terese try to abort the baby?”
She closed her eyes, but doing so didn’t shut out the shame. “I don’t think—”
“Tell me.” His voice cracked like thunder, and she knew there would be no arguing with his command.
“Yes,” she said softly.
“How?”
“Does it matter?” she whispered, hating herself for bringing it up in the first place. “Why are you torturing yourself like this?”
“Maybe I like pain.” He spoke from between clenched teeth, his jaw muscles twitching furiously as he ground his molars hard. “How?”
The wind whipped her hair against her cold cheeks, but the sting was nothing compared with what
Riker must be feeling.
“The first time, she drank a tea of tansy and pennyroyal oil. My father was furious.” Nicole had pleaded with him not to hurt Terese, but that hadn’t been hisintention. He’d chained Terese to a b ed until she swore to behave. And she had . . . for three weeks. “The second time, she threw herself down a flight of stairs.” Nicole had seen it happen, but she’d lied to her father, telling him it was an accident.