Begrudged: A Steamy Vampire Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance

2. Dawn

2

DAWN

Kain is practically panting, his amber eyes wild, his finely sculpted body not enough to distract me from the book in his hand or the worried look on his face. The room has gone quiet, no noises save the sound of my own breath as it hisses through my nose, and the rustling of the bedding — silky and brilliant red. Silas has already pulled his head from beneath the sheets, leaving my thighs cold in his absence, his short blonde hair mussed. He stares at Kain with his brilliantly violet eyes from his position near my feet.

Behind me, Draynor pushes himself to seated onto one muscular arm; his d**k has slipped from inside me, which is unacceptable. Yeah, I already came, but a girl can want seconds, and with his black hair and his piercing black eyes, Draynor is everything a good tremble-at-my-feet vampire should be. I’m still shaking under the blankets, and more than a small part of me is aggravated as hell that Kain burst in here right now with bad news.

Markula doesn’t seem to notice Kain’s here at all. He nips at my bare n****e as he’s been doing all morning, making me wince, then he snakes his fingers beneath the blankets, filling the void that Draynor left. His ruby eyes gleam as my hips rock against his hand, but the pull of Kain’s gaze is too sincere, too terrified to allow me to relax into it. And with Markula, there’s no relaxing anyway. He’s not that type of lover. At seven feet tall, f*****g him takes some … acrobatics. Even his fingers are thick. And fast.

Kain’s knuckles are pale around the book he clenches against his rib cage, a giant text that might be a collection of fairy tales or a textbook from the dark ages — giant and leather-bound. It looks important. Markula’s thumb presses harder against my clit, drawing a breath from between my lips.

“You’re not just a hunter,” Kain says. “You’re the one — you can kill us all. Every vampire.” His nostrils flare. “They were never after us because of Mikael. They’re after us because of you.”

Markula sucks my n****e between his teeth and presses hard on my G-spot, pinching exactly where I need him, and after a morning spent with Silas’s tongue between my legs and Draynor buried in my p***y, even Kain’s words can’t stop another o****m from ripping through me.

I cry out and collapse backward against Draynor’s thick shoulder, my body pulsing around Markula’s hand, his fingers still working me, teasing me, drawing out every spasm. Draynor reaches around and cups my breast, the one Markula’s not sucking on.

“No fair,” Draynor mutters, brushing his fingertips across the tender nub of my n****e, sending tingles of electricity dancing over my already vibrating flesh.

Markula shrugs one heavy shoulder, his blond ponytail falling to his back, the entirety of his arms and chest covered in brilliant red tattoos that match his eyes. “You snooze you lose.”

“Where’d you hear that expression?” Silas asks, but he looks disappointed too. As if we won’t end up in the shower after this. As if I’d leave him unsatisfied.

“All the kids are saying it,” Markula says.

I laugh. “You don’t care what all the kids are saying.” He doesn’t, but he’s been far more relaxed lately, even a little … funny. He wasn’t funny when I met him a month ago. It’s insane to consider how drastically my life has changed in the last thirty-two days.

I exhale as Markula pulls his fingers from my p***y and brings them to his lips.

Kain tosses the book onto the chair in the corner with a great thunk and throws his arms into the air. The book blends with the red-brown fabric, so large it appears as though the book is the seat itself, a block of aged leather upholstery. “Do none of you care at all?”

“Jesus, Kain, we’re busy,” Markula growls. His lips are shiny with my juices. “But go ahead. Tell us what’s so important that it can’t wait. And it better be something we don’t already know.”

I relax against Draynor’s chest, my body enveloped in heady warmth — he has that effect on me. On everyone, I guess. He used to be a doctor, the guy who made the pain stop, but as a vampire, he’s adept at feeling where that pain is on another level and drawing it out of the body as if sucking out poison through a straw. Manipulating emotions, altering sensations … No, that’s not the right way to say it. What he does … it’s more a feeling than something explainable.

“Did you not hear me?” Kain says. “I know what she is.”

But we already know, don’t we? I’m a hunter, that’s what Markula said. One taste of my blood and he knew it, but it wasn’t a shock to me. The drive to hunt bad guys has always been strong, instinctual, though up until the night I met Silas while stalking a serial killer, I’d only hunted humans.

“Right, she’s the one,” Silas says, exasperated. Kain has been going around and around with that one for weeks, his nose buried in his fancy books — the ones only he can translate. But we know what it means; he already told us.

The one.

Inamorata.

Beloved.

Fated.

I always thought I’d find love one day, but I didn’t know it would be with four vampires simultaneously. At some point in my past, I probably would have been surprised to hear I might someday love just one vampire. Or, you know, that vampires f*****g exist. Then again, maybe I’d have balked at the idea of hunting serial killers for shits and giggles too.

My, how the tables have turned.

“The one,” Kain repeats, “but not because she’s connected to us. I think she’s connected to us as a race — that she could be a weapon, a beloved to any vampire she meets.”

“That’s ridiculous," I say, pushing myself off Draynor’s chest. His chest hair’s soft and fuzzy on the back of my bare shoulders. “Mikael was a vampire, and he tried to kill me. If I was his beloved, he has a funny way of showing adoration. Same with the vampires that came after us in Vermont.” They followed us to a house there, attacked with an army. I’m still not sure how we survived, plan or not, but we’re obviously f*****g awesome. “I’ve met a lot of assholes, but you’re not going to convince me that anyone’s fated love would try to kill them on a first date,” I finish. Even abusers start out nice. That’s how they get you.

“You’re misunderstanding.” Kain shakes his head again, snatches the book from the chair, and drops into the seat, leaning toward us with the book on his knees. “They came that night because they know about Dawn’s connection to us. Just listen.”

He opens the book and flips to a page he’s marked near the middle. “One will rise. And she will be forged of bone and flesh, a love like no other — inamorata. And she alone shall force the heavens wide. Then shall the race of vampire fall.”

His words chill my blood for reasons I can’t fully comprehend. The race of vampire … fall? “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think it’s you. I think — ”

“You’re wrong,” Markula barks, shoving himself to standing. He towers over the bed — over all of us. I’ve often wondered if only those who are tall in life end up as Warriors, or if something happens at the moment they turn that springs them up taller, broadens their shoulders, thickens their … everything. My gaze drops to his crotch, the thatch of hair that isn’t even close to hiding his manhood. Maybe I should ask.

But not now.

Markula hauls on his track pants, huge but still tight around his muscular thighs. “You need to stop reading those stupid books. All those old proverbs … they have nothing to do with reality. A set of rules and stories meant to keep the race in line, but we’re more evolved than that. In this house, we don’t even kill humans unless we have to — if it’s for the good of their species as well as ours. Killing any human at will is a perfectly acceptable pastime according to that book, right? Even a necessary one.”

“What about the knife?” Kain’s eyes stay locked on Markula.

My throat tightens. My knife — my mother’s knife. While you can kill a vampire through decapitation, they all have a single, fine line of vulnerability across their throats, the rest of their flesh isn’t susceptible to injury from normal human weapons — they heal almost instantly. Unless they’re stuck with my blade. It’s the one weapon that can hurt vampires, and Markula would be a fool not to consider it. But I know why he doesn’t want to think about what it might mean — he doesn’t want this to be true any more than I do.

Silas bends over the foot of the bed, reaching for his pants. His face is drawn. Draynor tugs me against his broad chest, but not in a s****l way — my back warms where it’s pressed against him, and the anxiety that has been threading its way through my veins loosens and dissipates. I inhale the first full breath I’ve taken since Kain started speaking.

“What makes you think other vampires even know about this prophecy?” Markula says finally. “You found it … where? In some obscure text that no one’s read in a thousand years? Silas and Dawn killed Mikael, and it was his hive that came for us in Vermont. You have no proof they were there for other reasons.”

“This is more than Mikael, and you know it, no matter what you’re telling yourself. Mikael wasn’t important, a loser, meth head, which is why we underestimated their numbers — their attack.” Kain’s gaze finds mine, and even Draynor’s warmth isn’t enough to stop the icicles from springing into my blood — he looks terrified, but more than that, he appears … certain. “Did you see the Warriors?” Kain asks. “They were there for Dawn. They didn’t give a s**t about Mikael, or about us. I don’t think Mikael was ever the leader at all. I think he was … a pawn.”

“Again, you have no proof of that. None.” Markula’s eyes blaze with hellfire. I can almost imagine they’ll fry Kain on the spot.

Kain does not look away — his jaw tightens. “Markula … ”

“It was odd that they mounted such an attack to begin with,” Silas says, his violet eyes flicking to Markula, then to me, and the Sons of Anarchy vibe I got from him the first night we met returns with a vengeance — a deep resonating sadness beneath those glorious irises and in the set of his chiseled jaw. “Vampires aren’t known for vengeance, not like that; not for killing someone like Mikael. If we’d killed the leader of a larger group, a more popular vampire, someone who actually has inherent worth to a hive … maybe. But even then, they’d have to have a reason to fight for a dead vamp — a reason to risk death.”

“And we all know Mikael wasn’t strong enough to have turned all those vamps himself,” Kain says, nodding. “That hive … wasn’t his.”

“What else do you know?” Silas is standing beside Kain now, wearing jeans and a Pink Floyd T-shirt. I didn’t register him moving, dressing, but that’s the thing about vampires — they’re speedy as f**k when they want to be. And Silas is a Psychic — a mind-reader. If Silas believes Kain knows something more, he does.

“Here’s what we know,” Kain says. “She has a blade that can hurt us. Her blood turns most anything into a weapon that can pierce our flesh. She’s immune to our charms, immune to all those of our race, unless she chooses to let us in. And even if she chooses us, we can’t turn her — she’s resistant to vampire blood. Even a hunter wouldn’t be resistant to our blood; hunters are still human.” He drops his gaze to the book as if he can’t bear to look at us any longer. “She’s inamorata. For us all. Even me, who has never done more than touch her skin, would defend her to my dying breath. She might be this for all vampires, should she choose to be.”

I open my mouth to protest, but he raises a hand and draws his gaze to mine. “I do think it’s a choice on your part. You choose which of us you want to connect with. But if you should learn to hone that skill, if you can control other vampires whether or not you return their feelings … ” He drops his hand. “You’d be incredibly valuable as a weapon.”

Draynor shakes his head, and when he speaks, his words rumble through the flesh of my back and into my spine. “It just doesn’t make sense. You’re saying that they came for us that night because they knew she was the one … the one from this prophecy. But even if they knew about the prophecy, how would anyone else know who she is? We only met her days before the attack, and she didn’t even know vampires existed before she met us.”

Silas’s jaw drops. His violet eyes touch mine, then Kain’s. He’s heard something in Kain’s head … now they’re both scared.

“You think Mikael was after her on purpose,” Silas says. “That he found her on that bridge and not the other way around.”

Kain nods. “Mikael knew what she was then because he knew her before. If the prophecy holds true, they started on this path well before that boardwalk.”

“What path might that be?” I say. “No one knows anything. Even I don’t know anything.”

“You might not, but they do — they always have.” Kain levels his gaze at me. “Why do you think they killed your mother?”