Rachel Lee - Claimed by a Vampire

God, he craved her more than he’d ever craved anyone.

Creed would have liked to launch himself across the room, and take Yvonne to that heaven known only to vampires and their victims. But he certainly wouldn’t do it to a woman who had turned to him for protection.

If this was a test, he teetered on the edge of failing it miserably.

In desperation, he went into his bedroom and locked himself safely within. In here her smell would dissipate. In here he could no longer hear her heartbeat.

Rarely did he retire before dawn, but this night he could do nothing else. He could not afford to think about the delicious morsel lying on his couch.

Trusting him.

Dear Reader,

Another journey into THE CLAIMING was irresistible to me. The notion that vampires themselves can become so enthralled that it’s a matter of life and death for them gave rise to some of the events in this book.

Vampires have a lot of powers, and few weaknesses other than the sun. I skipped the part about the stake to the heart because that’s never appealed to me, but I felt there should be another weakness vampires are prey to, and thus The Claiming.

As you will find in these pages, The Claiming is love raised to the nth degree. No vampire wants it to happen, knowing full well its risks.

In Claimed by a Vampire , I also got to deal with a vampire who once had a wife and children but had to give them up because he had become a threat to them. He never wanted to love again because he had lost so much. Instead he finds himself drawn to a woman, a novelist, who needs his protection and who is also reluctant to become involved.

Each is wounded, one by love too good, and one by love too bad. And the bad love is the one that comes back to haunt them.

Enjoy!

Rachel

RACHEL LEEwas hooked on writing by the age of twelve, and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Creed Preston sat in the outer office of Messenger Investigations, amusing himself by watching the swirl and flow around him. Jude Messenger had been his friend for years, but only recently had he become comfortable enough to spend a lot of time in Jude’s office, surrounded by mortals like Terri, Chloe and Garner.

It was a vampire thing. He and Jude had cemented a friendship that crossed the final barriers of territoriality that most of their kind felt, often to an extreme degree, when Jude had risked his life to eliminate the evil that had nearly killed Creed’s great-granddaughter.

But spending much time in the company of mortals could still be painful, because they smelled so damned tempting. As the years passed, however, his self-control became easier, and over the past months since Jude had mated with a mortal, Terri, he’d learned he could enjoy their company and control his hunger well enough.

Terri was absent this evening. As an assistant medical examiner, she often had to go out at night to crime scenes. Chloe sat at her desk, wearing her signature punk-cum-stripper getup, her hair dyed black and worn in spikes. She topped the whole image off with enough black eye makeup to keep a cosmetics company in business, and bright red lipstick.

Across from her sat Garner, a gifted demon hunter of about twenty-five, blond and blue-eyed, and casually elegant in a scruffy sort of way. The two of them often argued like siblings.

Creed enjoyed listening to their spats. Once, long ago, he’d had children, and he’d been forced to watch from a distance as they grew old and died. When Chloe and Garner got going, he inevitably grinned and watched the show.

Jude, however, had no such background with kids, and had a great deal less patience.

“Will you two cut it out?” he called from his inner office. “I’m trying to think.”

Both Chloe and Garner fell silent, but continued to shoot fiery looks at one another.

Sitting here, Creed felt more “normal” than he had since his change. Which was probably why he was spending more and more time in this office, as his own job allowed.

He put a hand over his mouth to hide a smile and continued to watch the dagger-staring contest. As usual, Garner wanted to plunge headlong into something dangerous without even grasping how dangerous it was, and Chloe displayed enough common sense to be twice her twenty-five years. And keeping quiet was obviously stressing their self-control.

Jude, his fellow vampire, appeared in the door of his office. As always, he was dressed in a perfectly tailored black silk shirt and slacks. Most vampires preferred black because it helped them blend with the shadows. Creed himself wore black slacks and a black turtleneck sweater. He didn’t share Jude’s taste for finer clothes.

Jude was slightly above average height, three inches shorter than Creed, and right now his eyes, golden from recent feeding, were not quite golden enough. He was irritated or disturbed.

Jude looked at Chloe and Garner. “Have you two concocted a plan for how we’re going to deal with this?”

Neither answered him.

“I thought not,” Jude said, sarcasm edging his tone. “All that arguing and no plan. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Because you know us,” Chloe said with a toss of her head. “Look, boss, you ought to just let Garner go do what he wants. Then we won’t have to deal with him anymore.”

“Hey!” said Garner. “How do you know I’m not right?”

“Because you suggested it?” Chloe arched one brow.

Garner glared.

“Enough,” Jude said quietly. That one word quelled them both.

Jude looked at Creed. “I need to go keep an eye on Terri. You want to come?”

“Because of this thing? ”

Jude nodded. “She was a doorway last time. She might still be. I don’t know.”

Creed understood. Jude had offered to die permanently to save them all from the thing that had nearly killed Creed’s great-granddaughter, that had attacked Terri, as well. He also understood that no matter how many cops surrounded Terri, none of them would be able to protect her from that kind of threat.

He rose. “Sure.”

He didn’t have to ask Jude how they would find her. Jude and Terri’s relationship was more than a simple mating; it was a claiming. No matter where Terri went now, Jude would be able to find her. And if anything happened to Terri, Jude would probably tear the planet apart before he killed himself.

It was the way of vampires. And the reason most of them tried to avoid a claiming at all costs: inevitably, if something went wrong, death and destruction would result.

But apparently, to judge by the way Jude had claimed Terri despite all the warnings he’d given Creed about it over the years, claiming wasn’t always a choice.