Rachel Lee - Forever Claimed

“Couldn’t Jude just leave? Why don’t they just come here and confront him?”

“I told you, they want their amusement. And they know Jude well enough. He won’t leave because he won’t want a single human to suffer because of him. If he turned his back on this city, they might still do as they plan, and possibly more of it. This is a start, Chloe. These rogues want to satisfy their lusts unfettered. So far they have never gotten together in a large group, and thus we have been able to control them. It was always one or two at a time, and if they would not agree to follow the rule, then we would get rid of them.”

He closed his eyes a moment. “There are places where they rule. Few and far between, but not places I would choose to dwell. Not all the monster stories you hear are folklore and legend.”

“I kind of figured that out when I met you .”

Luc didn’t respond to the insult. “You see,” he said quietly, “as technology and communications improve, they must hide farther and farther away, going to places where the people are regarded as so primitive that no one believes the stories. Places where deaths and maulings can be blamed on other animals. But now they want a modern city.”

“They won’t succeed.”

His eyes snapped open. “Tell me, Chloe, how the news will report tonight’s murders tomorrow night. They will at first assume there is a madman. As the killings mount, they will consider a gang of some sort. How long do you think it will be before any humans start speaking openly of vampires? But Jude will know. And Jude will try to stop them. That’s what they want. And once they’ve removed Jude, they can hold the city in thrall with terror and take their victims by will. Because so few of you can resist our enticements. You are drawn to us, you obey us, you want us.”

Chloe looked glum. Dani felt again that icy trickle along her spine. The image he painted revolted and terrified her.

“Merde!” He rose to his feet and started pacing, moving so quickly he was almost impossible to see.

“Quit it,” Chloe said. “You’re making me dizzy.”

“Then close your eyes.” But he slowed down.

“What about you?” Chloe asked. “Are you going to help Jude?”

“Right now I am finding it difficult to be in this room. I am the fox guarding the henhouse.”

Dani drew her legs beneath her, ready to leap from the couch. “Can you control yourself, fox?”

Swiftly he crossed to her and bent over her. He closed his golden eyes and drew a deep breath. She knew he was smelling her. Helplessly, she shrank back.

“You smell like a banquet,” he said. “You arouse my hunger, even though I’m not hungry. Take heed.”

Then, before she knew he had moved, he was back in his chair. “Yes,” he said flatly, “I can control myself. But it does not make me less dangerous.”

That was a mixed-up statement, she thought as she started breathing again. He could control himself but he was still dangerous?

She fell silent, thinking that never before had she felt so caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Luc St. Just had grown used to loathing himself. He’d certainly done enough of it since Natasha’s passing. But now he almost revolted himself because the little wolf not only roused his hunger, but she awoke his sexual desires, as well.

He didn’t want to desire anyone ever again. And he certainly didn’t want to desire a mutant lycanthrope. While he said he didn’t care one way or another about them, the truth was the whole notion of shape-shifting disturbed him. He might be an abomination but at least he was the same thing all the time. Besides, whatever form they took, they were still dogs. Something atavistic in him rebelled at being attracted to one.

Trouble was, she smelled human. She did smell like a banquet to him, a banquet he too often denied himself since Natasha because he had refused to become intimate with anyone ever again.

But this woman had awakened nearly somnolent urges in him. He couldn’t quite ignore the way his pulse accelerated, the way she called to his hunger, the way she made him want to act like one of those rogues out there.

Well, not like one of them, certainly. No, he would woo and seduce her, and teach her delights unlike any she had ever imagined.

And her eyes … Those blue-gray eyes of hers were hypnotic. He wanted to keep looking into them, yet feared their call.

It would be so easy to give in. All that held him back was Chloe’s presence and Jude’s admonition. Otherwise he would reach for her, touch her, taste her, and by the time he was done, she would no longer think vampires were monsters. Oh, no.

He caught himself, reminding himself of his promises not to get involved again, however briefly. Then it struck him that the way she called to him gave her more power than it gave him.

The irony was not lost on him.

But it also gave him a jolt. Not once in over two hundred years had he ever considered that his desires could enslave him. Yet here he was, with a powerful thirst for a female, one that was in danger of overcoming his sense.

The hunger was part of him, deep, persuasive, pervasive, unlike any hunger or want he had known as a human. During the Reign of Terror, when he had been changed, he had been like most new vampires: famished and out of control. Only, in his case, surrounded by so much bloodshed, no one had tried to stop him.

But eventually calm had returned to the world, and with it a need for caution. One night he had arisen from the sleep of death to realize that if he didn’t want to be forever on the move every few days or weeks, he needed to find a better way.

As a result he had lived successfully in Paris for at least half his life, alternating every decade or so with some other city.

But now he realized something else. Jude’s determination to enforce the rule had another purpose than protecting vampires from discovery or humans from predation. It also ensured that a vampire was not a slave to his innate needs.

That modicum of self-restraint was all that separated a vampire from becoming a true monster. It provided their only claim to being truly civilized.

Luc had always held himself to be utterly civilized. It disturbed him to think he might not be even yet.

He forced himself to look at Dani while quashing his own urges. What he saw was a frightened young woman who had been through hell tonight. Considering the attack she had suffered, it was amazing she wasn’t falling to pieces.

But then the hunger rose again and he had to look away. Chloe, surprisingly, didn’t tempt him at all.

What was going on? In the past all humans had struck him as equally edible. It was, after all, only their blood he wanted, and very little of it, actually. Some were certainly more attractive than others and made better playmates, but this response was different.

He didn’t like it.

He desperately wanted to walk away now, to escape from the enticing scent that filled this room, but he couldn’t. Jude’s office provided a likely target if the rogues decided on a frontal assault.

Some remnant of honor and integrity held him rooted.

Just then, reaction hit Dani. The air was suddenly tinged with terror—another enticing scent to his kind—and he looked at her. She had begun to shake, and her eyes were almost wild.

“Chloe,” he said. “Get a blanket or something. She’s feeling the shock.”

Chloe leaped up and headed to a small room. When she opened the door he could see a bed and some other creature comforts. She returned swiftly with a thick down-filled duvet and draped it over Dani.

“You’re safe now,” Chloe murmured. “It’s all over.”