Angie Fox: Love Bites

Kat considered the gun, before stuffing it back into his coat pocket. Too bad. Where she was headed, it could come in handy.

Like a true Scot, he rode commando. Had to. The vixen had ripped the biker shorts right off him. Not that he’d minded. What started out as an act of mercy had turned into something else entirely.

Finn gunned the engine. If he could save her from this, he would.

He’d promised to return her to her fiancé. It was the way of her people, what her family wanted. He’d clear up what he hoped was a misunderstanding with the King about the drop-off scenario. Then he’d go back to the kind of hard-nosed jobs that kept her world safer.

Problem was, deep down he didn’t think the King had made a mistake about the pick-up time. The King was rigid, precise. In the three centuries he’d known the man, he never knew the King to ditch his part of a mission – especially when his family was at stake.

The lack of a royal entourage tonight meant one thing – while Finn had been off diddling the Princess, King Petronius Brasov Volholme D’Transylvania, Lord of the Seven Clans and Romania was under attack.

Finn turned on to Highway 11 to Brasov, Transylvania. Whatever was going on, he had to keep Katarina out of it. She might be strong, and downright wicked when she wanted to be, but she wasn’t a warrior. And he didn’t know what he’d do if something happened to her. The mere thought of it made his gut clench.

Because she was the mission.

Yeah, right.

Finn steadied his breathing, the way he’d been taught. Slowly, he disentangled himself from the emotions of the little vamp behind him. Her quiet sorrow was a thousand times worse than her protests.

As they neared her father’s castle, he opened himself up to the night. Along with the pine and dog roses in the air, he smelled danger too, the sticky sweet remains of deception and evil.

His fingers tightened on the Harley as he zoned in on the threat – three vamps and something else.

Varstnic Castle loomed like a spectre on the mountainside. Finn had travelled supernaturally fast, but they were running out of night. It didn’t affect him in the slightest. Finn could walk in the sun. As for Katarina, he didn’t even want to think what could happen to her if he didn’t secure the castle by sunrise.

Just under an hour.

Finn powered the bike up the steep mountain passage. The Harley spit rocks as the tyres fought for traction. He took them all the way to the limestone gorge that snaked around the edge of the property, and parked in a patch of Russian thistle. “We walk from here.”

Worry clouded her eyes. “My father is in trouble, isn’t he?”

Finn didn’t answer.

Instead, he helped her unwind her long dress from the bike and led her down as she dismounted. It reminded him of the way he’d assisted the ladies of old, and he quickly dismissed the thought. Kat wasn’t a simpering maiden. He wasn’t a knight and this was no fairy tale.

Katarina’s ancestral home jutted from the rocks above them as they made their way to the stone bridge at the edge of the property. The night was eerily silent. He didn’t like it one bit.

Finn kept her hand in his, and focused on what lay ahead.

Moss clung to tightly packed stones of the ancient castle. It was four feet thick in most places. Little had changed in the last several centuries, save for the secret entrance Finn had commissioned for the King.

You never could be too careful.

Kat clutched Finn’s arm as he led them through a thick forest of spruce. She knew what was coming: home. Well, Finn was just doing his job.

She hesitated as he drew her into the clearing that housed her family’s small cemetery.

“Not this way.” Kat held back, shivering against him.

He hated bringing her here, but if they were going to get into the castle undetected, this was their only choice.

Life-sized brass effigies stood ramrod straight, in concentric circles. The earlier statues dressed in ancient robes, the latter in medieval garb, some in nothing at all, green tarnish staining the joints.

Kat spoke her words as if drawing each one from somewhere deep inside of her. “I haven’t been here since . . . ”

“Your wedding. I know,” Finn said quickly.

Finn ran a thumb along the smothering velvet at the waist of her gown, and caught it against the loop of the gold belt she still wore underneath. If he could save her from this, he would.

Like peeling the layers of an onion, Finn took Kat’s hand and began leading her through the generations. He felt her pause at the memorial to Baghatur the Decapitator, the infamous Byzantine Conqueror, but he pulled her onwards. His job didn’t leave room for sentiment.

As they neared the centre of the graveyard, she stiffened and clutched her hand to the neck of her gown.

He gave her a quick once-over. “Are you OK?”

She wound her fingers through the stiff lace at her throat. “Do you have to ask?”

“For the record, this isn’t my idea of a dream date, either.” He diverted a portion of his empath senses her way and was hit immediately with her overwhelming desire to flee. He paused when they reached the centre of the inner ring, the final resting place of Illi the Father. The statue, as naked and muscular as Michelangelo’s David, held aloft a bronze dagger. “I need you to stay here.”

“Of course,” she said, eyeing the path they’d just taken.

“If I’m not back before the sun rises, go to ground.”

She nodded.

“Kat.” He cupped the back of her neck and leaned in for the last best kiss of his life. He descended on her with mouth and tongue, pushing her, tasting her, scorching them both with the intensity of what they had found together.

Pleasure swamped his senses. He ground her closer, needing her like he’d never needed anything before in his life. He couldn’t have her, didn’t deserve her. But he would save her.

He smoothed her arms to her sides, his body aching for one final touch before he unleashed the full force of his empath abilities and froze her on the spot. She stood stock still, the epitome of desire.

Finn stepped back from her immobile form. “I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it, even as the expression in her eyes went from confused to downright hostile. He couldn’t let it affect him. Finn had work to do.

He knelt at the feet of Alulim the First. Brushing aside the leaves at the base of the statue, he quickly located the security punch pad and dialled in the code. “Don’t worry,” he said, refusing to let himself look at her, “I’m not leaving you defenceless.”

Why did he have the sudden urge to show her? Touch her? It was ridiculous. Finn gripped the heavy metal trapdoor. It opened with the groan of joints that hadn’t been worked in years.

A ladder led down into the dark. Finn launched his fairy sixth sense down the narrow opening and found it empty of life.

“You stay here,” he said, glancing back at her and immediately regretting it.

He made one final check for the stake at his back and the knife at his belt before descending into the darkness. “Once I leave you, you’ll be able to move again. But don’t even think about following me. You can’t.” He’d designed the maze of passages under the castle long after she’d been married off the first time. No one, except for him and the King, knew how to get in or out. Smelling him, tracking him would be impossible.

She had to know he was doing this for her, and her family. But somehow, he doubted she’d gotten the message. And when Finn slammed the door behind him, a small part of him broke.

Think of the job.

He moved down the ladder soundlessly and with no need for light. Not that he could see in the dark like Katarina, but he could sense the objects and creatures around him.