Vampire's Soul

  Rand blinked, flattened his ears.

  That'd be a no. Regardless, Cai told Giles to bring two sets of clothes, and ignored the servant's puzzled look when he provided two different sets of sizes. He and Rand wouldn't be completely off on pants length, but otherwise, yeah, it needed to be two sizes. As broad-shouldered as Cai was, Rand had him beat by another hand span, and his chest...

  "If you have anyone in the house with the upper body build of a male gorilla, you'll be in the right ballpark," he instructed Giles.

  On that issue Giles didn't miss a beat. "Torrence, Lady Helga's servant, should have something. Um...do you have a servant that will be joining you? Is that why you want the second set of clothes?"

  "Yeah, that's a good way to put it. He might or might not need them. So Helga's the blond vampire with the monster-sized servant. Which means the vampire with the fashion-model hair is..."

  Giles blinked, obviously nonplused. "That would be Lord Mason. His servant is Jessica."

  "Great. Not a lot of time for introductions when I was being kicked in the teeth. If you're wanting to feel useful, a bowl of water and a good raw steak wouldn't be amiss for him." Cai nodded to Rand. "I'd be happy with ice water and a stiff tumbler of Gentleman Jack."

  A variety of expressions crossed Giles's face. Cai was sure he didn't fit the mold of anything with fangs that had crossed the servant's path before, but he provided a courteous response. "I'll attend to it."

  The servant headed toward the door, but came up short at the threshold, turning as if he might say something. His dark brown eyes under an unruly mop of blond hair revealed a sudden depth of worry that even world leaders didn't carry.

  Then all that was swiftly squelched. Giles did another pivot, apparently changing his mind and executing a nice three-sixty twirl to head back toward the hallway.

  "What?" Cai asked before he could get away.

  Giles stopped as if yanked to a halt with a fish hook. "I'm so sorry, sir," he stammered. He didn't look toward Cai. "It's not my place to speed you along, sir. Or even to suggest it. But...Dovia is a beloved member of this household, sir. And Lord Georg and his servant are sick with worry."

  He hadn't suggested anything, so it took Cai a second to catch up, but then he realized Giles was concerned about Cai kicking back with his Jack and taking his sweet time about showing his ass topside again. Like Lyssa would tolerate that.

  "That's why I want you to get me the stuff, so we can eat it here while we're getting cleaned up. Makes us ready that much faster."

  Giles was surprised enough at the reasonable response that his gaze snapped up and met Cai's. Cai should probably remind him that not all vampires were as touchy-feely as him.

  Hearing the wolf equivalent of a snort in his mind, he sent Rand a look, then spoke. "How long have you been here, Giles?"

  "Six months, sir."

  "Six whole months?" Poor bastard, stepping into all this shit where Georg's power was being contested and his daughter taken. "I'm sure you've been told not to question vampires. Or, in your case, even cryptically hint that you're about to."

  "Yes sir." The male's expression whitened. Kid wasn't much older than Georg's daughter, which made Cai put together another few pieces.

  "You her full servant?"

  Giles shook his head. "Second marked to her father, but here for her blood needs. And to tutor her in languages."

  "She doesn't have a second mark or full servant?"

  Giles expression tightened. "No full servant. Her second mark, Petra, was killed when she was taken." Another flash, this of grief. They'd obviously been friends.

  Would have been too helpful to have someone who was in her head, Cai thought with a mental sigh. Her father would be linked to her mind, but with the advanced Ennui, he likely wasn't able to get through the way he would normally. Adding to his rage and frustration. Her mother's connection would be through the vampire parent's mind. Same issue. Another reason Cai was here. He wondered if the kidnappers had figured out how to block that connection, or if they'd known about Greenwald's state. Or some of both.

  "Okay. Just remember you're lucky I'm not interested in proving how goddamn superior I am by ripping your tongue out of your throat and watching it flop on the ground like a trout. You might not get so lucky with the next vampire. Now go grab me some clothes."

  "Yes. Yes, sir." Giles disappeared out the door

  Cai ran a hand over his face. Just because he'd been brought here to provide information, didn't mean he would actually be of any assistance. Any hopes Giles had for him might be wasted.

  Cai didn't give it much further thought, though, since he was used to falling far below expectations. But a shower followed by a drink was going to feel hellishly good.

  Cai moved toward the bathroom, already stripping off his ruined shirt and the bloody jeans. Next came footwear.

  Rand had accurately realized his faded old clothing was Cai's version of pajamas. But thank the stars Cai had learned to keep his shoes on when resting in the earth. Picking his way daintily across Greenwald's asphalt driveway because Cai had tender soles would have been demoralizing. He was pissed at the loss of his pack, even though he didn't ever carry much, and nothing that he couldn't replace. It was the principle of the thing.

  He was most annoyed at the state of his clothing. He'd had the T-shirt and jeans broken in to the right level of slumber softness. Thanks to those barbs, pretty much everything but his hiking shoes were a loss, and they had some rusty brown blood stains on them, damn it.

  Cai stepped into the shower, letting the water stream over him. He moved his palms with brisk precision over his bruises and gashes, ignoring the tenderness. Soon as he had some blood, they'd disappear entirely.

  Hearing the clicking of toenails, he saw the dark wolf lie down on the tile outside the wavy texture of the shower door. He thought about Rand earlier in the evening, and the different ways the wolf had acted since then. If this was quid pro quo, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, then it was damn appreciated. When he'd licked the blood off Cai's chest, it was the first time in quite a while that Cai had been anyone's random act of kindness.

  Stepping out of the shower, he saw Giles was as good as his word. There were two sets of folded clothes on the king-sized bed, and a nearly empty water bowl. Water had been slopped over the sides, leaving dark drops on the carpet. A licked clean second metal bowl still smelled faintly of steak.

  "Messy eater. Didn't leave me a bite, did you?" He grinned and tossed the towel over the wolf's head. Rand dodged it, showing teeth. "Shift for me, Rand. It's just you and me alone, and I need to talk to you."

  He didn't respond immediately. Cai repeated it, a couple times. Unease touched him when he realized Rand wasn't ignoring him. He'd gone somewhere so deep in his wolf that human speech sounded like gibberish. Cai sharpened his tone and Rand's head came up. Using intuition, since he didn't have a how-to-talk-to-your-second-mark-when-he-shifts-into-a-wolf manual, Cai tugged on that bond. What do you know? Rand felt it. His eyes darted back and forth, muscles tightening as he fought an internal battle.

  There. He'd started to shift. As before, Cai was amazed at what an amazingly clean process it was. Not even a thread of hair left on the white tile, not even what Rand might have shed when he lay down outside the shower. A nifty bit of forensic magic.

  The male pushed himself up and onto his heels, all grace and no self-consciousness in his magnificent nudity. As they regarded one another, Rand was the one who broke the silence. And amusingly to Cai, he skipped over everything that had happened in the past few hours and went right back to twilight, before Cai had woken to meet the Three Stooges. Interesting, since his own mind was dwelling on the same timeframe.

  "If I'd known you buried yourself in the earth," Rand said, "I'd have dug you up at noon so you could get some sun on that pasty skin of yours. Would have saved us all the road trip."

  Cai grinned. "A very good point. But only one of us is allowed to have suicidal urge
s at a time. And you've used up your quota, by the way. Come into the bedroom. I need to eat so I can be as badass as usual."

  Cai moved to the nightstand, exploring what was in the top drawer. Yeah, it was a vampire household, all right. He turned his attention to the bed and the stacks of clothes there. Lifting a T-shirt obviously in Rand's size, with a good amount of stretch in the cotton to accommodate his shoulder span, Cai pursed his lips. "Nice response time. But then, they want something from us. It makes all the difference."

  Rand shook his head, probably at Cai's cynicism, and reached for the clothes. That was when Cai moved.

  He sprang, caught Rand about the waist and shoved him to the bed. He had the element of surprise, but it lasted him about a second. He told himself it was thanks to blood loss that Rand unhorsed him with a counter wrestling move and they hit the floor next to the bed with a jarring thump that probably vibrated through the mansion's foundations. Shit, he felt that through every bruise.

  Rand sat on top of him. He had his hands on Cai's wrists, his fine, muscular ass on Cai's cock. With his body canted over Cai, his loose brown hair fell forward and shadowed his frowning face.

  Cai pushed against his grip. Rand's fingers tightened and Cai let a slow smile cross his face. "You want to play rough, wolf? I can do that."

  "You yelped when you hit the ground," Rand pointed out. "You're in pain. What are you doing? You heard what they said. There's a female at risk."

  "I did not yelp. And she's a female vampire," Cai reminded him. "So why do you care? More of the decency and morality thing?"

  "A remarkable number of people possess some version of it. You don't care what happens to her?"

  "Didn't say that." Cai didn't let his head go there. He'd much rather focus on what was in front of him, the intriguing pleasure of the shifter's strong grip on his wrists, the weight of his body.

  But at Rand's penetrating stare, he sighed. "I think if she's been taken by this particular group of Trads, she's as good as dead. Because they'll destroy her trying to get what they want and, even if her father gets her back, this crowd won't want her because she'll be too broken. Vampires don't respect weakness in their own kind. Be torn apart there, torn apart here, what does it matter?"

  "Her father loves her."

  "Yeah, sorry. Couldn't appreciate his loving nature while his minions were whaling on me."

  "Cai." Rand gave him a severe look and released his wrists, sitting up to cross his arms over his broad chest. "There's no point lying to a wolf. I can sense your emotions, you know. Her fate does matter to you."

  "Okay, say it does. Get on your hands and knees on the bed so I can fuck you senseless. That way I can give them the benefit of my infinite wisdom about saving the girl sooner rather than later."

  Rand narrowed his gaze. The male was...so adorably stern. Cai found a reserve of energy to prove who was in charge and managed to heave him off. Another few minutes of serious wrestling, and he had Rand beneath him again on the bed, Rand face down, Cai on top, his hand wrapped firmly around Rand's cock, sandwiched between the press of Rand's body and the mattress.

  Cai wasn't entirely sure the shifter hadn't held back because he was more worried than Cai about property damage...or Cai's physical state. Well, to hell with that. To hell with everything but this very second and what he needed. Or wanted, rather, he corrected himself.

  "Don't stress over it, wolf. I have to feed, and I can do this at the same time, so neither you nor Giles has to get your shorts in a twist." He leaned down, so he could speak in Rand's ear, brush his lips against the curve.

  "What did I say I was going to do, the first opportunity I had you to myself?" Cai whispered it. "To keep you remembering there's a reason worth not hiding in your wolf."

  "Can't believe you remembered that after a three-hour beating," Rand muttered.

  "You remembered," Cai pointed out, his grip constricting. "I can tell."

  Rand struggled and tried to buck him off. It rubbed his rim against Cai's cock, where the head of it nestled in between his buttocks. Rand bit back a groan.

  "Tell me what I said. There you are." Cai's clever fingers had Rand's cock springing to further attention, though he suspected it was his words as much as anything else that accomplished it.

  "You were going to fuck me." Rand growled.

  "Fast and hard. We got interrupted. Didn't mean I forgot, sweetheart."

  Rand elbowed him, and made solid contact with Cai's jaw, enough to shoot a few stars through his already aching skull. "Don't call me sweetheart. Ever. Got it?"

  Cai cursed but emitted a harsh half-laugh at the same time. "Bastard. But that's more like it. I like a fair fight, wolf. Don't pull your punches. But right now, I want this. And your blood, if you'll lend me some."

  "I didn't think vampires ask," Rand retorted. "They just take."

  "We take. But we also give." Cai stroked and Rand's hips quivered. He was fighting the arousal rising in his body that Cai wanted. Rand probably didn't realize it would be the best soothing balm for any injuries Cai sustained. Or maybe he did, and that was why he wasn't fighting harder.

  "You're very single minded," the shifter complained, though there was a satisfying hitch in his voice.

  "On the contrary, I can multi-task with the best of them. I just haven't forgotten what my top priority was at the beginning of my evening. I'll have that before the day can get any more abysmal and the chance slips away entirely. Carpe diem, and all that shit."

  "Today could get worse than it's already been?" Rand tossed it off, a barbed response, but Cai felt the almost immediate mental pause in the shifter's mind.

  Yeah, it could. Guess we both know that, right? It can always get worse.

  Rand's head tilted. You never did tell me your sob story.

  "No, I didn't. And not going to right now. Talk about a mood-killer." Cai reached over him and pulled out the lube he'd found in the drawer of the night table.

  He used it, resting his free hand on Rand's back, sitting on his thighs. The shifter crossed his hands under his cheek, forming a pillow of his overlaid knuckles and giving Cai an even more superlative view, thanks to the shift of back and shoulder muscles, the bunching of his biceps. His lashes swept down, telling Cai the male was pulling a glimpse of Cai working the lube over his cock. Cai's shaft jumped in his hand as Rand moistened his lips.

  "Getting harder, wolf?"

  "I'm not the only one," Rand grunted.

  "Damn right." Cai slid his greased hand under Rand's body. Rand's hips lifted. Not much, but even the slight accommodation sent a jolt of pleasure through Cai, the physical evidence that the wolf wasn't merely putting up with him.

  He tangled the other non-greased hand in Rand's hair. "This mane needs combing and a trim. Maybe we'll take care of that while we're in civilization."

  "Cai..." Rand's voice sounded strained, maybe because Cai was working him in his fist. Slow, the skin sliding up the shaft to the ridged head, then back down again, Cai's thumb stroking the sensitive line beneath.

  "Yeah?"

  In answer, Rand adjusted, Cai moving with him as the male got onto his knees, using his elbows to balance on all fours on the mattress. When Rand dropped his head against his crossed forearms, Cai folded over him to brush a kiss between his shoulder blades. He felt tired suddenly, beat up, but glad to be skin-to-heated-skin with this particular male. Gratitude. It was an unsettling feeling. "You're a good guy, Rand. You really should have run."

  "Yeah, maybe." Rand's body rippled in response as Cai guided himself into his tight backside, working his way through the muscles, loving the slick glide.

  "Nothing like a quality lube. Makes enjoying the ride all the easier. Right?"

  "God..."

  "Yeah." Cai went deep, all the way to the balls, and stayed there a good, pushing, grinding, plowing moment before withdrawing and doing it again. Harder, deeper, if that was possible. Fuck, the male's muscles squeezed down on him as he came out, pushed in, like he was resisting.
Or gripping, so Cai couldn't leave.

  He moved a hand to Rand's broad shoulder, the other coiled in his hair. Yeah, a trim, but not a cut. He loved wrapping his hands in the stuff. He yanked the male's head up as he brought him off his hands and Cai slid his arm over his chest. He held him that way as he rocked and slammed into his ass, balancing them both on their knees on the bed despite the force. He might be somewhat under his normal strength, but he was still capable of being light as a cat on his feet and twice as agile. He pulled the hair to Rand's right shoulder and grazed his bared neck with sharp fangs.

  "Want to taste you. Nourish myself from your blood, wolf."

  Tension rippled through Rand. He didn't say no, but Cai wanted to hear an answer, from the firm, sensual lips, the deep voice. "Say yes."

  Rand's mind was surprisingly hard to read, as if he'd left the rooms of human reason in favor of animal instinct, so the former didn't invade and cause problems. At least that was how Cai preferred to see it. A long pause, but then the broad shoulders shifted against him as Rand drew in a deep breath. "Yes."

  Cai struck, biting deep, almost moaning at the taste that flooded onto his tongue. There was a rumor among vampires about the legendary shifters. That a vampire-shifter servant pairing would be a match made in heaven, because their blood was supposed to be richer and more potent to a vampire than three humans at once.

  He thought of how quickly Chavez had healed, merely from a fully marked human donor. The shifter blood might be all bullshit wives' tales, but there was no denying the compatibility factor was off the charts. Cai wasn't sure he'd ever want to drink another human's blood again. Anyone's blood but his wolf's.

  Not your wolf. Just a guy who unfortunately got dragged into your shit. He reminded himself of that, and turned his mind to what mattered. Feeling pleasure, and there was a lot of it to go around.

  As he drank what was needed, Cai reached around Rand's hip and stroked his thick, hard cock again. He reveled in the sounds the shifter made. The dip of his head and shoulder, as Rand leaned more on one elbow to brace himself against Cai's thrusts. His thoughts, swirling and hard-to-pin-down though they were, were equally pleasurable. Rand liked how Cai yanked on his hair as he thrust.

  Cai retracted his fangs and sealed the wounds when he'd had all the blood that he needed, but he wasn't sure he'd ever get enough of the male's beautiful body.