Vampire Wardens (Vampire Wardens 1)

She drew a sip from her straw and emptied the glass, pushing it toward him. “Considering I’m already buzzing,” she said, thinking his lips looked even sexier with a little alcohol to heat her blood, “that’s probably not a good idea. I’d planned to take a taxi home, but I want to be sure I can actually find the taxi.”

“You weren’t joking about not being a drinker, I guess.” Dark eyes assessed her with a probing, intimate inspection and, she had a feeling, he saw far more than she would have liked right about now. She shook her head. “It’s a control thing,” she said, “which is probably why the ER is exactly where I don’t belong. I can’t control anything there. Nothing. Horrible things happen – death happens – and I can’t do anything to stop it.”

“You’re focusing on the lives lost,” he said. “Not the lives saved.”

“I know,” she said. “I do. In the logical part of my mind, that makes sense. But I go home and think of the lives lost or the people that will never walk, talk, or see again. Those are the people who haunt my dreams. I left Austin to come here, and I think…it was a mistake.”

“You’ll find a place to put the bad stuff,” he assured her. “It just takes time.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You will.”

He said the words with such certainty, she found herself curious. “You say that as if you speak from experience.”

His lips lifted, but the smile didn’t touch his eyes where sadness danced in the shadows. “I’ll get you that drink.”

“No!” she said, knowing full well her tongue was already waggling way too much from the fuzzy stuff in her head. Most likely her feet would be tripping all over themselves. “I think I better stop. Escape sounded great until my head started buzzing.”

He leaned forward, his hands sliding onto the bar on either side of her. “I’ll make sure you get home safely, Marissa.”

She swallowed hard. There was something about the way he said "Marissa," and the heated way he was staring at her, that set her heart thundering in her chest. Did he mean … he’d take her home or he’d get her a taxi?

Marissa didn’t do one-night stands, or first-night sex, or drinking alone in bars. Not normally. But tonight, nothing in her world made sense. She reached in her purse and slid her keys onto the bar.

Tomorrow, she’d make sense out of the nonsense. She’d be responsible, she’d figure things out. But tonight she needed an escape. Maybe that escape was a slushy cold drink. Maybe it was Evan. She didn’t know. She didn’t care.

***

Three hours later, the bar was closed, but Evan had ensured that Marissa lingered in her seat, a drink in front of her. He wasn’t about to allow her to leave without him, and not just because of the wolf he was certain would have her in his sight. No – there was more to his desire to keep Marissa nearby. Plain and simple, he wanted her, and not just physically, though there was no question, she got him hot and hard. He was, after all, a male, a vampire male, with primal, sexual instincts that had him imagining all kinds of wicked ways to make her scream his name. But what really had him by the balls was not the desire she created in him, but the way she’d made him laugh when he’d have sworn it wasn’t possible. The way she’d made him smile when he was certain he had no reason. The way she’d made him realize how empty a century of hunting had made him and he wanted to know why, and how, a woman he barely knew could do such things. The time for discovery, both in and out of bed, was not now though.

He wiped down the counter, working toward closing up the bar, focused on getting Marissa out of here safely. To ensure the wolf didn’t target her, as he normally did the friends and acquaintances of his victims.

All but done with the façade of this night’s bartender duties, he cast a quick, seductive glance at Marissa, making no attempt to tame the primal heat in his stare. She wasn’t for him, he told himself silently. She was a forever kind of girl, and not the kind of forever he could give her. Nevertheless, when she smiled shyly at him, his groin tightened, cock thickening against his zipper, and he knew he wasn’t walking away without fucking her every which way she’d have him.

He tossed the rag down, and rounded the bar, eliminating the counter that had separated them all night, to stand beside her, his hand on the back of her stool. She turned to face him, the scent of her teasing his nostrils, his arm creating an intimate enclosure, trapping her between the counter and his body. She was his in that moment and the idea appealed to him far more than it should. One tilt of his head and his teeth could touch that delicate, pale neck. His lips her lips. His body her body.

She glanced up at him, her long, dark lashes fluttering with a combination of uncertainty and desire, her pupils dilated with the effects of the alcohol she’d consumed.

“You really are…tall,” she whispered.

“And you,” he said, brushing a finger over her chin, “really are beautiful.” And innocent. Too innocent and perfect for the likes of him.

She shivered. “Tall and a smooth talker, I think I should be afraid.” Her palm slid down the bar. “Ouch!” She drew her hand forward, red pooling on her index finger, a splinter of wood sticking out from the red center.

Instant lust fired through Evan as he took the opportunity presented and snatched the splinter away before he drew her finger to his lips. The sweet taste of her blood exploded on his taste buds, filling him with lust, desire -- fueling the sexual side of his vampire nature, when he already wanted this woman to the point of white-hot demand. His gums tingled, his recessed cuspids threatening to extend.

His eyes met hers, the scent of her arousal, the taste of her blood, seeping through him with a demand that he claim her, claim satisfaction. Somewhere in the back of the bar a door slammed shut. The sound was a jolt of reality that shook Evan just enough to calm the beast inside him threatening to take control of him, of her.

Slowly his tongue swirled around her finger, and then he released it, inspecting the area where the splinter had been.

“All better,” he said.

A stunned look etched her features. “I was right,” she whispered.

His brows dipped, “Right?”

“When I said I should be afraid of you,” she explained. “Because there is no way that what you just did should not bother me but it…”