Heart of the Warrior Read online

  "So, what? You gonna bust us? You’re an enforcer, right?" The short high seemed to be dissipating as the two girls turned and looked out the windshield.

  "Maybe. Maybe not. What are your names?"

  The two exchanged glances, their long hair hanging in sweaty ribbons over their faces and down their backs.

  "I’m…Candy, and this is…Sue."

  "And I’m the Tooth Fairy," Sev said. "Now, what are your real names?"

  The brunette behind the wheel shot a glance at him as if she couldn’t believe he had caught on to her lie, but really? Candy and Sue? How obvious could she be? Of course those weren’t their real names. No sane vampire within the king's inner circle named their progeny such ordinary names, and Sev would bet everything he owned that's what he had on his hands here.

  He cocked his head at the driver, waiting, but she only stared back, her lips pursed tightly.

  With a sigh, he looked away. He wanted to bust these girls, but something told him to let this one go with only a warning. Otherwise, their high-powered parents might drag this into a major issue that wouldn't be worth the energy. Maybe this was enough of a scare to sober them up and keep them from making any more late-night buys or equally bad choices. Probably not, but he would give them the benefit of the doubt.

  "Look, girls. I won’t take you in this time, but if I catch your asses buying or using again, I’m hauling you in, and then you’ll have to give me your names. Your real names. And your daddy’s." The last he said to the brunette. That seemed to get quote-unquote Candy’s attention. "Understood?"

  The two nodded.

  "So, you’re not going to arrest us?" The blonde gaped at him as if she had just fallen under a lucky star.

  "Not this time, but consider yourselves marked. I’ve got your scent right here." He tapped the side of his nose. "I will be looking for you. Rest assured. Now, do yourselves a favor and get off the cobalt."

  Sev met the brunette’s eyes and held her gaze for a long moment before hopping over the side of the car. "Now get out of here before I change my mind."

  The two girls glanced at each other as if they couldn’t believe their good fortune, and without another word, Candy threw the car in gear and took off, leaving him standing on the sidewalk.

  Shit. He needed to be less of a softy, but he liked giving people a break. One get-out-of-jail free card was all they got, though. He sure hoped he didn’t see Candy and Sue, or whatever their real names were, again, but he probably would. Oh well, they had been warned. Next time, he wouldn’t be Mr. Nice Guy.

  Dematerializing, he misted back to the alley and found Malek waiting in the Suburban.

  "Hey." He hopped in the passenger seat and yanked the door closed. "Thanks for waiting."

  "Well?" Malek put the Suburban in gear and they started out of the alley.

  "Two females in a Jag. Money falling out their asses. If I had to guess, I’d say they were recently-transitioned."

  Recently-transitioned could mean they were anywhere from twenty-eight to sixty years old. By vampire standards, anything less than sixty was young.

  "Damn. Makes sense, though. It’s the young ones who seem to get tangled up in the shit these guys were peddling." Malek jerked his thumb toward the back seat.

  Sev turned around and inspected the shackled drecks behind the iron grate separating the cab from the passenger seats. "How you boys doing? Comfy?"

  The one with the home run swing sneered. "Fuck you."

  Sev grinned and rubbed his shoulder. The bitch hurt like a mother fucker. "Maybe later." He turned back to Malek as they hit the main road and headed toward AKM. "Did you get names off them?" He bobbed his head toward their catch.

  "Nah, just call them Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. Or Dumb and Dumber. Although I don’t know which is which."

  Sev chuckled and looked out the window.

  "So you didn’t bust the girls?" Malek glanced sideways at him.

  Sev snorted. "Hell no. With all the money in that car, I had a feeling busting them would end up a nightmare of monolithic proportions. Nah, I gave them a warning this time."

  "This time?"

  "Yeah. I marked their scents. I’ll be looking for them, and if I catch them pulling this shit again, I don’t care who their daddy is, I’m hauling their asses in."

  "Is that the real reason why you let them go, bro?" Malek arched an eyebrow at him.

  Sev shook his head. "I know what you’re thinking Mal, but I wasn’t even remotely interested in tapping either one of them, okay?" He thought about Arion again and wondered if he would ever get the male off his mind. He had been thinking a lot about Arion. Too much, actually.

  Honestly, Sev was surprised at Malek's suggestion that he would be interested in the girls. Malek didn't normally talk about females. It was common knowledge that he had lost his mate centuries ago and had never fully recovered. Consequently, females weren't a big topic of discussion with him. He never dated, and he never even looked at a woman in that way, except for on the one night each month he went to the Black Garter. Even then, he only looked, didn't touch.

  Maybe Malek was just growing more comfortable with him and opening up more. Sev was the new guy, after all, and now that he and Malek were patrolling together on a regular basis, conversation flowed more easily. Who knew? Sev just wasn't used to hearing him talk like that.

  Malek let the subject of the two girls drop, and they rode in silence for a couple of minutes.

  "So, what are you doing after your shift?" Malek said.

  Sev inspected his fingernails. "I don’t know. Maybe hit the training center then go home."

  "You should come with us to Four Alarm."

  Us: Malek, Io, Micah, Trace…and Arion.

  Sev knew Arion would be at Four Alarm and he wasn’t sure he could handle that. Ari was easily the finest-looking guy on the team, and he attracted enough females to prove it. Women, both human and vampire, gravitated toward him like bees to honey. And wasn't that just swell? Ari and his best friend, Io, another member of the team who was equally popular with the ladies, were quite the crowd pleasers at the team's regular hang-out. Going and watching that dagger-through-the-heart shit would prove just how much of a masochist Sev was, and masochism wasn't something he normally ascribed to. That shit worked well and good for the likes of Micah's old friends, from what he'd heard, but Sev didn't float that way.

  "I'm not sure, Mal. I should really just go home."

  "Come on. It’ll be fun and you deserve a night to celebrate. You haven’t taken any time to hang and have fun since Tristan promoted you to full status."

  As the newest member of the team, Sev had only recently come off probation.

  He glanced back out the window. Part of him wanted to go, but seeing Arion would kill him. Had it really been over a month since the night Micah brought his mate, Samantha, into AKM after giving her his venom to save her life? Arion and Micah had argued that night, and in his emotionally-charged state, Micah had beaten the crap out of Arion. Then Sev had taken Ari home and…Sev's heart hiccupped as he remembered what happened in Ari's kitchen. Oh, the things they had done to each other in that brief, heated interlude.

  Damn, it had been over a month. Closer to six weeks. And Ari barely spoke to him now. The awkwardness between them felt like sludge, and Sev didn't know what to do or how to feel about the incidents of their first and only night together and all the uncomfortable moments between them since.

  He shifted uneasily as he remembered the way their bodies had fit together so perfectly. Ari's mouth had brushed over his and hovered there as their bodies had slapped together. Sev had never experienced anything quite like what he and Ari had shared. Hell, there hadn't been any penetration, and yet, the experience had been the most erotic one of Sev's life.

  And Ari had wanted him, too. He'd been too into him, too excited, too eager to touch Sev. Surely, Sev hadn't misread Ari's interest, but afterward, Ari reacted as if in surprise. As if he couldn't believe what had happen
ed.

  No, that wasn't exactly right. But there had been something in Ari's expression and body language that Sev couldn't quite put a finger on. Almost as if Ari had been in the midst of a revelation. He'd looked like someone who had always sworn he hated being near water, and then went to the beach one day and couldn't stop staring at the ocean. Before long, he's taken off his shoes and is walking in the surf, curling his toes in the wet sand, smiling in awe that he had missed this beautiful, wet world his whole life, asking himself what in the hell he'd been thinking.

  That's how Ari had looked that night – like a man who had been missing something his entire life and had only just found it.

  But now, six weeks later, it was as if that night never happened. Ari never mentioned it, and Sev never brought it up.

  Unfortunately for Sev, his world had shifted that night. Something had changed inside him. His heart had opened in a way it never had, and it scared him. Not even Gabe, who he lost a year ago, had made him feel this way. And if Sev was being honest with himself, the way he was feeling was the way a male felt in the early stages of taking a mate.

  Hence his reason for being scared.

  Male vampires lived in both excited anticipation and fear of the call to mate. Nothing possessed the power to lift a male vampire into the heavens emotionally the way the mating call did, while at the same time filling him with dread that reached the depths of Hell. Losing a mate could be fatal, and mated males never fully let go of that fear. It always hovered just at the back of their minds. And if a chosen mate didn't reciprocate? Well, that was like living death from the stories he'd heard.

  On one side was the beautiful, erotic phase known as the calling, which all males lived for, while on the flipside he faced the painful suffering, which caused males to cower in fear. The calling lifted a male up, and the suffering made his life a living Hell if his mate rejected him.

  And right now, it looked like Ari was definitely rejecting Sev.

  Lucky me.

  The early stages of mating were a precarious time for a male, and Sev displayed all the signs of early suffering. His chest ached, he was moody as fuck, any little thing set him off, his mind obsessed over Ari to the point of distraction, and he was a nervous wreck.

  Fuck. How had this happened? How had he started to attach to Ari when it was apparent Ari wasn't feeling the same for him? All he wanted was to see Ari, but he fought to avoid him so he wouldn't feel the pain of rejection.

  "So, what do you say?" Malek pulled him from his thoughts.

  "Huh?"

  "About Four Alarm. You coming or what?"

  "Okay, sure. I’ll join you guys for a while." Had he really just agreed to go to Four Alarm? His voice had simply come out of nowhere and betrayed him, and as soon as the words were out, he wished he could take them back.

  Truth was, if he was mating to Ari as he suspected, he would slowly lose control of his conscious behavior as his subconscious pushed him to reconnect with Ari. The mating tether was a bitch to resist, pushing a newly-mated male toward the calling so he could propagate the species with his fertile seeds. Too bad his mating side hadn't received the memo that he was gay and wouldn't be getting anyone preggers with his army of fertile soldiers unless a miracle occurred.

  "Great. Drinks on me tonight, bro." Malek clapped him on the shoulder.

  Sev watched the city pass by for the rest of the trip to the compound, and he made a conscious effort to keep a lock on his vocal cords before he made another colossal mistake, because Lord knew, he kept a lot of secrets hidden inside him and needed to keep his yap shut.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Arion sat at the bar with Io. A woman wearing barely-there clothes who'd introduced herself as Chloe was tucked between his knees and laughing at something Io had just said. She was built like a fitness model and had pretty eyes. She had a nice laugh, too. The way she pressed her perky breasts against him and snuck an arm around his back to dip her fingertips into the waist of his pants would have sent any man into fits of hard-on heaven. Any man except him, anyway. Because, honestly, he just wasn't into this scene, anymore. If he ever had been. And he was seriously beginning to doubt that.

  For the past six weeks, he had begun to realize he'd merely play-acted being into females all his life. Every day it became clearer that his motor ran for men and men alone. It still shocked him how quickly the truth had awakened in him after his brief interlude with Sev, and he was still getting used to the idea, but there was no doubt. Ari was attracted to men. He realized that now, and he kept that newsflash under lock and key more securely than the government guarded Area 51.

  Homophobia was just as rampant in the vampire community as it was in the human one, and he didn't need to deal with that shit. But lucky Arion, his best friend, Io, was a certifiable, card-carrying member of the anti-gay faction. So were his parents. They would disown him if they even thought he had switched teams and floated a hard-on for males now.

  Well, actually, one male.

  Ever since that night with Sev six weeks ago, it had become clear who he wanted. With Sev, his libido had spiked, and, for the first time, responded to someone. None of the women he'd dated ever excited him the way Sev did. But then Ari had only been with women before he and Sev ventured down Gay Lane and turned onto Orgasm Boulevard with each other. The conclusion seemed obvious, didn't it? Women equaled ho-hum. Sev equaled oh my God yes!

  The experience with Sev had given Ari a lot of food for thought, and after much soul searching, he realized he had gotten good at faking it with females. That alone should have tipped him off that he was gay. Looking back at all his short-lived relationships with females – none had lasted more than a few weeks – it was obvious he had never been heterosexual, only a poser. A gay male pretending he was straight.

  One clue should have been that he couldn't keep his eyes open during sex with females. He kept them closed. And the female couldn't talk too much. That way, he could fantasize about men and get excited enough to get off. But it took major fantasizing – as in super focused this-is-really-a-man-and-not-a-woman-and-he-only-feels-like-a-woman fantasizing. Going with the ever-faithful doggie style made it easier, because then he could really get into the fantasy that he had a man bent over in front of him. But even with all that fantasizing, he had gotten so good at faking orgasms he deserved an Academy Award. More often than not, though, he forewent the agonizing roll in the hay and took his fantasies home with him and let his hand do the honors.

  And his hand had been getting a lot of honors in the six weeks since he and Sev had dry-fucked against the kitchen counter. Well, not exactly dry, but hell, what did you call it when there was no penetration but you came all over each other, anyway? And what they did hadn't been masturbation, either. But, fuck, it had left Ari's blood boiling for more even though he was terrified of going down that road again. What if someone found out?

  Ari's world was going to Hell with a first-class ticket, because while he was terrified of someone finding out about his "new leaf," he couldn’t stop thinking about Sev. And it was driving him mad.

  He had felt a connection with Sev almost from the first day Sev joined the team two-and-a-half months ago, but he figured they would just be good friends. Now he knew better. He was attracted to Sev. Really attracted to him. As in, he could hardly think of anything else and was in a state of arousal half the time as he replayed that night over and over through his mind. Even now he was aroused thinking about it.

  Blind luck had pushed them together that night and he hadn't been able to resist. Sev’s mouth had felt perfect on his, and so had his body, and he often wondered what would have happened if he hadn't gotten spooked. Would he have invited Sev to spend the day? Would Sev have agreed? If so, just how far would they have gone with each other? Ari knew the answer. He and Sev would have gone all the way. More than once. That's how aroused Sev made him. But things had gotten awkward that night, Sev had left, and now he and Sev hardly even looked at each other, anymore.


  The evasive action was Arion’s fault. He was afraid. No. Afraid wasn’t the word for it. He was fucking terrified. What if his parents had seen them together? The thought was irrational, but he couldn’t stop himself from imagining his parents standing at his window, watching him kiss and hump his cock against another male. And it wasn’t just his parents that put the fear of God in him. What if Io found out? Io would rag his ass and he would never hear the end of it. Their friendship probably wouldn’t survive it, and Ari didn’t want to lose his best friend.

  So, he continued living a lie. No matter how attracted he was to Severin, he couldn’t be with him. It would cause too much trouble.

  "Are you listening to me?" The woman between his knees pulled back and Ari realized she had asked him a question.

  "I’m sorry. What did you say?"

  She tsked and tilted her head. Her flimsy blouse sparkled in the dim lights blinking over the dance floor. The music was pumping loud and hard.

  "I asked if you wanted to dance."

  Ari glanced at Io, who had a girl tucked inside each arm and two sets of lips sucking on his neck. From the looks of it, shit was getting intense and Ari figured Io would disappear with them soon to do whatever it was he did with them in the back. Yeah, no mystery there. Io was going to drink well tonight while getting good and fucked. The thought that he and Io used to participate in these little banquets together made his stomach lurch.

  "Sure." He scooted off the bar stool, and Io looked up long enough to give him an approving nod before turning his attention back to his fan club of two.

  If Io only knew how miserable he was inside and why, he wouldn't show such encouragement. Arion almost didn’t know who he was, anymore. He had lived the lie too long. Shit, he had gotten so good at acting hetero he had believed he was.

  Until six weeks ago.

  Chloe took his hand and led him to the dance floor just as the music changed to something slower. Grrreeeaaaat. Just what he needed, because sure as shit, Chloe would take the opportunity to cling to him like static. Her arms wrapped around him and he cringed inside as he slipped his arms around her waist.