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  “You said you had a sister.”

  “We call each other family, but she’s not from my human life.”

  I’d lost my parents years ago, but that pain still resonated inside me. I knew what it was to feel loss. But to lose a wife, too? I’d never loved a man before. I thought when I first met Kevin he would be a man I could love. Yeah, that didn’t work out as planned.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded.

  I glanced at the men across the room. Both zeroed their gaze on me in an instant, curiosity in their eyes. An uncomfortable silence fell on the room. Squirming in my seat, I said the first question that came to mind.

  “What are you?” I didn’t direct the question at any one of them particularly. “Your eyes … they look normal now.”

  Eli straightened in his chair and set his beer on the coffee table. “My brother and I are Drakonae. We run the Castle.”

  “Drakonae… like dragons? Like King Arthur and the round table? Knights fighting fire-breathing dragons kind of dragons?” I remembered reading tales of knights and ladies from a castle called Camelot. It’d been one of my favorite books from the stash in that old ramshackle barn. “Erick said the name of the club is the Castle? But why is it called the House of Lama-dis or Lamidae?”

  “Did you tell her everything already, Viking? Damn. You could leave a little mystery for us to share.” Eli tried to sound peeved, but the twinkle in his eyes said otherwise. His amusement was comforting. As secretive as they all were about themselves, they seemed willing to share with me.

  “We are very old. Older than King Arthur. Our race is called Drakonae. The Castle, or club as you said, is the home of the Sisters of Lamidae.”

  “So the club is a front?”

  Eli shook his head. “The club is very real.”

  I turned to Erick. “You’re not going to influence me and make me forget everything, are you?”

  “No. If you choose to remain in Sanctuary, you need to know everything about it to help protect it. In our world, ignorance is not bliss. It’s a death sentence.”

  He brushed his fingertips along my jaw and leaned toward me. His fingers threaded into my hair, cradling my chin in his large palm. He brushed his lips over mine and sucked my bottom lip into his mouth.

  His statement worried me, but my fears fled for a moment when his lips were on mine before embarrassment reared its head in their place. I pulled away. Heat rushed to my cheeks. I wasn’t used to displays of affection in front of anyone, much less two very intimidating dragon men.

  Erick smiled and placed a gentle kiss on my forehead before releasing me and dropping his hand from my neck.

  I spoke again, with more confidence this time. “I knew the castle had to be protecting something or someone. What or who are the Sisters?” The two men both snapped their mouths closed and frowned.

  Not quite the response I expected.

  “That is a story for another day.” Miles stood from his chair, his jaw set firmly. “We should head out,” Eli stated, rising to stand next to his brother.

  My knee bounced, a nervous habit I’d had since I was a kid. Erick ran his palm over my thigh to settle me. Not even a single twitch dared to go against his soothing touch.

  The way he could calm my body or settle my nerves with a touch or a word baffled my mind. The idea that a man would be thoughtful to my needs was foreign. The world I’d grown up in didn’t cater to women. It used them.

  The twin brothers ambled to the door. Erick pressed down gently on my leg before rising and following them out to the front. I stayed exactly where he left me. Exactly where he wanted me.

  It was rapidly becoming exactly where I wanted to be. The thought of leaving him, of leaving this town full of its amazing and unique people, grew more difficult by the minute.

  I could hear them talking outside, but couldn’t make out the conversation. Only a few moments passed before the door clicked shut and the wall in front of me shimmered blue for just a moment, reminding me why I’d been running in the first place.

  Sanctuary might have welcomed me. Rose might not mind my being here now. But when Kevin found me, hell would break loose and they wouldn’t want me anymore. Erick wouldn’t want me if he really knew what that monster had done to me. And Kevin was a monster. He might not have fangs or claws, but he could tear apart a person’s soul. He was still trying to finish off mine.

  Staying in Sanctuary for very long wasn’t an option. No matter how much I wanted to stay with Erick, I couldn’t risk exposing his friends to my ex. Whatever they were protecting was important. A lot more important than little ol‘ me.

  “I leave your side for but a moment and you’re upset again.” Erick leaned against the doorframe, his tall lean body called to mine, banishing my previous thoughts. “I assure you my friends mean you no harm … they were merely concerned about me.”

  “Why?” I asked, glad to focus his attention away from my thoughts.

  “When Elinor died ...” He paused, staring a hole in the floor for a moment before meeting my gaze again. “I left them for over a century. I wallowed in my sorrows and did many things I’m not proud of. Things that would have broken my sweet Elinor’s heart.”

  “Grief and anger are difficult beasts to conquer,” I whispered, remembering the rage I felt after my parents’ accident. When the social worker and police took me to the foster house, I wanted to hurt anyone and everyone around me.

  “Did you conquer them, min kjaereste?” He beckoned me toward him with outstretched arms. I stood and walked across the room to him, allowing my body to be tucked tightly against his, shocked by how much I wanted to be near him. Shocked more that I allowed myself that pleasure.

  “I learned how to bury them.” My words were muffled by his shirt, but it didn’t matter. He’d heard me.

  “The thing about burying beasts is that they keep coming back.”

  “Mine keep me alive. I learned to survive on my own because of my demons.” I pushed away from him. I couldn’t let myself become dependent on his strength, no matter how comfortable he was. My battles were just that—mine.

  “I will let you go … if that is what you really want. But if you want a home, you’ve found one. You were right earlier. If Rose didn’t want you here, she would have made it very clear. Instead, she almost seemed to be expecting you,” he paused, his gaze drifting away from me.

  I saw the light in his eyes and the determination. Like he’d just had an epiphany. Why would Rose have been expecting me? We’d never met. I’d only been in Texas for three months.

  Leaving wasn’t what I wanted, but it was inevitable. Kevin always made sure of it. The friends I made in Florida had paid dearly for their association with me. I read in the news that not two days after he’d tracked me there, the nursing home where I’d lived and worked had been burned to the ground, claiming over forty souls. After that, I stayed away from people. I never socialized and worked as many shifts as I could find. I’d learned over time, the more I worked, the less likely I was to be hassled by male staff. I never took breaks. Never smoked. Never spoke unless spoken to.

  “I will only bring pain to this town. It follows me wherever I go. I can’t stay … even though I want to.”

  “Try.”

  It was just one word, but it said everything. He was right. I’d already given up. I didn’t try anymore. It wasn’t worth it. I never stayed anywhere long enough to care. My thoughts were getting all jumbled.

  He stepped toward me, but I backed up, keeping the distance between us the same. “I do want to try, but then I think about you and Rose, Maven and Raven, and Calliope, and everyone else I haven’t met yet. I know what’s coming.” Tears burned down my cheeks now in a waterfall of pain.

  “I want you to stay with me,” he stated slowly.

  “Why?” A whimper slipped out. “Didn’t you hear me? He’ll kill you. He’ll kill anyone who won’t help him find me. He killed Matilda and Joe, and George, and the others. I know he d
id.”

  My body shook from sobs. I’d never admitted it out loud before, but I knew the fire had been his fault. The news reported it as an accident. They said it started in the room of an elderly resident named Matilda Jones.

  It hadn’t been an accident. It had been my punishment. He’d found out they were my friends.

  I crumbled, my legs gave way, but my knees never hit the floor. Erick’s arms encircled me, lifting me away from the hardwood, and he whisked me up the stairs to his room.

  “Things are different here,” he murmured, laying me gently on the satin covers.

  The bed dipped under his weight as he crawled next to me and tugged me firmly against his hard chest. I tucked my arms between us and accepted the comfort he was providing.

  It wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Nothing good in my life ever did.

  “I will protect you.”

  My mind raced, struggling to process what he’d just said. Maybe he was right. Maybe this town could protect itself. But, maybe not. I sucked in a gasp between sobs. Just being supernatural didn’t make you immortal. Even vampires could be killed.

  “I can’t just hide here in your house for the rest of my life. I thought staying here might be a good thing. But, I can’t hide in a small town. There’s no way to blend in. No crowds to disappear into. I’m vulnerable here.” The pros and cons list in my head started to appear. My usual habits and ways of avoiding detection wouldn’t work in Sanctuary.

  There was one main street. One restaurant, as far as I could tell. A castle with dragons, whips, chains, and who knew what else.

  “I will keep you safe.”

  “What if you aren’t around? I heard you tell your friends you go out of town for business. What if Rose needs you to do something?”

  “They will watch you if I’m gone.”

  “The dragons?”

  A soft chuckle rumbled in his chest. “In all honesty, you would be safest in the Castle but probably very uncomfortable.”

  “Because of the whips and chains and stuff?”

  He laughed aloud. “Yes, kjaere. But, everything that happens in the Castle is consensual. Nothing is done between two people that isn’t agreed upon in some form beforehand.”

  “I can’t imagine wanting to be beaten,” I hissed back, my emotions seesawing back and forth between wanting to trust him and hating myself for even thinking I could. Kevin had used many things on me, including a whip, but his belt had created most of my scars. That, and his baseball bat.

  “No one is beaten the way you are describing. A whip is used to heighten pleasure, not to torture and disfigure.” He spoke slowly, melodically.

  I knew he wasn’t lying to me about the club, but even the idea of a whip or a chain made me want to vomit.

  Most of my scars had lightened as the years passed. I was so used to them, I didn’t notice them much anymore, but one of the waitresses at the Seafood Shack saw one of my larger ones one day when my shirt came un-tucked. She never asked me about it, but her slight gasp of horror was enough to remind me how ugly Kevin had made my body.

  I never dated. Never flirted. I refused any man who showed even the smallest interest in me. It was better to be labeled a cold-hearted bitch than to end up with another man like Kevin. Once or twice when I’d admired a handsome man from afar, I always reminded myself that I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t a young eighteen-year-old with a perfect body. Society labeled me a whore because I lived alone, unprotected by family. Most of the male staff thought I turned tricks on the side and had asked for my number on several occasions.

  Erick was the first man I’d let embrace or touch me since Kevin.

  “You’ll never ask me to do those things. Promise me.” I turned my head and strained to look up at him.

  He loosed his grip, as if sensing I needed a visual connection with him.

  I did.

  His ocean blue eyes were soft. Kind. Tender. And then … there was something else in his gaze I didn’t recognize. Something unfamiliar that reminded me of those romantic books back in that Tennessee barn. He pressed another kiss to my forehead and shook his head. “I would never do anything you didn’t enjoy, min kjaereste.”

  His endearment brought tears to my eyes again. He’d called me beautiful, when I’d smelled like a sewer, but would he still think of me that way when he saw the damaged parts of me? Even faded, I knew the scars were ghastly to look at.

  “Why me?”

  He looked away for a moment and sighed. Then back at me. “I’ve been hunting Darius since Elinor died.”

  I gasped, biting back a sob. The Djinn had killed his wife.

  He nodded. “Darius is a bloody menace who needs to be wiped from the face of the planet.” Erick laid me on my back and then stretched out on his side next to me, propping his head up with his arm. “When I saw you … your eyes were so determined. You knew he was out there. You knew what he was and yet you stubbornly fought to get to a place where you thought you’d be safe.”

  I closed my eyes as he traced the line of my jaw to my chin with his free hand. Then he let his hand travel back up my face and his fingers sank into my hair. He rubbed my scalp, massaging ever so gently.

  “I wasn’t safe in the bus station, was I?”

  “No.”

  “Would he have killed me?”

  “Eventually.”

  I had run from one lunatic straight into another. It wasn’t fair. I deserved a break. A little bit of happiness in this screwed up world. Was that too much to hope for?

  “I want to give you new memories, Bailey. Something to help drown out the pain and self-blame. I don’t know what your ex did, but I want to help you find a way past it.”

  I relaxed into his touch and felt tears well up in my eyes, I closed them to hide the pain.

  “You’ve been running from him for so long to avoid physical pain, you never had time to forgive yourself for the emotional pain he inflicted. None of it was your fault. He was a predator.”

  “I’m scared you won’t like what you see. He did things to me that … that I have to carry with me. I’m a fucked-up mess.” When I looked in the mirror in the mornings, I saw a broken, battered mess of a woman who had survived by the skin of her teeth. More sobs slipped from my chest. I couldn’t hold them back.

  “You never gave up, min kjaereste. You may feel broken or ugly, but you have the spirit of a warrior. In my homeland, you would have been respected and honored for your scars. My people see wounds as badges of honor. You didn’t let your enemy win—you never quit fighting.”

  “They keep calling you a Viking. Were those your people?”

  “Yes. We were seafaring warriors and raiders. Strong. Independent. Fierce. Loyal. Passionate.”

  It would’ve been nice to live in a world where more people had those qualities. I opened my eyes and stared into the endless blue of his. He had such a beautiful way with words. I could listen to the ebb and flow of his deep velvety voice for hours.

  My sobs had turned to the occasional hiccup, and my heart had slowed to a more normal rhythm.

  He moved his hand from my hair slowly down my neck, over the curve of my breast, and along my torso. Stopping at my hip, he caught the hem of my shirt and tugged it up a few inches, revealing half of my stomach and a handful of white jagged scars.

  I held my breath. What would he do? Would he say something? I listened for an intake of breath, a gasp, a groan. Nothing. He didn’t make a sound.

  The bed shifted as he leaned forward and kissed along the length of one scar and then the other, until he’d kissed every inch of the marred flesh he’d uncovered.

  Then he looked back at me. Our gazes met and the heated desire in his eyes made me tremble. I wanted him. Not just a little want. I was wet, aching with need. If he couldn’t smell my arousal, my pheromones had to have given me away by now.

  “Tell me what you want, kjaere. This only goes as far as you desire.”

  Meaning what? If I said no in the middle of stripping,
he’d back off? If I started panicking, he’d just quit? I was supposed to trust this vampire, a predator by nature, to leave me be if I so dictated?

  But it wasn’t his wants and desires that left me confused the most. It was mine. I wanted to taste his lips again. I wanted to feel him against me, skin to skin. I wanted his cock inside me, stretching me, filling me until it was all I could feel.

  He said I was a fighter, not a victim.

  I hadn’t given up. Even though I’d been running, I never gave in. He called me honorable, not shameful. No one had ever called me anything but worthless.

  I lifted my arms, put my hands on his neck and pulled him closer. Our lips met and I parted mine, inviting him in. But it wasn’t just my mouth I opened. I knew a crack had opened in the walls surrounding my heart, too. I was falling in love with this man who called me beautiful and strong—a warrior.

  It was time to fight.

  Chapter 7

  He nuzzled my neck and licked along the pulse point. Then his right leg moved across my abdomen, straddling me, but not putting pressure. He straightened himself, leaving my skin tingling and desperate for more attention. Pushing up my arms, he grabbed the hem of my shirt and tugged, gently pulling until it came over my head.

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to see his initial reaction to my scars. I could hear him take a deep breath. “You are exquisite, Bailey. Look at me.”

  The words surprised me. I opened my eyes slowly. He held my gaze with a look I could only describe as adoration, while his hands slid behind my torso and unsnapped the bra. It slipped off easily and he tossed it, along with my shirt, to the floor.

  I heaved a breath in and out. I was completely bare from the waist up. Long jagged streaks crisscrossed my chest and stomach, some were raised and others were just ghostly white shadows.

  His hands caressed my breasts, rolling the nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, bringing them to a hard point. He leaned down again, pressing his lips against a scar that crossed over my left breast. “So beautiful, kjaere. So brave.”