There were no real thoughts running through his mind. Just impressions. Needs.
He saw only her. He felt only his need to catch her. He needed to make sure she didn’t damage her bare feet on the ground. He needed more of that scent. He needed to get them both out of the open before the sun hit the horizon.
That last need was the one that brought back a sliver of rationality. His heart seized as he risked a glance at the sky. It was already beginning to turn a deep, navy blue.
Just as fast, his focus was back on his runaway. Panic burned through him as he watched her fly over jagged rocks, toward nothing but more desert, less shelter. If he lost her, if he couldn’t get them back to the RV in time, there was a good chance she could be hurt. If she escaped him completely, she could die.
“Stop!” he bellowed, knowing good and well that it was a stupid thing to say to someone who had no reason to listen.
She didn’t stop, but she stumbled. Hard.
Atticus cursed as he watched her go down. He was a bit too far away to see why, but he thought she might have stepped on something. Gods only knew what was out in the desert. It wasn’t just jagged rocks, but bits of old barbed wire fence, the detritus left over from the war, broken glass, and rusty nails.
Alarm pushed him to go faster, the fastest he’d ever run before, despite the fact that she was struggling to stand.
He was on her in seconds.
She shrieked when he skidded down beside her, one leg outstretched and the other bent to hold his weight. His boots sent a cloud of dust and grit into the air. He slapped his hands onto the ground to stop his momentum and ended up nearly on top of her as she scrambled backward, trying to crawl away.
“Stop,”he grunted, trying and mostly failing to not snarl at her. She didn’t stop, of course, so he was forced to grab one of her ankles and drag her back to him. “Just fuckinglistenfor a second! I’m not going to hurt you!”
She fought like a hellion there in the dirt, with her little red claws and her bleeding feet. He would have been impressed with how many blows she managed to land if he weren’t counting down the minutes until sunrise — and also hard as steel behind his fly. The urge to subdue her with his weight and drive hisaching fangs into her throat was a great, throbbing need in his mind, blocking out nearly everything else.
Atticus cursed and fought to grab both her wrists with one hand. Once he had her, it wasn’t too hard to pin her down. She was as fine-boned as a bird. It took barely any effort at all to hold her still as he straddled her middle, using his much greater weight to stop her thrashing.
“Hey.Hey!”He didn’t like having to shake her, but when she kept trying to angle her head to bite his arm, he didn’t exactly have a choice. Even knowing she was most likely venom neutral, it went against instinct to let another vampire bite him. That was a damn quick way to end up frothing at the mouth.
Urges tangled in his mind, twisting him up into knots. The desire to bite her was a roiling, living thing in him, but it ran up against the natural instinct to avoid biting and being bitten by another vampire. Atticus had to shake his head hard to clear it as he pressed his weight down on his captive.
Big blue eyes, almost too big for her face, stared up at him. They looked liquid in the weak pre-dawn light. Her ceremonial makeup was hopelessly smeared. Dust caked her dress and her hair. Her chest heaved, and when she parted her lips to suck in panting breaths, he caught sight of the daintiest, prettiest pair of fangs he’d ever seen in his life.
It wasn’t just the run, nor the surge of panic that made his heart pound when he ground out, “I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I’m trying to help you. If you run here, you’ll be dead in a few hours. There’s no shelter, no caves. No nothing. You’d bake in the sun.”
Rather than reply to his very sound argument against running, she wheezed, “Are you my bridegroom or not?”
“No.” It pissed him off that she assumed he might be the kind of trash who’d buy a bride. Not that it was fair, knowing whathis involvement looked like, but he couldn’t help but be a little offended.
Those dark brows drew together, wrinkling the smudged crimson circle painted on her forehead. “Then who are you? You’re not— I never saw you in the crypt. You’re not an acolyte. I’d remember.”
Crypt?A headache pulsed behind his left eye.So she isn’t just dressed up like an acolyte of Grim. She might actually be one.Good gods.
He’d heard stories of some crypts getting into the extremely lucrative blood bride business, but it was stomach-turning to actually come face to face with it. Atticus wasn’t a religious man, but even he felt a little uneasy at the thought of what Grim would think of her own acolytes selling people off to be bred. The goddess was known for her mercy and her celibacy. Somehow he found it hard to believe she’d be down with blood brides, no matter what bullshit the vampiric zealots pushed.
Atticus didn’t dare let his captive go, but he did ease a bit of his weight off her when he answered, “I’m your— I was hired to be your driver. I had no idea that you were— that the job was for a blood bride. Fuckin’ swear.”
She blinked those huge, liquid eyes at him. They looked so innocent. It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who had just tried to beat the shit out of him. “They told me my groom was in California. Are we there already?”
“No.” Unease tickled the back of his neck. He glanced up. “C’mon. We need to get back to the RV.”
Hauling himself off her, he used his grip on her wrists to leverage her up onto her feet. He realized his mistake almost instantly.
The bride made a low, animal sound of pain as her knees buckled. Too late, he remembered her bloody feet. Crouching tosling one arm behind her knees, he swung her up into his arms with a hissed, “Shit!”
Her eyes were screwed shut and her lips puckered, but she didn’t complain as he hustled back the way they’d come. The world was growing dangerously light around them. Some vampires could handle sunlight better than others. Atticus wasn’t too sensitive, but he suspected the bride was when she tucked her head into the curve of his neck, hiding her eyes.
His pulse jumped. There was also the possibility that she just wanted to do it. That was a compelling thought.
Or maybe she’s just in pain, idiot.
