“Lana?”
“Is something wrong?”
“Nothing at all.” He touched his mouth to her neck and nibbled on the delicate flesh. For such a tough woman, she had very soft skin. His tongue slipped between his teeth for a longer lick. Her skin was salty with sweat, slightly gritty from the dirty floor. It was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted. He rolled his gaze up and met Lana’s confused eyes. Her cheeks were flushed—it was hot, she was embarrassed, but it was more than that. Her heart was racing and her breathing had grown shallow. She was excited by his touch, by the prospect of his bite. And the faint scent of her arousal was even more intoxicating than that of the blood rushing beneath his lips.
He held her gaze for a long moment. Forget the dirty floor, the overwhelming heat of their little prison. In that moment, his world collapsed to him and Lana. She made a soft sound, bending one knee so that his leg fell between both of hers. Vincent groaned, nearly swamped by a wave of hunger, and not only for blood. He wanted to fuck her until she screamed, to lap up the cream of her arousal, and then sink his fangs into her thigh as she bucked beneath him.
He reined in his lust with brutal force. He would have Lana Arnold in every way he wanted. But this was not the place. For now, he would settle for a taste of her sweet blood. If such a thing could be called settling. He lowered his head to her neck, his fangs piercing her skin and sliding into the velvet softness of her vein. A gasp escaped her lips as the euphoric in his saliva hit her bloodstream, followed by a quiet moan as she shivered in his embrace, her bent knee closing over his thigh to hold him close as she flexed against the erection that was straining painfully against his jeans.
Vincent growled soft and low, his fangs still deep in her vein, the dark nectar of her blood rolling down his throat, just as delicious as he’d known it would be.
Lana bit back a cry, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she writhed in the throes of the orgasm brought on by his bite. Vincent lifted his head, licking the two tiny wounds automatically, totally captivated by the sight before him. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed to stop himself from taking her right there. She would have let him. Hell, in her current state, she’d probably have begged him to fuck her and to hell with the dirt floor or the crazy cartel guards right outside the door. To hell with the strange vampire in the corner . . .
Vincent shifted his gaze abruptly and found the other vampire staring not at Vincent, but at Lana. Vincent acted faster than he’d thought possible, jumping up to crouch protectively between Lana and the stranger, growling a soft warning even as he sent a narrow spear of power that forced the other vampire to look at him and not Lana.
The younger vampire’s frightened eyes met Vincent’s for a brief instant before he lowered them in submission. The vamp was terrified. Hell, living like this, he probably spent most of his waking hours terrified, but he had a particularly good reason to be worried about Vincent. Because this little bastard was the one who’d betrayed Vincent to the local cartel boys, the one who’d set his attempted capture and enslavement in motion. And, yeah, Vincent thought in terms of attempted because, although they didn’t know it yet, his captors’ plan was about to blow up in their faces in a very spectacular fashion.
“What’s your name, boy?” he demanded, still blocking the vamp’s view of Lana whose orgasm was fading and slowly being replaced by intense embarrassment.
“Jerry Moreno, sir,” the vamp mumbled, still not meeting Vincent’s gaze.
Vincent tilted his head curiously and on impulse switched to English. “Who’s your master?”
“Alessio Olivares Camarillo is my master, sir,” Moreno responded in perfect, unaccented American English, which told Vincent where he’d come from, but little else.
Vincent frowned. “I don’t know any vampire by that name and certainly no master. Not in Mexico. Is he in the U.S.?”
Jerry Moreno looked up finally and gave Vincent a puzzled look. “Señor Camarillo is not a vampire,” he said, surprise obvious in his voice.
“Then he’s not your master,” Vincent dismissed. “I didn’t ask whom you worked for, I asked who your master was.”
Moreno appeared visibly distraught. “Forgive me, sir. I want to answer your question, but I don’t understand.”
“Who created you?” Vincent demanded impatiently. “Who made you Vampire?”
“I don’t know. No one ever told me.”
Vincent stared. He’d never encountered anything like this. The only way a vampire wouldn’t know his own Sire was if . . .
“How old are you?”
“I was twenty years old when I woke up as a vampire. That was two years ago, so . . . I guess I’m twenty-two.”
“What happened before that? You’re American, right? Why were you in Mexico?”
“Yes, sir, my family’s in Oregon. I was in the Army. We’d just come back from our second tour in Afghanistan and a bunch of us came down to Mexico on leave. And that’s all I remember.”
“You don’t remember meeting anyone? Getting injured, maybe dying?”
Moreno looked shocked. “No, sir!”
“And have you been here with Camarillo the whole time?”
“Yes, sir. Señor Camarillo was the first face I saw when I woke as a vampire. He told me I belonged to him, that he was my master, and he gave me my first blood.”
“Not your first blood,” Vincent muttered to himself. Some master vamp had taken this kid to the edge of death, fed him his blood, made him a vampire, then essentially bound him to the human drug lord. Had he been the one who killed him? Or had he found him already dying? Either way, he’d turned the boy without his consent.
Vincent caught the boy sneaking a glance at Lana and snapped a whip of power at him. “If you want to survive the next ten minutes, boy, don’t look at her,” he snarled. “Look at me.”