Bane's Choice (Vampire Motorcycle Club #1) - Alyssa Day Page 0,7

a degree, but his eyes remained unchanged.

He knew he was dying.

They always knew.

Bane lifted a hand but then let it drop. There wasn’t an inch of unburned skin he could touch in comfort or solace.

My friend, you’re beyond human help.

Hunter blinked slowly.

But I am not human, as you well know.

A question flared in smoke-damaged, blood-red eyes, but then resignation returned. Hunter’s eyelids slowly closed. Disbelief or hopelessness, perhaps.

Simple acceptance of his impending end.

Well, fuck that.

NO! Bane roared through their mental connection, rage and grief searing through him. I DO NOT ACCEPT IT.

Hunter’s eyelids flew open, and he tried to move his mouth, but his lips were burned away, showing the skull beneath.

Think your response. I’ll hear.

Hunter blinked again, and then, after such a long moment Bane thought the human had given up, Hunter’s voice sounded in Bane’s mind.

I must be fucking dead already, but if this is Heaven, I want a do-over. I expected sexy, half-naked angels at the very damn least.

Bane blew out a breath, relief relaxing muscles he hadn’t realized were clenched. Hunter was still sane, then, which hadn’t been a given, considering the sheer agony he’d endured.

You can argue with Luke about angels later. Now, you must decide. You know what I am. I can make you like me, and you will survive. But you will be changed. Forever.

The hideous clanging of an alarm sounded in the hall, and running footsteps—probably of the humans who’d finally broken free of the compulsion and figured out they should be in Hunter’s room—came toward them.

Decide. Now. Live or die.

Shockingly, unbefuckinglievably, the edges of Hunter’s ruined mouth twitched.

If you promise I’ll turn out to be as charming as your arrogant ass, then hey. Sure.

Bane was nodding when the woman he hadn’t even known he’d been waiting three hundred years for ran into the room and started shouting at him.

“Who the hell are you, and where is my staff? My God, you’re not even sterile, and 90 percent of his body is open to compromise!” She ran across the room, put herself between Hunter and Bane, and shoved Bane away from the bed, putting her entire body weight into it.

Bane blinked and actually fell back a step, not from her ineffectual shove, but from the fact that she’d actually done it.

Grown men feared him.

Vampires feared him.

Things that were far worse than even vampires feared him.

And this small human—with a face that was all furious, ocean-blue eyes and pale, creamy, glowing skin—was still pushing him.

And shouting in his face.

Every predatory instinct in his body woke up, shocking his nerve endings into an almost-electric state of heightened awareness, and his mind started shouting a warning at him—threat, threat, threat.

He looked into her eyes, and those same instincts seared a demand into his brain—mine, mine, mine.

Who the fuck knew courage would be his aphrodisiac? And wait…glowing skin? Literally glowing? It had to be something that only a vampire’s heightened vision could pick up. Bane couldn’t imagine the people she worked with not noticing if their colleague lit up like a lantern.

She shoved him again, disrupting that train of thought, and he narrowed his eyes. The only threat this human could pose was to his equilibrium, regardless of his bizarre reaction to her.

“Get out of here before I have to hurt you,” she shouted at him. “Security!”

He couldn’t help it.

He smiled.

She froze, her hands still on his chest, poised to push again. “Are you out of your damn mind? Get out of my patient’s room! You’re a danger to him. Security!”

“Security is not coming,” he told her, just for the pleasure of watching her react. Every emotion she felt showed on her face, and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to watch her experience them. For hours.

Days.

He flinched at the reaction, his shoulders tightening and his breath slowing. There was no logic in it. The sudden wanting came from a place far deeper than logic, far more primal than reason. A red haze of instinct started screaming at him to take her.

Keep her.

His mind was telling him to back away, fast.

She slammed her fists on his chest and leaned forward, still pushing, but all he could think was that her hair carried the scent of one of his most cherished memories: masses of wildflowers near a stream in a sun-drenched mountain glen.

“Are you…did you just smell me? What is happening here?”

On the bed, Hunter made a tiny sound, and Bane’s focus snapped back to his friend, whose agony was beginning to break through the hypnotic command