All four men were several inches over six feet, but where Damien and Jacob’s muscles were lean and sinewy, the twins were big and bulging. Working their Texas ranch in the eighteen hundreds had hardened and honed their bodies, having Isabelle finish them off after they were attacked by Carpetbaggers had ensured they stayed big and brawny.
Damien heaved a deep sigh, worry for his brethren evident in his dark eyes. “If he doesn’t show up tonight, I’ll go by and talk with him, see if I can get him to open up.”
A few months ago, Mason had moved off the plantation and into the city with no explanation. At one time or another, his pre-Civil War era estate had been home to all of the brethren. Over the decades, as some of them found and claimed their mates, they moved away to take up residence and their fight against evil doers to other cities across the country. Since they could travel swiftly by breaking their bodies down into the minutest of molecules and could communicate telepathically, keeping in touch or getting backup when needed could be done with eas
e and speed and it had been easy to disperse each night to different cities throughout the country. But all had remained close until they found their chosen significant other, which made Mason’s defection and attitude both suspicious and worrisome.
“Good luck,” Jon said. “That son of a bitch has always been a surly, closed mouth ass.”
“Give him some slack,” Jacob snapped in his friend’s defense. “He had a wife, kids as well as brothers he was close to. Having to watch them suffer from his unexplained disappearance and then watch them grow old and die still eats at him.” Jacob ought to know. He had to watch his own fiancé move on without him, marry someone else, have a family with him, and grow old with him. Have the life he wanted with her with another man. At least he had the comfort of knowing she found happiness after the war and he had been declared missing in action, presumed dead. Mason had simply never returned to his homestead in Oklahoma after a trip into town to buy supplies, leaving his wife and kids to think he had run out on them. “Thank God that demon bitch is burning in hell and is no longer able to destroy families.”
“I’m turning in,” Damien said as he watched his cats lope back into the bayou where they spent most of their time hunting prey, marking their territory and guarding his property. Beau picked Emma up and tossed her over his shoulder as he padded toward them.
“We are too. Thanks for the party, Damien.” Emma lifted her head and waved at them with a cheeky grin as Beau carried her inside. A loud, bare flesh smack followed by a high pitched squeal followed their exit, making them all grin.
“Congratulations again you two.” Ignoring the twinge of envy he couldn’t suppress, Damien nodded at Gideon before he and Ava disappeared to return to Columbus.
“You’re not going to be able to get by with your hand or Marie’s mouth forever,” Jacob candidly told Damien as the four of them stepped into the cool interior of the house and headed upstairs to spend the heat of the day in their darkened rooms.
“Hey,” Luc added, he and Jon completely at ease with their nudity, “if you don’t want her, Jon and I would love to have her sandwiched between us.”
“Fuck, Luc,” Jacob swore when Damien turned fiery red eyes on his brethren. Stepping between them before Damien could let loose on Luc, he snapped, “Back off, Damien. You know he’s just trying to get a rise out of you.”
Damien didn’t see the millions of dollars’ worth of artwork lining the wide hallway walls when they reached the second floor landing, or take note of the dark red, plush carpeting and the muted lighting from antique wall sconces that had been in his family for generations. All he saw was Abrielle’s naked body pressed between Jon and Luc, the twins indulging in their favorite pastime of fucking the same woman with his mate and the red haze that image provoked. “Watch your step, Luc,” he warned his friend menacingly. “I may not claim her, but neither will any of the brethren. She’s going to be free to choose her own fate, and it won’t be stuck with one of us.” Turning abruptly, he slammed into his private suite, reluctantly admitting to himself he would be just as pissed off if she hooked up with a human as he would if she found one of the brethren to her liking. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, he wished he could kill Isabelle all over again despite the fact that wouldn’t change the past.
“Sometimes, brother, I think you don’t have a lick of common sense,” Jon drawled in his Texan accent, his hazel eyes lit with humor.
“It was either goad him or beat some sense into him.” Luc looked at Damien’s closed door with a twinge of regret, his amber eyes shadowed with worry. He knew if he ever found his mate, the only one he’d be able to stomach sharing her with would be his brother.
“If that murder in Columbus turns out to be caused by one of our kind, we’re going to have bigger problems than our esteemed leader’s love life. Catch you guys later.” Jacob entered his own suite wishing he had someone special waiting for him to pass away the lonely afternoon hours with.
Isabelle Sartre gazed out her window, her anger and frustration as dark as the night. Damn those bleeding heart do-gooders, she seethed. As if it wasn’t bad enough that she had to spend decades below ground in the healing sleep of the dead to recover from the existence ending attack by Damien and Jacob all those years ago, but now she had to contend with those members of the brethren that she had managed to turn and Damien had managed to steal away from her thwarting her rogues attempts to bring her fresh victims. The two pathetic creatures cowering behind her, awaiting their sentence for failing to bring her a new mortal she could turn into one of her pets, informed her it had been a member of the brethren that had stopped them from returning to her with their victim and that if the young man hadn’t been in dire need of immediate attention, they would have perished by his sword.
She rued those days she had succumbed to her grief and desperation and sought to replace her beloved mate, Vladamir, with another that bore the mark of the brethren, one of the chosen few who could survive the transformation from mortal to vampire without slowly going insane. Damien had been the first and the bane of her existence ever since. Tricking him into killing had been a mistake, an error in judgment she has regretted and suffered for. Damien’s fear of facing the outside world as a feared creature of the night had kept him by her side for over a year and she had reaped the rewards of his compliance and wallowed in the pleasure he gave her, content with her life once again. He didn’t replace her mate, no one could, but his tall, hard body and his willingness to indulge her every kink made living without that special bond bearable.
Unfortunately, she had no idea the line he would finally draw would be at killing an innocent during one of their orgies. She knew he still possessed a moral streak too strong for her liking so, in order to ensure his cooperation, she had withheld her blood and her body for several weeks prior, knowing when the time came, he would be so desperate for blood and so depleted of strength he couldn’t fight the compulsion to drain a victim dry. His rage when he had come to his senses and looked down into the dead eyes of his victim knew no bounds and it had both scared her and turned her on.
With a sweep of his arm, he had backhanded her, throwing her against the far wall with his replenished strength. When the four other rogues in the room attacked him in her defense, he easily annihilated each of them. She knew they could never be a match for one of the brethren, but she had been secretly pleased watching him tear them apart one by one until they were nothing but a pile of ash. She hadn’t been afraid for herself; her longevity gave her both physical strength and strength of power over him. He must have realized that too, because he had sent her one last glare as she slowly licked and savored the blood from her split lip before he had stormed from the huge playroom.
Giving Damien some time to cool off had been her second mistake. By the time she returned to her chamber, he had not only torn the entire room apart, but he had found the Book of the Crescent Creed and left with it. That small book held all the information he needed to seek out the rest of the brethren and stop her from claiming them as she had him. She knew as well as he did that as mortals, none of those men would listen to a word he said, so he waited, their numerous blood exchanges allowing him the ability to track her whereabouts when she was above ground. Her long existence gave her the power to cloak herself, but he always managed to eventually break through that barrier. Unfortunately, never before she had managed to turn her victim, only in time to save him from becoming her pawn like Damien had been. It had become a game of cat and mouse between the two of them, pitting their cunning and powers against each other, her in an attempt to complete a brethren’s transformation and whisk him to her lair in the Carpathian Mountains and him in an attempt to stop her.
Despite the frustration, she had enjoyed tormenting him, got excited watching him battle the rogues who accompanied her to keep Damien busy while she sucked the life from yet another victim. It wasn’t until he had showed up with Jacob to save the Carter brothers that he managed to get the upper hand with her. The two of them had defeated her paltry backup within minutes and turned their wrath on her before she had time to pull herself from the erotic, lustful feeding she had been gorging herself on. Their attack had been painfully brutal, their aims precise, their cuts deep as they severed several major arteries, timing their assault close to dawn to ensure the sun would finish her off. If it hadn’t been for the cat that had wandered over to her just seconds before the sun peaked, she would have perished. Draining a cat wasn’t nearly as satisfying as a human, but it had been just enough blood to give her the energy she needed to dematerialize and return to her hidden home built deep into a mountainside and bury herself beneath its bowels.
Since arising from a century of deep sleep, Isabelle had spent her time thinking of a way to destroy the brethren, having finally decided they weren’t going to come around to her way of thinking. She should have realized after finding Damien on a battle field, that those who were willing to lie down and die for a cause, especially one that meant freeing an oppressed race, that they would not be easily manipulated into her immoral, evil lifestyle. She now preferred turning humans who were labeled scum of the earth, murderers, rapists, wife beaters, making it much easier to coerce them into doing her bidding, which usually entailed committing some of the very acts they had enjoyed before she came along. Even though there was a never ending supply of such mortals, their descent into madness less than a year after being turned meant she had to constantly replace them.
Isabelle turned from the window and thoughts of the past to face the rogues who had failed her. They had both been young when she had turned them, both drug addicts and criminals. Linda had been pretty once, but the need for drugs and alcohol had left her desperate to do anything for her next fix, including mugging the elderly. Now she not only bore the ravages of her addictions, but her slow shuffling walk and jittery eyes were the first indications she was becoming deranged. Matthew, on the other hand, had only been with her a month and wa
s still fresh and eager to please. Too bad that eagerness wouldn’t save him.
“Come to me, my pets,” she crooned softly as she dropped her blood red silk robe and padded naked over to her large round bed. Settling back among the piled, black satin covered pillows, she spread her legs and casually stroked a finger up her slit. “Come show me how sorry you are for displeasing me.”
With malicious glee, Isabelle watched them crawl over the hard stone floor, Linda’s large breasts swaying with her jerky movements, Matthew’s hard cock jutting out, pointing the way. Fisting her hands in Linda’s hair, she pushed the girls’ head down to her breast, sighing as her soft mouth closed over her nipple and started suckling. Matthew had come to know his mistress well in such a short time and wasted no time settling between her legs, burying his mouth in her pussy.
Releasing her tight grip on Linda’s hair, Isabelle reached above her, grasped the rod iron rails of her headboard and basked in their attentions. Linda’s mouth moved voraciously between her breasts, her lips, teeth and tongue working her nipples into reddened, stiff peaks, the pain from her bites sending shards of pleasure down to her pussy. “More, Matthew,” she demanded as he speared her with two fingers, his teeth worrying her clit. As always, she strove to achieve the heights her beloved Vladamir had driven her to and the ones Damien had come close to matching. As Matthew added two more fingers to her cunt, filling her, stretching her like she craved, it still wasn’t enough.
“Bite me,” she practically screamed in frustration, needing the painful ecstasy of their sharp incisors sinking into her soft flesh to get her off.
Linda bit deeply into the soft fullness of her breast, her fingers replacing her lips to torment her nipples as she slurped down her blood as if it was the finest of wines. Matthew filled her pussy with his entire fist as his fangs sank into the flesh of her upper thigh, the pain of both actions sending Isabelle into orgasm so fast it left her senses reeling from the impact. Despite the pleasure coursing through her, it wasn’t enough, was never enough and her frustration and disappointment never failed to raise her ire.