Sable leapt to her feet and glared at the wild-eyed, red-haired man who struggled between the grips of two agents. “Get him out of here.”
Captain Donnie stepped into the doorway after the agents dragged Hoff away. His countenance was grim as he came toward her. “What the hell is the matter with you, Taylor? You’ve never lost control like that before.”
She winced. The captain was right. She’d let her personal turmoil affect her actions at a time when she should have been in control. And she knew why. Living with Marius was driving her insane.
“I’m sorry, Captain. You’re right.” Her shoulders drooped. “I’ve been having some…issues. They got the better of me.”
Donnie shook his head and sighed. “I promised you three months leave of absence 104
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when this case was over. Why don’t you start them now? Just send your report to me by the end of the week.”
Sable nodded. “Thanks, Captain.”
Then she headed home to Marius.
* * * * *
Sable entered one of the dozen ostentatious, opulent mansions that belonged to Marius Drake and was grateful that she’d never have to enter it again. While she’d been in the database under Marius’s access code, she’d stumbled onto something that had shattered her heart. Derek wasn’t at all the man he’d said he was. She’d been staying with Marius trying to protect Derek and it turned out he didn’t need her protection at all. That meant neither of the master vamps had a hold on her anymore. She was free and once she packed up her stuff, she planned to hole up for a while and wait for her broken heart to heal.
She was two steps up the staircase on her way to pack her bags when the growling and crashing in the expansive ballroom halted her ascent. Weary, but curious, Sable lifted her nose and sniffed the air. She smelled the two Master vampires immediately.
Their territorial hormones filled the air, their heady and intoxicating blood pervading her senses, making her heart race and her palms damp.
She moved to the open doorway of the ballroom and surveyed the damage. The place was a mess. The heavy, three-story tall velvet drapes hung in tatters and every piece of furniture in the room lay smashed to pieces.
Her gaze searched for and found the combatants over twenty feet above the floor.
They were clinging to opposite walls of the room, panting and snarling, their handsome features distorted with rage and bloodlust. Both of their nostrils flared as she entered, smelling the blood from her wound. They became even more enraged, more animals than men, their hormones and instincts running the show. By her assessment, the battle for a mate had begun hours ago.
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The battle for her.
She drank in the sight of Derek, noting the minor injuries he bore. He was obviously winning, because Marius was in far worse shape. A relieved breath escaped her in a sigh. She was furious, yes, and terribly hurt, but she would never wish him harm. In fact, she couldn’t bear it if something happened to him.
If Marius weren’t so stubborn, he’d admit that she wasn’t the mate for him. He needed a wife who relished power and politics as much as he did. Sable liked action and a hands-on approach. Political sidestepping just wasn’t something she could spend an eternity doing. They also didn’t love each other anymore, if they ever truly had. It was time for him to move on, too.
And Derek… What the hell was he doing here? Hadn’t he gotten everything he needed out of her? The hollow ache in her chest became nigh unbearable and she lifted a hand to shelter her heart. Her stomach did a little flip at the thought of him coming after her and fighting for her, but she squelched the tiny hope ruthlessly. He’d lied about who he was, he’d used her body to get what he wanted, he’d demanded the truth from her and then hadn’t given her the same courtesy. Everything they’d shared had been a lie. It didn’t matter if he still wanted to fuck her. He didn’t love her. Not like she loved him.
Despite all this, her body softened, responding instinctively to the scent of her mate and the pheromones he exuded in his battle to win her. Looking at him and needing him with every breath she took broke her heart a little more. She loved him desperately, but she couldn’t trust him and there was no future to be had with someone you couldn’t trust.
She remembered their conversation in the hotel on Rashier 6…
“At least you’re honest.”
“Because that’s what I want from you in return, Sable—your honesty.”
“And I’ll give it to you.”
What a fool she’d been. And these two were even dumber for fighting over her 106
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when she didn’t want anything to do with either of them.
“You’re both idiots,” she said scornfully.
Then she turned on the heel of her boot and left.
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Chapter Nine
Derek’s senses were inundated by his mate’s proximity, his body recognizing her scent and adjusting to it. He stared at Sable’s beautiful face with a soul-deep longing.
Three weeks. Three damn weeks since he’d last seen her. He waited for her to smile, to show some pleasure at seeing him again. Instead she looked at him impassively for only an instant before leaving the room.
Filled with the animalistic need to claim his woman, he was no longer even remotely human. Moving with extraordinary speed, he crawled along the wall and out of the room, following her up the staircase. Marius did same, wisely keeping to the opposite wall.
The blond Master was badly cut and bleeding profusely, but remained determined to fight. Derek felt a reluctant admiration and a tiny grain of pity for the other man. To have once had Sable and then to have lost her—he could only imagine the pain of that.
But his imagination was enough.
Sable climbed the stairs with a casual, unhurried stride. She had to sense the two territorial Masters crawling along the walls above her, but she ignored both of them.
That worried Derek a lot, but not nearly as much as he worried about the scent of her blood.
Sure, she was tough and could take care of herself, he wouldn’t try to shield her because she’d hate that and resent him. Still, he knew he was going to be terrified every time she was endangered. But he accepted that, because he loved her the way she was.
As she entered her bedroom, she left the door open and Derek preceded Marius into the room behind her. As she pulled a bag out from under her bed and began to pack, Derek felt the rage boiling in his blood reduce to a steady simmer. He shot a glance at Marius. “She’s coming with me,” he growled triumphantly.
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Marius hissed at him and crouched for another lunge when Sable’s calm voice stilled them both.
“No, I’m not, President Atkinson.” She snorted in disgust. “You’re so damn arrogant you didn’t even attempt to disguise your name.”
Derek winced. Shit, shit, shit. She’d found out before he could tell her.
He felt his spine straighten, his muscles lengthening, his fangs and claws withdrawing, as the animal retreated and allowed the man to emerge. He reached out to her with his calling, tossing it over her like a warm blanket. Sable, love…
She tossed it right back. Nice try, lover, but the mission is wrapped. Haven’t you heard?
You don’t need to seduce me anymore.
Marius growled, remaining in his combat form out of sheer self-preservation.
“Sable, we have a deal,” he reminded her in a guttural voice no human could comprehend.
“Deal’s off,” she said coldly. She continued to pack without looking at either one of them. “Didn’t you hear me? Derek isn’t a STF agent. Fuck, he controls the STF. He’s President of the Interstellar Security Council. He’s just as powerful and connected as you are. In fact, I can’t believe you didn’t place his name and face. You can’t do anything to him and you can’t do anything to me. Not anymore. Not ever again.”
>
“I’ll protect you,” Derek assured her smoothly, still trying to connect with her, but ramming into the impenetrable wall she’d erected against him. Her ability to block his calling was amazing and impressive. As she aged and matured, she would become a formidable vamp the likes of which Derek had never seen. And he wanted to be there with her on every step of the journey.
“Of course you’ll protect me,” she agreed, pressing a button on the side of her bag, which compacted it to a quarter of its former size. She brushed past him. “You wouldn’t want word to get out about how you seduced your way into an IAB agent’s bed just to solve a case.”
His hand snaked out and clutched her elbow, halting her retreat. He searched her 109
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sapphire gaze, and found it icy and remote. “Damn it, Sable. That’s not true!”
Fury blazed in her eyes. “Are you denying that you went undercover and followed me for two years?”
His jaw tightened. “No, but—”
“Are you saying that when you detained me aboard your ship after the Windemere incident your intention wasn’t at least partly to fuck information out of me?”
His nostrils flared. “Partly, but then—”
“And are you trying to tell me that when you stowed away on my ship, your intention wasn’t to decide once and for all if I was the agent selling information to the Federation?”
He swallowed hard. This was bad. She knew everything. “Fuck, it isn’t what you think.”
“It’s exactly what I think,” she retorted, before yanking her arm from his grip and storming out.
Marius moved first to follow her. “Sable. I tried to warn you about him.”
She continued downstairs, leaving the two men to trail behind her. “Go to hell, Marius. How do you think I discovered who he was? You kept popping up in my life in all the wrong places. The first thing I did after I moved in was use your computer to access your records. I know all about the tracking devices you’ve been putting on my ships.”
“I can explain—” he began.
“Don’t bother,” she said curtly. “In a way, I’m grateful, even though that damned tracking device almost got me killed by the Federation. Once I got into your record, I saw a Charles Stein poking around in there. I looked him up and found out he’s the assistant to Security Council President D. Atkinson, presently on a mission of Interstellar Security. It didn’t take me a second to put it together. Maybe if you’d been doing your job instead of stalking me, you would have remembered voting him into 110
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office.” She threw her free hand up in the air. “I’m done with pushy, overbearing, domineering, lying, bullshitting vampire Masters. I think I’ll find me a nice docile human male for once. Someone I can push around for a change.”
“Sable!” the two Masters cried in stunned horror.
She waved at them over her shoulder and slammed the front door shut behind her.
* * * * *
Derek stood on the edge of the expansive ballroom in the Interstellar Council Headquarters and watched the hundreds of dignitaries and their dates swirl by on the dance floor. From the corner of his eye, a glimmer of golden hair caught his attention.
Marius Drake danced by with his fiancé, a beautiful woman who looked very much like him—cold and blonde. It had taken the other Master less than a month to find a newer, more docile mate after realizing that Sable was far more vamp than he could handle. Marius had tolerated her walking out on him once, but the second time was too much for his monumental ego.
Derek groaned inwardly. He, on the other hand, was still pining away for his one true love. He’d waited seven hundred years to find her and he would love her forever.
He’d tried to track her down, but she’d simply disappeared and he had no idea where to look. When Sable Taylor wanted to hide, she knew just how to do it.
He turned away from the festivities and headed down the hallway toward his offices. Work was his entire existence lately. All work and no play made Derek a very grumpy vampire. He hadn’t gone this long without sex in over six hundred years and it showed. He was curt and short-tempered, and since he’d ordered half his staff to scour the universe for Sable everyone knew why.
He strode through the open door leading to his outer offices and then further into his own expansive suite. He went straight to his desk and checked his messages. Sixteen agents had reported in, but the results were all the same—no sign of Sable.
He slammed his fist into the desk. “Damn it, baby, where are you?”
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I hear you’ve been looking for me.
He looked up in shock, then shot to his feet. Sable lounged in the doorway, her long legs crossed at the ankles, her torso encased in the old-fashioned silver dress from Rashier 6. Her hair was piled high on her head, and she was gorgeous. Breathtaking.
“You came back,” he whispered, insanely worried that he’d frighten her away.
Pushing away from the doorjamb, she sauntered in with an exaggerated sway of her hips that made his cock harden instantly. “Why did you suspect me of treason?” she asked in a conversational tone of voice that couldn’t hide the hurt in her eyes.
“Your file was incomplete, with large gaps and inconsistencies. In fact, Captain Donnie hid you so well, I recently promoted him. He had you listed in the IAB database as a droid, an area I’m ashamed to say I never thought to look in, so I never caught it.
As far as I knew, you were a bounty hunter, but unlike most, you didn’t take breaks after every capture. You never stopped hunting. It was a red flag to me that you needed so much money and despite how many captures you made, you never seemed to get ahead financially. The leak was coming out of the Delta Sector field office and that’s the one you worked out of the most. It was reasonable to investigate you.”
“I see.” She licked her bottom lip. “When did you realize you were wrong?”
“After those two days on my ship.” He rounded his desk. “When I established our first mental connection you were distant and secretive, but I sensed nothing but good in you and a strong desire for justice.”
“You still thought I was a criminal.”
“There were too many questions, baby, and you block me very well. Too well. But even if you had been involved in something illegal, I would have found a way to keep you.”
The left strap of her dress slipped down her shoulder, displaying the creamy swell of her breast. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were when I told you I was IAB?”
Derek swallowed hard and leaned back against the front of his desk. “I was already 112
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falling in love with you. I knew what you would think if I told you. I was afraid you wouldn’t believe my interest in you was genuine. And you see I was right. You broke it off with me as soon as you knew.”
Her steps slowed. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
“Sure. Right after the wedding.”
The other strap slipped and the dress hung onto her torso against the laws of gravity, barely clinging to the mounds of her breasts. His fangs descended as his cock swelled.
Her sapphire gaze narrowed. “Don’t you think that’s a little arrogant?”
He shrugged, pressing a palm against his straining, painful erection. “What better way to prove my love?”
As soon as he said the words, he felt her sensual call swirling around him— hot, misty and alluring. Sweat broke out on his forehead.
“I do love you,” he whispered reverently. “If you can believe anything I say, believe that.”
The dress fell to floor and Sable was gloriously naked beneath it, baring her firm, high breasts with their berry-colored nipples, her sleek abdomen and her impossibly long legs. All taut and toned, covered by creamy pale skin.
Damn, he loved her body.
“I realized you must care, at least a little,” she murmured.
“More than a little, baby. More than an
ything.”
“Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come back for you.”
Derek tore his silver jacket, the symbol of his station, away from his body. His pants also fell in tatters to the floor. And still she stood, unmoving, waiting.
Waiting for what?
“Let it out,” she urged in a throaty murmur. “Like the first time you took me and made me yours. You claimed me then, like a beast. And I loved it.”
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He watched her hungrily, memorizing her just as she was now, then his eyes slid closed. He felt his power and need rising inside him, heard her blood pumping through her veins and smelled her arousal. The animal tore at him, fighting to be freed, and he struggled to restrain it, to control it. It began to radiate through his cells, growing in strength.
Then she said what he’d longed to hear.
“I love you, Derek.”
And he couldn’t hold it back any longer.
* * * * *
Sable felt the energy building within her mate. It poured from him in hot, steadily radiating waves. She smelled him—pure, potent vampire male. Her vampire. Her Master. Her slave. Her love.
Everything. All things. I’ll be all you need. All you want, he promised. Then he leapt at her.
She watched him in a daze, as if time had frozen, contained in a bubble. Strong, powerful, beautifully masculine, his body stretched through the air. And then suddenly the bubble burst and she leapt to the top of his desk, neatly avoiding his grasp.
He growled, a deep rumble that vibrated through the air into her body. Cream flooded between her legs as her nipples hardened and her mouth watered at the sight of him. His magnificent cock was so hard, it curved upward to nearly touch his navel.
She crouched and her lips curved in a come-hither smile. Moving slowly, carefully, she twisted to sit on the edge of the desk and spread her legs wide, letting him see her welcome. She leaned her weight on one hand, while the other reached between her legs and stroked her swollen clit.
She watched his nostrils flare, watched him lick his fangs with a loving caress of his tongue. His eyes were molten silver, his muscles bunched and thickened, his cock 114