I Thirst for You Read online

  He was hunter.

  She was prey.

  She caught a quick glimpse outlined in the bright moonlight of a big man, densely muscled. At least he was shaped like a man. But his eyes belonged to a hungry, hunting beast. Fire burned in those eyes, the deep red of glowing coals. The anguish in them was terrifying. His gaze caught and held her even as he bore down on her too swiftly for her to escape….

  “Susan Sizemore enraptures readers, securing her rightful place among the writers who will soon rise to the top….”

  —Romantic Times

  Praise for

  I Burn for You

  “With her new twist on ancient vampire lore, Sizemore creates an excellent and utterly engaging new world. I Burn for You is sexy, exciting, and just plain thrilling. It’s the perfect start for a hot, new series.”

  —Romantic Times

  “I adored I Burn for You and really hope it’s the beginning of another wonderful vampire series from Ms. Sizemore.”

  —Old Book Barn Gazette

  “Sizemore has long worn two writing hats, that of romance author and sf-fantasy scribe, and…the bonding of [her] two literary worlds is as powerful as what Alex and Domini feel for each other in this sexy read laced with laughter, the first in a burning new series.”

  —Booklist

  “Sizemore’s hunky vamps can visit me anytime! I was so sorry to see this book end. This one is a must buy.”

  —All About Romance

  More raves for the work

  of Susan Sizemore

  “Wicked sensuality.”

  —Christina Dodd

  “Ms. Sizemore’s breed of vampire is intriguing and her delivery compelling.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Thrilling, sexually charged.”

  —Booklist

  “Sizemore knows how to write realistic vampires.”

  —All about Romance Review

  Also by Susan Sizemore

  I Burn for You

  Also available from Pocket Star Books

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  A Pocket Star Book published by POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 2004 by Susan Sizemore

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-7434-9396-6

  POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  For Micki Nuding. Great editors inspire,

  and Micki, that book you sent me

  was truly inspirational!

  Chapter One

  Two things pain can do for you: sharpen you up or dull you down. It never does anything for your mood. He’d been in pain for over a week, and the crystal clarity he’d run on was dulling down to shards of scoured glass. He’d been running on adrenaline, when he needed blood. That had to change—soon—if he was going to survive. Blood was survival.

  If he survived long enough out here, once he was free he could start thinking about revenge. He yearned to think about what he’d do to those who’d imprisoned him—but letting those thoughts surface could easily lead to hallucinations, a sure way to get himself caught again.

  “Not going to happen,” he growled, the sound a rumble of thunder in the desert night. The name of the game was survival, and survival meant paring himself down to pure animal instinct.

  Blood.

  That was the only order of business.

  He crouched on the ground, where scorpions scurried to get out of his way, rested his hands on the thick base of a saguaro cactus, and concentrated on finding blood. Animal blood wouldn’t do; it had to be human. Preferably female.

  He could hear the soft breathing of doves nesting in the cactus. Bats fluttered and flitted overhead, and he could hear their sonar squeaks piercing the air. Hearts beat all around him, so many small living things going about their nocturnal business. He was surrounded by life, but had never been so alone.

  He blocked out everything else and searched for the one heartbeat that had to be out there. Had to be waiting for him. When the need was the greatest, that was when you found The One. Wasn’t that how the old myth went?

  Eventually his head came up, then turned, nostrils flaring.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

  A slow smile creased his pain-ravaged features. He rose, gave a quick look up at the full moon, and whispered an ancient word of thanks.

  Then he turned south and ran, spending all his remaining energy in a burst of desperate speed.

  The stars were huge overhead, and the moon rode high in the sky. Stevie Nicks’s voice was in her ears, singing about sorcerers and sapphires. Maybe she should have been enjoying the deep silence of the desert night, but she preferred the music coming through the headphones of her Discman as she lay on a sleeping bag outside her tent and drank in the vast emptiness.

  She’d always liked being alone, but since the plane crash she craved privacy more than ever. She’d been called brave and heroic, and she hated that. She’d been the pilot, and she survived—which seemed so wrong to her. The admiration made her cringe; so did the sympathy. She hoped the solitude would be healing.

  She’d always absorbed other people’s emotions too easily, and it was worse now, since her head injury when the plane hit the ground. The physical wound had closed, but her mind was still open. Things poured into it, thoughts and emotions, things that had nothing to do with her. She used to be able to control it most of the time. “Empath,” a witchy friend had called her once, a Sensitive.

  Once it had been kind of fun to have this psychic ability; now it made her a fugitive. Now the need to be alone was the reason she’d camped out in the national forest south of Tucson. Here, she had some peace from the joys and pains and hungers that didn’t belong to her.

  Right now she concentrated on the music to get away from the pain that did belong to her. Four people had died in the plane crash. Four others had lived besides her, but lives saved didn’t make up for the guilt of lives lost. No one called it pilot error; it had been a freak storm. Wind shear. Lightning. An act of God. But she should have…

  Something. There must have been something she could have done.

  Try not to think about it. Try to move on. She’d heard those words so many times. But where did you move on to when by all rights you should be dead?

  Maybe she was dead, and hell was having to hide away from the rest of the human race to keep from—

  Hell? You don’t know anything about hell.

  The thought raced out of the night, straight into her heart, like an avalanche with a New York accent.

  Then hunger shot through her, hunger that was a burning pain that set her writhing on the ground and clawing feverishly at the earth. It absorbed her, nauseated her, leaving her twisted up in a sweating, cringing ball when the pain withdrew. Gradually she realized that the pain was not hers…but that it was coming for her.

  And she realized she did not want to die. In that way, the rising fear was a gift.

  Terror pumped adrenaline through her, bringing her to her feet, and she turned to run from the unknown danger.

  And found that she had turned toward the very thing she feared, as he came rushing at her like a runaway freight train out of the night.

  She caught a quick glimpse in the bright moonlight of a big man, densely muscled. At least, he was shaped like a man. But his eyes belonged to a hungry, hunting beast. Fire burned in those eyes, the deep red of glowing coals, and the anguish in them was terrifying.

  The woman’s fear speared him, but he kept on coming. He had no choice: he was hunter, she was prey. He felt her pain when she pivoted and twisted her ankle trying to escape him. She ran despite the sprain; instinct made him follow.

  After being pursued so long, being the pursuer brought him pinpricks of pride, and pleasure. He almost remembered what it felt like to be Prime.

  It was a short chase. He followed the pounding of her heart and quick, sobbing breaths a few yards, then grasped her around the waist and brought her to the ground. They landed in the spiky shoots of a yucca, but he pulled her out before any cactus spines penetrated her skin. Her blood belonged to him—every drop—and how he took it was under his control.

  Another time he might enjoy subduing her struggles, but he didn’t have time to waste with love play. He was growing weaker.

  He carried her back and sank to his knees onto a sleeping bag in front of her tent.

  He ripped off her loose-fitting shirt while she fought and scratched at him. He was aware of her surprise when he didn’t go for her bra or try to rip off her pants. He stroked a thumb down her long, lean throat, feeling her blood like blue heat beneath the satin skin, loving the strong, fast pulse. His fangs were already out, had been hard in his mouth for days.

  He pushed her down and fell on top of her. Her scream punctured what remained of the shielding that protected his mind, and her fear drove through him like a stake. Shock sent him into her mind. He found psychic injury, a torn-open p
lace that left her nearly helpless all the time.

  He pulled out quickly, unwilling to take more from her mind than he must. And at least he could ease this for her—so there would be a give as well as take.

  He drilled a thought into her head and made sure she understood.

  Then he forgot about everything but need. He kissed the side of her throat once, because he could not bear to make this intimate act completely impersonal. Then he sank his fangs into her. His need was so desperate, he couldn’t make the bleeding a slow, sensual sipping. What he did brought her to powerful orgasm within a moment.

  It brought him life, and he drank and drank and drank.

  Chapter Two

  Jo Elliot woke up not sure what had happened but, even semiconscious, knowing it was not a bad dream. It was real, as real as the crash, and just as life-changing. Though her hazy mind couldn’t focus, but her body was deeply aware of that.

  She gradually recognized the cooing of doves, a sound she’d always loved. Then the buzz of an airplane engine in the distance. She recognized the make of the motor.

  Very nearby she heard the sound of breathing—not just her own, but someone else’s, whose breaths were unnaturally slow and deep.

  And there was weight on her, hot and heavy against her thighs and hips and across her chest. She didn’t want to open her eyes; she didn’t really want to see what held her down. Skin pressed to hers, sweat to sweat. His face was next to hers, it was his breath that sounded in her ear.

  He had come out of the night, and he had…

  She didn’t know what he had done. Whatever it was, she felt weak. Used. Her bones were melted, and her brain was fried. She felt hung-over and hard-ridden, but—

  She had no memory of rape; no memory of pain. Yet something had happened. And she knew he wanted more.

  She didn’t want the new day to begin, because a totally new reality waited for her. Because he wasn’t going to let her go.

  “That’s right,” Marcus Cage said. He lifted his mind from her surface thoughts and his head from her shoulder. He looked at her, knowing she deliberately kept her eyes closed, not wanting to see what the monster looked like. Thanks to last night’s feasting, his fangs were under control and safely sheathed once more. He looked like a man, but he felt like hell.

  It was a few minutes after dawn. He wanted to get out of the growing light, but he took a few moments to study his captive. She had short blond hair and fine-boned features, with a short, sharp nose, high cheekbones, and a stubborn, square chin. She was on the skinny side, with breasts smaller than he liked, but he admired her long, slender neck. Marc was definitely a neck man.

  But he didn’t need sentimentality to memorize his beloved’s features. Now that he had her blood in him, he could find her at the bottom of a pitch-black mine shaft during a total eclipse. And he didn’t have time to waste on anything, not even on letting her get used to the idea of his being there.

  He took her by the shoulders and gently shook her. “Look at me,” he ordered. “Get used to me. I’m not going away.”

  Her captor’s deep, rumbling voice penetrated Jo’s mind, and his touch sent a bolt of electricity through her. Suddenly she was almost as angry as she was afraid, and her eyes flew open.

  “Get off me!”

  “Fine.”

  He got up and pulled her to her feet after him. Standing, Jo had to keep looking up to look him in the eyes. He was very big, with a hard-muscled body. He’d obviously spent a lot of time pumping iron. In a prison exercise yard, was her guess. His body was magnificent, but a heavy jaw and large nose spoiled any chance of his ever being called handsome. He looked like a thug, but there was something about his full-lipped, sensual mouth and the expression in his dark brown eyes that belied the initial impression of his being a monster.

  A beast that thinks, she thought; a beast that feels.

  “That still makes me a beast,” he said.

  A beast that reads minds?

  His huge hand was across her mouth before he involuntary scream came out. His other arm was around her, holding her to his chest. She was aware of the sharp male tang of his sweat and the heat coming off of him in almost visible waves. It was barely past dawn, yet his slightly olive skin was already starting to burn.

  She could almost, not quite, feel his pain. It wasn’t anything like last night. He had himself under control now, but it was like a wild animal straining on a leash. It could get loose again. She became very still, afraid of provoking that animal.

  “I’m going to let you go,” he said. “And you’re not going to run.”

  He wasn’t asking, he wasn’t threatening, it was a statement of fact. Jo didn’t even bother with nodding agreement. When he stepped back she stayed put, oddly aware of his absence.

  She was trying not to think about his reading her mind. Marc almost chuckled, but knew that a normal person running into the paranormal coped with the weirdness any way they could. He’d be sympathetic if he had the time, and if this woman was a normal mortal. She was probably one of those psychics who pretended they weren’t different. That kind of virgin was fun to court under normal circumstances, but right now there was no time for anything cute or coy.

  “You belong to me,” he gave her the flat-out truth. “What’s your name?”

  He looked around to see if anything among her camping gear would be useful. The light hurt him—and he needed to feed again as soon as she could tolerate it, so they had to get to somewhere sheltered quickly.

  “Do you have a gun?” he asked. “A knife? Do you know what could happen to a woman alone out here?”

  “Jo. Yes. No. You,” she answered his questions in the order he’d asked.

  “Where’s the gun?”

  She pointed toward the bright blue Jeep Cherokee Sport parked beyond the small tent.

  “Pack up,” he said as he headed toward the Jeep.

  “What do you mean, ‘pack up’?” she called after him.

  He turned to face her outrage. “It’s your stuff,” he told her. “I don’t know what to do with it.” He couldn’t help but smile at her. “Or do you expect me to be a gentleman and do all the heavy lifting?”

  “I expect you to steal my car and go,” she said. “Just—leave. Okay?”

  She looked really pretty when she was angry as hell, with the sun shining in her golden hair. He also liked that she was standing up to him. It was too bad he couldn’t do what she wanted.

  He came back to her and held out his hand. “Forgot the keys.”

  She fished them out of her pants pocket and slapped them in his palm. “Go.”

  “Pack up,” he repeated.

  He found a 9mm Beretta in the storage compartment between the front seats. He came back to where she was folding up the tent, the weapon in his belt. “You probably think that if you’d had this with you last night, it would have done you some good,” he told her. “It wouldn’t have.”

  Jo pretended to ignore him as she finished with her gear, but she was all too aware of him. She could feel the intensity of his dark eyes on her as she moved and knew she wasn’t imagining it.

  When she bent to roll up the sleeping bag, she saw a couple of white buttons lying on it, and she realized that her shirt was hanging open. A vague memory stirred. There were a few brownish specks on the bag as well, where her head had been not so long ago. Drops of dried blood? Jo put a hand to her throat. Her neck was aching—because she’d slept on it funny, right?

  Even as she made this logical excuse, she turned on her captor. “You bit me!”

  He answered with the faintest of gestures with a hand that moved far too gracefully for someone of his size. “Hurry up,” was all he said. “Forget the tent.”

  “What?”

  “Do it.”

  Jo knelt beside her clothing duffel and quickly shrugged off the ruined shirt, then pulled a Hysteria tour T-shirt over her head. The screaming face on the black background certainly suited the situation. There was no way she was going to change anything more than her shirt in front of this man, even though she was grungy and sweaty and—

  “You’re not the only one who needs a shower. Come on.”