Pursued Read online

  He snorted. “I should think so. After eating all that junk! Anyway, I thought you were a vegetarian—you never have anything but coffee and grapefruit when we have breakfast together.”

  “That’s because that’s all you ever have,” Elise said distractedly. “If you’d asked me, I would have told you I like breakfast food. You just never…never asked.” She could barely finish her sentence because the heat which had pooled in her pelvis seemed to have intensified, radiating outward like a ball of molten lead between her thighs. My God, what’s wrong with me? What’s happening to me? Suddenly she felt like she was going to be sick.

  “Darling?” James asked, frowning. “Look, if you’re finished eating I really have to be going. I can’t miss my flight and we’ve already spent enough time—”

  “Excuse me!” She bolted up for the second time that day, sending platters of half-eaten food across the table toward her hapless fiancé. James shot out his hands, attempting to fend off the flying pancakes and ended up with a lapful of scrambled eggs and sausage gravy instead. Elise ignored his cry of irritation and rushed back to the ladies room yet again.

  She barely made it to the handicapped stall and bent over the toilet before everything came up. Never, she thought miserably as wave after wave of nausea hit her. I’ll never eat breakfast again. I swear, I promise. Just let this be over, please God, let it be over.

  She finished puking at last and wiped her mouth on a swatch of scratchy toilet paper she fumbled off the roll. Stumbling to the sink, she rinsed out her mouth and tried to swallow a little water. Outside the door, she heard someone knocking.

  “Elise? Elise are you all right in there? Listen, darling, we really have to go now. I have to run to the office for a change—I can’t go to Japan wearing your breakfast on my trousers. Elise?”

  “A minute,” she managed to gasp. “Please, James, I just need one more minute.”

  “We don’t have another minute. What if a reporter from one of the news vids shows up? I’m telling you, Elise, I can’t be seen like this!”

  “I know. I’m sorry…sorry…” She tried to make her voice stronger but the words came out in a whisper. Now that her stomach was empty, the wrong feeling was growing again. The feeling of heat, of need…a different kind of hunger between her thighs. What was it? What was causing it?

  “Elise!” James was practically pounding on the door now. “If you don’t come out, I’m coming in. I—” Suddenly his voice changed and it became apparent he was talking to someone else. “Hello. What are you doing here?”

  “She’s in there?” A deep familiar voice, like stones rubbing together in a riverbed made Elise’s heart jump. Could it be…?

  “Yes, but she’s indisposed at the moment.” James sounded suddenly haughty—his posh British accent becoming much more pronounced.

  “I don’t give a fuck about indisposed,” the other voice growled. “Elise? You okay in there?”

  “Merrick…” His name was nothing but a whisper on her lips. The fire inside her was eating her now, burning her from the inside out. Elise reached for the door but didn’t make it. Her legs refused to work and she sank down on the grimy floor instead.

  “That’s it—I’m coming in. If you aren’t decent, cover up.” The wooden door banged open and Merrick barged in, ducking his head to avoid hitting his forehead on the lintel. James was right behind him.

  “You can’t go in there—it’s the ladies room! Don’t you Kindred understand the concept of privacy?”

  Merrick ignored him. He knelt on the dirty floor beside Elise and looked at her anxiously. “Hey baby, you okay?”

  The use of his pet endearment for her nearly brought tears to her eyes. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No, I don’t know what it is but something…Merrick, something is wrong with me. Really, really wrong.”

  “I know it, baby. But don’t worry—I’m going to fix it.” He scooped her up off the floor as easily as if she was a doll. “Put your face against my neck,” he ordered, his deep voice growling through her entire body. “Press against me as much as you can.”

  Elise did as he said, pressing her hot cheek to the side of his throat and inhaling deeply. The warm, animalistic scent of fur and smoke and musk filled her nose and immediately she began to feel better. Or at least, slightly less wrong.

  “Wait!” James sounded almost panicked as Merrick carried her out of the ladies room. “Excuse me but you can’t do that! You can’t just take her!”

  “The hell I can’t,” Merrick snarled. “Get out of my way or you’ll be eating my fist for first meal.”

  “Is there a problem here?”

  Elise opened her eyes to see the huge biker she’d mentally dubbed Blackbeard was blocking Merrick’s way down the aisle between the rows of booths.

  “Yes, absolutely there’s a problem.” James’ voice had gone shrill with outrage. “This…this Kindred is attempting to abduct my fiancé!”

  “Well we can’t have that, can we boys?” Blackbeard, grinned at bikers who were watching the confrontation with interest. He looked at Merrick. “James here is a pal of mine. I can’t just let you go off with his girl.”

  “She’s sick,” Merrick said shortly. “I’m taking her for treatment.”

  “I can take her,” James said angrily. “Tampa General is just down the road and I’m on their board of directors. A word from me and she’ll be seen at once.”

  Merrick shook his head. “Sorry, buddy but what she needs, you can’t give her. She’s got to go back to the Mother Ship.”

  “I don’t believe you,” James said belligerently. “I think you’ve just formed some kind of irrational attachment to her. You have some type of Beauty and the Beast complex and you think because you found Elise after her ordeal she’s yours for the taking. Well, she’s not. Now put her down right now.”

  Merrick glared at him. “Beauty and the Beast, huh? You’re fucking lucky I have my hands full, you know that?”

  “James, please,” Elise said, trying to raise her voice above a whisper. “Can’t you see I’m sick? I need to go.”

  “There’s nothing they can do for you up in that floating freak-show of a ship that can’t be done right here on Earth,” James said firmly. “You’d see that if you were in your right mind, darling.”

  Merrick raised his eyebrows. “Did you say freak show?”

  “Er, yes…” James stepped back a little but his tone remained belligerent. “I did.”

  “Hey, James, you want me to bust ’im up? Teach him a little lesson about trying to take someone else’s girl?” Blackbeard cracked his knuckles menacingly.

  Elise thought James looked vastly relieved. He always preferred to avoid physical violence himself, though he wasn’t above having it done for him. “As a matter of fact, yes. I think he could use a lesson,” he said, nodding decisively.

  Mentally, Elise groaned. Now they would never get out of here. Her earlier estimation that Blackbeard was almost as tall as Merrick had been right and he had plenty of friends to back him up. What were they going to do? But Merrick seemed utterly calm.

  “Elise, baby, can you stand for just a minute?” he asked, looking down at her.

  She nodded. “I…I think so.”

  “Good. I’m going to put you down and you stand behind me. This will only take a minute, I promise.”

  “All right.” She nodded again and he set her gently on her feet. James tried to reach for her but she evaded his hands and held onto the back of Merrick’s thin black shirt.

  “No, James, I’m sick. Leave me alone!”

  “But darling—”

  “There’s just gonna be two hits.” Blackbeard’s loud voice interrupted whatever he’d been about to say. Elise peeked around Merrick’s side to see the biker was swaggering forward, still talking. “Two hits, buddy,” he repeated. “Me hitting you and you hitting the fl—”

  Merrick swung. It was a swift, deadly punch that landed dead center in the biker’s face and plowed