Tempted by Blood

Dear Reader,

I’m thrilled to share with you the third book in the SWEETBLOOD series, Tempted by Blood, Jackson and Arianna’s story. The world is a deadly and seductive one, where a team of vampire Guardians fights to protect humans from Darkbloods—vicious members of their race who kill like their ancestors and sell the blood on the vampire black market. The rarest, called Sweet, commands the highest price.

If you’ve not read the first two books, don’t worry. The Sweetblood world is new to Arianna, too, but as you’ll find out, she’s not new to it. The owner of Paranormalish, a blog that checks out paranormal happenings, she’s learned to ask a lot of questions, dig beneath the surface and take a lot of pictures, which gets her into all sorts of trouble.

And that’s where Jackson comes in. He’s a charmer and a playboy, but he’s hiding a terrible secret. When he’s assigned to protect Arianna from Darkbloods, she ignites in him those dark cravings he’s been struggling to control. Tempting him as no other could, she awakens what he fears is the real enemy—the one buried deep inside him.

This is a story about secrets—everyone has them. But it’s what we do with them that matters … because some are more dangerous than others.

Happy reading!

Laurie

Also available from Laurie London

BONDED BY BLOOD

EMBRACED BY BLOOD

“ENCHANTED BY BLOOD”

in A Vampire for Christmas

And stay tuned for an all-new, sizzlingly sexy

Sweetblood novel, coming soon:

SEDUCED BY BLOOD

Tempted by Blood

Laurie London

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To mom, for your endless love and encouragement,

and your incredible example.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you, first of all, to my wonderful readers. A year ago when my first book came out, I was surprised and humbled that so many of you took the time out of your busy lives to contact me. I’ve loved “meeting” so many of you.

To the fun and sometimes zany online book bloggers and reviewers, thanks for your support and enthusiasm. I’m continually amazed at your creativity, professionalism, dedication and love of the romance genre, particularly you rabid paranormal fans. You make it cool and exciting to be a reader and an author in this digital age.

To Becky, Mandy, Janna, Kandis, Kathy and Shelley, thank you so much. I’d be adrift without you. Thank you to the Cherryplotters for the great ideas and for confirming when I’m on the right track … or not.

Thanks to my friends Julia, Eric and Marc, for tidbits that I twisted for my own evil purposes, and to Kevin, for help with a local urban legend that inspired a few of the details.

Thank you to my wonderful editor, Margo Lipschultz, for all your support and encouragement. You breathe life into my ideas and know just what needs to be done to make them better. Thank you to everyone at Nocturne™, including the awesome digital team and art department, for all your behind-the-scenes work. Thanks to my agent, Emmanuelle Morgen, for believing in me.

To my husband, Ted, and my two “babies” who are taller than me, thanks for putting up with crazy. I love you.

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN SHE SAW the number of vehicles parked in the second driveway on the left, Arianna Wells tensed and almost turned her car around. She hated having an audience for these things.

With her eyes forward, she drove past the house, then a dozen others in the neighborhood, and parked the old Cadillac under a streetlight around the corner. Out of habit, she scraped the wheel rims against the curb. Her father had loved this car and was so proud of himself when he gave it to her for her sixteenth birthday. Problem was, she’d been nineteen at the time and he’d mixed up her birthday with one of his many ex-girlfriends. Adding a new scratch when she was frustrated or pissed off always made her feel better. She shoved the transmission into Park and it lurched into a rough idle.

She stretched her arm over the seat and peered out the back windshield. Maybe that wasn’t the right place. All the houses had the same mirror-image design, painted one of three colors with identical rows of box hedges lining the walkways. Roads to the left and right led to similar cul-de-sacs. Everything was confusingly similar. It’d be easy to turn down the wrong street and knock on the wrong door.

She pulled the address from the front pocket of her jeans and realized she still needed to change her shoes. She’d gone in to work today for an unscheduled meeting and hadn’t thought about tonight until she was already at the office. Hopefully, she had a spare pair of boots in the trunk. If they went to the site of the disappearance, traipsing through wet bushes in flip-flops would really suck. From what she’d learned about getting to the Devil’s Backbone, even wearing hiking boots, it wouldn’t be easy.

She opened the folded scrap of paper: 4112 Maple Grove Avenue.

Yep, that was the right house. The one with all the cars.

She crumpled the scrap into a ball and threw it on the seat. Thanks to rush-hour traffic in Seattle, it had taken an extra hour to get here and she really didn’t want to reschedule. The hems of her jeans were damp from running into the office and she was still chilled. She supposed she could’ve parked in her company’s garage today, thus avoiding the rain and the wet sidewalks, but she didn’t have a pass and paying forty bucks for a two-hour meeting was just wrong. She could have asked Carter, one of her coworkers, to hack into their building’s property-management company and print her a parking pass, but unlike him she had principles. Although on a day like today, she wished she didn’t.

She grabbed her phone, hit Redial, and a young man answered on the first ring.

“Look, Blake,” she said, not bothering to hide her irritation. “I told you I don’t do this with a bunch of people around.”

“Is this Icy Shadows?”

He only knew her by her screen name and Arianna preferred to keep it that way.

“Yes, and don’t tell me your mom is hosting her book club.”

She heard the low murmur of male voices, a muffled curse, and she was pretty sure someone in the room with Blake said, “Do you see her yet?”

Good thing she’d parked around the corner.

“It’s just me and the guys who were with me that night. That’s all. I figured you’d want to talk to them, too.”

What part of “I want to conduct this interview alone” didn’t he understand?

Before agreeing to meet with him, she’d thoroughly checked out Blake’s background, as she did with everyone she interviewed in person. He was a seventeen-year-old honor student at Cascadia High School, on the varsity tennis team, vice president of the French club. In a write-up in the local paper about some community service project, his marketing teacher had called him a leader.

Using her internet-sleuthing abilities—some people would call it stalking, but she preferred to call it due diligence—she’d tracked his movements online. She found his social-media pages, followed him to the few blogs he’d read, hers being the only one that didn’t involve music, and she’d looked at dozens of pictures and videos. The few times he’d posted on her blog, he’d been respectful and articulate. The guy was who he said he was—a decent kid with a very interesting story that she was dying to hear in person.

But she knew nothing about his friends and she had her rules.

“We’ll have to do this another time, then. Goodbye—”

“Wait. Wait. I’m really sorry, but they really want to meet the Icy Shadows from Paranormalish.”

I’ll bet.

“Sorry. I’m shy.” Not really. Although she did hate crowds, she guarded her online identity with the finesse of someone navigating a minefield. Each movement, each next click could be disastrous.

If Xtark Software found out how she spent her free time, that she lied on her employment application about having a blog, she’d lose her job. The game company was anal when it came to its employees’ use of social media, requiring everyone to turn over their computer passwords so company security officials could monitor their online activities. They worried about employees sharing too much and other companies stealing their proprietary secrets—as if someone in the graphics department would know anything about software design. But a blog run by any employee was a huge no-no. As far as she was concerned, however, it was no one’s business but her own, and she preferred to keep it that way.

And then there was that business with her ex. When he’d found out about her blog, it had turned her life upside down.

She’d learned long ago that people thought her interest in unexplained phenomena was weird … crazy, even. Sitting on a cold metal chair at the Fremont area police precinct as a five-year-old, having no one believe her had taught her that. They’d tried to explain that shadows don’t just come alive and kidnap people; a real person took her mother. They’d given her a stuffed animal to hold—Comfy Carl, they called him. She could still picture the bear with crisscrossed threads for eyes that smelled as if it’d spent months in the damp trunk of a patrol car. But she knew what she’d seen and a toy wasn’t about to convince her otherwise.

At a young age, Arianna figured out pretty quickly that if she wanted to be taken seriously and keep a roof over her head, she’d better keep her interests to herself. The blog was her way of exploring topics she couldn’t discuss out loud.

No, she couldn’t risk Blake’s friends finding out anything about her. It could show up later online somewhere, making it easier for Xtark to discover what she was doing. Conducting these sorts of things one-on-one lessened the chances of that happening.

“Okay, okay,” Blake said. “I’ll make them leave.”

Arianna paused, her hand on the ignition, still not convinced she wanted to chance it.

“Pleeease?” His voice cracked midstream and he suddenly sounded younger, more vulnerable.

She knew her readers were dying to hear what happened that night at the Devil’s Backbone, complete with pictures and videos. Ever since Blake posted that the captain of the football team never came back after visiting the site and a watered-down version hit the news outlets, her blog readers had been pestering her to interview him. Many of them had never seen pictures of the site of the old sanitarium, which had burned to the ground at the turn of the century. Situated on private property, it was rumored to be haunted, and kids snuck in late at night to party there. Blake claimed the missing boy had been with them when they visited the site that night. He’d posted on her blog that he was too scared to go with them, so he waited in the car. All of the kids returned except for one. Sure, they could’ve been drinking, but given the fact that it happened at the Devil’s Backbone it was enough to pique her interest.

“A guy named George from another website has been emailing me, wanting to know what happened, but I’d rather talk to you.”

She winced. “George from OSPRA?” That meant he’d been reading her blog.

The Olympic Society for Paranormal Research and Analysis had been relentlessly pursuing her since she started blogging, pressuring her to join their organization of crazies—vampire hunters, ghost hunters and alien-invasion enthusiasts. After she’d repeatedly turned them down and inadvertently scooped them on a few investigations, they got pissed off and someone tried hacking into her website. If it hadn’t been for Carter, who beefed up her security settings, they’d have succeeded.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Bastards. That was it. “Okay. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. But if even one of those cars is still parked out front, the interview is canceled. For good. Understand?”

Blake lowered his voice. “Is there any way my younger brother can stay? He was one of the guys with us that night, too, and has a totally different story than I do.”

Did no one listen anymore? Was the spoken word that hard to understand? She let out an exasperated sigh and picked at a tear in the vinyl upholstery.

Interviewing one of the others who was there would give a good perspective to the article—make it even more compelling. George wouldn’t be able to compete with that.

Blake was quiet on the other end of the line, waiting for her answer. She could almost hear his silent plea for help. Then it dawned on her. Maybe he was seeking validation from her so that his friends would know he wasn’t making up the story. That all of this wasn’t just a twisted joke or the product of an overactive imagination. Clearly, he had experienced something but no one believed him. A familiar pang tugged at her heart. She knew how it felt to witness something that wasn’t possible. To be given a stuffed animal and a pat on the head because no one could figure out how to make you feel better.

She recalled the disapproving looks her great-aunt and -uncle had given her as they’d lamented that this preoccupation of hers was too deeply rooted in the satanic. After a few months, they’d given up and sent her to live with a string of foster families.

“Fine. Your brother can stay. But if I come back and get any inkling, any strange or nagging feeling that you lied to me, and your friends aren’t gone—”

“I promise,” he said hastily. “Just me and my brother.”

“Okay. Fifteen minutes.”

Before the line went dead, she heard him yelling at his friends to leave.

JACKSON FOSS DIDN’T PLAY by the rules, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to start tonight. Besides, he hated being rushed.

Reluctantly, he raised his head and turned toward the door, feeling his pupils dilate even more than they already were. This was the second time Mitch had interrupted him, and if it happened again, Jackson, swear to God, was going to storm out there and acquaint his knuckles with his partner’s face.

Techno music blared from the ceiling speakers. Although it was loud inside the tiny room, its walls upholstered in tufted pink vinyl, he didn’t have to raise his voice. His buddy would be able to hear him just fine.

“I said I’ll be right out.” But he lied—he’d need at least a few more minutes.

He turned his attention back to the woman beneath him. He was aroused but didn’t feel like using what the good Lord gave him. That wasn’t what he was after. At least not this time.

Soft waves of hair tickled his nose as he settled in again. The too-sweet smell of her drugstore perfume was so concentrated, so overpowering here at the base of her neck that he almost sneezed. He tried like hell to ignore it and placed his hand to her temple anyway.

Technically, Mitch was right. They were on duty tonight and being on duty didn’t involve this. He just wasn’t a slave to protocol like some people were. Sure, he’d be the first one to admit they shouldn’t be at the Pink Salon for more than just a standard walk-through. A drink at the bar? Maybe. Shooting the shit with a few of the regulars? Yeah. But this? Not really.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t serious about his role as a Guardian—he was. It was just that this was necessary, too.

With a jolt, her energies shot through his palm and up his arm, static electricity popping in his veins, leaving in its wake a warm, numbing sensation.

Heaven.

Inch by inch, his muscles unknotted, the gnawing hunger in his gut subsiding. Clarity settled over him, the clutter in his mind evaporated. Now he’d be able to concentrate on the things a Guardian should be doing. Walking the streets. Monitoring the police bands. Hanging out in alleys, searching the shadows for those who lived on the fringe of their secret but civilized society.

For a short time, at least.

Thank God things had been slow lately, so he didn’t feel too guilty being here. After the Seattle field team busted a huge Night of Wilding party recently on one of the San Juan Islands, the streets had been pretty quiet. Those who weren’t killed during the raid had gone into hiding. Not that there weren’t still members of the underground seeking out desirable blood types to sell on the black market—hell, he’d caught one last night stalking a young mother who was holding her child’s hand—but, for the most part, work was slow. Mitch just needed to unknot his tighty-whities and chill out.

Ah, yes, sweetheart, just a little more and I’ll be finished.

“You must work out a lot,” the woman said, running her hands over Jackson’s back.

“Yeah, guess you could say that.”

Not wanting to crush her small frame, he shifted his weight slightly and kept his hand against her temple. Evidently the anorexic look was in fashion this winter. The chick he’d been with earlier had been just as skinny.

Having yanked off her own shirt when they got to the room, she now tugged at his clothes, fumbled with his belt. He didn’t put distance between the two of them to make it any easier for her.

Lucky for him, she’d had a healthy dose of sun recently—her stored energy levels were higher than most people’s in Seattle who lived under a gray blanket during the winter months when the ultraviolet index was low. He was feeling stronger already, much more rejuvenated than if he’d been with someone else.

Had she just been to Hawaii? Cabo, maybe? Yes, Mexico, he decided. When they entered the private room a few minutes ago, he’d asked her to remove her silver rings and bracelets, citing an allergic reaction if his skin came into contact with the metal. Not exactly true, but close enough.

“God, I needed this.” Maybe he would be able to skip a couple of days.

“Me, too.” She managed to slip her hands under the waistband of his low-slung jeans, reaching, searching. Of course, she thought that was why he’d brought her here. It’s what he wanted her to think. It’s what he wanted everyone to think.

“Ooh, you’re commando. Did I tell you I like a man with easy access?”

“You lucked out then because I’m all about easy.” He sucked his abs in farther, making more room inside his pants without having to go through the hassle of shoving them down. He’d let her handle him for a few moments while he did his thing. As far as he was concerned, it was the perfect combination.

Her fingers brushed the head of his erection and she gasped. “Is that—oh, my God—what I think it is?” She’d found his piercing. Her pulse spiked as he hoped it would.

“It’s a little surprise for you.”

“No way.” She giggled nervously, her voice higher pitched than before. “Does it really, you know, make it better?”

“I’m told it does.” That tiny metal stud had seen its fair share of action. With minimal effort on his part, he could easily satisfy any woman. “Like I said, it’s your lucky night.”

And just like that, her excitement shot into his veins like a pinball ricocheting off the lighted bumpers. He held still and wallowed in the sensation.

She said something else, but he wasn’t really listening. This was his favorite part, experiencing the rush of anticipation from a female donor host when she made that discovery. It added an extra spice to the energy. Fear did the same thing, but he didn’t let himself think about that.

She tilted her head, seeking out his mouth.

I don’t think so. With his face turned away to keep his fangs hidden from view, he chose not to react to her body language. He ran his free hand down her arm to distract her.

“Kiss me,” she ordered.

“Tobacco. Just chewed a wad.” The lies easily rolled off his tongue. Only a few more moments, then he was outta here. “Didn’t know I’d be hooking up with the hottest girl in the club.”

“Really? You think so?”

“Absolutely. If I had, I’d have never taken a dip. I’m addicted, though. Weak. Totally unable to quit. Will you forgive me?” God, he was laying it on thick, but then women liked being with men they thought needed fixing. Men who needed their help.

“Of course.” She gave a little laugh that sounded like a cross between a woodpecker and a machine gun. It would’ve grated on his nerves if he wasn’t so mellow right now.

He didn’t like to kiss them, if he could help it. Even the pretty ones. Kissing led to feelings, which led to intimacy, which led to talking about the future. Not that he hadn’t played house with various women—both human and vampire—over the past century, but whenever they started in with the baby names, the bathroom colors and the mixing of bank accounts, he got itchy. As in the kind of itch that needed someone else to scratch it. After a while, when the charade became too hard to maintain, it just so happened that he’d become a shitty liar, very conveniently forgetting to cover his tracks. He really hated the “sugar, this just isn’t working for me any longer” speech, so he gave them a reason to break up with him.

His last on-again, off-again girlfriend had thrown all his crap on the front lawn when she discovered he’d been with another woman. His leather coat, his Xbox, all his games—ruined in the rain. He didn’t blame her for being pissed—he’d expected it. He cringed, though, when he thought about that damn coat. His favorite. It’d smelled musty ever since. Yeah, it was easier for every one involved to not let things go that far in the first place. It really wasn’t worth it.

Dating standards aside, he couldn’t kiss this woman anyway, he noted as he ran his tongue over his partially extended fangs. A side effect of being sexually aroused, whether he planned to bite her or not. She sure as hell didn’t need that shocking visual. A female screaming at your appearance, if only for a moment before her memory could be wiped, deflated more than just your ego.

With every heartbeat, her energies continued to pulse into him, and her movements became less vigorous. Her nails weren’t digging into his ass the way they had been, her ankles no longer clasped behind him. One leg slipped from his hip to dangle bonelessly off the edge of the mattress. Finally, she yawned. With his ear against the side of her face, he heard her jaw pop.

“I’m sorry. I feel so … tired all of a sudden.”

“I’ve worn you out already?” he joked, though he knew it was true.

“Don’t worry. I’ll totally rally.”

When she yawned into his shoulder again, he knew it was time to go. He’d taken enough. He ran his tongue over the tips of his fangs.

But first … maybe just one taste.

With his ring finger, he located and caressed her artery, feeling the steady rhythm of her heart there. He could sink his teeth in and drink. One sip. Although her blood type was common, with all the sun she’d been exposed to, it would have the same stored energy signature.

He’d taken blood from an earlier host, but what would be the harm in another little taste? Or two?

Wait. Stop.

He didn’t need more blood. He’d had plenty tonight to sate his physical requirements. This desire was all in his head, he told himself. Completely unnecessary.

Reluctantly, he dragged his hand away. This dark nature of his was a cancer that never fully went away. Coaxing him. Whispering in his ear like a jealous lover who didn’t want to be forgotten.

No. He wouldn’t give in this time, as he had less than an hour ago. He clenched his teeth, cutting his lip in the process. “Shit.”

“Wh-what’s wrong?”

He waited a moment, willing his fangs to recede into his gums. “Nothing.” With effort, he pushed away from the drowsy woman, forcing himself to look at her as a living, breathing human and not unsuspecting, vulnerable prey.