Belonging Read online

  You’re not going to do any better than Owen, Corinne. For pity’s sake, call the boy back up. Tell him you were just having a bout of jitters. Marry him. He’ll take care of you…

  She already knew how it would go and abruptly, she realized she wasn’t ready to face it. Bad enough she’d almost let Owen talk her back into a marriage she didn’t want. She wasn’t up to dealing with the same argument coming from her mother.

  She was cold. She was tired. She didn’t care where she went but she didn’t want to stay on the riverfront and she couldn’t go back home. Not yet. Not right now. So, though it was stupid, though it was a mistake of the worst kind, she let Levi walk her to his car, let him help her into the passenger seat and when he asked where to, she told him, “I don’t care.”

  And right then…she didn’t. She wasn’t with somebody who would push her into doing something she didn’t want to do, guilt her into anything or make choices for her. Even if she had spent too much time thinking about him lately, Levi was safe. Safer than anybody else in her life at that moment.

  * * * * *

  She had fallen asleep on his couch. Levi waited until he knew she wasn’t going to wake up before he slipped her shoes off and covered her with a blanket. When the phone at his belt went off, vibrating like mad, he slipped out of the small living room and shut himself in his bedroom before answering.

  “Did you find her?”

  Levi pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. I found her.”

  “So? Did you talk to her? Tell her she’s making a mistake?”

  “Owen, I talked to her…but…” Hell. How could he do this?

  I don’t love him, Levi.

  Setting his jaw, he made himself say it. This had nothing to do with him. Although his dick got hard every damn time he thought about her, it wasn’t about him. It was about Cori and Owen…and she didn’t want to get married. “Owen, I’m sorry, man. But she isn’t in love with you. If she doesn’t love you the right way, then going through with a wedding would be a mistake. Calling it off was the right thing for her to do.”

  “What?” Owen demanded. But he didn’t give Levi a chance to respond. “She does love me. She’s just confused…or nervous. Cold feet, that’s what her mother said.”

  “Her mother?”

  “Yeah. Her mother. I called over there earlier, wanted to see if Cori had gone home so I could talk to her. She wasn’t there so I talked to her mom.”

  “You told her mother.” Levi closed his eyes. Owen was a smart guy. When it came to book-type stuff, Owen was probably one of the smartest people Levi knew. The smartest—after Cori. But the man had no common sense. “Damn it, Owen, are you trying to make this harder than it has to be?”

  “What I’m trying to do is fix this.” Owen’s voice took on an edge. “Hell, I thought my cousin, my best friend, would want the same thing.”

  “What I want is for you to be happy. For Cori to be happy. But she doesn’t love you. How can either of you be happy if she isn’t in love with you?”

  “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” Owen’s breathing went harsh. “You—”

  The line went dead.

  Owen had hung up on him.

  “Shit.” Levi hurled the phone onto his bed and dropped down to sit on the edge.

  * * * * *

  Cori came awake to find Levi sitting on the floor next to the couch, staring at her.

  “Hey.”

  She licked her lips and rubbed her tired eyes. “Hey. Geez, how long did I sleep?”

  “Quite a while.” He reached up and brushed her hair back from her face. “You were exhausted.”

  Exhausted didn’t even cover it. Blood rushed to her cheeks as he stroked a thumb over the delicate skin under one eye. “When was the last time you had a decent night’s sleep?”

  “Ages.” Sitting up, she plucked at her wrinkled shirt, grimacing. “What time is it?”

  “Late. Close to midnight.”

  Startled, she glanced toward the windows, then at the digital clock on the DVD player by the TV. 11:52. She’d been asleep a good eight hours. Crap. She patted her pocket, looking for her phone.

  “Here.” Levi held it out and she took it, this time taking care not to touch him at all.

  She scowled when she looked at the read out. Her mother had called. Five times. The last time had been less than twenty minutes ago. The phone started to ring in her hand and she closed her eyes, dropped her head onto the padded couch. “Great.”

  Levi gave her a sympathetic smile. “I almost answered a few times but I had a feeling you’d rather she not know where to find you.”

  “You’re a smart man, Levi. I like that about you.” The phone finally went quiet and she sat there, staring at it. “If I don’t call her, she’s probably going to try to put a police report out on me.”

  He flashed her a grin. “She already tried.”

  Cori gaped at him. “You’re kidding me!”

  “Nope.” He shook his head. “One of the guys I work with called about an hour ago, said he’d taken a call from a woman who wanted to report her daughter missing. He recognized your name, told her that people have to be missing for a couple of days…blah, blah, blah…”

  “And I’m so sure she listened.” She shot a dark look at the phone in her hand and tossed it onto the couch. “She probably told him that I’m a helpless little girl who can’t possibly handle being on her own for a few hours.”

  Levi didn’t say anything.

  Narrowing her eyes, she asked, “So how close am I?”

  He winced. “Close enough. She was adamant enough that he promised to check around for her but then he called me. I told him you were fine. He let it go at that. He’ll stall her.”

  “Poor guy,” she mumbled. Anybody who had to deal with her mother deserved a nomination for sainthood. Caroline had managed to chase off four nurses over the past two years, and if Cori weren’t her daughter, she knew there was no way she could tolerate the way her mother tried to control everything she did. It already drove her nuts. “I should go home, though. She’ll be driving Linda up a wall.”

  Before she could stand, Levi laid a hand on her thigh. “I called your mom’s nurse and talked to her.”

  Cori’s mouth was dry. She found herself staring at his hand, mesmerized. Through her jeans, she could feel him. Warm and strong. Just like the light, soft kiss two months ago, that simple contact was enough to have her heart dancing the cha-cha. “You…you talked to Linda?”

  “Yeah. I told her not to worry, you were safe. She put two and two together. Don’t worry, she won’t go telling your mom where to find you.”

  “I know.” She still couldn’t stop staring at his hand. When he pulled it away, she sagged back against the couch, biting her lip to keep the disappointed sigh trapped inside.

  “Cori.”

  She lifted her gaze and stared into his eyes—into that warm, hypnotic gold.

  “Shit…”

  That was all he said. Dazed, she watched as he leaned in and covered her lips with his. He kissed her—short, hard, quick—then pulled back and stared at her. But she couldn’t meet his eyes. She was too busy staring at his mouth and licking her lips, tasting him. He cursed again, then reached for her, threading his long fingers through her hair and arching her head up and back. This time, the kiss wasn’t quick.

  It was deep, slow and utterly devastating.

  He came to his knees, using one hand to part her thighs and then he was between them, wrapping an arm around her waist and tugging her close. She cried out against his lips, shaken to the core by the heat that churned inside her. Through the layers of denim and cotton, she could feel the thick ridge of his penis throbbing against her and the sensation was too hot, too intense. Hunger spasmed in her belly and she whimpered, squirming closer.

  Levi swore and tore his mouth away. “Shit. Fuck. I’m sorry—”

  This time, she was the one to reach up, the one to grab his head and bring his mo
uth back to hers. “No. Please, don’t stop, Levi…” she pressed her lips to his and following instinct, licked his lower lip, pushed her tongue into his mouth.

  He groaned. The hands in her hair tightened, then abruptly eased. Lifting his head, he pulled back. She would have followed, but he pressed a finger to her lips, staring at her. “We can’t do this, Cori. We can’t. Not right now.”

  Chapter Two

  Not right now.

  We can’t do this, Cori.

  He should have.

  Fuck his cousin and fuck whatever polite etiquette would have dictated. Three weeks after he’d dropped Cori off in front of her house, he was standing in a cemetery. The cold wind blasted him in the face as he stood over the empty grave and stared at the headstone. If he’d listened to instinct instead of common sense, he would have kept Cori’s hot, sweet little body tucked under his all damn night and the tragedy that happened in the wee hours early the following morning wouldn’t have happened.

  She would have been safe.

  She would have been with him.

  Instead, he’d done the “right” thing and driven her home.

  The resulting investigation had concluded that she’d gotten into an argument with her mother. The night nurse had confirmed an argument and Cori had left. She’d gone to the hospital, though nobody would ever know the reasons. Owen had met her in the parking lot. But there was an attack, one that left Owen unconscious and in the hospital for a week, recovering from blood loss. Somebody had slashed his throat and if it hadn’t been for some hospital staff who happened to be leaving the hospital for an early run to McDonald’s, his cousin would have bled to death in the parking garage.

  Cori was nowhere to be found.

  None of the security monitors had proven to be worth a damn thing—there had been a dark van between the closest monitor and the area where the attack had taken place. All that was found of Cori was her coat and a copious amount of blood. Too much blood. Her body had yet to be found and, though the case was still open, they all knew the truth.

  She was dead. Nobody could lose that much blood and live.

  Who had killed her? Why? Those were questions that would never be answered.

  Red eyed and grim faced, Levi stared at the tombstone and listened while a preacher recited an endless spiel of words—words that were supposed to be comforting, but he was having a hard time finding any sort of comfort.

  He kept thinking he was going to wake up. It was all a dream, a bad dream brought on by a guilty conscience. He’d wake up and find out that Cori was alive, she was engaged to Owen, she was happy—

  “Amen.”

  Dazed, Levi looked up as the preacher closed his Bible. Roses were tossed into the grave to land on top of an empty casket. Empty.

  Chapter Three

  Four Years Later

  Being a vampire wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  Nobody knew that better than Corinne Lewis.

  As far as she was concerned, the refined senses, the eternal youthful appearance, the ability to heal rapidly, superior strength…none of it was worth it. But the absolute worst was the sex thing. As in the fact that her body craved sex.

  It was an annoying fact, but one that she’d mostly dealt with okay. She had a couple of excellent vibrators, a massaging showerhead and a vivid imagination. She coped and got by without hunting down a guy. That was how she preferred it.

  Well, no. Actually, she’d prefer not to be so damn hungry for sex. Sex had about as much appeal to her on a personal level as having her teeth cleaned. She was about as sexless as an anatomically incorrect doll. All of her sexual experience came from the times she’d been with Owen, and none of that was worth writing home about. It had been for him and she had gotten more pleasure from a haircut than she had from getting laid.

  If not for the annoying fact that her body now craved sex, she could happily just forget all about it.

  Back then, the few times she had been interested in sex, Owen hadn’t been part of the picture and that only added to the problem. She’d gotten all hot and sweaty about Levi, and the one time she’d tried to act on it, it had ended in utter disaster.

  Yeah, sex was definitely something she was better off forgetting.

  Of course, her body didn’t seem all that interested in letting her forget and damn it, considering where she lived, what she was, and what most of the people around her were, it was damn hard to pretend they didn’t notice her sad state.

  She might as well walk around with a flashing neon sign over her head—I’m horny and I need sex now, please. Sexual hunger had a unique scent to it and if she could smell it on herself, she knew those around her could too. While nobody at Excelsior had ever once said anything to embarrass her, she was well aware that they knew. They all knew. Hard to hide something like that when a girl was surrounded by vampires and shapeshifters.

  They lived under an illusion of privacy at Excelsior and while it frustrated her to no end, Cori didn’t see herself leaving either. When she was first brought here, she’d been terrified and traumatized. The vampire who had bitten her, who had attacked Owen, hadn’t lived a day beyond the attack. She didn’t remember his death, hadn’t been awake for her “rescue”, a rescue that came a little too late as far as she was concerned. Her attacker had bitten her and forced the Change on her.

  They’d gotten to her before he raped her. Just barely, she was told, but still, it wasn’t good enough. Sometimes she thought she’d almost rather have been raped than had the Change forced on her.

  If they’d gotten to her sooner…

  It had taken months of therapy with one of the counselors kept on hand at the school before she’d been able to handle the dark. Longer than that before she could tolerate a man getting too close. Although, in her heart, she knew she was in a safe place and knew nobody at the school would wish her harm, she hated every second she was there.

  Until she didn’t. Until she realized that inside these halls she could find sanctuary. It had taken a year before she realized she was where she needed to be. Though confused and struggling to accept what had been forced on her, in these halls she had found peace. Within them, she found solitude and an acceptance her own mother had never shown her. The same quiet acceptance that Owen had given her for so long.

  Here she had peace.

  Or at least, she usually had peace.

  This was the third evening in a row that she’d come awake with her body burning, an empty ache between her thighs that nothing could ease.

  Nothing but sex and she really couldn’t see herself seeking out one of the shifters or witches she fed from and asking if they’d mind servicing her in a different manner.

  Bad enough that she had to approach them to feed, though some of them had taken pity on her and set up some sort of “feeding schedule” for her, rotating through with clockwork predictability. Week A, it was Tanner McKade and Heather Marsh. Week B, it was Duke Lawson and Grady Wilson. Week C, Lloyd Hawkins and Kelsey Hughes. Then the damn thing started all over again. If one of her regular Happy Meals was unavailable, they found a replacement without her having to lift a finger.

  Half the time, Cori felt like some sort of new babe, being forced into taking a vein the same way a baby was offered a breast every couple of hours.

  The problem was, if they didn’t come to her and make the offer, she held back, and held back and held back. Even after four years, she couldn’t adjust to what she had to do to survive. Even when the hunger was riding her, when it had her fangs extended and it burned through her belly like acid, she couldn’t adjust. It wasn’t until she sank her fangs into flesh and the warm rush of blood filled her mouth that she accepted it—for a few moments.

  This, though, this was worse than the need for blood. More painful, that was certain. Rolling on the bed, she pressed her face against the pillow and sighed. It felt good, cool against her heated flesh. Heated from the dreams, because vampires typically only had warmth when others shared it, either th
rough sex or blood. “I can’t keep doing this,” she muttered, her voice hoarse. The need for sex had her on the edge, had her heart beating faster, her breathing accelerating and, though she’d just fed that morning before she went to bed, she was already hungry again. She was burning up all her energy just because she was so damn hungry for sex.

  Of course, it didn’t help that the witch she’d fed from had kissed her. Squirming in embarrassment, she tried to jerk her mind away from that path, but it was already trampling merrily on down that road. It had been Grady’s turn. He’d come to her room, a bit of a weird turn there, and she’d been puzzled about it. Hadn’t kept her from feeding, but then, after she’d satisfied the burn of hunger, he’d cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. “If you don’t feed both hungers, you’ll just keep needing blood more and more often.”

  She’d stick with blood. There was no way on earth she was going to have sex here. Even in her room with its soundproofed walls, privacy was just a pretense. Everybody knew what the other was doing—or whom. She’d rather none of them know that she was borderline frigid and just fine with it. Besides, though she could tolerate being around guys again, she didn’t know what would happen if things took a more intimate turn.

  Another spasm of need clenched her belly and with a groan, she kicked free of the blankets and stumbled to the shower. No, she wasn’t about to have a one-nighter with one of the way-too-sexy Hunters. Hell, her tongue got tied even thinking about it. But she also couldn’t do her job when she was so keyed up that just the brush of air against her flesh was painful.

  If not for massaging showerheads, Cori was convinced she would have gone crazy.

  But she couldn’t get that relief now. Not this time. She discovered that after ten fruitless, practically painful minutes in the shower.