Scarlet Heat (Born to Darkness) by Evangeline Anderson Page A

head. A girl with long,
dark hair and deep blue eyes. She was beautiful and very kind, the wolf
informed me, through more picture messages. She took away the pain. She gave
delicious food. She smelled right—like a wolf, not a dead one. She was pack.
    I shook my head in disbelief. Was I seriously
understanding the other side of my nature correctly? I had been certain that
the wolf inside me would hate Taylor—she was a fucking vampire, for God’s sake—the ancient enemy of our kind. I had been
afraid to change around her—afraid the wolf would hurt her. Instead, it seemed
my furry self wanted to adopt her, to claim her as part of the family.
    She is pack, the wolf affirmed in my head.
    What the hell? How had Taylor won over my inner
wolf so completely and quickly? A flood of images was my answer—Taylor leading
the wolf inside the house, taking away the silver pain thing that had been
biting his/my paw/arm. Then feeding him-me bacon ( delicious man-food! the Wolf sent excitedly) and curling up close
to him/me in bed, sharing rest and comfort the way pack members do.
    Hmm…curling up in bed. Behind me, the warm, soft
weight shifted and someone gave a contented sigh. A soft arm crept around my
side and settled on my chest. Then someone slung a long, slender leg over my
hip.
    “Mmm,” Taylor murmured, sounding as if she was
talking in her sleep. “So…warm.”
    She was pretty warm herself, for a vamp. Not that
I made a practice of sleeping with them. I inhaled deeply. God, she smelled
good, even better than the night before. The Wolf was right—she did smell more like a wolf than a
vampire. And there was another layer under her scent—a thin, scarlet ribbon of
heat that seemed to be growing.
    My hard-on got even harder but I frowned, lying
perfectly still and concentrating on what my nose was telling me. That hot
scent just under Taylor’s natural smell was familiar somehow. I knew it
instinctively, although I hadn’t smelled it in a long time, not since I had
been cast out by my home pack years ago. And I had never thought I would smell
it on a vamp—or on any female other than a were or a shape shifter for that
matter.
    It can’t be right, I told myself uneasily. She’s a vamp. There’s no fucking way she’s
going into—
    “Mmm…” Behind me Taylor stretched and hummed in
her sleep, sounding like she was just about to wake up. Her soft body pressed
even closer to mine and it didn’t feel like she had many clothes on. My cock
suddenly felt like it was going to burst. I had the urge to roll over in bed
and take her in my arms but I couldn’t do that—couldn’t scare her or take
advantage that way.
    “Uh, Taylor?” I ventured, turning my head to see
her. It was pretty dark in the room but the clock on the table said it was
around three in the afternoon. Wasn’t that kind of early for a new vamp to be
up? I had thought that only the really old ones could be awake during the day.
Was it possible that Taylor was just stirring in her sleep and wasn’t about to
wake up after all?
    Gently, I pushed her leg off my hip and pulled
her arm off my side. Then I turned over to face her. She was wearing one of my
white t-shirts, which was so big on her it fell to her thighs. Lying on her
side with her hands curled under her chin, she looked like an innocent little
girl. Her long dark hair fell over her shoulders and her eyelashes were like
thick black fans on her pale cheeks.
    So fucking gorgeous…
    Her beauty made me catch my breath, just as it
had on the night we had been blood-bonded. I had been so certain I was never
going to marry a vamp and had been right in the act of telling Corbin so and
then she had showed up in the doorway of his office. I could still remember the
way her white silk gown had clung to her lush curves and the crown of white
rosebuds in her long, dark hair. Her eyes had been so huge and uncertain as she
looked up at me—the expression on her face made my heart twist in my chest.
    That