Jared Read Free Page B

you’re a handsome
man.”
    “Never hurts to have it reinforced.”
    “I don’t suppose it does.”
    “But?”
    “I have things to do that don’t include you.”
    “Well, now, that is going to be a problem.”
    “Why?”
    He looked over her shoulder. She felt his energy fan
out and scan. She piggybacked hers to his, keeping under his radar. With her
debilitating weakness, it was about the only way she could afford the luxury of
scanning. She felt the Sanctuary patrol at the same time he did. They were back
at the bodies of the first two, but they wouldn’t be for long. Soon they’d be
coming after them. However, the patrol was far enough behind that if she could
get away from the stranger, she’d be able to disappear. The man’s grip
tightened around her hand. “Because I’ve decided to keep you.”
    He’d decided to—Oh, for heaven’s sake! She planted her
feet. “Look, Mister . . . ?”
    “Jared.” With a mere twitch of his arm, he popped her
forward.
    “Look, Jared.” She struggled to find her most
persuasive tone of voice as she awkwardly trotted beside him. She wasn’t used
to running while being levitated, and she couldn’t get the rhythm right. She
pried at his fingers with her free hand. She managed to work her pinkie free.
It gave her hope. “You can’t just decide to keep a person.”
    “No. I can’t.” The glance he cast her was beyond
amused. “But the vampire law does say I can keep an unattached female in need
of aid.”
    Vampire law was totally archaic and chauvinistic, and
didn’t appeal to her in the least, but that line of argument wasn’t going to
get her any further than tugging on her hand had. “My need for aid has passed.”
She shooed him along with a wave of her fingers. “You can go about your business
without having to worry about me.”
    “Well, Miss . . . ?”
    The arch of his brow was not only a prompt, it was as
sexy as all get out. Why did she have to meet this man here? Now?
    “Slovenski. Raisa Slovenski.”
    That brow twitched again. Her name and her accent
always marked her as a foreigner to this land. “Well, Raisa, the way I look at
it we’ll have plenty of time to discuss the beginnings and endings of my
obligations as soon as I get you to a safe place.”
    “But—”
    “No buts. About all you have to decide is whether you
want to run”—he held out his hand—“or be carried.”
    She wrapped her arm around her ribs where she still
felt the bruise of his last carry. Some choice. Take the pain from his carry or
the pain from the exhaustion. In the end her dignity made the decision for her.
She placed her palm in his, a tiny trill of pleasure at the contact spiking
through her energy as she did. “I’ll run.”
    But she was definitely discussing the endings of his
obligations later.

2
    IT was almost sunrise before Jared found a safe cave
on the back edge of D’Nally territory. For himself, he wouldn’t worry so much
about where he spent the day, but he had Raisa with him, and that meant extra
precautions. There were too few women of their kind, and what the Sanctuary did
to them was too horrible to risk her in any way. Not many women, even immortal
ones, survived the genetic manipulations nor the repeated rapes the Sanctuary
put them through in their pursuit of their master race. And even if a woman
survived physically, her mind was pretty much shot.
    Jared had encountered women in his mortal days who had
been worked over by men, and while he’d managed to distance himself from his
emotions long enough to get them home, he couldn’t seem to achieve the same
with the women the Sanctuary tortured. Couldn’t block their energy, couldn’t
get past the “if onlys” that might have come together in such a way that he
could have saved them. Which is why he did as few of those rescue missions as
possible.
    He glanced over at the woman. She was sitting on the
ground, her back against a boulder near the wall, head down, fishing through
her pack.