Destroy Me: A Reverse Harem Vampire Romance (The Last Vocari Book 4) Read online

  Destroy Me

  The Last Vocari: Book 4

  Elena Lawson

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  1

  "If you take any more, I'm going to need another burger. Or twelve," I grumbled between mouthfuls, a greasy double bacon and cheddar in one hand while the other lay limp against the table, an IV needle jabbed into the crook of my elbow.

  "Just a little more," Ethan said in a tone that was trying way too hard to sound detached. Though I clearly saw him flinch at my remark.

  He'd gotten good at dealing with my blood. Before, I could see the discomfort in the lines on his face. The tension between his brows, the slight downturn of his full lips. His bloodthirst made his job of playing doctor and scientist much harder than it needed to be. But now...now he seemed unaffected.

  I swallowed another mammoth size bite and set my burger down, trading it in for fries drenched in gravy and cheese curds. These Canadians really knew what they were doing with this poutine shit. It was like crack, even though I could feel my stomach rebelling against the sheer amount of grease and dairy. I couldn't stop eating it. "You're getting really good at that," I told Ethan as he pressed a cotton ball to the base of the IV and gently slid it out from my vein.

  Guiding my arm up and into a bent position to staunch the blood flow, he allowed himself a small smirk. "Thinking you could be dead really put things into perspective."

  My brows furrowed.

  He bit his lower lip. "Your blood doesn't bother me anymore," he explained. "It hasn't since I peeled you off the pavement in NYC."

  I offered an impish returning grin as he wheeled himself away, placing the newly filled blood bag with the stack of others in the mini fridge. I could hardly believe it'd already been a week since then. A week since I escaped a building of nearly two hundred vampires.

  A week since I escaped Raphael.

  I'd slept the first thirty hours after my return, dead to the world in an apartment ringed in a heavy line of salt and black ash to protect us against Amala’s magic. When I finally woke, everything was already in motion. Bags packed. Private plane fueled and ready for take-off.

  We moved quickly, my three guys and me. Under Azrael's instruction, we made for the tarmac, following the exact route he laid out for us. When we got to the airstrip, we found there were two planes. Well, one was a jet, really. The guys and I took that one, and the other was piloted by and filled with 172 vampires. Our army.

  Estelle was already on our jet, waiting with a thermos of her famous chicken soup and a warm smile. I had no idea how Azrael had managed it, but I was immeasurably glad to see her. And the soup was just the thing I needed to set my mind back in motion.

  "Az will be here soon," Ethan said as he worked, filling vials with blood, bringing me back to the here and now.

  I stiffened and his hand paused over a vial, sensing the shift in the atmosphere.

  Ethan turned from the long stainless-steel counter so I could see the tight set in his jaw. His caramel hair seemed to have grown while I was gone and dropped low over his brow now, concealing his steeped-tea eyes in shadow. "Are you ever going to tell us what happened in there, Rose?"

  I sighed, hopping down from the stool, my appetite suddenly vanished. "It doesn't matter. It's over now."

  Ethan's lips pressed into a hard line, but he said nothing, resuming his work. If it had been Frost or Blake, I’d have had to put up more of a fight to make them drop it. But Ethan would never make me talk about something I didn’t want to. He’d never make me do anything I didn’t want to. It was one of the many reasons I loved him so much.

  Even if I was doing a piss poor job of showing it lately.

  I moved to leave, but in the blink of an eye, Ethan was up and across the floor, his hand wrapping around my wrist to jerk me to a stop. He swallowed my short gasp of surprise with a kiss, fingers pressed to the nape of my neck as he guided my mouth open and dove in with his tongue, stealing all the breath from my lungs.

  At first, I was all hard edges. Clenched. The vivid memory of Rafe’s fingers on my body flashing before my closed eyelids.

  And then...the memory faded.

  There was only Ethan.

  I shuddered against him, a heavy moan curling up from my chest to be smothered between our lips.

  Fuck.

  He pulled away, gazing heavily into my eyes as he pressed his forehead against mine. "Sorry," he breathed. "I couldn't wait any longer, it was driving me insane and you didn’t stop me so—"

  I silenced him with another kiss. This one shorter, but every ounce as toe-curling as the first. I hadn't been intimate with any of my guys since my return. My body was battered and broken then. Healing.

  Though the physical things healed in the thirty-odd hours I'd slept, it was my mind that was still fractured. Reeling from the two days spent in a tiny dark box, forced to relive my most painful childhood memory over and over and over.

  My skin bristled and I bit my lower lip to try to shock the memories away with a stab of pain. It worked, if only for a second.

  "Come to bed soon?" I whispered as Ethan pushed my long black hair from my face, brushing it behind my right shoulder.

  His brow raised questioningly.

  In answer, I dipped my hand down between us grabbing him by his massive cock through his grey sweatpants. He stilled, lips parting at the contact, already growing hard beneath my fingers. How the hell had I waited an entire fucking week to touch them?

  What was wrong with me?

  If it was a distraction I wanted, I could think of nothing better than being with my guys. I just wasn’t sure if I could do it. If I could be into it with the shitstorm going on in my brain. I’d been wrong. Very wrong.

  And I was damn glad to be. Already I could feel my pussy growing damp beneath my fighting leathers and had to press my thighs together to quell the slight burn. Otherwise, I’d wind up letting him take me right here in the lab surrounded by combustible material, blood, and chemicals.

  Ethan groaned and I released him.

  "Back to work," I ordered with a wink as I spun to leave the room before I could change my mind, sternly reminding myself he had much more important things he needed to be doing.

  "The sooner you finish, the sooner..." I trailed off, giggling when I turned to find him piping blood into vials faster than a machine ever could. At this rate he'd be done making two hundred doses of 'Rose's Vampire Sunblock Tattoo Ink'; the name was a work-in-progress, within the hour.

  Good, because the things I planned to do to him, to all of them, would take most of the night.

  The underground military bunker was buzzing with life at this time of the night. Even though this wing was mostly sealed off from the main barracks along with other rooms where the now-193 vampires were staying, I could still feel them through the walls.

  My senses had been somewhat diminished over the past months. Before, when I still hunted them for sport, I never questioned my abilities. Now that prickle of unease that always warned me a vampire was near had all but go
ne. I blamed spending too much time fucking their kinds now instead of staking them, but regardless, I needed to get my shit in order.

  With a little active focus though, I found the sixth sense was still there. Like an icy finger on the back of my neck, making the small hairs on my arms and the back of my neck prickle. All of my senses on high alert. Sound flooded my ear canals and if I listened very closely, I could hear them through two feet of concrete.

  The indecipherable buzz of conversation. A thud and ensuing crack of stone when one vamp got a little too tired of another’s bullshit. If anything, that was one of the harder parts of keeping an army of vampires at your disposal—making sure they didn’t kill each other.

  Second only to keeping them fed.

  It didn’t help that their promise of meeting the sun had yet to be fulfilled. They were getting impatient. Agitated. Many of them wanted to stand against Raphael, having been turned against their will, with human families they no longer saw but wanted to keep from harm. But many others still hadn’t a care in the world for mortal life. They joined only for the promise of sunlight.

  Without it, they would desert us faster than I could blink.

  I’d be lying if I said every instinct in my body wasn’t vibrating with the need to fucking stake each and every one of them. Or at the very least, the ones who would turn on us, if even moderately provoked.

  I’d learned not all vampires were the same. My guys had taught me that. To some extent, Azrael had as well. I gulped, shaking my head to cast out that last thought. My mind was enough of a mess without thinking of him right now.

  If I had any luck, I’d be able to avoid him when he came. I hadn’t had to see him since that night in New York, in the apartment building. He saw only the guys. Communicated only by phone. I had no idea if he was doing it for me, or because he couldn’t stand the sight of me after knowing his brother had put his hands on me. That I’d broken under the weight of them.

  The overhead lights blinked, and distantly I heard the generator chug and then resume a rumbling monotone. I had no idea how Azrael had come to own such a place. The bunker was old but had clearly been retrofitted with modern amenities.

  The lab was small but had all the top gear a budding scientist could want. When Ethan first saw it, I swear his pupils dilated to conceal all the muted brown tones of his irises.

  Frost and Blake liked to spend their time in the gym, which, I assumed, was where I’d find them now. Blowing off steam day in and day out to keep from losing their shit.

  Maybe a little Rose time would help them chill the fuck out. I could hardly stand to be around them lately. My own edginess heightened whenever forced to bear the weight of theirs as well.

  We had maybe another week here before it would be time to act. A week to get everything lined up. To give the army of vampires their promised taste of sunlight. To get them briefed and trained. To come up with a solid plan of attack.

  We knew it was only a matter of time before Amala found us here. The blanket of salt and ash atop the bunker wouldn’t hold out forever, and even if it did, there were stronger forms of magic which could penetrate it. We were banking on Amala not being able to use them, though. If what Az told the guys was right, then Amala would need a group of witches to perform the spell strong enough to get through our wards—and she always worked alone.

  It would take time for her to gather the necessary number of witches to aid her, and none of us thought any even would help her at all. The witches wanted Raphael and everything he stood for obliterated just as much as we did. If we were right, none would help her.

  If we were wrong…

  I shuddered, more from the thought than the underground chill constantly clinging to the concrete walls. I didn’t want to know what would happen if we were wrong, that was why we needed to be swift. Be smart.

  No place was safe for long.

  Ahead, the grunts of Blake and Frost were audible, echoing beyond the heavy metal door leading to the gym. I inhaled, a smile pulling at the corner of my mouth. They were my sunshine. Stuck thirty feet below ground, they were the only light in this perpetual dark. I hadn’t allowed myself to realize that until Ethan kissed me.

  I’d been training, attacking practice dummies with feral rage, since we got here. Eating in silence with the guys. Sleeping alone.

  It was time to put an end to it.

  My hand closed around the handle when a familiar prickle of unease rushed down my back, making my insides twist and my knees grow weak.

  I spun, taking him in.

  Azrael stood fifteen feet away down the hall, his expression blank. Eyes slightly unfocused. I could only make out half of his face. He stood in the shadows, where one of the overhead lights were out.

  My throat went dry as I took in the tight line of his jaw. The hollow dip below his Adam’s apple, just visible over the unbuttoned top of his fitted black dress shirt.

  When I finally forced myself to look him in the eyes, making my own to adjust to the shadows, my stomach dropped. In them, I saw Rafe.

  Adrenaline flooded my veins, making my fingertips tremble.

  I am the motherfucking Black Rose. I do not tremble.

  I clenched my fists.

  “Azrael,” I said, keeping my voice level, giving him a slight nod.

  He cocked his head, and for the smallest heartbeat, I thought I was wrong. I thought it was Rafe. That he’d already found us. That he’d come to kill me himself.

  When Azrael took a step forward and I flinched, hand edging down toward the stake strapped to my thigh, he stopped. “You don’t have to do that,” he said in a low whisper, gaze darting to the closed-door beside me. He was speaking quietly so as not to alert the guys to his presence.

  “Do what?” I asked, more certain by the second it was Azrael. There was a menace in his ancient gaze, but not the same darkness as his brother.

  His lips pursed slightly, as though tasting something sour. “Pretend you can stand the sight of me. I know what my brother did.”

  A vein in his neck pulsed, growing in thickness as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his designer denim, trying to conceal how his hands were stiff with rage. Fingers curving slightly into talons.

  “But you aren’t him,” I ventured, unsure if I spoke the words more for my own benefit or more for his.

  Resolved, I lifted my chin and bit the inside of my cheek, striding to him with purpose. My heart a jackhammer beneath the cage of my ribs.

  I wouldn’t let Rafe do this to me. I wouldn’t let that fucking bastard win. There was fear within though, I was loathe to admit that fact, there was something else, too. Something I could use.

  Rage.

  Rage beyond anything I’d ever felt for another being in my entire life.

  Fear was all but useless. But rage…

  We were old friends.

  As I neared him, I noticed something had been changed. As my vision adjusted to the shadows and Azrael took a minuscule step toward me, I saw that he looked different.

  “What did you do?” I asked, falling back a step to get a better look.

  Azrael lifted his hand to run his fingers through his freshly cut hair. His near shoulder-length russet brown locks had been cut to stand several inches from his scalp on top, cut shorter on the sides. He wore it pushed back on top and the natural wave of it made it look somehow like it was both styled and effortlessly undone.

  I didn’t realize I was grinning until Azrael’s own lips twitched up at one corner into a curious smirk. “Do you like it?”

  I faltered for a response.

  “I thought it might be easier if I…” he trailed off, gaze shifting as he thought through what to say. “If we didn’t look so...similar.”

  Something in my chest ached at his admission.

  He’d done this...for me?

  So, I would be more comfortable?

  “It is,” I admitted, taking in the whole picture of him. It was a minute change. They still had the same face. The same
body shape. The same eyes. But it did make it easier somehow and I wanted to cry at the ridiculousness of it.

  Tentatively, I closed the gap between us. Azrael stiffened as I hesitantly wrapped my arms around him, taking in his scent of African violets and musk, so distinctly not Rafe. I tensed when he wrapped his arms around me in return, but after a second, I began to relax.

  “I’ll kill him for what he did to you,” Azrael whispered in my ear, his breath feathering over my neck, making me shudder. “And this time, I will not hesitate.”

  He kissed the top of my head and pulled back, eyes gazing into mine, gauging something. Perhaps whether or not I believed him.

  I wished I could.

  But the truth was he had the opportunity to kill his brother once and he didn’t take it. There was a chance he would squander it a second time. It was no matter, though. If Azrael failed a second time, I would succeed. I’d already decided. If an opening presented itself; I’d take him out, even if it meant I didn’t walk away from the fight.

  Azrael’s eyes hardened and I looked away.

  “It will not come to that,” he said roughly, answering my thoughts.

  I turned to leave, a little perturbed that he was inside of my head. He knew how much I hated that. But he caught me by the arm, halting me for another second. “We have much to do.”

  I nodded, tugging my arm from his grip, unable to stop the thought before it raced through my mind. Not before I do my guys.

  Azrael’s lips parted. I thought I saw hurt cross his features for a split second before his face was back to an expressionless mask.

  “Tomorrow then,” he acquiesced.

  “Tomorrow,” I agreed, striding back to the gym room door as he sped past me, following the path I’d taken from the lab, likely gone to check on Ethan.