The Reluctant Vampire - Lynsay Sands [115]
When she moaned and arched her back in response, thrusting her breasts upward, he couldn’t resist reaching for them. They both groaned at the excitement that bounced between them as he palmed her breasts, but Harper forced himself to release her and break the kiss.
“Christ,” he whispered, leaning his forehead against hers. “I’m so tired I can’t see straight, and I still want to rip your clothes off and sink myself into you.”
Drina gave a little sigh, and then pulled back to glance toward Stephanie. Her smile was wry when she turned back, her voice a mere whisper as she said, “Sleep.”
He nodded and started to rise, but she caught his hand, and said, “Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked with surprise.
“For coming with us to Toronto. When you asked at the house if I’d stay here if Lucian decided to replace me, I wanted to say yes, but Stephanie—”
“I know,” Harper assured her quietly. “It took me a minute to reason it out, but we’re life mates. We’ll be together. We just have to work out the particulars of where and so on.”
She smiled, and he caressed her cheek gently, and then pushed himself wearily to his feet. Drina shifted her chair into a reclining position as he walked to his own. He got in the second chair, shifted it into the reclining position, and then reached across the end table between them for her hand. She smiled at him gently and squeezed his fingers, and they both drifted off to sleep.
It was something cold and hard pressing against his forehead that woke him sometime later. Harper frowned and blinked his eyes open. His head was turned to the side, and the first thing he saw was Drina in the next chair, her eyes open and narrowed in concentration on something beyond him. Bending his neck to the side, he turned slowly to see what had been at his forehead and stilled when he saw the woman standing over him, pointing a gun at his head.
Chapter Seventeen
Harper stared at the slender mortal female with short, dark hair and a pinched, angry face. She was trembling, no doubt trying to fight the control Drina had taken of her.
“Sue?” he said finally, his voice as blank as his thoughts as he stared at Susan Harper. He hadn’t seen the woman since Jenny’s death, and his brain was having a little trouble accepting that Jenny’s sister would be here at all, let alone pointing a weapon at him.
“Why can’t I pull the trigger?” she growled, sounding furious. “I’m trying to, but my finger won’t move.”
Harper glanced to Drina.
“I woke up as she entered the room,” Drina said quietly. “At first, I was half-asleep and thought it must be Leonius, but then I realized she was a woman and mortal and she wasn’t going for Stephanie but heading for you. I waited to see what she was up to, but when she pointed the gun at you . . .”
Harper nodded, not needing her to tell him that she had taken control of the woman enough to prevent her harming anyone but leaving her free to think and speak. He shifted his gaze back to Sue; his eyes slid from her face to the gun and back, before he asked with bewilderment, “Why?”
“Because you killed Jenny,” she said bitterly.
Harper sagged in his chair, his old friend guilt gliding through him like a ghost . . . Jenny’s ghost. If he’d been the one controlling Sue at that moment, his control would have slipped, and he’d no doubt have a hole in his head. Fortunately, Drina didn’t slip at this news, and after taking a moment to regather himself, he cleared his throat, and said quietly, “I never meant for that to happen, Susan. You must know that. I wanted to spend my life with Jenny. She was my life mate. I’d sooner kill myself than my life mate.”
“She wasn’t your life mate,” Susan snapped with disgust. “Jenny didn’t even like you. She only put up with you so you’d turn her. She bought into all your promises of young and beautiful and healthy forever . . . but you killed her.”
Harper winced as those words whipped him. He didn’t know which hurt him most: the suggestion that Jenny had only been using him or the reminder that she was dead because of him. Susan’s saying that she hadn’t even