The Darkling Surrender

She was different now. She was confident, she was sexy. She was beautiful.

She was going to have what she’d been dreaming about for months. And she was going to have blood, too.

“Do you really want to talk?” Closing the rest of the distance between them, Aubrey leaned in a calculated inch. If she’d had any breath left, she would have been able to exhale on his lips and have him feel the warmth.

“You’re… different.” Gavin closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. “What’s different?”

Aubrey placed her rear at the edge of the van floor that was now at her back. Gavin had been moving a box, it looked like. A large, heavy box. She pushed at it with a hand, and it slid back into the vehicle as if it was empty.

She saw Gavin blink at the ease with which she moved the item, when he’d grumpily asked for help… and he was no weakling. She’d seen the muscles of his arms under the short sleeves of his scrub shirt. He was lean, but he was also ripped.

Leaning backward so that her weight rested on her elbows, Aubrey stared at Gavin, unabashed. “I’ve had to reevaluate my life. Being sick… changed me. And now all I can do is work with what’s left.”

She wanted him to come closer. Wanted him to touch her. She could’ve just grabbed him and torn her teeth into his neck, but she wanted him to come to her willingly.

She wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t do any of this, unless he was at least partially willing. Which was probably why Malcolm had told her to hunt only those who were strangers to her.

It was too late. She’d caught the scent of her prey, and like a decadent fudge brownie to a dieter, she could think of nothing else.

She would have him inside her, just as she’d wanted him for months. And while he was inside her, she would taste his blood. She’d drink, she’d grow strong.

And then she’d make him forget that any of it had ever happened.

Gavin was horribly confused. Dr. Aubrey Hart, the resident who’d abruptly dropped out of her residency weeks earlier, was lying against the back of his van with a confidence he’d never seen even a hint of before, and her body language was screaming at him to take what he’d tried not to think about taking from her before.

He wasn’t sure that he believed that she’d been sick. It was more like she’d had a complete personality transplant. But if he’d found her skittishness cute before—in a forbidden, can’t-ever-act-on-it kind of way—he found her new seduce-me attitude sexy as hell.

He liked strong women. They were difficult, they were demanding and they were a hell of a lot work, true, but they also challenged him.

What kind of man would he be if he wanted some sweet young thing who would just acquiesce to his every desire?

That was why he’d never understood his attraction to Aubrey. But now, with the memory of the sweet girl and the reality of the new woman in front of him, the two swirled into a delicious mix that made his mouth water and his cock thicken. Like whiskey and beer, the combination seemed as if it shouldn’t work.

But oh, how it did.

But something still seemed off to him, and that something had him holding back from simply climbing into the back of the van with her and covering her body with his own.

“We should go inside and discuss your residency.” He tore his eyes away from the curves clad in tight denim and reminded himself that he was her preceptor. This was not appropriate.

His glands screamed at him in response, and his hands actually twitched with the need to put them on her, to feel her skin.

She simply blinked, continuing to watch him brazenly with that direct stare. He decided that that was what had him unnerved.

The Aubrey Hart that he knew rarely made eye contact with anybody.

“Come here.” He was completely taken aback at the words that left her mouth, and even more so at the subtle movement that accompanied them.

As she spoke, she sat up slowly and at the same time opened her legs, just the slightest bit.

There was no doubt in his mind as to what she was getting at. But he didn’t know how to respond.

He wanted her. Oh, he absolutely did. This newfound brazenness that she was displaying all but made him drool. But at the same time, he was used to being the aggressor. The initiator. Part of him fought against the idea of being reeled in with suggestive body language and a sexy stare.

Not to mention that he was her boss. Even if that fact was rapidly fading away.

He found himself taking a step closer to the van—and Aubrey—and then one more.

Could he do this? He wanted her so badly that he didn’t feel like he had a choice. Was it possible that she wanted him as much? Or was this some strange kind of power play?

His cock pressed painfully against the zipper of his jeans, demanding an answer.

He made up his mind.

“No. You come here.”

Chapter Two

Aubrey was so thirsty that she could barely speak. But she managed to murmur assent over the thickness in her throat as she slithered down from the van and moved to where Gavin stood.

This was it. She was about to make her first kill—in figurative terms, of course. She wouldn’t kill him, she’d simply wipe his memory after it was all done.

But the thought of killing, of how very easily she could accidentally take his life, brought feelings from her old life foaming to the surface.

This was Gavin. Dr. Thibodeau. The hard-assed preceptor who nonetheless had comforted her when she’d lost her first patient. The one who was always on her case to be better, because he knew she could be.

The one with the smile that made her weak in the knees.

If she could have walked away at that point, she would have. But she was too far gone, both with the thirst and with lust.

She had to have him, and so she snugged her body up against his own. She could feel the outline of his arousal pressing against the flesh of her belly, and it pleased her immensely that she hadn’t yet had to use her new vampire allure.

At least, she didn’t think she’d used it. Again, she couldn’t be sure.

“Aubrey.” Her name falling from his lips sounded like a curse, and she savored it as well as the rich smell of his blood. She’d never heard him say her name before, not her first name. It had always been “Dr. Hart,” and it was usually barked at her in disgruntled tones.

She shushed him, the soft shh slithering into the night. His frame was tense as she closed the last whisper of space between them, tense with what she thought was confusion.

Tilting her head up, she let their gazes meet. She’d been intending to try using some of her new allure, but instead found herself feeling weak in the knees. Though she assured herself that it was just due to the hunger—though lust for Gavin made her hunger fade from the forefront of her mind, she was starving—in her gut she knew that it was likely because of the intensity in his icy-blue eyes.