Blood Match Read online

  Blood Match is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Loveswept Ebook Original

  Copyright © 2018 by K. A. Linde

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN 9781524798093

  Cover photograph: © Shutterstock/George Rudy

  randomhousebooks.com

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By K. A. Linde

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “Every breath and every heartbeat and every minute of every day was spent waiting for you,” Reyna whispered against his skin.

  His perfect skin. The hard-muscled chest, the cold feel to him, the awareness of his body pressed against hers. She had waited so long for this. So very long.

  “Becks,” she said. She ran her hands against his jaw and forced him to look down at her. A bottomless sea of onyx enveloped her. “Say something.”

  “I love you,” he said like a prayer.

  Her breath caught. She’d waited to hear that for so long. At her low points, she even tricked herself into believing Beckham had never said those words. That maybe he had never admitted to being part of the rebel group Elle. Maybe Beckham had never put all of his trust in her hands only for her to rip it away in one horrifying flight of dizzy terror.

  But he had said those words. And she had run out of his penthouse after he had bitten her. And then she had been kidnapped by Visage.

  This was her reality.

  One she had survived with all this time.

  She’d ruined everything.

  But now he was here and saying those words to her. The words she’d so longed for. And she couldn’t stop herself from relishing in it.

  “I love you too.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close. She wanted to feel him, solid and unmovable. To know that she couldn’t shake him—that nothing could tear him away from her again.

  A tear slipped out of her eye and down her cheek. He pulled back and brushed it aside with his thumb. “Shh, Little One.”

  “I can’t believe you’re really here.”

  “You never have reason to doubt me.”

  His thumb moved to brush across her lips as she read hot desire in his eyes. It had been so long since she’d had his hands on her. Since she’d seen that look cross his face. Her body heated from head to toe and a flush suffused her face.

  She said the words she’d been dying to say: “I never should have run that night.”

  “I know, but you’re here now.”

  And after that there was no talking.

  Beckham pushed her backward and onto the bed. It creaked beneath her slight weight and she feared that it would break entirely with the both of them. But she didn’t care.

  Her heart was in her throat. Her hands reaching out for him.

  He ignored her and took the threadbare dress she’d been wearing in his hands and ripped it straight down the middle. She was naked underneath save for a pair of cotton panties, but he looked at her as if she were encased in silk lingerie. And she had been once. It felt like a million years ago.

  A primal growl escaped his lips at the sight of her. He shucked his black shirt to the ground and stepped out of the black slacks. He was bulging through his boxer briefs. All she wanted to do was reach out to him. To feel him inside of her again.

  But Beckham was in control. She’d once quaked under his gaze and immense size. Now she was shaking for entirely different reasons.

  His lips closed over her nipple, sucking it into his mouth and causing her back to arch off of the bed. His hand kneaded the other breast as his hips held her in place. His fangs grazed her nipple and she nearly fell apart right there.

  The separation slid away and she was once again lost to this man.

  “Becks,” she moaned as he moved to give the same treatment to her other nipple.

  She was already soaking through the cotton panties. They needed to be gone. They needed to be gone now.

  As if he had read her mind, his hands slipped under the material to find her already wet. A feral sound breached his lips. He took the thin fabric in his hands and yanked it down her legs.

  “Please.” She wasn’t above begging. “I’ve waited so long.”

  “I won’t bite you,” he said, his face sliding down between her legs. A fang nipped at the sensitive artery in her inner thigh. “But I bloody well want to.”

  Did she even care if he bit her? It would be a relief after what she’d endured. A relief to feel that connection so acutely. But she wouldn’t press him this time. She remembered how they’d gotten carried away. He’d taken too much, drank too deeply, and she could have died. They needed to take it slow.

  The blood. Not the sex. She needed that right now.

  His finger slicked through her wetness and began to massage her clit. She vibrated from the sensation. She didn’t know if she’d be able to hold out before he was inside of her.

  Then his eyes found hers again. His boxers disappeared and then his cock was in his hand. He massaged the length of himself as he watched her walk on a tightrope. Any second she was going to fall off and into oblivion. Nothing and no one had ever made her feel so good. No. No one had ever made her feel.

  “So…close,” she ground out.

  One powerful thrust seated him to the hilt within her. She cried out as he stretched her to the max. No warning or preamble just his cock inside of her, filling her to completion.

  Her walls clenched around him. She was so close, but instinctively, she knew he wasn’t going to let her release without him.

  Then he started moving. A slow pull out and a quick drive inward. Once, twice, three times.

  “Not yet,” he said, his eyes commanding.

  She tried to hold back. She could wait
. Oh God, she could wait.

  Then he started up the rhythm again. Setting his own course, owning and claiming her body. Reclaiming everything that he’d lost in that one moment of stupidity on her part. In his one moment of weakness.

  She could see in his eyes the weight that loss had cost him. The toll it had taken on him for giving into his urges, for finally relinquishing his hold on himself. His eyes said he’d never do it again. His eyes were a promise.

  “Becks, come with me,” she cried, clutching the sheets.

  He grasped her hips and owned her body where he refused to own her blood. Taking everything she would give him, but not everything he wanted. Not everything she wanted.

  She was so close. She looked in his eyes and knew they would finish together.

  * * *

  —

  Reyna woke up screaming.

  She jolted upright in her overly plush king-sized bed with its too many pillows and too much softness. Her hair was plastered to her face. Sweat coated her body, soaking through the thin white shirt she’d worn to bed.

  Her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting and she looked around the small room. Everything was in place. Nothing had changed. Not a damn thing.

  Beckham wasn’t here.

  It had been a dream. A sick dream. A desperate horrible dream.

  Her hand moved to her cotton panties and found the slicked wetness still there. The ache still building in her lower half from lack of release. The aftereffects of the dream. It had felt so real. So very real.

  She had felt him moving inside of her. She had seen the love in his eyes. She had known his remorse.

  But none of that was real.

  That was her imagination at work. Conjuring his face just to torture herself with his absence. Remembering the feel of his body and the love in his eyes, only to know that he hadn’t found her. Aching for one more view of him.

  It had been fifty-five days since she’d last seen his face.

  Reyna made a mark in the notebook next to the bed.

  Fifty-six.

  Chapter 2

  As if it wasn’t bad enough that she had woken up from that dream, it had to be a Thursday too. A fucking Thursday.

  On Thursdays she had to give blood. Ugh!

  Reyna shucked the covers off of her legs and stalked to the adjoining washroom. She still didn’t consider it her room. She hoped that she would never think of it like that. It might have a Jacuzzi tub, waterfall shower, king-sized bed, and a library to make any bookworm jealous, but that didn’t make it anything other than what it was—a prison cell.

  She might have everything she could ever need, but she had nothing she actually wanted. No access to the outside world. No news of Beckham. No news of her brothers. Not that she’d dare ask. The last thing she wanted was to bring attention to them.

  And of course, she didn’t have her freedom.

  Beckham had offered that to her with a ten million dollar check in a brown leather folder. She hadn’t taken it, of course. She’d thought it was a trap. A way for Beckham to keep her indebted to him for life. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

  She knew what real freedom looked like. It wasn’t that check and it certainly wasn’t a well-maintained prison cell. Whatever that dickbag who had imprisoned her thought.

  Reyna turned on the shower and peeled the sweaty layers off her body while she waited for it to heat up. She stuck the clothes in a chute and grabbed another white T-shirt and a pair of loose cotton shorts, dropping them onto a stool and entering the steaming shower.

  Her closet was nothing compared to what it had been at Beckham’s apartment. She’d resented the silk and satin and lace. All the little unmentionables. The mile-high heels that she’d only recently begun to get used to. No one cared for her to dress up now.

  She was just a blood bag.

  An actual fucking blood bag to the most powerful vampire in the world—William Harrington.

  The president and CEO of Visage Incorporated and Beckham’s boss. He was the ruthless ruler who had brought vampires out of the darkness. After the recession had struck, Visage had emerged as if they were a benevolent organization dedicated to helping humanity. What that meant was instating the blood type cure. It wasn’t so much a cure for vampirism as a bandage over the real issue. Vampires who drank blood from a human who matched their blood type became less animalistic and more forward-thinking. They became bloodthirsty monsters in two-thousand-dollar suits, taking over the world.

  But the history books read that Visage brought the world back from the brink. They registered the vampires. They paid humans—blood escorts—to allow vampires to drink from them. Killed two birds with one stone.

  Except Reyna knew that Harrington would never be satisfied staying where he was. He would never rest until he had all the power centralized with him.

  But first he needed a match, which was where she came in.

  All those nights ago, Harrington had kidnapped her for her specific and very rare blood type, Rh null negative. She had none of the Rh antigens that were found in 99.9 percent of people in the world. A true universal donor. And unluckily for her, she matched Harrington.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d had her only city friend, Everett, betray her. She didn’t even know if he had ever been her friend or if he had been conning her from the beginning. She’d been so naive to think he might actually be friends with her. Worst of all, he’d taken her and left Beckham without answers as to her disappearance.

  She slammed her hand onto the tile wall in frustration. She hated thinking about this. Hated it! But the shower was her only solace. One of the few places without cameras. She couldn’t be helpless anywhere else.

  Even waking up to screams irritated her. It ruined the mask she had carefully constructed these long eight weeks.

  She needed to get a grip. That dream had gotten to her.

  It wasn’t the first she’d had.

  It wouldn’t be the last.

  But it had been the most vivid. It was the furthest they had ever gotten. It made her ache for him. And she couldn’t do that here. Beckham belonged in a compartmentalized shelf in her brain where he could keep her alive and make her stronger but didn’t interfere with the person she had to be.

  With new resolve, she got out of the shower, dressed, and slicked her still-wet hair back into a ponytail. Time to get this day over with.

  When she walked back into the one-room cell, the human nurse was already waiting for her.

  “Miss Reyna,” the woman said.

  She wore the crisp white Visage nurse uniform that had made Reyna cringe the first time she’d seen one at the Visage hospital all those months ago on her first day as a blood escort. The only color on the outfit was the blood-red V logo. A sight that still made her feel sick.

  “I’m ready.”

  “You should eat first. You know that you get dizzy if you don’t eat breakfast,” the woman admonished.

  Reyna wanted to snap back at her to stop trying to be her mother. Her mother had died just over a dozen years ago when she was eight years old. Her deadbeat uncle had taken her and her brothers in for three years before the economy had gone to hell in a handbasket. Then it was ten years alone with her brothers before desperation had pushed her straight to Visage. Straight to this new hell.

  But she didn’t voice any of her thoughts. She kept her face blank. “Sure.”

  She sat down and ate the food that had been carefully selected for her nutrition. A perfectly balanced diet and a healthy amount of exercise was forced down her throat regularly. Though no one cared how much iron she pumped. There was no chance of her overpowering a vampire.

  “Ready,” she said, pushing the tray aside.

  “Don’t forget your water.”

  Reyna snatched it off the table and carried it with her toward the
door. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Of course,” the woman said with a bland smile.

  She’d had the same nurse twice a week for eight weeks. Not a single change in all that time. Reyna didn’t know a thing about the woman. They spent an hour together every Monday and Thursday for one of the most unpleasant experiences of Reyna’s life and she didn’t even know the woman’s name.

  The door to the room slid open silently and Reyna held her breath. Every time it opened she envisioned herself slipping out and running away undetected. It was a pipedream. Still she clung to it.

  She followed the nurse out of the room and took a right down the hallway. When she’d first arrived, she’d tried the exact thing that she’d just been considering. She’d made it three feet before a shock wave ran up her arm and she fell forward flat on her face. Some hugely muscled vampire had picked her up with one arm and deposited her back in her cell.

  He’d laughed in her face as he shut the door and told her about the device they’d implanted in her arm to prevent the very thing she’d attempted. As if it wasn’t enough to have vampires guarding her. They had an invasive thing put into her arm.

  So, no running away for her.

  When they arrived, the room was white and sterile. The sight of it still made Reyna shake with fear. Needles. This room meant needles.

  Reyna knew intuitively that it was stupid at this point to still be afraid of needles. Two IVs twice a week for eight weeks equaled thirty-two needles. She shuddered as she sank into the plush chair that had replaced the hospital-style bed she’d woken up in. Thirty-two needles in fifty-six days and she still felt like crawling under the table at the thought. She’d pleaded with Beckham to bite her, but needles made her want to vomit.