Page 34 of Resurrecting His Soul
“I love you.”
“Good girl.”
ChapterTwenty-Two
Ricardo
“Lis, Lis, you’re okay.”
Ricardo turned away from the man at his front door when he heard Allison. She sounded frantic, and that wasn’t something he’d ever heard from her. He took off towards the room she and Lisandra were in and found her leaning over a frozen Lisandra. She was so pale. As vampires, their skin was naturally an alabaster shade, but their normal pallor was nothing compared to the pasty skin he was looking at. His eyes moved to her face, and her eyes were zoned out like a zombie caught in a never-ending horror flick.
Allison moved in front of her, blocking his view, and held her face in her hands. “He cannot get to you. I won’t let him.” She glanced back and briefly met his eyes before turning back to look at Lisandra once again. “And you know Ricardo won’t let him near you. He can’t hurt you here.”
That was all he needed to hear. He didn’t know all the details about Lisandra’s past with her ex, but he knew whatever the man had done to her had been enough to make her leave her home. And now, hearing Allison’s words, he was beginning to get a better sense of just what might have sent his love running far from the only home she had ever known. Faster than he’d ever moved before, he ran back to the man at his door, wrapped his hand tightly around his throat and slammed him into the wall outside his front door.
He bared his fangs but kept his jaw clenched. The drive to protect Lisandra was pumping through him. His teeth were tingling with the desire to rip the man’s throat open. “You are not welcome here,” he growled.
His grip tightened around the man’s throat until he felt his nails puncture the skin, but the guy just smiled. Ricardo had spent centuries killing, but he had been trying to get even with the woman who had broken him. This guy was true evil. It poured off of him. Ricardo could see it in his eyes, his wicked smile, hell even something about his scent was like a warning to stay away. Darkness oozed from the core of the man. It had nothing to do with him being a newly turned vampire. Without a doubt, he had been wicked long before he was fed vampire blood.
“If my girl is here,” the man rasped, “then I am right where I should be. She is coming with me.”
Ricardo pulled him closer, then slammed his head into the wall again, hard enough the siding behind his skull cracked. “She’s not yours and you will not go near her.”
A slender hand came over his shoulder and Ricardo snatched his head around, expecting it to be Allison or Lisandra. When he saw Melina standing to his side, he nearly hit the roof with anger.
“Ricardo, please,” Melina fluttered her eyelashes and tried to pout. “He belongs with me. He is my first progeny.”
Everything clicked in place in that moment. Why she’d been snooping on his computer and hidden her history, and why she hadn’t put up a real fight when he had told her to leave. She sought this guy out, with what in mind exactly he didn’t know, but it was without a doubt her planning to hurt Lisandra in some way.
He shoved the man to the ground and turned to lay into Melina, but as fast as he was, he had been too distracted to hear Allison coming, and apparently so had Melina. A loud smack sounded; Allison’s hand made direct contact with Melina’s face hard enough to make Melina’s head snap back. Human or not, Allison was one tough woman.
“You stupid bitch!” Allison shouted. She pulled her arm back like she was about to take another shot, but two arms wrapped around her from behind and pulled her away swinging.
“Would you knock it off, Allison!” Lisandra yelled while she dragged Allison back into the house.
It was clear Allison wasn’t happy that she was being pulled away, but he didn’t have time to worry about her being angry because Melina shook off the surprise of her slap and took off into the house. He kicked the unexpected visitor once more to keep him down and flashed inside after Melina, but Lisandra was faster than him. She shoved Allison behind her and punched Melina like a heavyweight champ and sent Melina flying into Ricardo, knocking him down. In the short time it took Ricardo to shove Melina to the side and get up, her new vampire pup ran in the house and got right in Lisandra’s face. Ricardo expected her to slap him or knock him down. She’d been such a spitfire since the day she came into his life. Instead, she froze for the second time since the man had shown up, and damn if that didn’t make the monster in him claw to find its way back out.
“Get the fuck out of here, Jameson!” Allison made her way out of Lisandra’s grasp and tried to shove her way between Lisandra and Jameson, but Lisandra didn’t move. It was as if she was caught in his gaze, like a fly in a spider’s web.
“Oh, I’ll leave,” Jameson said with a smirk, “but Lissy’s going to come with me. She knows where she belongs. Don’t ya Lissy?”
The pull and tug of anger and confusion kept Ricardo from acting. He wanted to send their intruder straight to Hell with a one-way ticket, but something about the hold he saw Jameson keeping Lisandra in made him pause. The fact that things between them hadn’t ended well was something he’d figured out, but this strange hold he had on Lisandra was not something he’d expected. It wasn’t love. No. He knew what Lisandra looked like when she looked at someone with love, and this was far from the beauty that look created. Still, this Jameson had some kind of hold on her and he didn’t like it one bit.
He pulled himself out of his own head and grabbed ahold of Jameson and forced him back outside, away from Lisandra.
“I don’t know how you knew who he was or where to find him,” Allison said, and she moved towards Melina again, “but you’re going to pay for this, Bitch.”
Melina extended her fangs and went for Allison’s throat. Ricardo released Jameson and went for her, but Lisandra managed to pull herself out of her weird trance and grabbed Melina’s hair, snatching her across the room just before her teeth could connect with Allison’s skin. Quickly, he ran to Lisandra’s side, the two of them forcing Allison behind them, both with their fangs out and their hands up, ready to fight Melina and Jameson. Jameson made his way back into the house, pure evil and hatred rolling off of him, but Melina rushed to him and held her hand up and he stopped.
“We will deal with this later,” she said to him.
Jameson nodded slowly, but his eyes were glued to Lisandra, and it was easy to see he wasn’t thrilled with Melina’s decision to give up. It didn’t matter to Ricardo. He was going to put a stop to Melina’s crap. He rushed them, snatched them both up by their throats, and threw them out the opened front door. Then he was on them. Neither of them was fast enough to get away from him. With Melina held down by her throat, he caught Jameson by the back of his hair and yanked his head back, exposing his throat. His fangs had barely pierced the asshole’s skin when Lisandra screamed.
“Stop!”
He turned to look at her without releasing the two, but the moment she fell to her knees on the porch and he smelled the scent of her tears, he dropped them and ran to her and pulled her onto his lap.
“They. Aren’t. Worth—” Lisandra didn’t finish, her sobs taking over, and she buried her face in his neck.
