She reached up with both hands to his prickly face and let her fingertips trace his powerful jaw lines. She slid her hands down to his shirt collar and began unfastening the buttons all the way down. “Oui, I could use your help.”
* * * *
Aaron cuddled up to Katya, nose buried in her hair. It was their only time alone together since they had arrived in Russia. The dusty bed tickled Aaron’s sinuses and the old mattress spring coils dug into his side uncomfortably, but, he considered himself lucky to have these few moments of peace with her.
He could relax when Katya slept. Awake and brooding, Katya’s presence dominated his thoughts, kept him alert for the next drama scene to avoid. Maybe once they were past this insane vampire hunt, he and Katya could have a decent chance of finding some level of normalcy. She seemed willing to integrate with him and Michelle. The way she handled intimacy with Michelle had surprised him.
“How do you get into these messes?” He murmured to himself and marveled at the crazy whirlwind of his life up to this point.
A few months ago, he’d been a simple waiter in an Italian restaurant. An average guy chasing after his bratty ex-girlfriend, Delia. Then Michelle walked down the New York sidewalk and straight into his life, rewriting the very fabric of his soul. He awoke reborn, with a master – a French vampire femme fatale – Michelle. He’d acquired a predator’s taste for the hunt. Through Las Vegas, and their misadventures in Paris, Aaron had been freed of Michelle’s control, only to land in the hands of a new master, Urvashi. From the US to France, and England, his life had been one fucking mess after another.
And poor Anastasia. Out of his mind on heroin, he’d married his bloodslave. They never had a chance at a honeymoon. His newlywed wife died in his arms in the Vegas desert, scant hours after saying their vows.
Bastard Colombian cartel.
Through it all, Michelle had kept him sane. His connection to her, their love, she was his anchor. No matter what happened, he would always have Michelle.
Now he had Katya, too. Aaron dug his nose deeper into Katya’s hair to let her scent wash away the mess of his life. Katya was his latest disaster, and far more complicated than Anastasia. What possessed him to do these things? Was he nothing more than a predator satiating his needs on the most beautiful woman within reach?
He’d begun to think that might be the case. “A fine mess we have here, Katya. I hope you can forgive me someday.”
She murmured something unintelligible and cuddled closer to him. Her ass, covered only by thin cotton panties, spooned perfectly up against the lump in his boxer shorts. He could take her right then, bite and fuck her to his heart’s content, and a powerful urge to do exactly that nearly undid his resolve, but that’s not what Katya needed.
She needed a break. If holding her in the wee hours of the morning was what she needed, then he could give her that much happiness. He owed her at least that much.
The click of the door opening preceded Aaron’s sense of his master’s entry into the room. Though Urvashi’s formidable mental shields kept him from digging into the privacy of her mind, she couldn’t keep him from knowing her whereabouts or tasting her moods. They were psychically tethered, a mistake of one errant bite. He knew she wanted to talk, now.
Aaron put his finger to his lips to shush Urvashi as he slipped away from the warmth of Katya’s tender ass and sat up in bed. He covered his bloodslave in heavy, coarse blankets and stood up to slip his pants on and tipped his head towards the door to draw his master out of the room. Katya needed her rest.
Closing the door behind them on the way out, Aaron caught a strange look on Urvashi’s face. “What? What’s up?”
She stared at him, her head cocked sideways, thoughtful. “I’m trying to decide if you’re a fool infatuated with every piece of ass that walks by, or if you’re one of those rare men who can actually love many different women … at the same time.”
Love might be stretching it, if she was implying he loved her, too. Michelle, most certainly, and Katya, yes. But Urvashi? He wasn’t so sure what they had qualified as love.
Aaron shrugged. “If you ask Michelle, she’ll tell you what a fool I was when we met. If you ask Katya, she’ll tell you I’m still a fool.” He smiled at Urvashi, trying to break the strange tension between them.
His master’s stare bored into him, and he sensed she caught all the nuances of his evasive answer. Urvashi missed nothing. She was the most perceptive and dangerous creature he’d ever met. He still didn’t know what to make of her, especially after catching a glimpse of what hid beneath her human mask.
He much preferred dealing with the mask. If Urvashi’s true form was the thing he’d seen, then she most certainly was not human, probably not of this Earth, and he was bonded with her from drinking her blood.
A little too much to handle right now.
Urvashi’s electric fingers tickled Aaron’s collarbone. A faint crackle of power hummed with her touch. He wondered if he was becoming dependent on her, on the energy she exuded whenever they touched. She charged him up like a living battery pack whenever they were close, and especially during sex.
She smiled and he felt that powerful influence from her again, a mood altering power she held over him. “Fool or not, I know you love them, which is why I allow them in our lives.”
Allow?
He almost opened his fool mouth, but she interrupted him. “In the future, you must consult me before adopting another pet into our little family. We are bonded. Your decisions are not your own, not when they affect me too.”
“Hey, you’re the one who told me how to heal Katya. I never would’ve had sex with her if not for your assurances I could heal her.” A side effect of his bond with Urvashi, Aaron had acquired Urvashi’s ability to transfer energy through intercourse. Aaron hadn’t even known, not until Urvashi admitted it while Katya lay dying in his arms.
If there had been any other way.
As it turned out, Aaron discovered this strange power resided within him, and he gave every inch of it to Katya, over and over again to save her life. Then he bit her, many times. Too many times. Bonding Katya to him had happened before he even realized it. His instinct to acquire bloodslaves felt as natural as breathing.
Urvashi watched him, waiting for his admission of the truth. She always knew. No holding back from her.
“So, maybe I didn’t have to bite her so many times … I don’t think there’s a way to separate sex and feeding, Urvashi. It’s not something I can do.” Which explained why Urvashi owned his ass, this one failing. He’d bitten her the first time they had sex, even after she warned him not to.
Fact: vampires bite people.
“Yes, Aaron. Let’s not make this a habit.” She twirled her fingers towards the bedroom door, in Katya’s direction. “Our lives are complicated enough.”
Aaron figured he best shut the hell up. There wasn’t much to say in his defense, so he just nodded.
“Renault will be here tomorrow night. He’s bringing some special supplies. The wolves don’t want to wait another minute, but I can’t let them go forward without proper equipment.”
He couldn’t miss the ominous warning in her voice. Damn. They were probably walking into a fucking dangerous mess.
The story of his life.
Aaron nodded again. He knew virtually nothing about guns and gear. Urvashi had shown him how to slice and dice with a pair of katanas, but his experience with guns was limited to the one and only time he’d used a pistol on Michael Jamison, in London. Point and shoot until the gun ran out of bullets.
“Renault’s bringing weapons into Moscow?” Aaron and Renault, Urvashi’s manservant, didn’t mesh very well. A former member of the wolf pack, Renault had taken an instant dislike to Aaron.
Urvashi caught the negative tone and raised her eyebrows. “I have my connections, and Renault does what he must to meet my needs. Getting guns into the city is no small feat.”
Then it finally clicked, what she was sa
ying. “You’re going with us? Into combat?” He’d never seen Urvashi in a fight, though she’d shown him a touch of her phenomenal power a couple of times. The idea of seeing her cut loose on Dmitri’s mafia thugs put a smile on his face.
“Yes, I am, and so is Renault.”
Great. Nothing like having a man who hates you standing around with loaded weapons.
“When is it going down?”
Urvashi’s brow creased and she looked past Aaron, deeper into the warehouse towards the other office cubicles the wolves had converted into makeshift bedrooms. “They agreed to wait for Renault, but no longer.”
“What about Nikolay?”
Urvashi shrugged. “He’ll be fine once he changes. They are similar to vampires in that respect. If he’s strong enough to change, the process is a rebirth. His flesh will be made new again.”
Aaron nodded. He’d heard this before from Ivan – after he’d saved Katya, and made her a bloodslave. From Urvashi’s wry grin, Aaron suspected she knew exactly what he was thinking. Time to change the subject. “How are we getting into Dmitri’s mansion?”
“It’s not really a mansion, though it looks that way from the outside. It’s a fortress.”
“You’re not helping my confidence.”
Her finger tips slipped down around his waist as she moved in to mold herself against him. She was wearing a black body suit and an ermine fur coat. She might as well have been naked beneath the fur, for all the suit hid of her lush curves. Her smooth sultry voice purred into his ear, almost a whisper. “The wolves tried to waltz through the front door, thinking their whore, Kristina, had paved the way. That was a trap. Now, without an insider, the choices are limited. Unless we go in from the roof, we would need a battery of tanks to get through Dmitri’s fences and walls.”
“Renault’s not bringing a tank? Not even a little one?” Though teasing, Aaron would much rather roll through Dmitri’s fortress in a tank. He didn’t care for the idea of reenacting a Jason Bourne film with some bullshit roof assault. Vampire he may be, fast, strong, and wicked vicious, but bullets hurt, a lot. He still remembered the bullet Jamison had put in his shoulder and the other bullet he’d taken in the Vegas desert, the same shot that had killed Anastasia. He had no desire to repeat the experiences.
Urvashi smiled and shook her head. They were going in through the roof for lack of other options. Cuddled up against his master, something she said struck him as strange. “What do you mean their whore?”
She sighed. “Katya never told you the story of Kristina?”
“She said Kristina was her niece …”
“Yes, but there’s much more to it. Over the years, Katya maintained contact with her human family in Russia, mostly through letters. Some of them know what she is. One of her distant family relations came to the pack for help. Family drama, I guess. The wolf pack adopted the girl as their pet, a cute little thing at the age of fourteen. Katya kept to herself in London, visiting her great niece only occasionally. The girl grew up rather fast. A few years later, before Katya knew what had happened, Kristina was banging half the pack, passed around from bed to bed.”
Aaron shook his head, smiling.
Urvashi’s lips parted in a half-smile. “They are wolves, yes, but still men. Don’t believe any of that ‘mated for life’ nonsense. The girl didn’t mind the arrangement. She had all their affections, and they spent money on her like a daughter.”
“Sounds like something the mafia would do.”
“This pack is old, Aaron. They come from a time when such things were commonplace in Russia. They protected the girl as one of their own. Everyone enjoyed her company, and it worked, until they recruited her to spy on Dmitri.”
Aaron already knew how this story ended, but she held his attention, and he needed to hear the rest. “He made her a bloodslave, right?”
“Of course. Dmitri surrounds himself with bloodslaves. Isn’t that what you would do, if you had the chance?”
“Hey! Don’t compare me to …”
“Stop pretending.”
His mouth opened in defense, but she was right. If allowed to follow his natural instincts, Aaron would collect all the women who caught his eye, and spend his nights entertaining them. It seemed to be the thing he was made for, collecting women.
“Sure, if Michelle wasn’t trying to hammer it out of me, and if I was on my own, without you to answer to, something like that could happen. But I do answer to you, and Michelle would never let me live in peace if I tried to grab another bloodslave. You know this. It’s not my reality, so you can stop throwing it in my face.”
She softened instantly. Instead of rising to his rebellion, she sucked him in with delicious caresses and a juicy kiss. “My poor, sweet Aaron. It’s easy to forget how very young you are. So much power and potential, so little experience. I would never compare you to Dmitri. You are not cut of the same cloth, and for that I’m grateful. I only want you to acknowledge the truth. This is the path to acceptance, enlightenment, wisdom. We must all face who we are, or forever live a lie.”
As usual, to Aaron’s chagrin, Urvashi’s council was sound. Her seduction irresistible.
* * * *
Aaron caught Ivan coming out the door to Michelle’s room with a shit-eating grin plastered on his face and his hands still working to tuck his shirt into his half-buttoned jeans. A look of guilty apprehension crossed Ivan’s face for a moment, then his grin resumed. He clapped Aaron on the shoulder. “I think she is good. Like new again.”
He positively stunk of Michelle. Not just her perfume, but her scent. The unique flavor of her body. Aaron had tasted every inch of Michelle, and he knew that scent, intimately.
Aaron smiled back at Ivan. “I never doubted she’d recover quickly. But will you?”
The big man paled and his eyes darted away from Aaron’s piercing gaze. “I only gave her a little taste of blood. She is careful, no?” Ivan looked worried.
“Sure thing. She’s more careful than I am. Just make sure you’re careful too.” Aaron nodded at him and Ivan finished buttoning his pants.
“I have been dealing with vampires for a very long time. Didn’t Katya tell you about Dmitri? Come, sit. Michelle is fine. Let me tell you a story of Russia that’s not in the history books.” The wily old wolf walked with freshly-fucked swagger as Aaron followed him over to the table. Ivan pulled the cap off a half-full bottle of vodka, took a swig, and glanced back at Aaron. “Well, it is Katya’s story, but I can tell you the beginning, before she became involved.”
Aaron sat down for this. Ivan held his full, undivided attention.
“You know of the royal family? The Czar, his wife, and their son, Alexie?”
Aaron nodded. “Yeah, only what’s in the history books. I got a C in history. They were killed by the Bolsheviks or something, right?”
Ivan snickered. “Or something. It all began with the man named Rasputin.”
* * * *
Chapter 8
“Historians call Rasputin a gypsy, a con artist. Some even said he was a vagrant. None of them understood the power of the man I knew, his charisma, his generosity of spirit. He was a born leader – not of countries or politicians – a leader of friends and family. People came to him to solve problems. He was the alpha of our pack, our leader. He was my father.”
Aaron could hardly swallow the idea that Ivan was related to this infamous historical figure. “You mean biological father?”
“No.” Ivan chugged a couple more swigs of vodka and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He gave me the gift of his blood, the gift of the wolf. Saved my life.”
Now that, Aaron could identify with. Michelle’s blood had saved Aaron’s life, literally. Blasted in the chest from a police handgun, Aaron had been bleeding to death in Michelle’s arms when she made the decision to give him her blood.
“I had pneumonia. Often fatal in those days. On my death bed, Rasputin gave me new life. In return, I pledged my life to his service, to the pack.�
��
A sense of reverence poured off Ivan as he spoke of Rasputin as though he’d been an anointed saint. Ivan’s eyes twinkled in reminiscence. “Mother Russia was a very different place then. Life was hard and the nobility held little respect for the rest of the country, but I wonder if it was a better time than this post-Soviet mess we have now.”
Ivan downed another gulp of vodka. “We were happy, the pack. There were many back then, well over twenty. If only he’d stayed away from the royal family…” Ivan shook his head. “But Rasputin was convinced he could gain the Empress’s favor and reveal himself to her, to save the boy, Alexie.”
“Huh?”
“Imagine if Emperor Nicholas had been given a chance to raise a young, healthy, educated Alexie, strong enough to stand up to the people, strong enough to bring his country into the twentieth century without all the bloodshed and revolution. Imagine the young prince as a wolf, with Rasputin at his side.”
“Weren’t there a bunch of revolutionaries, angry mobs? Bloody Sunday and all that?”
Ivan nodded and chugged back more vodka. “Everyone was angry with the mess of World War I. Poverty, starvation, the economy was in ruin. Our cities had factories everywhere, thousands of men toiling away their days for meager paychecks. Most were foreign owned factories. We were the cheap labor of Europe, producing goods for everyone else, yet we walked home on dirt roads and traveled in horse-drawn carts. The Russian people did not reap the benefits of our own industrial revolution. Labor Unions screamed in the streets as workers who earned too little and paid too much taxes listened to new ideals of strength in unity and political reform.”
“Bloody Sunday only made it worse. The nobility, once respected and feared, had become hated. They sat in their mansions and pretended the problem didn’t exist. They had not learned the lessons of France two centuries earlier. Sometimes I think that humanity is doomed to repeat the same mistakes of history, over and over again.”
The Nightlife Moscow Page 5
