Thirst

by Jacquelyn Frank

  “Well someone ought to be. Do you know what they’ll be asking you to do?”

  “If you mean take drugs, then yes. I do know.”

  “That is far from the worst of it. They want to send you into a pit of vipers that even some of the bravest vampires would shy away from.”

  “You’re trying to scare me. It won’t work. If you want to inform me further then be my guest, but you will not tell me what to do. I’ll make the choice on my own.”

  Rafe realized he was going about this all wrong. She was an intelligent woman. He had to appeal to her intellect. And the more he told her what she couldn’t do, the more she would want to do it just to spite him. He needed her to think clearly about this. Not emotionally. He could not react emotionally. But how to stay dispassionate when her life was on the line?

  “You’re right,” he said, his arms squeezing around her. “I don’t have the right to tell you what to do. But I can try to appeal to your logic. We’ll discuss it more later. Right now I want to get you safe at home. Here. I live here and there is no safer place for you on earth. Will you stay with me?”

  “Oh. I…I thought we were staying at my place. I don’t have anything to wear and I—”

  “We’ll go pick some of your things up. Then we’ll come back. Please. I will just feel safer if we are behind these walls and the heavy security we have.”

  “All right. We’ll stay here. Let’s go get my things.”

  Rafe let her out of his arms, but as soon as he did he wanted her back again. The possessiveness of his desire floored him. He had never been the sort to slather someone with affection. But it seemed instinctive to do so when Renee was around. Hell, having sex in an elevator? At his age?

  But he smiled just from the memory of it. And suddenly he wanted her alone—in his bed. Where he could make love to her properly.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked him when he didn’t seem to be following her.

  “Hmm? Oh. Nothing. Let’s go,” he said, guiding her to the elevator. The sooner they got to her place the sooner they would come back.

  And right then that was all he wanted.

  Chapter 17

  Rafe followed her into her apartment a short while later and waited somewhat impatiently for her. His hunger for her was growing exponentially with each passing moment. They’d had a narrow escape that day. The committee could have taken them away from each other forever. He wasn’t about to squander a minute of what they now had.

  “So tell me more about this undercover assignment, since you seem to know so much about it,” she called from the back bedroom.

  Rafe cringed inside. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t even want her thinking about it. Considering it. But he was determined to appeal to her logic and the only way he was going to be able to do so was to make it sound exactly as dangerous as it was.

  “There’s a sycophant that leads all of the sycophants out of the waterfronts. His name is Killean. There are many very powerful sycophants beneath him, but he is the main sycophant for that area. He, however, answers to a phant named Draz, who’s in charge of all of the sycophants on the Eastern Seaboard. Draz’s network of confidants would be impossible to break through. So all we can do is go for his lesser lieutenants. Like Killean. If we can find him. He is constantly on the move, keeping his location secret so we cannot pin him down.”

  “And why can’t you send a vampire after him?”

  “We can smell a phant from a mile away and they can smell a clean vampire the same way. The only way to fit in would be to become a phant ourselves. And once you do that you are lost to that world. There’s no way for us to go undercover. That means only a human could go undercover. Drug addiction is something humans can recover from—albeit with difficulty. Sycophanthropy is not. At least, not in the time it would take to worm into a position close enough to make a difference. Listen, this is a long-term con. That means long-term drug abuse. What about your job? It makes no sense that you would even consider a thing like this.”

  “Here’s the thing,” she said, coming in from the back room with a duffel bag in hand. “I have a lot of time coming to me. Vacation, personal days, sick days…or I could transfer to vice and have them put me in undercover. Kill two birds with one stone. There are options.”

  “In all of those options you have to pump poison into your body. I know you keep your body pristine and you do it for a reason. Are you going to fly in the face of all that discipline?”

  “That discipline is what I will need to come back from drug addiction. And besides, I won’t have to use a lot. Just enough to get by. How often does a person have to use before they’ll be deemed ‘too dirty’ for a lawful vampire and dirty enough for a sycophant?”

  Rafe frowned. She was taking this far too lightly. He didn’t like it.

  “It only takes once for them to be ‘too dirty’ and it takes about a week to get clean again…depending on how clean the person was to begin with. But that’s pushing it. It would be safer at two weeks.”

  “Great. So all I have to do is use once a week. Just enough for me to come off dirty.”

  “And if others ask you to use while you’re undercover? It will look suspicious if you turn them down. You’re supposed to be a junkie. A junkie goes for a fix whenever he can get one. Anything less will blow your cover.”

  “I’ll take each situation as it arises. You know, I used to work vice before I came to homicide. I know how it works. I never went full-blown undercover like this but I would dress as a prostitute and walk the corners. I realize that this would be different, but I’m fully capable of pretending to be something that I’m not. And I’m fully capable of remembering who I really am in the process, of not getting lost in it.”

  “This is different. Very different. I don’t think you fully appreciate the lure and temptation and danger of hooking yourself on drugs. And what drugs would you use? Heroin?”

  “God no. Needles leave track marks and are hard to come by clean. I’m not out to give myself AIDS or blood poisoning. And heroin is tough to control. Meth is just as bad. That stuff…I don’t hear of too many people coming back from using that stuff with any success. I would pick crack as my drug of choice. Crack is smoked. You can fake smoking. It will help me keep it down to the bare minimum.”

  “This is all moot,” Rafe said with frustration. “You haven’t even known about vampires for two days and you’re willing to throw all in with us? Doesn’t that sound a little reckless to you?”

  “I’m a cop. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s how to judge a situation and come to a quick conclusion. Your people need help, help I can provide. And besides, it’ll still be cop work. Stopping crimes. Catching bad guys.”

  “Wouldn’t going to vice again be like stepping backward? Won’t it hurt your career?”

  “Not if I direct the reasons for my switch. I can do it without too much damage. I can say it’s only temporary. They’ll go for it. It’ll mean switching precincts to get closer to the action, but I can switch back once this is over with. You can bet if your guy Killean is running an illegal operation of the magnitude you’re suggesting, then they have already got guys in play trying to get him. All I have to do is jump in. But what I need to jump in is something they don’t have. I need Killean’s location. If we find out where he is—or how to anticipate where he’s going to be—I can use that as an in. Because you can bet if you guys are having trouble finding him then humans are doubly so.”

  “This is crazy,” he said, his frustration clear in his voice. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. How are we supposed to find him? How are we supposed to do what no one else has been able to do?”

  “We’ll figure it out. I just have to learn about the structure of their enterprise first. Vice’ll have surveillance equipment, but I won’t have access to it until after I switch departments.”

  “I can get you surveillance equipment. State of the art. Far better than anything your police will have.
And I know for a fact that our authoritarians are surveilling key places for Killean already. They are also following Draz as best they can. He is just as elusive as Killean. They are taking pages from each other’s books.”

  “There. See? If we work together we can figure this out.”

  “Renee, this isn’t a goddamn social club! It isn’t a game. It isn’t safe or fun or anything like it! It’s not exciting and interesting. It’s one thing and one thing only: deadly. And dangerous. If you did this you couldn’t be more unsafe.”

  “Deadly and dangerous are two things,” she said cheekily, before growing serious. “You think I don’t know what I’m signing up for but you’re wrong. I know. We all know. All of us cops who go undercover…we all know. We know we’re risking our lives every single minute.”

  Rafe reached out to snag her hand and yanked her forward until she slammed into the front of his body, the air ejecting from her lungs. He let his hand curve over her hip until he was grasping her backside. He pulled her hips into his own, rubbing himself against her.

  “And what about sex?” he murmured against her ear. “These are sex traffickers and you are a very beautiful woman. They could easily decide to sell you for profit. Or they could demand sexual favors as you climb the ranks. Or they could just gang-rape you because that is what they feel like doing. Do you know how at risk drug users are for such things? And you’d have no backup. No one to protect you.”

  She wrenched away from him, shoving at his chest to put distance between them. “I am well aware of what could happen, Rafe. I can accept it,” she said, though there wasn’t a lot of conviction in her voice. “If that’s what I have to do then that’s what I have to do. But if I’m smart, if I play it right, I think I have an idea how I can make this work where I won’t be in danger. Not much in any event. Not from that.”

  “What idea?” he asked with a dark frown.

  “I’ll set up shop as a madam. I’ll run some girls in a reasonably nice place, provided you will fund it. Nice, clean girls. I’ll pick up some of the working girls I know from my vice days and give them nice rooms and a steady clientele to work with. I’ll definitely gain some attention if I am working a competitive gig. I might not even have to do drugs that way. I could say I run a clean shop. With clean girls and a clear head. Yes. This is a great idea!”

  “Until they kill you for daring to compete in their marketplace. This idea sucks.”

  “They won’t kill me; they’ll force me to give them a cut of my take. And then they’ll look on me as an equal—might even let me meet the boss myself, in order to do business. I’m much more likely to get close to him as a business partner than I am just being some junkie girl.”

  “If you stay clean they’ll suspect you.”

  “Not if I play the part right.”

  “And you’ll just crop up overnight?”

  “I can build up slowly over time. Start small so they don’t notice me at first. Then grow a little every day until they can’t ignore me any longer.”

  “You know what I hate most about this idea?” he said, reaching for her again.

  “What?” she asked, her body language stiff as he pulled her close.

  “That you’ll be in danger. That I’ll have to keep away from you…and that it just might work.”

  She smiled at that and relaxed against him. She stroked her hands up over his pecs, feeling the strength in him as the muscles twitched in response to her touch.

  “I’m not going anywhere yet. If I’m going to work something on this big of a scale, I’m going to need a lot of planning and a lot of help. A lot of players. I’ll need to get vice on board. I’m not about to risk my entire career going rogue and getting caught doing something I could go to jail for. Not something this big that’ll draw attention from all corners. Let me talk to my captain. I can tell him it’s connected to a murder I’m working, the one I’m working with the vampire killer. I can have you send someone to the station as a CI who’ll tell them that the killer is part of Killean’s inner circle. That’ll motivate them to want to get someone in there. I’ll make sure that someone is me. I’ll have to go about it just right but I think I can pull it off.”

  When she spoke she got an excited, almost glazed expression on her face. It was as if she were talking to herself. Part of him felt, rather petulantly, that he need not even be there.

  “The thing is, something like this takes time,” he said. “What if Killean is planning something this weekend when all the delegates will be in town? We need someone in there fast and now.”

  “That quickly? It can’t be done,” she said with a shake of her head. “Maybe if I’d had a week I could have done something in time, but no one can establish that kind of trust that quickly.”

  “If it can’t be done then it can’t be done,” Rafe said, his relief hardly hidden. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Renee bit her lip and her eyes unfocused for a moment.

  “What I need is an intro. From someone on the inside. Maybe if we make a few arrests I can get some leverage and get an intro. I still have some contacts through vice. I think I can figure out who to squeeze.”

  “Renee, can we talk about this later?” he asked softly. “Right now I’m really tired and I want nothing more than to get you into my bed where I can make love to you properly. I’m not discounting our time in the elevator, but it wasn’t exactly up to my usual par.”

  She smiled slyly at that and finally focused all of her attention on him as she sidled in close to him. “If that wasn’t up to par, then I’m dying to know what your usual game is like.”

  He chuckled as he kept her close and reached to take her bag. He lowered his head until his mouth was hovering just above hers, his breath coasting over her lips and face. “There’s only one way to find out,” he said invitingly.

  “Let’s go,” she said a bit breathlessly.

  Rafe didn’t hesitate. He stepped away from her, took her hand in his free one, and led her out of the brownstone.

  —

  A short time later Renee was standing in the middle of Rafe’s plush apartment completely in awe. Seeing that much square footage in New York City was stunning all on its own, but add to it the fine furnishings and rugs over expansive wooden floors and it was absolutely breathtaking.

  Renee walked over to the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that looked out onto an awe-inspiring view of the city. It was dark and it was snowing again, little flakes bouncing off of the cold glass. She shivered a little even though she was perfectly warm.

  Rafe watched her as she took in his home and all of her surroundings. She looked as though she belonged there—she seemed like the sort of person who could make a home anywhere she stayed. Even if it was someone else’s apartment for only a night.

  Rafe had put her bag down on a coffee table and now walked up behind her. He grabbed hold of her hips, pulling her into him, her back meeting his chest and her rear end nestling against his thighs. She instinctively rose up onto her toes and that brought her bottom snugly into the lee of his hips, erasing the disparity in their heights.

  He enjoyed the sensation of holding her for a moment, enjoyed the intimacy of their spooned bodies. Then he stepped back and turned her around. He touched a hand to her face, tracing the line of her jaw with his thumb. He tipped her head back and lowered his mouth to hers. He kissed her gently. Slowly. Savoring every moment of it. He put aside his upset with her and simply enjoyed her. They would talk more about this insane plan of hers to get close to Killean, but right now he just wanted to spend time with her. To hold her. To feel her.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked her.

  “Not for food,” she said breathlessly.

  The response pleased and inflamed him. He wrapped an arm around her waist and hauled her up off her feet against him. She laughed, her arms going about his neck and her legs wrapping around his hips.

  He kissed her again, savoring the flavor of her. Their tongues dueled hotly and on
e of her hands crept into his hair, mussing it thoroughly. He stepped forward and her back hit the cold glass window. She gasped and surged forward into him. He chuckled and placed a hand on the glass. She leaned back against it, using his hand as a buffer between her and the glass. He continued to devour her mouth, his breath coming fast and deep. He could smell her, the scent of her day clinging to her. Coffee, something with garlic, the perfume she wore. He could smell and taste her cherry lip gloss, which he had seen her apply in the car on the way to meeting with the committee, and her hairspray that helped tame her curly hair. All of these little details added up to equal her, and he wouldn’t change a single one of them.

  Renee could feel the hunger and desire radiating from him. It was like a fast-burning sun, scorching her every nerve ending. Add to it the tingles and sparks that came every time she kissed him or was touched by him and she was easily overwhelmed. She broke away from his mouth, gasping for breath as he immediately began to kiss down her jaw and the side of her neck. He sucked and kissed and licked her as if he was still engaged with her mouth. Renee squirmed at the heat and intensity of his mouth and the sparking sensation as his hand pulled her blouse free from her jeans and slid beneath the silk.

  “Mmm, no,” she murmured, reaching to place her hand over his through her blouse, the silk a flimsy barrier between their contrary desires.

  “No?” he asked, his head lifting from where he’d been pleasantly attacking her collarbone.

  She could hear both the surprise and the consternation in his voice and it was all she could do to not laugh aloud…or torment him. But she quickly put him out of his misery.

  “Not here. Not like this. You haven’t a single curtain on these walls of glass, and I don’t feel like putting on a show for all of New York City.”

  “No one can see in here. That’s why there are no curtains. We face out over the city and this part of the building is above all of the others.”

  “There are things like telescopes,” she persisted.