Zoey leaned close. “What about Pimenov?”
Uta cringed.
The other female grew serious. “Fine. Take your pick. Just don’t sit on Andre’s lap, or I’ll have to kill you.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Uta nodded solemnly, her face neutral in spite of the effort it required to suppress her chuckle at the laughable threat from the younger, weaker vampire.
“Did I hear you say cat fight?” Pimenov said.
“Take a walk in the sun, Pimenov,” Uta said. The Russian had been hitting on her since she was a baby vampire. It was possibly the millionth time she had told him to buzz off.
“Actually, we were talking about mud wrestling,” Zoey said.
What the hell was she doing?
He took Zoey’s bait. “Mud wrestling? Tell me more.”
“Sure. We were just going to play another hand. Join us?” the young vampire asked.
“Delighted.” His mouth curved into a smug grin.
In a matter of minutes, Zoey had won all his poker chips and fleeced him of his Rolex while he continued to grin at the two of them like a dope. Her managing of Pimenov was diverting, and in spite of the ever present throb in Uta’s pićka, she managed not to think about Bel.
When the hand was over, she glanced around the room to find Sadavir in a jovial mood too. Uta always forgot he’d been graced with a princely face, as handsome as any Bollywood star’s, when he wasn’t scowling.
At the moment, he was smiling broadly. “Uta, this was a fine idea. I can’t remember the last time the Justicia joined together for recreation.”
Her face spread into a smile at the unexpected compliment. “I told you so.”
“Foxtrot?”
“I don’t remember how. Will you lead?”
A hearty laugh burst from his mouth. “I will be truly shocked if you can suppress your instincts well enough to follow. But I shall gladly attempt it.” He swept her up in his powerful arms and shuffled her around a patch of open space between card tables with impressive grace. Her mind and her limbs surrendered to his masterful guidance. Her feet barely touched the floor, but when they did, each step landed perfectly.
“You are a fine dancer.” She peered into his face with a newfound appreciation for the male. Who would have thought he had any pastime other than despising Hunters?
A pleasant tingle tickled its way up her spine, alerting her that Bel was nearby. She laughed—Zoey was correct—her inattention to the problem had snared him, drawing him like she tugged on one of those cowboy ropes with a loop at the end. She’d gotten what she wanted, then, and her moment of delightful reprieve had come to an end.
Chapter 25
BEL PUSHED UP FROM HIS DESK, his glass empty once again. How did it keep getting that way?
Lexi had been too shaken to brainstorm with him. She’d just stared off into space until he’d suggested she help him call the test subjects. None of them had observed a change. It had only been twenty-four hours—likely too early to see results, but he wasn’t holding out much hope. Afterward, he’d tucked her in on the couch in Kos’s office.
And now Bel was simply going to get another bottle of bourbon from the bar in the parlor.
He was not going to look for Uta and he was not at all curious why the tug of her longing had slackened. He’d grown used to the vast ocean of her desire pulling at him, begging him to dive right in. Then it stopped. And he sure as hell didn’t want it back.
He took each step down the stairs at a leisurely pace. Why hurry? It was just a drink.
Was she all right? Maybe she was hurt. Or dead. Shite.
He tripped over his own feet and barely managed to grab the rail before he would have somersaulted all the way to the landing.
Righting himself, he shook off the tumble. He didn’t care if she was dead.
Good riddance!
He rolled his eyes at his own lie, wishing he believed it. This was what she did to him, turned him into an irrational, unscientific child. He was going to need a lot more bourbon.
Ragtime music shimmied from the room, not his favorite genre, but fun. She probably wasn’t dead then, or they would have cut the swinging party vibe. Still trying to appear casual, he leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms, scanning the gathering.
Sadavir glided Uta around in some retro dance steps, laughing as if he were a reasonably charming creature instead of a warmonger. The song ended. Sadavir promptly pulled Uta down onto his lap. The mean old vampire whispered something to her, and she threw her head back, laughing with her fangs out.
Gorgeous, and fierce, and dead sexy in a red dress. Her knees pressed together and her ankles splayed akimbo—a girlish pose without even a hint of awkwardness to spoil her grace. And her dress was sex itself, slinky and swooping nearly to her navel. The line from her exposed throat, down her chest, onto her belly was an arrow pointing at her pićka, just like his cock. Just like his every neuron and nerve.
Slowly, like she knew exactly how much desire was coursing through him, she turned her head. Mouth open, eyes wide, she stared at him. Riveted, he couldn’t have looked away if the Hunters were back and launching rockets at the estate. She was beauty itself, and he wanted to spread those long legs and know exactly what beauty tasted like.
Come get me.
For a split second the scientist in him wondered if she’d spoken the words, or sent them across the strengthened connection of their emotional wireless network. But the answer didn’t really matter because their meaning registered as a command and he recoiled. He planted his feet in the doorway and glared, refusing to obey.
A minute passed. Two. Was everyone staring, or had no one noticed them? He honestly didn’t know, and didn’t care enough to check. She was the light at the end of his tunnel; she was all he saw. But he wouldn’t take orders from her. Everything hinged on her ability to surrender control.
He jerked his head back, wordlessly commanding her instead. Come with me. Then he turned and crossed to the cellar door, while entreating God, Darwin, and the universe to make her follow him. Heels clicked on the wood floor, and he turned. When he saw her, he thanked his holy trinity of agnosticism.
At the threshold to the cellar, one gentle wave of longing splashed into him. Their connection had grown so much deeper that the force of it froze his boots in place. He had to know what this misery was about, and he opened himself up, raising his sternum in invitation to her feelings.
Haunting images of the Hunter attacks roared back at him, and then he saw himself—a boy, observed from a distance. The despair stole his breath. That was what she was hiding under all her bravado? Would he drown in the icy black sea?
“Bel.”
She extended her hand to him. A thin strand of hope shot through him at that point of connection.
“It is all right,” she said.
He didn’t know what she meant.
Her delicate pink tongue ran across a fang, and he shivered. “I am right behind you.”
Again, her obedience proved irresistible. He held the door for her, and she descended a few stairs into the bluish gloom of the cellar. At the bottom of the stairs, she stepped to the side and let him pass, her face neutral.
She’d waited. She’d chosen to follow. Who the hell was this, and what had she done with Uta?
He led the way toward the workroom, and she trailed half a step behind, putting her hand on his shoulder as if she needed him to guide her in the irregular light of the compact fluorescent bulbs. She didn’t, but it satisfied him to pretend.
They ascended a flight of stairs into the large workroom. Bel strode back to the same length of stainless steel table where he had kissed her earlier. He sensed her behind him and turned without warning to pick her up, placing her on the table.
“Right now, I want you. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“I understand.” Her feet dangled, and the open toes of her glitter-gold shoes revealed her shiny red toenails.
Just like when he
was a boy. He took off her shoes and held her feet in his hands. Somehow, she tugged at him without words, trying to force eye contact, but he would only look at her feet. An urge rose up in him that no other woman had stirred. Red tinted toenails peeking out of the sand on the Šoltan beach. Even then he’d wanted to suck one of her pretty toes into his mouth.
He shook off the urge. Hell no, he was not going to kiss her feet. There was a chip in the polish, the flawed reality to his airbrushed memory of her. All this sentimental bullshit and sex flowing between them was some heretofore unexplained biological phenomenon, predetermined by the laws of the universe. It wasn’t about his true feelings. How could he possibly love someone like her?
He cataloged her offensive traits. Stubbornness. Brashness. Fierceness. Only they seemed like virtues to a mind twisted by their bond, unable to see clearly for want of her—desperate, ravenous want.
He pulled her knees toward him so the small curve of her sweet little ass was right at the edge of the table. Her perfume teased at his nose again, and finally he recognized it—the faintest trace of heady hyacinths blooming in springtime on Šolta. A rare longing for home took hold of his heart—but it was really Uta he wanted.
“How’s your pićka?”
“It aches.” Her lower lip pressed forward in a pout.
He pushed her shoulders backward, but she resisted. The illusion of her agreeableness unraveled in an instant, shooting tension up his spine and into his jaw. He ground his teeth.
“Bel.” Her hands went to his belt. “Let me.” And then she slid off the table onto her knees. The strain in his muscles melted at the sight of her kneeling before him. She unbuckled him and unzipped his fly. When she took his cock in her hand, he sucked in a loud breath. Her sharp hiss was even louder.
“I will be whatever you need to me to be, Bel. Anything for you.” She didn’t give him time to think about what that meant before she swallowed him whole.
It had been a while, but didn’t these things usually start with a little licking and teasing?
Oh, shite.
The hot, wet suction of her mouth nearly pulled him right out of his skin. His circuit board was on overload. He squeezed his eyes shut to block out all extra stimuli, shuddering with the pleasure flowing from his extremities into her velvety heat.
The sensations took on a rhythm as she drew him in and out of her soft lips, and he settled into the pleasure. Had her mouth been made for him? No—it was the other way around. He had been made for her, like Eve from Adam’s rib, Bel from Uta’s blood, a God-given companion, a friend, and a perfect mate.
Could she be?
Her eyes opened, seizing hold of his gaze. Again, he couldn’t have looked away from her had the world come to an end around them. Her dark brown eyelashes and the faint pink capillaries on her eyelids, the fine golden hairs at the edges of her eyebrows, the tiny pores in her porcelain skin. The world had never been so crisp, so vibrant. He’d never seen so clearly before, hadn’t really been alive, all these years apart from her.
His balls drew up, threatening to pour into her. But he didn’t want to come in her mouth—he wanted to be inside her, to feel her pleasure around him.
“Uta, stop.”
With her lips still wrapped him, she shook her head and gripped his hips firmly.
He stepped back, sliding his cock from her mouth. His erection bobbed free. “Not like this. Not the first time.”
Her eyes widened then closed, and her body uncoiled as a sliver of a smile curved her lips.
Oh yes, she’d clearly heard his meaning. He pulled her up, crushing her swollen lips in a kiss. Her name clanged in his mind like a bell. Uta. His Uta wanted him after all. She sagged into him, opening her mouth to accept his tongue. He devoured her mouth, sliding his tongue across her teeth and returning her sweet, teasing caress. Her fang nicked him, and she sucked on his tongue, moaning.
He lifted her onto the table again and bunched her skirt around her hips. No panties. He should have known. She couldn’t have hidden them under that dress. He bent her knees, and she settled her heels flat on the tabletop.
The exquisite folds of her sex, pink and dark, lay open before him. His heart pounded in his chest. His Uta, splayed before him like a feast.
“Are you going to look all night?”
He bristled.
She must have felt it. “I am sorry, Bel. I am trying.” She pushed her hair off her forehead, and her apologetic smile soothed him. “Do not hurry on my account.”
No, he wouldn’t; he’d show his control. He tucked his rigid cock against his abdomen and zipped up his jeans.
Then, behind his incisors, that tingling began. Damn, so many new hungers.
He surveyed her body, noticing a lush vein in the seam of her leg. His gums throbbed and his heart pounded. Under his nose, her finger appeared with a crimson drop of blood beaded atop it. On instinct, he drew it into his mouth, tasting her salty and metallic essence on his tongue. So hot. He groaned as it tingled against the roof of his mouth and instantly raised the temperature of his own blood.
All the while, he never took his eyes off her labia, which were beginning to glisten with the moisture of arousal. She stroked her hand up her thigh and across her vulva, taunting. Clearly, she wasn’t one of those abashed women, shy about her private beauty, but loved to be looked at. He wanted to tease her and feel her writhe. His fingers twitched to slip inside her, to gauge wetness and to learn her body’s pleasure.
“Bel, please.”
Her plea was a salve on his old wound, and it rendered him downright merciful. He leaned over and stroked her once with his tongue, tentatively tasting.
Hell. She was life itself, sweet and salt and softest flesh.
Then he began for real, pushing his tongue into her core. She lifted her ass off the table, meeting and accepting his thrusts. He licked her up and down while she squirmed and gasped, another sweet sound that stroked his ego.
To reward her, he sucked her bud into his mouth and filled her with his fingers.
She gasped and cried out, “Volim te. I love you.”
His emotions poured out, tangling with hers—longing and satisfaction, anger and fear—blurring his edges. No matter. All he wanted was to dive into her. He explored inside her, finding the spot that made her groan. She rode his fingers so hard it took all his strength to meet her.
That should have been a warning.
With his tongue, he circled and teased and sucked some more. And then she was coming on his fingers, clenching him so hard his knuckles cracked even as his cock leaped again, begging for a chance at her. He brought her down with feather strokes of his tongue. With her fading orgasm, all his muscles went slack.
Intertwined, they slid down onto the cold cement floor. Their cheeks rubbed together and someone’s tears slicked their skin. Wave after wave of frightening emotion crashed over him.
Was this happiness?
Could he really be whole?
This time, would she allow him to stay?
The questions came one after another in the voice of a child he barely recognized, but knew to be himself. In an instant, he became that little boy again, abandoned and alone. All these years later, it didn’t really matter if she had her reasons.
He extricated himself from her arms and pushed onto his knees.
She sat up, clinging to him. “Bel?”
“I can’t, Uta.” He scrambled to his feet. “I can’t put myself through that again.”
She reached for him. “I promise I will not abandon you this time. Never again.”
His longing threatened to swallow him, and he wanted to believe her, to run back into her arms. Instead, he backed away. “I need you to stay the hell away from me.”
She stood, all bare long limbs, her nipples rocks, her skin rough with goose bumps. “Please, Bel, try to trust me.” She extended her arms in a plea.
Even unconscious and covered in blood she hadn’t looked as vulnerable as she did now, but that wasn
’t his problem.
He spun, adjusted his angry erection, and left, slamming every door on the way back to his room. When he got there, only an empty bottle of bourbon waited for him. He stormed into the parlor and found a fresh one—a surefire hard-on deflator. He poured himself a double and then rinsed the smell of her off him in an icy shower that did nothing to soften his cock.
Back at his desk, her emotions slithered toward him like tentacles across their bond. Longing, fear, desperation. And so he did what he’d always done to protect himself. He cracked open his laptop and began modeling the shape of the hemoaurum model, examining active sites where a cofactor might interact with the protein, rendering it active inside a vampire. He would find a way around this without Uta’s osjećaj. If he could just get back to San Francisco, he could run each isolate through the mass spectrometer and identify which ones might fit into the protein like a man fit into a woman.
Shite. It was hard not to think about his hard-on.
Each time the insidious, pointy tip of Uta’s feelings prodded him, he squeezed his eyes shut and imagined himself in some impenetrable stronghold made of steel and held together by large rivets. And finally, it worked. Uta’s emotions receded from his awareness, and he was left inside his air-tight mental bunker with an unwaning erection, a belly full of anger, and his research. Now that felt familiar. He plugged his headphones into the computer and let Johnny Rotten’s rage about England’s shitty future be his pissed-off soundtrack.
No future.
Not for him and Uta.
And not for the vampires, unless he found a cofactor for his hemoaurum.
Chapter 26
THE SKY TURNED DAWN-PINK outside the parlor’s French doors as, one by one, the vampires trickled out of the party and back to their rooms to feed, or shower, or do whatever they got up to with their blood servants.
Pedro hadn’t found a bit of rest. Cards didn’t soothe him the way they did Andre and Kos. Months after turning, he still hadn’t found a nighttime activity that suited him. Omar did crossword puzzles in French, but Pedro hated the things. He didn’t know what Uta did, but she wasn’t with Bel, who’d slipped into the parlor only long enough to nick a bottle of bourbon, and he’d smelled like he had been all up in some vampire but scowled like he hadn’t enjoyed it for a second.
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