The central pieces of the room were a ceramic-faced fireplace with a carved wooden mantel and a sofa whose deep red suede-looking material glowed mellowly in the dimly lit room. Not exactly a guy color, I thought, making me wonder if someone else had picked it out.
“Do you live here alone?”
“I do,” he said. “Can I get you something? Wine?”
“Sure, I could use something to help me relax.” Truth be told, my adrenaline had been at an all-time high earlier, and I was still pumped from the action.
His back to me, Jake said, “So you’re a cop.”
“Detective Shelley Caldwell.”
“Silke’s twin sister, if I’m not mistaken.” He turned from the cart, two stemmed goblets in hand. “Your looks are similar, but you’re not really alike. That’s why I knew you weren’t Silke.”
“No one else seemed to notice.” At least I hoped not.
“I assume your going undercover has to do with the deaths in the area.”
I didn’t feel obligated to confirm the obvious, but how did he know there had been more than one death? I was pretty sure Norelli and Walker had only been questioning people about Raven.
Jake handed me one of the glasses of wine. The red was dense, reminding me of blood. I thought to check my arm.
“Let me see.”
He set down his glass and gently pulled my arm toward him. At first touch, my breath caught in my throat.
“It’s fine.”
The blood had begun coagulating—I’d done a pretty good job of stopping the flow in the car—but dried blood stained my makeup-whitened skin and the cut itself looked pretty nasty. It was just now making itself known by throbbing sharply, as if in warning.
Jake seemed fascinated by it. He traced his finger along my flesh parallel to the still oozing wound. “You’ll have a scar.”
The comment drew my gaze to his scar, half-camouflaged by his beard stubble. I wondered how he’d gotten it. I hadn’t thought on it much. I guess I’d assumed he’d had an accident. But after seeing him fighting, I wasn’t so sure.
I shrugged and joked, “New addition. It’ll go with the others.”
He raised an eyebrow and met my gaze. “I’d like to see the collection.”
“I just bet you would.”
“In the meantime, let me take care of you.”
He left the room for a moment, but his mere absence didn’t settle my nerves. I sipped the wine and paced the space, inspecting it thoroughly. Not that the light from that single lamp showed me much. It did set a mood, though, and it was enough to get a feel for the place. On the cart where he’d gotten the wine rested a small framed portrait of a young and beautiful woman with dark hair and eyes. The one who’d picked out the sofa fabric? I wondered. I kept wandering and stopped before a photographic display spread on the wall behind the sofa. There were more than a dozen framed photos of cities—American, European, Asian—all taken after dark.
Jake came back into the room, hands filled with first-aid items.
“Great photos,” I told him. “Yours?”
“Yeah, you could call it a hobby.”
“You’ve traveled all over the world.”
“Actually, I’ve lived in all those places.”
I was feeling a warm glow from the inside out, not only from the wine but also from the rush of the battle. And, truthfully, from being alone with Jake. I blamed the adrenaline. I still hadn’t come all the way down from my high.
“Sit,” Jake said, indicating the sofa.
He set the medical supplies on the table next to it. I set my arm directly under the lamp so he could better see what he was doing. Hydrogen peroxide came first. I gritted my teeth so I wouldn’t yelp at the pain. Then I noticed how focused he was as the mixture of peroxide and blood bubbled up red and spilled over my flesh. Again, he seemed fascinated…and then he tore his gaze away from the cut and looked directly into my eyes.
I got a jolt. Not more adrenaline exactly, but something even stronger.
Before I could analyze, Jake asked, “So what were you doing going after a bunch of wanna-be vampires on your own tonight? Where was your backup?” He gently cleaned the flesh around the cut.
“I looked for my backup, but they’d already left. Sometimes I act on impulse.”
I wanted to tell him everything, starting with LaTonya, but I still didn’t know who or what Jake was, and until I did, I couldn’t fully trust him with information that was being withheld from the press. For all I knew, he could be a reporter himself, a plant. That would go with his having traveled around the world so much. Perhaps it had been on assignment, to get unusual stories. Only, if he was a reporter, how had he been put on this particular story? As far as I knew, he’d been working at Heart of Darkness for some time.
Jake had finished securing two butterfly bandages across the cut to keep it closed. Now he covered it with a light coating of antibiotic cream and patted off the excess with a gauze pad. Quite a neat-looking, professional job.
I said, “I’m hoping to bring this case home before anyone else gets hurt.”
“You mean dies.”
“That, too. It’s hard to know what to believe about Raven’s murder, whether or not she was meant to die. Tonight, Mowry gave Annie a drug and cut her, but he didn’t kill her. And I don’t think he meant to. It looked more like an initiation. And from what I’ve read about vampire cults, a pretty tame initiation at that.”
“So you think what happened to us after we got Annie away from them was pretty tame? What the hell do you do for excitement?”
His darkened visage made me laugh. “You have a point. But I’ve been trying to make sense of this—”
“So you’ve been overthinking it,” he finished for me. “It’s simple, really. Either we’re dealing with a real psychopath…or a real vampire.”
I laughed again. “Yeah, right.”
But he’d said it with a straight face. So Jake was either into black humor, or he was a little loony, I thought, wanting it to be the first one. Of course he had to be joking. And I was in a fine mood. Normally, I would respond with a wisecrack rather than a laugh, but tonight I couldn’t manage it. Whether or not I’d needed help, he’d really looked after me earlier.
I was grateful to him.
And attracted.
“You’re trying to simplify things, make what you know fit in some neat package,” Jake was saying. He reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair back from my face. “You’re going to have to start thinking outside of the box.”
Vampires? Not likely. I shook my head. “Pretty far out for me. So what’s your part in what happened tonight, Jake? Why involve yourself?”
Was he a reporter or a cop or what?
“I need to see justice done,” he said simply.
A concept that needed no explanation. I could relate. “To whom?”
“To the person responsible for a lot of things—” he glanced back at the portrait on the liquor cart “—including my mother’s death.”
The breath caught in my throat. “That’s your mother? She was killed like Raven?”
“She was burned to death.”
“Oh, Jake, I’m so sorry….”
A fire. How horrible. Not knowing what else to say, I put a hand on his arm. A hand that he patted, as if feeling the need to comfort me. For some reason, the back of my throat grew thick with emotion. His pale eyes were filled with sadness when his gaze met mine. The woman in the portrait was so young. He might have lost her when he was a child.
“I’ve been searching for the truth for a lot of years,” he said. “There are just some things you never can put behind you.”
“I understand more than you know.” I might not be related to LaTonya Sanford, but she haunted me all the same. “I’m assuming you don’t know who—”
“Not yet. But I’m in the right place at the right time. And I will find the guilty one.”
“So you think whoever killed Raven killed your mother? Wh
y? What’s the connection?”
“The way the blood was taken.”
“But you said she burned—”
“That, too.”
The cop in me said, “If you beat me to figuring it out, you’ll tell me, right?”
He didn’t answer, and I didn’t press him. I didn’t have all the facts yet, but I would get them. Just not right now. He’d finally reached out to me, and I didn’t want to spoil it. Plus, I didn’t want to ruin whatever it was we had going here.
In one night, everything had changed between us. Jake had backed me up. He hadn’t laughed at me or questioned my reasoning; he’d just gone along with me and then had acted. He could have been killed, but he hadn’t hesitated. Then he’d taken care of my wound and had shared his deepest secret, one that formed an unlikely bond between us.
Before me stood a man who might actually understand and appreciate me. And he seemed to be someone I could count on.
Jake gathered the medical supplies in a pile on the table and stood, but before he could pick them up and escape the room, I pushed up from the couch and provided a human blockade. He seemed surprised…and yet, not. If he was thinking about leaving the room, he didn’t so much as twitch.
“So why did you bring me here, Jake?”
“I knew you would be safe here.”
“My place is safe.”
“But judging by last night, we might not be alone at your place.”
Seconds ticked by as we stared at each other. I had that feeling again, as if he were inside me, trying to read me. Try as I might, I couldn’t deny the connection. It felt familiar…and not. Like my connection with Silke, only different.
I remembered feeling that I might do anything he wanted. That he had some kind of mind control over me. Impossible. And yet…
My breath went shallow and my sense of expectancy—of something about to happen—increased. The rush of the night and heightened adrenaline continued, swept over me until my body went taut on the outside, soft on the inside.
I don’t know who did what first, but the next thing I knew, we were locked together, body and lips. I felt I was drowning in his kiss, a kiss like no other I’d ever experienced. My head buzzed with it. And my body…well, my body seemed to unfurl and open to him.
We stayed in lip lock for I don’t know how long. Somehow in that time and space, we managed to eliminate the barrier to getting closer. I worked on him and he worked on me—hands touching, exploring, exciting—and the next thing I knew our clothing and my holstered weapon were scattered around us on the floor.
And still we were kissing.
Suddenly, he gripped my hips and pushed me away and took a long, lingering look at my body that made me blush from the toes up. His expression was intense. And he was looking at me, for heaven’s sake, like I was beautiful or something.
Then it was my turn to look at him. No avoiding it. The lights might be dim, but they were still on.
The first thing I noticed was that he was erect. Wetness pooled between my thighs as I considered straddling him and sliding down him until my flesh covered his.
My body overheated and my face felt flushed as I raised my eyes to his. Our gazes locked. My imagination was playing with me again. I swore his eyes glowed in the semidark. I saw him reaching into the table where the medical supplies were and pick up a condom wrapped in gold foil.
He held out his hand. I took it. Something live and electric beat through me. He tugged and I stepped closer. And he placed my hand where my eyes had feasted. I spread the condom from his tip around and down him. Then I pushed him back until his legs hit the sofa.
He smiled that smile. That sharp-toothed smile I had noticed earlier.
I gave him another shove and he fell back lengthwise, taking me with him. I wasn’t letting go, not yet. I crawled up over him and I rocked my hips as inch by inch he disappeared inside me.
My breath came in small gasps, and he growled deep in his throat in what I knew was a sound of satisfaction.
I fell forward, my weight on my arms and hands, one on either side of his face. I was open to him and he took advantage, licking my skin, every inch of it—neck, shoulder, arms—all except for the area that had been cut. Then he concentrated on my breasts, nipping the full flesh with sharp teeth and sucking my nipples into long, hard points.
I tried to control myself as I moved up and down his length. But try as I might to remove myself a step so that I could make this last, I was swept up in a rush of passion that made my ears ring and my inner flesh spasm.
I gave myself over to sensation and came in long, hard pulses.
“Sorry, I couldn’t hang on,” I gasped as I collapsed against him. “Give me a minute and it’s your turn.”
“No rush. We have hours until dawn.”
Right. Hours. As if he could last that long. The thought certainly was titillating, and I wondered how long we could last. It seemed no matter what I did, I couldn’t bring Jake over the edge. He made me come a second time and a third. And each time he became more inventive.
We were on the floor, then, and he was in back with me on my knees, my thighs opened to let him in. I tilted my hips and pushed at the same time he did. Once more he filled all of me. Surely he was ready….
His hands slipped around my hips, one going to my breasts, the other to my center. I was wet, so wet that we made soft, nerve-shattering sounds as he slipped in and out of me. He leaned over my body and nuzzled the soft flesh near my shoulder. He moved his head around, his lips dancing along my neck. I imagined he found my pulse with his tongue, then sucked down, gently at first, then with increasing pressure.
I felt a tension enter his body that hadn’t been there before. He moaned and increased the pressure on my neck, exciting me beyond control.
“That’s it,” I whispered, unable to hold on any longer. “Faster. Let go.”
I felt the pulsing start deep inside me, but this time he was the one. I let go, too. We came together.
I’d never had a night like this. I felt so weak I couldn’t move.
As if he sensed that, he cocooned me with his body and pulled me down to the carpet.
I lay there panting, thinking it was over. That we were both spent. But I was wrong. I could still feel him inside me, and if he’d reduced in size or hardness, I certainly couldn’t tell.
I tried to move away, but he caught me to him and whispered in my ear, “Don’t be in such a hurry. We’re just getting started.”
Enough to put fear in the heart of a woman who’d basically gone without for longer than she wanted to admit.
“I don’t understand. How can you—?”
“Don’t try to understand. Just enjoy the ride.”
With that, he rolled over so he was on his back and I was mounted on him again, but this time I wasn’t facing him. His hands curled around my hips and moved them so I rose and lowered on him.
The pressure began building once more.
I definitely enjoyed the ride.
This time when we floated down together, it was to collapse, to hold each other, to sleep. Dreamless.
When I awoke, I realized that Jake had put a pillow from the couch under our heads, and from somewhere, he’d gotten a throw.
As much as I hated to leave the cocoon, I knew I had to. I needed to report to the area office in a matter of hours. I needed to shower, to scrub the fake red color out of my hair, to set my thoughts straight.
I dressed quickly and quietly, not wanting to waken Jake. Now that my lust had subsided, I was seriously questioning my own actions. It wasn’t like me to be so impulsive.
I glanced over at Jake. He still looked gorgeous and inviting, spread out on the floor with little of him covered. He snored softly and turned as if seeking something.
Me?
But he quickly settled down and so did I.
I was trying to solve a crime, not hook up with a man. The connection I’d felt with Jake in the dark seemed weaker in the cold light of morning.
>
So I quietly let myself out of his place, looking back only once.
No worry…
Jake slept the sleep of the dead.
Dawn was fast approaching. The creature cried out softly, calling to the initiate in a high-pitched demand. Time to take shelter.
No response.
A bit more searching found her feeding on a piece of human trash. The idea was repulsive. The food was unwashed, unclean. The victim’s garments were soiled and the smell…
But of course the homeless were such easy pickings, even a rank beginner could hunt one. That was the problem. Too many homeless people in this city. The other had fed on one, too, with bad results.
A hard tug brought the new one upright. An expression of ecstasy hovered around her features, which were now smeared with a viscous red.
“Dawn approaches. Go…now!”
She mewled in protest and disappointment distorted her features, making her look like a spoiled child whose toy had been confiscated.
The next command was inaudible to the human ear.
But she was no longer human.
And she got the message. Giving her unfinished meal one more look of longing, she scurried away toward shelter.
Now, what to do with the body? This one needed to be hidden or the authorities would come after them with burning torches. No need to go through that again.
The hunger was driving this one to be careless. It couldn’t go on. But how to drive the point home to her when she hadn’t settled yet?
A vehicle turned the corner and inched down the street.
Time to blend with the shadows, up and out of sight…
The vehicle stopped directly below, and a rack of blue lights suddenly lit the darkened street.
Police! Damn!
Now there was no helping it. Now there would be trouble. Not that this was a new thing. It was the reason for moving from city to city, country to country. But choosing the right companion was sometimes difficult. Unfortunately, all weren’t created equal.
But why did this have to happen now? Why so soon? The city had barely begun to give up its treasures.
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