She wasn’t ready, not yet.
However, for once she wasn’t completely resistant to the idea.
Nicolas resumed his steady pace, thrusting harder, then pausing to circle his hips, grinding the base of his groin against her clitoris. Finding the exact series of movements that left her gasping hard.
She lifted her legs to encircle his waist, riding the motion of his hips, pulling to cup him closer within the well of her thighs.
Sweat dampened their bodies, their bellies sliding easily together and apart. As deep and close as two people could get, but it wasn’t enough.
Chessa leaned up to kiss him, promising with her body to try.
Nicolas murmured and lifted away his mouth to smooth his lips down her throat.
Chessa knew what was coming, steeled herself as best she could, knowing it would be too much. Too keenly felt.
He bit deeply, drawing her blood, exerting his irresistible vampiric lure that dragged her past a gentle orgasm straight into a fiery, orgiastic explosion that had her writhing beneath him, undulating to drag her hips down and up to meet his quickening thrusts. His cock lapped in silken, creamy delight.
Pleasure, so pure it pierced her chest, tightened around her core, rippling and pulsating along the length of his cock in ever tighter constrictions until, at last, she cried out and fell back against the bed, her arms landing limply on the mattress beside her.
Nicolas withdrew his fangs and licked her neck to close the tiny piercings. When he came back to kiss her mouth, he rubbed her lips and murmured again, “Mon ange…this is so fucking good.”
Chessa lifted her lips, unable to respond.
He lunged inside her twice, then groaned deeply as his release swept over him, flooding her channel. Finally, he sank onto her, his heavy body squeezing the breath from her lungs.
“I think we’re stuck together,” Nicolas muttered.
“We just need a bath,” she said, trying to draw a deeper breath over the top of his shoulder.
“No one would ever accuse you of being a romantic.”
“Is the honeymoon already over?”
Nicolas dragged in a deep breath and raised on his elbows, a smile quirking one side of his lush mouth. “I rather like the sound of that.”
CHAPTER
11
Just past dusk Nicolas and Chessa stepped off the curb in front of her apartment building to find Alex once again standing beside his car, waiting for them. She eyed his frayed jeans and stretchy black top. Interesting fashion choices, but both showed his honed body to perfection.
“You could have come up.” A blush heated her cheeks at the intimate look he gave her, sweeping over her body, no doubt remembering all the places his lips, fingers, and cock had played.
No way was he ever going to pretend nothing had happened.
“So, any news of our friend?” Nicolas asked, a disquieting terseness to his tone.
“Yeah,” Alex said easily, seeming indifferent to Nicolas’s deadly glare. “State troopers found three vehicles. All the victims fit the same M.O. We’ll need to stick pins in a string along Highway 61.”
“So, that’s where we’re heading?” Chessa asked.
“They’ve already taken the bodies to San Gabriel. Thought we might take a look.”
“You’ll have to go without me.” Nicolas’s expression was remote. All business.
Chessa remembered the phone call from the previous evening. “Checking in with Inanna?” she asked, keeping her tone even while jealousy boiled in her stomach.
“I need to talk to Simon,” he said, still eyeing Alex.
“Need a lift?” Alex asked.
“I’ll find my own way.” When his gaze fell on Chessa, his expression softened. “I’ll catch up with you later. I have the satellite phone number. I’ll give you a ring.”
Feeling awkward, Chessa looked at the ground, anywhere but into Nicolas’s sharp-eyed gaze. Their relationship had undergone significant changes. She didn’t quite know how to act.
Thankfully, Nicolas took the initiative, wrapping his hand around hers to pull her close. When his arms came around her waist, she lifted her face instinctively for a kiss.
“This,” he whispered, “is how people falling in love say good-bye.”
“We haven’t had a chance yet to do an autopsy,” the young man in medical scrubs said, as he led them into a tent in a long row of white tents that made up the temporary morgue. “They’ll be cleaned up first, then stored in one of the refrigerator cars.”
Chessa shared a glance with Alex.
His nose wrinkled. His face was as green as the jacket he’d thrown on over his holster.
She grinned and wondered if he was going to throw up. The smell of disinfectant and the underlying odor of decaying corpses assailed them both—only it appeared she wasn’t nearly as squeamish.
“How long have you been a cop, anyway?” she asked, under her breath. “Breathe through your mouth.”
The bodies they’d come to inspect lay on a tarp floor in black bags. The young man knelt and unzipped the first one. A woman in her mid-forties, gray roots showing beneath auburn-colored hair, stared sightlessly upward. Her smocked denim dress with its embroidered flowers was marred by the large dark hole that sank in the center of her soft upper abdomen and the blood-spatter spotting the crisply ironed fabric.
“Looks like he used a post-hole digger to rip through her,” the young man said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “What kind of person would do a thing like that?”
The next three bodies had similar injuries.
Working silently, they finished making notes, Alex holding his breath over each corpse.
“You have to sign out,” their escort said. “I’ll escort you to the checkpoint.”
Lit as bright as any high school football field on Friday night, they made their way between the tents, passing people rolling gurneys with more bodies in FEMA black bags.
Alex was signing the checkout roster when screams ripped through the night, coming from the direction of the row of refrigerator cars.
Chessa sprinted back through the grounds, reaching for her weapon as medical personnel scrambled past, horror twisting their features. Chessa tried to halt one woman to ask what had happened, but she twisted away and kept on running.
At the corner of one trailer, she glanced over her shoulder to find Alex standing close by, his weapon drawn. He nodded to her, and she ducked around the corner, the stock of her Glock 40 gripped between both hands as she scanned the area.
Deep in the shadows she detected movement. The figure beyond the end of one truck ramp moved oddly, jerking, twitching, then stomping rapidly, almost too fast for the eye to follow.
Not human, that was for damn sure. She tightened her grip and took a stealthy step forward. When another twitching figure stepped suddenly in front of her, her mouth gaped.
The man was a walking corpse, his features bloated like a body too long in the water, the skin of his face peeling away to reveal underlying muscle and scraped bone. The odor that emanated from him had her stomach lurching.
Before she could do more than blink, his hand shot up so quickly she didn’t have time to dodge.
“Shit!” she cried out, as he grabbed her throat and dragged her closer. His gaping maw of a mouth opened wide to reveal a row of jagged teeth.
Choking, she shoved the barrel of her weapon into his belly and fired off three rounds.
The shots passed through him, dinging against the trailer behind him, but he didn’t loosen his grip.
Something large and solid barreled into her and the monster from the side, sending them both flying. Alex didn’t stop, rolling quickly to his feet.
Chessa leapt to hers, but not as quickly as the ghoul who rose straight from his back to a standing position, his arms outstretched toward her. “What the fuck?” she cried out, this time ducking beneath his grasp, only to have his hand grab at the back of her jacket and jerk her off her feet.
; She swung her foot forward and slammed it backward against his knee, but he seemed as immovable as a tree trunk.
Suddenly, a shot rang out from beside her and the monster’s head exploded, splattering her with gray gelatin and coagulating blood. The hand gripping her tight, opened, dropping her to the ground. The corpse crumpled beside her.
Chessa kicked it, cursing, and scrambled away.
“Zombies, Cheech,” Alex shouted, already searching the shadows for the next one. “Aim for their heads. Move it!”
Together, they raced down the row of tractor trailers while Chessa stretched her senses, scenting the air for the smell of rotting corpses, listening for the heartbeats of the living, and finding wildly beating hearts as workers huddled beneath wheel wells.
Scent proved an elusive clue as the breeze changed direction, but she found more of the creatures by their tell-tale jerking movements and eerily rapid advances.
With Alex’s back sliding close to hers to watch for anything coming up behind them, she paused to pop off rounds when she spotted one, then moved forward again.
She fired until she ran out of bullets and dropped her clip, quickly reached for another from her pocket and rammed it up, filling the chamber with another round.
Knowing she had only one clip left, she crept forward, scanning left to right and back again, her Glock following the direction of her gaze.
More strange stomps sounded behind her. Alex squeezed off shots, another zombie then another stomped into view, their features twisted in frightening leers. She aimed, fired, missing as they rushed forward in their halting gait that looked like a film in fast forward. Her mouth dry, she drew a deep breath to steady her aim and dropped them.
They moved trailer to trailer, peeking inside, finding bodies writhing in body bags, finding more roaming the grounds. Only when the minutes dragged on without finding new targets did she draw a deep breath.
Chessa straightened and lowered her weapon, glancing behind her to find Alex sliding his gun into his holster.
“How many rounds do you have left?” she asked, dropping an empty clip and ramming her last one home.
“I have a box in my trunk.”
“I have to reload.”
Alex lifted his hand to glide his fingers over her cheek, drawing something sticky from her skin. “You know, we’ll have to hit all the bodies left in the trailers. Can’t take any chances.”
Chessa nodded toward the people cautiously emerging from their hiding places. “What will we tell them?”
Alex smirked. “That a demon called The Devourer paid them a visit and sprinkled a voodoo priestess’s powder over the bodies to make them rise from the dead?”
She rolled her eyes. “Uh…no. Think of something less absurd.”
A grin broke across his face. “Good thing it was us here, huh?”
Realizing she’d missed a few clues while they’d battled zombies, she gave him a searching glance. “Yeah, who else would have known how to kill them?”
When she’d streaked toward the tractor trailers, he’d kept pace. He’d also managed better than she to sight their rapid movement and drop them before they’d crept too close.
Not something any human should have managed.
Cool air greeted Nicolas as he entered the long hallway leading toward Simon’s apartment. A generator hummed somewhere in the distance.
Pasqual gave him a crooked smile and straightened from his post beside Simon’s door. “Hey there, boss.”
“She’s inside?”
Pasqual lifted an eyebrow. “Would I be here?”
“Did she say why she came into the city herself?”
“I’m just a Revenant. She doesn’t tell me what she’s thinking.” The words held no edge of resentment. So long as she welcomed him to her bed, Pasqual was happy to serve.
Nicolas understood that sentiment all too well. After all, once upon a time he’d been the eager supplicant. He drew a deep breath and lifted the brass doorknocker, knowing he was about to enter a minefield of treachery.
1308
Outside Poitiers, France
Nicolas put down the doorknocker and blew on his hands, rubbing his fingers together to warm them. The horses that had delivered them to her door were led away behind them. He and Armand shared a glance, and he frowned again at his brother’s appearance.
Armand dressed plainly, his hair scraped back so hard his scalp shown white, as though he resented the fine trappings they’d been given. Why couldn’t he just enjoy their new circumstances? Instead, he’d grown more withdrawn these past weeks as though something precious had been robbed from him.
Nicolas had come to the realization Armand loved God more than he loved him and would have welcomed a righteous death. While Nicolas had loved Armand above everything.
No longer. Nicolas was learning to love himself.
Still, a vague unease followed him, as though he was conditioned to expect the worst to happen after his long ordeal. Feeling like he’d been fattened and cosseted like a Christmas goose, he stood in his fine new clothing, freshly bathed and pink-cheeked. While truly grateful for his rescue, he felt a growing impatience to embrace his future.
The door swung open, and Nicolas stepped back from beneath the shaded entrance, shocked the lady herself answered the door.
Her glance slid from his newly shorn hair down the fine fit of his clothes then back up again. Slowly.
He felt a seductive curl of heat wash over him.
Her gaze inspected Armand much more quickly, and Nicolas knew a moment’s satisfaction her interest appeared to be for only him.
“Follow me,” she said, turning back into the dimly lit entry.
Nicolas gave Armand a dig in the ribs for his brother’s nose was wrinkled, his lips thinned as though he disapproved of the fact she’d opened the door in a robe.
Nicolas found it convenient for he had no misconception he’d be sinking between her silky thighs before the afternoon was done. Whether or not they got down to the business of what she needed from them first was inconsequential. He’d thrown off his Templar’s mantle, released from his lifelong duty to his brother by his anger over Armand’s stubbornness that had nearly gotten them both killed.
Now he wanted to taste life. Wanted to taste this woman, with her slim round hips, burnished hair, and eyes that smoldered with Eastern knowledge promising she knew a thing or two about pleasuring a man.
She’d wanted a guardian—well, guardian would be his occupation—but he no longer believed in quests. He’d leave that sort of zealous devotion to his brother.
The lady Inanna showed them deep into the house to a parlor unlike any he’d ever seen. Rather than stately wooden furnishings, this room was draped in silky fabrics that covered the windows and encircled the center of the room, reminding him of the interior of an Arab’s tent. Plush bolster cushions surrounded a low table; a thick hand-knotted Persian carpet stretched beneath it all, inviting him to sink his toes and body there.
Candlelight flickered within the intimate space, painting the woman’s skin in golden tones that only enhanced the warmth already creeping beneath his cotte. The room was hot as any late desert afternoon. He spotted two braziers in the corners of the room and felt perspiration dot his forehead.
She waved a hand to the groupings of pillows. “Will you join me for a cup of qahwa?” she asked, dropping gracefully to her knees.
Eager to draw nearer, he took a seat close to her, his legs crossed in front of him, happy to be free of social restrictions.
Kneeling gracefully in the folds of her crimson and gold dressing gown, she poured two cups of the sweetened drink. Although he would have preferred ale, he accepted the dark, aromatic drink, served hot, and sipped it cautiously.
Armand sipped quietly beside him, his gaze resting on a curtain, his sleeve, finally the depth of his shallow cup. Nicolas knew he was uncomfortable sharing such an intimate setting with a woman dressed as though for bed.
Inanna’s glance
and secretive smile remained with Nicolas, sharing her amusement over his brother’s discomfort. She plucked a deep red apple from the tray of fruit beside the tea urn—plump, out of season, but perfect, and extended it to Nicolas.
He accepted it, grinning at the symbolism of the act, and took a large bite, turned it, and handed it back to her.
Her white teeth bit the flesh he’d already laid bare, and she gave him a wicked smile as she chewed.
Beside him, his brother cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable sitting on the floor beside them. “When will we be shown the crypt?”
Inanna lifted her hand, cupping her fingers in a beckoning wave to someone who hovered close to the door. “Will you take our friend out and show him belowstairs?”
“Will you not come with me brother?” Armand asked softly.
Nicolas didn’t look his way. “No, I think I’ll stay.”
While Armand followed the servant out the door, Nicolas’s cock thickened—so much so, he had to stretch his legs to the side and rest on an elbow, assuming a casual pose. That his arousal was clearly visible beneath the soft fabric encasing his groin didn’t bother him a bit. They were alone now, and she didn’t seem the modest sort.
In fact, her avid gaze clung to his groin for a long moment, before she gave him a wicked smile and lifted her hands to the front of her robe.
His breath held as she pulled apart the knotted ties and spread wide the lapels of her dressing gown, exposing her body for his viewing. Lovely as a goddess, she sat quietly while he stared, taking in the fullness of her breasts, the indention of her narrow waist and the soft, dark curls that pulled his gaze downward. “Do I please you, Nicolas?” she asked in her lilting voice.
His body tightened, his cock strained harder. He cleared an obstruction at the back of his throat. “Very much so, milady.”
Her amusement shone in the sideways glance she gave him. “It’s rather warm in here. I have no objection if you wish to make yourself more comfortable.”
Since she’d been generous with her own disrobing, he decided to make his intentions indelibly clear. Ties, knots all flew open and he tore off his cotte and undertunic, tossing them to the side. Then he pulled off his soft leather boots and chausses, all the while looking for a signal he should stop.
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