She perched on the edge of the plush, ebony leather and stared forward, vaguely aware of her surroundings. She felt Nathan settle in beside her, but her mind still held the strange, trancelike state which made her ambivalent to the atmosphere or danger. It was all so illogical. Somewhere way in the back of her mind, she knew fear would have been a handy tool at the moment. She wanted it more than anything, but couldn’t scrounge it up.
“Mia, look at me.”
The only option was obedience because she couldn’t think for herself. This had to be a dream because she had zero control over speech, thoughts or motor skills beyond those he commanded.
His expression was gentle and warm. He reached up and trailed the back of his fingers across her cheek. “I’m not going to hurt you, little one. You won’t feel pain or fear, only pleasure I promise, which even that you won’t remember come tomorrow.”
Mia just blinked at him. None of what he’d said made sense, until he leaned in and captured her lips. That ambient part of her which kept protest or any other actions at bay, broke free when he began wreaking some major havoc on her mouth. She drove her fingers into his hair and pressed in, taking all he gave and returning more and then some.
She hadn’t been kissed in over five years and like this never in her life. Everything carnal in her had been unleashed, by Nathan, herself, she didn’t know, but she had to have more. She broke the kiss just briefly to crawl onto his lap, then returned to devouring his mouth, vaguely aware she now had physical control. She should have been using it to get the hell out of here, but it was the last thing she wanted.
He started sucking and biting at her lower lip while trailing one palm across the side of her black tank top, down her Levis and back again. She was on fire! When he broke free of her mouth, she let out a little grunt. Disgustingly enough, because she wanted more.
He looked at her, those strange violet eyes shimmering again now with pure, hot lust. He grinned. “My instincts were right. There’s one hell of a fire simmering beneath that prickly exterior. However, as strange as this may sound based on what we’re about to enjoy next, I’ve never forced a woman sexually. Know you’re in complete control there.”
She looked at him as if he were a lunatic. So was she, because she realized he hadn’t been prompting her actions for the last several minutes. They’d been all hers, which astounded her. She didn’t do casual sex. “I need to go.”
“Not yet.” He frowned at her, then leaned in and abducted her lips again. Whatever drug she was tripping on, still had her in it’s thrall. She caved in like a semi on a sinkhole. It got wild and crazy for a bit, then his mouth left hers to trace kisses across her cheek and neck. That felt really good. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she moaned. He began to suck on the skin where her pulse pounded out of control.
All of it, everything he did to her was kinky, sexy and felt great. She leaned her head back to grant him further access. He pulled away for a brief second, then she heard him growl. Really growl. The sound was deep and scary, like a wolf’s warning just prior to attack. It reverberated loud with menace in the small space. She glanced up and caught a flash of white hovering below his upper lips as he leaned forward and buried his face in her neck.
A sharp stabbing pain in her throat snatched a cry from her, but immediately her body went limp and she felt no pain. Her arms fell to her side and her head lolled back. Thankfully, he was holding her because she had lost all muscle control. She hung like a rag doll in his grip. Once the concern of her immobility passed, she realized what he was doing to her.
He had bit her neck and was now drinking her blood. The last rational cell in her brain told her this was wrong in every sense of the word. Sinful! As if it would have mattered. She had no ability to move, let alone fight. The rest of her brain cells were saying, `Oh my God, more please more’. They won, despite her desperation to scratch for her morality. What he did to her, wrong or right, felt incredible. Pure, raw, sensual crazy took over. Wild, raunchy thoughts between her and this insanely hot man were racing out of control in her head. Somehow she knew they weren’t just hers, but his, because she wasn’t that creative.
Everything happening to her mind, emotions and body at the moment held time in limbo. Eventually, he stopped and spent a good while kissing and nuzzling her neck until the hurricane of sensuality he’d created between them settled into a gentle shower.
She made a little grousing noise when he pulled her off his lap and settled her next to him. Her mind was still in a fog, a dream, she didn’t know, but she looked at him, hoping to gain some answers.
He gave her a heated look, then said, “You’ll remember us meeting, but not what happened here. Go finish your dinner. I’ll be seeing you again soon.”
He opened the door, then assisted her out. Mia didn’t even remember how she managed her way back into the restaurant. The next thing she recalled was the irritating buzz of her alarm clock.
Chapter 2
Nathan closed the front door and paused in his long foyer, outfitted with family portraits and antiques, some of the few things he’d managed to save after the war between the states.
He scented, then frowned. Julia and Dimitri were somewhere on the first floor, waiting up for him no doubt. Last night when he arrived home around this same time, one in the morning, he’d ran into Julia in the hallway outside the kitchen. She’d been raiding his refrigerator again, something she’d been doing a great deal lately. She’d reeked of pastrami, peanut butter, pickles and suspicion.
She started drilling him about where he’d been and why he smelled of jasmine and lavender for a second night in a row. His attempts to blow her off had probably only fueled her suspicions. Dimitri’s too. No doubt she’d immediately reported her findings to her husband.
Nosey woman.
He’d just spent the last two hours in his limo with Mia again, enjoying those accused scents, along with her company, her kisses and the ever intoxicating aroma of her blood… “Oh hell.” He was in trouble and not just from Julia and Dimitri.
He’d told Julia the woman was a mere donor, a huge mistake. Ethical vampires didn’t repeatedly feed from the same human. Those who did were a scourge to their race. After feeding from Mia three nights in a row, he was feeling very scourge-worthy.
Nathan didn’t bother walking softly. He rounded the corner, which gave way to the west wing of his New Orleans Antebellum house, then continued toward his office. Halfway there, he heard footsteps behind him, then turned. The life-mated couple emerged through the archway leading from the kitchen into the hallway. He sighed and forced a smile for his two friends.
Dimitri gave him a studious once over. Julia popped a piece of pastry in her mouth, obviously remnants of a beignet, judging from the powdered sugar on the end of her nose. She studied him with a prim, suspicious frown as she chewed.
He rolled his eyes. The way she’d been eating lately, he needed to have a commercial food purveyor deliver groceries to his home. Poor Jazerra, his housekeeper, had been making supermarket runs on a daily basis over the last couple of weeks. She was threatening to quit over it. Then again, she’d been threatening to quit over one matter or another for the last forty years.
When Julia’s mouth was clear, she asked, “Who is she, cher?”
The words `to you` were left unspoken. Since he had no answers yet to that question himself, he speared Dimitri with a pointed look. “It’s nearly one in the morning. The two of you should be in bed. Do I need to have a refrigerator installed in your suite? Julia has to be exhausted running up and down the stairs to rifle through the contents of the ones in the kitchen all night long.”
He chuckled, his shiny, silver eyes flashing mirth. “That won’t be necessary. The exercise does her good.” He sobered a bit and continued in his Slavic accent, reproof in his voice. “We’re worried about you, Nathan. We’ve known you for over seventy years, but even I have never seen you spend three consecutive nights feeding from the same human.”
&
nbsp; Nathan was a hell-of-a-lot more than worried. He was bewitched by Mia and his actions scared the hell out of him. He could have made up a lie, told them she knew he was vampire and their encounters a mere sexual dalliance, but he’d developed respect for her. Even ambiguous to them, he couldn’t sully her that way. “I was hunting. She was convenient and it’s no concern to either of you.”
They looked at each other, their expressions gaining the emotion.
“What?” he demanded.
“It might be our concern.” Dimitri’s tone was hard, his gaze too.
He knew what Dimitri meant and didn’t like what he implied. He was a hundred and seventy five year old unmated vampire. They feared he verged on feral because insane ones of their kind fed voraciously and often repeatedly on the same human until they killed or turned them. “Back off. It isn’t what you’re thinking.” He stalked off down the hall to his office.
They followed.
He opened the door, faced them and said, “Both of you are way off base.” Were they? He’d just fed from Mia tonight again, erasing her thoughts of course. He’d allowed her to remember their encounters at her restaurant, but not what happened after her shift inside his limo.
Turning feral had never entered his mind. Like it could. He’d been so obsessed with Mia, he could think of little else. He’d never fed from the same human more than once.
Maybe the two of them had a point.
“We hope so,” Dimitri said. “We’ve never met a vampire prior to turning feral, but we all know what the signs are.”
Nathan didn’t answer. He knew the signs too and the fact he exhibited some scared him shitless.
In the terms of their kind, feral meant insanity beyond redemption and death was the only course of treatment. He’d been turned by a feral female vampire, Isabella Ravini, when he was a mere nineteen year old boy. The insanity she’d visited upon his mind while he’d been her fledgling, made him realize if he trekked toward that heinous point of no return, his friends would have no choice but to extinguish him for the safety of their kind as well as human kind. Their affection for him would not matter, only the best interest of their race. Sadly, he would have acted exactly the same.
How ironic, he thought. The very reason he was in New Orleans had to do with Isabella stalking him. When a male vampire’s sire was a feral female, she was never really gone from his life. Both he and Dimitri had been turned by Isabella years apart, but both of their infant days as vampires had been a hellish nightmare, and a number of them since.
Nathan rounded the massive, mahogany desk that ate up the back half of the room situated in front of a large window. He pulled out a plush office chair, sat and gave the computer’s mouse a little click—a futile attempt to brush off the two nosey vampires who had followed him inside.
They seated themselves in the cocoa, Italian leather chairs across from him and stared. Subterfuge and evasion would have been a waste of time, so he opted for a version of the truth. “Obviously, I met a human and was intrigued. You know it happens.”
He glanced between them and his emails, settling on the couple because they stared at one another intently and he knew they mind spoke. Mind speaking was only possible with vampires if they were blood bonded or life-mates.
Julia nodded at her husband, then faced him. “If this donor is just a casual liaison then we apologize for intruding. You are unmated and we understand that difficulty and the need to find comfort in the arms of a human until you find the woman God designed for you. Neither of us want to think the worst, Nathan, rather the best. Could there be something brewing with her? We generally seek those of our own kind for our mates, but we often find ours among the human population. Thank God, or I would have never found my, Dimitri.”
She reached over and squeezed her husband’s hand, an adoring look in her green eyes the color of an Irish spring meadow. She was a beautiful woman with long strawberry blonde hair and she loved Dimitri as he did her. Nathan envied their bond, because he’d never experienced anything close to what the two shared.
Nathan recalled the day they discovered one another. Julia and her sister Anne Marie had been on the verge of gang rape by a half dozen German soldiers inside a rickety barn in a village south of Paris.
Being vampire, both of them heard the women’s screams over the endless rounds of ammunition firing between Allied and German forces and stormed the barn. He and Dimitri dispatched the German scum in mere minutes without unloading one round.
Long and short of it, the moment Julia and Dimitri laid eyes on one another, it was on. If not for Nathan, Dimitri would have gone AWOL to get to the woman over the months that followed while she and her sister were at an aunt’s in London, they back in trenches across Europe fighting Nazis.
Once the war ended and they re-united, less than a month later, Dimitri turned her. He really did love her, enough so he tried to talk her out of it, but she’d wanted to be a wife to him in every way. She wanted to give him children, something she couldn’t do human.
Humans and vampires were two separate species. Actually, vampires were a sub-species of humans. They had evolved from them due to a blood disease, which could only be managed by ingesting the blood of their sire species.
“Does she have any idea?” Dimitri asked.
Nathan knew what he meant. He shook his head. “I haven’t allowed her to remember anything. She’s the sort of human whom I suspect wouldn’t take the truth well.” Few would once they discovered they’d been an unwitting buffet of pleasure for a vampire for three consecutive nights.
“You must have some plans, Nathan,” Julia said, then glanced at Dimitri, worry in her eyes.
Dimitri added, his voice stern, “You know you can’t continue with this sort of behavior. Humans are frail and have their limits.”
“And it is unethical,” Julia added, her expression as priggish as a schoolmarm.
Nathan grunted. “You think I don’t know that? I’ve been cautious, but I have no future plans for her at the moment. If I did desire to consider some, the two of you are making it impossible for me to formulate any.” He wasn’t sure he should as much as he wanted to. Taking on another distraction when he was neck deep in Isabella troubles wasn’t wise.
The couple gazed into each others eyes, mind speaking again. A handy tool when talking behind someone’s back in front of them, Nathan thought sourly.
Dimitri had a valid point. He was attracted to Mia physically, but also in a bloodlust way which was very abnormal combined. Rarely, did the two lusts mesh when a moral vampire fed from a human donor.
Feeding was merely an act to replenish one’s body, the same as food or water. Like eating, it was pleasant, and within the right circumstances it could be wildly sensual. Taken to the dark side, immoral ones of their kind, ferals, would enchant a human and have sex with them while feeding, then often kill them.
Turning feral was an ever real and present danger for an older male vampire. All sought a life-mate in their youth between sowing oats. Eventually, reality kicked in, time marched on and that vampire realized years were passing and he was still alone. Then he’d lose hope of sharing a life with another of his kind. Work and hobbies sufficed for awhile, but eventually loneliness had her whorish way and that male ended up dying young or turning feral.
Davenport Enterprises had consumed him for years and he’d given little thought to finding a mate. He couldn’t be on the verge of feral. No way.
Besides, Nathan made it a rule to never feed on a female human he found attractive, unless he chose to disclose the fact to the woman that he was vampire and she agreed to the sexual liaison. Even then it was a one time thing. Of course if the news troubled the woman, nothing would happen and she wouldn’t remember the conversation. It wasn’t fair to keep the truth from the human, but he’d been extraordinarily unfair to Mia, doing exactly that. He swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the lump of guilt in his throat.
“I think you lie, my friend.” Dimitri arched a b
row. “I’ve rarely witnessed guilt in you, but the emotion is as you American’s say: is written all over your face.”
“I think the two of you are wasting your time. I’m not talking about this anymore.” He tapped his mouse, bringing up his personal staff correspondence from Davenport Enterprises. He clicked on an email from Dominic.
“We can’t help you if you won’t talk, Nathan,” Dimitri said.
“And you obviously need help, cher,” Julia pointed out.
He agreed. Not so much regarding Mia, but he was in serious need of a crowbar to pry these two out of his office. “You’re both making mountains out of molehills. I merely find her interesting. Nothing more.”
He was lying through his teeth. He’d been feeding from humans for over a hundred and seventy years, but never had a human’s blood courted him the way Mia’s did. The moment he’d scented her in that little bistro, having her had been like a mental disease.
The intoxicating smell of her life force had sucked him in, but her beauty, wit and humor had snared him. He liked her. A lot. He wanted her too, but even under enchantment she drew a line in the sand there. Disappointing, but he had no desire to enchant a woman into his bed. If she didn’t go willingly, no enjoyment could come from the experience.
“What is she like, my darling?” Julia asked, eagerness edged her tone.
He glared at her and let a soft, vampire growl rumble in his throat, hoping she’d get the message. She just pursed her lips and continued to stare.
However, she’d succeeded in her mission to drive him to distraction. Visions of Mia played through his mind. For a human woman, she was fairly tall, thin boned, with classically elegant curves that his hands and eyes had spent a great deal of time exploring.
She had an exotic, yet earthy sort of beauty, wide set almond eyes, so dark and bewitching, he couldn’t count how many times, he’d labored on a reply while they’d engaged in conversation in his limo tonight. Her skin was a rich golden brown, which coupled with her eyes and high cheek bones suggested she had a prominent Native American background. Not exclusively because her long thick, auburn hair was a riot of curls that he’d played with for a good while earlier, the source of the bewitching jasmine and lavender scent, which still clung to his clothes.
Forever and a Night Page 2
