After Elizabeth left, Josh spent a lot of time on the phone to his agent, two producers, and a director, negotiating a short postponement of his commitments. He also had to fend off Mark and Fenstein, who wanted to come around and cosset him and didn’t take kindly to being told to go on paid vacation. But Josh was growing too used to the pleasant independence of life in New York, where it was much easier to keep a low profile and slip into anonymity. It reminded him of the old days, when he and Emily had been young and working in theater. Except, of course, that he hadn’t been attacked by vampires back then. And no one had stolen his sword, which he now needed to reclaim more than ever, since he’d discovered his unworldly father had been right about so many impossible things. The sword was more than a keepsake now; it was an icon, a justification of his father to everyone who’d ever laughed at him.
As darkness began to fall, Josh closed all the drapes and blinds in the apartment, shutting out the night because Elizabeth had told him that was when vampires roamed at will. He had to trust her that none of them would seek him out, especially not when he was under hunter protection, but he didn’t understand it. That Travis had seemed pretty determined to get him this afternoon, even if he’d fancied a bite of Elizabeth even more.
And Elizabeth! Now that the shock was wearing off, he could remember her defense against the vampires with pride as well as astonishment. Never in a million years had he expected the quietly spoken academic to turn into such an efficient killing machine, more like Buffy the Vampire Slayer than any other label he’d pinned on her. As he retrieved his frozen dinner from the oven he realized that he hadn’t even told her how much he admired her for what she’d done; he hadn’t even said thank-you.
Josh sat down in the living room with his dinner on a tray and opened a bottle of beer. He’d call her tomorrow, say all the things he should have today. And ask her all the questions that had been occurring to him since she left.
Just as he turned the television on, and began to enjoy his unaccustomedly down-market meal, his cell phone rang. Cursing, he set his tray on the sofa beside him and fished out the phone. It was Garrick, the detective he’d hired to watch Dante.
Dante! Shit, I forgot all about him!
“Hi, Garrick, what’s happening?” he asked breezily, covering up his weird feeling of guilt.
“Got some news on our friend,” Garrick reported. “While you took over at the club, I waited back at his apartment building until he came home. But he wasn’t there for long. Left in a cab just after five o’clock and I followed him to JFK. And I’m afraid that’s where I lost him. I know he made a private charter, but I couldn’t find out where to, not by wheedling, cajoling, or bribing.”
“Shit, you mean he’s left the country?”
“He could have. I went back to his apartment, saw his people shutting it up as if his stay in New York is definitely over. He could have just flown back to Washington, of course. I’ll get in touch with my contacts there.”
“Okay,” Josh agreed. “Let me know if you hear anything.”
“Will do,” said Garrick, and rang off.
Josh scrolled down to find Elizabeth’s number, then hesitated. Since the poor girl was probably jet-lagged on top of all today’s excitement, perhaps he should just send a text. He made it brief, since he planned to call her in the morning.
It was hard to sleep knowing he was there, knowing what she wanted more than anything. In fact, it became impossible even to lie still. Restlessly, she shifted her head on the pillow, then turned over onto her other side.
Risking it, she opened her eyes slowly. He stood with his back to her, his dark silhouette against the tall full-length window. One hand rested on the pulled-back curtain as he gazed out at the night.
He’d said he wouldn’t go out, that he didn’t need to, and certainly by the time she’d gone to bed, leaving him in front of the computer, he’d looked as if his full strength was fast returning. But she realized all over again that although he’d taught himself how to make the most of daylight too in this modern world, he was at heart a creature of the night. Eat your heart out, Bela Lugosi. . . .
She wondered if it called to him, or if he saw the darkness much as she did. She wondered what he did out there when he wasn’t plotting and planning and exerting his will over the ever-growing numbers of his minions. Aside from feeding.
She tried to shy away from that thought. He drank a lot of blood, although he rarely killed. It didn’t make the idea of him feeding from humans much more palatable to her. Unwanted, an image swam before her eyes of a young woman—she looked a little like the girl who’d brought her room-service dinner—clasped in his arms as he buried his fangs in her neck.
Shocked, Elizabeth realized that her feelings weren’t merely distaste. Between her legs trickled the wetness of sexual arousal, because part of her, a ridiculously large part, was jealous of each of his victims, real and imagined.
And yet she’d hated him in Budapest after he’d fed from her.
She licked her dry lips, banishing guilt as well as jealousy. “Go out if you want to,” she said quietly.
He didn’t turn. In fact, he answered with so little surprise that she suspected he’d always known she was awake. “I don’t want to. I like to stand here, listening to you breathe behind me. It gives me the illusion of companionship.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. In that moment, she understood him so completely it hurt. She knew his loneliness as if it were her own, and this was all there would ever be for them, snatched nights when circumstances beyond them dictated they could be together for twenty-four hours. For a being thousands of years old, that was less than a drop in the ocean.
This is all there is. Don’t waste it, Silk.
She rose from the bed before she could change her mind, padding the few feet across the soft-pile carpet to his side. Still he didn’t turn from the window, but by the city lights reflected on his face, she glimpsed his faint smile.
“Is it all illusion with us, Saloman? Is none of it real?”
“It’s all real, just . . . fleeting.”
He wanted more; he still wanted more. It should have appalled her; it should have sent her scurrying back to bed with the sheets drawn up to her chin in protection. She should not have continued to stand there in her sexy nightdress, and she certainly shouldn’t have taken his hand, threading her fingers through his as she gazed with him across the blackness of Central Park. The sounds of traffic and partying were faint, but audible.
“I never expected New York to be this beautiful,” she observed.
“It has its own charm, as all places do.”
“You have been here before!”
The smile came back briefly and vanished. “Not since it was like this. A long time ago, before it was called America.”
She accepted that. One day, perhaps even tomorrow, he would tell her about it. Tonight, it seemed, he didn’t want to talk. So she lifted their joined hands to her cheek.
“I wish it was different, Saloman,” she whispered, and then, before the tears came, she dropped his hand and turned away.
But she moved too slowly. Before she had even taken a step, he’d seized her wrist and swung her against him. His arms were hard around her and his head swooped like some bird of prey. There was no time to protest before his lips crushed hers.
Her mouth opened wide in shock; she might even have intended to object, but as he took possession, she gave up and sank into his embrace with a muffled moan of relief and joy. He bent her body backward, grinding the hardness of his erection into her abdomen, and she flung her arms up around his neck, grasping his hair between her fingers. As he deepened the kiss, she welcomed his tongue with her own, and when she felt the graze of his dangerous fangs, she licked them greedily.
Saloman spoke inside her head, presumably so that he could keep kissing her. Did you come to offer me your blood or your body?
Either. Both.
I wish I’d thought of showing you weakness
before.
At that, she tore her mouth free, tugging at his hair in a feeble attempt to prevent him from doing exactly as he wanted to. “You think this is some kind of weird, misplaced pity?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer, simply took her mouth back, and her tugging fingers relaxed in his hair, holding him to her. You don’t like pity, she reminded him.
I like sex with you. One hand caressed her shoulder, pushing down the strap of her nightdress, then slid down over her exposed breast. Elizabeth moaned, pressing into his hand, into the bone-hard erection nudging between her legs.
Saloman jerked down the other strap, and her nightdress pooled around her ankles. At last he released her mouth, drawing back a little so that he could look at her. “Naked in my arms,” he whispered. “That’s where you should be.”
She couldn’t disagree with that, especially not when he bent his head to take one elongated nipple into his mouth. She held his head to her breast, her eyelids falling in bliss as his sucking seemed to draw on some invisible pleasure cord running between her nipple and her womb.
“But you’re not,” she gasped out. “Naked, I mean.”
He smiled around her nipple, then lifted his head to take back her willing mouth while his hand closed on her breast once more. I don’t need to be.
Elizabeth disagreed there. Sliding her hands down his back, she tugged at the loose silk shirt he wore, trying to draw it free of his trousers, but it seemed Saloman’s needs were more urgent. With a surge of fresh excitement, Elizabeth felt his fingers pushing between their bodies, working at the fastening of his trousers. She gasped into his mouth as the immediacy of his desire infected hers. He raised his head and lifted her by the waist. From instinct, she wrapped her legs around his hips. Amber flames shot through his black eyes and he lowered her slowly. His naked erection nudged between her legs, drove along her slit, making her gasp and jerk with the sharpness of the pleasure, and then he found her entrance and let her slide down his shaft.
Elizabeth moaned long and low. She’d dreamed of this, yearned for it since she’d last known it—making love with Saloman. He filled her, stretched her with such exciting sensation that she thought she’d come at once. But he held her still, his cool cock slowly heating and twitching inside her. She was drowning in his eyes, in lust and love.
The movement seemed to grow very gradually from his throbbing inside her. When it morphed into a slow, sensual thrusting, she began to undulate very slightly, soaking up the additional delight it gave her. Increasing the pace, she lifted herself and fell on him in slow, sensual strokes that made him groan and throw back his head. She smiled, reaching again for his mouth, kissing him deeply while their bodies gyrated and thrust together, grinding in such exquisite pleasure that she wanted it never to end.
Over his shoulder, she became aware that the curtains had drawn themselves fully back, that Saloman made love to her against the background of New York’s beauty. Upright in his strong, steady arms, she had the illusion that they floated above the city, the only two beings who existed there. And as their bodies thrust and writhed and strained with ever-increasing urgency, the lights of the city lost focus, became confused with the glittering of his burning eyes and the unbearable ecstasy building inside her and clamoring for release.
Like all of this loving, the orgasm came slowly, rising higher with each stroke inside her until she thought it would never stop and she wouldn’t be able to bear any more. Her own moans and cries echoed in her ears as she convulsed on him, clinging to him, burying her face in his hair as he kissed her neck in a long, sucking kiss. She felt his teeth like shards of ice on her skin, and with an abruptness that made her jerk, he bit her and sucked before she was properly aware of what was happening.
As if the blood were being drawn from her delirious, convulsing core, each powerful suck was like a fresh pulse of ecstasy, holding her in orgasm while he fed. His deep, howling groan told her he’d released his own climax, intensifying it with her blood.
She felt as if she were spinning through air, half fainting from sensation she could no longer bear. And then, with a jolt, she realized he’d laid her on the bed, still buried between her thighs as he loomed over her. He detached his teeth from her throat, pressing his tongue to her wound.
“More later,” he promised huskily. “I could drink from you forever.”
So long as he didn’t take it all and kill her.
Rearing up on his knees, he tore off his shirt and slid out of her to remove his trousers and underwear together. He threw them all on the floor with such force that Elizabeth struggled through her haze of joy to say, “What are you doing?”
“Preparing to make love to you again.”
When the knock sounded, Severin gazed bleakly at his hotel room door. The new future he’d begun to envision with such eagerness seemed to have crumbled with Maggie’s dust. It wasn’t his first loss of a beloved female companion, but it was the deepest, and he struggled now to make the necessary decisions.
Saloman, who’d been everything he’d hoped for and more—powerful, impressive, commanding—had also been surprisingly sympathetic at their meeting early yesterday morning. He seemed to understand both the loneliness of Severin’s position ruling his unruly people, and the blow of Maggie’s loss. Saloman had said he’d deal with Travis, that Severin should take his vampires home to safety. And he was right.
Except part of Severin demanded revenge for Maggie. Another part disliked being quite so submissive, even to so powerful an ally. Especially when this ally was also talking to Travis. Travis had made sure he knew about that, sending him a mocking, if brief, telepathic message that he and Saloman were gambling for the leadership of America.
Where exactly would Severin fit in? Disgruntled as he was, he found it hard to care. He missed Maggie, whose enthusiasm for Saloman’s new world had convinced him to come here.
And so here he still was, surrounded by his restless followers. And the unaligned vampire Jacob now stood patiently on the other side of the flimsy door. Severin’s senses could pick up no other vampire presence in the vicinity, so he jerked his head at his minions to let Jacob in.
With vague distaste, Severin watched him swagger across the room.
“Glad I found you,” Jacob said. His pleasure appeared to be genuine. “I met someone who’s looking for you.”
“Who?” Severin asked, without much interest.
“A girl. Human, but very strong. Not a hunter. She wants to know where you are.”
Severin curled his lip. “I presume she paid you for the information.”
“She will when I give it to her. I was wondering if you’d care to pay me to make the introductions on your terms instead.”
Severin let out a contemptuous laugh. “Do you really have nothing more on your mind than making money?”
“No,” Jacob said candidly.
Severin regarded him. “Does she have a name, this girl?”
“Presumably. But I don’t know what it is. She’s not American—British, I’d say. And I had the impression her interest was not friendly.”
Severin narrowed his gaze, thinking of the two humans who’d followed them to the office block after the previous night’s hunt. “There’ve been people sniffing around us since the fight. What does this girl look like?”
Jacob shrugged. “White. Red-blond hair. Pretty. Looks fragile as antique china.”
Severin frowned. “That’s not the one.” Standing up, he walked over to Jacob and sniffed. He hadn’t touched this human woman, for none of her smell lingered on him. Knowledgeable and strong and not a hunter. And British. A suspicion began to enter his head. Could this girl be trying to use him to get to Saloman himself? Could she be the elusive Awakener whom Saloman had failed to kill? Trying to lead the hunters to the Ancient before Saloman got to her?
Seeing his way at last, Severin felt his inertia fall away. He swung on his followers. “Anton, you and Frederick stay with me. Louis, you take the rest home. We�
��ll catch up.”
“Now?” Louis objected. “It’s nearly dawn and I—” Under Severin’s glare, he broke off and shut up.
“What are we doing, boss?” Anton asked eagerly.
“We’re going to catch a present for Saloman,” Severin said with relish. “Which should give us a little more leverage in this relationship. Jacob, you may arrange it.”
Gamble with that, Travis.
It had happened before—slipping into this cocoon of happiness and sensual pleasures that excluded the world and every notion of right and wrong that she knew. There was only Saloman.
Eternally fascinating, he held her in thrall once more. The remains of the night disappeared in the blissful excitement of lovemaking, punctuated, or even accompanied, by lethargic talk and laughter. She’d almost forgotten his wit and how he could make her laugh, even when she least wanted to.
Only as dawn broke, and she sprawled naked against the pillows within the circle of his arm, did she remember why he’d come here, and what he’d said in his tiredness yesterday evening.
“What game are you playing with Travis?” she asked lazily, running her fingertips along the veins of his hand.
“Hunt the sword. Winner takes America.”
She blinked and stopped caressing to stare at him. “Isn’t that a bit of a risk?”
“Not when I know where the sword is.” His hand moved, finding her breast and idly rolling the nipple between his fingers as he spoke. It made it harder to be angry.
“Where is it, then?” she managed.
“At Dante’s apartment.”
“You’re guessing,” she accused, wriggling under the growing pleasure of his relentless fingers.
“At this moment, yes. But it was there yesterday. In fact, if you hadn’t fallen into Travis’s clutches just at the wrong moment, I would have, er, reclaimed it. That’s the second time you’ve distracted me from that particular quest.”
Blood Sin (2) Page 18
