Elizabeth couldn’t resist a crow of triumph, which made him smile, so she teased, “You don’t seem to regard it as a very urgent quest. Shouldn’t you have gone to get the sword last night? Even if just to keep it out of Travis’s hands?”
“I had better things to do last night,” he said, and when she glanced at him provokingly, his hand stilled on her breast and he added by way of explanation, “Fucking you and drinking your blood.”
The flush of heat rose swiftly into her face. “You used to say those things because you thought they would shock me.”
“Now I say them because I know they arouse you.”
Indignantly, she tugged at the hand, which had begun to torture her breast once more. “I’m not so shallow!”
“I didn’t say you were shallow, but you are damnably fuckable.”
“Saloman!”
“What?” he said, rolling her under him and stroking the sensitive wound on her neck, which he had broken and healed twice in the night.
“Aren’t you afraid Travis might have taken the sword?” she said, rediscovering her thread with some difficulty under his distracting fingers, which slid from her throat back down to her breast.
“One more little drink,” he said huskily, “just because you recover so fast. And no,” he added against her skin. “Someone has taught Dante an object-masking enchantment. I doubt Travis could see through it.”
“Where can Dante have learned . . . ? Oh, Jesus,” she whispered as he pierced her skin and she felt again the blissful pull of her blood into his cruel, tender mouth. But this time, it lasted only a moment, just long enough for him to push himself inside her once more, thus distracting her from her perverse disappointment as he healed the wound so soon after making it.
“It isn’t natural to make love this often.” She gasped, holding on to him as he rode her.
“It is for me. And you don’t appear to object.”
She didn’t. Her body soaked him up like an addict, although she couldn’t imagine it even tolerating this amount of attention from anyone else. She was also aware that at some point she really would need to sleep.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “Even when everything hurts, as soon as you touch me it turns back into pleasure and I want you all over again. That isn’t natural either.”
His eyes darkened impossibly as he moved above her, his face pale and shadowed in the shifting dawn light. “It is for me.”
When she woke, the travel clock beside the bed told her it was just after nine o’clock, which meant she’d been asleep for only a couple of hours. And yet she felt almost luxuriously refreshed as she stretched alone in the large bed and saw Saloman through the open doorway, sitting at the desk in the living area with his back to her.
Perhaps she needed less sleep as her physical strength grew. She’d killed several vampires yesterday and some of them had been strong.
Or perhaps she was just happy.
Between her legs was a dull, pleasurable ache that became more than part tingle as she gazed at Saloman. Impossible to want more sex. She’d shatter.
Smiling at the ridiculous thought, she rose from the bed and padded across the room, pausing to pick up her green nightdress from the floor and drop it over her head as she walked through to the living area.
Saloman, dressed in a loose white shirt and dark trousers, glanced up and smiled, the rare, full smile that warmed her heart. She’d seen it a lot in the last twelve hours.
“What are you doing?” Elizabeth asked.
“Researching paranormal sources,” he replied unexpectedly, reaching one arm around her.
She blinked. “I thought you knew more than all the books put together!”
“I do, but Dante doesn’t. You made a good point last night. He must be getting his information from somewhere.”
“Yes, but would you find those kinds of books online? The hunters’ libraries aren’t available,” Elizabeth pointed out.
“I’m looking for other sources. Rare books in private or public collections. But I’m not finding much that could have given Dante the knowledge he has.”
“Maybe his relationship with Travis is long-standing. Travis could have told him everything he knows.”
“Possibly.”
Elizabeth slid reluctantly out of his arm to go to fetch her phone from the dressing table. Mihaela might well have discovered some connection between the two unlikely allies. Or some clue as to Severin’s whereabouts that might make the dubious Jacob redundant. But the only message waiting for her was from Josh.
“Oh, dear,” she said ruefully, and when Saloman glanced across at her, she almost wanted to laugh. “Dante’s left New York. Do you suppose he’s taken your sword?”
Chapter Twelve
Having decided to go together to Dante’s apartment to allow Saloman to “feel” for the sword, they took longer than expected to finally get out of the hotel—largely because the sight of Elizabeth fresh from the shower inflamed Saloman all over again. With her sunny hair toweled and rumpled and glistening with dampness, the snowy-white bathrobe that was too large for her drooping across one graceful shoulder, she looked adorable in a completely different way from the compassionate, almost hesitant siren of last night.
He couldn’t watch her padding across the bedroom without touching her, and her reaction to being touched—an oddly delightful one of mingled surprise and pleasure as she turned in his arms—made him kiss her. And after that, the rest was inevitable.
However, as he took her to bed once more, arousing her further with hands and lips that knew her body increasingly well, he surprised himself by his powerful urge to care for her. He was aware he’d exhausted her last night, had taken more from her body than was good for a human, and not just in terms of the blood she regenerated so quickly now. And so he took his pleasure in pleasuring her, always a joy and now given an exquisite edge by his deliberate restraint.
Ignoring the clamor of his own body, he did not enter Elizabeth’s, but made love to her only with tender hands and lips, teaching her new rapture that she welcomed with gratifying wonder. And when he finally took his lips from her convulsing sex and moved up her body to kiss her mouth instead, she clung to him in a way that made his heart soar and ache at once, especially when she shifted to make her body more available to him.
“I think you’ve had enough for now,” he whispered.
Her eyes were both soft and deliberately tempting. “Have you?”
“I’m teasing myself by waiting for the night.”
Her eyes searched his, as if for some dissatisfaction, and then, presumably finding none, she pushed him with a mischievous grin, rolling him over to straddle him. But he lifted her off and set her on the floor.
“I want my sword,” he said with mock severity.
Laughing, she ran back into the bathroom, although this time she left the door open, like a symbol of their new intimacy, while she called through the doorway with spontaneous curiosity, “Don’t you ever need to shower?”
“My body cleanses itself from the dirt of the air. And since I produce no bodily toxins or sweat, I have no need of water.”
“That’s bizarre.” The sound of the shower spraying her naked body once more added to his suppressed arousal. Over the splashing, she added, “It used to bother me—how you always smelled so good when I’d never once seen you wash!”
“You humans concern yourselves too much with trivia.”
“Comes of having bodily toxins,” she said dryly, “and an attraction for dirt that isn’t too afraid to cling to our bodies.”
The shower was switched off and she reemerged in the decidedly damp bathrobe, rubbing herself dry. This time he kept his hands off her, but entertained himself by lounging in a chair and watching her dry and dress. There was an intimacy in it that almost frightened him, but, having begun it, he refused to forgo the pleasure.
Clearly deep in thought, she didn’t talk as she dressed and combed out her hair. Only as she set down t
he comb and turned to him did she say abruptly, “What will you do with the sword when you find it?”
Saloman stood. “Treasure it,” he said flippantly. “And keep it safe from others. Much as I do with you, in fact. Shall we go?”
He walked into the living area and toward the door. Keeping up with him, she parted her lips to ask more questions, as if well aware she wasn’t being told the whole truth. Which, of course, she wasn’t. He couldn’t tell Elizabeth that. He couldn’t tell anyone.
He didn’t even need to get out of the car. He knew before they entered the parking garage under Dante’s building that the sword wasn’t there.
“You don’t seem to mind too much,” Elizabeth observed as he restarted the car.
“I expected it to be gone with Dante.”
As he drove toward the exit and pulled out into the traffic once more, he felt her intense gaze on his face. “Do you suppose Travis has it after all?”
“No, but I’ll drive past his lair to make sure.”
“He could have hidden it somewhere else.”
Saloman smiled at her innocence. “Nowhere I couldn’t find it. Besides, if he had it, he would be waving it in my face—no doubt before as many witnesses as he could drum up, including Severin—to show that he had won our wager and that I should now slink off with my tail between my legs.”
“Would you?” she asked curiously.
“Slink? I’m not sure I know how. I would have to find another way to win his submission.”
By this time, her gaze almost burned him, so he spared a moment’s attention from the hectic road to glance at her. For an instant, her clear hazel eyes seemed to pierce him, as if she were trying to examine his very soul. Then she gave a quick, deprecating smile and dropped her gaze.
“You’re afraid to ask,” he observed, slowing to avoid a collision with a large truck in his path. “But you’re wondering why I don’t just kill him.”
“It crossed my mind,” she confessed. “I even wondered if you could kill him.”
“I could,” Saloman said, overtaking the truck and speeding up in order to make it to the next traffic light before it changed. Driving in a large city was like one of those computer games Dmitriu had first shown him in an arcade in Bistriţa. “But where would be the fun in that?”
Again, she surprised him, seeing behind the flippancy of his words to the deeper truth beneath. “It is fun for you, isn’t it? Gathering power and territory, pulling the strings.”
There was no point in denying it, so he merely shrugged. “Yes.” After a moment, skidding through the lights the instant they changed, he added, “More fun than killing, although I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t enjoyed that too. It’s a trait of my race that humans find contradictory—we enjoy the exhilaration of the hunt and the kill, and yet value all forms of existence.”
There was a pause, then, “So speaks the vampire Saloman.”
“You don’t believe me,” he observed. It shouldn’t have hurt. He was well aware she still regarded him as the enemy. In fact, she regarded herself in much the same light, just because she loved him.
But unexpectedly, he felt the brief, brushing caress of her head on his arm. “That’s the trouble,” she said ruefully. “When I’m with you, I believe everything you say. I don’t think you ever lie, but I know you can be economical with the truth. I have to think of every possible meaning behind everything you say. And don’t say.”
“I don’t want death and destruction,” he said. “Still less do I want to rule over these things. Do you believe that?”
He glanced at her again and saw a faint smile on her lips. “Yes,” she said. “Although I refer you to my previous caveat.”
“Always the academic,” he murmured, giving in to the next red traffic light.
“I’m just trying to understand,” she said intensely, and he believed she was.
“It’s not so hard,” he said gently, “when you add it to what you already know of me. Existence embraces all of life, good and bad, the most extreme emotions, and physical feats as well as the lesser events and the quiet times. What is the point of any existence if you don’t experience all of it?”
“If you don’t enjoy it,” she said slowly, still watching his face. “Like you made me enjoy my life in Budapest, even though you meant to take it from me.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “Believe it or not, my people regard it as a responsibility. Used to regard it. Now I carry it alone.”
Her breath seemed to catch. “But who are you to choose?” she burst out. “It isn’t up to you! Why should I get to live when Professor Salgado-Rodriguez didn’t? On your mere whim, Saloman!”
He loved her anger, her opposition. It made him all the more determined to win her. And he had no objection to explaining his point of view.
“A whim, if you insist,” he allowed, “but there was nothing mere about it. I make choices for the greater good, and that demands that I be strong—emotionally as well as physically.”
Again, her eyes burned him. “I make you strong? Even alive, I make you strong?”
He couldn’t help smiling at her tone, which managed to mingle disbelief with pleasure and downright astonishment. But he didn’t want her immolating herself for the hunters. So he rephrased it. “You add to my existence.” He hesitated, then added, “And there is potential in you that goes beyond the personal.”
“Potential for what?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. It’s still, er . . . potential.”
Almost as if they were married, he dropped her off on Fifth Avenue to do some window-shopping while he went to a business meeting. First of all, she found an ATM and withdrew money she could ill afford in case she needed to pay Jacob that night. Then she relaxed into tourist mode.
It felt weird. As she gazed into windows full of glamorous clothes and fashionable shoes, she was chiefly conscious of the desire to meet up with Saloman again. And yet the very prospect of it added an exciting luster to her expedition. Although she couldn’t afford the fabric she let slide between her fingers, or the handbags she admired from a safe distance, it was fun to look, to soak up the ambience of New York, and know that soon she’d see him again, talk to him again. Make love with him again.
For Elizabeth, the future was a blank canvas, and she took care to keep it that way. In her heart, she knew this fragile happiness couldn’t last, but she refused to think of it as an illusion, because for this moment, it was real. And she grasped the moment with eagerness.
I’m beginning to think like him. . . .
When her phone rang, she grabbed it from her bag like a teenager waiting for her boyfriend to text. But this was no love note. It was from Jacob.
Stupidly, shock brought her to a halt on the pavement and someone walked into her heels. Muttering apologies, Elizabeth slunk up against a shop window to read the brief note.
“I have it. Bring money. J.,” followed by an address off Fifth Avenue. The closeness made her blood run cold, sent her gaze scanning among the crowd and up on the rooftops. But that was ridiculous. Jacob couldn’t walk under the sun.
He could have human accomplices. He’s the type who would. They wouldn’t even guess what he is.
Dropping her phone back into her bag, Elizabeth pulled herself together. She hadn’t been afraid of Jacob last night, alone in the dark; she was damned if she’d give in to fear in broad daylight. This was her world.
She paused only long enough to surreptitiously conceal a second easily accessible stake, then turned on her heel and walked back the way she’d come until she reached the first crossing. Jacob must have been driving behind her to know she would recognize the street easily and join him quickly. And if he was in one of the shops, he wouldn’t risk attacking her.
But the address he’d specified appeared to be a deserted shop. Dark blinds covered the windows and the glass door. A sign read CLOSED FOR BEREAVEMENT. Elizabeth only hesitated a moment before, right hand on the stake in her bag, she pushed at the
door with her left. It opened easily.
Warily, she stepped inside. The shop was gloomy, with most of the sunlight blocked by the blinds, but she could still make out racks of coats and jackets and dresses. Too many places for a vampire to hide. If Jacob decided he wanted her blood as well as her money, she’d have to rely on her reflexes and hope they saved her from losing either.
She moved slowly inside, glancing around, deliberately brushing into the clothes to disturb anyone skulking beneath them. Halfway across the shop, a staircase ran up to a gallery full of hats, bags, belts, and other accessories, modeled on shadowy mannequins.
As she reached the middle of the floor, checking to the right and left, another shadow detached itself from under the stairs. Elizabeth halted, curling her fingers more tightly around the stake in her bag.
“Miss Not-Exactly-a-Hunter,” said the mocking voice she remembered. “I have your information. I hope you have my money.”
“If you lie to me, I’ll have your description spread around every hunter network and police force in the country. You’ll lose more than you’ve earned.”
“I get you,” Jacob said patiently, halting a respectful—or circumspect—two feet away from her. Slowly, he lifted one hand, palm upward in an unmistakable request.
With her left hand, Elizabeth drew the sheaf of money from her bag to let him see it. “Where?” she asked.
“They move around to make sure Travis’s boys don’t find them. But right now Severin and his bodyguard are at the Sheraton Hotel on Long Island. All together in room two twelve.”
She scanned his steady eyes. She’d never know if he was lying until she went there. If it was true, would she have time to get there and kill Severin before Saloman found her? Then at least it would be over; she’d have completed her mission.
Slowly, she extended her left hand with the money. “Thank you.”
Jacob smiled. “Thank you,” he said, closing the distance and reaching for the cash. But as he took it, his fingers touched hers, giving her an instant’s warning before they twisted, snaking up to seize her hand along with the dollar bills.
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