“I was very fortunate, Sir. I’m a Junior Exhibition Coordinator. I guess I was just in the right place at the right time, and I agreed to take the historically small salary…”
Enough, Rick thought, I want to see her eyes. He extended his arm across the table, and with two fingers gently raised her chin to emphasize his interest. “I’ve known you for ten minutes and I already know it was more than luck,” he countered warmly, and then turned up his intensity. “What made you get involved in this vampire role-play thing?”
“Oh.” Anna studied the moisture dripping down her chilled glass and squirmed. “I guess I missed, you know…”
There goes our eye contact, Rick thought irritably. Lost to embarrassment. “You missed us, not the bite?” Rick sat back flabbergasted and crossed his arms over his chest, preparing himself to read her more accurately.
“Well, yes, Sir. I mean, I never really understood why Matt banned me…”
There was a beat of silence between them. The raucous squeal of two donors entering the bar broke their stares.
“Anna.” Please, just look at me! Rick’s tone became serious. “I know exactly why Matt banned you.” That got her head up!
“Well, it was decent of him to tell me! I’ve never been fired before!”
Rick ran his finger down the bridge of his nose, and stopped to stroke his bottom lip, rolling his mental dice. If he told her the truth, would she take her fine innocent ass back to her mortal reality? Go for broke, Rick decided, sitting a bit straighter.
“He thought you were too young.” He watched for her reaction, but his words didn’t seem to offend her as he expected. “Matt felt you were too special to get involved with us.”
Anna’s brows knit. She pouted, earning her Rick’s closing statement.
“Anna, it was a compliment.” He forestalled her further protest with a raised hand. “I know it didn’t feel that way to you at the time.”
“Yeah, well… May I ask you something, Sir?”
Rick nodded, primed to be blindsided.
“This woman Matt married…is she a vampire?”
And…we’re back to Matt. “Why does that matter?” Rick’s lips curled in a juvenile smile as he held his glass and slowly rotated the cocktail straw around the rim. “Matt, Matt, Matt.”
Anna slid her glass forward as she leaned toward Rick. Her lips tightened around the red cocktail straw as she drew cola into her mouth. His eyes riveted to her unconscious show. As much as he wanted to banish the thought, he could feel her lips drawing on his cock. She swallowed hard, and he swallowed harder.
“Won’t you tell me?” Anna prodded as she stared up at him.
Now I get unlimited eye contact. Rick tapped a nervous finger on the table before he shifted sideways in the booth in an effort to adjust himself. He inhaled, measuring the room’s pheromones. A glance around confirmed he was the only vampire in the room, and yet, he was the one feeling cornered.
Ego protesting, he aimed for a brotherly tilt of his head and tone of voice when he spoke. “You knew Matt, he’d never get involved with a mortal. Yes. She’s a vampire.”
“Okay.” Her reply was barely audible. “So, if he’s married now, may I come back?”
Not in a million years. Rick was silent for a long beat, studying her. “I would have to get Matt’s signature on that.”
Anna’s smile fell like hope evaporating.
“Matt and I don’t share the same opinion about vamp/mortal interactions. You know what stumps me? From what I hear, you’re really not into BDSM. If Matt’s off the table, why would you want to come back?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but seemed at a loss for a reply.
“Don’t answer tonight. You think about that for a while and get back to me.”
“Yes, Sir.” Anna breathed.
“You’ve graduated from college. You have a career. Do you have family nearby? You date—and I don’t mean that vampire-role-play guy?”
“Oh, I’m not dating Carl Sterling, Sir. He’s a silver-plated jerk. I’m not dating anyone right now. And my family, well,” her mouth turned down. “They’re on the other side of the States.”
Rick scowled. “You started to think of us as your family?”
“I…sort of…I guess.” She added quickly, “Sir.”
“It’s time we found you some mortals to bond with.”
Anna gave him a dazed nod.
“If you’re through with your drink, I’ll see you to your car.”
She hurriedly drained her glass. “Yes, Sir.”
* * * *
“Tomorrow is Sunday,” Rick started as they emerged from the parking garage elevator. He found his hand gravitating to the small of her back. He wanted to ask what her plans were for the day. Not a good idea. “So, Sterling leaves for his cruise on Monday?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I’m sure you’re working all day. What time do you plan to go by and feed the hound?”
“Around six.”
“Excellent. Text me the address and I’ll meet you there.” He frowned. “Wait, you don’t have my number, do you? Give me your phone.”
She dropped it in his outstretched palm and he added his info to the address book.
“There now, that’s my private number. Emphasis on private; if this number goes anywhere I’ll know where they got it.”
Anna blushed, and Rick could not resist inhaling a whiff of her tempting scent, so infused with that odd mixture of obedience and obstinance. He guessed the seclusion from her family had taught her to be indomitable as well as sensitive. That was good; she’d need that combination to be successful in life.
He handed her into her car, a tiny skateboard of a thing no one should drive in L.A. “Thank you for looking out for us, Cupcake,” he said in dismissal, and bent to kiss her cheek. “Until Monday.”
“Yes, Sir. Until Monday.”
Rick watched her touch her cheek in wonderment as she backed out of the parking space. His cock stirred for the second time this evening.
A lumbering hulk of an SUV nearly ran her into the wall as he watched. Anna waited patiently for the larger car to pass, but Rick was irked. Damn that wretched little car of hers, he thought. He would have to do something about it. He wondered if it had been a family graduation present, since it was a new model. If it was, they certainly didn’t know anything about driving California freeways. He knew winning the prized position of Junior Exhibition Coordinator was more than luck. Matt’s fine hand was in it, Rick was sure. C.G.I. was a generous supporter of the LAC Museum of Art, but dammit, they needed to come up with a better salary. A girl couldn’t live on a tiny salary in Los Angeles… He walked back to the lobby whistling. He couldn’t remember the last time he whistled.
* * * *
Despite his current diversion with the delectable Anna, Rick was beginning to sense a brooding malevolence toward his undead Family. Methodically, he undressed and showered the outside away. Before the World Wide Web, it had been easy to ‘be’ someone for ten to fifteen years, and then, with a competent attorney, he’d bequeath every worldly possession to his ‘son’ and relocate to another thriving city. He suspected C.G.I. had overstayed their market visibility in L.A. Despite the financial hit they would take for relocating, they should trade familiarity for survival. One vampire hunter was enough to incite a torch-bearing mob.
With tonight’s discovery, Rick was entirely rethinking North and South America as a preferred location. Switzerland was looking better with each pulse of the shower. He hoped fatigue would overtake him as he went horizontal and closed his dry eyes. Within his tomb, silence ticked and Rick began to fidget. Generally, he took the same corpse-like position each morning. This morn he twisted left to right until he rose fitfully and found sanctuary in his soaking tub. Ice-cold water and a few drops of essential oils brought him down from an unaccustomed mental ledge. Rick’s eyelids grew heavy while he floated to tumultuous memories.
Chapter 3
Irela
nd, 1534
It had been a time of torment in Ireland, a time of total rebellion against English rule, to which his family had sworn allegiance. Rick had been Richard Fitzjarrald in those days, Duke of Erne, Earl of Mayo. His half-brother, Ian, led a rebellion earlier that year, and marched on Dublin intending to overthrow the English. Rick counseled against the rebellion and fought against the siege, but with Henry the Eighth paranoid and watchful of the Irish, he was in a perilous spot.
Rick was home for a respite between battles, when an itinerant craftsmen’s wagon broke down within sight of the castle. The most divine of women, Tsura, somehow managed to surmount the moat, scale the walls, evade his sentinels, and knock at the castle door. His presence in the great hall was all that kept her from death. His brothers wanted her beheaded, or at least jailed as a spy. Rick overrode them all and listened to her plight.
He was fascinated not only by her beauty, but by the fact her arrival at the castle door was virtually impossible. He was convinced she employed witchcraft, and with the difficulties he and his family faced, Rick was willing to engage any benign practice that gave them an edge. He personally led the rag-tag band to dry quarters in the farthest corner of his massive stables. Though he offered food, they declined it, only accepting jugs of the strongest red wine. That gave him pause, wondering if he’d admitted a band of drunkards.
Rick was an upright man, loyal to the King despite Henry’s suspicions, and due to be joined in marriage to a prominent lass. He never dabbled in any kind of magic; yet, as he observed the nocturnal group, he could not deny something about them was preternatural.
He never knew his parents, and grew up hearing stories of his father’s skills with the dark arts. Tales told at his brother’s knee suggested his dead father, the old Earl, rose once every seven years on New Year’s Eve and sang in the holiday as he danced a jig. If he was born of a man suspected of shapeshifting to a bird and flying away, why couldn’t he believe in creatures of the night?
Mass was endless that night. The rain had recently let up after two days of downpour, and Rick caught some fresh air sitting on a bench before the chapel. Absently, he honed his personal weapon while his thoughts turned to memories that were anything but pious. He recalled with relish watching Tsura bathe in the full moon’s light.
The glowing moon reflected off the water that caressed her and continued in sheets down her womanly form. Soft dimples sat over two luscious buttocks that drew down into strong thighs, and then shapely calves. She washed with her head up, eyes focused on the full moon, sweet lips wide open, drinking the rainwater. When she turned, Rick saw her exquisite breasts, ample and creamy smooth with rose-toned nipples honed hard and erect in the cold rain. One graceful hand lifted a plentiful bosom while the other ran slow circles around it with a bar of soap. She obviously enjoyed her own touch, and he found himself steely hard as she moved the soap over the dark bush of hair at the junction of her thighs. Rick shuddered. How he longed to move over that forbidden junction himself!
Lantern light shimmered along the surface of his gold and silver dirk. He found the play of light mesmerizing, especially when it danced along the facets of the bejeweled grip. Pulling his thoughts from Tsura, he considered he might need to use this weapon against his King in the near future if things went badly. It was not an option he wished to entertain.
In the few days he knew her, he often felt Tsura was privy to his most personal thoughts. She tapped into the tensions of Erne Castle, the hints of the King’s displeasure and rumors of traitorous deeds.
“You dwell on imaginings, your Grace. Do threats of a trial affright you?” she asked gently when she came upon him. She sat beside him without permission. “They could hang you. Why do you not flee?”
Rick shrugged. “My name and countenance are known. If I tried to flee, I would be held fast at the first border. And…” he heaved a resigned sigh, “to flee would be an act of cowardice.” Still, he resolutely sharpened the ornate but deadly weapon.
“I see no heroism in needless death,” Tsura countered, but then she was a woman, and women did not understand honor.
Rick could pretend indifference to himself, but he could not hide his true feelings from Tsura.
“Your generosity will be rewarded, my Lord,” she promised, placing a consoling kiss on his cheek. It was an unheard of thing to do, and Rick could only stare at her in disbelieving gratitude.
“Reward will have to come in the next world, it seems.”
Tsura’s dark eyes gleamed in the moonlight. She stood tall, with a raucous mane of ebony curls. Her flesh was translucent under the fine linen blouse falling off her shoulders. Coins trimmed the hem of the scarf around her luscious hips, and their clatter sang her invitation.
“You understand this is imminent, don’t you?” Tsura circled him, in the way a cat circles its prey.
“Is it that evident?” the young Rick stuttered out. He had scant experience with a woman this formidable. He only knew the attentions of the jejune milkmaids or the cook’s daughter in the haylofts. His length grew harder as Tsura’s circles drew closer. Her heady musk did not wash away even though she bathed in the pouring rain last night.
She strode toward Rick, and he felt she owned him. The difference between her aura and that of other women was her power. She embodied raw supremacy while looking every part an enchantress. She bent toward his ear, her breast brushing his shoulder, and whispered, “Think of my pussy, deep, pulsing, nakedly marking you.”
Rick’s entire body stiffened, his back ramrod straight. His ear tingled at the chill of her breath. Did she know or even sense that he could think of little else? Rick’s fantasies of making love with the possibility of being caught in the act with a milkmaid had been prominent on his forbidden list. Where on the list would he place this siren?
Rick drew in a centering breath. He yearned to take her hand and wend their way up to his bed. Hopefully, the staff would be bedded for the night, too content to rise at the sound of footsteps.
“Can you feel the way my body aches at the mere suggestion of your naked flesh, nothing between us, the promise of our immortal fusion?”
Rick rose to face her. His rising softened her stance for a moment before she stepped into his embrace. She ran her hand down his linen shirt, seeking the center slit. Furtively, she slipped within the soft linen to find his pecs, then lazily drew her nail around his nipple, finishing with a gentle pinch. He gasped as she pressed closer and ran her tongue at the seam of his lips.
“Do you taste my primal hunger for your seed filling my cunt, dripping from my womb, streaked hotly across my lips and tongue and pale skin?”
That was it. Rick dropped his dirk into its sheath and caught her up over his shoulder. He made haste up the curved back stone staircase, past the fewest of family bedrooms.
Tsura forbade him to light a candle as she drew back the heavy draperies. “Do you see how I crave you and long to possess no other?” As she stepped from window to window, Rick thought her eyes glowed in the moonlight.
“Can you see the need wrenching me from the peace of my rest? Your spirit called to me.”
“My…my spirit called to you?” His balls constricted at the thought. Rick watched his chamber brighten in the shafts of the full moon’s glow. Wasn’t he about to be joined in marriage till death do part? Shouldn’t he exercise his education of the female body before his wedding night? What if he was carried off in shackles and beheaded, and there was no wedding night?
Rick held an inviting hand out to her. “Was it a word, a gesture, a quality, a look?” His head tilted and she grinned and began to remove the coin-lined scarf at her hips.
Her lips curled as her soft voice declared, “It was your mind, your body, your face, your desire.”
Rick reached for her skirts, his tone doubtful. “My mind? My desire?”
“Am I not your fantasy?” Tsura seemed crestfallen at his question, although she allowed Rick to undo the ties at her blouse and her skirts.
This illicit real-life experience certainly surpassed his fantasy. Surely, it would assume such tremendous stature, it would steal him from an otherwise routine existence.
“Are you aware, your Grace, that you have overtaken my erotic imagination and yearning absolutely?” Now she moved with a lyrical gate, dancing between the shafts of moonlight, “And when you touch me, the pleasure will ripple across every inch of my body. You will mark my wanton desire indelibly, as I will mark yours.”
Then, in his chamber, she stood naked as she had when she bathed the night before. Yet she did not stand still; she quickly began dispatching Rick’s opulent garb, peeling layer after layer off his broad shoulders and slim hips. Tsura reduced him to only his braies as his cock strained to be released to her hands. It was a slow reveal that left him breathless.
Tsura’s saucy grin encouraged Rick to release the tie and drop his final piece of clothing. She let out a bit of a giddy cry at their joint nakedness, bounded onto the sumptuous feather bed, and threw back the bed linens. She lay there, spreading her thighs, arching her back, leading his hands to her luscious gaping sex.
Rick drew her into his lap, face to face with him, her legs coiling his hips, his turgid length pressed between them. Her arms rested along his shoulders while her hands finger-combed his coarse waves. He began to perspire, encouraging damp ringlets to gather around his face. Rick’s heat only increased as he pressed his face between her ample breasts and inhaled.
His hand found a place atop one full, fat breast. A moan escaped him as his other hand weighed and molded her other breast. Not since Archimedes weighed gold had anyone enjoyed weighing something so much. Her nipples were rose-kissed and rigid, her breasts full with desire.
Rick regarded her with curiosity. What engendered his fascination? Was it the deep and accented voice laced with carnal passion and erotic yearning? All angst evaporated, all guilt vanished, as Rick devoured her bouquet. He forced her breasts together and suckled both her rigid nipples at once. Tsura’s head fell back and rolled from side to side in ecstasy.
Blood Emerald Page 4
