The Perfect Ten Boxed Set

by Dianna Love

  “Unscathed?” She snorted. “My life has been threatened twice, once by bite and once by bomb. I was whisked away in the night and left to deal with the knowledge that my boss is playing for the skins team when I thought he was playing for the shirts, and now—” Her voice broke. Mortified, she turned away.

  Damn, damn and damn again. She was going to cry. No, she was already crying. He detected the betraying salt smell of her tears.

  “I’m sorry, I’m suddenly not feeling all that resilient.”

  He suppressed a groan. Every chivalrous instinct he owned urged him to take her in his arms, offer her the physical comfort she so clearly needed. Except there were other instincts to be considered. Like the call of her blood to his, the all-but-audible surge of it in her veins…

  Damn, maybe he should call Eli.

  Her head snapped up. “Don’t even suggest it!”

  What the hell? “Pardon me?”

  “Don’t you dare offer Eli for me to use as some kind of security blanket.” She dashed tears away with the back of her hand.

  By all the saints, she’d done it again! Deduced his thoughts as though she’d plucked them straight from his head. Just like the other time, when he’d gone out to find Webber. He scowled. And drew a shield tight around his thoughts.

  “There you go again, thinking you can read my mind. For your information, Nurse Crawford, I was not about to offer Eli’s services, in that or any other respect.” Hearing his own words, Delano could almost credit them. He hoped she would, too. “Believe it or not, there are one or two things I can do for myself without resorting to a proxy.” Pray God this was one of them. He took her hand and pulled her toward him. “Now, come here. My shoulder is quite up to the job, I assure you.”

  He expected an argument. Wariness. At the very least, he expected to have to reassure her that such intimate contact was perfectly safe. That having fed mere moments ago, he was unlikely to be overcome with lust. But she turned into his arms with a choked sob, making it unnecessary for him to utter yet another lie.

  “I’m sorry.” The words were mumbled against his shirt. “I never do this. Really. I’m always the one who holds it together.”

  “Hush, Ainsley. I know. Don’t worry about it.”

  His arms closed awkwardly around her, and her arms gripped back as though he were a lifeline. Her breath warmed his chest through his shirt, and he felt a fine tremor shudder through her. And oh Jesus God, it was good to feel the touch of another human, let alone the press of a woman’s flesh against his own. How long had it been?

  Very quickly, the steady thudding of her heart impinged on his awareness, distracting him from the simple comfort of warm contact. He felt the pumping of her heart as distinctly as his own. At this range, the muted surge and whisper of her blood became a roaring in his ears. To his heightened senses, her body felt like a blazing furnace, even through the layers of clothing they wore, and her heated scent rose to tantalize his nostrils.

  He tried to keep a lid on things, reminding himself that she was distraught. She needed his comfort, not his lust. Even now her tears burned him through the fine cotton of his shirt, and sobs wracked her body.

  Despite his best efforts, a sensory image of how she would taste — her lips, her skin, her blood — flooded his senses…

  Jesus, Bowen. Get hold of yourself!

  He fixed on her heart sounds, imagining the corresponding functions. Better.

  Right atrium contracting. Now, the right ventricle. Back surge as the blood tried to flow back into the right atrium. Both right and left atrioventricular valves closing.

  Lub.

  Pressure building, blood squeezing out of the right ventricle, through the pulmonary semilunar valve, and into the pulmonary artery. Pulmonary semilunar valve and the aortic semilunar valve closing.

  Dub.

  Lub, dub. Lub, dub. Lub, dub.

  No, no, no. Not good. Tune it out. Think of something else!

  He found himself stroking her hair, though he had no conscious memory of lifting his hand to her head. Lord, it was like spun silk, fine and warm and fragrant and straighter even than his own. His fingers itched to pull out the clasp that trapped it in that twist at her nape, but that would never do. Such actions were for lovers. And he would never — could never — be that.

  For to taste her might be to die.

  His blood cooled fractionally.

  At the same moment, she pulled back, wiping her eyes. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. That was … embarrassing.”

  Delano stepped back. Thank God. Space. Layers of air between them. He could breathe again.

  “No, that was merely human, Ainsley. In the last week, you’ve had to absorb more than most people could cope with and still keep their sanity. I think a few tears are allowed.”

  She laughed, daubing at her eyes again. “Well, that was more than a few tears, but thank you. I guess everything just sort of caught up with me.”

  He nodded. “Exactly so. And if you don’t feel like returning to work under the circumstances, I will understand entirely. Of course, whether you attend the clinics or not, I will see that your salary is deposited.”

  Her chin came up. Her violet eyes, washed almost blue from her tears, sparkled with temper.

  “My need is great, as you’ve pointed out on numerous occasions, and your pockets are clearly very deep, but I could hardly take your money if I’m not working.”

  “Nonsense. You wouldn’t be in this position if you hadn’t answered my advertisement.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Had you not answered my ad, you would not have ventured near that alley, and thus you would not have been savaged by Edward Webber. And had you not been bitten, you would not have been under my care, indeed under my roof, when Janecek attacked. In short, you would not be here, in the particular situation in which you find yourself. So, whether you choose to work or not, your salary will continue.”

  She inclined her head. “That’s very generous of you, Dr. Bowen, but I insist on earning my pay. But before you rush to canonize me, you should know that I’ll be insisting on something else.”

  Something else? His pulse kicked. “And what would that be?”

  “Danger pay.” She fixed him with a steely look. “I think twenty-five percent over the basic compensation package ought to do it.”

  Danger pay? That was all she wanted? He’d been half afraid she was going to try to extract something much harder for him to give. Money, however, was not a problem. Hell, he could easily afford to pay her ten times the salary she was earning, and he wouldn’t begrudge a penny of it. Unfortunately, he couldn’t risk handing her so much money that her financial pressures evaporated altogether. Her financial need was a major tool in keeping her close. But surely twenty-five percent he could do without jeopardizing the situation. And she was quite right — danger pay was definitely in order.

  Still, he mustn’t grant the concession too easily. She wasn’t the type to enjoy a victory if it were too readily ceded.

  “Twenty-five percent over an already generous base?” He lifted his eyebrows in what he hoped conveyed surprise. “You realize our armed forces would be lucky to get that, even as they march into imminent danger.”

  “Twenty-five percent,” she repeated. “And as far as I’m concerned, we are in imminent danger. You’re lucky I’m not asking for it retroactively.”

  “Then excuse me while I thank my lucky stars.”

  Her chin came up higher. “No need for sarcasm, Dr. Bowen. Oh, and I expect you’ll make the same adjustment for Eli.”

  Delano’s snort of disbelief was genuine. “You’re bargaining for Eli now? What’s this? A union?”

  “Both of us. Twenty-five percent.”

  Wait until Eli heard about this! He already protested that Delano paid him far too much. “What about the security I’ll be providing? Throw the cost of that in with the compensation package, and it’s a pricey office overhead I’ll be paying.”

 
“True, but it’s a risky enterprise you’re engaged in, particularly here, where your activities will be unsanctioned, in an underground clinic.”

  Delano thought about prolonging the exchange just to keep her looking at him with that fire of determination in her eyes. But the time had come to cede her point.

  “You make a good argument, Nurse Crawford.” He pretended to consider the issue for another moment. “Okay, twenty-five percent it is, for both of you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now, if there’s nothing else, I really must be going. I need to make contact with potential clients.”

  The change of subject left her blinking. “You’re going trolling for vampires?”

  “Precisely. We have to get the word out on the street if we expect to do business by tomorrow night.”

  “Of course.”

  He started to move toward the door when she spoke again.

  “Delano?”

  He turned back toward her. “Yes?”

  “Be careful.”

  He knew she wasn’t alluding to the law-abiding vampires he’d be recruiting in the all night establishments down on the street. She meant Janecek.

  Something lurched painfully inside of him, something rusty that hadn’t moved in a long time. He turned away from the concern in her eyes before it undid him.

  “I’m always careful,” he said. Then he left.

  Chapter 8

  AINSLEY FOUND Eli on the phone.

  “Can you hold on just a sec?” he said into the telephone, then covered the mouthpiece. His eyes took in her face, which was no doubt still blotchy and hideous from that crying jag. “You okay?”

  She grimaced. “Small meltdown, but I’m better now.”

  “Long overdue, you ask me.” He gestured toward her suite of rooms. “We got you some clothes, if you’d like to ditch that shirt. Not that there’s anything wrong with you in that shirt, you understand.”

  She laughed, buoyed by his easy, uncomplicated masculine appreciation. “Thanks. I’ll go check them out.” It occurred to her to tell him about his new pay hike, but thought better of it, seeing as he was in the middle of something. She waved him back to his phone conversation and headed for her rooms.

  Ten minutes later, she’d examined everything in the four bags piled on her bed.

  Two pairs of flat-front trousers, size 10, one pair chocolate brown, the other navy, just like the ones she’d left in St. Cloud. Two Eddie Bauer wrinkle-resistant, two-pleat khaki pants. One pair of designer jeans she knew must have cost the earth because, in a fit of self-indulgence, she’d paid $80 for an identical pair at a 75% off sale. A waffle-knit top, a long-sleeved v-neck tee, a ribbed v-neck sweater. Two Oxford shirts, one long sleeved and one short. A couple of tanks. The pants were precisely the same issue as the ones she’d abandoned, and the tops were close enough.

  The final bag contained underwear. 36C underwire bras that fit, along with matching thongs and boy shorts and hip-hugging briefs. Underwear that mirrored almost exactly the intimates she’d left behind, though the stuff back home had seen better days.

  Definitely not Delano’s work. The very versatile Eli must have phoned back to the house in St. Cloud to get the particulars of her wardrobe, then paid a shopper to reproduce it as closely as possible. No wonder he was so invaluable to Delano.

  Ainsley tossed the underwear into a drawer, gathered the clothes off the bed and hung them in the closet. Then she stretched out on the bed.

  Lord, she was tired. Bone-deep weary, the way she used to get after stringing together too many consecutive 12s at the hospital. Except she didn’t have long shifts to blame for her exhaustion this time. Just one nasty, psyche-rattling shock after another. But at least she knew the score, now.

  Or did she?

  Delano didn’t seem like he was hiding anything more from her. Of course, she hadn’t thought he’d been hiding anything significant before, and look how wrong she’d been.

  She sat up on the bed, drawing her knees up and hugging them to her chest. How was it possible that she could read him so easily one moment — God, it was freaky … like she could hear his very thoughts — only to discover he’d effortlessly concealed something as humongous and critical as, “Oh, by the way, I’m a vampire.”

  Unless he projected the things he wanted her to know, or things he flat out just didn’t care if she knew, but shielded the rest?

  She lifted her chin off her knees. Dear God, she was starting to think about this stuff as though she really had some kind of weird telepathic connection with Delano Bowen! How bizarre was that?

  “Argh!” She flopped back against the pillows again.

  Her eyes, still slightly puffy from crying, wanted to close, so she let them. God, but it would be good to just crash. If only she could shut her mind down like a computer. Clear the cache. Ctl-Alt-Del. Re-friggin’-boot. That’s what she needed to do. If she could just sleep, she could forget about vampires for a while. And Delano’s murderous nemesis Janecek. And her possible infection with the vampirism virus. And the way Delano’s hot, black gaze had burned straight back into hers, touching her soul.

  Her lids sprang open. That was no way to think. Nobody touched her soul, not without her permission. And she was extremely picky.

  She let her lids drift closed again. It felt so good to close her burning eyes. But aaaaaaahhhhh, she couldn’t sleep. Not now. Not yet. If Delano was planning to have a clinic up and running by tomorrow night, she’d better stick to the night rhythms, and sleep by day.

  Besides which, if he were hiding something more from her, she’d have to match his hours so she could keep an eye on him. Groaning, she rolled off the bed and headed for the shower.

  Delano stayed out until almost 4:30.

  By 2:30, he’d already recruited more candidates than he needed. After all, these were familiar stomping grounds. He knew where to find the usual suspects. But he just wasn’t ready to go back that soon. So he inserted himself into the current of humanity moving from bar to bar to after-hours club.

  From Ste-Catherine Street, he moved northward along St-Denis Street, through the Quartier Latin, letting the scent of sweat and sex and booze and perfume and high spirits wash over him. He rarely walked among people like this, choosing not to torture himself with what he could not have. What he could not be. Except tonight, the hot, bright, slightly desperate gaiety was his salvation. Sweet, sweet distraction.

  Eventually the sky started to lighten in the East. Only then did he head back in the direction of the high-rise.

  It was her fault, dammit. The smell of her, the sound of her pulse, the way it quickened when he moved close to her. He’d had to tell her, had to show her, what the blood lust did to his kind. But she hadn’t recoiled from him, as he half hoped she would. Instead she’d offered him her slender, delectable, innocent white throat. It had taken every shred of discipline he could summon to step back.

  And this even knowing it could be the death of him. Literally.

  Damn Edward Webber to the furthest reaches of hell for muddying the waters. Delano still didn’t know if it was Ainsley’s blood itself that killed the rogue outright, or whether her blood merely started a rapid reversal of the mutation.

  The legends were murky. This particular strain of the Merzetti family was said to be lethal for vampires. But interestingly, not all vampires who partook of the blood died. According to the old tomes that Delano had unearthed, some vampires who infused themselves with the fabled toxic blood were reputed to have been mysteriously restored to a “state of grace”. Delano interpreted that to mean their mutation was reversed, leaving them once again human.

  And knowing what medical science now knew about transfusion medicine, it was entirely possible that those who died did so because the Merzetti blood reverted them to type, so to speak. Unaware of what was happening internally, they might have gone on to feed upon another victim whose ABO type was incompatible to their resurrected blood type.

  Is that what happe
ned with Webber? Would the Merzetti blood have killed him outright, even if he hadn’t taken the second victim’s blood? Or had the Merzetti blood already reset his genetic code, setting off the reversal?

  Somehow, he hadn’t imagined the reversal could be so quick. But why not?

  Certainly the original mutation had acted quickly enough. Contrary to what he’d led Ainsley to believe, it generally took just over twenty-four hours for the change to begin, once the virus was imparted. Thirty at the outside. Why shouldn’t the reversal be equally expeditious?

  Clearly, what he needed to do was orchestrate another attack on Ainsley. Only this time, he’d be right there, right goddamn there, to monitor the situation. It had been frighteningly close the last time. The shock of the blood loss might have killed her if he’d been a moment later arriving.

  The thing that had lurched in his chest earlier made another jerking wrench. His hand went to his breastbone as though to still the pain.

  Damnation. This couldn’t possibly be good. It happened every time he thought about putting her in the path of another rogue. But it had to be done. He didn’t see a way around it.

  And dear Lord, all that talk about taking blood from a sexual partner. It made him hard just to think about it. Hard and angry with himself.

  Oh, it was all true, the incomparable rush, the full-on body-brain-soul connection. But what he’d failed to tell Ainsley was that he hadn’t shared that sacred act with a living soul in almost 80 years.

  How safe would she feel in his penthouse if she knew that?

  And, oh Christ, how safe was he?

  Well, that was a question for tomorrow. Tonight was all but gone. He glanced to the eastern horizon and picked up his pace.

  Two minutes later, he entered the building’s lobby, only to be braced by security. The shift must have changed in the night, because the security guard was different than the one he’d passed on his way out earlier. This one was older, military haircut, and clearly unimpressed by Delano’s claim to be the owner of the building. As was the German Shepherd at his side.