He considered Ivy in all her enthusiasm for the world as he experienced it. Perhaps it was time to create a new slave. She could prove useful if he had to spend much time away from his normal haunts and habits on this investigation.
“Your coffeemaker just beeped,” he told Ivy. “Orange.”
She glared.
When she didn’t move, Christopher fetched a pair of mugs off wall hooks and poured for both of them. He saw she wasn’t having anything to do with further contact, so rather than have her flinch away from him, he left her mug on the counter.
“Tell me about vampire hunting,” he said after he’d taken a long, hot gulp. “Have you killed many?”
Dangerous territory, this. He didn’t expect her to talk to him about it.
“Why were we in each other’s dreams?” she asked. “What does that mean?”
She was braver than he was to bring that up. Not foolhardy. The woman burned with a deep core of curiosity. She wanted to know about everything. She refreshed him.
“Do you really want to think about that?”
She shook her head, accepting discouragement.
“Neither do I,” he said. “Tell me about Chicago vampire hunters.”
She shook her head.
He sipped coffee. Ivy sidled forward and took a drink from her own cup.
“Tell me about your family, then. Or is that the same as talking about Chicago vampire hunters?”
“Let’s talk about you,” she countered. “Why did we dream about Jack the Ripper last night—day?”
“How do you know about synesthesia?”
She literally stomped her foot in frustration. He had to laugh.
“Why can’t we have a single, simple, straightforward conversation for once?” she demanded.
“I’m not sure that’s possible when we’re both trying not to tell each other anything.”
“But—we’ve been in each other’s minds. How can we not tell each other anything?” After a puzzled pause, she asked, “Did what I just said make any sense?”
“Yes. But probably only because we have been inside each other’s—dreams.”
He couldn’t admit to her that their minds had touched, that they’d somehow flown together when he didn’t know how that was possible.
“Yeah,” Ivy said, and made a face like she’d tasted something bad. “Euww—who wants to know how a vampire thinks?”
“It might be useful in your work,” he pointed out. “And I discovered a frivolous mortal with terrible taste in clothing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You were dressed like a pantomime gypsy.”
“I’m not the one who came up with the Death in Whitechapel scenario. Did you really know Jack the Ripper?”
Christopher sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “We met briefly.”
Excitement glowed pink around her.
“Who was he?” she asked.
“I have no idea.”
“I’ve always liked the theory that he was Queen Victoria’s heir, but there’s really no solid evidence for that. The new theory that he was a famous artist is—”
“Do you know something about everything? Or do you just make things up as you go along?”
“Note all the books lying around the place,” she countered. “You don’t have to live for a thousand years to know something about history,” she shot back angrily.
“I’ve hardly been around for a thousand years.”
“Do vampires live through history without bothering to study anything about it?”
“Do you think I think history is nothing more than a hobby for mortals?”
“Probably.”
“You don’t know what I think about anything.”
“And you don’t know me.”
Christopher finally noticed that they were now leaning across the counter, nose to nose with each other. He took a step back. “Right. Calm down. There’s no need for us to bicker like a pair of old marrieds.”
She rubbed her bruised shoulders. “What the hell is a pantomime gypsy?”
“Not arguing anymore,” Christopher answered.
She was babbling. She knew it, and hated it. She’d always been amused at her cousin Paloma’s ability to jump from one subject to another at the speed of light. Now she found out it was a family trait. A rather unattractive one on me, Ivy thought. I’m reacting when I need to be thinking, doing.
She needed to get out of there, to get away from this monster. And he is a monster. First lesson, never forget vampires are monsters no matter how nice some of them might be individually.
She moved cautiously away from the fridge, squeezed past where he sat. Though he didn’t watch her go, she didn’t turn her back on him until she was well into the living room.
The bastard was leaning against the front door before she had a chance to get there. “There’s someone out there trying to hurt you,” he told her. “You’re safer here with me.”
“How do you define safe?”
“You’re not dead yet.”
That might actually be a pretty good definition of safe in their crazy world. And she and Christopher were members of a small, very small, minority of magic users. A minority that had been in danger of being destroyed by the much greater normal population for hundreds of years now.
Ivy considered making a broad statement about how she could take care of herself. But since she would be proclaiming that while imprisoned in her own home, such bravado would only be embarrassing in the end, even if she knew how self-sufficient she normally was.
“The night is wasting,” she said. “Why don’t we each get out there and do what we have to do? Alone. All by ourselves. Go. Have fun.” As long as you’re not killing anyone, she added to herself.
She’d been with him in dreams but really still had no idea what he wanted, why he was in Chicago, why she’d caught his attention. She wished she’d been able tell Selena more about him. Hopefully, mentioning him had been enough warning.
But if Christopher was the killer of those two kids in DeKalb, catching him wasn’t Selena’s job. It was hers.
“You’re looking very brave,” he said, coming forward. He reached his huge, horribly strong hands out toward her again.
Instead of flinching away, she shocked herself by leaning toward his touch.
Christopher held Ivy’s face between his hands, soft and sweet as peaches. He breathed in her heat, saw bravery in the blood rushing under her tender skin.
He brought his lips closer to hers. She was anything but surprised by his intentions.
“No biting,” she said.
Kissing her was the only way to shut her up. With telepathy, even that wasn’t likely to last for long. Unless they could distract each other to the point where words meant nothing. Reach the point where sensuality totally overruled thought.
Her mouth was hotter and sweeter than when their souls kissed in the dream. Her reaction was stronger, the thrust of her tongue more demanding. Desire seared through her, caution and fear burning to ash, sensation hovered on the edge of addiction. Blood or no blood, he could taste it.
She belonged to him.
chapter fourteen
This was dangerous.
This was sexy beyond belief. This was hot and heady and—
His tongue played against hers.
Delicious.
He hadn’t held her like this before, gently, possessive, but with no threat. There was so much arousal and promise of more to come in his touch as he cupped her face, her breasts, her bottom. He’d held her tightly before, but they hadn’t been drawn together like this, hip to hip. Heat to heat.
They’d shared the bed, been close, but they hadn’t touched. Not really. Skin to skin.
They dragged off each other’s clothes, pulled and tugged and tossed away layers of shirts and pants and underwear in an awkward, feverish dance. Hands and mouths began to explore. Discover.
This was dangerous.
His lips touched and
skimmed her throat, left side, right, left again. Kisses paused on pulse points, moved on. She explored his lean body, her fingertips tracing his chest and down his sides. She dug her short nails into the wiry muscles of his back. Warning? Encouraging?
Dangerous. Dangerous. Dangerous. What fool thing was she doing?
“No more fool than I am,” Christopher groaned against her mouth between kisses.
He tasted of coffee and darkness. Hot with need. Eager. Pouring desire into her, pulling it out of her.
He kissed each of her bruised shoulders, slowly, gently, tracing his lips down to her breasts and belly. He waited, urging with his hands, his mouth, and all the powers within him. It would be so easy for him to take. So easy for her to be claimed and taken. But he waited.
No excuses allowed for later. Free will. What a bitch that was.
Dangerous.
His arousing fingers danced down her belly, between her legs, inside the wet heat of her core.
“Sweet Goddess!” she groaned, convulsing with pleasure.
Rising fire raced through Ivy. Need beyond any she’d ever known begged for more.
“Free will, my ass,” she muttered, her lips against his shoulder. She licked his hot skin, breathed him in.
“You can still say no,” he whispered in her ear. While his fingers teased her swollen clit.
“Hell, no!” She gasped through the lightning running through her.
“I’ll take that as yes.”
The vampire picked her up and put her on the bed. Just as well—she couldn’t have stood if he let her go.
She clung to him, arched against him as his body covered hers.
Should never have kissed him, inside or out of her head.
Caution swept away. Every bit of psychic shielding melted. She became as vulnerable as any other mortal, but wasn’t naked alone.
What color is sex?”
“Green,” Christopher answered, before he realized what she meant.
He paused, hovering with his weight on his arms. Her thighs were wrapped around his hips, steadying him. No one had every asked him how he perceived sex before. He grinned down at her.
“Green right now,” he said. “Summer grass in hot sunlight.”
It was November, and he was a long time from feeling the sun, but right now, Ivy was a summer day.
“Mmmmm…nice…” She squirmed and lifted her hips against him. Her fingers curled around the base of his cock, then cupped his balls. “Green is good,” she added as he gasped with pleasure.
He thrust into her again, resuming the rhythm broken by her unexpected words. All his perception flew into the colors of primal sensation. He was soaked in grass green, surrounded by her green velvet body. When electric green fire exploded through him and around him, she came with him, adding a blending burst of burning turquoise to their shared orgasm.
“Green,” he said as his spent body dropped heavily onto hers. She made a sound that was half grunt, half laugh. Her skin sparkled with sweat and satisfaction. He kissed her forehead, her nose; his lips lingered against her soft, sexy mouth. “Next time we’ll try for red.”
“Purple would be nice,” she said.
He shook his head. “Too much melodrama involved in purple.”
“Vampires never do melodrama,” she agreed.
“Never.” He bit her nipple, but not hard enough to break the sensitive skin. He looked up to meet Ivy’s gaze as he began to suckle the hardening bud. But we can add enough excitement to liven up a girl’s night.
Ivy’s laugh was low and dirty. Her hand pressed his head to her breast. Her breath caught as she said, “Go ahead, then. Prove it. Again.”
chapter fifteen
Christopher lay on his side, head propped on one arm, his fingers slowly circling one of Ivy’s fine, round breasts. “Perfect size,” he said. “I reckon they’d fit into a champagne glass.”
“Why would I want my boob in a champagne glass? Some sort of Lady Gaga costume?”
He almost reluctantly lifted his worshipful gaze from her perfect bosom to her pert and pretty face. He was rewarded by the puzzlement in her eyes. “Something you don’t know? Lovely.”
Her puzzlement cleared on a crystal tinkle of memory. She had such a bright mind. “I remember now. Weren’t champagne glasses designed to look like Madame du Barry’s breasts?”
He rested his hand on her stomach. She was curved in all the right places, but the girl was a hard body. Vampire hunters had to work out a lot, he supposed.
“Wasn’t it Madame Pompadour’s breasts?” he asked.
“No. I think it was du Barry, or some other mistress of Louis XV. Pompadour was far too classy to flash her boobs at a glassblower.”
He showed that he was still a man of Victorian sensibilities. “How much of a lady does a king’s mistress need to be?”
“I say she was a lady.”
“She was no better than she ought to be.”
Ivy gave an offended sniff. “She was a grand, intelligent noblewoman, more or less virtuous. I ought to know, I was Pompadour in a former life.”
It was Christopher’s turn to be puzzled. “You don’t look your age.”
“Neither do you. What is your age anyway?”
“A lot older than you. What do you mean you were old Louis’s mistress? Trying to make me jealous?”
Ivy blushed a bit, and explained, “I’ve done some past-life regressions—guided self-hypnosis stuff to remember reincarnations. My aunt teaches classes like that to—”
He watched curiously as she chose her next word carefully. Her first choice was gajo, but she settled on a more politically correct option.
“—civilians.”
“Dabblers in the occult,” he offered. “Seekers of esoteric truth?”
“Yeah, them. Anyway, I’ve tried reincarnation regressions a time or two. I imagined I was Pompadour of all people in a past life. I never thought I’d have been a famous French aristocrat. But that’s what floated up out of my subconscious.”
“You don’t really believe in reincarnation, do you?”
She shrugged.
He liked the way it made her bare breasts sway. Lovely nipples. He wanted to bite them—in the right way, without restraint instead of teasing nips that drew no blood. He wanted to bite her in all sorts of places, needle-sharp fangs branding her, bringing blood and pleasure. She’d be a happy pincushion when he was—
Christopher forced his attention back to the conversation. Something about the past-life-memories nonsense they were spouting tickled his senses, told him to let it flow, there was something there.
“I think reincarnation is certainly a possibility,” Ivy said. “But was I Madame de Pompadour? I seriously doubt it. I’ve absorbed a lot of information from history books and movies and LARPs to trust any memory from a hypnosis session.”
“Not to mention what you might have picked up from wandering around in other people’s dreams.”
Ivy tensed and rolled away from the pleasant questing of Christopher’s hands. She sat up on the opposite side of the bed from him, her back to him. Back turned to a vampire, how stupid was that? “I don’t dream walk,” she said. “I can’t do that.”
“Some mortals can. Surely you know about astral projection.”
“Never tried it.”
“Controlled dreaming.”
“Heard about it. Never tried it.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. He was sitting cross-legged on the bed. One of his bony knees touched the base of her spine. There was something too cozy and comfortable in that simple touch.
“Remote sensing?” he asked.
Ivy shook her head. “What’s that?”
He flashed that wide grin at her. “Could there be something I know about that you don’t?”
“You are an ancient and learned strigoi lord,” she intoned.
“Not that ancient. Not a lord.”
“But what are you? Who are you?”
He nudged her with
a knee. “Naughty girl, sleeping with a stranger.” He reached for her, pulled her onto his naked lap. She squirmed against his hardening penis.
“What’s remote sensing?” she asked.
He turned her to face him. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Her moving got a groan out of him. “More sex, less talking, woman.”
She put her hand around the base of his cock, ran her thumb delicately up and down. “Well?”
“Just astral projection, but governments call secret espionage programs using it remote sensing.”
“More green, less talk.”
She guided him inside her, rocked back and forth. Goddess, but he filled her so perfectly!
“No biting,” she said, when he pulled her tighter against him.
“Don’t you want to be a vampire?” Christopher whispered in her ear. He teased her earlobe with his lips.
She didn’t want him to know the truth.
“No,” she answered.
She leaned backwards onto the mattress, and he went with her.
Ivy went to sleep after they had sex. It was just as well, as Christopher didn’t want to drag her along on his own vampire-hunting expedition. There was no doubt that the mortal girl knew far more about the city’s magical inhabitants than he did, and he’d drain every drop of that information from her. But she needed her rest right now.
Besides, he wasn’t going to carry out his assignment under the eyes of any mortal—even one he was probably keeping as his own. Or he might yet kill her if she proved too troublesome, too duplicitous.
He watched her as he put his clothes on. He saw her breath as a satin cloud, her scent was stormy music—something by Saint-Saëns, perhaps. No, Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky. What an odd way to sense a perky Midwestern American girl, but his brain didn’t work right, did it?
He allowed his freakish nature to roam over her in the few minutes it took him to get ready. In over a century as a strigoi, he’d learned ways to pull his synesthesia back, make it a minor part of the more important psychic senses so necessary for hunting. Normally, the freak senses only added a bit of spice. Sometimes they told him the truth, but only in such an encoded, subconscious way that it was too much work to try to figure out. A light would go off months after an event, and he’d think, Oh, that’s what that meant. Useless.
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