He carried me to the bedroom and dropped me on the mattress, leaving my skirt hiked to the top of my thighs. He stepped back a good five feet and gave me a warning look as if something dangerous was about to happen.
I squirmed to slide the skirt higher and parted my legs a few more inches before looking back at him, letting him know I was ready and willing to take on that danger.
“Come here,” I breathed.
He shook his head slowly as his fists clenched and his eyes lowered. “Forgive me,” he whispered in a voice so quiet I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be heard.
“Forgive you? Whatever for?”
He ignored my question and began unbuttoning his shirt. His jacket hit the chair, and then he slid his crisp cotton shirt over his shoulders and tossed it next to the jacket. His fingers went for his belt but stopped after disengaging the buckle and releasing the button, leaving his pants hanging at the crease of his hips.
“Stop teasing me, baby,” I whispered as I spread my knees wider and rolled my head back.
Greer crooked his finger, instructing me to come to him. I obeyed because it meant I’d get him inside of me faster.
I stopped just within arm’s reach and we locked eyes. We stood like that, wordless for a good minute before he reached his hand around the small of my back and pulled me into him. His breath warmed my cheek as he ran his hand down the back of my thigh and inched my dress higher.
“Tell me to stop, Alex. Do it now, because a minute from now I won’t be able to.”
I shook my head as I buried my face in his naked chest and bit gently on his muscle. My nipples hardened as they rubbed against the fabric of my dress and pressed into his hot skin.
The carefully practiced escape from my dress wasn’t necessary after all, because his hand was already working the sash loose around my waist. It fell away from my hips and slipped over my shoulders, falling to the floor in a fluttering pool of vivid blue around my feet.
He raised my chin to bring my eyes to his as his other hand slipped past the silk and moved between my legs. I moaned as he pushed his fingers deeper, and before I could catch my breath, he was on his knees moving my legs apart.
“Oh, God,” I breathed, trying not to fall as his hands gripped my hips and pulled me closer. And then his tongue replaced his fingers, and my legs went completely boneless.
My back was against the bed before I could open my eyes. Greer gazed down at me while he unzipped his pants halfway. But just when I thought I couldn’t take another second of waiting, his fingers went still and he walked back toward the chair with his hands dragging cross his face.
“I can’t do this,” he gritted out, reaching for his shirt.
I jumped off the bed and wrapped my arms round his waist, pressing my cheek into his back, squeezing him so hard I was afraid I’d cut off the air to both of us. “I want you so bad I can’t breathe. If you leave, I’ll die. I’ll just die, Greer.”
A moment later, I was back on the bed. Greer worked his pants off in a matter of seconds and stood next to the bed naked, gazing at me like he wanted to eat me alive, his breathing so labored, it alarmed me.
“Are you all right, Greer?”
He swallowed hard. “No. I’m not all right.”
I propped myself up on the bed with my elbows, watching the man I loved refuse his own bride. And then I collapsed into a weeping, vulnerable mess. Tears burst from my eyes as I realized it was over. Our relationship was over before it even began.
Greer’s face sobered. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled me into him. “Stop.” His fingers swept the tears from my face. “I can’t stand it.”
“But you don’t want me,” I sobbed.
He stiffened against me, and then he turned my face to his and kissed me softly on the forehead.
I thought I’d break apart when he rose from the bed and walked to the other end of the room, standing in deep consideration, trying to come up with an amiable way to say goodbye to the girl he’d foolishly taken as his bride. Then he took a fortifying breath and came back toward the bed. His eyes flashed a brilliant blue as his lips parted and words came out of his mouth in poetic verse. They were beautiful, Latin or some other language I wasn’t fluent in. The words floated through the air like a soothing love song, elevating my desire and the need to have him inside of me.
“Lie back,” he said. “I’m going to show you just how much I want you.”
A swarm of bees circled through me as I did what he asked. I pushed myself higher on the bed and dropped my head to the pillow.
He moved his hand up my stomach and released the front clasp of my bra. My breasts bloomed as the delicate lace fell away. Then he moved down my torso and pulled the panties over my thighs and past my calves, leaving me completely exposed and open on the bed.
My modesty got the best of me, as I shyly pulled my legs up and covered the tips of my breasts with my elbows.
Greer slowly shook his head and reached for my wrists, gently pulling them away from my firm and erect nipples, revealing me to anything that might wander through the room. “Don’t ever do that,” he whispered. “Don’t ever hide from me.”
I blinked and shook my head in answer, letting him know I would never hide from him again. His body responded by growing harder, his erection straining toward the muscles of his stomach.
He climbed onto the bed and crawled over my body, moving my legs apart with his knee as he settled between them. I opened them wider to accommodate his long, muscular thighs, and he pushed deep inside of me.
“Greer,” I gasped from the sensation and the intense emotion flashing through every conceivable part of me. I dug my fingers into the rounds of his biceps and wrapped my legs tighter around his waist. He moved higher and pushed deeper, and all I could hear was the pounding of our hearts and the blood racing through our veins.
I promised never to hide from him again, but the heat in his eyes humbled and weakened me. It was too much, like being split open by the sword of God and letting every secret fly free, both breathtaking and terrifying as I met his raw gaze.
The tension broke as my face turned into the pillow. “No, no,” he whispered as he pulled my eyes back to his and the verse spilled from his mouth in an unintelligible river of sound. And then nothing mattered but our breathing and our rhythm, and the steady friction and pleasure as our bodies entwined into a single moving force. The sky seemed to explode as stars filled the room and I could feel him in my head, caressing my mind with the thought of never wanting anything but him.
A roar echoed off the walls as he strained against me and sent a quake through my body. Then he dropped to the bed beside me, panting like an animal after a long, zealous hunt.
“Fuck, Alex.” He turned to look at me as his face heated up again.
I reached for his Rolex, teetering on the edge of the nightstand from the force of the bed shaking the floor. “Leave it,” he said as his arms wrapped around my waist and pulled me on top of him, lowering me onto his hips until he was deep inside of me again. I moved against him as he met my body with equal force, his eyes beautiful and wild, while mine lit up the room with a soft glow that got brighter as we reached our second shattering climax.
We spent the rest of the night working each other to the point of exhaustion, and when neither of us could move another inch, he circled me and kissed the damp skin of my belly before laying his head on it and falling into a deep and satisfied coma.
I woke to the feeling of sandpaper running across my nose. Bear had managed to climb up the bedspread and was eager for me to get up.
“That, my friend, hurts.” I pushed him under the covers before he could lick my face again because cat tongues weren’t made for sensitive facial skin.
My head was pounding from the miniature marching band trapped inside my skull, and every muscle from my thighs to my waist ached as I swung my legs over the side of the bed. “Jesus, Bear. What did we do last night? Run a damn marathon?”
Either I w
as coming down with the flu, or I had a monster hangover. I don’t know which was worse.
One of Leda’s dresses was draped over the chair, and a pair of amazing shoes sat on the floor next to it. Leda must have left them. The black bra and panties tossed in the corner were a little more difficult to explain
“Did I go out last night?” I mumbled.
The smell of bacon and eggs floating down the hallway perked me up. At that moment, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than one of Sophia’s breakfast spreads and a very large cup of coffee. For the first time, I actually considered blowing off work. But it was inventory week so I didn’t dare. At least I had the late shift, which gave me all morning to recover from whatever it was making me feel like hell.
I took a long shower, and then got dressed and followed the smell to the kitchen. I grabbed a bagel from the counter before joining Sophia at the stove. A pot of tomato sauce sat on the back burner. “I love your sauces, Sophia, but I’m not putting that on my eggs.”
She took the pan of bacon off the burner and turned to look at me. Her hand went to that place on her hip that usually meant she was about to give me some Italian momma tongue, but before she could speak, her eyes moved over my shoulder to her approaching employer.
Greer walked into the kitchen and stopped when he saw me standing at the stove. He and Sophia glanced at each other and had one of those silent conversations I was never privy to.
“What?” I looked back and forth between the two of them, and then glanced down at my T-shirt to see if something was out of place. By the way they were both gawking at me, I figured I’d either done or said something the night before that I needed desperately to remember.
Sophia’s eyes went sideways to the cold sauce on the stove, and then back to mine. Her brow raised, and I could tell by her expression that she wasn’t the one who left it there. “Don’t look at me,” I shrugged, glancing at Greer, wondering if he was a closet cook.
Someone had to break the ice, so I grabbed a plate and piled it full of bacon and eggs and headed for the dining room. Greer followed with a cup of coffee. He sat across the table and stared at me without saying a word.
“You know, I really wish you would just say what’s on your mind, Greer.”
He was looking at me far too seriously. “Are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I mumbled around a mouthful of eggs.
Without answering, he continued watching me closely while I chewed my bacon. “Okay, you need to stop staring at me like that. If I did something stupid last night, just tell me.”
“I was just wondering—” He hesitated, his face twisting slightly before continuing. “I was wondering if you enjoyed your afternoon yesterday?”
“My afternoon?” I was about to make some comment about his obsessive interest in every mundane move I made, but I stopped when I realized I had no idea how my afternoon had gone. Then I remembered Isabetta Falcone showing up at the shop and Alasdair Templeton shoving a necklace in my face. Was that yesterday or the day before?
Sophia came into the dining room, placed a cup of espresso in front of me, and then glanced at Greer. “Drink,” she ordered. I preferred my coffee on the lighter side but took a sip of the powerful black brew to appease her.
“Sophia, did we have lunch yesterday?” I was beginning to remember fragments of an interesting conversation with the woman standing next to me. I shot my own glance at Greer as the conversation about her husband started to come back. “You were telling me about your daughter—and your husband.”
Greer’s eyes darted to Sophia. I detected a slight shake of her head as she looked back at him.
“We went shopping and we ate.” She made a sweeping motion with both hands as she headed back toward the kitchen. “I come in this morning and find uneaten food all over the place. Is a sin to waste good food.”
When I turned back to Greer, he was gazing at me intently, sending an uncomfortable flutter through me like he was about to drop a bombshell.
“Is that all you remember about yesterday?” he asked.
I glared back suspiciously. “Why?” He didn’t answer, and I knew there was a reason for that enormous headache I woke up with. “Should I remember something?”
He held my stare for a minute before his eyes dropped to the newspaper in his left hand. I noticed he was wearing a pair of warmup pants and a T-shirt. “Aren’t you going to the club today?”
“I was planning to take the morning off.” He scanned the front page of the paper as he spoke. “But I’ve changed my mind.” The paper landed on the table as he got up. “I’ll be at the club if there’s anything you need…or would like to discuss.”
An article in the lower left corner of the page caught my eye: THIRD WOMAN ATTACKED IN CENTRAL PARK.
The memory of the night I was attacked in the park came rushing back. It had been an entire season since it happened, but the headline made it all feel like it had happened just yesterday.
Number three. I wondered how many others hadn’t come forward because of the strange circumstances around how the Rogues handled their victims, poisoning them from a distance and scrambling their thoughts until they dropped to the ground willingly in some sort of hypnotic obedience. How do you convince yourself that it wasn’t your fault? How do you explain that to the NYPD?
Greer came back down the stairs dressed in a dark navy suit. He hesitated for a few seconds as he reached the bottom of the stairs, and I could feel him looking at me as I considered my half-eaten breakfast.
“What?” I asked when I caught him staring at me.
He just stood there mute like something was burning a hole in his tongue, something he considered carefully but chose not to say. A moment later, he stepped into the elevator and pushed the button.
As the elevator door shut, Constantine’s face popped into my head. The question had never been asked because it hadn’t occurred to me until that very moment to ask it. On that day in November when I was attacked, where was Constantine? If he was the self-proclaimed “King of Central Park” and he knew who I was, why didn’t he defend me?
That was just one of the many questions I had for him, but I was more interested in finding out how much he knew about Alasdair Templeton. Of course, the ultimate prize was the vessel, and even though he would never admit it, he knew where it was. I’d stake my life on that. If I could get him to talk about Templeton, I might be able to convince him to drop a hint about the vessel’s location without compromising his self-imposed code of ethics. It was a long shot, but worth a trip to Central Park.
SIXTEEN
Central Park was the one place I preferred to avoid because nothing good ever happened when I set foot over its threshold, but it was the most likely place I’d find Constantine.
I had the morning and part of the afternoon to find him and convince him to tell me what he knew about Templeton.
I stopped at the corner store to grab a cup of green tea. “On the house.” The man behind the counter smiled and waved my money away. I shopped there just about every day, so I guess a free cup of tea to a regular was just good customer relations.
“Thank you.” I smiled and put my money away.
My mood was unusually good today, light and euphoric for no particular reason other than the fact that I was alive and free to explore without a babysitter. I sipped my tea as I crossed the street and headed south.
The sound of a low flying bird broke my calm, ruining that rare moment of peace when I didn’t feel like every stranger on the street was gunning for me. I was back to my old suspicious self, where the buildings had eyes and the pigeons were messengers of doom.
I glanced up at the stone face glaring down at me. The buildings really did have eyes. The creature’s face shifted toward me as its mouth twisted in a grotesque grin that looked like an expression of pain. Its hands cupped the sides of its face in an agonizing grip. There was another one on the next building, only that one had wings and a lapping tongue protrudin
g from a row of jagged teeth.
My eyes dropped back to the sidewalk as I moved faster. One, two, three. I counted the seams in the cement as a distraction from all the noise taking over my head. And then I saw the shadow creeping up from my rear, growing wider and taller until it was almost as long as my own.
I wanted to turn around and see who or what was behind me, but my face refused to move from the sidewalk. Eventually I just stopped walking and let the shadow catch up.
“If I didn’t like you so much, I’d kill you,” I muttered to Rhom as he stepped from behind me.
“Where are you going, Alex?”
“To find someone.”
He glanced at my chest before looking at my face. Rhom was too much of a gentleman to blatantly rake a woman’s breasts, so I knew it wasn’t to assess my cleavage. “Mind if I tag along?” he asked.
“Do I have a choice? I thought we were done with the babysitting.”
His job was to hover, smother, and protect me, so what I wanted was irrelevant. “I won’t interfere,” he assured me. “But I will be joining you.”
He gave my chest another glance, and the dynamic between us suddenly shifted. In all the time I’d known him, it was the first time he’d ever made me uncomfortable.
We walked in silence for several blocks. Rhom and I had spent many days and nights walking side by side without saying a word, never feeling the need to force a conversation. But there was something different about the way he occupied the space next to me today, and I wondered if it was because of his unease or mine.
He was staring at me intently when I glanced at him. “Is something wrong, Rhom?”
“I was just noting the way you smell.”
“Smell? You were noting how I smell?”
His nostrils flared and the corners of his mouth dropped. Rhom’s features were chiseled and hard, but there was always intelligence and kindness cutting through the toughness of his face. Today I was looking at a stone.
His eyes locked on mine, and then he abruptly turned away as something slithered past his lips. He pulled something from his pocket, and when he turned back to face me he was wearing a pair of dark sunglasses.
The Blood Thief (The Fitheach Trilogy Book 2) Page 15
