“Where do you want me?” she said, smacking her gum.
The spell was broken the minute she opened her mouth.
“Just sit on the bed, and don’t say anything, okay?” Judah pulled his T-shirt off and grabbed another lukewarm beer, turning away from her as he popped the cap off with his teeth.
“Whatever you say, pal. It’s your dime.”
Her words made him shudder. He needed to find a moment of clarity before he clouded her mind so he could feed. He grabbed the last beer out of the pack and popped it open.
“Here,” he said as he held it out to her, “relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She muttered something that sounded like “That’s what they all say,” but Judah let it go. He didn’t have the strength to converse with this girl. He had other plans for her. She accepted the beer, chugged it down in almost five seconds flat, and came back up coughing.
“What is that shit?” She choked while she wiped her mouth.
“Stout.”
“Fuck you, I knew that.”
“No, the beer, it’s called a stout.”
“Oh,” she said, finally getting the feeling back in her throat. “So normally, I could give a shit about your personal hang-ups and why you feel the need to pay to fuck a complete stranger, but are you always this picky when you hire out?” The girl twisted a lock of hair from the wig between her fingers and pointed to her eyes and then to the dress he’d given her to wear.
Judah just shook his head. His eyes dropped to the floor again as he plopped down on the bed beside her. He saw the way the white satin of the dress hit the tops of her bare feet, and the absolute wretchedness of what he was doing hit him in the chest. It was pathetic and completely disgusting, but it was part of his life now, part of who he was, and the brief moment of exquisite release he found when he did it made up for all the self-loathing and bitterness.
“Can I ask you something else?” she nudged at his shoulder with her own to grab his attention. “Just one more question, and then you can do with me what you like. But she was something to you, wasn’t she? The woman you made me dress like.”
Judah narrowed his eyes at her. There were several moments of pensive pause and a few side-of-the-lip sips from his bottle before he sighed.
“Yes,” he said. “She was something to me.” She was more than just something. She had been everything. His morning, his night, his earth, his sky. The sun rose and set around his beautiful wife. He’d spent the better part of the last couple hundred years trying to outrun her memory, but it haunted him, the way she had left, so fast, so tragic.
The woman beside him read his face like a book, and she lifted a hand to touch him. She smiled weakly, scooting closer as her fingers patted his scarred shoulder.
“It’s okay, you know? You can move on.”
The tenderness and genuine sincerity in her voice caught him off guard. “You know, you all are a lot smarter than the public thinks you are.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “You’d be surprised how many times I’ve done something like this. A lot of guys don’t even wanna fuck by the time they get us somewhere. A lot of them just wanna talk.” She laughed a little. “Sometimes the best shrinks in the world are hookers.”
Judah’s shoulders tensed again.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” She ran her fingers over his back, rubbing it gently, trying to ease him. “We don’t have to have sex if you don’t want to.”
“It’s not a question of want to,” he said. “I need to.” He paused and looked up at her.
“And I need something else, too.” Even as he spoke, his teeth elongated. He found just enough sanity to tap into her thoughts and implant his own into her pretty little head.
You won’t remember this tomorrow, and for tonight, you are going to think this is the most amazing thing you’ve ever experienced.
Judah threw down the beer bottle and lunged at her, taking her into his arms and instantly plunging his elongated teeth into the skin at her collarbone. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, and as he pulled at her vein, he felt his body fill with renewed life. She gave herself up to it, accepting his intrusion not with a moan but more like a giggle. The sound was sweeter than he thought it would be. He still hated it, but it made him feel a little less disgusting.
The pain in his veins was beginning to ease. The blood now began to center in the front of his pants, and it made his cock throb against the zipper until he couldn’t wait anymore. He quickly freed himself and pushed the hem of the satin dress up around the girl’s waist. Her legs tightened around him as he pushed himself into her.
He wasn’t gentle, but he wasn’t forceful, either. He had to get through it, had to get it over and done with so he could scrub her off him and go home to his own bed.
To do what? The question pushed into his mind almost as quickly as he’d pushed into her. Seriously, to do what? To lie in a bed that was still empty on one side? To wander around those damned hallways, constantly haunted by the memory of a woman who should be there? He slowed his hips a little and looked down at the woman beneath him. She was here. She was warm and real and everything that his wife was no longer.
Regardless of what epiphany he had that night, he would still feel like shit the next day, and he knew it. But for right now, in this moment, with that beautiful hair and those strange eyes staring back at him, Judah felt different. For the first time in a very long time, Judah felt like his heart wasn’t quite so broken.
He felt like he was home.
Chapter 23
Morrigan couldn’t help but snicker just a little when the new guards were paraded into the office upstairs to meet their new boss, only to find instead the large, battered body of a naked man lying in the middle of the floor. The only one who didn’t completely and totally flinch was the big one, and even he seemed disturbed by the sight. It was extreme, she knew, to have the new employees trotted out in front of her while Bane was fighting to hold onto his life after the beating she’d given him. But really, was there any other way to establish her rule?
There was nothing more exciting than knowing that a mere glance cast from her direction could shrink a man’s balls in his pants. It was even more fun to watch humans flinch when confronted with pain. A vampire would have known that if the man on the floor survived, he would be right as rain in a few days. Humans, on the other hand, saw mortality in heavy shades of black and white. You either lived or died. There was no happy medium, and so this blissful feeling of complete control was even headier due to the fact that she’d made the decision to refrain from hiring vampires. After their most recent debacle, she didn’t want to take any chances. As useless as they had proven to be at the time, it was still a shame to lose allies, and the loss of William and his two vampire cronies was a blow she didn’t want to see dealt again.
A sputtering cough from the floor in front of her desk told her that Bane was still alive.
It seemed strange that now he would show the internal courage to fight, when before, when confronted with Taris and the remainder of The Nines, he had barely lifted a finger. She would have been perfectly fine with complete and total chaos, but Bane, for all of his self-proclaimed love of carnage, never saw the logic in absolute anarchy. He was methodical in his ministrations of torture and death.
This, as far as she was concerned, made him a giant pussy.
The new guards tried not to flinch when an anguished moan flooded out of his mouth. His naked body was covered with dark red, congealing blood, but even through the crimson sheen, they could see the long gashes that stretched the length of him. From the hollow of his throat down to the tips of his toes, he was all but filleted open, back to front. He started to shudder and managed to curl himself into the fetal position.
“Gentlemen,” Morrigan grabbed their attention. She leaned back in her chair and casually placed her feet on the edge of the desk, crossing them at the ankles. “I hope you enjoy your time in my employ. I am a very
easy supervisor. I ask very little of my employees. The few things I do demand are loyalty and a delivery of goods, so to speak.” She lifted her feet from the desk and placed them on the floor. She pushed her body upright, and she couldn’t help but smirk at the look of disbelief on the new guards’ faces. All but one scanned her body with their eyes, which was perfectly fine and dandy with her. She’d used her curves to their greatest advantage all of her life, and it was nice to know they still carried a deadly power.
“I will not tell you my name, simply because you will not address me unless I address you first.” She slowly made her way to the front of the desk, sidestepping the still curled-up Bane. She planted herself directly in front of the tallest guard, the one who didn’t seem to move or flinch or even make any kind of eye contact. “Are we understood?”
The rest of the men muttered “yes, ma’am,” but the large one just nodded.
“You, what is your name.”
He looked down at Morrigan with dark silver eyes. In all of her years, Morrigan had never seen human eyes that color.
“Stellan, ma’am.”
Morrigan smiled up at him; the deep bass of his voice resonated in his chest just at her eye level. He was by far the largest human she’d ever seen. He had to be almost seven feet tall. His body was packed with hard muscle, and his hair, which was strangely the same dark metal color of his eyes, hung down well past his shoulders. Out from under the short sleeves of his black T-shirt, she could see a canvas of expertly done ink. She ran a finger up from the waist of his dark jeans, around the titanium colored FA-Q that was his belt buckle, up to the center of his chest, and then trailed it around as she walked a slow circle around him.
“So, Stellan,” she spat out, drawing his attention back to her face, “how is it that you came to be here?”
“Parole. Ma’am.”
She stepped back from him, making her way to the desk. As she walked, she caught the tip of her high-heeled shoe underneath Bane’s shoulder. She jerked her foot free and gave him a swift kick in his midsection. He barely had the energy to groan.
“Gentlemen,” Morrigan turned around and leaned against the desk, completely kicking aside the shaking hand Bane tried to lift up to her. “You’ve all been given guns and orders. No one is to come in this place without my permission. Any one of you who violates that order will have to answer to me. If you have doubts as to the pain I can inflict, take a good, long look at this pile of meat lying on the floor. That, gentlemen, is my husband. Now ask yourselves what kind of damage I could do to someone I do not hold in such high regard. That is all. You are dismissed to your posts. Except for you,” she pointed a long, manicured finger at Stellan.
“Pick that up,” she nodded down to Bane, whose eyes were now barely open, “and watch over him for the next few hours. If he dies, fine. If not, well, that’s just as well, too. I suppose I can find something else for him to cook up. When he’s well again, take him out to find what we’re looking for.”
She gave Bane another swift kick in the ribs before stepping over him. “Next time, stand up to him.” She followed the other guards out of the room, leaving Stellan standing over Bane.
When the door was finally shut, Stellan walked over to the chair against the far wall and retrieved a blue leather duster. He could only assume it belonged to the wounded guy. There was a whole pile of clothes on the floor in front of the chair, all of them torn to shreds and covered in blood.
Stellan walked back over to where Bane was lying. He was flipped over on his back now, desperately trying to find the strength to lift himself up. Just as he would brace himself in at least a somewhat upright position, his arms would give out, and he would fall back into the puddle of his own blood.
“Ease up, killer. I got you. Just kick back for a sec and let me wrap this around you. I don’t want your parts brushing up against me while I help you out of here.” Stellan wedged his hand underneath Bane’s neck and lifted him up. His hair was a strange purple color from the blue dye and red blood mixing together. As he lifted Bane, he got a good look at the carnage that had become his skin. His front had been torn apart and his back looked like it had gotten into a fight with a pack of wolverines and lost…badly.
“What did she do to you?” he whispered. He’d seen pain before, but this was beyond the pale. How could anyone survive this?
“Chain,” Bane whispered against Stellan’s arm. He struggled to lift a hand and pointed to the corner where his clothes were. Draped over the back of the chair was a rusted link chain. The links were nothing more than pieces of jagged metal and rusted rings.
Stellan shook his head as he stood up, bringing Bane to his unsteady feet. He almost fell twice before Stellan made the split-second decision to pick him up and carry him out of the room. Propriety be hanged. At that moment, he wouldn’t have cared if the guy had been stark naked. Nothing on earth and no being walking should have to endure what this guy apparently had.
Bane wearily pointed him to his makeshift bedroom on the top floor of the club. Stellan placed him on the bed and covered him up. It would have been wise to have his wounds tended to, but Bane insisted that he sleep. The blood on his body soaked through the linen in spots, and a wave of anger flooded Stellan all over again.
“Why do you put up with that, man?”
Bane rolled over and cracked his eyes open, meeting Stellan’s strange silver orbs with his even stranger red ones.
“My wife,” he muttered. “I have to. She’s my only family now.” She was the only family he had now. She’d been the only family he’d had for centuries, and in those few hundred years, he’d convinced himself he was happy with the constant submissiveness of his existence. But the look in her eyes as she repeatedly reared her arm back and split his skin in two had caused something to snap, and for the first time in a very long time, he wondered himself why he was there, what he was doing with her.
He found himself wondering, before he drifted off to much-needed rest, if there would ever come a day when he could break free.
Chapter 24
Sarah sat on the cold metal stool and stared at the pictures on the wall. The completely glass ceiling and three surrounding walls gave her more than enough light to study every nuance of the work that surrounded her. Frescos with intricate details and deep colors gave way to impressionist art that rivaled Monet. Progressing down the line, the styles changed, as if to reflect the centuries in which they had been painted. Abstract, Modern, Postmodern—all of it was done with such skill and love that she would have thought them to be reproductions from the Masters themselves.
The fact that Rhiannon had painted them all still boggled her mind.
She and Nick were currently ensconced in her studio, using the ample space and abundance of natural lighting to do what they’d initially been brought here to do. The long metal tables that Judah and Achan brought in housed their entire lab. She wasn’t exactly sure how they’d managed to do it, but from the small dorm fridge they used to protect specimens down to the very last slide and dropper, all of it was present and accounted for.
There was a strange, stark contrast in the decor. The bottom half of the room was clinical and sterile, while the walls displayed the vibrant life of art. She was particularly mesmerized by the portraits. So detailed and real, they seemed more like elaborate photographs than oil on canvas. And Rhiannon had managed to capture each subject perfectly—Achan’s joking smile, Kalin’s sweet soul, Judah’s wisdom and finesse. In particular, the portrait of Zillah intrigued her quite a bit. She was smiling, something Sarah had yet to see her do. There was something different about her, a happiness that she didn’t have now.
And then there was Taris.
The dark backdrop of the painting made him seem fierce and dangerous, while the subtle shading and light that Rhiannon had added to his face gave him a regal, intimidating air. The amber gaze looking down at her from the canvas made her heart beat faster. She wiggled in her seat and couldn’t help but feel like sh
e was losing herself to him all over again. The heat of his mouth, the passion in his touch, that desperately coveted moment when they first joined together, all of it played out in her mind again as she stared into those expertly created eyes.
“You’re mine,” he’d said. Just thinking about his deep voice whispering those words was about to make her come unglued without a single touch. They’d both built up walls against each other, but just as quickly as they’d been put up, they had come crashing down with a violent explosion of desire and the realization that this was something more important than just the chemical reaction between a man and a woman.
“SARAH!”
Her eyes shot down and met Nick’s irritated stare.
“Are we going to work or what?”
She cleared her throat and nodded her head. “Sorry. I was distracted.”
“No shit,” Nick muttered, turning back to the microscope in front of him. “So can we put our working hats on and get this ball rolling? I have most of the components put together. We just need to make sure the compound is stable before we start testing anything.”
Sarah nodded again and grabbed a set of latex gloves from a box nearby. She could daydream about Taris later.
“So,” Nick said, not even looking up from his microscope, “I noticed that Taris didn’t come back last night. Caught him creeping in this morning like a school kid. It was…odd.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat and dug around in the small dorm fridge underneath the table. “How the hell am I supposed to know where he was?”
“Someone sounds guilty. I didn’t ask you where he was. I simply said he came in all sneaky like.” He tilted his head to look at her, a sly smile on his face. “You have something you want to tell me?”
“Not particularly, no,” she said, still rummaging. “Of course, you know everything, so I’m sure you’ve already come to your own conclusions.” She wasn’t about to volunteer that she’d spent the last few hours underneath Taris, having the most passionate sex that had ever been documented in the course of her life’s history.
Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1) Page 19
