by Krista Walsh
“I do,” she admitted. “But there’s something to be said for being out of the routine of one’s life. I found I had time.”
Matthew’s grin widened and he leaned toward her, cocking his head so his jawline ran along hers with his lips close to her ear.
“I believe you to be a woman who makes time for whatever she wants. A woman who knows her own mind and doesn’t let anything stand in the way of what she believes she deserves.”
His breath tickled her neck and a shiver ran down her spine.
“You speak as though you were looking in a mirror,” she replied. Her anger swelled at his effect on her, and she channeled it to steel herself against him. “Does that description apply to you as well?”
Matthew pressed a gentle kiss into the spot beneath her ear, and Allegra tensed. She’d braced for the heat of his touch, but just as he made contact, ice pellets formed in her blood and goosebumps erupted over her arms.
Something moved in the corner of her eye, as though someone stood as close to her on the left as Matthew was on her right. A light touch caressed her shoulder, cold as death, and a serpent of nausea uncoiled in her stomach. It slithered up her chest into her throat, blocking her breath, numbing her to everything else around her.
She wrenched away before the monster could sting her, and Matthew wrapped his arm around her waist, catching her before she tumbled off the stool.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She met his gaze, expecting to find more laughter at her expense, but the amusement had seeped out of his expression, replaced by concern.
Allegra wished she could laugh the moment away, but panic kept her heart racing, and tears stung the corners of her eyes over the realization that she had almost lost herself a second time to the draugr’s touch. They were getting closer, bolder. She had to get rid of them.
Still shaking, she drew her shoulders back and forced out a chuckle.
“Of course,” she said. “I skipped lunch. The champagne must have gone straight to my head.”
Matthew brushed her hair off her brow and caught her chin between his thumb and the crook of his finger, forcing her to look him in the eye.
He assessed her and shook his head. “You’re no drunker than I am, but something made you turn stone cold with terror. As though death were standing right behind you.”
She started at his description and ran her dry tongue across her lips. His gaze slid over her shoulder, then he craned his neck to check over his before returning his attention to her. The gesture was so considered, so careful, that the hair on the back of her neck danced.
He ran his lower hand over her waist and pulled her in. The warmth of his touch eased the tension in her muscles, and for the first time since she’d arrived at the hotel and sensed the unseen gaze watching her, she felt guarded.
A foolish illusion. Matthew couldn’t protect her any more than Lee could — and yet she didn’t want him to let her go.
In a volume just louder than a whisper, he said, “You don’t need to worry that I’ll think you’re crazy. I’ve seen them, too.”
Allegra’s muscles stiffened, and she tightened her grip around the stem of her champagne flute. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Those dead creatures,” he said. “Whatever they are.”
The skin between Allegra’s shoulders tingled with anxiety at the lack of irony in his voice. He wasn’t mocking her or pulling from stories he’d heard around the hotel and throwing them in her face to humiliate her. He was telling the truth. He knew the draugrs were here.
“I also know about you,” he continued, and at his words, Allegra’s heart stopped. The floor dropped out beneath her feet, and she rested her hand on the bar to steady herself, setting down the champagne glass before she dropped it.
Then her heartbeat picked up again in a rush. He cannot mean that the way it sounds. It’s impossible.
“What do you know about me?” she asked, pushing out a pathetic attempt at a laugh.
Matthew’s seriousness never wavered. He leaned in until his lips once more brushed her ear, but this time it lacked the forward desire of his earlier touch. Whatever he intended to say wouldn’t be words of pleasure — they would be secrets. She closed her eyes and braced herself.
“I know you’re not human.”
11
Allegra stared at Matthew. Her thoughts were escaping her. Any reaction she might have had was lost beneath the shocks she’d already experienced that afternoon.
The corners of Matthew’s eyes creased with sympathy. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”
Her tongue felt too big for her mouth, and she cleared her throat to open her airway before she choked.
“Perhaps you might be the one to have had too much to drink,” she said. “You’re speaking nonsense.”
She downed her champagne and slid off the stool. She needed air. First, Tim had escaped her trap, then the draugr had come close to claiming her again, and now Matthew professed to know her secret. It was as though all of her nightmares had come to life. No longer the storm clouds of her dreams, but a real, suffocating net that threatened to destroy her.
She crossed the lobby and reached the staircase before Matthew caught up with her. He grabbed her hand and pulled her to a stop. She jerked her arm away, but she was still floating in too thick a haze of shock to put much force into it, and his grip held fast.
He cast his gaze over the lobby to make sure no one was within earshot, then said, “You don’t want to discuss this? It’s obvious I’ve shaken you up.”
“There is nothing to discuss,” Allegra said. “You are clearly mad and I would not wish to encourage whatever delusions you are working under.”
“So there was no dead face over your shoulder just now, and the dried up hand reaching for you was only a trick of the light?” He climbed a step to bring himself closer. “Your eyes didn’t glow gold while we were in bed last night?”
As though she’d stepped out of her body, Allegra’s mouth fell open and stayed there. Her gauze-laden mind struggled to come up with a reply, but no words formed out of the fog.
Had she slipped so far out of control during their encounter? Without realizing it? Her legs wobbled, and she reached for the wall to keep her feet. How was it possible that this man had pushed her to such limits, to reveal the part of herself she only revealed to men she was about to feed on?
Matthew reached for her other hand, and this time she didn’t pull away, her muscles too slack to try.
“Come with me,” he said softly, and led her up the stairs behind him.
As though the movement of her legs reset her body’s processes, her mind stirred into action, thousands of thoughts swirling around, vying for attention. She grabbed on to one that stood out as the likely explanation: Matthew was also not human. As ludicrous as it seemed, it was the only answer that made sense.
She handed him her room key, her fingers too numb to work the mechanism herself, and he let them in, closing the door behind him. As soon as the latch clicked, Allegra’s brain settled, and she turned on him.
“What are you?”
“Excuse me?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“How is it you know about the draugrs? How is it that you —” have such power over me, she almost said, but caught herself in time. That sort of admission would put her in too much danger if he chose to wield the knowledge against her. Instead of finishing her thought, she threw up her hands and paced the room. “You speak in riddles and expect me to understand. Explain. What are you?”
Her question evoked the first hint of Matthew’s smile, a faint tug in the corners of his lips. “I might ask you the same question.”
He leaned against the door, crossed one foot over the other, and watched her, as though he were taking in the show of the confusion spinning through her head. She wrangled her expression into neutrality and glared at him in a silent standoff.
After a full minute had pas
sed, he released a breath and pushed away from the wall, peeling off his gray jacket. He folded it, draped it over the back of the chair in front of the vanity table, then stepped past her and dropped onto the edge of the bed. He loosened his tie and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
“I’m a medium,” he said. Then he cocked his head and rolled his gaze to the ceiling. “Well, no. I’m the grandson of a medium. I inherited her sensitivity, though not all of her abilities, and it lets me see things not everyone else can.”
Allegra released a breath and glowered at him, working to process his answer before she offered anything in reply. Mediums picked up on energy and were better able to differentiate between mundane and otherworldly than most humans. If he was what he claimed, it would explain why she hadn’t sensed anything unusual about him — he was human. It also meant he had no idea what she was, just that she was other.
Her secret was still safe.
“Then you know about the hotel’s curse,” she said, preferring to remain on surer footing than her own nature.
Matthew nodded. “I sensed it as soon as I arrived, although this is the first I’m hearing about draugrs. Is that what almost grabbed you?”
She jerked her head in a nod. “And what killed Monique.”
Matthew’s eyes filled with awareness. He passed a hand over his face, then rolled his neck until it popped and released a breath. “Poor Monique.”
Allegra stared at him, wishing this was the end of the conversation. She could pretend he’d never said anything about her, and hopefully he would do the same. He didn’t need to know any more than he already did.
As soon as the thought popped into her head, he locked gazes with her. “Since honesty seems to be the theme of the evening, I would love to know what you are.”
She snarled. “That is none of your concern.”
He offered a soft smile. “I understand it’s hard to believe me when I say your secret is safe with me, but I wish you’d trust me. I don’t intend to spread the truth around. I don’t even really care. If I did, do you think I would have spent the night with you?”
“Then why are you asking?”
“Because I’m fascinated.”
She looked away from him, staring into the blank television screen where it sat on top of the desk. If he knew the truth, he’d bolt out the door and never speak with her again. Worse, he might go to the police, and suddenly every man that turned up dead would be laid at her doorstep. She couldn’t trust a human.
So why was she filled with an overwhelming desire to tell him everything? To reveal the truth of what she was and watch how he reacted? Was it the understanding with which he’d received the news about Monique? His nonchalant reaction about monsters in the hotel that only one menial laborer would admit to seeing?
Her lips burned with a need to open and confess. Maybe if Matthew, this man who had sparked something in her she never imagined she could feel, knew the truth, if he didn’t run or look at her in disgust, she would finally be able to accept the side of herself she’d spent her life hiding.
Between Tim and the draugrs, she felt the world closing in on her, and the need to be herself with someone flickered like fire in her veins.
Matthew got to his feet and approached her, his hands out in front of him as though she were a feral cat he was trying to put at ease.
“I don’t know if it’s this otherness about you or your goddamn stubbornness, but you are the most beautiful, frustrating, captivating woman I have ever met,” he said. “When I look at you, I feel as though I’m looking at the surface of a river, and I need to know what lies beneath.”
He stood close enough that the warmth of his skin brushed against Allegra’s like a balm, and she closed her eyes, not wanting to be lost in his expression. His hand brushed her arm, and she tensed. She could tell him her secret and watch him run. Turn his desire for her into loathing.
It would be for the best.
If her allure had inadvertently trapped him, it was only fair she should release him. Never mind that she hated the idea that he would never be as close to her again as he was in this moment.
She bit down on her tongue to steel herself for what needed to be done and turned toward him, looking up to catch his gaze.
“Would you feel the same if you knew that I could devour your soul with a single kiss? That I have brought hundreds of men to my bed, offered them ultimate pleasure, then left them as corpses? I am no saint, Matthew. Just one more demon out for survival.”
As she’d expected, he dropped his hand as though she’d burned him and stepped away. His dark eyes gleamed with fear as he cast them toward the door, likely wondering if she could stop him before he reached it.
She wouldn’t try. She doubted he wanted the world to know about his own abilities, and she could use that against him if he tried to turn on her. For the moment, she simply wanted him gone. Out of her life, so she could focus on the crucial goal of staying alive by exterminating the draugrs.
But he didn’t move.
She watched him, watched the recognition creep into his eyes. “You’re a succubus?”
An involuntary smile twitched on her lips to hear the term from someone so human.
“I am.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed with a swallow, and his tongue flicked his lips. “Well, that explains a lot.”
She held still, their positions now changed as he became the one who needed time to understand. He took a step toward her and she crossed her arms, braced for his reaction.
“It explains your beauty, your coldness, your passion,” he said, and his voice turned husky, still coated with fear, but also tinged with excitement. “I don’t know why I can’t walk away. You literally hold my life in your hands, and yet the last thing I want to do is walk out that door. Is it because of what you are? That now that I’ve had a taste of you, I want more?”
“Yes,” she said. There was no point deluding him into thinking his emotions were anything more than an effect of her allure. Yet he didn’t appear put off by her answer.
“I spent my youth standing on the doorstep to the otherworld. Gran opened my eyes to the truth that there’s more to life than what most people can imagine. But even though the door is open, no one’s ever invited me in. The threshold terrifies me, frankly. I feel like I’ll get lost if I take one more step. And yet, I want to cross it at the same time and discover just how big the world really is.”
“I am not a ticket to some amusement park,” Allegra said, squeezing her nails into her palms. “If you seek thrills or novelty, do not think you will find it with me.”
“It has nothing to do with thrills,” Matthew said. “If I wanted that, I could drive fast cars or jump out of a plane.” His gaze scanned over her neck, her lips. His pupils dilated and his cheeks flushed. “I might be the stupidest man in the world, but even knowing what you are, I can’t deny that I want you.” He met her eye, and beneath his fear, the glimmer of his dark humor returned. “Should I be afraid?”
Allegra wanted to tell him yes. She wanted to tell him that she never permitted anyone who knew what she was to live — especially no one of the mundane world. Her secret was her security, her guarantee that she could go on feeding, surviving. She couldn’t give that up for the sake of one handsome face.
His reaction to her secret stunned her, and she didn’t know how to respond. She felt an overwhelming longing to destroy him, to draw in the soul that had awakened such want. But she also burned with the desire to show him more of herself, to stop hiding for once in her life and spend the night with someone who wanted her — not just the image she projected. She wondered if this was how Antony had felt with Jermaine. For the first time, she understood how it might have driven her brother to such insanity.
The two conflicting longings spun through her brain, yanking her one way and then the next, but when Matthew dipped his head to kiss her, her skin burned at his touch. Any thought of tearing him apart, or of her brother’s inevitab
le destruction, vanished in the fire. She cupped Matthew’s face with one hand, the other sliding down his stomach. He moaned and she melted. Her tongue teased his, and when she bit down on his lip, he released her hand to wrap his arm around her waist, drawing her to the bed.
She unbuttoned his shirt and broke the kiss as she jerked it over his shoulders. Trying to regain the power she felt had fallen from her grasp, she responded to the question still hanging between them. “You need not fear me. I would not bite the hand that pays me.” She offered him a sly grin. “Not hard, anyway.”
Matthew closed his mouth over hers with a moan, preventing her from saying anything else.
As Allegra lost herself in the growing heat, a voice in the back of her subconscious demanded her attention. What was she thinking? How could she allow herself to lose control like this?
But her mind had already slipped past all reason, and for the rest of the evening, the questions went unanswered.
***
A silver strip of moonlight cut through the window and spilled across the bed. Allegra traced her fingers through the glow, appreciating the way it caught her skin, as though lighting it from the inside.
She stretched and rolled onto her side, propped herself up on her elbow, and stared down at Matthew. He lay on his back, the cover snug around his chest. He reached up to brush the loose hair out of her eyes and stroked his finger over her cheek and across her lips.
Even after all their hours together, her body was not yet tired, wanting more of him and what he offered. She had never enjoyed a human man so much.
As though his touch were magic, the tension that had been stringing her muscles together throughout the day — the cold terror that had filled her in the bar when the draugr had come for her — was gone, and all that existed was the moment.
A crease appeared between Matthew’s brows as he stared at her, and Allegra returned the expression.
