Taste Me

by Tamara Hogan

  Got ya.

  She lapped at him, over and over again, for endless minutes, learning his textures and tastes with long strokes of her hands and tongue, noting which touches made him writhe, and which made him relax. When she added the slightest purring vibration from her vocal cords, his hips jerked, pheromones blooming ever more dark and damp.

  Lifting her head away from the drugging scent, she shook it to clear away the woozy buzzing. The movement swept her hair over his violently engorged cock. He moaned and grabbed her head.

  Bzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  Lukas glared at the ceiling in exasperation before reaching for the mini-comp pulsing and chattering on her bedside table. “It’s Gideon,” he said softly.

  Gideon Lupinsky. Annika.

  It all came crashing back.

  She shrank away from his hand and stumbled off the bed. His cock was wet from her mouth.

  “Scarlett?”

  Whirling away, she ran to her bathroom, closing the door and locking it behind her.

  Chapter 13

  Finally.

  After days of unnatural silence, of a poise so flash-frozen that it seemed she would shatter if anyone so much as touched her, Scarlett was finally crying again.

  Annika’s funeral service at Fontaine House, the family’s ancestral home located on the rugged cliffs of northwestern Ireland near Donegal Bay, was finally drawing to a close, and when Lukas rose from his front row seat, he felt like he’d popped up his head while under sniper fire. All eyes on them, he nudged Scarlett up out of her chair, escorting her to where his father and Claudette stood in the aisle waiting for them.

  He knew speculation was running rampant: Was he at her side as a family friend? A lover? Her bodyguard?

  All three theories contained at least a grain of truth.

  Seated in the row behind him, Rafe, Sasha, and Antonia would host the after-funeral reception until he, his father, Scarlett, and Claudette returned from performing the ceremony’s final steps: casting Annika’s ashes into the ocean. In the front row on the other side of the aisle, Wyland discreetly supported Valerian, visibly sagging under the weight of his resplendent ceremonial robes. Underworld Council members and their families filled the next rows of reserved seats. Behind them sat Scarlett’s band mates and their families, except for Stephen, who remained hospitalized back in Minneapolis. After that, rows and rows of friends, both Annika’s and Scarlett’s, filled the ballroom. Most of them had also attended Scarlett’s homecoming show, which had simplified the funeral’s security arrangements somewhat; most of their background checks had already been performed.

  Lukas refused to think about the long hours he and Jack had spent on pre-funeral logistics. While he couldn’t begrudge Annika the service, the arrangements had taken even more time away from the hunt for her killer, who was still at large. As he escorted Scarlett, he felt every accusing eye.

  When the small group reached the back of Fontaine House’s ballroom, the massive terrace doors were thrown open to the elements. The Atlantic Ocean crashed and pounded into the nearby cliffs, and yes, the sky was the color of clay. In choosing Sting’s “The Wild Wild Sea” as the final song to be played at her funeral, it seemed as if Annika had somehow choreographed the weather to the lyrics.

  Annika had planned her funeral in as much exacting detail as many young women planned their weddings, and listening to Wyland read her will at the Underworld Council meeting called within twenty-four hours of her death had been brutal. Though Annika had taken a maddening number of liberties with the document’s required contents, her funeral preferences had been documented to the last explicit detail, requiring Claudette and Scarlett to make very few decisions—certainly her intention. She’d designated the location of the service, the decorating scheme, the music to be played at both the ceremony and the reception… layers and layers of details, right down to the brand of tequila she wanted poured into shot glasses for the final toast.

  Who could have predicted that the Council’s newest and youngest member would be the first one to die? Lukas swallowed around the lump in his throat. With his lack of attention, he’d not only cost Scarlett her sister, but probably her career. Now that Annika was dead, Scarlett was the new Siren Second—a job she had no interest in performing.

  Footsteps tapped against wood, a dozen tiny hammers, as the siren choir and the kind-faced, white-robed woman who’d performed Annika’s service with Valerian filed past them and started walking down the dozens of twisting, weathered stairs leading from Fontaine House’s second floor ballroom terrace to ground level. Lukas grabbed Scarlett’s arm as she tottered toward the steps in a pair of fuchsia high-heeled boots which were completely unsuited for the weather or the rough terrain.

  “You’re going to break your neck,” he muttered softly.

  Her only response was a small pulse of pain-laced annoyance—not much, but it was more emotion than she’d directed toward him in a week. She allowed him to support her as she walked down the slippery steps, and didn’t pull away as they made their way across the damp wildflower lawn to the winding dirt path, worn smooth by centuries of footsteps, which led from Fontaine House to the oceanside cliffs where the last part of the ceremony would be performed.

  The back of Lukas’s neck itched. Seconds later, when they reached the cliffs, he saw light glinting off long-range camera lenses nestled in the rocks just beyond the Fontaine estate’s property line. Fucking paparazzi. Did Scarlett even notice them? Or was she so used to being watched that they simply weren’t on her radar? Lukas took Scarlett’s chilly hand and shifted them so their backs were to the photographers. They might be on the legal side of the property line, but damned if he’d make their job any easier.

  And where were Scarlett’s gloves? Christ, it wasn’t fifty degrees out, and the blowing wind, saturated with moisture, cut to the bone. He didn’t remove his hand, hoping some of his body heat would transfer to her—and because, he admitted to himself, he wanted to hold it. To feel some sort of connection, because if the time they’d spent together in Scarlett’s bedroom had burned into her psyche the way it had into his, it certainly wasn’t showing. Nope, since Annika’s death, Scarlett had shut down, had gone through the motions like an automaton, even as she’d signed the document formalizing her as her sister’s successor.

  If he’d been concerned about her health at their first meeting back from tour, he was even more concerned now. To his discerning eye, she looked even thinner, if that was possible, and she moved slowly, like a sleepwalking wraith. According to Sasha, Scarlett had spent the days between the Council meeting where Annika’s will had been read and the flight to Ireland closeted in her bedroom, uninterested in food, in the cards and flowers that streamed to the penthouse, or even in her beloved Crackhouse Blend. Sasha bullied her into eating a few bites here and there, but she accepted comfort only from that feral black cat, who hissed and bared his fangs at anyone who made the mistake of knocking on her bedroom door.

  Her silence had continued during the excruciating transatlantic flight that brought them to Ireland, her energy ebbing at such a low level that she barely registered.

  A burst of wind buffeted the small group as they assembled on the edge of the rugged cliff. Lukas instinctively leaned in to shelter Scarlett with his larger body. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed his father doing the same thing for Claudette as she stood in her family’s ancestral worship area like a poised ivory statue, her face locked in a rictus of control. In this thin, milky light, her hair looked more gray than red, and her white mourning trench coat whipped around her legs. She cradled a fuchsia suede bag about the size and weight of a sack of sugar in both arms.

  Her daughter’s ashes.

  Compared to her mother, Scarlett blazed with defiant color. She’d made no attempt to harness her hair, and it billowed behind her like a red sheet on a clothesline. Her calf-length wool coat was bright turquoise, her pink boots glowed, and her face was blotchy with tears.

  Grie
f and sadness poured out of her like blood from a wound. Lukas clenched his jaw and held on to her hand as the siren choir gathered around them in a loose semicircle.

  “Let us sing our sister home,” the Celebrant intoned. She turned her substantial body to the pounding sea and extended her arms to the sky and waves, singing the first haunting notes.

  He thought he was prepared. He really did. But when the other women joined in… Jesus. Dissonant harmonies shrilled up and down his backbone, and he grasped Scarlett’s waist more tightly—whether to support her or to be supported, he didn’t really know. Scarlett was as much moaning as singing, her incomparable voice rising above the others as she extended her arms to the sea and tipped her head up to the sky. The collective mourning energy swirled above them like a whirlwind as the sirens sang the Fontaine family lineage, imploring the wind and the waves to accompany the brave siren Annika to her final resting place. Annika, daughter of Claudette, daughter of Signe, daughter of Siobhan, daughter of Siann, of Sorcha, of Catraoine. Of Sinead, Maire, Ceile, and Fiona. On and on, back through the generations, the sirens recited the names the unbroken Fontaine matrilineal line back to Canola, Goddess of the Harp.

  It was up to Scarlett to ensure continuity of the Fontaine line.

  On and on the singing went, the sirens acknowledging sisters lost to history, sisters who’d protected their families and ensured their species’ survival by luring marauders’ ships into the cliffs with no weapon but their voices. Lukas surreptitiously popped an antacid and tried to focus on the waves pounding against the cliffs, the swooping gulls—the fall sumac blazing between the rocks, where the paparazzi crouched like fucking jackals. Something, anything, to distract himself from the taste of Scarlett’s saltwater mourning mixing with her mandarin essence.

  Or how his seed boiled at the thought of fathering Scarlett’s child.

  Finally, the plaintive song came to a close, and the Celebrant stepped back, gesturing to the churning water.

  “I… can’t do this,” Scarlett whispered brokenly, the first words she’d spoken to him in nearly a week.

  Lukas bracketed her chilly face in his warm hands, trying to pour whatever strength he could into her. “You can.”

  She clutched his wrists with her hands for a long moment, her eyes locked on to his. Finally, she stepped away from the shelter of his body and joined her mother at the edge of the cliff. And as the other sirens chanted, “All that was… all that is… all that shall be,” they reached into the bag with their bare hands, casting Annika’s ashes to the wild, wild sea.

  ***

  Stephen’s head throbbed. The scent of alcohol wipes, dinner trays, and overcooked coffee stung his nose as he slowly walked past the patients’ solarium and the empty nurses’ desk on his way back to his hospital room. Televisions murmured out of almost every room—talk about a captive audience—and far too many were tuned to a so-called journalist with Miss America hair who breathlessly reported the Latest! Breaking! News! on the tragedies which had befallen singer Scarlett Fontaine: the death of her sister, and the senseless attack on her drummer, who “at this moment was lying near death” in an unspecified hospital. “We mourn with you, Scarlett,” the anchorwoman emoted like the lead in a bad community theatre production. When she queued up footage of a small group standing on the cliffs—clearly filmed from a helicopter buzzing the site—to the tune of “Wind Beneath My Wings”—Stephen just about puked.

  Yeah, he felt like shit, but at no point had he been “lying near death.” And there was absolutely no news, breaking or otherwise. If there was one thing he’d learned in the week he’d been hospitalized, it was that when Lukas Sebastiani established a communications blackout, he created a black fucking hole.

  He was being well-protected, perhaps too much so. His fan mail was screened, all deliveries to the hospital were searched, and Garrett had told him that packages were piling up at the office. He didn’t have computer access, and every visitor on his approved visitor list was scanned head to toe by bodyguards posted at his door.

  Keep walking. He did laps around the hospital several times a day, skulking around the ER, the NICU, the morgue, tailgating enough secondhand energy to keep the beast from snapping its teeth. Between the blast of mojo that Annika had hit him with as she died, and the pain and death energy that saturated the hospital itself, his tank was still half-full.

  His sleep cycle was all screwed up. Anyone who thought people could actually get some rest in a hospital was nuts, and needless to say, after a year on the road, the hospital routine didn’t exactly coincide with his body clock. He really should have asked for a bed on the vamp floor. But he hadn’t, so it was blood pressure and temperature checks at six in the morning and breakfast an hour later, whether he was hungry or not. Shower, shave, and then up and at ’em with both physical and occupational therapy, which he’d tried to charm his way out of with absolutely no luck. Surprisingly, he enjoyed the time he spent making woven plastic key chains with three chattering kids. The children didn’t know who he was, and they didn’t ask questions he didn’t want to answer. Instead, they seemed fascinated by his hair.

  Maybe Garrett could raffle the key chains off for charity, or give them to fans.

  He weaved on his feet. “Whoa,” he muttered, slapping a hand against a doorjamb for support. “Sorry, ma’am,” he called to the elderly woman lying in her hospital bed.

  She lifted her nut-brown head up from her creased pillow, peering at him with rheumy eyes behind thick, thick glasses. Her TV was tuned to the same channel as everyone else, except now the vapid journalist yammered about the supposed Brad-Angie-Jen love triangle.

  “You look like that drummer,” she said, fingers plucking at her colorful quilt.

  “Nah. Do I look like I’m lying near death?” Phlegmy coughs rattled her chest as she laughed. “Are you okay?” he asked, stepping into her room to push the nurse call button. Damn your flippant tongue. She was the one lying near death. It wouldn’t happen this minute, and probably not today, but the process was well under way.

  When he reached her bed, her hand latched on to his with unexpected strength. “Don’t bother, son,” she rasped. She accepted the water he handed her from the table by her bedside, sipping from the straw. When she finished, she laid her Brillo-haired head back against the pillow. Her voice was weak, but her dark brown eyes snapped with annoyance. “Thank you. Dying’s a tiresome business, boy—don’t let anyone tell you any different.” She patted an empty space on the quilt. “Sit down before you fall down.”

  He sat before he was conscious of doing so. There was more than enough room on the bed. The old woman’s gnarled body was so wasted away that it barely created a bump under the covers, but her wrinkled lips were painted a bright, defiant red. Despite her failing body, a formidable brain clicked behind her eyes. Somehow he felt stripped naked before her, but instead of wanting to leave, he leaned closer.

  “Yeah, you look a little shaky to me, but you’re nowhere near ready to journey beyond The Pale.” She nodded firmly, confident of her diagnosis. “What happened to your head, dear heart?”

  His throat slammed shut at the endearment. “I…” Stephen swallowed heavily. How was he supposed to answer this majestic woman’s question? “I threw myself against a table”? “I killed a woman while we were having sex, and I’m afraid I’ll do it again”? Instead of answering, he simply dropped his head, rubbing his aching sternum with his knuckles.

  “It’s okay,” she said softly.

  “No. It’s not,” he replied before he could stop himself.

  She extended her wasted hand. He took it, clasped it in both of his. Somehow, he knew he could tell her anything, and she wouldn’t be shocked.

  He was actually opening his mouth to do so when a curvy blond nurse wearing bright purple scrubs poked her head in the room. “There you are, Stephen,” she chirped as she came into the room. “I see you’ve met Madame Bouchet. She’s one of our star patients.”

  Madame Bo
uchet eyed her balefully. “That statement makes absolutely no sense. I’m dying, girl, and we all know it.” To Stephen, she added, “Don’t get old. People talk to you like you don’t have a brain in your head.”

  “Sorry, Madame,” the nurse said cheerfully as she straightened the riotously colored quilt. “Stephen’s been on his feet a long time today, and he really needs to get back to bed.”

  Stephen looked down at their still-joined hands. He didn’t want to let go. When he finally released her, the oddest sense of loss fluttered through him.

  “You come back and see me anytime, boy, you hear?” Madame Bouchet said softly.

  Stephen nodded, smiled, then allowed the nurse to steady him as they left Madame’s room. Together they walked the short distance down the hall to his own.

  “You’re really shaky,” Peggy said as they entered his room. “I’m not sure you should be pushing yourself so hard this soon after…”

  The attack? After the assault? Funny how even here in the hospital, people were reluctant to state out loud what had happened to him—or what they thought had happened to him. Did other crime victims feel so invisible?

  Peggy was a spring bouquet of scents. Her scrubs smelled like those fabric softener sheets people used in the dryer, and he caught a whiff of apple shampoo and baby powder as she helped him climb onto the freshly made bed. She murmured a soft apology as she peeled back the gauze dressing covering his wound. He’d done a bang-up job of gouging the corner of a fricking table into his skull—too good a job, really. Though the pain was getting better by the day, most days his head throbbed like a bitch.

  Even though the nurse busied herself tearing strips of adhesive tape off a roll, she couldn’t disguise the bump of lust she felt. Regardless, he had to give this one top points for professionalism. She didn’t brush her breasts against him, touch him inappropriately, or even let her expression change, which was more than he could say for the nurse he’d caught threading her fingers through his hair as he’d awakened one night.