“I’ve decided to cite loyalty to my company and gracefully decline,” Alex said in a quiet voice.
He thought he noticed the slight droop of Dante’s shoulders and believed he’d relaxed. Lowering his voice to a hush, Alex said, “I’d like to be alone with you right now. To be naked with you, our bodies aroused, sweaty and fucking.”
He chuckled when he saw Dante gulp and almost choke on his food. He could imagine what that remark was doing to Dante’s groin.
“The point is, I want to keep on seeing you when this is over. I’ve been trying to work that out in my mind. But do you want to continue to see me?” Alex asked.
“Yes. The idea we’ll suddenly be going separate ways before our relationship has a chance to develop beyond hot sex disturbs me, but I don’t have a solution. We live so far apart.”
“You could always move to New Orleans and work for Global.”
One corner of Dante’s mouth lifted in a wry smile. “Or you could move to Florence.”
Powerful and strong Alex might be, but a weight had just lifted from his shoulders. He felt like standing up and shouting to the other diners that Dante wanted to be with him, wanted to get to know him better. He wished he was wearing the long black cape lined in red people expected of vampires—he could spread it wide and theatrically strut his stuff. But there’d been a famous actor who’d jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch on TV—minus the cape—shouting that he’d fallen in love, and that hadn’t gone over well.
So instead, he smiled wickedly. “If you’re through with your meal, we should go to see the undead polizia.”
Chapter Twelve
Back in Alex’s suite, they made love again on what might be their last night together for a while. Once they had the prince’s decision, they’d board the night train to Rome together and then be wrenched apart. Alex would fly to the United States. Dante would spend the night in Rome and make the two-hundred-mile trip to Florence by train the next morning.
With bodies demanding to have it all before they parted, their lovemaking was hot and passionate, almost violent at times. Mouths seeking, tongues delving deep, they raced their hands over each other’s bodies seeking every secret place, every arousing crevice, and cavity before finally settling on their cocks. Dante had run his fingers through the nest of golden curls at its base and then curled about Alex’s stiff erection jutting from them and slid up and down, up and down.
Dante moaned as Alex’s cool, hard hand reached for him, stroking and thumbing his full, aching erection. Lost in the rising need, he squirmed and pressed harder against that hand until he almost forgot to coax Alex’s huge, hard rod to completion. He never wanted to forget the feel of that cock, or the velvety skin purpled by the distended veins that trailed its long length or the dark head pounding into his hand. Or into his aching ass.
He had no control over the moment of release. He’d been climbing a mountain when his balls tightened and the spasms shook him. His cum shot over and over into Alex’s hand. At that moment, when he was buried in sensation, he felt Alex tighten, then respond with shudders that synchronized with his.
When it was over, and Dante’s spine seemed to have melted for the moment, the sticky wetness that should have been deposited in Dante’s hand was absent. Would forever be absent. It didn’t seem to lower Alex’s pleasure, and all that mattered was that Alex soared with him.
After Dante had recovered from his climax, they lay side by side and talked. Dante traced his fingers over the beautiful face, the sensual lips. “How old are you really?” When Alex answered him, he said, “My God.” And then, “Where were you born? Are you really Greek?”
And so Alex told him about his early life in Athens, by the sea.
When Dante asked how he’d been changed into a vampire, it was Alex’s turn for his fingers to explore Dante’s lips, followed by a kiss brushed across his mouth. “Let’s not speak of darkness. Tell me about Dante and Florence.”
They talked late into the night until they knew more about each other. And when a lull finally came, Alex guided Dante onto his back and began to send sucking, bruising kisses across his nipples until they marbled and burned with desire. His mouth moved down the dark hairs of his belly as his clever fingers caressed Dante’s cock to life again. Caught up in a maelstrom of sensations, Dante could only whisper, “Yes, oh, yes,” when Alex ran his nails up the tender inner sides of his thighs and bent his knees. Dante was beside himself as Alex cupped his balls and then slid fingers into the begging opening in his waiting ass.
His cock, when he’d withdrawn those fingers and entered Dante, was not cautious, but molten and demanding. Dante cried out when the pain of the entry mingled with the swelling, filling pleasure of it. Alex covered his mouth to take the cry into himself, and Dante responded by lifting up to meet the hard thrusts, releasing any restraint he might have with this immortal. He gave no thought to the danger he might be in, only to his need and the enthralling, dark being above him.
When he felt Alex’s mouth leave his and poise over that spot in his neck where he felt his full pulses throbbing with passion, he cried, “Now!” And let himself soar with Alex as the sharp fangs nipped and the mouth sucked.
He drifted in the aftermath of their love, warm and comfortable, knowing he’d been taken to great heights but was still himself, still Dante. He wakened only long enough to realize Alex was still in bed with him. Alex’s cool fingers brushed over his eyelids to close them.
“Sleep, my human lover. I will stay with you until I do.”
Exhausted and spent, they drifted off together, bodies touching.
§§§§
Dante was hot. Only partially awake, he kicked the bedding aside and lay back in the buff. Alex’s body usually kept him cool, but the heat intensified even after he’d shed the covers.
Beside him, Alex moaned and tossed restlessly. His vampire slumber should be so deep it would be difficult to wake him, so he was obviously in pain.
Dante sat up, wondering if the suite had air-conditioning. It must be almost nine in the morning. His inner alarm had failed him. Awake now, he realized a light was on. He usually went to bed before Alex did. It wasn’t like Alex to leave the lights on, but apparently he had. Then he remembered they’d gone to bed at the same hour because their remaining time together was precious and not to be squandered. They’d been in full darkness then.
Alex screamed, and Dante turned toward him. Alex’s usually pale face was red and tiny blisters were forming on his skin. His arms, unprotected by the covers, were beginning to blister.
“Alex! Wake up! What’s wrong?”
Alex covered his eyes with his hands and struggled to sit up, to talk through swollen lips. “Dying…sun—”
Sun? There was no sun. Whatever was happening to him was causing him to have a nightmare about being dying in sunlight.
Dante’s skin was tender and when he checked, he saw his arms and chest were red. As if sunburned. It was then he made the connection with the heat, the blisters and Alex’s words. A sunlamp. There was a sunlamp on in the room, and Alex had tried to warn him. Frantic to stop what was happening to Alex, he raced to turn the light switch off. The death-dealing light went black. In the ensuing darkness, he stubbed his toe hard as he fumbled for the desk and the phone. The pain nauseated him, but he found the phone and called the front desk.
“This is an emergency! I need a doctor for the vampire in this suite. Someone turned a sunlamp on to kill us, and he’s very sick. Please notify Prince Massimo, too. Hurry!”
He had no idea what he should do for Alex except cool his skin. That seemed important. He ran to the bathroom and turned on the shower to a slow flow and tepid water. Then he raced back to Alex.
“Alex, sit up! We have to cool you off.” He hooked an arm around Alex’s undamaged waist and helped him slide off the bed. With his sore toe and Alex’s weight, it took longer than he’d wanted to reach the cool tiles of the bathroom floor. Apparently seeking relief from the heat,
Alex tried to sink down on them. Dante knew they must feel good to a being for whom such coolness was normal, but if he let him lay down he’d never be able to get the big vampire on his feet again.
“No, no. We’re getting in the shower. The water will help cool your skin. Mine, too.”
Thank God, this wasn’t a cheap hotel where the shower was over the tub. He couldn’t have managed Alex’s dead weight if they’d had to step over the rim of a tub. Finally, they were in the shower, and Alex stopped moaning as the water flowed gently over his face and arms, but he kept his eyes closed and seemed shocky and unable to talk.
They were both standing there naked and Dante unsure how much longer he could hold onto Alex, when the paramedics, a physician, and the hotel’s night manager arrived.
The paramedics took Alex from him and towel dried all but his face and arms. They covered him with a soft sheet and lifted him onto a gurney. He lay still, his eyes closed, and Dante’s heart crunched to see the powerful vamp like this.
Dante wasn’t an emergency, so while they attended to Alex, he gingerly patted himself dry and wrapped a towel around his waist. When he came out of the bathroom, one group of paramedics had whisked Alex away. Dante’s gut wrenched. He hadn’t told Alex he’d come to him.
Dante’s only article of clothing was the towel wrapped around his waist when the undead police arrived and interrogated him. Ordinarily, it would’ve amused him to be sitting there with his dick and balls barely covered while engaging in such a serious discussion, but he was too worried about Alex to find any humor in it.
The remaining paramedics told him his toe was probably broken.
“It certainly hurts enough to be,” he said wryly.
His burn turned out to be superficial, involving only the top layer of his skin. They insisted on rubbing a soothing balm on it, and he welcomed the relief. When he asked about Alex, they told him the blisters indicated a superficial partial thickness burn. Perhaps even more serious full thickness damage would be found under some of the blisters.
Dante bit his lower lip to keep from responding to the news by cursing.
At last, they allowed him to take his clothes and dress in the first room Alex had stayed in. It still contained a few of Alex’s things because he was still paying for it. A police officer had gone in ahead of him to check out the room.
“This suite’s safe. In the suite where you slept, we discovered someone had substituted a sunlamp bulb in the ceiling light over the bed. It was on a timer set to go off while the vampire slept. Fortunately for Mr. Nicolaides, you were here to save his life. The electricity was on, but the other bulbs had been unscrewed so they wouldn’t light up.”
Hair stood up on Dante’s arms and the back of his neck, and he began to tremble uncontrollably as fear and rage flooded him. Giacomo had to have been in their suite after they’d fallen asleep to twist those bulbs. It was a wonder he hadn’t driven stakes into their hearts. But he’d obviously wanted the hated “final death” for Alex—flames to ashes. The thought he might have hidden in the suite and watched while they had sex sickened him.
He asked the manager where they’d taken Signor Nicolaides. He had to get to Alex to see how he was, to let him know he wasn’t alone.
From the doorway, Agapeto Maciodi said, “He’s in our hospital. I’ll take you to him.”
“Thank heavens, you’re here, Mr. Maciodi. What was happening to Alex was horrible.”
“Please. Call me Agapeto. I think we’ve been through enough together to warrant first names.”
Then it struck Dante that it was daytime and Mr. Maciodi was here. “Is it safe for you?”
“It’s kind of you to worry about me. Heavy fog hides the sun this morning, but I’ll be careful.”
Dante nodded. He slid his “peddler’s jacket” with its stake from a hangar and pulled it on. Before he climbed into the Town Car, he said, “I don’t expect Prince Massimo to be at the hospital, but, just in case, you need to know I’m armed.”
“As am I, my friend. Have no fear. The prince feels great shame that Giacomo has eluded us. If we locate him before the police do, it will not go well for him.”
The memory of Garibaldi’s severed head rolling on the floor at his feet popped into Dante’s mind. “I’d consider a clean swipe to the neck with a sword a justified death, but, personally, I’d rather see him left tied up out in the sunlight until he’s nothing but ashes.”
Agapeto didn’t reply to that. Instead, he said, “We heal fast, but Alex’s wounds may be such that it will take longer. They’ve given him artificial blood to aid in the healing and started antibiotics since infection’s part of the risk with blistered burns. I believe he’s in and out of consciousness due to the pain.”
Dante leaned back and closed his eyes to deal with his emotions.
His gut tightened in pain when he saw Alex. A silvery ointment covering his burns gleamed under the harsh lighting in his hospital room but gave off a faint scent of cinnamon. An empty polyethylene bag of what had contained blood hung from an IV pole with its line shut off. The line ended at a needle taped to a vein in Alex’s right foot. Another needle was in place in the other foot, and a bag of fluid containing penicillin dripped into that vein. Alex managed a brief smile when he opened his swollen eyelids enough to see Dante.
Alex looked awful, but Dante put on a cheerful voice and gently rubbed the toes on one of Alex’s feet with his fingers. It was the only safe place to touch him, and he had to touch him. He had to convey his feelings to him, and he was desperate to assure himself Alex was alive.
“Hey, fabulous immortal. You’re looking good considering what Giacomo tried to do to us.”
“You—” It was all Alex could get out.
“Not so bad. I’m afraid you got the worst of it. Thankfully, I overslept and the heat woke me. You mumbled just enough to alert me to what was happening, and I shut off the damned sunlamp. I’m not going anywhere tonight. I’ll sleep right here in this chair.”
Already, Alex’s eyes had closed again.
Agapeto spoke, his voice hushed and grave. “Our friend won’t be alone. The guard ordered by the prince is just outside the door for now.”
“That’s good,” Dante said, “but I’ll be here anyway. Not sure I can stay awake all day, but I won’t leave him.”
Agapeto nodded. “Alexandros is fortunate to have you as a—” He cleared his throat as if stumbling over the idea of a human lover and began again. “To have you as a close friend.”
A doctor examined Dante’s now reddish-blue toe and taped it. A male nurse insisted he drink a couple of glasses of water because of his burns, then brought a pillow and a blanket. Dante remained awake for a long time, a wooden stake clutched in his hand under the blanket. Exhausted from the ordeal of the morning, he fell asleep.
It must have been close to five in the evening when he roused in terror. A vampire was sitting on Alex’s bed.
Tossing the blanket aside, Dante leaped up, his stake lifted high, ready to drive it into the vampire’s back.
The vampire turned toward him.
Dante noticed the stylish haircut and the earring in the ear. “Prince Massimo!”
“Come. See,” the prince ordered.
Dante’s hands shook as he slid the stake into his jacket pocket before he approached the bed. The thought of the consequences of having staked the prince made his mouth go dry.
Alex’s golden strands of hair, dull now instead of the healthy gleam Dante had loved, covered the prince’s forearm as he bent over it.
Sensing Dante’s presence, Alex lifted his head. His eyes were red and his fangs were out. Blood dripped from them. His mouth was covered in blood.
Horror rolled through Dante at the evil sight and a side of Alex he’d never seen, but before he could react, the prince spoke. His tone was matter-of-fact.
“Fresh blood heals best. Growing older increases our blood’s ability to provide healing and, because of my age, there are few in Italy to match
my blood’s power. The burns Alexandros suffered are extremely toxic. He has been very ill. Ill enough to make his undeath true death. The synthetic blood they’ve been pouring into him has been only minimally effective.”
Alex’s mouth returned to drink from the vein in the prince’s arm.
Dante’s shoulder tingled and his belly stirred at the memory of sex and the “little bite” as his lover had called it. Still sickened by what he saw, he focused on the prince’s dark eyes and away from the sight of fangs at that wrist and the desperate drinking of royal blood. “Thank you for your help. You honor him.”
“It is my obligation. I should have waited to remove Giacomo after the two of you had left Naples. You’d have been out of sight and out of mind, as they say.” He sighed. “Sometimes I am impetuous, I fear.”
Yeah, Garibaldi’s head was off in seconds, Dante thought. He said nothing.
Alex stopped drinking and was now licking the prince’s wrist to seal over the wound with his saliva. Massimo laid his hand gently on top of the blond head, then removed it.
“Even before the meeting, I knew Giacomo was recruiting followers to usurp me. With little success, I might add, but I knew I’d have to remove him from the council, so I snapped and declared my authority when he ordered you killed.”
Alex sank back, eyes closed. Dante wished the silvery ointment wasn’t hiding the color of his skin so he could see if its redness had lessened, but he thought the blisters were receding.
The prince spoke again. “You hadn’t arrived when Alexandros confirmed what I’d suspected was Giacomo’s dishonesty regarding the gems I asked Alexandros to appraise. Apparently, he’s learned about the friendship between the two of you and that I’ve invited Alexandros to replace him. I’m sure all of this sent him into this insane rage.”
Dante listened without comment. He thought the prince was correct. Giacomo was insane. He was also a coward. A clever one. He knew he couldn’t win in a fight against Alex to get to Dante, so he’d contrived this deadly thing with cunning.
Night Train to Naples Page 9
