Carson was staring at her, his eyes narrowed. “Of course,” he said slowly. “Why didn’t I think of that? That is what happened to me. They took my memory. But why settle for that and not simply just killing me? What’s the payoff in leaving me alive? Peter killed the sculptor, the gargoyles killed him, they found me, did whatever they did to me to make me forget…” He grew still and his focus moved inwards.
“Then Nick and Damian arrived on the trail of the demon and everyone still alive scattered, leaving you with two bodies and no explanations,” Tally finished.
Carson nodded. “That much I seem to remember. At least I remember all hell breaking loose when those two appeared out of nowhere. That long sword of Sherwood’s isn’t an original, is it?”
Tally smiled. “I think it might be, and from his own ancestral hearth.”
Carson blinked. “He’s a real lord? That accent isn’t a put-on, then?”
“Genuine blue blood. He doesn’t like to talk about it, though. You know vampires. They hate reminiscing. You have to catch them in a really mellow mood, and get them to tell a story that strikes them as funny, or whimsical or something.”
Carson rubbed the back of his neck. “Even with you?”
“Especially with me,” Tally said firmly. “I’m human, a girl, and they’ve watched me grow up. I remind them at every turn that my stay on this earth is temporary, that I am not like them. They have tried so very hard to not remind me of their longevity, that one day I will die, and they will go on.” Tally smiled as she remembered some of the very human activities and reactions the pair had displayed over the years, as they had tried to give her as normal a childhood as possible. “They think I have not thought of this, that I haven’t dealt with it and accepted it. They forget that I have lived with them all my life and thought of nothing else.” She gave a small shrug. “I find living with humans far more difficult.”
Carson drew in a breath. “My god, what a wonderful childhood you must have had!”
She grinned. “It was a particularly carefree one, I must admit. But I only know that now. At the time I just ran wild and loved it, while either Nick or Damian watched over me and hauled me out of extreme scrapes of one kind or another. I didn’t know it then, but it was the perfect training for a hunter. It gave me nerves and daring to try anything. My father would have been horrified at the stunts I attempted if Nick or Damian had cared to let him know. Later on, my boyfriends often were appalled or terrified or flat-out disapproving. They seemed to think someone who looked like me should behave with more grace and dignity. I went through boyfriends like oatmeal.”
Carson threw his head back and laughed.
Chapter Three
Tally dressed in the rayon wrap print dress in dark blues and greens that Bloomingdale’s had sent over. It was a bit snug around the bust line, but wearable. There were some platform shoes in a teal green that the wardrobe consultant had included in the parcel, just in case, that matched flecks from the pattern in the dress, and she slipped them on and went downstairs.
Nick was reading, but put his finger in the book and the book on his lap when she sat on the hassock next to his feet. “You smell of sex and satisfaction,” he stated baldly. “Was he good?”
She could feel her cheeks heating, but Nick and Damian had never let her be a hypocrite in anything. “He’s not like normal men at all, Nick. He’s…different.”
“He’s a hunter,” Nick said simply.
“He’s human,” she countered.
“Very,” Nick said, showing his fangs. “But he made you scream, little one.”
She drew in an unsteady breath.
“Tally doesn’t want to fall in love with just a human,” Damian whispered next to her.
She swiveled to look down at him. “You’re conscious!” Relief flooded her. She wanted to hug him and leaned forward to do so, then hesitated. She reached for his shoulder instead, but didn’t know if that would hurt too much. Finally, she stroked his forehead. “You scared me.”
“I’ll be fine. Just claws. No bites, so no toxin.”
Tally looked at Nick, but he wasn’t sitting anymore. He had put the book down and was looking out the window down onto Central Park. “Where is he?” he rasped, his voice a growl.
“Carson?” she asked, suddenly uneasy. Nick was pissed about something. That growly tone of his was a dead giveaway. “He went out to get food.”
Nick nodded and turned to look at her. “Who said anything about love?” he demanded.
She stared at him. “Who did say anything about love?” she asked, baffled.
“I did,” Damian whispered. “Because it’s too late, Nick. The elephant is in the room with us. Might as well talk about it. Look at her. Smell her.” He coughed hard and fell silent.
Nick whirled back to the window.
“What are you talking about, Damian?” Tally demanded fiercely.
“You love him,” Damian said simply. “A human’s pheromones change when they’re in love. Yours have changed.” He gave a smile and small shrug.
“No…” She was horrified. “I can’t be!”
“When he walks back in that door, you’ll know,” Nick said from the window. He came back to the chair he had been sitting in and sat down once more. He looked tired again. “Why doesn’t she want to love a human?” he asked Damian.
Tally hung her head. “Don’t. Please.”
“You want to carry this shadow all your life, Tally?” Damian whispered.
“I thought it was a good thing,” she muttered.
Nick made an impatient sound.
Tally looked him in the eye. “I wanted to fall in love with someone like you two,” she said simply. “Someone not human. A vampire, an other-world creature. I’ve spent my life in this world. I know it better than the human world and I like it here. I prefer it. I even thought that perhaps you two would one day come to love me like you do each other, for I know you like women in your beds as much as you like men.” She held up a hand, warding off their protests. “I know now that could never happen, so don’t look so stricken. But I never, ever wanted to fall in love with a simple human man and settle down in a house with a picket fence! I don’t want to end up a wife and mother, for heaven’s sake!” She brushed at her cheek, which was wet again.
They were both staring at her.
She swiped at her cheeks again, and sniffed. “Please say something,” she begged.
Nick deliberately inhaled then blew out a breath. “I didn’t spend all these years training you, Natalia Grey, just to have you become a wife and mother. That is not your destiny. I don’t think falling in love automatically shuffles you off into the kitchen anymore. It has fallen out of fashion. Besides, Connors, as you put it yourself, is different. He’s a hunter and he knows very well that you are one, too. Hunters, even if they are human, don’t quite qualify for full human status. They have one foot in both worlds. You know this yourself as you’ve been straddling both worlds for years, Tally. So Connors and you don’t really qualify for the ‘merely human’ tag you seem to abhor.”
She bit her lip. “You’re really stretching the logic there, Nick.”
Nick grimaced. “You asked me to speak. I don’t even like saying his name. Give me credit for trying.” He moved, and was suddenly at the window again. Vampire speed. She stared at his stiff, straight back.
“Give him time,” Damian said softly as Tally stared at Nick’s back, the pain of this small rejection more hurtful than she might have imagined.
She turned to Damian. “Sometimes I just don’t understand either of you.”
“You’d have to live as long as both of us to do that,” Damian said seriously.
She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s that at all. I think sometimes you’re both just being childish and selfish, but you’ve learned to hide it better than most.”
Damian grinned. “That’s what happens when you’ve lived as long as we have.”
She thumped his shoulder, very
gently. “You’re older than him, Damian. Kick his butt for me.”
“Okay. When I can stand, consider it kicked.”
The front door of the apartment opened and closed.
“It has to be Carson. No one else can cross the wards right now,” Nick said from the window.
Tally felt her stomach clench emptily. “I’m starving,” she confessed.
Carson came into the main room, carrying two big brown paper bags, his gaze quartering the room just as her father’s always did whenever he first entered a room.
But then she forgot to breathe. She had forgotten exactly how gorgeous he was. How perfect his physique and features. Even with the stubble, and the stray locks of hair brushing over his midnight blue eyes, he was delightful. He was wearing the pea coat again, which just emphasized his shoulders and neck.
He saw her and his mouth turned up in a smile and her heart stopped.
“Hey,” he said softly, and it was just for her.
She wasn’t sure how she got there, but she was suddenly there, her arms around his neck. He must have put the bags down, because his arms were around her and his lips were just where she wanted them; on hers. His kiss was hot and possessive and sensual and perfect.
There was a muffled thud and she realized he had shed his coat, with the tools of his trade stashed in the inner pockets – iron knives, salt-loaded guns and other weapons and tools. Tally slid her hand up into his hair and wound her leg around his waist. She couldn’t get close enough to him.
“Tally,” Carson murmured into her hair. “God…”
With a groan he brought a hand under her hip, holding her steady. The other lifted her other leg and wrapped it around his waist. He carried her upstairs again and this time he needed no directions. He placed her on the bed on her back, lifted the skirt of her dress and saw she wore no panties and groaned again. With a hand that trembled, he fumbled with the fastening on his jeans, lowered them only enough to release his cock and slide it into her. She was more than ready. She was on fire for him, and at the touch of his cock on the inner walls of her vagina the flames leapt up and consumed her in a sheet of white hot all-consuming fire that roared through her body like an underground express.
As Carson came, so did she, her fingernails scratching at his shirt and digging furrows in the cotton.
Afterwards, he lay beside her and gazed at her face, his eyes moving from feature to feature. He didn’t speak.
Tally led with her heart, knowing that it was the only part of her life where she would be able to do so. “It’s only fair you should know, Carson, that I’ve fallen in love with you.”
He grew still, his eyes focusing on hers. Then his eyes closed. “Thank god,” he said hoarsely, and rolled onto his back. He brought his arm over his eyes.
She sat up, alarmed. “Carson?”
“I fell in love with you about five hours ago,” he said, not moving his arm. “I’ve been trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do about it, short of suffer like an idiot for the next eon or two.” He rubbed the arm across his eyes and sat up. “Is there a reason you don’t look profoundly happy about the idea, Tally?”
“I’m fine,” she said stiffly, plucking at the bedcover.
“No, you’re not. Does it having anything to do with why Sherwood looked ready to pluck my heart and eat it when I arrived, just then? I know he doesn’t like me.”
“He doesn’t like that I love you. It’s nothing personal.”
“He doesn’t like that I’m a rival in the hunting game and I’ve only been in it for three years, while he’s been around for one hundred and ninety, and your father considered me good enough to be his partner. It’s very personal. What else is there, Tally?”
She looked him in the eye. “You’re different, Carson. You’re not like human men I’ve known…in bed I mean. I…don’t know you very well.”
His smile turned smoky, hot and wicked. “But you like what you do know,” he finished.
“Yes,” she whispered, her cheeks blazing. “Where—” Her courage failed her.
“Where did I learn that?” he finished.
She nodded.
He climbed off the bed. “I’m going to get the food and come right back. We both must eat and I bought hot meals.” He slipped from the room.
While he was gone, Tally removed her shoes and settled cross-legged on the bed. It was nearly one in the afternoon. No wonder she was ravenous. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday.
Carson reappeared with the two brown bags, which he placed on the small table by the window. There were two warm stuffed baguettes, freshly squeezed orange juice, and apple pie.
For a while they ate in total silence.
When Tally could spare enough attention away from her food, she asked, “You weren’t born into a demon hunting family, were you?”
Carson shook his head as he wolfed down his apple pie. He reached for hers when she pushed it towards him and tackled it hungrily. “Born and raised in Minnesota. I was even married for a whole nine months.” He looked at her. “I learned later it wasn’t really my idea. The most beautiful girl in the town, who happened to be the daughter of the most powerful and richest man in the county, decided that I was the only man suitable enough to be her husband, and set about to make it happen any way she could. Mostly that was by using Daddy’s name and influence, and straight emotional blackmail. In the end it was straight blackmail. She told me she was pregnant. It was a lie of course.”
“You divorced her?”
“An incubus seduced her and killed her when it was done with her,” Carson said flatly. “At the time, I had no idea about this underworld of ours. I only knew that the police finding of depression and suicide made absolutely no sense at all. Not if you knew Debbie, which I finally did after nine months of her bullshit. Her father didn’t believe it either, which made us uneasy partners. He gave me an open check and told me to find the truth. It took me eighteen months but I did find the truth at last…and he didn’t believe me. He kicked me out of the town, out of his life, and made sure I could never step back into the county without being arrested.” Carson pushed the pie plate away with a convulsive shove and wiped his mouth.
“But you knew about the demon world after that.”
“Yeah,” Carson growled. “I had nowhere else to go. So I started hunting. First, I went looking for the incubus.”
“Did you ever find it?”
Carson shook his head. “Not yet. I’m not in any real hurry. One day I’ll cross its path and we’ll have words. But that’s not why I’m in this, Tally. Don’t ever think that. I’m not looking for a white whale and leaving destruction in my wake.”
“You don’t give off that impression,” she assured him.
“Mostly I’m doing it because it interests me,” he told her. “For nearly thirty years I had no idea there was a whole other world of creatures and people mingling with humans, undetected, sometimes living as humans. Then there are the humans who go among them and even hunt them. It’s a whole different universe, with different rules. I found myself drawn in. The more I was drawn in, the more I learned and the more I liked it. I started hunting, but I didn’t stop at hunting.”
Tally felt her whole body ripple as his gaze fixed on her.
“I figured,” he said softly, “If I was a hunter, I might as well be a hunter for true. I’d only been in this world a short time for me to figure out that real hunters, those that had been born to the trade, the human ones, well, they’re not quite human. They don’t think like real humans do. They don’t react the same. They don’t have the same values. If I was to be a good hunter, I needed to learn as much as I could about this new world I was in, as soon as possible. I had to absorb and experience as much of it as I could.” He smiled and heat flickered in his eyes. “That led me into some very interesting places.”
“I’m quite sure it did,” Tally murmured and shivered. This was a reflection of Nick’s words.
Carson slid off the bed
again and went back to the table where the bags were still sitting. He delved into the still untouched second bag. “I didn’t just buy food while I was out, Tally.” He began laying items on the table beside the bag and as she stared at them, her heart leapt and slammed against her chest. Some of the items she couldn’t name and others she wasn’t sure entirely how they would be employed. But she recognized exactly what the array of objects was.
Sex toys.
She pressed her thighs together as her pussy and clit throbbed and her breasts seemed to grow heavy and tipped with lava. They chaffed inside the dress.
Tally licked her lips. She had no idea what Carson intended to do with her, or with those things lined up on the table, that was the problem.
Something of her dilemma must have shown on her face, for Carson picked up the slender white rope coiled on the table and came toward her. “Remember when I spoke of trust this morning?”
She nodded.
“You ended up letting go in the end, didn’t you? Just letting go and letting me give you any sort of pleasure I wanted to and just accepting it. Remember?”
The reminder made her whole body clench with an echo of that thrill. She had been mindless with need. She nodded again.
“That’s all I’m asking you for now. You just have to let go and in return you get that incredible pleasure.” He dropped the rope on the bed next to her where it lay gleaming softly like a pearly-white doily. He snagged the button on her wrap dress and pulled it undone. The front of the dress sagged open. Underneath, there was a pair of ties that held the dress closed, which he pulled undone with a tug. The dress fell open completely, revealing her bare breasts and naked body.
Tally was unable to say no, as he slid the dress off her shoulders and dropped it over the back of the chair next to the table.
He took all the pillows off the bed. “Lie down,” he told her.
Tally glanced at the rope one last time, before lying down. Carson kissed her, then picked up the rope and her wrist. She sucked in a shuddering breath as he wrapped the rope around her wrist and lift it towards the bed post.
Carson's Night Page 4
