by Michele Hauf
She had kicked off her shoes. They lay at her feet, looking on the black asphalt like spiky bits of fallen silver stars. He found himself smiling joyfully, in spite of everything. After enduring years of an empty, benign lack of emotion, he had experienced several in the last half hour. With her.
Holding out against a surge of possessiveness so strong it threatened to take him over, St. John said to her, “Just this once,” and started to run.
Chapter 5
Shudders rolled over every inch of Madison’s body, stemming from the electrical charge that came with this man’s skin meeting hers.
Again, she found herself sprinting through parts of London with a stranger. She may have made a stupid mistake by trusting in him in the first place. It wasn’t like her to take this many chances.
They were sprinting through a maze of narrow side streets. Her bare feet were taking the brunt of both the pace and the debris littering the ground. She vowed to complain if things got weirder.
No sound came from behind. Only the rush of blood echoing inside her head filled the silence. Her companion’s legs were twice as long as her own. His shoes, striking the streets, seemed to be working in mute mode. He wasn’t laboring, wasn’t breathing hard. He was definitely the one in better shape.
With all the twists and turns they’d made, she lost all sense of direction. Since they hadn’t slowed, it became obvious that her companion knew the area well. The hour was late, well after midnight. The side streets were quiet. They hadn’t passed anyone since leaving the trendy West End. If she shouted for him to stop now, or asked where they were going, would the idiots behind them hear?
If they were still following.
Around the next bend, a set of steep concrete steps loomed, looking in the dark like a stairway from hell to whatever lay above. Madison tackled those stairs in her guide’s wake. His hold on her hand never loosened. Tiny bursts of electrical charges continued to pass from his fingers to hers, his skin to hers, each surge bringing up more questions and fresh rounds of anxiety.
She was harboring lusty, ridiculous thoughts about one-night stands with strangers. With no idea who her companion might be, or where they were, the drama and the obvious electricity between them turned her on, despite the situation.
They reached the top of the steps with her heart working near to full capacity. She sucked air through her mouth without the ability to catch up or stabilize her breathing. Her bare feet were sliced up pretty badly, and probably bleeding, leaving a blood trail for vampires to follow, if, as in Stewart’s world, blood was their drink of choice.
If she got out of here, she might not be able to wear shoes for a week.
When her guide suddenly slowed, she wanted to cheer, until she sensed movement from their left. A subtle shifting of shadows in the distance produced a new layer of gray on black that her companion noted with a sigh.
She heard voices, laughter. Her heart careened wildly.
With a smooth tug of his arm, her compelling stranger shoved her against an old stone wall. What air Madison had left in her lungs whooshed out as he pressed himself close, as though he would shield her from whatever was out there by grinding his body tight up against hers.
His body was hard, taut, and her reaction to him was swift. Her legs and arms began to shake with expectation. Her breasts strained against his chest.
“Damn you,” she whispered.
The fabric of his pants felt soft against her bare thighs. His breath warmed the side of her face. This sensual stranger felt solid, human and exactly like a man in every way that counted. In spite of that, her breath suspended, because there was something about him she couldn’t mentally digest. Her instincts warned that something wasn’t quite right.
What was it?
Before she could think about it further, he brushed his lips over hers so softly that Madison wondered if she’d made those warning signals up.
A flush of heat rose from her chest to her neck, and into her face. Her thighs began to simmer, despite the chill of the London night.
“So,” she said breathlessly. “You think I owe you just because you saved my ass?”
His hands were on the wall behind her. Madison felt him looking at her, sensed those big eyes continuing their careful observation in the same darkness that wouldn’t allow her to reciprocate.
“I have never forced myself on anyone,” he said.
The pressure of his body against hers was erotic. Way down deep, she shook with a series of internal quakes. An insistent drumming beat out a warning that had the words no good attached to it.
This closeness was wrong, somehow. At the very least, it was distracting, when she had to keep focus. For the sake of her sanity and self-respect, she had to get away from this man who might brag about an intimate liaison with a TV celebrity, or post illicit photos on the internet.
She had to escape this predicament in spite of the fact that the hips tight up with hers fit in all the right places, setting those places on fire.
This was too freaking unbelievable.
Her reactions were unsound. They were in some godforsaken alley, and part of her didn’t care. Part of her wanted this, and him. She just couldn’t resist his magnetism and graceful animal allure. Against the onslaught of physical reactions, she stood little chance of thinking straight. Her last one-nighter had been a very long time ago.
“This isn’t like me. I’m not this person.” The words stuck in her throat. As a rule, she didn’t lose her wits. Couldn’t afford to. Yet the urge overtaking her at the moment wasn’t to run away, but to lock her mouth to his mouth, so hot and close and beckoning. The impulse was to tear at his clothes with both hands in order to maximize a crazy, all-consuming and insatiable hunger for him.
When her exotic companion spoke in the gravelly, velvet-clad tone of a man unfulfilled, she knew he was experiencing the same thing.
“Madison,” was all that he said, but the word caused her body’s deep throb to intensify. She was certain this man knew it. He had to be feeling each beat.
His lips danced across hers lightly, without lasting pressure. His face moved to the crook of her neck in a slow slide of his smooth, cool cheek over hers. She felt his lips touch a spot beneath her right ear before he moved on to place a soft, almost tender kiss on her shoulder.
She was getting hotter, hornier.
“All right.” Her lips formed those words against his lips. “Damn it, all right.”
He didn’t react or respond until her hands crawled up his back. Then he made a faint sound of startled acceptance. After that, the night became a hungry, mindless blur.
His hands were back on her. In a replay of the naughty touch on the dance floor, they slid between her legs with a dangerous spontaneity.
The hem of her silver mini rose. His fingers moved under it, drifting over her lace-covered mound.
When her thong began a feathery, downward descent, Madison wanted to shout at the time this was taking. Spontaneity didn’t mix well with taking the time to consider the possibility of mistakes. She wanted him now, inside her, hard and fast. She wanted to get this over with, because it was insane and unavoidable, and too late to do anything about.
He lifted her up. Her back hit the stone in a scrape of sequins. The lace panties fell silently to her ankles, and then to the ground. She was naked from the waist down, and his fingers flowed over her sensitive places like some kind of molten liquid. Confidently. Possessively.
He urged her to wrap one leg around his hips with a slight motion of those hips, and her bare, moist, sensitive parts met with his swollen groin as cool palms danced over her thighs.
Madison loosened her grip on his tensely muscled back just enough to make room for a second brush of friction; his fingers on her folds without the thin, almost indecent barrier of lace.
The subtle external caress, accompanied by the silky seduction of his golden hair sweeping across her face, kicked up a rolling internal rumble that rushed toward this personal touch. Each breath she fought for was shallow. She could not have opened her eyes, no matter what.
The guy dealing out this exquisite level of pleasure hadn’t yet even fully participated, and she was already on the verge of a climax.
But the deep-seated evidence of his seduction also seemed to carry something else in its wake. A dark shadow rode this seduction like an unwanted hitchhiker.
Something was wrong.
Madison whispered a throaty, “Stop!”
The hand pleasuring her stilled upon her command.
The inner chaos of her approaching orgasm hovered some time more before eventually starting to recede. Her insides ached for its loss. Her mind whirled.
He hadn’t reached that place she’d so badly wanted him to reach. His hand remained on her quivering slit, and she couldn’t allow him to move.
She had no idea where the protest had come from, or what that darkness was that she’d felt so extremely. Yet as the orgasm she hadn’t quite reached disappeared, the dark haze lifted from her sight, leaving her and this stranger motionless, and glued together in a compromising position.
It was a truly awkward moment.
He moved first. Her would-be lover set her on her feet, and backed up a step, forcing her to overcome the weakness in her knees.
“We will meet again,” he said in an unsteady tone, and gently pushed her toward the concrete stairway, where she was again out in the open without her shoes, without her panties, unsatisfied, alone and exposed.
The transition from being in his arms one minute, to being on her own the next, was too quick.
Was it possible that this hunk of a man might give her to the creeps who had chased them, turning her over to them after having his fun? He and that gang couldn’t be some kind of kinky, faux-vampiric tag-team, out to separate tourists from the crowds?
She supposed that anything was possible. She had been uncharacteristically gullible, but at least they hadn’t had sex; no penetration and going all the way. She was lucky that her companion had let her get away with this protest, and had stopped when she’d asked him to.
Would he have done so if this was part of some scam?
Hearing laughter echo off the buildings, Madison spun to face it. This was men’s laughter, loud and unrestrained.
Were they laughing at her expense?
She gazed into the dark, to the wall she had been pressed to, no longer able see the man she’d been with. Panic shot through her as she pressed her dress down, and glanced at the steps.
Someone shouted at her, too close for comfort.
Rigidity overtook her. It was too late for retreat.
The laughter became a roar in her ears.
Balling her hands into fists, Madison turned as another shout came. Two more shouts followed, sounding like...greetings. Sounding, in the vast stretch of foggy, foreign darkness surrounding her, vaguely familiar.
Nerves revved, skin tingling with fear, Madison felt a scream claw its way up from her chest. On wobbling legs, she processed the familiar lilt of a voice, unable to confront the rush of relief she began to feel.
“Hey, Madison! Is that you?” Theodore “Teddy” Jones, her network cameraman, called. “What are you doing out here?”
Collapsing with relief was not an option.
* * *
St. John watched the four mortal males surround Madison. In a swirl of his own shadow, he silently leaped onto the wall at the edge of the alley. Walking quickly along the top, he backtracked along the same route he and Madison had taken.
The rogues were heading this way.
His sexual escapade with Madison would have been short, if allowed to continue. But he had been up close and personal with the American media anchor twice, enough to ensure that some of her scent had rubbed off on him, as well as the other way around. Smelling like her, he would lure the rogues away from where he’d left Madison, and lead them to a more secluded area.
Fledgling vampires tended to squeal like teenaged girls at a party when taken down. If it weren’t for Madison’s scent, saturating his pants and jacket and hands, the murderous villains wouldn’t even see him coming.
On the downside, her lingering fragrance was as enticing as it was delicious, and a heady distraction from his usual routine of avoiding mortals whenever possible. His coat smelled like an orchard of trees basking in Florida sunlight. His fingers, having dipped inside her glorious heat, smelled like...heaven.
He stopped midstride as if pulled to attention.
Something wasn’t quite right about either scent. In the heat of the moment, he had missed that.
He wanted to turn around, find her again, and to hell with the Americans he’d left her with at the steps, as well as the bloodsuckers on Madison’s trail. He wanted to know what had just happened, what this new scent was and why she had been the one to step on the brakes.
Madison had been willing. He hadn’t imagined this. The spike of electrified current he’d experienced with her, with every touch, in every breath, had also caught her up. She had been soft and supple. And yet she had only gone so far.
Had she heard the others approaching, with inferior mortal ears, or had she merely had second thoughts about a sexual liaison in a dark alley?
She hadn’t pulled away or raised a hand to slap him a second time. Her sensational body had ached to give in to the bond he’d set in place in the club, just as his ached.
But he had begun to detect the anomalies in her as soon as his mouth had met with hers. Although it had taken him awhile to process the information, he’d tasted the thin layer of darkness that Madison kept tucked away, hidden.
That’s what the unusual scent also had to be. Darkness. She may have hair the color of flames, and lips like heaven...but all of that was tinged with a subtle layering of shadow.
He had sensed a similar darkness hovering about her brother on the one occasion they’d met.
This gave him pause.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t afford to reason things out at the moment, with his responsibilities here only half over. He’d gotten Madison to safety, and although her safety was important, his initial task remained.
Taking off again, St. John jumped from the wall and landed soundlessly. The nearness of the young vampires ruffled his nerves beneath Madison’s darkened, woodsy fragrance.
“Job to do,” he said aloud, with determination.
With Madison’s scent in their noses, the fledglings searching for her like cats after a rat would never give up. After one whiff, these vampires would follow her until they found her, however long it took.
They had to be stopped before they did, stopped before they encountered other people on the streets tonight who got in their way. Fledglings didn’t know how to curb their appetites. These upstarts had outlived their welcome in the West End. Madison was far too intriguing to wind up as pulp on a damp sidewalk.
Miss Chase had to be around for a while longer, so that he could see her again.
He intended to learn how much she knew about her brother’s research, and what part she played in it. But the truth was there were more personal reasons for keeping her safe that had little to do with whistle-blowers, hidden inner darkness and her capricious, lacy lingerie. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to accept those reasons.
As St. John kicked up his speed to a pace that made him little more than a blur to any onlooker, he admitted to himself that it was entirely possible that, darkness aside, Madison smelled nothing like a Florida orchard. Since he’d never been to Florida, he might be wrong about that.
One more alley...
He paused in an open-legged stance, listened, waited. Wh
en the five savage youngsters, probably no more than a week or two old as vampires, full of themselves and finding comfort in their numbers, stopped on the opposite side of the lane, sneering at him with their fangs exposed, St. John shook his head.
“Now that,” he said, “just makes it easier all the way around.”
Then he waited for the stupid bastards who knew no better, and knew nothing about him, to attack.
Chapter 6
Sleeping had been tough before. Trying to keep her eyes shut now amounted to torture.
In her unair-conditioned hotel room, located a short hop away from Buckingham Palace, Madison tossed and fretted on the mattress, struggling to relax, finding it impossible.
Fresh air might have helped, but there was no way she could open the window when the man who had rescued her from those thugs had freaked her out about who might be out there. Hell, he had sent her imagination into overdrive. Possibly, that damn loose screw was at that very moment turning inside her head.
She didn’t even know that man’s name.
She had stood in the shower until the hot water turned lukewarm, and scrubbed her skin raw with a washcloth, and she still smelled him on her skin. Wool and musk and that other more elusive undercurrent that permeated the air around him as he’d taken her for a midnight run were still there.
Her hotel room smelled like him. So did her sheets. Her oversize white T-shirt had picked up the smell. It had been impossible to rid her freshly washed hair of this lingering fragrance of seduction and mystery.
She didn’t know why he had initially played along with Stewart’s vampire games. Admittedly, though, the guy she’d been groin to groin with was too special to be a mere mortal, any way she looked at it. And way too sexually exciting. From the start, it had been obvious that something had clicked into place between them. Lust at first sight was a powerful incentive for tossing inhibitions aside.
That stuff about them following might have been a ploy for him to get her alone. Them, as in what, London’s version of a low-life street gang? Certainly he didn’t mean the monsters her brother would have her believe frequented London’s crowded places. That had just been a game. Strange foreplay.
