The Vampire Who Loved Me

by Theresa Meyers

  Beck sat bolt upright, suddenly uncomfortable with being in his arms. “Look, I can’t think about that right now. I don’t need some five-hundred-year-old baggage on my shoulders. I’ve got to find a way to stop the release of Vanquish. And I don’t have time for this hocus-pocus-past-life imprint stuff that you’re telling me won’t probably exist anymore if I turn mortal again.”

  Achilles released her, but the distance between them suddenly seemed far greater than just mere inches. “That’s why I want you to go back to being mortal as soon as it’s possible. I don’t want you to suffer the way you did before.”

  “You mean you don’t want me to make you suffer.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “You didn’t have to. Even if I couldn’t read your mind, I could have read it in your eyes. You’re scared. Terrified. Whatever happened between you and Ione really messed you up.”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. “What happened is half of me died! I’ve been living as a damned halfling for five centuries. I didn’t have any hope until you came back.” He released her as if touching her burned him.

  “What do you need to create an antivirus to Vanquish?” He sounded so resigned it made her ache, as if she’d somehow bruised him.

  “I need to get a sample of what Margo’s created.”

  “I can—”

  Beck touched him. “No. You can’t. If Vanquish is live and does what Margo says it can, it could react with you and you’d be dust in forty-eight hours. There’s only one of us that can take that risk.”

  Achilles shook his head. “That doesn’t mean I like it.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  He lifted his head, settling his steady gaze on her. “How can I help you?”

  “Tell me how to get inside the lab like a vampire.”

  “Unless you plan on waltzing through the lobby, then you’re going to have to jump up to your lab and transport through the wall while maintaining invisibility.”

  “It’s six freakin’ stories up!”

  Achilles grinned at her in a way that made her knees weak.

  “Yes, but you’re a vampire now. That’s a workout, but not impossible.”

  Beck rolled her shoulders and bent her head to one side, then the other, loosening up her shoulders like an athlete.

  “Okay, six stories. Jump. Got it.”

  “Then transport through the wall. And stay invisible.”

  “But we haven’t even covered that yet!”

  Achilles pinched the bridge of his nose. “Gods preserve me.” He glanced up at her, pinning her with a sparkling green gaze. “If you’d just give me a chance, sweetling, I can teach you that, too.”

  He promptly disappeared and she feared the worst.

  “Achilles!”

  “I’m still here.”

  Beck noticed that rather than there being a telltale smokelike wisp, he was there one second and totally gone the next. There was nothing gradual about it. She reached out and encountered a very solid, very warm chest. Her fingers tingled.

  “Just checking,” she said as she worried the edge of her lip between her teeth.

  An instant later he was back again, and the feeling of him beneath her touch hadn’t changed.

  “I’m guessing invisibility is more of an optical illusion.”

  “Partially. This is the part I think you’ll understand better than anyone else I’ve trained. You’re actually rearranging yourself, so that you can move through the air, become one with it. You have to mentally will yourself into nothingness.”

  “You mean like rearranging atoms?”

  He nodded and Beck felt like a grinning fool.

  “I want you to give it a try.”

  “Right now?” she squeaked, and pulled the lapels of her bathrobe a little tighter together.

  “It’s either give it a shot now and know you can, or give it a shot when you’re out there on that window ledge and hope you can.”

  “Gotcha. Okay, here goes nothing.” Beck closed her eyes, letting her mind empty.

  “Very nicely done, Doc.”

  She popped open her eyes and held out her hand and didn’t see a thing beyond the carpet and the couch and Achilles. “Thank you.”

  “Well, if you have no further need of me, I’m going to check back in with Dmitri and tell him of this latest development and your plans.” He turned on his heel to walk away.

  “Wait.” A smile curved over her mouth as she tiptoed past the couch and hefted herself to sit on the counter.

  He glanced over his shoulder, pinpointing exactly where she sat.

  How did he know? She’d moved while she was invisible.

  “Yes?”

  “How do I become visible again?”

  He chuckled as he strode over and stood right in front of her. “You have to focus on your body, bringing it all back together again.” He stepped closer, and her knees had to part to accommodate him. “I’ve found wanting to do something physical usually does the trick.”

  Her body grew heavy and warm. “Like hit someone?”

  He nodded, leaning in still closer until his mouth was only an inch away from hers. “Or kiss someone.”

  Beck didn’t want to stop herself. She knew she was only going to be a vampire for a short while longer. So she eliminated the distance between them and threw her arms around his neck, locking him against her.

  “Why don’t you show me exactly how that works.”

  A growl rumbled low and needy in his throat. “You know we shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “Yeah, imprint, forever, blah, blah, blah. Kiss me, already.”

  His lips were warm and solid and sent a shower of sparks shooting through her body, sensitizing every nerve ending. His hands curved around her ass, pulling her closer around him. With a flick, her fangs extended at the sensation. She saw her shoulders reappear and glanced down to see her legs wrapped around his hips. She didn’t need to see his erection to feel it pressed hard against her softness.

  “Mmm,” she murmured against his mouth, “you still taste like black licorice.”

  Achilles rested his forehead against hers. “And you’re killing me, Doc.” With a flick his fangs extended as well, peering over the edge of his bottom lip.

  “Then it’s a good thing we’re both undead.” She kissed him fiercely, with everything she had, and Achilles matched the assault, making her toes curl.

  Chapter 14

  He pulled back long enough to stare deeply into her eyes. “You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Me or the vampire I used to be?”

  A valid question. He’d loved Ione with a passion, but what he felt for Rebecca ran far deeper, intertwined with his very ability to feel, to hope. She’d awakened him from a seemingly endless darkness. Achilles brushed the pad of his thumb over the incredible softness of her lip. “You.”

  The need to taste her, to feel her grew overwhelming. As good as he was at denial, he’d finally met his match in her. “Gods, woman.” His voice was hoarse. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Easy. Make love to me. Not like a vampire, but like the man I know you are.” She closed her eyes, and he could sense the power spiraling up inside her. Without warning their clothing phased away leaving him skin to skin with her.

  The sudden contact stunned him. Her wet heat pulsating against him. He ground his teeth, forcing himself to hold back from sinking deep in her. If he did this, if he surrendered to his desire for her, there’d be no going back unless she turned mortal. The imprint would be completed and his fate would be sealed, as would hers.

  Deep inside, his granite heart crumbled into dust. The knowledge hit him with a force unlike anything else.

  He wanted an imprint with her. Needed it. Even if it only lasted a short time.

  Tucking her closer against him, he lost himself in the drugging power of her kiss and her touch as she kneaded his back and dug her fingernails into
his skin.

  He had to keep some part of her to himself forever, even if it was all he had to last him another five hundred years until she was brought back again. Someday they’d get it right, but for the moment the imprint was a pulsating, driving force that couldn’t be stopped.

  Slowly he traced the curves of her cheek, his fingers gliding a sensual path down her neck and over her shoulder that his mouth followed. The heat of her seared his lips as he tried to memorize every sweet inch of her fragrant skin. The soft globe of her breast created a hot silk weight in the center of his palm as he caressed it. He brushed the hardened pink tip with his thumb before drawing her into his mouth. Gods, she tasted like gingerbread, hot and spicy and sweet. Beneath his lips her nipple hardened further. Rebecca shuddered, her eyes drifting shut as she let out a soft rumbling sound from the back of her throat that torqued his response up even higher.

  As he moved to taste the other side, Rebecca arched into his touch and he took everything she gave. Waking from the existence of being a halfling for so long was earth-shattering. Each touch, each caress, was magnified in intensity a hundredfold. His hand slid down the edge of her ribs and across the flare of her hip and the smooth expanse of her stomach, her skin so velvety soft it made him ache. The ichor within Rebecca moved and pulsed, the rush of it beneath her skin whispering to him like a tempting promise of redemption. Gods help him, he wanted to please her.

  Rebecca panted, her breath stirring the hair on his head as she gripped his shoulders hard. He glanced up at her face. Her lush mouth was slightly open, her eyes half shuttered behind a fan of dark lashes. “Keep going,” she urged. “Don’t you dare stop now.” The soft curls at the juncture of her thighs were damp with feminine desire as he slid his fingers into the slick cleft. Achilles trembled, drawing on everything he could to maintain his Spartan control. He’d felt her before, but that had been purely in his mind. Beneath his hands she was fire and silk. Her hips bucked toward him, pushing his touch deeper, then pulled back, allowing him to caress her.

  Achilles followed her demands, his fingers stroking her as he kissed a slow, wet path back to her mouth. Her breathing grew shallow and fast, the raw need pulsating in the air around them. Gods knew Achilles needed her—whether she was called Ione or Rebecca—in a way he’d needed no one else before or since, and he would always need her. The imprint had never diminished. It had lain dormant, waiting until he came to life once more in this woman’s arms, and the drive to complete it was stronger than a mortal’s need for air or a vampire’s need for blood. Beck’s soft, panting breath was fire against his skin.

  He wished he was strong enough to deny himself for her. But Gods, no man, mortal, vampire or god was that strong. He pulled back his fingers, making her gasp with indignation, then plunged into her, making her groan. He absorbed every ounce of sensation he could. After so long separated from his other half, it was like stepping out into brilliant sunlight. Even with his eyes closed, she was pure, utter brilliance, the warmth of her soaking into every cell and bringing him back to life.

  Beck threw back her head and shouted, as he pulled slowly back then slid home, filling her, completing her. But on the edges of her sexual haze, something glimmered and she instinctively knew there was something more she needed from him. He kissed a scorching trail down her neck. She arched. “Achilles,” she breathed. “Now.”

  His fangs sank into her carotid, sending a bolt of electricity winding through her arteries to connect the points where they joined. Lips, breast, belly, thighs and all points in between, pulsed and throbbed as the light consumed them from the inside out.

  Beck gasped. She couldn’t believe the swirling intensity he brought out in her as her ichor flowed into him. It was like being a superhero, capable of seeing more, feeling more, than she’d ever imagined possible.

  The sensation of him inside her was amplified a hundredfold when she realized she was experiencing not just her own überawareness of him, but of herself, as well. She was in her own body, but now she was in Achilles’s body, too.

  Stunned and turned on, she felt the soft silk of her own skin when he touched her breast. She felt her own arousal and also knew the power of his erection as he slid in and out of her.

  Before, the friction of him inside her had been enough, but now she experienced the wet heat of her own body as it encased him, the silken feel of her gripping him and the rush of pure pleasure it gave him. She could feel the flow of energy growing as he fed from her.

  A shuddering rush rippled through her, spiraling her higher and higher until she reached a point where everything stopped. Then the free fall started. A mind-blowing rush. She cried out.

  And before she hit earth, the same spiraling heat lifted her up again twice more.

  No way this was just sex. Or lust gone wild. This was something purer, more potent and far more precious.

  Achilles could call it an imprint, but she knew what it really was—love.

  And as much as she wanted to never leave this feeling, it scared her all the same. Love caused people to make stupid choices. Love got people hurt. But she didn’t care.

  All she needed, all she desired at the moment, was to feel him and know they were together. That she mattered to him. Tomorrow and the next day could wait.

  He pulled away from her, his fangs slipping from her skin. The power still radiated around them, a literal glow in the room. He leaned in, touching his forehead to hers.

  “I’m sorry, sweetling. I couldn’t stop myself.”

  “Sorry? Don’t be sorry. That was … that was incredible.”

  A heartbreaking half smile lifted his sculpted lips that had been so soft, so tender against her. “I’m afraid I haven’t been the best mentor for you. I wasn’t strong enough to hold off the imprint forming between us.”

  “How could you? Didn’t you tell me an imprint was stronger than any one vampire?”

  He looked away, unable to meet her eyes and Beck’s chest constricted. “I should have let another mentor you.” The regret and self-loathing in his voice made her ache for him.

  “Look, who says it isn’t in our very nature to be meant for this? Weren’t you the one who said you can’t fault something for its nature?”

  He brushed a large hand over his dark blond cropped hair and cupped the back of his head. “That’s different. I had a responsibility to you. You should have had a choice in the matter.”

  “But I still do.” She caressed his jaw and it flexed beneath her fingers as if she’d caused him pain. “I’m going to get that sample of Vanquish, and I’m going to go back to being mortal. If the imprint lasts through that, then maybe you’ll consider that it was meant to be. Deal?”

  He closed his eyes and sighed. “It would be for the best.”

  “Achilles.” He looked up and gazed at her, the green of his eyes as deep and dark as the cool bottom of a lake. “I don’t regret imprinting with you. Not for a moment.”

  “That’s only because you do not know the darker side of it.”

  Sometimes there was no winning with a man. She dropped her hand and he pulled back from her, leaving her skin exposed to the cool air. But by the look in his eyes, he’d pulled away from more than just her touch. She phased the bathrobe back around her, but it didn’t provide the comfort she needed.

  Clearly feeling as vulnerable naked as she did, Achilles phased his jeans, shirt and shoes back into place. “I need to see Dmitri and tell him what you’re planning to do.”

  Beck nibbled at her lip and nodded.

  “I’ll do everything I can to protect you,” he said, almost like another apology, then vanished in a curl of dark smoke.

  Beck’s sigh echoed heavily in the room. “But who is going to protect me from you?”

  She wished she had the luxury of curling up in bed or soaking in a hot tub to wash away the hurt building inside her. But there wasn’t time. She needed to get a sample of Vanquish tonight.

  She closed her eyes, phasing for herself a pair of snu
g black jeans, a black turtleneck sweater covered with a fitted black leather jacket and flexible black shoes. Normally black wasn’t her thing, but regardless of the fact that she intended to be invisible, a little extra camouflage in the dark couldn’t hurt.

  Concentrating on the grounds just inside the security gates of Genet-X Laboratories, Beck concentrated on the sucking pull. Suddenly the chill of the night air knifed through her lungs. She glanced up at the sheer pale face of the building. A row of lighted windows glimmered on the sixth floor. Beck knew what she had to do. She blew out a harsh breath, bounced on the balls of her feet a time or two before crouching down, then pushed up with all her might. She landed on the window ledge outside the sixth floor laboratory and gazed in at what had once been her desk.

  A pang of familiarity hit her in the gut. Her desk looked just the same as she’d left it two weeks ago. Margo looked the same as she had two weeks ago. But two weeks had changed Beck’s outlook on the world forever.

  Their desks faced each other, but Margo sat at the pair of desks alone, her dark bob hair cut pinned neatly behind her ears. It was late, nearly 10:00 p.m. according to the clock on the laboratory wall. But Beck knew the kind of hours she had to be putting in to get results, especially working on it alone. She lifted her head as the phone rang.

  Outside Beck felt the vibration of the phone along the tiny hairs on her arm. She closed her eyes testing her new senses just as Achilles had taught her. At first the rumble of the central heating and air conditioning system mimicked the roar of a jet engine.

  Beck tried harder, sorting through sounds. It was like tuning a radio dial to pick up exactly what she wanted to hear.

  Finally she caught Margo’s staccato voice. “—excellent, bring him to the lab. They should be here shortly. Call me when they arrive.” She hung up, then twisted each of the vials in the test tube rack on her desk so that none of the labels matched the same direction.

  When who arrived? The investors? She’d see for herself soon enough. Beck telescoped her vision so she could easily read the paperwork on Margo’s desk. The final approval documents for payment on the project was waiting for signature pending one last satisfactory product test.