A loud crash shook the hillside. Xandra craned her neck in time to see the car slam into a tree trunk. A plume of flame erupted as the gas tank exploded under the impact.
Terror and anger shot through her, followed swiftly by guilt. Those were probably operatives she knew back there. But they’d shot at them. They couldn’t risk going back to help.
Dante led them on a bumpy ride down the hill to another dirt road not much better than the last. They followed its zigzagging trail for half an hour until it met the highway. The motorcycle’s engine sounded far rougher than it had when they’d left. She was amazed it was still running.
They sped along the highway for a time until Dante paused on the shoulder for a quick glimpse behind. The sky had cleared as the moon set, leaving only the gray glow of approaching dawn. Dante studied the horizon for a moment, listening intently.
“I think we lost them.”
Xandra sagged against him. “How far now?”
The last thing she wanted to do was to spend another night in a motel where credit cards might be traced and they might be interrupted again.
“Not that far,” he assured her. “I’ve overshot a bit to throw them off the trail, but we’ll make it by dawn.”
“What makes you think they won’t find your cabin?”
“It’s been in my father’s family for generations. It’s built on land held by an alias. There’s no record of it that can be traced to me.”
“I hope not,” she said as he gunned the engine again and they raced off down the highway away from the dawn.
They left the highway again and traveled up another dirt road. The sky had lightened enough to make out the scenery. Trees thinned as they approached a small hill and disappeared on the other side of it. A sudden rush of sea air made Xandra crane her neck. Ahead she heard the crash of waves against the shore. Salt stung her nostrils.
Dante continued down the other side of the hill, the bike sputtering in protest over its rough handling. It idled unevenly as they coasted down the hill before coming to a halt by a small cabin. He let her off by the porch, then circled around to a shed out back. There, he stowed the bike and came back to where she was standing looking out over the open water.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Let’s go inside. It’s going to be dawn soon.”
“This is a beautiful spot,” she said, turning reluctantly toward the door. The hill blocked all view of the landscape. If she hadn’t been with Dante as he followed the winding dirt road over the hill, she wouldn’t even have suspected there were cabins down there on the waterfront.
Waves lapped gently against the rocky shore. The scent of pine drifted on the breeze. All her life, she had wanted to live by the sea, but work kept her in the city. Work kept her away from relaxation and all her friends except Alix, who worked nearly as hard as she did. It kept her away from having a life. No, Jeremy prevented her from having a life. She had to wonder why.
If Jeremy hadn’t recruited her, if he hadn’t promoted her, if he hadn’t cancelled half of her holidays and booked up her weekends, she might have a life. She might have a lover, a husband…children.
Strange, but she’d never thought of it quite that way before. Not before Dante Rodriguez showed up in her life.
The adrenaline rush wore off all at once. Exhaustion pulled at each muscle, urging her to lie down and sleep for hours.
Keys jingled in his hand as he unlocked the door. Swollen with moisture, it stuck. He put his shoulder against it and heaved. It swung open, admitting her to the stuffy interior.
Xandra stepped into Dante’s cabin. It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. Then she gasped.
Sheer, dark drapes fluttered in the breeze from the open door. Drapery that formed halls and rooms.
The house from her dreams.
She turned to bolt from the cabin and ran straight into Dante’s broad chest. His arms closed around her protectively.
“Hey!” he protested. “What’s wrong?”
She pressed her hands against the hard muscles of his chest, trying to ignore his blatant masculinity and how much she wanted to burrow into his safety of his embrace and forget the night had ever happened.
He held her in place, but she squirmed in his arms. “Xandra?”
“I dreamt about this house,” she whispered.
In the dim light of the coming dawn, she could barely make out his face. His eyes narrowed. “Okay…”
He didn’t, she noted, tell her she was crazy. Or that it was just a dream.
She pushed against him, and he let her go. She took a step toward the door. Hugging her arms tightly around her, she turned back to survey the interior.
Dante walked away from her. Pushing aside a swath of drapery, he reached for a candleholder on a nearby table. She saw the sudden flare of a match, then the place glowed with golden light.
Just like in her dream.
She felt oddly panicked, as if she stood on a precipice. After tonight things would never be the same. Once she took that plunge, she’d be forever changed.
“How did I dream about this place?” Questions rushed from her mouth like a flood. “I’d never been here before. I’d only just met you the night I had the dream. There was no way I could have known about your cabin.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
He smiled wryly. “I don’t know everything.”
“I thought it was maybe…you know…a vampire thing.”
“A vampire thing,” he repeated.
He looked vaguely insulted, but she had to know, so she continued on. “You know…like in the movies. I thought maybe you put some sort of hoodoo mind meld on me.”
To that he laughed out loud. “I’m afraid the hoodoo mind meld is not among my talents.”
“Not funny,” she snapped. “This means something. How could I possibly dream about a place I’ve never seen?”
He studied her for a long moment. He seemed on the verge of revealing something important to her but then changed his mind. “Perhaps we have more in common than you suspect.”
With that enigmatic answer, he closed the door, shutting her in the stuffy, dark interior.
She followed the beacon of his candle as he pushed aside the drapery and walked to the far wall. She heard the screech of a window opening, the old frame protesting the sudden movement. Then she caught the tang of salt air. Watery yellow light flooded in after him, but the dark curtains contained it and rendered it helpless.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded, following him.
He sighed. Turning, he put the candle down on a table and grasped her gently by the shoulders. “We have a lot to talk about, Xandra.” He looked over his shoulder at the pale disk of the sun, barely visible through the dark curtains and the window. “But morning is here. And both of us need our rest.”
Yes, rest, her body urged. She just wanted to curl up somewhere and forget it all. Fine, she agreed. Let Dante have his daytime sleep. She’d think about this when she was rested and clearer headed. She nodded to the open window. “Is it safe?”
“The cabin needs airing out. Don’t worry, I’ll shut them before it gets too light.”
He held out his hand for her to follow him. She took his hand, marveling at how it felt so warm, so unlike Vlad or George. Dante was withholding something important from her, something essential about himself. She felt certain of that much. And she intended to find out. But at the moment all she wanted to do was to curl up in the shadowed interior of this refuge on the ocean and sleep.
She followed Dante through hallways made of black sheer drapery. All the while that eerie feeling of déjà vu haunted her.
Just like in her dreams, the old cabin was devoid of interior walls. Built about the turn of the last century, it would have been a charming one-room home. Dante had added his own fusion of high-tech/low-tech décor to the place. Dark sheers mounted from curtain rods formed a living room complete with
the nest of black cushions she remembered. Another portion of the house squared off with drapery created a bedroom. A king-sized futon sat low to the ground on a black frame. A modern dresser was topped with an antique washbasin. The kitchen, or at least a sink to wash dishes and a couple of cupboards, was housed in an extension at the back. She guessed cooking wasn’t high up on a vampire’s list of priorities. Afraid to ask about the sanitary facilities, she let the matter drop, fervently hoping he had at least an outbuilding somewhere by the shed.
He led her to the bedroom and sat her down on the futon while he rummaged in a chest of drawers. Tossing a pair of loose cotton sweats on the bed, he dug further and found a black T-shirt to match.
“You can wear these until we have time to venture into town and get you something better.”
Xandra realized she still wore his leather jacket. Under the heavy leather, she was starting to sweat in the stuffy interior. “Thanks,” she said, relieved to be able to get changed. She desperately wanted a shower as well, but she hadn’t seen anything resembling a bathroom in the odd, curtained interior.
Dante picked up the antique washbasin sitting on the dresser. Another of those odd mixes of old and new. It looked out of place alongside the sleek futon. “I’ll go to the pump house and get you some water so you can clean up.”
He disappeared behind another wall of curtain.
Feeling oddly exposed within the bedroom made of sheers, Xandra stripped off his jacket and her dirty jeans. She cast a furtive glance over her shoulders, but Dante had vanished somewhere off behind the kitchen. She hoped it was shaded enough back there to offer him some protection. She took off her cuffs and torque and set them on the bedside table. Then she donned the borrowed cotton pants and T-shirt.
Xandra lay back into the softness of the pillows. The futon was firm against her back. Every muscle hurt with some new ache. She’d been attacked, bitten and bruised. But Dante’s blood had cured her, made her strong again. She had to worry about that, her tired mind reminded her. Later, she told it.
She hadn’t realized she’d drifted off until she felt a soft sponge at her face and the cool water against her skin. Jolting awake, she tried to sit up, but Dante held her back.
“Easy,” he said. “It’s just me.”
Just him, she thought with a mental laugh. Fancy being in the middle of nowhere in a vampire’s house. Dante was never just himself.
More time must have passed. She could tell by the brightness behind the dark curtains that the sun was higher in the sky. He’d closed the window to a narrow crack to give them a bit of fresh air. The drapery that had been blowing in the ocean breeze lay still, but even that small opening made her feel vulnerable.
Exhausted, she let him wash her face and arms, stripping away the feel of the feral vampires, the run-in with Jeremy and everything else that had happened in the past few days.
“That’s it, relax.” Dante said in that tempting low voice of his. He’d changed into another T-shirt and put on another pair of pants like she wore. The thin material emphasized the muscles in his tight butt.
“Are you sure they can’t find us here?” she asked drowsily.
“Don’t worry, this house isn’t registered to me. Not at least under any name they’d recognize. And I detoured quite a bit on the way up here, trying to throw them off our tracks. There are houses all up and down the coast, all of them in secluded spots like this one. Trust me, they’d have a hard time finding us here.”
She glanced at the open window. The stuffy interior desperately needed some fresh air, but she really wanted him to shut it even though her fear was silly. It wouldn’t be much harder to break the glass than it would be to wrench the old wood open. But Dante got up, slammed it shut and threw the bolt.
“Satisfied?”
She nodded.
Drowsiness threatened to pull her down into the seductive depths of sleep. He leaned in to give her a kiss. “Go to sleep, Xandra,” he murmured. “We’ll talk later.”
His lips brushed her forehead. Just the barest touch, but she felt it down her entire spine. Her tired body fastened on to this new feeling, sleepiness forgotten. Her eyes flew open. She grasped his shoulder, stopping him from turning away.
“I don’t want to sleep,” she said.
Chapter Eight
“Xandra,” he whispered against her hair. “You’re tired, you’re injured.” He moved to pull away again, to exert some reason into the situation. But she sat up and pulled him closer.
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “And I’m far too wound up to sleep.”
Dante eyed the black drapery, as if he suspected one of Jeremy’s team might be skulking through the sand dunes ready to peer through the windows. He opened his mouth to protest further and then shook his head.
This time he didn’t pull away when she leaned against him. His hand cupped the back of her head. His thumb rubbed soothing little circles around the base of her neck. She relaxed against him, feeling safe for the first time in…years, she finally decided. She hadn’t experienced this calmness since her mother died. Not for more than a few minutes.
“Shh.” Dante’s hands drifted down to her shoulders to massage the abused muscles. She must have had her shoulders hunched for the entire trip up here. She was so afraid of being hit by a stray bullet, or whatever else Jeremy’s men decided to lob at them. “Relax,” he said in that voice that could melt her heart in a single word. “Let me rub your back.” He turned her away from him for better access.
Under his command her body obeyed. The kinks in her shoulders loosened. “Ohhh, that feels better.” She tried to keep from moaning aloud. His touch did more than simply calm her abused muscles. Passion stirred deep inside. She’d never felt desire of that intensity before.
For several minutes she was content to submit to his ministrations while her body explored this new sensation. Then the nature of his touch changed. He pulled her back against his chest. His hands slid up to cup her breasts through the T-shirt. His fingers caressed her nipples through the thin material. He alternated short little teasing strokes with longer, more seductive circles. A moan escaped her lips before she could call it back. She started at the raw sound, so full of need.
Dante chuckled.
“That isn’t my back.” She tried to bring some dignity back into the situation.
“It certainly isn’t,” he said, his lips scant inches from her ear. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No!” The intensity of her protest made him laugh out loud. “No,” she repeated softly.
His fingers strayed to the hem of the T-shirt. He gathered the material in his fist and slowly inched it up to her shoulders. She ducked her head through it, tousling her hair. Dante tossed the shirt aside.
He bent his head to brush her collarbone with his lips. His hair fell forward, dusting over her bare shoulders like a curtain of velvet. She jumped as his mouth skimmed along her shoulder toward her neck.
With a hiss, Dante turned her back to face him. He looked down into her eyes, his own dark amber disks in the dimness. “I’d never hurt you, Xandra. You can believe that.”
She touched the place where he’d kissed her. “That’s not it,” she whispered. “I—I want—it’s just—”
Now where had that come from? She wanted him to what? To make love to her in the way only he could. To bite her? She searched inside and found the notion wasn’t as repulsive as she’d thought. Not the way those fiends in the mall had gouged her, but gently, sensually, the way she knew Dante would do it.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said softly, guessing. “We’ll take it slow. I won’t do anything you object to.”
He sounded so sincere, she believed him.
She sat still in the intensity of his regard. With a scorching look, he dragged his eyes from her and trailed his glance down over her breasts. His lips followed the path of his eyes. Xandra gasped as his scalding lips fastened on one nipple.
This was unlike anything she’d ever felt. Sh
e’d wanted sex, certainly. She’d wanted companionship, a lover. But nothing she’d experienced could compare to Dante’s all-consuming possession.
Lifting his head, he took the other nipple in his mouth. She sagged in his arms, content to let him lead. That too, was new. Usually, she liked to be in control.
Dante responded by lowering her down into the softness of the pillows. His hands strayed down her ribcage, setting off little landmines of pleasure. She’d never known the skin over her ribs to be so sensitive. His fingers grasped the drawstring of her pants and pulled. She let him slide them down over her hips and set them aside. He looked down at her, splayed before him. She saw only worship in his eyes.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured.
In her work as an undercover operative, she’d heard all kinds of pickup lines. Trite sentences meant to seduce. She’d been called beautiful before. But when Dante said it, she believed him without question.
Xandra pressed her hand against the hard muscles of his pectorals. The tangle of curls in the center of his chest was soft beneath her questing fingers. She rose up to kiss him. He smiled down at her.
But she wasn’t satisfied. She teased him the way he’d teased her. Her mouth fastened on one of his flat nipples. She traced its form with her tongue and heard him let go his breath with a hiss. Trailing her fingers down over his ribcage she located the waistband of his pants. She undid the tie and felt him stiffen against her hand. He was far more ready for this than she was. But right or wrong, she wanted him. So few times in her life she’d had a chance to indulge in her own desires. She wanted Dante Rodriguez, even if it turned out to be a terrible mistake.
She slid his pants down over his hips and he rose to step out of them. Standing before him, she took in the majestic whole of him. A sculptor had to have made Dante. His wide shoulders tapered to slim hips and muscled legs. The soft bronzed hair that began on his upper body all but disappeared into a thin line that ran down his torso to his groin. The muscles in his stomach were perfectly defined. He looked like a Greek statue. Her eyes dipped lower still until they settled on his very core.
Feral Passion Page 11
