“Yes.”
“How mortifying.” It was, too. I had no idea I was a hummer.
He shrugged. “I don’t see why you’d feel that way. I think it’s charming.”
I stared over my shoulder at him. “You’re . . . you’re a strange man.”
“That’s been said before. Is that why you came on to me, because you felt sorry for me?”
“I did not come on to you! You were the one thinking all sorts of smutty thoughts about me!”
“You thought them about me, too.”
“Only because you put them in my mind! Besides, you manhandled me!”
He raised one glossy black eyebrow, looking me over from crown to toes. “If I had manhandled you, love, you wouldn’t be standing right now. I will admit to responsibility for a certain amount of what just happened, but I don’t make a habit of engaging in sexual acts with women I’ve just met.”
There was an odd sort of mental twitch, as if his words weren’t quite the truth. I tried to peer into his mind to see just what it was he was shielding from me, but I lacked the ability to just go marching into his head as he did mine.
“Well, thank you so much for making me sound like a great big ho!” I slapped his arm. “For your information, I have never, ever had sex with a man who I knew less than six weeks. Minimum! So you can just stuff that in your ‘I’m so incredibly sexy, women can’t keep their paws off me’ pipe and smoke it!”
He tipped his head to the side, a lock of his hair swinging over his brow. “Can you keep your hands off me?”
“Of course I can!” I pushed the lock of his hair back, my fingers trailing down his jaw. Just the touch of his stubble on my fingers restarted fires deep within me. “Look, we had sex, OK? It’s no big deal. I admit that it’s totally against my character to do that, and that I can’t wholly blame you for what happened, but the bottom line is that it’s never going to happen again. I don’t like you. I don’t like men who are prettier than me. And I especially don’t like bloodsuckers!”
Is that so? His mind was filled with arrogance as he pulled me up against him, his mouth like fire on mine.
I put both hands on his chest and shoved him back, slapping him before I realized what I’d done.
“Oh!” I stared at him in horror, one hand over my mouth, the other reaching out to touch his cheek. “I’m so sorry! I’ve never hit anyone before. Did I hurt you?”
Ire flashed in his gorgeous eyes for a few seconds before it faded to amusement. “Unfortunately, I have been struck many times. No, you didn’t hurt me, although I do not like to be slapped. Please refrain from doing so again.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, appalled at my behavior. “Really, I seem to be all discombobulated today. I think it’s because of this whole weirdness of being in the Akasha.”
“What did you do to end up here?” he asked, frowning again.
Even frowning, he was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
He smiled.
“Stop that!”
“You’re projecting.”
“I am not! I never project! And what did you mean, you marked me?”
He sighed. “Why won’t you ever answer a question I ask?”
“Probably because I don’t want to. Did you leave some sort of Dracula mark on my neck? I don’t remember Avery doing that, although he sure gave Jas a whole lot of hickeys that she just thought were funny.” I tried to look at my own neck, failing as I knew I would. “What sort of mark is it? Am I going to have to wear a scarf forever to keep the Van Helsings of the world from staking me so I won’t become a female vamp?”
He rolled his eyes, and just walked away.
I stared after him for a minute, not believing what I was seeing.
“Where are you going?” I finally called once I realized he was really leaving.
Away.
“Away where?”
Does it matter?
“Yes, it matters! You can’t just walk away! I gave you blood!”
Thank you for the blood. Good-bye.
I stared at his receding figure, stunned. He was going to leave me? Just leave me? After I’d given him blood and had the most erotic experience of my life, he was just going to leave?
“Hey!” I bellowed. “Alec? You’re leaving me?”
He stopped, and I knew, just knew, he was sighing.
I apologized for taking more blood than I should. I didn’t berate you for reviving me. I made you hum. What more do you want from me?
I bit back my pride and ran after him, trying to follow the same path he took around the rocks. “Well . . . geez, I don’t know. I just think that you kind of owe me, you know?”
He turned, his expression dark with anger. “For bringing me back to awareness that I am doubly damned? ” He made a low, sweeping bow, his mind filled with bitterness. “Thank you for tormenting me as no one else has done.”
“I didn’t mean to . . . you didn’t want to be woken up?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He gestured around us. “If you had the opportunity of slipping into unawareness of this torment, would you not choose to do so?”
“No. I’d choose to leave.”
The look he gave me was filled with scorn. “There is no way out.”
“Of course there is. If there’s a way in, there’s a way out. Am I going to be a female vampire now because of your mark?”
He just stared at me for a couple of seconds, then took me by the wrist and pulled me after him as he headed to what I thought was the north. “If your sister is a Beloved, you must know that it doesn’t work like that. The marking I referred to is the mental connection we have. It is one of the seven steps of Joining, which is wholly impossible given that my Beloved died six hundred years ago, but understandable given the amount of blood you gave me.”
“Well, I don’t know about this marking business,” I said, carefully locking away the thought that reincarnation might very well mean his Beloved was alive and kicking, and damned close to jumping his bones again despite her desperate attempt to stay away from him, “but as for the other, I don’t know that much about you guys. Jas went off to live with Avery, and . . . well, I’m not very comfortable around him. Or his brothers. Plus there’s the fact that Jas has been trying to fix me up with Avery’s youngest brother, Daniel, and I—”
The word Alec snarled wasn’t at all polite, nor was the face he turned on me as he gripped me with both hands. But what was most intriguing was the hot spurt of jealousy that I could feel rip through him.
He was jealous? Of me? Why did that delight me so much?
I am not jealous.
No? So the thought of me having sex with Daniel does nothing—Alec!
His tongue was there in my mouth again, his thigh shoved between mine, his fingers working my zipper down again. Mine! he snarled into my head.
Oh, I am so not yours!
You are. You gave yourself to me.
We had sex, Alec. That’s all. Get over yourself. Oh, holy mother, do that again first, though. Hooyeah!
Another shout from the distance, somewhat louder, brought sanity back to us. Alec removed his hand from my underwear, his eyes burning with passion as he rezipped my jeans.
“That ‘mine!’ crap? It’s so not happening. I don’t like possessive men,” I told him.
“At this moment, love, I don’t particularly care what you like,” he snapped, grabbing me by the hand and hauling me after him.
Chapter Five
“Where, exactly, do you think you’re taking me?”
“Away.”
“Away where?”
“Just away. You didn’t wish to be left behind, so you’re coming with me.”
“Why?”
Alec stopped and shot me a look that probably should have warned me he was at the end of his patience, but I decided that was less important than knowing where he was hauling me. “Do you ever stop asking questions? ”
“Not really, no,” I said after some
thought. “There are so many things to be answered.”
He grinned. My inner devil squealed and swooned at the sight of it. I told her to buck up, that he may be sexy as hell, but he was not for us. “I happen to agree with that philosophy, but now is not the time to discuss it. What did you do to get tossed in here?”
“Wrong place at the wrong time, as best I can figure it out,” I said, following when he tugged on my wrist. Although the screaming in the distance had stopped, I had an uneasy feeling that something was back there that I’d rather not meet.
Something is. A wrath demon.
How did you hear about that? You were unconscious.
I know the sound of a wrath demon when I hear one. What wrong place?
I sighed. “You’re really persistent, aren’t you?”
“No more so than you. Why are you glowing?”
I looked down at myself. “I didn’t know I was until Ulfur told me—”
He jerked me forward, spinning around. “Ulfur? You know Ulfur? A ghost about my height, with brown hair?”
“He has brown hair, yes, but he wasn’t a ghost. He said he was a . . .” I bit my lower lip, trying to dig the word out of my memory.
Alec’s gaze flickered to my mouth. Stop that.
Stop what, trying to remember?
No. Stop tempting me with your mouth.
I’m not.
You are. You’re flaunting your lips at me. Stop it.
A little warm kernel of feminine pleasure glowed inside me at his mental growl. “I hardly think a bad habit like biting my lip is deliberately flaunting, but if it amuses you to think that, knock yourself out. Lich. That’s the word. Ulfur is a lich.”
“That’s right.” Alec looked beyond me, his eyes unfocused. He rubbed his chin with his thumb as he thought, the rasping noise sending little shivers down my back. “Pia said something about them trying to bring him back, but the Ilargi had him by that time.”
I couldn’t stop looking at him. I tried to look at his shoulder, or the rocks beyond him. I reminded myself that he was a man who didn’t think twice about murdering people, not that I didn’t feel sympathy with the fact that the ox lady had decapitated me with her cart and left him without his only salvation, but still, he admitted he’d murdered other people. He was bad to the bone, and I didn’t give a damn what my swoony inner bad girl thought—I was going to tolerate him only until he got Diamond and me out of this hellhole.
Dear god, I wanted him again. He just stood there, his brain whirling away with some thought, all smoldering sensuality and raw male attraction that made my body hum with happiness.
“Stop that,” I said, unable to stand it one minute longer.
He looked startled. “Stop what?”
I stared at his thumb. “Stop tempting me with your manly stubble. And chin. And jaw. But mostly your chin. Did I mention stubble?”
A little frown pulled his eyebrows together. Merciful heaven, even his eyebrows were sexy. I wanted to lick them. “What in the name of the saints are you going on about now?”
It was too much. It was all suddenly too much. “You’re too damned handsome, OK? I don’t like handsome men! They’re always halfway in love with themselves, and they use their looks and their seductive bodies to sway women into doing whatever they want, and I won’t have it, do you understand me! I will not have it! Stop being handsome!”
“Corazon—”
“Garrgh!” I yelled, and with both hands, mussed up his hair until it stood up in clumps.
He looked deliciously tousled, like he’d just been engaged in a wonderfully energetic romp between the sheets.
“I hate you!” I yelled, and stomped off, muttering to myself that I would not let him affect me. Sex, I told myself. We just had sex. Not even real sex, more a quickie, just a purely physical reaction to me giving him blood. What right did he have to go around looking all steamy hot and gorgeous?
“I sense that you’re angry with me about something,” he said drily, falling into step beside me. “But since I also sense it has to do with my hair and beard, I’m at a loss as to how to placate you. If you are through having a temper tantrum, would you mind telling me how you met Ulfur?”
“I might. But first, let’s discuss this plan of yours to get us out of here. I assume the exit place is where you’re taking me?”
Alec sighed, and stopped. “You’re part of my punishment, aren’t you? It’s not bad enough the council banished me to the Akasha—they sent you here to drive me insane, didn’t they?”
“What council? One that oversees the killing of innocent women?”
“No.” He started forward again. I watched his back for a moment, absently noting that he had a very, very fine walk, before hurrying to catch up with him. My little devil had me taking his hand before I realized what she was doing, but I figured it would be rude to suddenly drop it like it was full of worms or something, so I pretended I didn’t feel all warm and fuzzy when his fingers threaded through mine in a way that made my little devil happy. “I was sentenced to remain in the Akasha for crimes committed against Dark Ones.”
“But you’re one of them,” I said, looking at him.
His jaw tightened. “Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“How did you meet Ulfur?”
“How are you getting us out of here?” I countered.
“If you don’t stop asking me questions instead of answering them, I’m going to make you stop,” he threatened, his voice a low, sexy growl that I felt all the way to my toes.
“You’re going to kill me, too? ” I asked, surprise kicking in when I realized that I wasn’t afraid of him. He was a murderer, yes, but somehow, I knew he didn’t pose a threat to me. Not that sort of a threat, anyway . . . my peace of mind was another subject.
“Tempting as that thought is, no, I would simply kiss you until you couldn’t think anymore.”
My eyes widened as he thought about doing that, my breasts, suddenly becoming strumpets, demanding that I walk them right over to his chest, and let them have their way with him.
“Stop it,” I said, looking down at my shirt. My nipples had hardened at the thought of Alec’s chest, my breasts feeling heavy and very, very needy.
“Now what have I done?” he asked with a distinct note of exasperation.
“It’s not you. I’m having some trouble with my breasts.”
His gaze instantly dropped to my upper parts. “Problematic, are they?”
“Right now, yes. They want an introduction to your chest. I’ve told them no, that what happened before was simply a reaction to me feeding you, but they won’t listen.”
“Perhaps I can be of some assistance,” he said in his polite, slightly accented English. “Would you like me to take up the discussion with them?”
“It wouldn’t do any good,” I said, shaking my head. “They wouldn’t listen. They’re headstrong.”
“We won’t know until we try, hmm?” he said, suddenly stopping, turning me around so I faced him. My breasts cheered as his gaze caressed their upper slopes visible through the lacy part of my top.
“Oh, I think I know . . . hooobah!”
Alec didn’t bother to introduce himself properly—he just slid both hands underneath my shirt to cup my boobs, and did a cleavage dive. The sensation of his stubble on my now highly sensitized breasts left me clutching his head, my breath caught in my throat as he snaked his tongue between my breasts, his thumbs gently rubbing where my nipples were trying to burst free of my bra.
This is just the blood, I said somewhat desperately. It’s just because I gave you blood that my boobs want you so much.
This isn’t due to you feeding me, mi cielo, he answered, his voice rubbing against my brain in a way that threatened to tumble me into another pit of need and desire. This is something else.
What? I asked, shielding from him my secret.
I don’t know, but I will enjoy myself fully finding out what. Do you want me to make love to you ag
ain?
You didn’t make love to me before. We had a mutually desired quickie, brought on by bloodlust.
You just keep telling yourself that, love. He pulled his head from my chest, his grin downright cocky as he pulled down my shirt, giving my breasts one last caress before taking my hand again. “What’s this nonsense about me getting you out of here?”
“We have a deal,” I said when I was able to pry my tongue off the roof of my mouth.
“We do?”
“Yes. When you were lying there being roadkill, I told you that I would give you blood and you would get Diamond and me out of the Akasha.”
“You made a deal with me while I was all but dead due to lack of blood?”
“Yes. You didn’t say you wouldn’t do it,” I pointed out.
He shot me a look.
“All right, all right, I know, it wasn’t a fair deal, but it was a deal nonetheless, and if you insist on walking around here looking like sex on two legs, then you can just honor the deal.”
“My appearance again,” he sighed. “I can’t help the way I look, Corazon.”
I narrowed my eyes on him. “You could try looking ugly, you know.”
His green-eyed gaze cast upward for a few seconds in an obvious plea for patience. “If I covered myself in mud, would that help?”
I had a vision of him standing naked, his body slick with water, as I slowly, gently, carefully moved a soapy sponge over his flesh, cleaning him, leaving all that satiny, hot skin exposed, just waiting for me to touch it, taste it—
“You continue with that thought, and I will make love to you right here,” he warned with a growl.
“Sorry. Mind got away from me. What was the question ? ”
“Akasha. Getting you out. Me. Someone evidently named Diamond.”
“Oh, yes, well, as I said, I made this agreement with your unconscious self, and since you’re a big, bad vampire, and everyone is scared to death of you, I figured you could get Diamond—she’s the woman who stole my husband, not that I really mind because he’s a total dillwad, but still, there was a matter of pride for about five minutes—then I got over it and realized I should be grateful to her—anyway, she was in the house with me when Ulfur and the English Satan dude were arguing, and whammo! Here we are.”
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