“Get ahold of yourself, man!” he whispered, taking a deep breath and shaking his head yet again to clear it. ‘You’d have felt her if it was her,’ he thought to himself. He huffed out a breath and started on his way again — his senses open, searching, his eyes sharp, looking for any trace of Alastair. He rolled his eyes behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses. Who was he kidding? He was also looking for any trace of Solange. He needed to see Solange as desperately as he needed his next breath. Besides, he reasoned, if he found one of them, he’d likely find the other nearby. Tired of walking the French Quarter, he directed his steps toward the old French Market. At night it was a darker, quieter part of town. Perhaps one or the other of them had been there, and he could pick up a sense of them without the throngs of tourists that flocked to Bourbon Street.
~~~
It was two in the morning when Solange was awakened by a soft growl. She didn’t open her eyes, instead she pretended she was still sleeping, and listened to Mr. Scruffikins who was curled up beside her head, sharing her pillow. His little body vibrated as he growled at something he was not at all happy with. Solange sent out her energies, ‘feeling’ around her room for any type of presence. There was none. Slowly, she opened her eyes and once sure she was alone, silently slid from her bed and stood there totally nude, pressed against her bedroom wall in the darkness. She watched Mr. Scruffikins for any sign he was still on alert. He lifted his lip and snarled while his eyes were pinned on the hallway.
Then she heard it. ‘Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.’
Solange reached for the over-sized teeshirt she’d tossed to the foot of her bed when she’d finally gotten in bed for the night, and slipped it over her head. Quietly she made her way from her bedroom toward her living room where she’d heard the tapping noise coming from. Mr. Scruffikins fell into step behind her. “Stay here,” she whispered to him, flashing her palm at him to signify he needed to stay.
When she reached the end of the hallway, she closed her eyes and sent out her energies again, feeling for any presence at all, inside or outside her condo. Her breath caught when she felt him. He was here.
‘Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.’ That sound again, like metal tapping on glass. She took a deep breath, surrounded herself with protections, then stepped into the living room. The sight that greeted her made her heart race. There he stood, leaning against her wall of windows, his forehead pressed against the glass as he rhythmically tapped his sharp nails against the double-reinforced pane. She stared at him, and he stared right back at her. Their eyes locked on one another, each waiting to see what move the other would make.
Solange shook her head, disbelieving her own judgment as she stalked toward the control panel, deactivated the alarm, threw the manual lock on the sliding glass windows to the unlock position, and pushed the button to open them. She watched as the windows slowly opened, slidding into place, every other one behind the one next to it, leaving wide spaces between them. The heavy, humid night air came in, mixing with the cool air of her air-conditioned condo, and with it, stepped Crispin. His attention focused completely on her.
Crispin walked toward her, unafraid, unhesitant, his need to see her, to feel her, overriding any sense of self-preservation he should have felt due to her profession.
She still stood beside the controls for her windows, watching him approach. She should have been afraid as well. He was after all, a vampire. And vampirism is what she’d dedicated her life to eradicating. She took a deep breath and let it out shakily when she realized she did feel a sliver of fear. But it wasn’t fear of Crispin, it was fear of what Crispin made her feel.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
“Hunting. Like you do. Walked through the market tonight.”
“And?” she asked.
“It was empty, the stalls locked up tight. But I found something anyway.”
“Did you?” Solange asked, acutely aware that he stood so close she could feel his breath on her skin.
“I did. I found you. Your scent weaving in and out of some of the stalls. Yours and the dog’s. Followed them to this area, and then, to this building. Didn’t take me long to locate your place, then I found your terrace. Once I knew for sure this was where you’d hidden yourself away, I just couldn’t make myself leave.”
“I don’t hide. I just prefer to be alone,” Solange said.
“So do I,” Crispin answered.
“Then why are you here?” she asked.
“Because you are,” he answered.
“So you tapped on my window until I came to let you in.”
“Something like that. I hoped you’d let me in,” he said, grinning sinfully.
“What do you want, Crispy?” she asked, as he stood close to her, his body heat as intense as his stare.
“You. I needed to see you, to speak with you. Just to be near you,” he confided, giving up any pretense of misleading her.
Solange regarded him for a moment, then let her eyes travel outside to her pool. “How did you really track me?” she asked before looking back at him. She was on edge now. The idea that he had tracked her simply by scent was unheard of, but it was entirely possible he had developed talents that they’d not yet been aware of in a vampire. And if he had, two things needed to happen — she needed to tell Gillian about the possibility that both she and the rest of the slayers could be tracked through scent, and she’d need to move, to a more secretive space, and start wearing perfume to disguise her scent.
“I told you — scent,” he lied.
She called his bluff. “If you want to end this conversation here and now, go ahead and keep lying to me as you leave my home.”
Crispin didn’t respond at first, then he nodded resignedly. “I didn’t want you to be angry with me.”
“Go on,” she said, a smirk on her pretty face, as she stood seemingly relaxed with her arms loosely crossed over her ribs.
“When we kissed, back in the church?” he said, prompting her to remember.
“Yes,” she answered, her eyebrows raised, waiting for the rest.
“Alastair had hit you… there was a little blood,” he raised his hand to point to the corner of her mouth, “just there.”
Her eyes rounded and her lips set firm.
“I couldn’t help it. I kissed you, I tasted it, I took it in. It wasn’t enough to bind us, but it’s enough that if I’m in the vicinity you are, I can get an idea of the direction you’re in. That’s how I found you,” Crispin explained.
“How’d you know I’d been to the market?” she asked.
“Shopping bag on the coffee table in the living room says French Market. I was on my way there when I felt you in this building. That you’d taken the dog with you was simply an educated guess. You’d asked me about the dog back in Italy, and there are dog toys and a dog bed out by the pool.”
Solange stood there, trying to make sense of what he’d said. Trying to determine if she had to kill him now that he had a tie to her, a loose one, but still a tie.
Crispin could tell it unnerved her. “It’s not that bad, Solange. I’m not evil and insane, needing extermination to protect the human race from my rampages.”
At the sound of her name she returned her focus to him.
“That’s your name isn’t it? You shared it with me before you disappeared. And things are not as bad as you think.”
“Of course they are!” she hissed. “I’m a slayer! I can’t be tracked, I can’t be identified. And now you have a link to me and have tracked me to my home! You’re a vampire, Crispin. You’ve compromised everything about me!”
Once she became upset, Mr. Scruffikins charged into the living room, all twelve pounds of him, snarling and bristling as he went straight for Crispin’s leg. He latched onto Crispin’s jeans and shook for all he was worth.
Crispin looked down at the little furred hellion and chuckled. “What is this?” he asked, lifting the snarling fur ball from the ground after making him let go of his jeans.
&nb
sp; Solange watched him gently handling her — at the moment — very bitey dog. He was gentle, he was actually trying to soothe the animal. And it was working. “Put my dog down,” she demanded.
Crispin was murmuring to Mr. Scruffikins and managed to have the damn traitor wagging his tail slightly before placing him back on the floor. “What’s his name?” Crispin asked.
“At the moment… Traitor. But that’s not important. Did you hear what I said?” she asked, her voice rising.
“I did. And you’re wrong. I’d never compromise you. I’d never hurt you.”
“Yet here you are, visiting like we’re having Sunday tea,” Solange snapped.
“And you let me in like you were expecting me,” Crispin retorted, taking the last step to put him only inches from her.
Every molecule in her body began to tingle at his nearness. She inhaled deeply, taking his scent into her lungs.
Then his hands came up and his fingers gently curled around her biceps as he looked down into her eyes. The warmth from his touch seeped into her skin and she couldn’t make herself pull away. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her. She knew it in the deepest part of her.
Then her brow furrowed. “You’ve fed. You’re warm,” she said, images of him killing to take what he needed to live had her frowning.
“I did. But I never take a life to continue mine. I take only what I need and leave them asleep with pleasant dreams.”
That had her entire expression changing. The scene she was not picturing was him in the arms of another woman while feeding from her. She lifted her eyes to his and glared accusingly.
Slowly Crispin realized what she must be thinking. His smile gradually grew again, the hint of unspoken pleasures peeking from his lips. “I am guilty of exactly what I believe you’re thinking, but not since you left me in Italy. I find I no longer have the stomach for a female that isn’t you. But, just for the sake of argument, would you mind greatly? I mean, it’s not just sex, it is a matter of survival, you understand,” he said, teasing her.
“What you do with your time is of no consequence to me,” she answered, pushing the button to start her windows on their way to closing. “I expect you to leave before these windows are closed.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“If you’re not gone, I’ll have to kick your ass. I can’t have vampires knowing where I live and what I do,” Solange said in a steely voice.
“Yet you let me in,” he said, moving closer so the length of his body was pressing agaisnt the length of hers.
“Momentary lapse of reason,” she answered. Her eyes glanced toward her windows. “They’re almost closed. You should really consider leaving,” she said, now looking straight ahead, her eyes focused on his upper chest.
“You won’t hurt me,” he whispered as he lifted a hand and pulled the scrunchy from her hair, allowing it to fall just below her shoulders.
“Why would you think that?” she asked quietly, her heart thundering in her chest.
“Because you know I won’t hurt you,” he answered, catching a stray hair strand and tucking it behind her ear.
Solange looked up at him and he smiled down at her as he slid his hand behind her neck to hold her steady while he slowly lowered his mouth to hers.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” he said just as his mouth covered hers.
Crispin’s lips claimed hers and she lost herself in him. She kissed him back, her hands coming up quickly to desperately claw at him in an effort to hold him tightly to her.
Crispin slid his hands down her body, then lifted her from the floor and pressed her against the wall just behind her. He used his body to hold her in place as he slipped his thigh between her legs to better steady her. The damp warmth of her most sensitive skin immediately enveloped his thigh. His jeans offered little resistance to her body and its arousal. He pulled back just a little to look her in the eye suspiciously, a slight smile on his face. Then his hands dropped to her hips where he slowly gathered the edges of her shirt tightly in his fingers. He began to lift as he peeked at its hem as he lifted it higher and higher up her thighs and over her hips. Once it had cleared her hips and he could see that she was naked beneath the shirt, his breath caught, and a hunger unlike anything he’d ever experienced showed itself in his eyes. “You knew I was coming,” he accused, pressing his lips chastely against hers.
“I had no idea,” she answered, her lips swollen and red from his kisses.
“Yet you have nothing on beneath this shirt. Do you often greet unexpected visitors in the night dressed this way?” he asked.
“I don’t have visitors in the night. And I sleep nude every single night. It’s my home, I can walk around it any way I choose,” Solange answered.
Crispin glanced down at the juncture of her thighs. He ran one hand up her thigh and over her hip to clasp her waist gently, before looking back up at her. “If you really want me to leave, say so now,” he said, giving her one last chance to send him away. Despite her blustering, she’d let him in without pause. If she didn’t want him here, she’d have never opened the door to him so he reasoned it was a safe bet to offer her one more chance to banish him.
When she didn’t answer, he made himself clear. “I mean to know every inch of you. I mean to make you so addicted to me that you will never have a thought that doesn’t include me. I’m going to love you tonight, Solange, and I’m going to love you well. Tell me to go if this isn’t what you want,” he said urgently. “This is the only chance you’ll have to say no.”
Solange heard his words, she felt him all around her, and she knew she’d heard the windows slide back into place. She turned her upper body just enough to reach the alarm panel beside her on the wall. She pressed the button to engage their locks, then armed her security system. She looked at him as he focused solely on her. She was all he saw, all he heard, all he felt. She felt his strength as he kept her between himself and the wall, balanced on his knee simply by using the weight of his upper body pressed against hers, and his hand on her waist. The luscious feeling of her body rubbing against his, the scent of his skin, the feel of him controlling her body as he held her where he wanted her were too much to ignore. So she decided to be selfish.
“I don’t want to think tonight. I just want to feel,” she whispered.
“I need you, Solange. Will you have me?” Crispin growled as he released her waist and buried his hands in her hair, forcing her head back to give him access to her throat. He dragged his fangs across the tender skin there.
“You can’t bite me, Crispin. Don’t do it,” she said, her stomach flipping with his fangs so close to her.
“You said I had a link to you. I don’t want a link with you. I plan to have a bond with you. A bond will never compromise you, it will only make you stronger. I’ll know when you need me, and you’ll know when I need you,” he confessed.
“No, Crispin. I’m a slayer. You can’t bite me. There are other bonds we can enjoy. I don’t want that one,” Solange said firmly.
Crispin leaned back and looked her in the eyes again, his mind turning, his thoughts warring inside him. He wanted her. He wanted her bound to him and him alone. But ultimately it had to be her choice. “I won’t bind you to me until you say you want it. I give you my word,” he promised.
That was all Solange needed to hear. She actually trusted him. She smiled at him and leaned forward, sucking his lower lip into her mouth. “What makes you think I’ll ask?” she teased.
“After tonight, you’ll beg,” he countered, grabbing Solange by her hips and lifting her from his thigh, he settled her around his own hips. “Where’s the bedroom?” he asked.
“That way, at the end of the hall,” she answered, just before he claimed her mouth again.
Chapter 14
Crispin wasted no time getting her down the hall and into her bedroom. He went straight to her bed and laid her down on the edge of it with her bottom just barely hanging over it, and her feet still at his hips. He presse
d her legs apart as he went to his knees, swiping her from bottom to top with his tongue.
Solange was shocked. She was panting, her heart beating rapidly, her body trembling. She’d read about this in books she’d kept hidden from her grandmama, and in her own choice of reading she downloaded to her kindle now that she was on her own. But she’d never, ever, had a male touch her like Crispin was now.
Crispin licked his lips and spread the folds of her swollen, pink flesh open with his thumbs before dropping his head and feasting on the little bundle of nerves raising its head just enough above the rest of her sex to let him know it was begging for attention. Solange moaned and whimpered, her hips rocking in rhythm to his ministrations. He lapped at her clit until she could take it no more, grasping his head and grinding herself against his mouth until she shuddered with delight as little tremors of pleasure traveled the length of her body. Having given her the first of many orgasms, he stood and shucked his clothing hurriedly.
Then he crawled onto the bed and up her body, kissing and suckling along the way, nipping his way up her body as he went.
Her fingertips trailed along his sides as he moved up her body, and she watched him with anticipation. He smiled, rubbed his nose against hers, before licking across her lips and pressing his mouth against hers. “Tell me what you like, Solange. Tell me and I’ll give it to you,” he promised.
Solange looked up him, looming over her, holding himself up on his forearms. She didn’t answer, just ran her hands up to his shoulders and held on tightly.
“Hold tight while I move us further up the bed,” he said, dropping another kiss on her lips.
Solange did as he asked, and Crispin slipped a hand under the small of her back as he moved them to the center of the bed. Then he released her and looked down at her.
“Are you ready for me, Solange?” he asked.
Blessed Curse Page 12
