by Michele Hauf
She stepped toward the door and put up her palms in staunch refusal. “I’m out.”
“I thought you’d say that. And I respect your decision. Much as I could probably use your help to soften up D’Arcangelo and tease the spell out of him, I won’t involve you further. You should probably get as far away from Paris as you can. The spell can’t discriminate from one vampire to the next.”
“I’m headed for Russia.”
“Should I ask?”
He needn’t, because he already knew she was on yet another trip seeking adventure, good times and as many handsome and virile men as she could manage.
She took his hand and hugged him. “Charles, are you sure about this?”
He nodded. “I’ve been searching for the missing piece from the eternity spell since the middle of the last century. I am more than ready.”
“Even if it means ending the lives of so many?”
“You should go now.” He kissed her and then held his mouth against the corner of her lips for the longest time. “Don’t hate me.”
“I hate you.” She kissed him back quickly. “I love you. We will always be family, good, bad and evil.”
* * *
While he should be more concerned werewolves believed they had their hands on a device that could destroy hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of vampires, Dante was currently focused on the curve of Kyler’s neck where it segued into her shoulder. She smelled like softness and the roses pinking the Jardin des Plantes.
He’d pulled off her shirt and tossed it aside the moment they’d stepped inside her place. Pushing her against the wall by the door, he hiked up her leg along his hip and dove along her skin, tasting, kissing and nipping the heat of her salted perfume. The pulse of her heartbeat was so close. Just a tilt of his head to the left.
“You’re hungry,” she cooed and slid her hands down his shirt, unbuttoning it with an ease he appreciated.
“For a bite,” he murmured. He quickly loosened his tie, but before he could pull it off he kissed her right over the vein. She didn’t tense, and he took that as a sign that she was ready and willing to give blood.
He would take it because she was his. And only his.
Dante lifted Kyler and carried her into the bedroom. Moonlight danced across the gray bedspread and painted hardwood floor. The room looked cold, but holding Kyler warmed him soul deep. He laid her on the bed and tugged down her pants. She wore no panties, and with a flick of his fingers he quickly relegated the lacy bra to the floor. He took a few moments to glide his gaze over her moon-dappled skin. The pale luxuriousness of her stomach, the sweet rises of her hips. Her breasts sat high, and the nipples were so tight he had to kiss each one in turn. He loved how the areola tightened under his tongue.
She curled her finger and enticed him up to again kiss her neck. “Come here, lover boy. Don’t you want another bite?”
“Kitten,” he murmured. “You are something I never wish to resist. But you must know that I’ve never allowed another vampire to bite me before you. Save for my transformation.”
“I suspected that.” She held him away to meet her eyes. Lush black lashes, highlighted with a line of kohl, fluttered. “I don’t know how you’ve been able to resist. You’ve been vampire so long...”
“Truth?” It was getting easier to share his deepest secrets with her for reasons that baffled him, but with which he wouldn’t struggle. “I’ve never wanted a woman to have that much of me.”
“I get that. Especially knowing the conditions in which you were raised. So why me? Aren’t I the last woman you’d ever trust? I think, at times, I hate you more than I like you.”
“Your hate feels remarkably exquisite in those moments. It seems I don’t mind so much giving myself to you. I had thought to resist the shared bite, but...” He patted his chest right over his heart. “It’s something I can’t put into words.”
“You don’t need to. But if you want to take things more slowly, I do understand.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to go slow with you. That’s another thing I like about you. You don’t stand back and wait for my direction. If I’m at a loss, you simply take the lead and dive in. You challenge me, Kyler.”
“I do like a good challenge.” She brushed a forefinger over his mouth and teased it open to tap his fang. “These are so sexy.”
He allowed his jaw to drop open, giving her better access to his fangs. The stroke of her fingers against them was equal to that when she stroked his cock. It shuddered through his system as if his fangs were directly connected to his genitals. Mercy. She wasn’t afraid of anything.
Not even the unknown longing she’d opened up in his heart.
“I’ve no intention of going slow with you, Kitten.” He laved his tongue over her finger, then grazed a fang tip along the length of it. “Ask of me what you wish.”
Her playful grin revealed her lowering fangs. “May I have some more, pretty please?”
“Always. Take what you will and know that I trust only you.”
Her fangs pierced his skin with ease and a sweet promising pain. Every touch from Kyler held such promise. As she licked and sucked at his blood, Dante pulled her on top of him. The orgasmic sensation of his blood leaving his body was indescribable, yet to increase the high he pumped his erection against her thigh, rubbing it harder and faster.
Finally he could resist no longer, and he dove to sink his fangs into her neck. Mmm, utter bliss. Hot blood filled his mouth and caressed his throat as if it was a liquid hug from Kyler. He clasped her across the back and lifted her breasts against his chest, thumbing a nipple as she sucked at his life and he at hers. The shared feeding went beyond satisfying a hunger for sustenance. It fed his soul.
And when they’d slaked that rapturous thirst, Kyler kissed the puncture wounds on his neck. He felt them heal with a pulling tightness. “When we share blood,” she whispered in his ear, “it goes deep.”
“Yes, I know. All inside me.”
“No, Dante, like I feel it in my soul. It’s hard to explain, and...I know you won’t get it, but I’m not afraid to tell you this means so much to me.”
“Yes.” He spoke his thoughts. “I can understand that kind of soul deep.” And he did. Because she touched him in a way no other woman had. Dare he allow her to love him? Could he love her in return? A part of him wanted to grasp that hope. Perhaps he already had. “As I’ve said, I trust you, Kyler. You own me. My soul.”
“I’ll take it. Now.” She kissed him and glided a finger down between her breasts and to the top of her mons. “Blood was a treat, but now I want you to make your kitten purr.”
“I can do that.”
Chapter 18
Dante placed the toothbrush back in the medicine cabinet where he’d gotten it. He wasn’t sure why Kyler stocked five extra toothbrushes, but he couldn’t knock having the option the morning following a night of sex. Actually, afternoon. It must be after one, he figured. It was pouring rain, so it was difficult to determine the time from the sky, and he couldn’t find his cell phone to check. Probably lying under a blanket or a piece of abandoned clothing.
He stretched a palm over his tight, hard abs and then turned to the side, almost glancing in the mirror. Lately he assessed his appeal in Kyler’s eyes.
He needed that admiration. Or he had, until very recently. He released a breath, and his gut relaxed. Still firm, as it would remain, for vampirism tended to preserve a person’s shape, whatever that may have been at the time of their transformation.
Did it matter how he dressed or the looks he gave a woman? He’d picked up mannerisms and ways to seduce and attract from his mother and her collection of prostitutes. They had moved to appeal to a man’s eyes. He moved to attract a woman’s eye. They had spoken to enhance a man’s self-esteem and make him feel powerful. He spo
ke to capture a woman’s interest and instill confidence. They had touched to grant pleasure, while harboring power in that touch. He touched to instill a wanting desire, while maintaining his control and power.
He bit into the vein to please himself. That was something his mother could have never taught him.
He glanced at the closed bathroom door. Kyler was still lazing in bed. With her he didn’t feel compelled to put on the act of the rogue, the Casanova. He wasn’t that man around her. Or at least, he couldn’t find that man when lying beside her, enjoying her warmth and the acceptance she gave him. What was that about?
She was falling in love with him. And it didn’t bother him as much as he thought it should. He wasn’t about to consider if he, in turn, were falling in love with her. He wasn’t ready to face that truth.
He rubbed a brow with his thumb. By now he would have bitten the woman—only once—fucked her more than enough times to ensure she never forgot his name and then sent her on her way. On to the next amorous adventure.
Was it because Kyler needed his help? A knight adorned in Armani and bespoke leather shoes to protect the lush damsel? With hope, he’d solved that dilemma by giving Bunny the endgame handoff. Yet still he wanted Kyler to stay with him. To not leave him alone. Because he now felt that the next woman could never be as interesting as this one. And that had always been the reason for his quest. To learn the next one’s secrets, to examine what differences they all had. To, indeed, add another notch.
To form a blood bond with Kyler, or not to bond? It meant taking a lot of blood, more than he normally would when he slaked his hunger with a human. It was a commitment akin to marriage. To confessing love. He adored Kyler, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to plunge in so deeply.
But what was he afraid of? The bonding did not require them to live together and date only the other. It merely made them two of a kind, intimate on a level most others could never dream to share. It would open him to her completely and expose him at an emotional level.
That was it. He didn’t know how to do that. Sure, he’d exposed himself by confessing to her his past growing up in a brothel with the relative removal of a bystander. Such memories were distant enough that he could view it that way and not feel the emotional exposure. And he’d learned to leave the past where it belonged. Mostly. Zara still haunted him. She was the only woman who had ever broken his heart.
If he told Kyler he loved her, he then risked her breaking his heart. He wasn’t sure he’d know how to patch up the thing a second time around.
He closed his eyes and drew in the scents of lingering tea tree shampoo steamed to a heady brew by the hot water. Beyond that, he moved his senses through the wood door and into the bedroom, thick with sensual musk and the crisp lavender that clung to the sheets. And Kyler’s hair, silken and teased with a hint of rose and citrus from the gardens. Her skin, hot and salty-sweet. And her blood.
Fangs descending in his mouth, Dante parted his lips, allowing the tease of the sharp teeth over his skin to shiver desire through his system. He wanted more of her blood. To feel it running down his throat, coiling into him, becoming a part of his very being.
She thought him the rogue, a man who would simply play with her until he tired. He had to prove to her he could be more.
“I want her,” he whispered his sudden revelation, “to want me.”
To ask for the bonding. To prove that she could devote herself to him. To become the one person he could trust completely with his fragile heart.
Yet, hadn’t she said the same of him? That she’d wanted him on his knees, wanting her?
“Dante?”
Opening his eyes, his senses returned to the bathroom and the dripping showerhead and the taste of toothpaste in his mouth.
“Come to bed,” she coaxed from the other side of the door. “I miss you.”
Pushing open the door, he padded across the room and stood before the bed.
Kyler eyed his erection. “I can take care of that for you. The fellow looks in need of a kiss.”
“If you think so?”
She patted the bed, and he crawled between the sheets and nuzzled up beside her irresistible warmth. Who ever said vampires were cold?
Her fingers wrapped around his cock, and she squeezed and pulled and stretched and played with an expertise she’d gained over but a few days. Touching the head of him against her mons, she slicked her own wetness onto him, and he groaned and buried his face in her hair. Her touch mastered him in ways he couldn’t comprehend. Because it wasn’t as though other women had not done the same to him. Only with Kyler, he wanted to fall into the feeling and simply...surrender.
“You make me...” he whispered.
But he couldn’t put into words how he felt right now. Close to her. Surrounded by her. Desired and wanted. And somehow, in his place.
“You don’t have to say it. I’m slowly figuring you out. Love doesn’t mean the same thing to you as it does to most.”
“Perhaps.”
“But you did love that one woman who transformed you?”
“Zara. Yes.”
“The only woman you ever loved gave you that egg to protect.” Her hand stopped moving, which he silently cursed. Why the urge for conversation when they should only be breathing heavily? “So you went after the egg because if you got it back, you might have gotten her back,” she posited.
“No, it’s not like that at all. I don’t want her back.” He meant that. And he believed that. Maybe? “She’s moved on. Zara had a tendency to love them and leave them.”
“The female Casanova?” She tilted a knowing look at him. Gave his cock a teasing squeeze.
So that was it? Why had he never thought of Zara in that way? And he’d become the thing he’d once loved in an attempt to—what? Carry Zara’s memory with him forever? To punish all women as he’d been punished when Zara had left him? He’d been thankful for the gift of vampirism, but when she’d refused to stay and teach him how to adjust to his new condition, only then had Dante realized how little he had ever meant to the callous vampiress.
So why had he kept the egg for her?
That was obvious. Because when she’d asked him he’d felt hope, as if they had another chance. And really, it had been an immense show of trust and he’d felt honored knowing that in his care was something an entire population of vampires would appreciate him protecting.
Kyler had confessed much the same; she’d run back to King with hopes of rekindling what she’d wanted to be a real relationship.
They truly were two of a kind. He understood her. He trusted her. And he knew that she could understand him.
“Kyler.” He clasped her free hand and kissed it. His heartbeat thundered, warning him not to do what he felt compelled to express. He had to. He must. It felt as necessary as breathing. “All I’ve ever wanted is to be loved. I know that’s stupid.”
“Oh, Dante.” She nuzzled her head onto his shoulder and kissed him softly. Another tender squeeze of his cock held him securely. “That’s not stupid. In fact, that’s the most honest thing you’ve said since I’ve met you.” She hugged him. Bright blue eyes flashed at him. “You can have love if you learn to recognize it.”
The gentle stroking of her thumb against his penis calmed him. Recognizing love? Was it akin to lying quietly in a bed with a woman who had somehow put into words that she understood him? And she did, even if he hadn’t put it all together until she’d said it.
“I love you,” she said softly. She lazily stroked his cock. “Whether or not you like it, it’s the truth. I admire the man you are, and the vampire. You’ve shown me that I am beautiful and that I’m pretty skilled when it comes to surviving intense life situations. And you are dedicated to keeping a harmful spell out of a monster’s hands, thus protecting so many. I aspire to be like you.” He looked down at he
r, and she met his gaze, asking, “Let me love you?”
Such a simple request, and yet he didn’t know what to do with it. It felt welcome and vile at the same time. Those very words he had given Zara so many decades ago, thinking, finally, he had found love. And Zara had laughed, even as he’d clutched the Fabergé egg to his heart. A gift from one he’d admired.
He only wished for Kyler to want him. Were they one and the same, love and wanting? No, he knew they were not. Wanting was superficial and callous. Love, well, it seemed as though the attachment delved to a soul level.
Behind them on the nightstand, a cell phone rang. It was Kyler’s ringtone that sounded like chimes. He hoped she would ignore it, and then realized that with everything they had going on right now she had better not.
He clasped a hand about hers, stopping her ministrations, and said through a clenched jaw, “Get it. Please.”
She kissed him, then rolled over and checked the phone. “It’s him.”
“Let me answer it.” He took the phone and the immense sexual high crashed and his cock wilted too quickly. Fuck the bastard vampire hunter. “King,” he said with forced cheeriness. “How’s Bunny?”
“She’s off to Russia.”
“Interesting. I guess she found the egg for you, and now everyone is pleased as punch.”
“You’re the only one who knows how to open the egg.”
“Well, yes, there is that. Need a bit of help?”
“There is no spell inside the egg. You have it. Don’t deny it.”
Of course, he should have expected King would come to such a conclusion when he hadn’t fought Bunny to get the egg back. Poor planning on his part.
“I’ll need that spell,” King said. “You can bring it to me at ten. I’ll be waiting in the aqueducts beneath the Louvre.”
“I’m sure I’ll be otherwise occupied at the time. So sorry.”
“Then you’d better keep a sharp eye on Kyler today. One moment of inattention, and she’ll be gone. When that occurs—and it will—you’ll know how to get her back. Ten o’clock,” he said and hung up.
