Department 57: Rubies of Fire

by Lynne Connolly

  He lifted his hand, and the drapes closed. He smiled. “Technology,” he explained. “There’s no one to see us, but I want this to be entirely ours, as though we’re in our own private place. Contained in each other.”

  She understood what he meant. She wanted to explore him, discover him, as she hadn’t before, and she trusted only him, as he trusted only her, to be this close.

  So when he took her to the bed, they sat down at the same time. Their hands went to the other at the same time, and they continued the kiss begun downstairs. She leaned back; he followed, his mouth caressing hers. He tasted spicy, a flavor she would always associate with Andreas, and she needed to taste more of him.

  She’d kissed him before, she’d caressed him, but then he had been a friend she enjoyed invigorating sex with. This time felt different. She let him in further, deeper than anyone except one other. He opened to her, and she saw the truth as she sank into his mind and he into hers, welcomed and ushered in by right.

  He lifted his hands to the buttons of her blouse at the same time hers went to his shirt, and they unbuttoned each other slowly, their kiss breaking so they could concentrate. Before, they’d undressed in haste. This time they slipped each button free carefully, as though each action held meaning. When he undid the last button, he lifted his hand to touch her cleavage gently, trace the cleft, and dip briefly inside before pushing at the fabric of her blouse. They sat up to remove their outer clothing. He unsnapped her bra for her and slid the straps slowly down her arms, each touch increasing her sensitivity, making her yearn for more.

  He didn’t hurry, but touched her as though each was his first, lifted his hand to her bare breast, cupping it, lifting it, and finally spreading his hand over it. Her nipple hardened. “Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?”

  “I could say the same thing. I am saying it.” His chest, sprinkled with dark hair curling in on his nipples, covering firm, defined muscle, just begged her to touch. So she obeyed her instincts, smoothing her hand flat to take in as much of his texture as she could. His hard nipple prodded her hand and caught in the juncture between two fingers. She took it in her fingertips, rolled it gently.

  He echoed her motion, pulling gently to peak her breast before bending to take it between his lips and touch his tongue to her sensitive flesh. She moaned lightly, gliding her hands over him, finding his body soothing and stimulating against her.

  He tickled her nipple, flicking his tongue repeatedly over it, bringing her to a height of awareness she’d never experienced before, just from mere touches to her nipples. Except there was nothing “mere” about it. Sliding her hands down his body, she felt every rib, felt his powerful muscles tense and relax. Without taking his mouth away from her breast, he eased her down on to the soft coverlet. He didn’t attempt to conceal the lapping sounds his mouth made against her flesh, gently wetting and caressing her. He kissed around her nipple before moving on to the other one. She reclined, her hands on his back, smoothing and caressing, half of her longing to return to his belt buckle and hurry things along.

  He knew—of course he did, with their minds merged the way they were. He lifted his head, glancing up and capturing her gaze. His eyes appeared hungry, but not starving as before. Permission was given and received. He lowered his hands to his waist and undid the buckle that had defeated her fumbling fingers a moment earlier. When she lifted her hands away from him, she knew a loss, as though her hands belonged on him and nowhere else.

  “Let me. Please.” His low murmur broke into her mind. She trusted him to bring her, and himself, all the pleasure he could muster. Only she wanted to do the same for him. “There’s plenty of time,” he said. “All the time we need.”

  There was. No one would find them here. This was the middle of a state in a “propitious situation,” which probably meant nobody could track them; anyone following them would be defeated by ley lines and, for all she knew, modern technology.

  She let him take charge because she sensed his need, his yearning to do so, but she was no passive partner. He slid his pants down his legs, dragging his underwear with them, then turned to do the same for her. He took his time, undoing her pants carefully, kissing every inch of flesh revealed by the slowly lowered zip.

  When he realized she had gone commando, his low groan fed her need for him. He wanted her. She smiled, pure, feminine power over her man. “I heard the commotion from the bathroom, so I didn’t waste any more time. I threw on the first clothes I touched.”

  “But you stopped to put on a bra.”

  “I’d already put that on.”

  He smiled, an intimate sharing, then closed his eyes. “You smell so good. I could spend all night down here.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Maybe not all night.” He bent, and she forgot what she meant to say when he touched his tongue to the edge of her cleft.

  “Andreas!”

  “Sweet,” was her only answer as he shoved her pants aside to reach her. He slid them down her legs and returned immediately to her, this time opening her with his thumbs, staring down at what he’d revealed. “You’re erect. Beautiful.”

  No one had ever described her in that way, but her clit strained for his touch. She didn’t have to tell him what she wanted, but she did anyway. “Andreas, kiss me there, suck my clit. Please.”

  “You don’t have to say please.” With a suddenness that made her gasp, sucking air deep into her lungs, he dived in.

  The strong pull sent waves of pure want through her entire being, making her shout her need, and before she quite realized what was happening, she climaxed, the waves shooting inside her, her whole body contracting around him, answering his strong suction with pulses of easement.

  All too soon it ended, but he didn’t stop, continuing his caresses, pausing to lap at her, tracing her deepest creases with his tongue, plunging inside her pussy.

  When she felt the suction again, it came from deep in her and outside her, his mouth wide, covering her clit and her vagina, drawing both deep into him.

  “God, you taste so good! I can’t get enough of you!”

  She was beyond anything past an elementary, “Bite, bite!”

  His fangs responded. Their sharp edges grazed her sensitive skin, and she moaned, encouraging him to move, to take her.

  “I can’t stop this. What have you done?”

  “Do it!”

  She felt his sense of wonder. He’d never done this with anyone else? Before her confused thoughts could coalesce, she felt his teeth enter her, graze her. She knew he drew blood, but she trusted him, as she had with her throat. He wouldn’t hurt her. The intimate sting of his teeth jolted her into another climax, higher and sharper than the last one.

  He lifted his head, licking her, and she sensed his panic.

  She lifted a shaky hand to touch his shoulder. “No, Andreas; that was right. Lovers share blood in intimate places. Lick it clean, darling. I’ll heal in no time. You’re so good at this, I can’t believe you’ve never done it before.”

  He stayed where he was, lying between her legs until he saw her cuts healing. She saw them in his mind, cruel slices, closing as quickly as he made them, and she knew he needed to see for himself.

  He crawled slowly up the bed until he could gaze into her eyes. “That was good, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “It felt right to me. I have to let you do it to me?” he asked.

  She felt the doubt in his mind and loved that he allowed her to see it.

  “Only if you want to,” she said.

  She lifted her hand to push it into his thick, dark hair, the strands falling silkily around her fingers. “Right now I need you more. Love me, Andreas.”

  He took her mouth, and she tasted herself, the metallic tang of blood mixed with her own juices. He slipped down her wet opening, his cock sliding into her as though it belonged there, as though he’d come home.

  Which he had. They fitted together like the interlocking parts of a puzz
le ring, coming together as though being apart was an unnatural state. He filled her completely, and his balls nestled against her perineum and ass, caressing her sensitive flesh, before he withdrew to impale her again, slowly, sensationally.

  When he drew back from their kiss, his eyes opened, as did hers, and they watched each other as he slowly withdrew and thrust, withdrew and thrust. They needed no words, no verbal communication of any kind, only the communal experience: he in her, she in him. She felt his reaction and hers, doubled, tripled with the energy of awareness. They took each other higher with only the gentle movement of thrust and retreat, her legs wide and accepting, her body tilted up for him. They never lost eye contact as their shared orgasm slowly built and time ceased to exist. His thrusts deepened and increased in power, but there was no abrupt passion, only that slow, inevitable growing to a peak neither had imagined, neither had believed existed before.

  Until they progressed to a spiraling, inescapable consummation, soaring above and beyond, into each other, deeply embraced until they truly became one being with one unbelievable climax.

  Roz wasn’t sure when it ended, but she found herself locked in his arms, nestled closely to him on the soft, cream coverlet of his large, welcoming bed. “Did I sleep?”

  “Hmm? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I did too. Does it matter?”

  “Not really. Andreas?”

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “What happened then?”

  He grunted. “Something wonderful. I don’t know what to call it precisely, but I’m not sure I care. Only that I want it to happen again.”

  “Me too.”

  “Sometime soon.”

  “Yeah.” She kissed his nipple and felt his instant response. “You taste good.”

  “Good doesn’t begin to describe the way you taste.” He stroked her shoulder and back. “Roz, this is new to me.” He sounded uncertain.

  “To me as well.” Shock arced through her when she realized how true this was. In all her time, all her years, sex had never been as intense, as powerful as this.

  Had she been kidding herself when she thought John had been her one true love? Andreas had made her feel things John never had, but her late husband still held a place in her heart nobody else had ever reached. At least, not until now.

  Still unsure about the way she felt, she lifted herself on one elbow and watched his eyes soften and his free hand go to her breast to caress it gently.

  “What is it?”

  Time to come clean, to tell him everything. She’d run out of excuses, and she owed him this. Especially now. She might have known he’d notice the change in her mind. The easiest way to tell him would be mind to mind, but it would also be unfair to both men. Andreas should never see her images of herself and John, and a man of John’s generation would feel betrayed by the sharing of such intimate memories.

  “There is a place in my heart forever closed to you, as it should be.”

  He tensed, and his hand fell away from her. His gaze sharpened. “Tell me.”

  He suspected someone else. He was right, but the someone else didn’t form a rival to him. Such different men, but she could see they had similarities. She hoped the similarities went as deep as she suspected.

  “Let me tell you in my own time, in my own way. Please.”

  He sighed. “Does this mean you want me to wait until you’re ready? I’ll wait, but if you make me wait much longer, it will drive a fence between us.”

  “I know.” She rested her hand on his chest, more because she had to touch him than from desire. “Just let me begin where I need to, and try to explain to you.”

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  And as though she had shot him for real, she saw pain enter his eyes and she hated herself for what she was about to tell him.

  “Andreas, I was born British, at the height of the British Empire. In 1852.”

  He smiled. “You told me how old you are.”

  She lifted her hand and gently pressed her fingers against his lips. He half closed his eyes, then kissed her digits but didn’t say anything when she drew them away.

  “I lived a quiet spinster life for my first fifty years. With the turn of the new century, I decided on a new life, so I disappeared from my old haunts and became a secretary in Liverpool. It was going really well until 1914. After that, I lived through a terrible world war and saw my country brought low by it.” She heard the British accent creeping through her educated American one and relaxed into it. The better to convince him. “I decided to ‘die’ early. I’d seen too much, and I wanted to start again. It was easier then. I moved cities—that was all—from Liverpool to London and began as a young woman with family in the north. By the time prosperity began to return, and other times I never want to remember in any detail, we were heading for war again.

  “In 1932, when I was ostensibly twenty-three years old, working as a secretary in the City of London for a law firm, I met a young lawyer of great promise called John Templeton.”

  He knew; he knew then, and his eyes flattened as he drew his thoughts together, from postsexual relaxation to full awareness, but she couldn’t stop. She had to tell him everything, or he would wonder. The whole story.

  “We fell in love. My family wanted me to have an affair, to indulge myself and then leave, because John was a mortal. I thought I knew better, and I married him. I told him what I was before we married, and I was terrified of losing him. He was so conventional but passionate about the causes he believed in. He was braver and wiser than I gave him credit for, and he accepted me for what I was. He understood that I would not age as he did, and he forbade me to take on that burden. We never bonded as I wanted to. Then I would have taken on his lifespan, and it would have been resolved at our deaths, but he wouldn’t let it happen. I respected his wish and accepted it. He told me to go on, to live my natural lifespan, and when he heard about the donor scheme, he demanded I never volunteer for it, to let another young couple take my Gift from me. He knew I planned that too. He couldn’t bear it, he said, if I allowed anyone to take the life out of me, to make me suffer.”

  She gazed down at Andreas and saw the same integrity in him. “I think you would have liked each other, had you met. I could almost wish you had met.”

  He winced, but he kept his gaze on hers, kept his mind quiet, although his violent emotion suddenly rose and just as suddenly banked. His control surprised her. For such a young vampire, Andreas had resources some of her elders never developed. This took real strength, to hear her talk about the man she had loved and lost. Her husband. She swallowed.

  “But the revelation created a wedge that slowly drove us apart. He was a man of great truth, so when he fell, he fell hard and painfully. John fell in love with someone else, someone I only knew by sight, the wife of a colleague. Small, blonde, sweet. She fell for him. But they never did anything about it.” She fought back her own pain, so effortlessly recreated by the articulation. She’d never told anyone about this before.

  It hurt more than she’d imagined, even after all this time. “In those days, people didn’t. She was married. So was he. It hurt so much to see him look at her at social functions, the only places they allowed themselves to be together once they realized how they felt.” She blinked back her tears. “I offered him a divorce, but it was no use. He still loved me, he said, and her husband wouldn’t have divorced her. It would have damaged his career as a family lawyer, destroyed two families. I said they could have an affair. I would go away for a while, or ‘die,’ and he would be free. He wouldn’t hear of it. He cried, said he’d get over it. For a while we worked at what we had, and we were happy. When we married, I told him about my probable infertility, and he accepted it, but I think after a few years that made him unhappy. Men have biological clocks too. He would have loved children. I’m sure of it.”

  She no longer tried to blink back her tears. They came too fast for that, trickling down her cheeks and dripping onto his chest, sticking his chest hairs to his ski
n. She looked down and concentrated on the effect, hoping she would stop soon. “In September 1939, Britain declared war against Germany. In December, he joined the air force. He had a private pilot’s license, rare in those days, and he felt he could do his duty better as an airman than a lawyer. We were all filled with loyalty, a desire to get this over with quickly and stop the Nazis taking over Europe. We didn’t realize what it would cost us, least of all me.”

  She lifted her gaze to his face. What she saw there stopped her breath. He felt her pain; even though hearing of her love for another man must hurt him, he still felt for her first.

  “He died?”

  “He died in the Battle of Britain. Shot down. When I heard the news, I wanted to give up. I felt guilty for everything: our marriage, his death. And then the woman who loved him killed herself. I know that it wasn’t my fault, but at the time that was what I felt. I’d promised I wouldn’t give myself up to the donor scheme. That’s when I made the promise to my family, the Gardiners.”

  His gaze sharpened.

  “They provided a Gardiner man for me, a nice man, one who might not bring me to the heights of love, but I didn’t want that. I didn’t want anyone, so I told him to wait. He agreed. I emigrated to the US after the war. I wanted, needed to start again. He came over too, not because of me, but because he felt, as so many of us did, that we needed to start anew. We’d seen too much. Europe was too tired, too worn-out by years of war and deprivation. It wasn’t a good time to be born in Europe, not a good time to live, and we’d had enough.” She swallowed. “Bill died six years ago.”

  They stared at each other, naked in mind and body. She held nothing back except the very private thoughts she’d shared with John, things it wouldn’t be right to share with anybody else.

  “He was one of the San Francisco vampires, wasn’t he?”

  She met his gaze fearlessly. “Yes, he was.” She kept still, watching his face. “We never loved each other, but neither of us wanted that. He’d lost a mortal wife. The family thought they were doing us both a favor and giving us a chance to make a child together, and we agreed, always putting off the marriage, busy with other things, other people. When he was killed, they agreed it was my right to help in the search for his killers. They want to hold me to my promise, and they’ve provided someone else for me. I promised to marry a Gardiner, and they want that. They do care, Andreas, truly, but some of them are stuck in their ways.”