Elena drew her nails down his back and cried out. Fin felt strangely light-headed, disoriented, as the familiar sensation of release shot through him. He felt himself sway as the shower walls seemed to close in around him.
One minute he was standing up, holding her in his arms against the tile wall, the next minute they were sitting on the shower floor, the warm water pooling around them. She smiled at him, a sensual, sweet look of satisfaction on her beautiful, wet face.
Fin blinked. How had he gotten down here? Obviously he hadn’t fallen. Nothing hurt and Elena seemed unconcerned. But he had blacked out, he was sure of it.
He closed his eyes, letting the warm water run over his head. He was working too hard, staying up too late, not eating enough. Mary Kay said it would eventually affect his health.
Elena rose up on her knees and picked up a bath brush from a shelf in the shower wall. She squirted soap onto it. “Let me scrub your back.” She knelt in front of him.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“No, I do not. Turn around.”
Because it was easier than arguing, drawing up his knees, he spun around on the slippery wet tile. With the water now spraying from the rear, it felt like rainwater. She dragged the slightly rough, bristled brush across his lower back and at the same time, brushed her breasts across his shoulders.
He groaned and closed his eyes. “Keep doing that and I’ll be ready again in a few minutes.”
She kissed a spot between his shoulder blades. “Promises, promises,” she murmured.
She scrubbed his back and then his front and they made love on the floor of the shower. This time, Fin remained in complete control and was able to hold back until she’d come several times.
Finally satiated, they dried themselves with big fluffy white towels. It had been Fin’s intention to go home but Elena persuaded him to come to her bedroom and lie down with her for a few minutes.
“My bed is empty and lonely,” she told him in that sexy, slightly accented voice of hers that he loved.
One minute Fin was half sitting, half lying in Elena’s bed, his arm around her, the bedside lamps glowing softly, the next minute, he was waking in the pitch dark.
Fin always found waking in a woman’s bed to be disorienting. A little scary, even. He liked having sex with them; he did not like sleeping with them. It was too intimate.
He glanced at the digital clock beside the bed. Three forty in the morning.
Crap, he thought.
Moving slowly so as not to wake Elena, nude in his arms, he slipped his arm out from under her. She sighed in her sleep as he carefully drew the sheet over her.
His eyes now adjusted to the darkness, he located his boxers in his pile of clothes on a chair near the door and stepped into them. Elena rolled over on the bed and put her arm out in her sleep as if searching for him. Fin had to get out of there before she woke.
Armed at least with underwear, he grabbed the rest of his clothes and slipped out the door. The hall was dark, but he had no problem navigating it now that his vision had adjusted. In most circumstances, the Kahills could see as well in the dark as in the daylight.
So why didn’t he see her until he almost tripped over her?
Chapter 17
Elena’s niece startled him far more than he apparently startled her, almost as if she routinely ran into half-naked men in her hallway in the middle of the night.
She looked up at him. Then down at his boxers. Then up. “Hello,” she said.
Clutching his clothes to his chest, he stared at her. He knew she was fourteen or fifteen, but she looked younger in her white nightie and sleepy face. “Hi,” he managed.
As she walked into the bathroom, he heard Elena come out of her bedroom and turned back toward her. She held a silk robe closed with one hand.
“I am so sorry,” he whispered, nodding toward the closing bathroom door. “Your niece, I ran into her on my way out.”
“Which one, Lia or Alessa?”
He hated to admit he didn’t know which was which. This was supposed to be a no-strings-attached relationship. That covered family names, didn’t it?
“Alessa is the younger one,” Elena offered.
“Lia, then.”
“Ah.” She folded her arms over her chest, looking none too pleased.
Fin felt like a complete ass. After fifteen-hundred-odd years, surely he knew better than to get caught sneaking out of a woman’s bed. By a kid, no less. “I never saw her until I was in the hall. I must have fallen asleep. I never even heard them come in.” It wasn’t like him to let his guard down that way. It was foolish and damned dangerous. “I really am sorry, Elena.”
She sighed. “It’s all right,” she said softly.
“It’s not. An innocent young girl like her—”
Elena pushed dark, silky hair from her eyes. “Lia is not as young nor as innocent as she appears, I am afraid.”
Her tone was odd. Fin couldn’t tell if she was angry, or just tired, or both.
“I’ll go,” he said.
She nodded. “You can let yourself out?”
“Yeah. Sure. Of course.” Fin hurried out of the house, not stopping to dress until he was at the end of the street. As he held onto a stop sign for balance and stepped into his pants, he sensed someone watching. He glanced up to see a Doberman watching him. He knew dogs couldn’t laugh, but he could have sworn he heard Arlan snicker.
Elena waited in the hallway. She had a feeling Lia was hiding from her, hoping she would just go back to bed. Elena had no intention of doing so, not without first speaking to her niece. Finally, the bathroom light went out and the door opened. Elena faced Lia in the dark.
“I’m sorry,” Lia said. “I didn’t mean to cause an awkward situation.”
Elena crossed her arms over her chest. “I did not mean for you to meet. I try to keep my private life private.”
“I won’t tell Mama and Papa, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I am not worried. Your parents know I see men from time to time.”
“Does he know? About us, I mean?”
Elena was silent.
Lia looked down at her bare feet. She was wearing a cute baby doll nightgown. She looked like a dark-haired angel. “No need, I guess. We’ll be going home in a few weeks.”
“We will.”
“Well, good night, Auntie Elena.” The girl turned to go.
“Lia?”
She turned back.
“Do you know your brother has been going out at night?”
“No. Where is he going?”
“I do not know. That’s what worries me.”
“He didn’t kill those boys, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said softly. “Beppe would never do anything like that again. He knows Papa is serious when he says he would kill him to protect the rest of us.”
Lia was right; Elena knew she was right. She hadn’t really suspected Beppe of murdering them. But for some reason, she was still uneasy. “It’s not a good idea, you know. Him prowling about unaccompanied at night. If I tell your parents, we will all be cutting our holiday short.”
“No, please.” Lia took a step toward Elena in the dark hallway. “Don’t tell them,” she whispered. “I’m actually making some friends here. Sort of,” she added.
Elena’s heart went out to the teen. She knew how hard this life was for her. She could only imagine what it was like for the children.
“Let me talk to him.” Lia grabbed Elena’s hand. “Please?” she begged. “Let me talk to him. Let me handle it. You know he won’t listen to you but he might listen to me.”
Elena looked down at Lia and patted her hand.
“Please?” Lia whispered. “I’ll talk to him. I’m sure he’s just walking at night. You know how restless he gets.”
“You will talk to him?”
“I swear it. But it can’t come from you. I…I’ll just tell him I saw him leaving the house. You have to pretend you don’t know.�
��
Elena let go of Lia’s hand, not sure her niece’s plan was the best option.
“I’ll tell you if there’s any reason to worry. I swear it.”
Elena thought for a minute, then nodded. “All right, but if you think there’s any reason to be concerned, any whatsoever, you have to come to me. I don’t think he’s dumb enough to kill again. His desire for self-preservation is too strong, but we have to be careful, Lia. I do not have to tell you that.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed Elena on the cheek. “Good night, Zia Elena.”
“Good night.” Inside her bedroom, Elena closed the door and leaned against it, shutting her eyes. Her entire body still tingled with the feel of Fin’s hands. She could still taste him on her lips.
She knew she should alert Celeste and Vittore to Beppe’s nighttime prowling. It wasn’t safe. Not for Beppe. Not for Clare Point. But if she told, even if Beppe was completely innocent of any wrongdoing, her sister and brother-in-law would want to return home immediately. And Elena wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
She opened her eyes, looking at the rumpled sheets of her bed. She could still smell him, his male scent lingering on the bed linens. She walked to her bed, letting the silk robe fall off her shoulders. The cool air that blew from the vents lifted goose bumps on her bare skin. Her nipples puckered, reminding her of the feel of Fin’s mouth on her breasts. He was one of the finest lovers she had had since her husband’s death. She would miss him when she returned home. But she wouldn’t go home yet.
Kaleigh leaned against the air hockey table and sipped her orange Vitamin Water. Katy stood beside her. Grape Fanta was her poison. They were just killing time until after curfew when they would sneak into the forest. They watched as Regan moved from video game to video game, emptying the change reservoirs. He was either so entranced with his duties that he hadn’t noticed them yet, or he didn’t care that they were still there.
Kaleigh sipped her drink. “What’d you tell your parents?”
“That I was spending the night with you.” Katy slurped her grape soda. “You?”
“That I was spending the night with you, of course.”
They snickered.
“Parents. You’d think they’d learn after a couple of centuries.” Katy set her can down on the air hockey table. “But they never do.”
“Maybe they know what we’re doing, they just realize after all this time that teenagers will be teenagers.”
Katy smirked. “Maybe.” She studied her fingernails, drew her thumbnail over her lower teeth, and checked it out to see what damage she had done to the green glitter nail polish. “You tell Rob about your party tonight?”
“No. He wouldn’t have liked the idea. He would have said I should just go to the Council, especially now that we know the killer’s a V. He doesn’t understand that the kids are my responsibility.” She was quiet for a second. “You tell Pete?”
Katy chewed on her thumbnail. “Pete and I are not dating. I don’t have to tell him where I’m going.”
“You’re not dating? You were making out with him at the snow cone booth the other day at the parade.”
Katy whipped her head around. “Who told you?”
Kaleigh smiled. “Wisewomen have their ways.”
“Oh, please,” Katy groaned.
“What are you two still doing here?” Regan got down on his knees in front of the four-lane skee ball alley and used a key to open the change reservoir. “We’re closed.”
Katy glanced at the garage doors that led out onto the boardwalk; Regan had pulled them down and secured them twenty minutes ago. The three of them were the only ones left in the building. “I can see that.”
Regan dumped the quarters into a big plastic bucket. “Which means you should be home, safely tucked in your beds. Don’t you know there’s a killer loose in Clare Point?”
“From what we hear, we’re not the ones who have to be worried.” Kaleigh finished her drink and set the bottle beside Katy’s can, right next to the NO FOOD OR DRINK ALLOWED sign taped to the hockey table. “It’s the humans who better be careful.”
“Pretty hard to believe, isn’t it?” he asked, locking the reservoir and getting to his feet. “I mean, who would jeopardize everything we’ve built here?”
“If I knew the answer, you think I’d be here?”
“Maybe it’s someone under a witch’s spell or something,” Katy offered.
Kaleigh cut her eyes at her best friend.
“I’m just saying.” Katy gnawed on her thumbnail. “So maybe it’s someone not thinking straight. Like maybe it’s someone under the influence.”
“Katy!” Regan looked so hurt that Kaleigh felt bad for him. He still hadn’t been forgiven by the sept for turning Victor into a vampire. To many, turning a human into a V was a worse sin than just killing them.
“I would never do something like that.” He stood in front of them, the bucket of change in his hand. “No matter how wasted I was.”
“Didn’t say you would.” Katy spat a piece of nail polish on the floor. “I was just trying to make it make sense. Just like everyone else in town. I mean, she’s got to have her reasons, right?”
“What makes you say it’s a she?” He jingled the change in the bucket, thoughtfully. “Could be a he.”
“Oh, it’s a she all right. Call it women’s intuition. You see those guys’ pictures in the paper? They were both hot.” She wrinkled her nose. “Anyone talk to Eva? She could definitely have sex with a man and then kill him.”
“Eva doesn’t even like men,” Kaleigh argued.
“All the more reason to kill them after you have sex with them and suck their blood.”
“One of them might have had sex prior to death with the killer, but not the other,” Regan said.
“So? Doesn’t mean anything. I’m telling you, take it from a woman. It’s a woman.”
Regan passed the heavy bucket into his other hand, contemplating what Katy had said. “What do you think, Kaleigh?”
Leaning against the air hockey table, she groaned and closed her eyes, tilting her head back. “I try not to think at all. I’ve got problems of my own. My head’s already about to burst.”
Regan offered a lopsided grin, then something caught his attention behind them. “Hey, get that can and bottle off the hockey table! Can’t you read the sign? No food or drink.”
Kaleigh snatched up her empty. “We gotta go anyway. We’ll let ourselves out the back.”
“Be careful walking home,” he called after them.
Regan carried the bucket of change to a plastic tub he’d left on the floor near the office door. As he dumped the coins from the bucket to the tub, he watched them spill like a waterfall. As the last few hit the growing pile, he checked the clock on the wall. He was supposed to meet Fin at midnight for a beer. He’d have to hurry to finish up here or come back early tomorrow. The bathrooms still needed to be cleaned, all the trash cans emptied, and the floor swept. Plus, he needed to take a look at the Kung Fu video game. A couple of the kids had complained today that it was “eating their money.”
Regan heard the back door at the end of the hall close behind the girls as they went out. He wondered if he ought to lock it. But that seemed silly. Kahills didn’t lock doors. And Katy had been right. They were in no danger. It was the human tourists in town who needed to lock their doors.
He left the bucket next to the change bin and went down the hall to the closet to get the big black garbage bags and the broom. For the next forty-five minutes, he emptied trash cans and swept the floor. He piled all the bags of trash at the end of the hall next to the door that led to the alley. He’d take them to the Dumpster on his way out. He checked his cell phone for the time. He could work on the Kung Fu game tomorrow morning before things got busy, but that still left the bathrooms. He could either clean them and arrive late at the pub and piss Fin off or he could finish his work.
Fin was always
pissed at him about something anyway…
Regan went back to the closet and grabbed the cleaning supply caddy. He’d make it quick and then he’d be outta here. Some people might get grossed out by cleaning public bathrooms, but he didn’t mind. He liked busywork; it gave him time to think. And he liked feeling like he had accomplished something at the end of the day. Maybe it wasn’t a position on the Kill Team, or the High Council, but it was a start to rebuilding his place in the community, wasn’t it?
He opened the door to the women’s room and propped it open with the caddy. As he leaned over to grab the pair of rubber gloves his mother had insisted he wear when cleaning, he got a strange feeling. The hair rose on the back of his neck and he straightened slowly, slipping one hand into a glove. He listened hard but heard nothing but the whirr of the fans in the air-conditioning unit.
He stepped out into the hall to look around the open door. Nothing. No one. Staring down the dark hall, he slid his other hand into a glove.
Something just didn’t feel right. The girls had been gone almost an hour. Could they have come back? “Kaleigh?”
Nothing.
Regan stood there a minute longer, listening. He shook his head as he walked back into the bathroom and flipped on the lights in the single-seater. He would have said he’d been watching too many scary movies, only he didn’t like scary movies. Because, well…he got scared.
He grabbed the toilet brush and the blue liquid stuff to clean the bowl and got down on his knees. It didn’t look too bad. He squirted the cleaning stuff around the rim and scrubbed, then flushed, just the way Mary Kay had taught him. At the tail end of the flush, he thought he heard a sound behind him, but he couldn’t be sure. The toilet was pretty loud.
Had it been the back door?
Regan got to his feet, walked into the hall, toilet brush still in his hand.
Something in a cape flew straight at him. Just like in the nightmares. Only this time, he was absolutely, positively sure he was not dreaming.
Immortal Page 17
