Between a Vamp and a Hard Place

by Jessica Sims

  “In the box behind you,” I lied, hoping he’d take the bait. Just, you know, jump right back in and make yourself cozy.

  He eyed me, clearly not falling for it. “Get it for me.”

  “Women aren’t allowed to carry swords.” I kept my face as guileless as possible.

  Rand’s mouth quirked into what would have been a devastatingly attractive smile if I hadn’t known he was a vampire. But I got the impression he was enjoying my tart responses. “Very well,” he said, and turned around to dig through crates.

  Success! I got up and bolted for the stairs, hoping I could escape before he caught on to what I was doing.

  Four

  I made it three or four steps up the circular stairs, my feet clanging against the metal loudly. Then a strong, cold arm wrapped around my waist. “You do not leave, wench.”

  I screamed, flailing my arms against him. “I’m not your captive!”

  “You are mine until I am done with you,” he told me in that amused, cocky voice. As if what I wanted didn’t matter in the slightest. It was infuriating. “And you are not escaping me. Not while I have need of your services.”

  I could just guess what those services were. Blood, and judging by the way he looked at my heaving breasts as he set me back down on the stairs, other services that had nothing to do with blood and everything to do with submitting. The worst of it all? He wasn’t ugly in the slightest, so it wasn’t as if it’d be a chore to sleep with the guy.

  And that galled the crap out of me.

  “Cease fighting,” he told me. “You will injure yourself.”

  I slammed a fist into his arm just to prove that I could. He didn’t even bat an eye, though his amused smile widened.

  I shouldn’t have fought so hard. In the next moment, the room spun, and I felt light-headed. I wobbled and fell against him.

  Rand caught me easily, his look one of concern. “Are you well?”

  “Of course I’m not well,” I snapped at him. “You drank half my blood. I need to sit down.” My voice was weak and thready. “Maybe eat something. Maybe . . .”

  To my surprise, he picked me up in gentle arms, cradling me against his chest. “I will carry you. Tell me where is the best place we can get you food and ale.”

  Ale? For some reason, I giggled at that. Here I was pitching around like a drunk on a bender, and he wanted to give me alcohol. “It’s way too early in the morning for ale.” Actually it was more like late at night, but after midnight, it was morning, right? Right. “But I could use some orange juice and a few cookies.” That was what they gave you when you donated blood, and I’d donated quite a bit.

  “Tell me where we can get these jews and cookets.”

  “Juice and cookies,” I corrected, and pointed up the stairs. “The kitchen is up there.”

  “Inside the keep?” he asked, but he began to make his way up the stairs, cradling me against his chest.

  It felt a little odd to have my legs dangling over one strong arm, my head pressed against a chest that had no heartbeat, but I was too tired to walk it myself. “It’s not really a keep,” I told him idly as he climbed the stairs. “And all houses come with a kitchen now. Resale value and all that.”

  “Mmm.”

  “What’s ‘mmm’ mean?”

  “It means I grasp your words but I do not understand their meaning.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m still not entirely sure how you suddenly speak English, so we can both be confused.”

  He chuckled, the sound warm. His chest moved against my ear. “I told you, mistrustful wench. It is because the Dragon knows your language.”

  “And I told you I have a name,” I retorted.

  “Ah yes. Lindsey. It is a man’s name.”

  I made a raspberry with my mouth at that, like a child. I was too weak to come up with a coherent comeback, so that would have to do.

  He merely chuckled again and continued carrying me up the twisting, narrow stairs. At the top, he pushed aside the secret door as if it weighed nothing, and set me down gently on top of the nailed-down buffet. “Do not move,” he instructed me. “You are too weak.”

  I wanted to protest, but he had a point. I was feeling pretty damn weak at the moment, trembling with exhaustion. So I sat there and watched as my vampire captor climbed over the buffet and then pulled me back into his arms again. “Where from here?”

  I pointed him out of the dining room and saw that the door had already been pushed open wider than I had been able to move it. Clearly Rand had gone exploring while I’d been passed out. A shiver of fear hit me. I wondered what he’d seen. Gemma, asleep upstairs? Oh no.

  Then I wondered why he’d returned.

  “The kitchen?” he prompted when we were in the narrow hallway of the Venetian apartment. I wordlessly pointed at another door, and he carried me in. The kitchen was slightly less messy than when we’d discovered it. Gemma had tackled it first, since she’d seen a fair amount of old vintage dishes she knew would bring a fair penny online.

  “This is the place?” Rand asked, and when I nodded, he carried me to the counter and set me down gently upon it. “Now, where are the scullery maids? Let me know and I shall wake them. Is it the woman upstairs?”

  I stared at him with wide eyes. How had he known Gemma was upstairs? Had he hurt her like he did me? “You—”

  He shook his head, as if anticipating my thoughts. “She slumbers. I did not interrupt her. Your blood quenched my thirst for now.” He leaned in and sniffed me.

  Lucky me. I leaned back, trying to scoot away from him. “There’s no scullery,” I told him. “It’s just me and Gemma here.” I pointed at the old, small fridge in the corner. It still worked, and we’d been using it to store food so we didn’t have to eat out every day. “There should be some stuff in there.”

  Rand tilted his head, gazing at me. Then he leaned in and sniffed again.

  “Um, what are you doing?”

  “I have drunk blood many a time before, but perhaps my senses are . . . overeager. You smell . . .” He inhaled again. “ . . . incredible.”

  “Gee, that’s nice.” I pointed at the fridge. “Can we eat now?”

  He gave me a quizzical look, but at least he wasn’t sniffing me anymore. “The trunk carries food?”

  “It’s not a trunk. It’s a refrigerator. Or a fridge. We use it to keep food cold.”

  I watched his face as he processed this information. His eyes flicked with recognition, as if receiving information. “Ah, a refrigerator. I have this word in my memory.” Rand approached the fridge and studied it. “How . . . how does one open it?”

  The fridge was an old-fashioned one, like the one Indiana Jones rode in during that last horrible movie. I pointed at the lever on the side. “Give that a yank.”

  He did, and the door flew open, swinging backward. Rand nearly stumbled in surprise, and I smothered a laugh. “Not that hard of a yank.”

  “My apologies,” he said, then put his hand inside, tentatively feeling the air. The look on his face was wondrous. “How is it cold? And why does it hum?”

  “Electricity,” I told him. “There’s a current of electricity that goes through the back that tells the coils to stay cold.” I was probably botching the whole “how refrigerators work” thing, but I was also pretty sure he didn’t need to know the nitty-gritty, just the basics. “The hum is the electricity going to the fridge.”

  He gave a slow nod. “When I awoke, I heard the hum of many refrigerators. You say these are common?” He gestured at the windows. “The entire city sings with such sounds. It is a cacophony. I miss the crickets and the sighs of horses in their sleep.”

  I nodded, ignoring the twinge of pity I felt. This had to be weird for the big guy. “No one uses horses anymore. Normally we use cars, but this place runs off of boats.”

  With that, he curled his lip. “I am not a fan of boats.”

  “Me, either.” I pointed at an orange pitcher in the fridge. “Pass the orange juice?”
<
br />   “Again, I know these words, but I am not familiar.” He handed me the pitcher. “Explain?”

  “I guess oranges aren’t all that medieval? Hand me two glasses in that cupboard, please,” I said, pointing at a cabinet behind his head. “Orange juice comes from a fruit.” I didn’t want to get into the whole “this actually came from a can of frozen concentrate” thing.

  I watched with a raised brow as he pulled out two glass tumblers and stared at them as if they’d been the most valuable things on earth. Reluctantly, he handed me one. I poured a glass of orange juice, then held it out to him.

  He took it from me and sniffed it, then a startled look touched his eyes. “I remember this.”

  “You do?” I poured myself a glass, curious. “Like from the Dragon or whatever that means?”

  “No. From the Crusades.” Rand sniffed it again, a look of stark longing on his face. “When we took Jerusalem. The infidels had food and drink that they offered us. I remember tasting this. At least, my nose remembers the scent.”

  “Well, try it and let me know what you think of it.” I held my own glass in my hands, curious.

  He lifted the glass to his mouth, reverent, and took a small sip. After a moment, he grimaced and spat it on the floor.

  “Just so you know, we don’t do that sort of thing on the floors here. It’s kind of frowned upon.”

  Rand wiped his mouth, giving me a curious look. “No? Is that why you have no rushes?”

  I didn’t know what rushes were, but I nodded anyhow. “If you have to spit, you spit in the sink.”

  “Another word I recognize but do not understand.”

  I pointed at it. Some other time I’d have to give him the full house tour. Not right now, though. Actually, scratch that, I thought to myself. He can do it on his own. I grabbed a towel off the counter and handed it to him. “You can clean up your mess.”

  To my surprise, he did just that, and I watched him carefully mop the marble flooring with the towel as I sipped my orange juice. There were cookies in the cabinet behind my head, so I pulled them out and began to munch on them between sips, feeling a little better as I did. When Rand straightened, I offered him a cookie.

  He shook his head and held up a hand. “I suspect it would taste as foul as the juice.”

  I considered my glass. Sure, it was from concentrate, but I thought it was pretty tasty. “You think it tastes foul?”

  “Everything does,” he said, a wistful note in his voice that surprised me. He leaned back against the counter and watched me scarf another cookie. “All normal food and drink is like ashes in the mouth of a vampire. I have not tasted pleasant food in the two hundred years since I was turned.”

  “Oh,” I said around a mouthful of cookie. “That has to suck. No pun intended.”

  Rand gazed at me blankly, then shrugged. “It was not as if I was turned of my own volition. And I suppose it has been more than two hundred years now, has it not?”

  “Six hundred,” I agreed.

  Rand looked around the room, then back at me. “It truly is the year of our Lord two thousand and fifteen?”

  “It is,” I agreed. The cookies tasted dry in my mouth, and I again felt a stab of unwanted sympathy for the vampire. He looked rather lost despite his big form and easy smiles. “This must be a big change for you.”

  His look was rueful. “It is not one change. It is everything that has changed,” he admitted. “Naught I remember is familiar, and all is strange.”

  I tried to picture myself waking up six hundred years in the future, and how much things would have changed at that point. Okay, yeah, that would not be fun. “You’ll be all right.”

  “I am utterly adrift,” he admitted. “Friendless and alone in a strange place and time. Though one would argue if the men I called my friends from long ago were truly that.”

  “You think one of them staked you?”

  At that, he gave me another rueful, sexy smile. “I know exactly who staked me. It was a blond whore with large tits and bountiful thighs. My last memory is of her riding my cock.”

  I gave him a look of horror and choked on my cookie. “We need to have a talk about oversharing,” I wheezed when I could breathe again.

  “Did you not ask?” Rand quirked an eyebrow at me.

  For a moment, I wanted to cuss at him like Gemma and her sailor-mouth. “I didn’t ask for that level of detail,” I told him. “So, a whore staked you? Not a friend? I suppose that’s good, right?”

  “Nay. Or rather, no.” Rand gave a small shake of his head and crossed his arms, leaning back against the counter. His pose was one of such casual sexiness that I wondered if the utter sensuality of every movement he made was part of the vampire package, or if Rand had just been sex on a stick before becoming a vampire. I couldn’t ask without embarrassing myself, though. The last thing I wanted was the man to find out that I thought he was attractive. I’d never get away from him, then.

  “So you were bouncing around with hookers and you got staked? Did you tick someone off?”

  He contemplated this for a moment, and I suspected he was deciphering my words, filtering them through whatever mental ability let him speak the same language as me. “That is the question that repeats in my mind, over and over again. Who have I embraced that was an enemy to me?”

  “Maybe start with all the hookers you’re so fond of embracing?” I said sweetly. “Maybe you called them ‘wench’ too often?”

  “They were wenches,” he said with a roguish smile. “And they served many a man in bed. I do not see what was so different about me that they would lure me to my death. They were not the ones who brought the stake. They had not the strength.”

  So now all women were wimps as well as wenches?

  I must have had a sour look on my face, because Rand grinned at me. “Again, you mistake my words. Do you think it is a simple thing to hold down a man with unnatural strength and drive a blunted length of wood through his chest?”

  He had a point. “So you were set up? Is that what you are saying?”

  “Perhaps. I knew the women I tupped. They were good, sweet girls with not much between their ears. Certainly not enough to plot a warlord’s downfall. They must have been bribed to entice me into their bed.”

  My eyes widened. “I thought it was just a blonde with big thighs. Now it’s more than one? Exactly how many wenches were you bedding at once?”

  “Last night? Four.”

  I sputtered again. “Four?”

  “They approached me and offered their services.” He gave me another one of those purely masculine grins. “Who am I to refuse the ministrations of four women at once?”

  “Gee, and you didn’t stop to question this at all?”

  “I am a warlord with much wealth at hand, and I have been told I am not unpleasant to the eye. It was not the first time several women offered their services to me. Why should I think anything strange of it?”

  “Why indeed,” I said dryly. “Next time you get offered a free gang bang, maybe you should think twice about why they’re willing.”

  “Wise words,” he agreed. “And now, because I do not know who sought my death, I am alone and unarmed in this strange place and time.” For a moment, he looked so sad and lost that my heart gave another unhappy squeeze. “To think that mere hours ago, I was laughing with my soldiers and planning the next day’s ride. Now I am here in this strange place, my men are long gone, and I am awash with enemies all around.”

  “Oh, come on,” I muttered. “Not everyone’s an enemy.”

  “Do you mean to tell me that you are not mine?” he said, a small, sad smile on his mouth. “That you would not press that stake back into my breast if you could?”

  He had a point. I didn’t trust myself to say no, so I said nothing at all.

  He nodded at my silence. “You cannot be happy at my appearance here. Indeed, I am not happy with it myself. Until I know more about this place and time, I am afraid you will have to lead me.”
/>   “Wait, lead you where?” I had a sneaking suspicion I wouldn’t like the answer. “No one said anything about helping you.”

  Rand moved forward, leaning closer to me. I was trapped between him and the cabinet, and I scrunched my body backward as he leaned in. “Let us get to the truth of the matter, Lindsey. You are angry that I suckled at your neck.”

  Jeez, when he said it like that, it sounded positively dirty. I clamped my thighs together, hating that parts of me were reacting. I was still outraged, damn it. “Wouldn’t anyone be mad about that?”

  “Actually, no,” he said in a low, soft voice. “I have naught for complaints in the past. Women have requested that I bite them during bedsport. I am told it is exceedingly pleasurable.”

  The way he said that made me want to squirm.

  He regarded me with blue-eyed intensity. “So, you tell me that if I asked permission to use your neck and suckle you, you would respond differently to me? That you would be sweet and willing in my arms instead of fighting something that is clearly pleasurable?”

  “You’re so incredibly arrogant,” I whispered, shocked.

  “I am,” he agreed. “I am used to getting my way. I am a leader of men. I do not ask permission, ever. But if you say I must, I must.” He leaned in so close that I could smell his strange, spicy scent. It felt as if he was going to kiss me. Instead, though, he simply leaned in and his lips moved close to mine. “If I ask nicely, Lindsey, may I suckle you?”

  A hot bolt of unwanted lust shot through my body. “No,” I protested, but my voice sounded weak, even to my own ears.

  “No?” That sexy, arrogant little smile touched his mouth again. “You tell me no, but the rest of your body is responding to my nearness. Vampires have heightened senses.”

  I moaned in embarrassment. So he could smell my arousal? “You jerk. You don’t bring that up to a girl,” I hissed at him. “And no still means no.”

  “But I need you,” he murmured, that wonderful, beautiful mouth inches from my own. From this angle, he looked like a beautiful, pale man. No fangs were visible. His skin wasn’t touching mine, so I couldn’t feel how cold he was. Just a pretty man telling me he needed me.