by Reinke, Sara
“Why the hell not?” Tristan demanded, and Karen didn’t miss the way Mason’s eyes darted toward her, then away again, so quick a cut, if she hadn’t been standing right there, she might have missed it.
Tristan immediately fell silent, offering no retort, and all at once, she realized.
“Me?” she whispered to Mason, aghast. Shaking her head, she managed a shaky laugh. “That’s ridiculous. You think he’s after me? Why?”
“Because he’s been spying on us long enough to realize that you and Angelina Jones are the only two humans within miles of our compound,” Mason said. “And—more importantly—that we care for you. Lina is on her way to Florida right now, but you? You’re a seven-hour car trip away. Isn’t that what you estimated to reach here, Tristan?”
He doesn’t possess the telekinesis of one who has fed from another Brethren, but he’s still physically very powerful, Naima had warned her of Jean Luc—and all of a sudden, like a slap in the face, Karen understood the full ramifications of that statement.
He doesn’t possess the telekinesis of one who has fed from another Brethren…
“We’re getting out of here.” Reaching down, Tristan seized Karen by the hand. “Tonight. Right now. We’re getting back on the plane and we’re flying back to Tahoe.”
“My pilot’s not available again until Sunday evening,” Mason said. “I told him we’d be here for the weekend. He’s made plans.”
“Then we’ll rent a car,” Tristan said.
“And take a chance of coming up against one—or more—Davenants on some secluded desert highway in the middle of the night?” Mason frowned. “No, thank you. I’ll call Michel, tell him and Naima to drive down tonight. We’ll all go back together tomorrow. We’re perfectly safe here at the resort in the meantime. The Davenants wouldn’t risk trying anything, not with so many possible witnesses about. The threat of exposure’s too high. They don’t dare.”
“Fine,” Tristan said. “But I’m not leaving Karen alone tonight.”
His fingers tightened firmly against hers, and despite her fear, her mounting anxiety, a sudden, happy little shiver rippled through her.
This machismo bullshit’s starting to appeal to me.
It amazed her how nonchalant Mason seemed when their server approached them hesitantly to make sure everything was all right. Nothing but smiles again, he flapped his hand in a dismissive wave as he shooed her and Tristan back upstairs for the night while he settled their bill.
“I’ll meet you in Karen’s suite. Give me half an hour,” he said. “I’ll stop off at my room first and give Michel a call.”
“Wait a minute—what about the party?” Karen stopped as Tristan again tried to lead her away. “The grand opening celebration. No one there would know me or Tristan, but won’t they be expecting you, Mason?”
He chuckled. “Ma chérie, you’ll give me delusions of grandeur,” he said, leaning forward and kissing her cheek. “I’m but one of hundreds of investors, architects, engineers, celebrities, and tight-ass corporate types in designer suits invited to this event. No one will notice my absence, and trust me, even if they did, my associates can more than adequately offer excuses on my behalf.”
****
All of the way through the restaurant and lobby to the elevators, Tristan kept Karen pulled close to him in protective proximity, his arm around her or his fingers laced through her own. She might have enjoyed it more had he not been so nervous the entire time, his eyes sweeping any gathering of people with anxious suspicion. They took one of the glass birdcage elevators up to their floor, and throughout the ascent, Tristan stood looking outward and down, his nose nearly pressed to the glass, his gaze cutting a wide swath across the lobby below.
“He’s down there somewhere,” he said, so softly, had she not been standing immediately beside him, she would not have heard. “I know it.”
“Naima said he doesn’t have telekinesis,” she said. “Michel doesn’t think he’s fed from anyone but humans before. Which sucks for me, I guess—literally—but should make kicking his ass easier for you.”
He shot her a look; her nervous attempt at humor had obviously fallen flat.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, trying a different tack, looking down at her shoes. “For looking out for me, I mean. Wanting to keep me safe.”
He turned to her fully and when she looked up, hesitant, she saw he wore a puzzled, somewhat wounded expression. “That surprises you?”
“No.” She shook her head. Even without using telekinesis, when he wanted to, he could capture her with his eyes, pinning her, immobilizing her as effectively and thoroughly as if he’d caught her by the shoulders with his hands. “I mean, I don’t know. I guess not.”
The elevator chimed softly; they’d reached their floor. The doors slid open, and she took advantage of the distraction to tear her eyes away from his. Without waiting for him, she stepped out into the corridor. For the first time, the long hallways with their intricate, colorful runners and landmarks of nothing but closed doors and brass-plated room numbers seemed somehow ominous. The overhead lights had been dimmed to soft amber hues for the night, but instead of lending a comfortable ambience, the resulting shadows felt foreboding.
“Stay behind me.”
She wasn’t alone in her caution, she realized, as Tristan brushed past her, catching her by the hand as he flanked her. Macho bullshit or not, she was suddenly grateful to have him feeling protective of her, and stayed close to him as they ventured toward her room together. It wasn’t until she slipped her key card into the door and crossed the threshold into the foyer of her suite that she felt able to relax again, to breathe without apprehension.
Tristan didn’t share her reassurance. After double-checking the locks on the door as it closed behind them, he walked quickly around the suite, switching on lamps, checking out every alcove and room before satisfying himself that they were alone.
Karen sat in one of the chairs in the living room area and kicked off her shoes. “Now what?” she asked, leaning over and wincing as she rubbed her aching feet each in turn.
“Now we wait,” Tristan replied, checking his watch. “Another twenty minutes or so, and Mason should be here.”
“You’re not happy that he’s going to call Michel,” she observed.
Shaking his head, he crossed the room and dropped into a chair opposite her. “I still don’t see why we need his sanction.” With a heavy sigh, he shoved his hair back from his face. “I feel like I can’t even take a shit sometimes without Michel’s okay.”
“It sounds like he’s had a lot more experience dealing with the Davenants,” she said.
“He’s had a lot more experience with a lot of stuff, but that doesn’t mean he knows everything. I swear, Karen, I just…I get so tired of everyone kowtowing to him all of the time. Michel thinks because he’s the oldest and he controls all of the money, he’s some kind of dictator or…or tyrant or something.”
His exasperation and frustration were apparent in his face, the pleading look in his eyes. She fought the urge to go to him, to kneel down in front of him and slip her arms around him in a comforting embrace.
“I know,” she said quietly.
He cocked his head, then tapped his finger against his throat. “Do you have a safe in here where we could stick that?”
She remembered the Cartier necklace—all forty-six grand worth of it. “Oh, God,” she gasped. “Yes, thank you. I’d die if something happened to it.”
“You?” he asked with a laugh. “Mason’d be the one footing the bill. And I’m the one he’d make wash dishes to cover it.” As she laughed, he rose from his seat. “Here. I’ll get it.”
Folding his long legs, he squatted in front of her, close enough for her to feel immediately stirred by his sudden, unexpected closeness.
“Turn a little bit,” he said, and she pivoted her hips mutely, her posture rigid with sudden bright apprehension. When his hands slipped into her hair, parting it over her shoulders, she
melted at the heat of his skin against her neck and shoulders, the friction of his touch. She felt a light tug against her neck as he worked the clasp on the necklace loose, then a faint tickling as he drew it away from her.
“Where’s your safe?” he asked, his voice soft, and—was it her imagination?—a bit ragged.
“In the bedroom,” she replied, then heard the rustle of his clothing as he stood again. “I set the code already,” she called, watching him walk away. “It’s one-two-two-six. Twelve twenty-six.”
He paused, glancing back at her. “Like December twenty-sixth? That’s your birthday.”
Inexplicably it pleased her, sending a happy little shiver down her spine to realize he knew the date that she’d been born, had committed it to his memory enough to know it even when mentioned out of proper context.
“You shouldn’t use your birthday for PIN numbers or passcodes, you know,” he said as he moved again, disappearing into the bedroom and simultaneously dashing that little puddle of giddiness that had only just formed in her belly.
“It’s the only way I can keep track of them all,” she replied with a frown, because who the hell did he think he was, telling her what she should or shouldn’t do?
“It’s too easy for someone else to figure out,” he called. “You don’t…”
His voice faded to momentary silence; then he stepped back into the doorway, looking across the room at her. “Where’d the flowers come from?”
She’d nearly forgotten the box of roses she’d received just before going to dinner.
“Oh.” She laughed nervously. “Those? Just from some guy I met on the elevator earlier today.”
She started to tell him it was nothing, no big deal, but then he’d uttered a quiet snort of laughter, making her bristle. “Seriously?” he asked. “And now he’s sending you roses?”
That this might surprise or even shock him made Karen fume. “Why? Would that bother you?”
His brows shot up in surprise. “Excuse me?”
“I said would it bother you?” she snapped. “The idea that another guy might have found me attractive? Just because you don’t doesn’t mean someone else wouldn’t.”
“Is that what you think?” he asked, and again, like on the elevator, he looked bewildered and hurt.
“What the hell am I supposed to think?” she exclaimed. “You’ve hardly spoken to me since we left Tahoe, except for tonight at dinner, but you only managed that after you’d knocked back a few glasses of wine. It’s always been like that—you either want me around or you push me away. Mason says it’s because you’re afraid of Michel using me to set you up, but I think it’s because you’re too damn stubborn to admit when you’re wrong, even if that means losing something—or someone—you want.”
Someone you love, she added mentally, biting back the words, grateful his telepathy wasn’t working so he wouldn’t catch that last.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, scowling.
“I’m talking about you and these stupid games you keep playing. Last week, you almost married another woman, for Christ’s sake! Do you have any idea how that made me feel? Do you even care?”
“Of course I care.” He offered this in a quiet voice, one that was edged with remorse and shame. “I didn’t marry Tessa.”
“Because she couldn’t do it,” Karen snapped. “Eleanor and Naima told me everything, how they went with Rene to find the two of you, how Tessa left you at the altar.”
“That’s not what happened.” Tristan stiffened, a slight crimp forming between his brows. “I was the one who couldn’t go through with it, not her.”
In that instant, all the wind stripped from Karen’s self-righteous sails. Sputtering, she shook her head and blinked stupidly at him. “What?”
“I broke off the wedding, not Tessa,” he said. “You want to know why? Because when I was filling out the application for our marriage license, I wrote your name down, not hers. And she saw me do it. ‘Your heart’s not in this.’ That’s what she told me. She said my heart was back in Lake Tahoe.” His shoulders sagged as the tension in his body abandoned him, and he stood before her, piteous and vulnerable. “And it was. It still is…with you.”
It was a good thing she’d already kicked off the stilettos, she figured, because in that moment, she felt decidedly dizzy. If she’d still been in the high heels, she’d undoubtedly have fallen flat on her ass.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ve been a fool, too scared to admit the truth to myself or to anyone else…but most of all, to you.”
“Get out,” she whispered, drawing her arms fiercely about herself, because even though he was saying everything she wanted him to say, everything she’d ever hoped he would say, she couldn’t accept or believe it. Not after last night. Not after this morning.
His brows lifted. “I love you.”
“Get out,” she said again, more loudly this time.
“I’m not playing games,” he insisted. “Karen, please. Last night was amazing. I’d wanted that so much—wanted you—for years. Probably from the first time we met.”
“Get out!” she shouted, grabbing the nearest potential projectile she could—a decorative vase off a nearby table—and winging it at his head. He ducked to the side, dodging as it blistered past, smashing into the wall behind him and shattering in a spray of bits and pieces. “I don’t want to listen to you, not anymore. You broke my heart last week. Then you crushed whatever was left this morning. Don’t you get it? Get out of my room. Get out of my life. I’d rather stare down Jean Luc Davenant and a thousand of his brothers than—”
Tristan closed the distance between them in two swift strides, seizing her face between his hands and cutting her voice breathlessly short as he kissed her. His lips pressed fiercely into hers, and she stiffened in wide-eyed surprise.
“I love you,” he whispered again, drawing back just enough to speak, keeping his forehead tucked to hers, the tips of their noses brushing. “I’ve fucked everything up—I know it, and I’m sorry. I know I don’t deserve it, but if you give me the chance—I’m begging you, Karen—I’ll make it up to you. To my dying breath, every day for the rest of my life, I swear it.”
He kissed her again, tilting her face up to him and pulling her near, so she danced on her toes, pressed into his chest. The tip of his tongue grazed the seam of her mouth, and when her lips parted to let him delve inside, she uttered a soft moan, muffled against him. She resisted the indignant urge to push him away and instead let him ease her backward, matching him step for step, until he’d pressed her against the wall. The kiss deepened, his tongue tangling with hers, his hands slipping from her face to her neck, then sweeping down, caressing her shoulders.
He reached behind her for the knot fettering the halter straps of her dress together, pausing to shrug his shoulder and flap his arms to help as she pushed his jacket down, then off. The knot loosened, the straps fell slack, and the twin panels of black silk drooped down from her breasts. His hands fell against her to take the dress’s place, massaging slow, sensuous circles, cradling her in his palms.
He dipped his head, his mouth slipping from hers, trailing down her chin, then to her collar. Letting his lips guide the way, he kissed her slowly, until his tongue found her nipple and began to encircle it, slowly at first, then as her heartbeat and breathing grew fluttering and frantic was need, at a quicker, darting pace.
She tilted her head back, leaning into the wall, splaying her fingers through his hair and gasping sharply for breath. While his mouth remained at her breasts, his hands slid down, his fingers closing in the folds of her skirt and lifting it toward her waist. He reached beneath, his hands grazing her upper thighs, then around to her buttocks, easing her into him so that she could feel the strain of his arousal against her through the front of his pants. When he touched the straps of her garters, his fingers lingered, and he groaned, his voice low and filled with need.
Tell me to stop. She waited for him to say th
is, as he had the night before, because she understood now. He hadn’t wanted to bite her, to give in to the bloodlust and feed from her. As he lifted his face to hers again, close enough for his breath the brush through her bangs, she held her breath and waited to hear it.
Tell me to stop.
Then she realized his face, though flushed now, hadn’t changed. She could still see the green in his eyes—sharp now, dominating the hazel of his irises in the dim light—because his pupils hadn’t dilated. When he kissed her again, all she felt was the urgent passion in his mouth, not his fangs as they descended. Just as he’d told her at dinner, he was controlling the bloodlust. His body’s desire was still evident—and throbbing as it pressed against her apex through the thin covering of her silken panties. But somehow tonight, unlike the night before, he wasn’t suffering from the overwhelming, detrimental urge to feed.
Tonight he wants me, she realized, not my blood.
Seizing his face between her hands, she kissed him fiercely, deeply, making him whimper against her mouth. When she drew abruptly back, she left him gasping, trembling against her.
“Karen,” he whispered, pleading.
“My bedroom,” she told him, locking gazes with him, her fingers coiling in his hair again in firm directive. “Now.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The night before had been rushed, harried; Tristan had been burdened with the bloodlust, fighting against it, and had missed the chance to fully explore and enjoy making love to Karen. It was an oversight he decided to take his time in remedying.
In the bedroom, he shoved the box of roses to the floor with a rustle of tissue paper and a scattering of scarlet petals, then lay her back against the bed, her legs dangling over the side. Hooking his fingers in the fabric of her dress, he pulled it down from her waist. She raised her hips, and it slipped down the lengths of her legs. He cast it aside, then knelt on the floor, pushing her thighs apart, giving him ready access. Leaving her garters in place and the bustier that framed her breasts, he leaned over, easing her panties aside, letting his tongue slip lightly, deliberately between her warm, damp folds.
