by Grosso, Kym
Samantha started to analyze the code as soon as they got into the car. She couldn’t wait to get home to crack it. On the precipice of solving the mystery, she smiled to herself. Inwardly, she celebrated the fact that despite all Asgear’s efforts to control her mind, some small part of her couldn’t be controlled. The code was evidence that she probably had stolen the periapt, and had taken great care to hide it from him. Yet despite her small victory, its clandestine location had drawn a very powerful and dangerous vampire into her circle. She prayed she’d find it before he found her again.
CHAPTER TEN
After taking a hot shower, Samantha checked her cell phone for the hundredth time. Neither Rowan nor Ilsbeth had attempted to log into the database. She was still feeling exhilarated from finding the code. Wrapping herself warmly in Luca’s robe, she held it to her nose and inhaled his masculine scent. Samantha shook her head, knowing that Luca was stealing her heart. She could feel herself falling for him, and wasn’t sure how or if she wanted to stop it. All she knew for certain was that she was going to find it very difficult to go back to Pennsylvania without him after they found the amulet.
She sighed in defeat, conceding that her heart might break into a million pieces if she didn’t have him in her life. Even though they’d only just made love, she felt as if she’d known him forever. She wasn’t one to just have sex with any guy. But on a whim, she had given in to her most carnal desire and let him make love to her. In the aftermath, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was the one for her. She wished it wasn’t true. He probably had a thousand women on speed dial who’d come willingly running to service him…to be his donor or whatever else he needed. How could she leave her heart open to a vampire? The answer didn’t matter, because it was already done. Samantha contemplated whether or not she should move to New Orleans. As the thought popped into her head, she laughed to herself. Just a day ago, she’d been kicking and screaming to stay away from that city. But now there was Luca. And Luca was in New Orleans.
As she walked out into the kitchen, he was putting out sandwiches on the large granite bar. There was something heartwarming about seeing a large, sexy man preparing food for her.
“Hi there, the sandwiches look great,” she said.
“Hey, beautiful. Thought you might be hungry. I had Kade’s cook bring over something to eat, so you’d have strength to work. And to play with me,” he joked, pushing a plate towards her. “But work before play. So first, let’s take a look at the code while you eat, shall we?”
She took a healthy bite of turkey, and looked at the code: “NIJE QN QSMGIOT” What did it mean?
“So here’s the thing. When I do my ciphers, I usually use something called a date shift cipher. That way, I can stack the ciphers when I’m trying to make it really hard to decode. Also, all I have to do is change the dates and it will change the codes. I wrote a program that can run through figuring out a date cipher, so that’s not the problem. The real challenge is finding out what date I used.”
“I’ve heard of date ciphers. It’s going to make this tough to crack without the date,” Luca commented. When he’d joined the war, they’d often put their messages into codes; if captured by the enemy, they were indecipherable without the key date.
“Yes, you’re right. So what code would I have used?” she spoke aloud to herself.
“A birthday?” Luca suggested.
“No, too easy. I did this all the time at the office. Sometimes I would use someone else’s birthday, but given that I don’t know anyone down here, I don’t think I would have done that. A family member’s birthday would, again, be too easy. Sometimes I’d pick dates of important events. Things that only I would know,” she explained.
“Your graduation date, perhaps?” Luca realized in that moment that he didn’t know that much about her past; something he fully intended to investigate once they’d found the amulet.
“Maybe. I have used my high school graduation date in the past. Can you get me your laptop? I want to pull over my date cipher program from my home server, and try it.” Samantha was starting to worry that she wouldn’t be able to find the date. It literally could be any date, past, present or future.
Luca booted up the laptop and set it in front of her. He watched as she typed away; she chewed her lip, concentrating on what she was doing. He loved seeing her in his home, wrapped up in his black velour robe. She pushed the reddish curls of her freshly washed hair behind her ears as she waited for the program to open.
“Okay, read me the code,” she instructed and typed it into the space designated for it. “I’m going to try my high school graduation date, which was June 23, 1999. So what happens is that the computer will take all this information and work backwards to see if we come up with something that makes sense based on the code and date variables. In a date shift cipher, the date is generated sequentially without the slashes over and over. The letters of the alphabet are assigned to each number. So then you take your message, and the code assigns a letter based upon how many spaces you need to shift,” she explained.
“Can you give me a quick example before it runs?” It had been a long time since he’d deciphered a code on the battlefield and wanted to make sure he correctly understood.
“Sure. So my graduation date would be written like this.” She wrote down the number sequence, six, two, three, nine, and nine and continued, “So I would write the numbers over and over again until I had a little more than the alphabet. Like this.” She drew out the numbers until they were all the way over. “Then I would add the alphabet underneath, like this. So if I was looking to code the word, “sex” for example, I would go to the S which tells me to move over spaces. So the S turns into a B, the E turns into an N and the X turns into a G. So the code would be BNG. But still, you’d need to know the date I used in order to crack the code. But again, if you’d been given the secret code, BNG, you would need to know the date in order to solve the code.”
BNG
Luca laughed. “You’re brilliant! Perhaps in need of some lovin’, but brilliant,” he teased. He came around the bar and sat next to her to watch what happened online.
She smiled over at him but turned serious again as she watched the progress of the program. Within seconds, it finished bringing up the message. It made no sense, which meant the date was incorrect.
“Shit. That’s not it. You know what they say? Garbage in, garbage out. We need the right date,” she huffed.
Samantha closed her eyes and put her hands to her forehead trying to rack her brain for the correct date. Luca rubbed her neck while she concentrated. Think. Think. What date would I have used? I was in a hurry. In danger. Scared. It occurred to her that maybe she’d used the day she was taken by Asgear. It would have been fresh in her mind, something she’d want to remember. She reached back into her mind to search for the date but couldn’t seem to do it without a visual calendar in front of her.
Opening her eyes, she pulled up her calendar on the screen. “August. I was taken in August. August 11, 2012.” She flipped back to the cipher program and typed in eight, one, one, one, two and pushed enter.
Luca and Samantha watched patiently as the program worked backwards through the sequence to find out the code. Within seconds, the screen came up with a message: MAID OF ORLEANS.
“Maid of Orleans? What’s that?” Samantha asked.
“Maid of Orleans,” Luca said thoughtfully. “The Maid of Orleans is a statue of Joan of Arc. It was given to the city by France in the seventies. I’m not sure what we’ll find there but we’ve got our next lead. You did it, Samantha!”
Samantha was overwhelmed with relief that Luca knew what the message meant. She was one step closer to freedom. “Where’s the statue? Why would I have been there?”
Luca went over to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of champagne. He talked as he uncorked it and poured it into flutes. “The statue’s in the French Quarter over near the French Market on Decatur. It’s not far from Sangre Dul
ce. Maybe wherever Asgear took you first, he had to walk you past it to get to the club. I’m not sure, but perhaps somehow you got away long enough to hide it. It might have taken only a few minutes to feign an escape, plant another clue or the amulet and then agree to go to the club.”
“Joan of Arc, huh? Kind of ironic, isn’t it?” Samantha commented.
“Ah yes, Joan of Arc. She was accused of witchcraft, and yet a very real witch chooses her as the place to drop the next clue.” He grinned wryly, handing her a glass.
“Let’s not forget she was burned at the stake,” Samantha reminded him. “I’d like to avoid that if at all possible.”
“Well, let’s just take a few minutes to celebrate. It’s getting really late, and I for one am growing tired of this chase. You see, I’d much rather be chasing you.” Luca set down his glass and came up behind Samantha, putting his hands on her shoulders. As he massaged her neck, she let out a loud groan.
“Ah, Luca, that feels so good. I’m not used to walking around in heels like that all night. Or being in that kind of club. Seeing some of those people do what they were doing; it made me feel…I felt…” Her words trailed off; she wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted to talk about it.
“Tell me Samantha. How did it make you feel to be in the club again?” Luca questioned her. He was worried she’d have a flashback or panic at the club, but nothing had happened. She was one cool cucumber. But he knew that beneath the surface, thoughts lingered. Fear? Anger? Arousal?
“I…I felt…I don’t know. I was scared to be in the club at first. But nothing happened. I didn’t remember anything. And then there was the whole meeting with ‘mister freaky vampire’. He was really scary at first. But it was strange. He was very angry, but controlled. By the time he was finished telling me to get the amulet, it was as if I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. I know it sounds crazy. I can’t explain it. And then seeing the submissives parade around naked as if it was nothing. And the sex. I guess it was okay.” Samantha sounded unsure of her own thoughts. She’d witnessed and experienced so many strange and new things.
Luca put his fingers around her pallid neck, tracing his fingertips from her hollow to the back of her shoulder blades. He wouldn’t let her off so easily. He wanted to know what she really desired.
“Did the domination scene excite you, darlin’? I saw you watching,” Luca whispered into her ear. She shuddered, feeling his warm breath against her.
“Luca, did you go to that club often? Is that something you like? Do you do those things? Do you do what that woman was doing to that man?” she asked.
“Answering a question with a question? No. Quid pro quo. You first,” he answered.
“Fine,” she sighed. “I found it erotic. I don’t think it’s something that I’d do every day, but I wouldn’t mind playing at home with someone I trusted. But there is no way I’d do that in public like they were doing. I don’t mean to sound judgmental, it’s just that it’s not me. When I saw them, naked, and her touching him so intimately, I was aroused, but also upset. I kept picturing me in that club. I can’t believe that I did that, served drinks that way. I guess it’s not too bad, not at this point, considering I can’t remember. It’s like you’re telling me I did it. I see a picture in my head, but it doesn’t seem at all real to me. Then, later tonight, dancing with you on the floor; that was real. Okay, enough about me. Now your turn. Dish.” She got up, walked around the stool to stand next to him and put her arms around his waist.
Luca looked down at his beautiful woman. He was falling for her. He planned on telling her about the bonding, about everything. But tonight? Gazing into her eyes, he knew it was right. She was his and he knew in his heart he’d never let her go.
“Samantha, I’ll be honest. I don’t ever want to lie to you. You know I’ve lived hundreds of years, and yes, I’ve had sex with many women. But I haven’t loved anyone since Eliza. I really want to tell you about her sometime, but tonight all you need to know is that there’s no one in my life right now except you. As for the club…well, yes, I’ve been there a few times over the past couple of years with friends. I’ve played in the rooms, sometimes dominated women who were looking for fun with a supernatural. But it’s not something I do all the time or feel compelled to do. Until you came along, I was just passing the time. I work for Kade, collect antiques, travel and that’s about it.”
“And do you want to do that to me? Do you want to tie me up?” she said, flirtatiously rubbing her breasts against his chest. Samantha hugged Luca, and he embraced her back, holding her tightly in his arms.
“Perhaps. Are you interested in playing with me, little witch?” His sultry voice washed over her.
“Um, yeah, that might be fun. Playing with you, experimenting with you actually excites me a lot. Is that wrong?” she giggled.
“No, it certainly is not. I’d love to play with you in all ways possible. But Samantha,” he continued, “before we make love again, I need to talk with you about something. You know, there’s a connection between us.”
She nodded.
“Well, you need to know that I want more than just a casual affair. I want to be inside you, tasting you, bonding with you. I want you to be mine.”
Samantha didn’t really understand what he meant by bonding with her, but she knew for certain that she wanted him to make love to her. Her heart pounded against her ribcage, hearing him say that he wanted her. She’d been unsure about how he felt. Every minute she spent with him made her never want to leave. Her prior life and job in Pennsylvania were becoming a distant memory as he was becoming her future. She admitted silently to herself that she wasn’t sure of the consequences of what he was asking. She only knew that she wanted him: to make love to him, to be with him, to be his.
Samantha looked up at Luca who was patiently awaiting her answer. With great anticipation, he heard a single word from her soft lips. “Yes.”
Intense green eyes locked on Samantha’s as he leaned in to kiss her. Her heart raced, anticipating his kiss, his every touch. With trembling lips she opened to him as he fiercely captured her mouth. His tongue danced with hers, tasting her magical spirit.
“Yes,” was the only word he heard in response to his proposal; Luca lost control. Passionately and provocatively, he took her with a hungry urgency. It wasn’t sweet. His mouth claimed hers, savagely taking what was his. The intoxicating nectar of Samantha only made him kiss her more deeply. He wanted her in a way that he’d never wanted any woman. Determined to possess every part of her body and mind in the moment, he would claim her tonight. She’d be his forever.
Luca tore his lips from hers. “Bedroom. Now,” he commanded. Leading her by her small soft hand, he stopped her before they got to his bed.
“I will have you tonight, Samantha. After tonight, you’ll never forget that you are mine. And I will be yours.”
Samantha silently nodded in response. She was ready to commit to this man, this vampire. Luca was everything she’d ever wanted in a male: strong, loving, trustworthy, and passionate. She knew in her heart that giving herself over to him was all she desired now and for her future.
Luca unraveled the belt on her robe, slid his fingers underneath the soft fabric and slowly pushed it off Samantha, letting his hands glide from the smooth skin of her shoulders to her hands. As the robe pooled at her feet, he gently took her hands in his. She stood bare before his eyes. “You’re enticing, Samantha. I cannot seem to get enough of you. So the question is, do you want to play with me tonight? Be honest with me, darlin’, because I plan to take you to places we’ve never been before.”
Samantha felt womanly, exposed to Luca. She trusted him completely as he released her hands and placed his on her waist. “Luca, please, hurry. I can’t seem to keep my hands off of you.”
“Well, I guess we’ll have to do something about that,” he smiled knowingly. “Turn around, face the wall. Don’t move unless I tell you. It’s time for some fun.”
Without question, she comp
lied and waved her bottom at him, shooting him a sultry look that said, ‘come and get me’.
Luca loved how responsive she was under his direction. He didn’t ever bring women into his home, and certainly engaging in a little light bdsm was something he rarely did anymore. Yet he’d wanted to do this to her since the minute she’d danced with him in the club. Luca slid his hands slowly up the sides of her waist, under her arms, pushing them upward and placing the palms of her hands against the wall. With the same precision, he glided his hands back down her arms, waist, until finally, he reached her bottom.
“Samantha, you are everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman; beautiful, smart.” She let out a small moan; he rubbed his hard aching bulge against her. He wanted to fuck her right now, but he wouldn’t dare. No, he planned to make her beg for mercy as he slowly brought her to orgasm over and over.
Though he was still fully clothed, she could feel his magnificent erection against her bum. She wanted him in her now; she grew wet from the intense ache between her legs. “Please, Luca.”
His hands slid from her ass around to lie just beneath her sensitive bosom. She moved slightly to urge him to cup her breasts. He smiled, smelling the overwhelming scent of her desire, but he wanted to draw out the anticipation, tease her with delight. “No, no, no, darlin’. Not tonight. You don’t get to decide when or how the pleasure happens. You wanted to play, so play we shall,” he whispered into her ear. Goosebumps ran over her skin in response to his hot breath. “Tonight is about wanting what you can’t have until I give it to you. It’s about me savoring every stroke of your flesh. The ultimate pleasure, tasting you while you come, screaming my name. Now, do you want me to touch your lovely breasts? Tell me, Samantha.”
