by Tina Folsom
She sighed. “Haven is a big softy.”
“Could have fooled me.”
She turned her head to look at him. “I told him that I feel safe with you.”
“Then why did you cry?”
“I—”
“I saw it in your eyes when you got back in the car.”
She looked away. “It’s complicated.”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me. I was just surprised that he would cave so easily. He seemed pretty dead set against me getting anywhere near you.”
“He was,” Katie admitted. “But he knows how important it is for me to feel safe. And I haven’t felt safe in a very long time. He couldn’t deny me my wish when I told him I needed you to stay with me. All these years Haven worked so hard to make me feel safe. To help me forget…” She hesitated, waiting for the panic to set in that she always felt when she thought back to the events of five years ago that had almost cost her her life. To her surprise, it didn’t. The darkness didn’t encroach this time. Didn’t swoop down on her and engulf her like it usually did.
Luther took her chin between thumb and forefinger and gently turned her face to him. “To forget what?”
She dropped her lids halfway. “There was a stalker back then. He did terrible things. He…”
Luther’s nostrils flared, and she felt his body around her tense. “What happened?”
The concern in his eyes made her continue. “I trusted him. The studio had assigned him to me as an assistant. He was invaluable. Always there when I needed him. Nobody saw it. Nobody realized how disturbed he was. He wasn’t right in his head, but he was smart. So smart that he fooled everybody.”
She felt Luther’s arms tighten around her. “What did he do to you?”
Katie turned her face away, looking into the distance. “He was driving me to a meeting with a producer, or so he’d said. I didn’t even get suspicious when he drove up that deserted canyon. He was all cheerful and chatty. Just like always. But when he stopped at an old house, I felt it. I knew something was wrong. I felt a prickling sensation on my nape, and I pulled out my cell phone. The last number I had called was Haven, because he was coming down to LA on business the next day and wanted to visit. I pressed the recall button. I heard it ring once, then a fist hit me in the face, and I was knocked out.”
“Fuck!” Luther cursed, shooting up to a sitting position.
She reached for his hand, squeezing it, turning to him. “When I came to I was in a dark room, tied up. I saw it then. He was crazy. Mentally ill. Delusional. He wanted to turn me into a doll he could play with. A doll that did everything he wanted.”
“Did he rape you?” Luther ground out through clenched teeth.
“No.” She scoffed. “He couldn’t get it up. He was impotent.” She searched Luther’s eyes. “It was the root of his obsession. He thought if he had me, his problem would go away. I had a certain reputation in Hollywood. They called me the modern day Mae West.” She shook her head, a smile forming on her lips. “It was all just an image. The studio wanted me to be a sex symbol, to hit the tabloids with lover after lover. It sold movie tickets. Everything in Hollywood was just for show. A big illusion. A person said or did one thing, but when you looked behind the façade, you saw something different altogether. It was one big stage. One big illusion.” She sighed. “In reality, most of the men the paparazzi photographed me with were hired by the studio to play my lovers. I had few boyfriends. But just like everybody else, my assistant believed in the image I portrayed. He became convinced that if he had me, he’d be cured.”
“What did he do to you?” Luther gritted. The tips of his fangs were showing now, and the rim of his irises shimmered golden.
“He kept me locked up. When he realized that he wasn’t able to rape me, he decided to hurt me instead. To take his anger out on me, he used a knife…”
“Oh God, Katie.” Luther threw his head back, growling.
“Haven found me. He traced my cell phone. He was able to heal me with his blood. I was lucky, there were no scars. Nobody would ever find out.”
Luther drew her against his chest. “Oh Katie, I’m so sorry for what happened to you.” He took a deep breath. “You think he’s come back to finish what he started. You think it’s Forrester?”
“No. It can’t be him. The man who’d kidnapped me was human. Haven killed him. Ripped him to shreds in front of me and buried his body in the woods. He’ll never come back.” She sighed. “And even though I know that, even though I’ve seen it with my own eyes, the fear never truly left me. I turned my back on Hollywood and my career, thinking if I left that life, I would feel safe again. But I didn’t. Not until I met you.” She reached for his face, cupping his cheek. “That’s why Haven agreed to let you stay. He knows how much I need this. I know it’s just for a little while, but when I’m around you, that darkness that’s always hovering over me, it retreats. You’re chasing away my demons.”
Luther took her hand and brought it to his mouth, pressing a kiss into her palm. “I’m so sorry, baby. I wish you would have never had to experience such horror.”
She turned fully and slung her arms around him. He’d called her baby. Just like he’d done when he’d taken her in the bathroom. But this time it was different. Not spoken in the heat of passion, but meant as a true sign of endearment.
“Will you stay with me, until all this is over? Until Forrester is taken out and Isabelle is back? Just until then. That’s all I’m asking. After that, I think I’ll be strong enough to finally put all this behind me.”
He nodded slowly, his expression serious. “I’ll be here for you.”
“Thank you.” She pulled his head down to her and offered her lips to him.
34
Luther looked into Katie’s eyes and saw hope flicker in them. How could he refuse her anything now? She’d been through so much and yet asked for so little. The vampire in him still seethed with rage and wanted to hurt the man who’d caused her so much pain. But he pushed the beast back. What Katie needed now was tenderness. He still remembered what tenderness felt like, despite the long years without it. He knew he was still capable of it.
It felt strange at first to kiss her softly, to mould his lips to hers and not make any demands. To allow her to take the lead and give her liberty to take from him what she needed. To set his own needs aside and only respond to hers. Her need for tenderness and protection.
He held her in his arms like in a protective cocoon, cradling her to his body, keeping her safe. When her lips parted on a sigh, he took his time to explore her. Slowly and carefully, he licked his tongue against hers, waiting for her to ask for more.
Then he drew his head back by an inch. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want to feel you inside me again,” she murmured.
“Are you sure? If you just need to be held, I’ll hold you. I don’t need anything in return.”
She brushed her fingers over his cheek, her lips tilting upward into the beginnings of a smile. “Don’t tell me this big bad vampire is suddenly going all soft on me.”
Luther felt a chuckle build in his chest and didn’t stop it from coming over his lips. “Soft, huh?” He ground his pelvis against her. “Does that feel soft to you?”
“Thank God, no.”
“Good, ‘cause the only thing that’s soft around here, is your delicious body. Now, if you want me to go all bad vampire on you, fine, but personally, I’d rather make love to you slowly and gently. I’d like to take my time, draw out the pleasure.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
He pressed her back into the sheets and rolled over her. Braced on elbows and knees, he began to plant soft kisses on her face and neck, dipping lower to her enticing cleavage.
“Has anybody ever told you that your blood tastes of sin and innocence all at once?”
“Nobody ever drank my blood before today.”
At that admission, male pride rose in him, and he hummed his approval ag
ainst her flesh, teasingly biting her without breaking her skin.
“I’m not just talking about your blood, Katie. Your skin, your hair, your lips, all of it tastes of that same sin and innocence. Inviting and forbidden at the same time. I’m surprised no other vampire has ever bitten and tasted you.”
He licked over her breasts and captured one nipple in his mouth.
Katie moaned and arched her back, thrusting her tantalizing flesh deeper into his mouth. “Maybe they were all afraid of my witch blood.”
For a second, he let the tasty nipple pop from his mouth and chuckled. “Or one of your brothers.”
“Neither of them is here now.”
“We’d better take advantage of that then,” he teased and headed for the other breast. He licked over the hard nipple, before closing his lips around it and pulling on it.
Beneath him, Katie sighed, and he realized how much his body responded to her sounds of pleasure. He filled his hands with her breasts, squeezed and sucked, until Katie was twisting underneath him, her body glistening, her heartbeat pounding against her rip cage. Like a drum, it beat in his ears, communicating with his own heart.
Farther below, his pelvis rocked against her center, his hard cock sliding against her sex without entering. Just teasing her and himself. The scent of her arousal filled the room now.
“You should be made love to twenty-four hours a day,” he murmured. And maybe that’s what he should do: make love to her until neither one of them could move another limb. Until they were both completely sated.
“Let me feel you,” she begged, her hands reaching for him, pulling him closer.
He complied with her wishes and aligned his cock with her drenched sex. The tip of his erection touched her entrance, and a moan came from Katie.
“I’ve got you, baby,” he assured her and drove into her, descending into her warm cave slowly and evenly, inch by inch, without haste. He felt her more intensely now, partially because he’d had her blood, but also because he wasn’t rushing it. He perceived every muscle inside her, relishing in the warm wetness of her inner sanctum. She trusted him with her body, and he sensed that trust physically.
Seated to the hilt, he gazed into her face. “Look at me, Katie.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Luther.” She traced his lips with her finger. “Show them to me.”
“My fangs?” he asked, though he knew what she meant.
“Yes. Let me see them.”
He couldn’t have stopped them from descending even if he’d tried. Peeling his lips back from his teeth, he presented them to her. “Aren’t you afraid when you see me in my vampire form?”
“No,” she said in a breathy voice and lifted her pelvis to force him deeper into her, while she pulled her lower lip between her teeth.
“My God, it turns you on, doesn’t it?”
The green in her eyes suddenly seemed to sparkle. “Yes. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful or exciting.” Her hand trailed down to his marred chest, and she caressed it lovingly, as if she were touching the softest silk. As if she didn’t even feel the ugliness under her palm.
“Don’t you see my scars?” he asked, wanting her to acknowledge them.
“They’re part of you.” She met his eyes. “I wouldn’t want you any other way.” Then she laced her hands behind his nape and pulled him down for a kiss.
Her lips were demanding this time, and he knew playtime was over. It was time to satisfy the woman in his arms, to give her what she so desperately needed: beautiful memories to replace the horrible ones.
“I’m all yours,” he assured her and started to move inside her.
Katie’s interior muscles held him tightly. They wrapped around him like a vise. On every descent she relaxed, on every withdrawal she clamped around him as if she didn’t want him to leave. He felt the pressure inside his balls build and had to use every ounce of his strength to ward off an imminent orgasm. It was difficult not to give into the pleasure that she gave him so freely. Not to let himself go and accept everything she offered him. Because for him, too, this moment meant forgetting the past. He, too, needed to make new memories to deal with the old ones, the ones that haunted him in his sleep.
He whispered sweet nothings to her, telling her that he desired her, that she made him feel good. That she was perfect.
She thanked him with gestures: a tightening of her delicious channel, passionate caresses with her hands, and her ankles crossing below his butt to imprison him. And unlike the prison he’d inhabited for twenty years, this was a prison he didn’t want to flee. It was a prison of softness and warmth, of tenderness instead of cruelty, of belonging instead of loneliness. With every plunge into the center of her body, he felt himself drawn deeper.
Had it really been over two decades since he’d felt such joy? How had he survived without the warmth and comfort only a loving woman could provide?
Eager to gobble up what Katie gave him, knowing that soon all this would come to an end, he unleashed his passion on her. Soon he would turn his back on San Francisco again, but until that happened, he had to fill the void in his heart with the illusion that there was somebody in his life who cared enough about him to grant him a few hours of bliss.
What had Katie said earlier? That Hollywood had been one big stage, a pretty illusion. Maybe this here was the illusion he needed to go on with his life. To lay the demons of his past to rest. To forgive Vivian and himself.
He gazed into the passion-drugged face of the beautiful woman beneath him and found her looking back at him. Her gaze was open, and he felt as if he could see into her soul.
“Oh, Katie,” he rasped. There was so much he wanted to tell her, to give her, to make her feel.
It was then that he felt her clench around him. Her orgasm caught him unaware, and it was too late to hold back his own release.
With a guttural moan, he thrust into her again and joined her in ecstasy. Before his eyes everything blurred. A sensation akin to floating gripped his body and carried him away to a place where nothing mattered, where the world was in order. Where everybody was happy.
35
Katie pulled the pizza out of the oven and placed the hot baking tray on the stove.
“I’d almost forgotten what it smells like in a kitchen when somebody’s cooking,” Luther said from behind her.
She looked over her shoulder, smiling. Luther was leaning against the kitchen island, wearing sweats and a T-shirt, both belonging to Haven, for whom she kept a small closet in her house in case of emergencies, while Luther’s own clothes were in the dryer. Katie had slipped into yoga pants and a T-shirt after they’d slept for a few hours. But a text message had awoken them.
“That’s not surprising,” she said. “You haven’t been around humans in a long time.” She turned to switch off the oven.
“My wife liked to cook.”
Katie froze, surprised that Luther was revealing something from his past. She hesitated, but then asked as casually as she could, “Vivian?”
“Yeah, she would spend hours in the kitchen. I think she always found it a pity that I couldn’t eat what she concocted.”
“Well, I’m not much of a cook,” Katie admitted. “I didn’t make the pizza. I get it frozen from Pasquale’s, and just shove it in the oven.” The sound of the garage door interrupted her. “Just don’t tell them. They think I actually make it from scratch.”
Luther’s hands were suddenly on her shoulders, and he turned her to face him. “Another illusion? That of the perfect aunt?”
“Don’t we all try to show others what they want to see?”
“Are you doing that with me, too? Showing me what I want to see?”
Slowly she moved her head from side to side. “I can’t pretend with you.”
“Good.”
Luther gripped her chin between thumb and forefinger and dipped his head to hers. His kiss was gentle, but full of heat nevertheless.
The door to the kitchen was flung open, and Luther immed
iately released her.
“Mmm, pizza!” Cooper said, charging in. “I’m starving!”
The closing door almost hit his sister Lydia in the face. She stopped it with her palm and thrust it open again. “Cooper, you have no manners!” she chastised her younger brother, then tossed a long suffering look at Katie. “Sorry, Aunt Katie, he still hasn’t learned to knock. I keep trying, but he’s a lost cause once he smells pizza.” Her eyes darted to Luther, then quickly back to her. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“Hey, Lydia, so good to see you!” Katie greeted her with a smile and pulled her into her arms. She squeezed her niece tightly and ran her hand over her long red hair. “How are you holding up?”
Nineteen-year-old Lydia drew her head back and sniffled. “I miss Isabelle. She’s my best friend.”
“I know, honey, I know.”
“We’ll get her back,” Luther said from behind them.
Katie released her niece and turned sideways. “This is Luther, he’s been helping us. Luther, that’s my niece Lydia, and—” She pointed to the sixteen-year-old hybrid already cutting the pizza in slices. “—my nephew Cooper. Haven and Yvette’s kids.”
Luther offered his hand to Lydia. “Your mother is Yvette? But that’s impossible.”
Lydia hesitantly shook Luther’s hand and quickly released it. “I’m adopted.” Then she pointed to Cooper. “But unfortunately Mom had him later.”
Cooper grinned, chewing on a slice of pizza. “You’d be bored if you didn’t have me to boss around, sis.” He stretched his free hand out to Luther and shook it. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.” Luther looked quizzically at Katie. “I guess we’re not talking about the Yvette I knew a long time ago, because she’s a vampire.”
“Oh, Mom’s a vampire,” Cooper said casually. “That’s also why she sucks at cooking.” He grinned at Katie and pointed to the pizza. “This is amazing! You’re the best cook in the world, Aunt Katie!”
