Blood and Kisses

by Shah, Karin

  Thalia went to the closest window to look outside. She pulled back the curtains and found a metal shade. She tried to lift it, but it wouldn’t budge. Her heart jumped for a second as she realized all the windows were like that. Had she walked into some sort of trap? She ran to the front door. It swung open effortlessly.

  Her heartbeat settled back into its normal meter, and she laughed at herself. Naturally, a vampire would make sure he was safe from the sun in every room in his house. But the reminder of her host’s true nature brought her mind back to her original task.

  Maybe it was useless to try to investigate a vampire using her private investigating techniques, but it was all she had.

  She moved toward the back of the house accompanied only by the creak of the wood floors beneath her feet and the waxing and waning of the ticking clocks in the various rooms she passed.

  “Hello,” she called again.

  The odor of lemon wood polish lingered in the air, but Cam was nowhere to be found. Thalia relaxed. Assuming Gideon was dead to the world—she groaned inwardly at the accidental pun—until sunset, she had hours to investigate.

  She entered a room that was clearly an office and went to the massive mahogany desk. She crushed the burgeoning tendril of conscience that cried out against such an invasion of privacy and reached for the brass pull punctuating the thin center drawer.

  It slid open.

  Empty.

  She checked drawer after drawer, but they were all the same. The leather wingback chair behind the desk sighed as she sank into it. Everyone had some paperwork. He had to pay taxes like everyone else. It wasn’t like he actually needed health insurance, but not having it would certainly draw attention. He had a car. Where was the paperwork involved with ownership, maintenance and insurance?

  His bedroom.

  Dare she? Vampires were said to go into a heavy sleep, not unlike a coma, during the day. If she were careful, he would never know she was there. She bit her lip and forced herself to remember Lily’s ashen face as she lay on the cold table at the city morgue.

  A face that would never see children of her own, a face that would never laugh or cry or sing again. A face she would miss for the rest of her life.

  It wasn’t sunset. Far from it. Gideon knew that. More like late morning. What had awakened him? He listened for a minute. His preternaturally acute hearing sorted through the myriad sounds he normally blocked.

  Thalia. He heard her speaking with Cam. He could hear the surprise in Cam’s voice as she greeted the little witch. He hardly made a practice of having houseguests.

  He lay there as Thalia left the bed, and soon he could hear her moving around in the bathroom. The soft ruffle of each item of clothing hitting the floor triggered a vivid picture in his mind. He groaned, imagining each inch of creamy skin as it was exposed.

  The shower started. He could hear it hiss and sputter as the pipes did their thing. Thalia gave a moan of pleasure as the steaming water hit her body, and Gideon closed his eyes, biting back another groan, unable to prevent himself from imagining the cascading flow over her body. Crystal water flowing over milky flesh. A sparkling stream sleeking her hair against her smooth shoulders and following the curves of her full breasts, the hollow of her belly, until sliding into the soft dark hair guarding her sex.

  He sucked in a deep breath. His body hardened and the bloodlust, never far from the surface, surged through his veins. His fangs extended.

  Beneath the sound of the water he could hear her breathing, feel the beat of her heart moving the sweet blood through her veins.

  The water stopped.

  He struggled to regain control as his rebellious mind furnished the image of her stepping from the marble shower stall, her skin flushed pink from the heat of the water, droplets gleaming on her rosy skin.

  Even if she weren’t a witch, she wasn’t for him.

  No one was for him. Passion was much too close to violence. He could never forget that the monster lurked, omnipresent, waiting for his opportunity to take over. His opportunity to destroy.

  The hairdryer turned on, purring industriously. Several minutes passed.

  Before sleep could take him again, her door opened. He listened to her progress throughout the house, jolting upright when he heard her run for the front door. It opened and closed, but she didn’t leave. She called out for Cam.

  Footsteps entered his study. He heard drawers slide open.

  She was going through his desk.

  Anger twisted the threads of desire still entangling him.

  So, the little witch thought to take advantage of him while he slept. Well, she wouldn’t find anything.

  Her footsteps on the stairs brought him back to the moment. What was she up to now? The floor creaked outside his door. Her heart was pounding now. He could smell the adrenaline flavoring her blood. She was going to come in. The little fool.

  He should end this right now. Instead he lay back on the bed and pretended to sleep.

  Thalia licked her dry lips and placed her hand on the brass door handle of Gideon’s door. She pressed the other hand against the wood. For a moment, she imagined she could feel heat on the other side, as if there were a fire. Her witch senses warning her?

  There might not be a fire, but danger sure as hell lurked on the other side.

  She hesitated. He’d saved her bacon last night, brought her into his home. Snap out of it, Kent! He’s still a vampire. She blew out a gust of air.

  Sure, he was hot, but the strange connection she felt to him was a biological advantage of vampires, nothing more. Without their magnetism, where would they get their next meal?

  Gideon, like all vampires, was a predator. Only her poisonous blood prevented her from being a vampy snack. What made it so hard for her to remember that?

  She couldn’t afford to trust him. Might just as well plant his teeth in her own neck, metaphorically speaking. Lily had no doubt trusted the monster who’d tapped her dry like a beer keg at a frat party.

  Evoking the image of her cousin’s lifeless face once more, lips tinted blue, skin blanched, Thalia huffed, once twice, three tines. She could do this. She had to do this.

  Pep talk over, she took one more deep breath, turned the handle, and stepped cautiously into the predator’s lair.

  Chapter 4

  It was dark in the room. Light from the hanging fixture in the hall spilled onto the wide bed like a spotlight, highlighting the still figure sprawled on its vast surface. Inky shadows hovered thick in the corners, disguising their contents.

  Thalia whispered the final word of an illumination spell, and a cool yellow flame sprang to life above her curved palm. She raised her hand to dispel the shadows, revealing a room furnished in dark wood. She’d seen this suite in the catalog of a furniture company way out of her price range. A deep, rich red colored the walls. Dark wood plantation shutters decorated the window, but she knew the same heavy metal shades that covered the windows in the rest of the house were present behind them. She owned several of the same colorful prints that hung in the room, but she had a feeling these weren’t prints.

  Her gaze drifted back to Gideon, who lay on his side. A white sheet covered him below his smooth chest. It emphasized the trim line of his waist and made his skin look like pale honey. Thalia drew a ragged breath. Even unconscious he was magnificent.

  She tore her hungry eyes away from his large form and surveyed the room. A dresser against the far wall seemed a logical place to start. With one leery glance in Gideon’s direction, she crossed to the dresser and slid open the first drawer.

  “That’s my underwear.” Gideon’s voice was soft as liquid velvet and as difficult to read as a Sanskrit text, but he had to be furious.

  She sighed, closed the drawer, and spun to confront him, pressing back against the dresser. A knob dug into her hip, but the minor pain couldn’t compete with the danger on the bed. She stayed put. “So I see.”

  He propped himself up on one strong elbow. “Find what you wer
e looking for?”

  She stared at the flexed muscles of his bare shoulder. How could such an innocuous body part be so beautiful? The light in her hand played golden over the planes and depressions of his torso. Her other hand flexed and her fingers tingled, as if already forging a trail over forbidden territory. She gulped and tore her eyes away. “Obviously not.”

  Gideon waved his free hand and the lights came up. His eyes were burning pitch in the stern frame of his face. He reached out and grasped her slim wrist, pulled her toward him, brought the flame in her cupped palm close to his lips and blew it out. His breath both tickled and cooled her sensitive skin. She shivered.

  He skewered her with his scorching gaze. Thalia’s fevered brain seemed to lose the ability to command her body. She watched helplessly as his dark head lowered over her hand once more, his fingers iron bangles around her arm, not tight enough to hurt, but unbreakable. His mouth was a smoldering coal on the tender flesh of her palm, and she gasped. She felt as if he were drawing a different sort of flame from every fiber of her body down her arm and out through the place where his lips burned. The pleasure was so intense it verged on pain.

  She moaned, and he was out of the bed, her body clasped against his.

  He took her mouth.

  She had never been kissed, not like this. She wasn’t even sure she’d been alive until this moment. Her lips reveled in his taste, sweet and spicy, and in the stroke of his tongue against her own, slick and wet. A more intimate touch than she had ever known.

  She fought for air, placing her hands on his shoulders and pushing away. But that only brought her soft breasts into contact with his hard, bare chest. The sensation fed the fire, and she pressed closer. Her eyes fell shut. Her hands strayed up to his nape, her greedy fingers burrowing into his silky mane, kneading his scalp. He groaned and slid his scalding mouth to her cheek, laving the edges of her birthmark with his tongue. As if plunged into an ice bath, she froze, coming to her senses. She ripped away from his grasp and fled from the room.

  Thalia gazed out her bedroom window. The navy sky was singed with the last fiery streaks of sunset, the trees mere charcoal shadows against the darkening sky. Gideon was due to arrive any minute, and she still hadn’t answered the question of how she could possibly face him after the events of that morning.

  The growing darkness turned the transparent windowpane into a mirror. Her face reflected back at her, pale and indistinct, like a ghost. The memory of the kiss brought her hand to her full lips. Despite the hours that had passed, they seemed to have retained the imprint of his mouth. She could close her eyes and bring back the feeling of his lips feasting on her own, remember the taste of him, his scent.

  Tears glazed her vision. It hadn’t been her first kiss, but it might as well have been.

  “Idiot!” she said to her reflection and stalked downstairs to the kicking bag in the basement, warming up her neck on the way. Once in front of the red column, she kicked off her shoes and punched the bag hard enough to rock it on its black, water-filled base.

  Her first real kiss. Why couldn’t she let that go?

  Thump. She struck the bag again. Knuckles still stinging, she palmed her birthmark.

  Her family had carried the mark for generations, but none of them had ever had one so large. Her mother’s mark had been a tiny crescent near the corner of her left eye. It had seemed more like a beauty spot.

  A rueful laugh shook her chest. If the size of the mark were equal to the size of her talent, she’d be hell on wheels.

  She leaned her forehead against the cool plastic of the kicking bag. Of course, she’d never thought anything about her mark, except to be proud of her family’s heritage, until she’d gone to school.

  She could still remember walking to the bus stop that first morning. Her mother had sent Spirit with her, although actually he’d watched, invisible, from afar.

  It’d been a warm, sunny day. They’d had an unusually wet summer. Only a few leaves had begun to turn, and the grass was still bright green, but the tree growing at the bus stop corner had turned early. Its leaves glowed ruby-red in the morning sun. The sky was a brilliant blue, unmarred by clouds.

  She’d worn a pretty new dress, pink gingham with white daisies embroidered on the bodice, and shiny white shoes. God, she’d loved the dress.

  Then the other had children arrived, one by one, until there were five in all, and the whispering began.

  The stares didn’t bother her at first. It was an awfully pretty dress.

  A boy about her age, or maybe a year older, showed up. He possessed a shock of dark hair, a snub nose, and thick red lips. He walked around her silently in a slow circle. His eyes fixed on her mark. Not knowing what he was doing, she stood still, looking down at the shiny white patent leather of her shoes.

  Then he spoke. “What’s that on your face?”

  “A birthmark,” she said, peering up at him. Her mother had told her not to tell the other children the significance of her mark.

  “Looks like you need to wash your face.”

  She’d stomped her foot. “It’s a birthmark.”

  “I don’t think so. I think you’ve got a dirty face. Why don’t you wash your face, Messy Bessie?” he’d sneered, upper lip drawn back to reveal missing front teeth. “Messy Bessie, Messy Bessie,” he’d chanted in a singsong voice. The other children joined in.

  He’d laughed and picked up a clump of dirt from a ridge of raised earth, tossing the clump from hand to hand. “Wash your face, Messy Bessie!” With that, he threw the clump at her, striking one of the pretty white daisies on her dress. The clump exploded into a cloud of dust, and dirt rained down on her shoes, dulling the veneer. Forbidden by her mother to use magic, Thalia could only shield her head with her arms and sob as the other children began to follow his lead, scooping up clumps of dirt and lobbing them at her, soiling her dress, her hair and her legs, while continuing to chant.

  When they ran out of dirt, they began to push her. She stumbled back and forth, bouncing from shoving hands to shoving hands until finally she’d tripped and fallen to the ground with a loud ripping sound. She sat on the sidewalk for a moment, shocked, and then picked herself up and ran back home, her face smudged, her dress destroyed.

  She hadn’t made it to kindergarten that day, but she’d gone the next. Her mother’s angry phone-call to the other children’s parents’ made their jeers more subtle, but no less hurtful.

  Billy Lasher, the boy who’d started it all, seemed to make it his personal duty to hound her, and the name Messy Bessie had followed her until middle school, when her schoolmates had chosen a new name.

  God that was a long time ago. She bounced back on the balls of her feet and took another swing at the bag. It landed with a solid thunk. If only the past could be defeated with your fists.

  She was twenty-five years old and she had never made love, had never even dated. It seemed unlikely she ever would.

  But she had been kissed, well and truly kissed this morning, even if it had been in anger. In spite of the fact that it could never be repeated, it was a memory she would savor.

  A disgusted chuff exploded from her chest and she planted a fist in the bag. God, she was pathetic.

  In the dream, Gideon didn’t see a man, he saw a demon. A monstrous creature bent on annihilation. Devoted to death. An unstoppable force guided by shadows. Driven by madness.

  Men screamed as he ripped out their pumping hearts with his bare hands. Cries of triumph spilled from his chest as he wallowed in the sounds of hearts beating, lungs fighting for coveted air, and living flesh being rendered from bone. The smell of death haunted the stale, hot air.

  Blood was everywhere. It spattered the walls of the tent, flowed in rivers off the carpets and fed the hungry sand. But it did not feed him. It couldn’t.

  The beast was not of the living dead. It did not require blood to survive. It was human, with all the venal needs that state implied. It was he.

  Gideon awoke with a strangled
cry. The harsh rasp of his breathing filled the room. He sat up and stared at his broad palms, expecting to see them stained with red. He hadn’t had the dream in years.

  No explanation for its sudden reoccurrence was necessary. Thalia had awakened the slumbering demon.

  He closed his eyes, rubbed his hand over his face, but the image of her face in the seconds before she’d run away lingered in his mind. Lush mouth pink and swollen, irises a mere aquamarine ring around enormous ebony pupils, a flush tinting the creamy satin of her cheeks. And that look in her eyes, guarded by the feathery sweep of her lashes, that flash of something soft and vulnerable. That look that seemed to plead, please don’t hurt me.

  And hurt her he would, if he couldn’t keep the monster at bay.

  The doorbell chimed just as Gideon prepared to leave. He considered slipping out the back, but quickly discarded the idea. June days were long. It was almost ten, and twilight had not quite given up its nightly fight. Whoever was outside must have a good reason for calling this late.

  He opened the door. A man and a woman stood on his doorstep. He didn’t bother scanning their minds; their clothing and body language screamed, “Police.”

  “Mr. Damek?” The woman, a tall, pretty, slightly plump redhead in a lettuce-colored summer weight pantsuit smiled and extended a hand, her voice a bit breathy. “I’m Detective Dana Cole. This is Detective Edward Poole.” The other police officer was young, blond, and snub-nosed. A scraggly moustache draped over his top lip. Still, his denim blue eyes held a keen intelligence.

  Gideon shook her hand. “What can I do for you, detective?”

  “May we come in?”

  He hesitated. Just plant a memory and send them on their way. No, he sighed inwardly. That could backfire, and they might have information he could use.

  “Certainly.” He stepped back so they could enter the foyer, then led them into the living room. The detectives ran curious gazes around their new surroundings, reminding him of Thalia’s reaction to his house, but he shrugged away thoughts of her and focused on the here and now.