by Tamara Hogan
If he didn’t want this, now was the time to move.
So, he moved—yanking their bodies together with a firm tug.
She whoofed in surprise, but recovered quickly. She looped her arms around his waist and tugged their hips together more firmly, pressing her soft curves against the mindless rod of flesh shoving so rudely against his zipper.
The pressure—too much, not enough—was absolutely maddening.
She learned forward, pressing her breasts against his chest, nuzzling his bare throat. She inhaled slowly, luxuriously. “Mmm.”
She exhaled, sending a shiver through him. Her lips curved, then she kissed her way up his sternocleidomastoid muscle, her clever hands working at the knot of his already loose tie. “For future reference,” she said, tugging the annoying strip of fabric out from under his shirt collar and tossing it onto the bar, “this is an excellent look for you.”
“What is?”
“The loose tie? The rolled-up sleeves, the rumpled hair?” She nipped at his chin. “Sex on a stick. Absolutely panty-dropping.”
A thrill shot through him. A chuckle escaped.
“What’s so funny?”
“Have you shared those phrases with Valerian yet?” He slid his hand to the elastic waistband of her ridiculous boxer shorts, then cupped her right buttock with his palm. “You don’t appear to be wearing any. Panties, that is.”
Her answering smile was enigmatic, as if she enjoyed some private joke. Before he could ponder it too closely, she rose onto her tiptoes and laid a blistering line of kisses along his jawbone, finally nudging her lips up to his mouth.
He took control of the kiss, locking their lips into perfect alignment, then dove in to the dark oasis of her mouth like it was the only thing keeping him from dying of thirst. She gave as good as she got, their tongues thrusting and parrying, strong and slick as they tasted and tested each other. When her fang grazed his lip, the delicious sting zinged straight to his cock. Pulling away slightly, she licked at it, gathering a tiny drop of blood.
Tasting his most intimate, primal essence.
He watched as she sampled him, as she swirled the droplet in her mouth like a wine connoisseur judging this year’s vintage. The mere seconds it took for her to murmur her approval and fuse their mouths back together stretched time to the snapping point.
The taste of his own blood on her tongue almost clubbed him to his knees. As she clutched at his hair, his mind flooded with deliciously carnal images: Tia, unzipping his pants and fellating him where they stood. Her, bent over the arm of the settee, him driving into her from behind. The two of them in her bed, his hair tickling her stomach as he bathed her slick inner folds with his tongue...
Her hands dropped to his belt.
“Wait.” He took a shaky breath. Valerian was right upstairs. Gardeners, caretakers, household staff…the security office was right down the hall. “We can’t,” he muttered. “Not here.”
She pulled at the leather and unfastened his belt buckle, the soft, metallic clank mocking his feeble protests. She reached for the tab of his zipper, drawing it down so slowly that he felt the gnash of each tooth.
His mind filled with hot, vivid visions: Moist, open lips. A blunt, hot weight, filling his mouth to capacity. Ravenous suckling.
His eyes narrowed slightly. Even at his most celibacy-addled, he’d never fantasized about dropping to his knees and sucking a man’s—
Her thoughts, not his.
He shoved her out of his mind with a brutal mental blast, severing the connection she shouldn’t have been able to make.
“Aaah!” She slapped her hands to her temples. He reached for her, but she stumbled away from him.
He should have noticed. He should have noticed the fragile new connection between them—weak, unschooled, but there.
Damn it, Valerian, what have you done?
When he reached for her again, she shied away. “Don’t touch me.” Anger had doused her desire dead. “It was you, wasn’t it? That headache the other night.” She rubbed her temples. “Damn, that hurts.”
He wouldn’t apologize for his self-preservation instincts, but he hadn’t meant to hurt her. “I’m sorry you’re in pain.” Actually, with the strength of the shove he’d given her, she should have been lying on the floor, incapacitated. Instead, she looked ready to kick him with her tiny, turquoise-nailed foot.
“You thralled me that first night,” she accused. “You abused your power.”
“I use my power as I see fit.” Her words carried an uncomfortable sting of truth, but damn it, Val’s abuse of power was a far worse crime. Val had clearly shared his blood with Tia, transferring Wyland’s blood at the same time, opening a fragile mental link between them. Though a vampire of his strength could easily thrall or glamour whomever he pleased, he’d need to drink from Tia, or drink from someone who’d drank from Tia, to create a reciprocal channel.
He zipped his pants and buckled his belt. He felt…hideously exposed. They were hideously exposed. How in the world had a baby vamp so quickly gained such intimate access to the Vampire First and Second?
Was this a honey trap? Was Tia a spy in their midst?
No. Lukas’s deep background check had come back clean—and though she had the right physical attributes, she was temperamentally unsuited to be another Mata Hari. Every emotion she felt was displayed on her face, for anyone to read. Right now, despite her kiss-swollen lips and erect nipples, she looked like she wanted to wring his bloody neck.
Damn it. If Tia hadn’t been a security risk before, she certainly was now. Damn it, Val. What the hell were you thinking?
No answer, but reassurance throbbed from upstairs.
“Don’t blame Valerian,” Tia snapped. “It wasn’t his fault. He was trying to help ease my headache—a headache, it turns out, you caused.”
“So you held Valerian down, and took his vein without asking?”
“Of course not—”
“Then I damn well do blame him.” But there was plenty of blame to go around. Yes, he’d caused her headaches, but he’d also let her lick the blood from his mouth. He’d invited her to taste him, exalting in the desire that had dilated her pupils so much that her irises had been all but obscured. And that had been a mistake. “You’re one of my subjects,” he said in as remote a voice as he could manage. “I’m responsible for you. And now, I have to find time to train you.”
“Don’t strain yourself, Buckwheat.”
He grasped her by her upper arms and gave her a little shake. “Do you realize what he’s done? Do you realize that you can now be used as a tool against us?” When her eyes widened, he pressed the point home. “No one can learn of this. No one can know you’ve fed from Valerian.”
She wrenched her arms out of his hands. “That’s not the only reason you’re angry.”
He didn’t answer; he didn’t have to. Retrieving his tie from the bar where Tia had thrown it, he looped it around his neck. He buttoned his shirt and tied a Windsor knot, his hands on autopilot. “I’ll talk to Thane. He and I will set up a schedule for your training.”
“A schedule? Training?”
He snugged the tie up tight against his neck. Where it belonged. “You need to learn how to strengthen your mental barriers.” And he needed to remember his own. Protecting his thoughts all the time, in his own damn house, was going to be utterly exhausting.
“Oh. That machine my parents have.”
He nodded curtly. Recent vampire generations used a bio-feedback training device to learn how to protect their thoughts—and they’d use one with Tia to start—but he and Thane would have to teach her techniques most vampires never had reason to learn. “Drinking from Valerian transferred strengths to you, but it also created vulnerabilities for him, and everyone who feeds him.”
“Meaning you,” she said. “That’s why you’re so pissed off.”
He didn’t acknowledge her comment. “You now have mental access to me, to Thane, and to Valerian. You need to learn
how to shield your thoughts, and shield them well.” And someone needed to drink from Tia, to create a two-way bond, if only as a defensive measure.
The thought of Thane’s teeth piercing Tia’s skin, even platonically, made something inside him recoil.
Val, you wily old bastard.
“It’s not that I can read your thoughts or anything,” she muttered. “There’s this vague sort of…throb. An emotional short-hand.” She paused. “It was a lot stronger when we were kissing.”
Because he’d dropped his guard—a mistake he wouldn’t make again.
Her gaze lowered to the tie, then returned to his face again. “So we’re really not going to talk about this?”
“About what?” The less he said, the sooner he could retreat to the safety of his bedroom.
“The fact that you put your tongue in my mouth, and that you liked it.” She pointed to his necktie. “And the fact that you just put your goddamn armor back on.”
The spicy scent of her arousal was going to drive him to his knees. “Why don’t you go to bed?” He gave her a slight mental push.
She shoved back, hard, sending a spike of pain behind his eyes. “Stop it! Don’t think you can send me to bed like a sleepy child.” Her eyes dropped to the hard-on still bulging below his belt. “We both know you don’t think of me as a child.”
Her words hit the bulls-eye, and it took everything he had to hide the wince. The images she’d spilled into his head… “I’m going to bed.” He didn’t have the strength to argue with her anymore.
“Chickenshit.”
“I see we’ve descended to name-calling.”
With a growl of frustration, she brushed past him, snatched her purse, then stalked upstairs. He didn’t need a blood bond to know she was angry. Confused. Feeling a raging sexual frustration that rivaled his own. And that she was disappointed.
Disappointed in him.
“Join the club,” he muttered. Without thinking, he picked up Tia’s can of Diet Mountain Dew and drank. Citrusy and oddly refreshing, the beverage tasted better than it should, given the information on the nutrition label. Hell, the caffeine content alone should be enough to keep him awake for hours—which was good, because he had plenty of work to do.
As he reached for his briefcase, a glint of gold caught his eye. Tia’s ring. She’d left it on the bar. After a slight hesitation, he picked it up and put it in his front pants pocket. Carrying the can and his briefcase, he trudged upstairs. The hallway was dim, and Valerian’s room dark, as he walked into his own room and closed the door behind him. In the quiet, he heard water running next door.
The bathtub.
Tia, naked in the bathtub.
Humming.
“Damn it.” Setting the can and his briefcase on his desk, he went to the mini-fridge, grabbed a bag of blood, and popped it onto his teeth. He quickly drained the bag, grabbed another, then sat down. Since Tia had moved in, he’d been going through blood at a blistering pace, trying to keep bloodlust at bay. Thane had obviously noticed, but hadn’t said anything.
He reached for the Stoker folder. Spreading its accordion pleats, he withdrew the letter he’d recently received from the software baron who now owned the original Dracula manuscript. His latest purchase offer had been very politely declined.
Again.
He wanted that manuscript, wanted to examine, touch, and smell the pages written in Bram’s own hand. There had to be some clue he’d missed, some piece of information he could find, that would confirm, once and for all, whether his own carelessness and poor judgment had given Bram the idea for his book.
Exposing their people’s existence.
Wyland’s lips flattened. He’d back off, give it some time. Make another offer to the man’s heirs after his inevitable death.
Time had a way of passing.
He slowly paged through the folder, studying his copies of Bram’s research notes. Maybe he should go back to the Rosenbach and work with the original notes again… No. He couldn’t leave home right now, couldn’t even think about it until he was more confident about Valerian’s physical recovery—and not until Tia gained better control over her thoughts.
Her inflammatory, deliciously wicked thoughts.
He straightened in the chair and dropped the now-empty plastic bag into the wastebasket. Between Tia’s soda and the fresh blood thrumming through his veins, he’d be able to work for hours before he’d have to escape into sleep.
He closed the folder with a snap, pushed it aside, then reached for his reading glasses. After perching them on his nose, he picked up a thick sheaf of legal-sized paper from the top of the pile, and pushed thoughts of Tia, singing naked in the bathtub, firmly out of his mind.
When Tia and Nick walked into Sebastiani Security later that afternoon, the last person she expected to see was Commander Gideon Lupinsky. Gotcha. “Commander,” she greeted him. “What a surprise.”
“Ms. Quinn,” Lupinsky said. “Nick.” He shook their hands.
The Commander wasn’t as tall as Lukas, Jack, or even Wyland—werewolves tended toward average heights—but with his muscular build and dark, sharp-featured intelligence, you’d notice him. Though he never wore a uniform, tonight Lupinsky was dressed more casually than she’d ever seen, wearing faded jeans, a plain blue T-shirt, and a Twins baseball cap. He sported a definite five o’clock shadow, perfectly appropriate considering the time of day. “Going to the baseball game from here?” she asked.
He nodded. “Lukas told me about your break-in. I hope you don’t mind if I join you at your meeting today.”
“Not at all. I’d like to speak with you as well.” Lukas had asked her and Nick to come to Sebastiani Security to discuss her case. While it couldn’t hurt to get the Commander’s input, he sure as shit wasn’t leaving without answering a few questions of her own. “We’ve been playing phone tag.”
“Yes.” Lupinsky didn’t look at all sorry.
The stairwell door to the left suddenly opened, and Jack and Chico entered the lobby. There was a slightly discolored smudge on Jack’s cheekbone, and they both had shower-damp hair. “Kicking the crap out of each other again?” The sparring cage in Sebastiani Security’s basement was a favorite workout venue for its employees.
Jack threw Chico a dark glance. “Lucky shot.”
“Yeah, my heel missed your pretty blue eye out of sheer dumb luck.” Chico slapped his hand against the security pad mounted next to the heavy steel door separating the lobby from the work areas. After a soft beep and a click, he pulled it open, and gestured for them to enter.
“We’re in the corner conference room,” Jack said, pointing down the hall that ran the length of the building. He paused at the break room. “Can I get anyone something to drink?”
“Nothing for me, thanks.” Since waking up a couple of hours ago, she’d pounded two diet Dews and a large cup of coffee. If she drank anything else, she’d float away.
They walked down the exposed brick hallway, past Lukas’s cluttered office and Jack’s neat one. Over in the main workspace, people talked and keyboards clacked. A raucous game of Nerf basketball was underway over in the far corner. They filed into the corner conference room, leaving the trash talk behind. Lukas was already there, sitting in one of the big leather chairs with his eyes closed.
Guilt swam. With everything else on his plate, the last thing Lukas should be worrying about was someone leaving snakes in her bedroom.
“Oh, hey,” Lukas said, abruptly rising to his feet.
They kissed each other’s cheeks. “Enjoying the silence?”
He smiled but didn’t answer. “Please, have a seat.” A dozen leather chairs surrounded the long, oval table. They gathered around one end, Lukas greeting everyone as Jack closed the door. Instead of taking a chair, Chico leaned against the wall.
“How’s Valerian?” Jack asked her as everyone else settled in.
“He seems to be doing well.” Valerian had still been asleep when she and Nick had left the house, wi
th Nick behind the wheel of a muscular black SUV with UV-treated windows. Driving here in broad daylight, without needing to coat herself in nuclear-powered VampScreen, was an experience she wouldn’t soon forget.
Wyland’s parking spot had been empty.
Not that she cared.
Much.
Hell.
It pissed her off that she even noticed he was gone, that she wondered where he was. That she worried whether he’d gotten any sleep, even after he’d acted like a complete dick earlier that morning. She’d fallen asleep to Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, with its haunting, evocative flute, leaching through their shared bedroom wall. With centuries of music at his disposal, why had Wyland chosen such an erotically charged piece?
“How’s it going living at Vamp Central?” Lukas asked.
“Fine.”
“Good, because I’d like you to stay there a while longer.”
“Why?”
Lukas narrowed his eyes. “You’re not worried that we found trace evidence connecting your case to ours?”
“What trace evidence?”
Lukas explained that the lab had found some particles on both notes that merited further investigation.
“When did you discover this?”
“Earlier this morning,” Lukas said. “Wyland didn’t tell you?”
“He did not.” Earlier this morning, Wyland’s mouth had been otherwise occupied—and then he’d tried to send her to bed like a recalcitrant child. Had he known about the trace evidence then, or had he been notified after she’d gone to bed? It didn’t matter. “Gentlemen, for future reference, any information pertaining to my case should be communicated directly to me.”
“Certainly.” Jack’s voice was Scotch-smooth. “We found—”
“Wait a sec.” Lupinsky’s dark eyes were hard as flint. “You were threatened?”
Lukas told him about the letter he and Scarlett had received. “Someone also threatened the Council using comments at Tia’s website, In Like Quinn, as the communication mechanism. Jacoby Woolf was specifically threatened.”
“Folks.” Lupinsky looked around the table, exasperated. “You really have to loop me in on this stuff.”
