Enthrall Me (Underbelly Chronicles Book 4)

by Tamara Hogan

  “Tia…” He looked as if he was being tortured, stretched out on a rack, but he didn’t move her hand. Instead, he shifted his hair aside.

  Offering her his neck.

  “Mmm.” She dipped her nose into the shallow canyon behind his collarbone, where his scent pooled and deepened, then nuzzled her way up the taut neck tendon, pausing at his throbbing, pulsing vein. As she suckled against his skin, preparing it for her bite, a purring groan rumbled in his chest, vibrating into her body. He slid his hand between her legs, combing through her curls, giving her clit a glancing caress as he stroked through her slick folds. He teased her opening.

  Nudged inside.

  She plunged, driving her fangs deep into his flesh.

  The first surge of power made her eyes roll back in her head, made bloodlust surge to the fore. With a greedy groan, she adjusted the seal of her lips against his skin, clutching at his hair to pull him closer. His pure blood was delicious, a dark metallic sting, but his emotions…oh, gawd, his frenzied need crashed and churned, tossing her like a white water rapids. She sucked and swallowed, sucked and swallowed, caressing his cock as she frantically gulped him down.

  His clever fingers delved and plundered, stroked and swirled. All too soon, her orgasm loomed. She gasped as she felt its glittering, inexorable approach.

  “Tia.” His voice sounded dragged from the depths. His hips were moving in urgent, spasmodic jerks. “Come with me.”

  Ecstasy, carnality, eroticism…an urgent, helpless yearning…pulses of promise, of possibility…eddying and swirling, tugging her along.

  “Tia…” he strangled out, shuddering.

  A warm flood of release against her hand.

  She broke apart in his arms. Flew over the edge.

  Let the undertow pull her under.

  When Wyland woke up, she was gone.

  He glanced over to the bedside table, where the digital clock mocked him with a steady red glare. “Damn.” He’d been asleep for over twelve hours, the deepest and longest stretch of sleep he’d gotten in recent memory.

  Napping like an old man. No doubt Tia had been awake for hours.

  A peal of laugher from across the hall let him know Tia’s whereabouts. He threw the blankets back, sat up, and swung his legs over the side of the mattress. Thane had probably fed Valerian already, but he should check.

  A throb of reassurance from Valerian: I’m fine.

  Is Tia with you?

  Yes. We’re watching TV. Take your time.

  Apparently he wasn’t needed right now.

  There was a vague, scolding throb from Tia. Valerian’s amusement immediately followed. She’s annoyed that she can’t hear our conversation.

  But having shared blood with both of them, she could feel it. This triangulation between him, Val, and Tia could become damn uncomfortable.

  I apologized on your behalf.

  Thank you. He stared at his discarded underwear, lying on the carpet. Her body’s plush clutch, its hungry rhythmic clench against his fingers as she climaxed, was seared into his brain. Never had spending outside a woman’s body satisfied him so much.

  A pulse of naughty amusement slid into his mind from across the hall.

  He sent her the mental equivalent of a wink, then gently but firmly severed the bond. Tia might be comfortable with the always-on, wide-open-to-everyone connection Thane had warned him she favored, but he was not—and even if he wasn’t by nature a very private man, his position as the Second precluded such rash behavior. If he and Tia were to share any sort of future together, she needed to learn how to block—effectively, ruthlessly, and often. If anyone could train Tia how to do so, it was Thane, the Vampire First’s bondmate.

  He pushed to his feet, dropped the underwear in the hamper, and headed for the shower, mentally sorting through his workday as he washed. He didn’t have office hours tonight, and the resident could handle rounds. Legal paperwork, phone calls to return, a Council meeting for which he should prepare...all of which he could do here at home. After showering and dressing, he headed across the hall to check in on Val and Tia.

  Never before had crossing the hall to Val’s sitting room caused his stomach to turn such lazy, erotic backflips—and never before had such a strong chemical scent assaulted him. “Bloody hell.” He picked up speed, entered the room where Tia and Val were watching TV, and quickly discovered the odor’s source: Tia held a small, red bottle in one hand, and a tiny brush in the other, painting her toenails. On the table closest to her was an open bottle of remover or solvent, several sharp little tools, three turquoise-stained cotton balls, and a big mug of coffee. Her phone lay out of spilling range, but still within reach.

  As he stared at the exotic feminine mess, one of the three contestants on the television screen leaned over to spin a colorful horizontal wheel, yelling, “Come on, big money!” while everyone else clapped. A slim blonde woman wearing an evening gown stood next to a wall of white, illuminated rectangles.

  “Big money!” Val called.

  Tia grinned down at her toes.

  Val looked hale and hearty, his skin a ruddy pink against the collar of his burgundy velvet smoking jacket. If Wyland was a gambling man, he’d bet everything that he and Tia hadn’t been the only lovers to share body and blood since they’d all seen each other last.

  “Hi, there.” Tia had noticed him. Somehow, her casual greeting sounded significant, intimate—or maybe it was the way she skimmed his body, like she could see right through his clothes.

  “Hello.” For some reason, Val was sitting in the club chair instead of his favorite place on the couch. Tia was curled up on the couch’s far right cushion, leaving Val’s seat open.

  For him.

  “Wyland, hello!” Val waved toward the couch. “Please. Join us.”

  After a pause, he sat in Val’s place, his gaze snagging on Tia’s legs. She wore a pair of those clingy black workout pants she seemed to live in, and seven of her ten toenails were painted a shiny, carnal red. His pulse gave a kick, but he ignored it. He could keep his hands to himself in front of Val—not that Val, who’d led centuries of pagan rites, would be the least bit shocked by anything he might imagine.

  Or anything he might do.

  Val’s silent laughter echoed in his head.

  Tia and Val chatted, watching the game and discussing the simple word puzzles. Val, much to his relief, solved many of the puzzles more quickly than the contestants did, though he suspected Tia purposely let Val shout the answers out first. “What’s this show called?” As a cognitive exercise, it was simple but effective.

  “Wheel of Fortune.” Tia closed the bottle with quick twists of her wrist, set it on the table, and, after a slight hesitation, took his hand.

  Lifting their joined hands to his lips, he kissed her knuckles. Her sunny pleasure slipped into him, but a tiny shadow remained. Apparently he still had some making up to do.

  Ya think? Val thought.

  Val, these things take time.

  So says the man who hasn’t taken a lover in a century, Val scoffed. Don’t assume you have all the time in the world, son. “Tia, were you able to reschedule your appointment with the Senator?” Val asked. “Your face looks much better today.”

  Val was right; the dark half-moons under her eyes had definitely faded.

  “We’re meeting next month,” Tia said, “and when we do, I’d really like Jane to join us.” She fiddled with her thumbnail. “I’m going to mention it tomorrow when I give her a ride to a job interview. Give her some time to mull it over. She’s…twitchy.”

  “Understandably so,” Val said. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  Tia, behind the wheel? No bloody way. “I’d prefer you wait a bit before you drive,” he said as mildly as he could manage.

  “Why?”

  “Tia, you were knocked unconscious.” Not that her possibly concussed state had prevented her from making him come harder than he ever had in his life. “And your car’s in the shop.” Ins
tead of simply replacing the broken passenger window, he’d asked the mechanic to replace every window with those providing UV protection.

  “I’d planned to ask if I could use one of the SUVs.”

  “Of course you may, but—” neutral, neutral “—in my medical opinion, driving at this early point in your recovery puts your safety, and the safety of others, at risk. How about using a driver along with the SUV?” A driver who was also a trained bodyguard, because she damn well wasn’t going to leave the house without one.

  “Bubonic Plague!” Val suddenly exclaimed.

  “What?”

  Val pointed at the television. “The answer to the puzzle. It’s Bubonic Plague.”

  Tia studied the puzzle. “So it is.”

  Val folded his hands over his stomach. “Speaking of which, have you moved Sigurd’s trunk to the Archives yet?”

  Apparently Val’s thoughts were skipping rocks again.

  “What do you mean, Val?” Tia asked.

  “Sigurd’s trunk. It’s down in the catacombs.”

  Tia straightened from her comfortable slump. She reached for the phone sitting next to the nail polish bottle, then turned on the voice recorder.

  Bloody hell, he knew exactly which trunk Val was talking about. Over a century ago, when they’d moved into the house, he and Thane had carried the simple wooden box deep into the caverns, with Val nipping at their heels, urging, “Take care, take great care…” They’d set the trunk against the far back wall, then had gone upstairs to retrieve the next item.

  Thinking nothing of it, because there were so many items to move.

  “What catacombs?” Tia asked.

  “When we built the house in the early 1900s, we had to consider requirements beyond mere shelter,” Val explained. “We needed a place to store our collected history, and the property next door—the Archives—wasn’t yet ours. The cave system we dug under the house was the solution.”

  “Caves under the house? How cool.”

  Cool? Moving the artifacts had taken countless hours of hot, sweaty effort.

  “Sigurd had been dead for months when I found him.”

  Wyland reeled at the abrupt change of subject, at the pain in Val’s voice.

  “I’d been in Italy on business, and while traveling home I saw a brutal scourge ravaging the land, infecting the old and young, the hale and hearty, the rich and the poor,” Val said. “The Black Death—and being blood drinkers, vampires were particularly hard hit. Those who drank from the sick died themselves. As healthy donors became fewer and farther between, many vampires starved, or succumbed to bloodlust.”

  “How did you survive?” Tia asked.

  “I drank from uninfected animals, mainly from deer. By avoiding the main traveling routes, I managed to find a meager supply of untainted donor blood. But when I arrived home…” Val paused, swallowing hard. “When I arrived home, our village was empty. Silent. Everyone was…gone. Sigurd had dug a pit and burned all the bodies.”

  “And Sigurd?” Tia asked softly. Empathy poured from her like water over a wound.

  “I found him in our hut, lying on his pallet. Dead, of course. Black boils were still visible on his skin, and his journal lay open next to him.” A tear spilled, rolling down his cheek. “The…the knife he’d used to slit his own throat was still in his hand.”

  Wyland wasn’t surprised that Sigurd, ill and in extremis, had committed suicide rather than succumb to bloodlust. It was a vampire’s final act of control over his own destiny.

  Tia rose from the couch, knelt on the floor in front of Val, and took his gnarled hands. “I’m so sorry.”

  Val wiped his wet cheek. “It happened a long time ago, but thank you, my dear.” Val looked down at her, then over to him. “I’ve forgotten more than I remember, but his journals might provide some of the answers you seek.”

  Wyland blinked. “You have his journals?”

  “Of course I do. His journals, his pens and tools, and more. Everything the horse and I could carry.”

  Sigurd’s journals, written in his own hand, downstairs all this time. Energy buzzed through him. After being stored in a battered trunk for nearly seven hundred years, were the pages still intact? Was the writing still legible? What had Sigurd used as paper and ink?

  Had there been other Firsts before him?

  Bloody hell.

  “Could you and Tia bring the trunk upstairs for me?” Val asked.

  “Up here? Why?” The trunk contained precious historical artifacts. Wyland wanted to assess their condition, and start necessary preservation work immediately.

  “I’d like…” Val cleared his throat. “I’d like to see his things again.” One last time.

  His stomach lurched. Val, you have plenty of time—

  “Of course we will.” Tia scrambled to her feet, squeezing Val’s hands. “We’ll bring the trunk upstairs for you, right now.”

  He rose more slowly. “Will we?”

  “Oh, stop with the eyebrow already. Of course we will.” Turning off her voice recording, she looked down at Val. “Would you like to come with us?”

  Val patted the arms of his chair. “These old bones are happy right here.” Thane suddenly appeared at the sitting room door, carrying Val’s breakfast tray. They held a silent conversation and shared a private, bittersweet smile. “Thane will keep me company while the two of you go to the caverns.”

  He hesitated. How would Val react to seeing Sigurd’s belongings again?

  “Go,” Thane urged, shooing them toward the door as he set the tray on the table closest to Val. Val’s fine, and look how excited Tia is.

  She was practically dancing, shifting from foot to foot.

  Three against one; he was on the losing end of this argument. “You’ll want to put some shoes on,” he told Tia. “And maybe a jacket.”

  Grinning, she bent down to kiss Val’s papery cheek. “We’ll be back soon.” As she rose, she snitched a piece of bacon from Val’s plate, then walked toward the door, glancing at him. “I’ll meet you in the hallway.”

  He followed her out. While Tia was in the guest room retrieving footwear, he went to his bedroom and found the flashlight he kept for emergencies. When he went back out to the hall, Tia was waiting, wearing a zip-up sweatshirt and those horrid black flip-flops with the sparkles on them. “Do you not own real shoes?”

  “My toenails are wet.”

  “Heaven forbid you ruin a pedicure.”

  “Hey, I’d ruin the shoes, too.” She started walking toward the stairway with an annoying snap-snap-snap, leaving him to follow. At the bottom of the stairs, she paused. “Where, exactly, are we going?”

  “The basement.”

  “Oh, down by the pool?”

  Nodding, he led the way to the basement door. “The entrance to the catacombs is down here.” She followed him down the stairs, her noisy shoes telegraphing every footfall. At the bottom of the stairwell, he went to the south wall, to the shelving unit holding stacks of fluffy, folded towels. “Stand back.” Reaching behind it, he pressed the hidden latch.

  The shelving unit swung away from the wall on silent hinges, revealing a shadowy opening.

  “Oh, awesome!”

  “Indeed.” Reaching into the stale air, he tugged the pull chain of the nearest of many light bulbs hanging suspended from the ceiling. Flicking on his flashlight, he shone it ahead, past the built-in wine racks to the next bulb, a hundred feet ahead. “Follow me.”

  She obeyed, but not for long. What he’d envisioned as a brisk walk to the end of the cavern didn’t happen, because Tia had questions, so many questions: About the initial excavation process. About the ‘quaint’ 1930s-era electrical system. About Valerian’s wine collection, and about Wyland’s work to transfer items stored in the catacombs to the Archives next door. And she touched everything—the walls, the light bulb chains, the floor—sniffing with her eyes closed, as if imprinting herself with scent.

  “This is amazing,” she said, stroking the wa
ll’s rough surface with her fingertips. “I wish I hadn’t left my phone upstairs.”

  If she kept stopping to explore, they’d never get to the end of the passage. He took her hand. “Come on.”

  Finally, twelve light bulbs later, they reached the last storage room dug from the rock. Several pieces of furniture rested under protective sheets, and boxes sat neatly stacked, their contents waiting to be rediscovered. The battered wooden trunk sat right where he remembered, against the back wall, out of the light bulb’s weak reach. He shone the flashlight’s tight halogen beam against the trunk. “There it is.”

  “We walked south, right?” Instead of rushing to the trunk, she trailed her fingertips over the slats of a rough wooden box. “Toward the Archives?”

  He nodded.

  “We must be almost halfway there,” she mused. “Have you ever thought about connecting the two buildings?”

  “Yes, but it’s not a priority right now.” He watched her walk toward the back wall, into the shadows. “Thane and I will revisit the idea when we update the electrical system.” Which, given its Edison-era vintage, should probably be done sooner rather than later, unless they wanted a damn fire on their hands. “I haven’t been down here in about a year,” he said, following her.

  “When Val came down with pneumonia?”

  “Yes.”

  Tia shook her head in wonder. “Imagine living during the Black Death. Imagine surviving it.” She suddenly grinned, her teeth flashing in the dim light. “Imagine you, having to record for posterity that the Vampire First remembered where Sigurd’s trunk was while watching Wheel of Fortune.”

  Bloody hell, she was right.

  Tia crouched beside the trunk, touched the worn wood. Tested its size by stretching her arms out to the side. When she lowered her head to sniff the wood, he almost yanked her back. There was no possible way that active Yersinia pestis remained, but who knew what kinds of dusts and bacteria lurked in the— “Tia, don’t!”

  Too late. She’d already opened the trunk. Peering inside, she covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my stars.”