Absolution

by Susannah Sandlin

  “Why are you here?” God, he sounded like such an asshole. He sucked at conversation in general, but not usually to the point of idiocy.

  She blushed, and the rush of blood near the surface of her skin was intoxicating. It made his mouth water more than the stew.

  “Melissa said I’d be staying here, that you were hosting me—no, wait, sponsoring me.” Glory twisted her hands together in front of her. Not quite the spitfire who came after him in the clinic. Might have something to do with not wearing pants, although he enjoyed the view. “I can leave, if you just tell me where to go. I don’t want to get in your way. I spilled some of the stew on the clothes Melissa loaned me. I found this shirt thrown over the back of the sofa. It smelled like you, and I really didn’t think about whether you’d mind if I wo—”

  “Stop.” God help him, the woman would talk a person to death. “You can stay here.”

  Had those words come out of his mouth? He’d clearly been brain damaged during his month with Matthias. It was temporary, just until she settled in. He could handle it that long. “It’s OK to wear the shirt.” Mirren took a visual journey down well-shaped, tanned legs to bare feet. More than OK.

  “And Melissa told me that you could help me find a job, and we had to be bonded, but I have to tell you, I’m not keen on this blood-drinking business. I mean, I know it’s how you guys stay alive, and if you want to feed from me, I guess that’s OK. But as for me drinking your blood…God, I can’t believe I even said that. It’s just—”

  “Stop.” He had to find a way to shut her up. Unfortunately, the method that came to mind involved covering her mouth with his. He cleared his throat. “If you don’t want to bond with me, you can choose somebody else—Aidan or Will.”

  But as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew it was never going to happen. In fact, if Will Ludlam, playboy of the vampire world, so much as tilted a fang in her direction, he would hurt the man. Never mind that Will had rescued them both from his batshit-crazy father.

  Mirren eyed the square quilted piece of cloth on the counter sporting a silly black-and-white cow, picked it up, and used it to lift the lid off the pot. The broth was rich and dark, filled with meat and vegetables, liberally doused with pepper. He let the steam from the pot rise around his face and closed his eyes as good memories washed through him. Memories of a happy youth, a future of promise, family—before it all got screwed up. Before he’d been taught to live in the dark, cold place in his head. Before the vampires.

  “You miss food, don’t you? Big guy like you could probably pack it in back in the day.” Glory had moved closer and reached out to rest a hand on his arm. “You don’t have to say it—I can see it on your face. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought food in here where it would make things hard for you. I’ll start going to the café.”

  He moved away from her touch and settled the lid back on the pot. “I like to smell it. Keep cooking.” That she’d care about his feelings after all she’d been through at the hands of his kind was…weird. “Where’d you get all this stuff?”

  She laughed, and it was a nice sound. Made him want to laugh with her. Well, almost. “Melissa stopped at the grocery store and bought me some things. She came in with me because she said she’d never been inside your house and wanted to see if you had motorcycle parts in your living room. I realized later you stored them in your kitchen drawers and cabinets. I think the entertainment system surprised her. It is awesome.”

  Damn busybody women. “What did you touch?” Mirren stepped around her and zeroed in on his baby. Sixty-two inches of fat-screen, high-def beauty, 3-D ready, a living room wired to surround him with sound. Nobody but him had ever touched it, and he scanned it for smudges or fingerprints.

  On the screen, John Wayne stood in all his glory next to a grizzled Dean Martin. Mirren gritted his teeth. “You got into my movies.”

  “Man, you really must love Westerns. I’d never seen this one before. It was called…uh…” She shuffled through several DVD cases she’d dragged out on his coffee table. An unfinished glass of wine sat beside them.

  “Rio Bravo,” he muttered, reaching for the remote and hitting the off button. He sat on his oversize sofa, built for comfort. “Gotta have some boundaries. You and Melissa can’t sit here all day and go through my stuff.” Melissa was the worst gossip in town, and what he had in his house was nobody’s fucking business. And then there was the matter of his shirt; it took a helluva lot of nerve for her to wear it without asking. Even if it did look a lot better on her than it did on him.

  Glory stood in front of him, feet apart, and propped her hands on her hips. “Well, fine. As my sponsor, you’re supposed to help me settle in here, right?” She glared at him expectantly.

  “Aw, fuck me.” He leaned his head against the sofa back and closed his eyes. He needed to feed. She was even sexy while standing there and giving him the evil eye.

  “Language.”

  “It’s my fucking house, and I’ll fucking curse if I want to.”

  “You don’t curse and I won’t let anybody touch your TV.” Glory settled on the sofa next to him. She smelled of the food she’d cooked and, under that, the soft sweet smell of clean skin. He was way too aware of it, of the heat that radiated from her body.

  “Whatever.”

  “I need a job.”

  That wasn’t what he expected. He was waiting for the I-want-to-go-shopping talk or the give-me-a-key-to-your-house talk. He rolled his head to the side to stare at her, frowning. “ Why? ”

  “Mirren.” She gave him an expression that said she clearly thought him an idiot. “I need clothes. I need food. Do you know how embarrassing it was to go to breakfast with Melissa and have her pay for it because I don’t even have a wallet anymore, much less money, and to have her buy me food and a pot to cook it in? I need a job. I can do anything—bag groceries, clean houses, whatever needs doing. I’m not afraid of hard work. Notice anything different here?”

  He looked around, shifting until he was sitting up straight. She’d organized the haphazard piles of magazines that had been scattered around the room into neat stacks. He’d never be able to find anything. The muscles in his jaw started to tic.

  “I found all the dirty glasses I could and washed them—they’re in the kitchen, and no, I didn’t move any of your tools and stuff, although it is kind of weird to keep them in the kitchen drawers.”

  She’d also dusted, since he could no longer write his name in the coating on the furniture, and a neatly tied bag of what he assumed was trash sat by the front door. He needed to go through it before she took it out and threw away something valuable.

  As uncomfortable as he was with the idea of someone in his house, moving his stuff, he had to admit—at least to himself—the room looked better. “You don’t have to work. Aidan’s some kind of investment genius. We all have money. It’s not an issue.”

  Her eyes, the color of rich earth, narrowed beneath scrunched eyebrows. “It most certainly is an issue. Everything you spend on me I write down, and then I pay back. I’m not in the market for a sugar daddy with fangs.”

  He shifted, sitting sideways on the sofa to study her. It had been a long time since he’d been around a human woman except for feeding or sex. He had no freaking clue what she was talking about. “Sugar, what?”

  She huffed like she was going to chew him a new one, then let out her breath in a gasp of laughter. “Never mind. I don’t expect you to support me, at least not after I get things figured out. When I do, I’ll pay you back. Let me stay here until I find a job and can afford to find a place of my own, then I’ll be out of your hair. There’s a bedroom down the hall that doesn’t look like it’s ever been used and…”

  She kept talking, but he quit listening, focusing instead on her mouth, the way she formed her words, the hint of a dimple in her chin.

  Suddenly, he was aware of the lack of chatter. Glory was staring at him, wearing an expression he couldn’t interpret.

  �
��What?” Had she asked him a question? Should he say no on principle?

  “I asked if you needed to feed. Your eyes have gone from gray to silvery. Since we have to bond anyway and Mel said you’d lost your fams—I’m sorry about that, by the way—it’s OK if you feed from me. In fact, I want you to.”

  After what she’d been through, that didn’t make sense to him. “Why?”

  “I’m going to live here among vampires, at least for a while, and the only experience I have is from Matthias and his awful friends.” She stared down at her hands and flexed them. “I remember when you fed from me in that cell. You were gentle, even though you were starving. What I associate with vampires is pain, but Melissa says it’s not supposed to be that way, so help me change that. You need to feed, and I want you to use me.”

  Her words burned through him. He didn’t want to use her. She’d been used enough. He didn’t want to be another vampire who took from her.

  She mistook his hesitation and touched her scarred neck. “It’s ugly, I know. If you don’t want me, it’s OK. I understand. I just thought that it would be—”

  “Stop.” He slid closer to her and reached out to brush his fin gers across the delicate skin of her throat, the scars rough under his touch. “I want to kill every vampire who had a hand in this. Not just Matthias. All of them.” He might not be the Tribunal’s executioner anymore, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill someone who needed killing.

  Her pulse sped, beating a steady rhythm against his fingers as they traced their way down to the gentle curve of her neck and shoulder. He stopped his hand where her smooth skin disappeared into the collar of his shirt. She sounded breathless. “You say that to me an awful lot.”

  “Say what?” He slid his fingers inside the shirt collar, his own sluggish heart speeding at her slight intake of breath.

  “Stop. You keep telling me to stop talking.” She slid forward until her knees touched his. “So do you want to do it?”

  His gaze shot to hers, and he realized she meant feeding. His mind had moved way beyond that. “Uh, yeah. We need to do the bonding. Safer for you.”

  “OK, tell me what to do. I mean, do I need to bite you? Because seriously, Mirren, I’ll do it, but that’s just kinda gros—”

  He didn’t think, just moved. His mouth covered hers and swallowed the rest of her words. All those words. She stiffened, and he pulled back with an inward groan. What a bloody idiot. The woman had been chewed up by vampires. She might think she wanted him to feed from her but—

  She placed a palm on each side of his face and pulled him back toward her slowly. “You took me by surprise. Let’s try that again.”

  She kissed him, opening herself to him, and he tasted a trace of the stew, the sweetness of wine, and the essence of her. She pulled back and moved her hair away from her neck again.

  Mirren knew he should get up and leave, then send Aidan back to bond her. Or he should feed from her wrist or forearm, like he had with his former fams, and not her neck, where it was so personal.

  He had no experience with this kind of intimacy. He was the killer, the coldhearted bastard. Except, tonight, he’d felt like the man he wanted to be instead of the man fate had made him. And that was dangerous for both of them. What if he lost control and hurt her? What if—

  “It’s OK, Mirren. I want you to.”

  He swallowed hard. “I can feed from your wrist.” She wasn’t scarred there—he’d checked.

  “No, I want you to show me what it should have felt like instead of…what they did to me.”

  Holy hell. Could he do this? He was nobody’s savior. He didn’t want to be.

  But even as he told himself that, his head tilted, and he slid his arms around her, pulling her into his lap. She was warm and soft against him as he kissed her again and then slid his mouth to her neck, feeling the rough scars under his tongue, studying the tiny, almost heart-shaped birthmark on her left earlobe. He moved slightly above the roughened skin and kissed her again, licked that small unscarred spot. Then he bit.

  CHAPTER 13

  Glory waited for the pain to begin. Mirren had fed from her once when they were in that cell, but she’d been so messed up she didn’t trust her memories of it being a pleasant experience. She’d told him that so he wouldn’t balk at feeding from her. It was the only way she knew to thank him for taking her in. Instinctively, she knew that if she told him it was to thank him, he might think of her as what the vampires had called a “blood whore.” And that wasn’t it. It wasn’t an occupation; it was her giving him the only thing she had to give.

  There was a short, sharp stab of pain when he bit, and she waited for it to blossom into agony. Instead, wave after wave of pleasure swept through her, wiping out the sting. His mouth at her neck pulled gently, each draw of blood bringing a new food of sensations that pooled well south of her heart.

  After what she’d been through, she hadn’t thought she’d ever want another man to touch her again, much less a vampire. But as Mirren’s big hands stroked her back, she surprised herself by wishing his hands were on her skin, not touching her through the fabric of his own shirt.

  He pulled away from her too soon, then kissed the spot where he’d bit. She wanted to ask what he’d done to keep it from hurting, but she didn’t want a clinical explanation, didn’t want to spoil with words a moment when she felt so close to him.

  Words were what she used to cover up nerves or fear or bad emotions.

  Mirren shifted under her, and she moved to stand. “No, wait. I was just trying to find a knife or…oh, hell.” He sank his fangs into his own inner forearm, then held it up toward her. From two small puncture wounds wept small trails of blood, more magenta than crimson. “You don’t have to take much.”

  Ugh, ugh, ugh. OK, need to do this. Glory grasped his arm, marveling that she couldn’t even wrap her hands around it completely. Lowering her mouth, she touched her tongue to one of the blood trails and discovered it wasn’t at all what she’d expected. It wasn’t metallic, but rich and a little sweet. She wouldn’t want a bowlful of the stuff, but it wasn’t a complete gross-out.

  OK, go for it. She rested her lips on his arm, pulling in the scent of him, clean and outdoorsy, even as she pulled on the wounds. Closing her eyes, she drew a little of the blood into her mouth.

  “That’s enough. Don’t need much.” He groaned around the words.

  She raised her head and looked into his eyes, which were kind of glazed and more the color of steel than his usual thunderclouds. He didn’t make any move to get her off his lap, and from the feel of a telltale hardness pressing against the back of her thighs, he wasn’t in any hurry for her to go. She’d thought her feeding from him might hurt him, but the expression on his face had no relation to pain.

  She raised her mouth toward his again, but he pushed her back and cut his eyes toward the front door. “Aw, f…damn.” He stood up, taking her with him, then deposited her on the sofa as if she weighed no more than one of his DVDs.

  “What’s wrong? Did I…” Her words trailed off at the sound of a car door closing outside, a few seconds of silence, then a knock. Guess vampires heard better than humans, or he’d had her very preoccupied, which was a possibility.

  Mirren made no move to go to the door, but glared at it as if he could send some super X-ray mojo through the wood and dissolve whoever was there into a puddle of goop.

  “Mirren, I know you’re in there, you antisocial bastard. I need to talk to Glory Cummings.” The voice was male, generic American and without the hint of accent both Mirren and Aidan had.

  “Who is that?” Glory swiveled on the sofa to look at Mirren and was struck anew at just how big he was. Tall, broad shouldered and slim hipped, his dark hair that might have a hint of curl if it were longer, the intricate tattoos. She’d love to hear the story of those tattoos one day but wasn’t sure he’d tell her. Come to think of it, he hadn’t talked about himself much. He’d talked about Aidan. He’d talked about Penton. He’d talked
about Matthias. He had said very little about Mirren. It was something she’d have to work on.

  “Will Ludlam, Matthias’s son. He’s a good guy. Mostly. For a smartass.” Mirren strode to the door, opened it, and stepped back for Will to enter.

  So this was the handsome young blond she’d spotted briefly in her room at the clinic yesterday. Well, the first day she’d really been aware of her surroundings. He could’ve visited her every day the past week and she wouldn’t have remembered.

  Glory stood up, clutching her hands into fists, wishing she hadn’t followed the impulse to put on Mirren’s shirt. She felt exposed with Will in a way she hadn’t with Mirren, which was odd.

  Mirren and Aidan had something old-world about them, as had most of the vampires she’d encountered among Matthias’s acquaintances. Not Will. He could pass for a wealthy twenty-first-century college student, from the style of his hair, moussed and intentionally tousled, to the golden-brown sweater that matched his eyes, to the perfectly pressed black slacks that hit the tops of his stylish black lace-ups at the right point.

  The type of guy who’d never give someone like Glory a second glance, in other words. She’d sold beer to plenty of them at the Circle K, where they would stock up before driving back to college over in Athens.

  He was grinning at Mirren. “Did I interrupt dinner?” He stared pointedly at Glory’s legs. “Or something else?”

  “I’ve gotta go on patrol.” Mirren grabbed his keys off the sofa table, unlocked a cabinet, and pulled out a monster-size handgun and shoulder holster, which he strapped on with practiced speed. Reaching back in the cabinet, he extracted a pair of handcuffs and clipped them to his belt loop.