by Karen Chance
Yet his only movement was to draw me nearer, his hands sliding down my sides to grasp my hips. It left us close, so close, as I never was with any of them, never could be, because being this near meant violence, meant fear, meant death for one of us. It always had and it always would, and there was no goddamned other way it could be. And yet he was still there, hard and hot and so close….
So close, the scent of her, wild and comforting at once, enveloped him. He needed to stop this; he needed to leave. If he immersed himself in that scent, grew to depend on it, need it, it would starve him when it was gone.
He was already too hungry as it was.
Shut up, I thought savagely. I didn’t want one of Louis-Cesare’s random memories intruding, especially not of some other woman. Not here, not now. This was mine.
I deliberately slipped, falling backward onto the bed and dragging him down on top of me. “Dorina—”
“You’re breathing heavy.”
“Vampires don’t breathe.”
I pressed up against him, and his breath caught in his throat. “Guess you’re right,” I said, and flipped him.
The high slit made it easy to straddle him. So I did, before running my hands down to the waist of his trousers again, and tugging his shirt loose. I liked the way his hands clenched on my arms as I unfastened his belt, the delightful tensing as my fingers slipped just inside his trousers.
He did nothing to help me, his own hands curved around my waist, softly stroking my skin through the silk. But he didn’t stop me, either. My hands smoothed around his hips, my fingers finding the dimples at the base of his spine.
They were a frivolous feature on such a body, like that overabundant fall of hair that he took such pains to keep in check, or the absurdly long lashes on that strong-boned face. It was as if his body had somehow known that the man was going to be a pile of contradictions, and had woven them into him, skin and bone and flesh. I stroked the small indentations lightly, feeling the muscles tighten underneath my tender exploration, before moving on.
A sweep of sinfully rich lashes against moon pale skin.
A coy look, a flash of white teeth, as she slowly backed
down his body. He needed to end this. But she was touching
him, and it felt so good, just this, even this. More was
going to kill him, and he wanted it, fiercely.
Louis-Cesare stared as if mesmerized as I slowly bent lower, close enough that he could feel my warm breath on him, yet he still didn’t move, didn’t try to stop me. I decided that was as much of an invitation as I was likely to get. The dark tailored slacks were skin-warm under my lips as I bent forward, mouthing the soft material and the hardness just beneath.
He wasn’t wearing anything under those trousers, and the wool was so fine that it felt like silk, more an enticement than a barrier. I outlined him with my tongue for a moment, watching with a kind of fascination as the trousers tightened impressively. It was an addictive kind of power, knowing I was doing this to him, shaping his body the way I wanted. I gave the tiniest of bites, and he made a sharp, startled sound and jumped against my lips.
“Dorina.” He sounded a little strangled.
“Don’t rush me,” I admonished. “You had your turn.”
He breathed in sharply. “I was trying to relax you!”
“Oh, is that what you were doing?” I asked, amused.
“Yes!”
“All right.” I let him have the lie. “Now shut up and let me return the favor.”
I wanted to torment him some more, but he was so teasingly close. My throat ached with wanting him; my tongue craved the intimacy of flesh. I slowly pulled down the zipper and peeled back the smooth material, freeing him. The sound he made as the cool air hit him was almost unbearably sensual. But not as much as the sight of him, thick and long and straight and perfect.
He was near enough for his scent to fill my senses, a deep, rich musk that made me lean in, suddenly hungry. Pure silk slid against my cheek. I sighed across him, watching him leap helplessly.
The seconds dripped like honey as she leaned closer, her thumbs settling against his hip bones, and he had all the time in the world to move away. But he didn’t. He was too busy watching her eyes go dreamy and half-closed, the usual smirk fading and becoming something softer, something just for him.
I ran my tongue over my lips, and he immediately went from tense to rigid. I glanced up and saw that his eyes had turned the color of polished silver, and I hadn’t even touched him yet. I decided it was time to rectify that. One hand slowly caressed his hip, while the other dragged across warm skin to wrap around him.
A faint flush darkened his cheeks, his breath caught and his pulse went from quick to frantic. I could feel it under my hand, a rapid staccato beat that seemed to follow my slowly gliding fingers. Like the blush of his skin, rose and gold, ebbing and flowing as I willed it.
I knew what he wanted, what his body craved, and I deliberately didn’t give it to him. I teased him instead with light butterfly touches, too gentle, too slow, until his thighs were granite and his hands were fisting at his sides. He was beautiful like this. The Senate’s greatest warrior, helpless in my hands.
Ray was safely away by now, but I didn’t care. I wanted to see Louis-Cesare lose control for once, wanted to watch the tension in those proud features drain away, wanted to remember this. Dangerous game, a disconnected voice murmured in the back of my mind, but I pushed it aside. He jumped again, and this time, I caught him with my mouth.
A long, shuddering breath rushed past tight lips, and his head fell back.
One of my hands curved around his taut backside, the other circled warm satin, as the smooth solidity of him slid against my tongue. He was firm and slightly resistant, warm, with faint traces of salt and Louis-Cesare. Delicious.
My tongue slowly circled the tip, caressing him softly, letting him squirm. I flicked the sweet spot once, twice with the end of my tongue, then ran it up the side. My hand wandered backward, tracing a featherlight path to the velvet globes contracted high against his body. I teased and tormented, stroked and fondled, while my tongue swirled languidly around him.
Flashes of intense sensation seared up his spine and coiled in his belly, regular as clockwork and then deliberately arrhythmic as she modified her stroke to torture him anew. He shivered at the slight, purposeful rake of teeth, the edge of danger driving his need higher. Dieu, a man could die from this, die and not care….
His thoughts leaked through in pieces, and I wasn’t worried about them being memories, not anymore. They were too in tune with the expressions flitting across that changeable face. We’d shared something like this before, some emotional connection I didn’t understand, almost like the mind-speak of the vampires. Only I’d never been able to do that with anyone else.
Normally it would have intrigued me, but right now I wasn’t too concerned.
I swallowed, abruptly taking him deep, my lips stretched tight around the width of him. His hips jerked up reflexively, trying not to thrust, trying to stay in control when he so clearly wasn’t. I hummed deliberately, wanting to see how crazy I could drive him, and I was rewarded with a groan that sent my own pulse racing.
Pulling back, I let him go with maddening slowness, allowing him to feel the drag of my tongue along his whole length. I paused for a long moment, with just the tip of him under my lips, reveling in the feel of the tremors that rippled under my hands. I let the anticipation build, caressing him softly with just the tip of my tongue.
“Dorina, please—” It sounded strangely like a prayer.
I let him squirm for a few moments longer. It felt so damn good to hear him begging in whispers and moans when I was the one getting what I wanted. And then, with no warning, I suddenly slid all the way back down.
The sound he made that time was really quite satisfying.
My head bobbed a few times, until I found a dreamy sort of rhythm, drinking in the soft sounds he made. And everything seem
ed to affect him. The soft brush of my hair against his thigh brought on a shudder, the feel of my teeth, scraping oh so carefully along his length, made him groan, the sight of me completely embracing him turned his eyes wild.
And then I wasn’t able to think anymore, my own need spiraling up to envelop me. I heard when he finally broke, when he cried out my name, when he gripped the bed frame hard enough to crack it. But it was distant.
I looked up to find his eyes closed, his head thrown back, his face more vulnerable than I’d ever seen it. I stared for a long moment, wanting to memorize that expression. For once, it wasn’t something gleaned from a tumbled mass of memories, a stolen glimpse into someone else’s pleasure. It was something we’d made together, something new and uniquely mine.
A moment later I was down the fire escape with Ray and running flat out for the car, my heart thundering in my ears.
CHAPTER 18
I didn’t intend to end up drunk in a seedy dive. It was pretty cliché, after all, but there are times when the only response to life’s little jokes is to get hammered. And if this wasn’t the greatest joke ever, I didn’t know what was.
There’s a bar downtown that’s so well-known to the regulars that it doesn’t need a sign. Just as well, since it’s named after the owner and there was no way that many syllables would fit. I left Ray’s body in the back of the car, because if Cheung found it here, good luck to him. The garage was guarded by a couple of demons who really loved thieves—preferably seared with a shot of tequila.
I took the duffel in with me. After everything I’d been through to get it, there was no way it was leaving my sight. Possibly ever.
I grabbed my usual booth in the back, under a suspended TV that flickered blue light across the tabletop. It was showing one of the telenovelas the bartender loved. He wandered over after a minute and put down my usual, beer. “Nice dress.”
“The reserve, Leo,” I told him, scowling. There was nothing on the regular menu that was going to give me the burn I needed.
The shaggy eyebrows went up, but he didn’t say anything, just took the bottle away and shambled into the back.
Claire was going to be worried. It was going on sixteen hours since I’d left the house, and I needed to call her. I also needed to get the ball rolling with Elyas, or at least make the attempt. But I didn’t want to do either. I didn’t want to think at all. I wanted to keep drinking until I was so staggeringly smashed that I couldn’t remember how stupid I’d been.
But I wasn’t sure Leo had that much in stock.
He returned and sat a small blue bottle on the table in front of me. I drank the contents straight, keeping pace for three shots with the cigarettes a guy at the bar was chain-smoking, until I started to feel the burn. Then I slowed down and stared at the TV without seeing it.
It was just the novelty of it, I told myself. A vampire who didn’t act like I might go for his throat at any minute was a new experience, much less one who talked to me like a person, who held me like I might be fragile and who bought me silly, soft clothing, like he wanted to know how it felt against my skin….
I decided the whole not-thinking thing had been the best plan, after all.
Another inch gone and the glass hit the table, tipped and rolled off the edge. Leo slid into the opposite seat. “Want to talk about it?”
“No. Want to get wasted.” I started to retrieve my errant glass, but succeeded only in hitting my forehead on the very hard tabletop.
“I think you’re already there,” he told me, and pushed my hair out of my eyes. His face was craggy and scarred, but his mouth was soft, the eyes assessing my condition without judgment. “If you were anyone else, I’d say it was man trouble.”
“He’s not a man.” Not anymore.
Leo raised those caterpillar eyebrows. “Some Weres can be very nice.”
“Not Were, either.” I took a drink straight from the bottle and wondered why I hadn’t gone home to get shit-faced. Oh, yeah. I hadn’t wanted to drive that far.
“You’re dating a demon?” He leaned forward. “What kind? And don’t tell me it’s one of those damn incubi. They get all the pretty girls.”
Leo was only the first part of a half-hour-long name, but it fit. His type of demon has vaguely leonine features, and he always wore his sandy blond hair long. Like all bartenders, he could be damn talkative, although usually he had more tact than this.
“Just drop it, Leo.”
“I knew it. It is an incubus. Useless damn things—”
I slammed down the bottle. “It’s not a demon, okay? And can I please get drunk in peace?”
“Not a—Oh, no.” He looked shocked. “You’re not dating a fey. You can’t trust those bastards, Dory. Ask anybody.”
“Just because they overcharge you for your supply—”
“It’s price-gouging,” he said resentfully. “They know nobody but fey can make the stuff, so they set the price as whatever they want and we damn well have to pay! You don’t want to have dealings with them.”
“Funny thing—they say the same about demons. And he’s not fey.”
Leo wrinkled his massive forehead. “Not human, Were, demon or fey? What’s left?”
“Hey, once you go vamp, you never go back,” Ray said from the depths of the duffel.
Leo jumped. “What the—”
Something buzzed against my hip. It was my phone, wedged up against me inside the duffel bag. I almost didn’t answer it, but it was Mircea, and I was going to have to talk to him sooner or later. Considering how that usually went when I was sober, I decided to try it drunk for once.
“You’re dating a vampire?” Leo asked, looking shocked.
“No, just boinking,” Ray told him.
“I’m not—That’s not even a word,” I told him, and hit TALK.
“Dorina?” Mircea wasn’t putting so much effort into the dulcet tones this time, I noticed.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you?”
“Downtown. Leolintricallus—something or other. It goes on for a while.”
“We get an additional syllable for every century we live,” Leo said, frowning. “Although I never thought I’d live long enough to see this. What the heaven were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t.”
“That’s clear enough!”
Great. The only thing worse than falling for a vamp would be having Leo tell everyone I’d fallen for a vamp. “Look, Leo, it’s not what you—”
“Dorina!” Mircea’s voice snapped.
“You sound annoyed.”
“It would not be without cause!”
“What now?” I asked wearily.
“Point number one,” he said grimly.
“Wait. There are points?”
“You do not tell me you are being chased by Hounds, and that you will call me back and then fail to do so! You have not answered your telephone for the majority of the evening!”
“I didn’t have it for the majority of the—”
“Point number two: you have free access to my properties, but I would very much appreciate it if in future my bedrooms were off-limits!”
“Woah. You did the boinking in your dad’s bedroom?” Leo looked vaguely impressed.
“Stop eavesdropping!”
“Are you kidding me? Your life is way better than anything on the soaps lately.”
“Dorina.” It sounded like Mircea might be grinding his teeth.
“Is there a point number three?” I asked. “Because you’re interfering with my drinking here.”
“Yes. If it will not inconvenience you too greatly, I should like to speak to Louis-Cesare.”
“Sorry. You missed him.”
“And yet Horatiu tells me he recently left tracking you.”
“Tracking?” I asked, getting a sinking feeling.
I jerked open the duffel, and there it was, buzzing softly. I stared at it for a moment in disbelief. He’d tagged me. The son of a bitch had tagged me with my own damn c
harm.
“I’m going to have to call you back,” I said grimly, clicked the phone shut and jumped up—only to find myself staring into a pair of burning blue eyes.
“Uh-oh,” Ray muttered.
Louis-Cesare didn’t say anything, unless you count breathing heavily.
“Look, this isn’t what you think,” I said, getting a solid grip on the duffel. “I wanted to get Ray away so we could talk—”
“There is nothing to say. You will return the vampire to me. Immediately.” His tone might have been that of a king talking to a peasant. It made me quietly furious.
“I’m not one of your servants,” I snapped. “You can’t give me orders. And if you’d listen for a minute, you’d learn why you don’t want to take Ray to Elyas.”
“I know precisely what I want to do.”
“Okay, then while you’re up there, you might want to ask him what he was doing at the club just before the fey was found murdered,” I said sarcastically. “And why Ray thinks he already has the rune, and intends to keep it and Christine. You might want to ask why he’s been playing you!”
There was silence for a moment. “An excellent idea,” Louis-Cesare said softly. And disappeared.
I stood there for a second, staring stupidly at empty space. I’d seen vamps move quickly before, but that was just ridiculous. And then I snatched up the duffel and headed out the door.
“What are you doing?” Ray demanded as I dashed across the garage floor, stabbing at the key fob repeatedly with my thumb.
“Going back.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Not at the moment.” I slid into the seat, threw him on the passenger side and started the engine, all in one motion. Louis-Cesare was on foot; if I didn’t hit any traffic, maybe there was a chance—
“You could have fooled me!” Ray said as we tore out of the garage on burning rubber. “When two first-level masters are determined to rip into each other, the only sane place to be is somewhere else!”
