by Debra Dunbar
“I want you,” I gasped, finally able to speak. “Now, inside me.”
“Not yet.” Twice more he brought me over the edge before he worked his way back up my body, grabbing my waist and rolling so I sprawled on top of him.
“Put your equestrian skills to good use, woman.” He grinned, slapping me lightly on the ass. I was still floating, feeling like a pool of liquefied Jell-O, but I squealed at the smack then obliged, spreading my thighs, straddling him and lowering myself downward. The fullness of him inside me, the smoothness of his dark skin against my hands was intoxicating. I angled my pelvis forward and watched a muscle twitch in his jaw. Slowly I moved, rocking my hips as I raised and lowered myself, heat washing over me at the feeling of him so deep within me. With each motion of my hips, I watched. As enjoyable as it was for me, the way his body responded, the smoldering, hungry look in his eyes did just as much to turn me on as the feel of him inside me. My pace increased, grew more erratic as our breathing turned jagged, then suddenly his hands grabbed my hips just below the bruise and he drove the rhythm, pounding into me with each thrust. I felt him swell within me, his hands holding me tight against him. He closed his eyes, head back, every muscle in his body tense. Then he came with a jerk of his hips, letting out the breath he’d been holding. My body convulsed in return, trembling as I came.
I draped forward to lay on top of him, feeling his chest rise and fall with each breath, noticing the lack of a heartbeat, the coolness of his skin against mine. He twitched inside me and I smiled, reluctant to let him go. His hands caressed their way up my side to tangle in my hair. Twisting it into his fist, he pulled my face to the side and traced the pulse in my neck with the other finger.
“Someday if you offer again, I will take this.” His fingers moved to touch my bottom lip. “But tonight, I intend to take everything else you’ll offer me.”
I smiled against his finger, knowing that I intended to offer him every square inch of myself, and that I also intended to demand the same from him.
Chapter 15
Dario couldn’t sleep. He hadn’t slept for over three hundred years, but it was times like this, when he watched humans slumber, that he missed it most. It always seemed as if all the cares of the world had fallen away, leaving them in a sweet state of grace as they dreamed.
Aria snuggled closer, her lashes dark against her pale skin, her hair a snarled mess across the sheets. He tightened his arms around her, breathing in the scent of her hair and skin. She was so warm. He’d forgotten what it felt like to be warm. He wished he could doze off with her, wake to sunlight spilling through the windows, watch her rub the sleep from her eyes.
But he needed to leave. It was two hours until dawn, and what he dreaded could be put off no longer. Carefully he untangled his limbs from hers, easing out of the bed, watching her sleep for a few moments before tucking a blanket around her and grabbing his clothes and shoes from the floor. Halfway to the bedroom door he paused and came back, scooping the torn shirt and bra off the floor.
It was funny, as if he were a teenage boy stealing the underwear of his first lover to remember her by, but if he couldn’t awaken by her side, at least he’d return to life at dusk surrounded by her scent. With a grin he thought that if she’d been wearing underwear tonight, he would have taken them too.
He tiptoed into the main room of her apartment, and dressed out there, thankful he could see just as well in the darkness of night as he’d previously been able to do during the day. Then with a pang of longing, he looked around once more before leaving. Sentimental fool. It wasn’t like he was leaving forever. He’d see her after sunset. Still, he hated being dead during the day, not knowing what she was doing, if she was in trouble or not. He wouldn’t know until he awoke. And during the daylight hours he was completely unable to help her if she needed him.
The warm ease that had filled his heart began to chill as he drove to Leonora’s, vanishing by the time he pulled into her driveway and greeted the door guards. Tonight it was Madeline and Opal, the younger girl looking bored as she leaned against a porch pillar and lit a cigarette.
“How are they?” he asked Madeline.
“Worse. We have over fifty now. We’ve been putting two or three in everyone’s houses, but we’re running out of cages.” She shot a quick glance at Opal and lowered her voice, as if the other vampire couldn’t hear a pin drop at twenty yards. “Leonora is insisting on continuing with this ridiculous feast tomorrow night. Half our Balaj might be crazed with the hunger, but she won’t cancel.”
“She needs to save face. If she cancels Simon won’t wait to attack. The best we can do is try to keep it from spreading and put on a good show. One more night then they’ll be gone and we can mourn.”
“How do we keep it from spreading?” Madeline snapped. “After last night we screened all the donors. None of them had so much as a head cold. How are we getting sick? How?”
“Maybe there’s a dormancy period—either in the humans or in us or both. All we can do is feed as little as possible and ride it out.”
“Vampires don’t get sick. We don’t catch illness or disease from humans. If this were just a few of our family losing control of their hunger, we could ride it out. Some extra feedings, monitoring their intake, perhaps sacrifice a few select humans so they can safely gorge themselves and they’d be fine by the next nightfall. This…I don’t know how to ride this out.”
“I don’t either,” he admitted.
The other vampire glanced toward the doorway, her eyes lingering with affection on Opal. “She’s so young. I look at the ones who are twenty, fifty, even seventy years turned and I worry they’ll be next. Immortality, but only for fifty years. I don’t want that for them. I don’t want it for our older brothers and sisters either, but I especially don’t want to see the young ones die.”
He knew what she meant. His first thought upon hearing that twenty more had been infected had been for Bella. He’d driven by to check on her just to be sure she was okay before he went to meet Aria.
“The Templar says there is a plague demon in town. Given what she’s told me, I think maybe he’s to blame. When she identifies and banishes him, whatever this is should stop spreading.”
“When? I know what you’re here to do. We can’t afford to lose three quarters of our Balaj because it takes your Templar a week to hunt down this demon.”
“Probably another day or two. Until then we need to think if there is anything linking those who have become ill. Were their donors from the same area? Did their donors eat at the same places? This demon seems to like food poisoning. The human donors could be carriers, like the rats spreading bubonic plague.”
Madeline sighed and jerked her head toward the door. “Pierre and Michael are barely coherent right now. All they do is scream and beg. Rosa went in to disable them about midnight and Pierre actually attacked her. Bit her and darn near chewed her arm off.”
Dario froze. “Is she okay?”
The other vampire snorted. “She’ll live. You almost had one less vampire to put down, though.”
“I want her isolated, under watch. I don’t know if this thing can spread vampire to vampire, and I don’t want to take any chances.”
Madeline’s eyes widened. “Seriously? Rosa won’t accept that order unless it comes from Leonora. You know how she is.”
Yes, he did know Rosa. And yes, Madeline was right. Dario climbed the stairs, delaying the horrible task before him to find the Mistress. She was in the library, half-reclining on a chaise lounge with five human women lined up in front of her. For a second he thought she was picking out a donor for a late snack, but he quickly realized the women were modeling clothing—skimpy fetish attire the Mistress wanted the humans to wear at the feast.
At least she wouldn’t insist Aria wear such a ridiculous outfit, although his heart sank as he realized that Leonora would once more want all of her Balaj in leather. Maybe he could claim the god-awful tight black leather pants were at the cleaners,
or that someone had stolen them, or they’d been ruined somehow.
“Pierre bit and mauled Rosa,” he blurted out, never able to stand on ceremony with Leonora. Yes, she was at least a hundred years older than he was, but they’d become close before they’d left Haiti, and she’d had his back more than once. It was hard to think of her as his Mistress when she’d always seemed more like a slightly annoying older sister.
“Yes, I know. Maybe she’ll be more careful next time.” She tapped a red fingernail to her crimson lips. “Feathers? The glittery one? Or the studded black leather?”
It was all he could do to keep from rolling his eyes. “Or naked. Saves time undressing them, you know.”
She pouted at him. “Dario, we are not savages. We’ll go with the leather.”
Of course. He watched as she shooed away the women, waiting until they had all left.
“I wanted to thank you for taking care of Marcus last night.” Her voice cracked at the end, then she quickly composed herself. Leonora had turned Marcus. Even if he wasn’t in charge of delivering the Mistress’s justice, Dario would have done that task for her. No one should have to put down their own “child.”
“And now I need to do two more.”
She nodded. “And tomorrow possibly another fifty, or seventy, or one hundred. What is happening? Why are they losing control like this? We let Colette take six donors tonight—six—and she still claims to be starving.”
Dario walked toward her. “There’s a plague demon in town. I think what’s happening might be connected to him. And I’m worried Rosa might be infected since she was bitten. She should be isolated and monitored until tomorrow night just to see if she develops any of the symptoms.”
The mask of indolent excess slipped and Leonora suddenly looked every bit her four hundred years. “Of course. Tell her isolation and we’ll check on her right after sundown to assess if she’s become the same as the others.” The vampire sat up on the couch, putting her head in her hands. “Dario, what are we going to do? I can’t cancel this feast or Simon will be on us like a rabid dog, but I can’t stand to put on a show while my family suffers in cages. I don’t want to sit here and watch those I love die. And I really don’t want to strut around like an arrogant ass while those I love die.” She lifted her head, her dark eyes pleading. “I can’t fiddle while Rome burns. I can’t.”
He sat down beside her. “You have to. Simon and his crew are here already, and the entire Balaj needs you to be confident and flamboyant as always. One night, then he’ll be gone and we can grieve for those we’ve lost. You do what you do best. I’ll do what I do best. Somehow we’ll get through it.”
“Sure you don’t want to slice my head off and take over?” Leonora had joked about this before, but he got the idea she wasn’t completely kidding this time. “Times like this I think I might just welcome oblivion, or even whatever hell has in store for me.”
“No, I don’t want to take over. I didn’t before, and I don’t want to now. Power your way through this problem, as you’ve done a million problems in the past.”
Leonora sighed. “It’s all falling apart. I thought we’d finally made something of ourselves, a Balaj that we could be proud of, one that didn’t overrun their food source or bring the kind of attention that would lead to us being hunted. This feast was my way of flipping Simon off, of showing him we weren’t the same weak Balaj we were forty years ago when we barely managed to take down Aubin.”
Dario put his arm around her broad shoulders and squeezed. “We aren’t weak. We’ll get through this. And I know you’re strong enough to pull us through—all of us. Remember St. Augustine? None of us would be alive today if you hadn’t defied Aubin and got us the heck out of there.”
She laughed. “Fine. I’ll tighten my corset and put on a show just like when Aubin and I were back in Paris. I’ll manage the front section for the feast, and be the face of the Balaj. Can you take responsibility for the garden? I think that’s where we’ll be most vulnerable. Take Balen and Zoe and whoever else you need.”
He nodded. “Where do you want Aria?”
“Keeping Erica safe. And no, she doesn’t have to wear the leather thong like the other humans. She’s got too many scars for that to look good on her. She’s too skinny, anyway.” Leonora shot him a narrowed glance. “You reek of sex, you know. Please tell me you finally bit her. Maybe then you can stop with this foolish obsession of yours.”
“No, I didn’t bite her.” He might as well be honest. One look at Aria tomorrow night and she’d know it anyway. It was one thing to leave his scent all over her, it was another to mark her, to have the undeniable stamp of his ownership running through her blood, clear as the small punctures on her neck, or thigh, would be. He felt his hunger stir at the thought, but that would need to wait. It might need to wait forever.
“I don’t like her.” Leonora pursed her lips in an exaggerated pout. “I don’t like having a Templar hanging around us. I don’t even like her as a regular human.”
He hid a smile. “Well you’re the one who brought her into the necromancer thing.”
“Because you insisted.” She shot him a sideways glance. “I saw how she was digging her claws into you and hoped she’d get killed.”
He knew she didn’t mean it. The Mistress was honest in that she didn’t particularly like Aria, and she worried about the presence of a Templar in their city, but she wouldn’t wish any more sorrow on him than he’d already had. They’d all had more than their fair share of that.
He patted her shoulder and stood. “One night, old girl. Do it for the Balaj.”
For a second she looked lost and tired, then she straightened, thrusting her bosom outward and arched a brow at him. “Everything I do, I do for the Balaj.”
She did. It might not always seem that way and he didn’t always agree with her methods, but her heart was in the right place.
“It’s nearing dawn. I’m going to go down and make sure Pierre and Michael don’t have to suffer any longer.”
She nodded, serious once again. “And I’ll speak with Rosa. She’s more likely to listen to me than to you.”
That was the truth. Dario left the room, pausing at the top of the staircase that led down to the cells. Even from here he could hear the faint sounds of crying, the hoarse begging of a vampire in the agony of starvation. He’d known Pierre and Michael for nearly two hundred years. They were brothers. They were family. And now it was time to say a final goodbye.
Chapter 16
I woke up alone in bed, sun streaming through my windows, pleasantly aching in places I hadn’t ached in years. Every nerve ending tingled, still on edge from last night. Even waking up alone didn’t put a dent in the happy contentment I felt at the moment. I had a demon mark threatening my afterlife. I urgently needed to send this plague demon back to hell before more vampires and humans were infected. I had to move in two weeks and I didn’t have a pickup truck. But, oh I felt good in a sore, muscles-used kind of way; in an endorphin overload kind of way.
I grabbed some clean clothes from my dresser and went to grab a shower ignoring Raven’s white board. My friend could hardly have missed what went on last night, and I’m sure I was in for some serious teasing. Later. After I’d had a shower and coffee.
It was during the shower that I noticed I had a hickey—and that the hickey was on the upper inside of my thigh. Memories of last night rushed through me, and I found myself once again seriously turned on. At least it wasn’t on my neck where I’d have to borrow Brandi’s curling iron mishap excuse at work.
I could ignore the white board no longer, so I grabbed it as I went into the kitchen to make coffee.
Oh. My. God. It was like a porno last night. And he is even better looking naked. The ass on that man—it could launch a thousand ships, I’m telling you.
I wasn’t sure how Helen of Troy would feel having her face compared to Dario’s backside, but I did agree with Raven that he was mighty fine—from the front as well as fro
m the rear.
“It was fun, I’ll admit it. I’m looking forward to doing it again. Tonight hopefully, although we’ve got that stupid feast thing of Leonora’s.”
All I can say is it’s a good thing you’ve got an apartment lined up because the neighbors are probably ringing the landlord’s phone off the hook. I thought the building was going to come down the way you all were banging around in there. And the screaming—you’re lucky the cops didn’t show up, although it would have been funny to see the look on Tremelay’s face.
No, it wouldn’t have been funny. “Speaking of the good detective,” I said, looking down at the beep of my phone and seeing a text from Tremelay.
Irving Blackwell is clean. Not so much as a parking ticket.
Well that was a relief. The new place was a go and everything was all set for my move except for the pickup truck.
When you get up, call me. I need you to meet me this morning.
I texted him back, hoping this wasn’t related to the two humans that Marcus had killed. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to hide the fact that I knew what had happened to them if he started talking to me about missing persons reports from that night.
Nope. It was something different, although Tremelay didn’t specify what. He sent me an address for a coffee shop near the hospital, and asked if I could meet him in an hour. I checked the clock, thinking I should be able to squeeze in a quick visit before I needed to work, if I hustled.
“Sorry,” I told Raven. “Looks like I’ve got to run.
I called Reynard while dressing. Again I was sent to voice mail, so I left a second message and this time told him it was urgent. Then I dialed Tremelay. “What’s up?”
“Oh the usual. Drive by. Overdose in Harbor East that they wanted me to look at just in case. As if I don’t have enough to do.”
