by Michele Hauf
“No, you didn’t have to. It wasn’t force. I’m a slayer. Your enemy!”
“Yes.” He tilted my head up and brushed his thumb over my mouth. “I had to do it, or we would have never danced again.”
Inhaling, I stepped closer to him, and he clasped my hand, drawing us into a snug tango embrace. We stepped minutely, our faces tilted into one another. His breath stealing mine. Our chests crushed together. My thigh caressed his.
“Kiss me,” I said.
When a woman asks a man for a kiss, no fool would refuse. I was not that fool. Even if it did disturb me I was kissing the woman who had just held a stake to my heart. She seemed determined to accomplish her deadly task. Just … not right now.
I could deal with that.
Though we’d stopped moving in a dance embrace, we were still performing the tango. I savored the tango’s dance of emotions between love and hate, joy and pain, even the middle ground of like and disinterest.
Veronica’s mouth had been made to fit mine. I could not get enough of her taste, her soft sighing moans, that supple body rubbing against mine.
I pushed her against the wall, drawing my hands up her arms and pinning her wrists gently above her head. I could not resist the need to own her, to show her I could take control at any moment, no matter the danger she presented.
She twined her leg along mine, drawing the hard toe of her high heel up my shin. My fingers played across the silken black stocking that had been revealed by the rip in her dress.
Mercy. It had been too long since a woman had blasted my discretion to hell. Had made me want her despite the ridiculous clash of our natures. We were not meant to share such an embrace.
Only fools tempted the devil Himself. I made a point of avoiding that dark prince. Yet I suspected he would get a chuckle at our expense.
I slid the sleeve from Veronica’s shoulder, and marked the newly exposed skin with kisses. So soft there, scented with cherries and vanilla. My fangs descended, wanting their due, so I closed my mouth to prevent cutting her flesh.
My dangerous dancer arched toward me. Silently she said, “It’s okay, continue.”
And when I moved my mouth across the soft mound of her breast, she tilted back her head. I dashed my tongue behind the dress and licked her nipple. Her moan accompanied a deft move as she hooked her ankle behind my calf, anchoring herself to me.
Be damned wicked memories, I could not leave her alone tonight. The moon was still high in the sky. It would not be daylight for hours.
I swept Veronica into my arms. Without a word, our gazes agreed. This embrace would not end.
CHAPTER FOUR
MOONLIGHT PERMEATED the thin white sheers in my bedroom. I don’t like sleeping in complete darkness. The cold light found my lover’s skin and dazzled upon it. I slipped off Alexandre’s shirt and let it drop as we walked—me backward—toward the bed. This dance step excited me and at the same time made me anxious.
A vampire stood in my bedroom. A vampire kissed my neck. His fingers glided over the shoulders of my dress, shoving down the spangled fabric. His mouth followed the path of his fingers, moving those dangerous fangs away from my neck.
A relief. Yet I knew a vampire could bite a person anywhere. Blood shimmied through my veins, warming and flushing my skin. But would it excite him a little too much?
Distracting myself from the unknown, I ran my palms down his bare chest. “You are so beautiful.” The hard ridges of his muscles pulsed.
“Men are not beautiful,” he whispered against my breast. He moved my arm back, which was all it took to allow the dress to slide from my breasts, over my hips, and to the floor. “Only women can touch beauty. And you are a goddess, Veronica.”
“I mean you’re a wondrous thing to look at.” Scooching up onto the bed, I tugged him to me and bracketed his hips with my knees. I wore but the silk thigh stockings. “Do you work out?”
“As you have seen, I dance.”
“Dancing does not do this.” I swept another appreciative palm over his rigid abs. “How long have you danced?”
He dipped his head to my breast and tongued my nipple. Hot and firm, his tongue flicked rapidly, making me squirm and I couldn’t stop a moan.
“Decades,” he murmured. “It takes me away from the world. I can think of nothing but the movement when I dance. How long have you danced?”
“My father taught me when I was young.” I bowed my head to the top of his and closed my eyes, shuddering as his attentions stirred the core of me. “We dance for the same reason—to be taken away.”
“I can take you away now.” He licked down my stomach, cupping both my breasts. “Spread your legs, Veronica. Let me kiss you there.”
My fingers slipped through his hair, grasping and wondering if I should stop his explorations. Always that nervous twitter when a man kisses you so intimately. But the first strike of his tongue between my legs branded me.
I was his. This not-so-expert slayer was making love with her prey. And it wasn’t a trick to lure him into a trap.
Or maybe this was his trick, to lull me into a state of ignorant bliss. And then … he would pierce me with his fangs and destroy me.
My life was already marked for early expiration. If I was going to go, I choose the vampire’s bite. Please. And make it slow, painful and so, so delicious.
Sex and biting go hand in hand. I rarely enjoyed one without the other. When I did bite without considering sex it was usually a quick, necessary extraction from a random person in a dark alley. Sex with strangers can get tedious if you have to persuade them to forget the bite before sending them on their way home.
I had no intention of enthralling Veronica’s mind. It would be a lie. A wicked manipulation she did not deserve. I cared too much for her. Though we had only been in contact a few days, I’d thought about her every waking moment in the preceding weeks when she’d been tracking me.
I was already in love with her accidental bravery, her misplaced daring. Her desperate desire to make a kill to prove—well, what, I wasn’t sure. She was no slayer, yet I felt this kill would prove symbolic to her somehow.
To steal her lifeblood now would be a cruel victory. I didn’t need it. I wanted to taste Veronica’s blood, but it could wait. Tonight, was for sealing us in an unbreakable hold no dancer could resist.
I willed my fangs up so I would not risk cutting her flesh. Once I tasted blood, I would not be so in control of my dark hungers.
She moaned sweetly at my command. Her body slicked beneath my tongue as I tasted every inch of skin seasoned with cherries, vanilla, salt and a hint of smoke from the milonga. I devoured every undulating muscle the tango had honed, and every soft curve dancing could not steal from her femininity.
I felt her trace the scar that ran from the side of my neck and around back. “I didn’t think a vampire could scar. What’s it from?”
“Not a good memory.”
“You’d rather not talk about it?”
“Not now, Veronica. Only us tonight … nothing dismal. Mmm …” I traced my tongue along her thigh. Her stomach was soft, rounded, so sweet.
“You won’t …” she suddenly said, as I kissed beneath her breast.
I knew what she dared not ask. “No, lover. Not tonight.” I dashed my tongue beneath my upper teeth. Fangs were up. “Does that make you more comfortable?”
Her chest sank as she exhaled. Relief.
Disappointment caused me to pause, my cheek aside her breast. She had accepted me into her bed, but I would ever be a monster to those unlike me.
Yet we monsters were endlessly fascinated by others.
Her fingers tickled through my hair and I smiled against her flesh. “Come here,” she said.
Gliding up alongside her, I moaned as she slid a hand inside my trousers. I flicked open the fly and kicked the pants off my legs.
“So hard,” she whispered aside my ear, as her fingers explored me. “And thick. I’m not sure …”
“We will fi
t,” I reassured, but took the surprise in her tone as a compliment. “We were made to dance with one another, Veronica.”
Her leg wrapped around behind my hips, and I slid to press my erection against her mons. Already I shuddered with imminent release. The intimate shape of our hold could be duplicated on the dance floor, she following my lead, her hand about my neck to confirm or deny what I asked of her.
With one roll of my torso, I entered her slowly, gauging her whimpers and gasps so I would not be too rough. I became the follower, taking her lead. A tango beat pulsed in my blood, daring me further.
Slowly, ever deeper, I found the core of her. Hugged so tightly I had barely to move. Our breathing, heavy and frantic, strummed muscles and played her inner walls, clasping, holding, winning.
I cried out and stiffened above her. Fingernails raked my chest, gouging sweet pain in the wake of delicious triumph. And as my climax fluttered away Veronica’s body arched up toward me, and she tumbled over the edge. The intensity of her surrender stole me into her realm.
I wished to never leave.
“Veronica,” I whispered, and kissed her mouth. My fangs had descended again and I grazed them along her jaw. “You have claimed me.”
CHAPTER FIVE
WAKING ABRUPTLY, I slid off the bed, my bare feet landing on the cool ceramic tile. I always come awake ready to hit the pavement. Caffeine has never been a part of my lexicon.
I glanced to the bed. He lay so still. His gorgeous body was visible now that my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Arms folded above his head on the pillow, his length stretched at an angle across the mattress. No sheet covered him. The temptation to glide my fingers down the hard plane of his stomach and touch the now-soft part of him that had impaled me earlier twitched my fingers.
Indeed, we had fit together perfectly, even despite my apprehensions. I’d never experienced lovemaking like that before. So intense, the man utterly focused on my needs. And to feel him climax within me had been amazing.
It was an exquisite going away present—for both of us.
Tiptoeing through the shadows drawn across the floor by the slatted blinds, I glanced to the clock: 4:00 a.m. The sun wasn’t due for a few hours. I had plenty of time.
But Alexandre did not.
Out in the living room, the wooden stake lay on the floor by my backpack. It was solid in my grip. A real weapon I had been trained to use. And this vampire did not intimidate me as those two in the alley had.
Finally I would have closure. A girl couldn’t say goodbye without putting a few things in order, and I had a strange desire to not leave this world without a farewell. I needed to do some good first.
Back in the bedroom, I stood over the bed listening for signs of life, a quiet snore. Alexandre breathed, but he lay still, as if marble. It was creepy until I glided my eyes down his gorgeous torso. Those buff abs and solidas-rock muscles—no. I’d done admiration.
This man was a vampire. He had … immortality. Something I could never touch. That was not fair.
Breaths racing, I raised the stake above my head with both hands. I leaned forward, preparing to plunge it through flesh and muscle to burst the heart.
If he were to suddenly open his eyes and look right at me, it would devastate me. Like a scene from some horror movie gone bad. But he didn’t. The vampire wasn’t aware death loomed over him.
My fingers twisted around the wood, tightening. Sweat warmed my grasp. I closed my eyes.
“Goodbye,” I whispered, and lunged—my swing backward, away from the bed. I tossed the stake aside and ran from the room.
Vampires need little sleep. I usually only drift off after great sex. So it didn’t surprise me to wake in a strange bed. The lingering scent of Veronica’s perfume calmed any rising apprehensions.
What did surprise me was the wooden stake lying next to my hip. I startled upright and grabbed the thing, wielding it as if to stab. Veronica wasn’t in the room, but she must have been here.
Had she been going to stake me?
I swiped a hand down my face and swung my legs over the side of the bed. My trousers were close and I pulled them on. I zipped and buttoned them, but didn’t bother with my shirt.
A glance out the window showed me that I had about an hour to get home before the sun rose. I could do sunlight in small increments. It wasn’t as though when I stepped into sun I’d burst into flames. But I did burn, quickly.
Crying led me into the living room. She sat near the floor-to-ceiling window, her head against the glass. Tears spattered the glass like raindrops.
I squatted next to her, but felt words were inappropriate. I displayed the stake before her. She grabbed it from me and threw it across the room. It clattered against the opposite wall.
“I was going to kill you. All right?” she said on huffing breaths. “Don’t you hate me?”
“But you did not.”
“I couldn’t. I … I think I really care about you.”
Taken aback at that confession, both of us.
“And besides, I can’t do this,” she said, her lip trembling. “It was supposed to make me feel better. To allow me to reclaim my control before it was lost. And I was supposed to do something good for others before I … well … But staking you? No, that’s not good. You’re no threat. And I am not a killer.”
“Something good?” She made some sense, but she was rambling in a frantic emotional tirade. She hid something from me. I’d sensed it as we’d danced. She was too tense, not completely prepared to surrender. “Why do you have to do something good before …?”
She nestled her head to my chest and I dragged her onto my lap. Leaning against the window I held her, naked and warm. I wanted to kiss her, to stroke her soft skin, and begin making love again. But I would not toy with the obvious pain I sensed she felt.
“I’m dying,” she said softly. Now the tears had stopped. She spoke plainly but slowly. “Huntington’s disease. Soon it’ll affect my dancing because it attacks the muscles, and it kills very quickly following that. There’s no cure.”
I hugged her tightly, not wanting to give her up to anything unseen or visible. The world could be very cruel to mortals.
“For a year I’ve been training to be a slayer. A man approached me after a support group meeting. He told me about vampires, and proved to me they exist. He said I could do a good thing by exterminating them. That they harmed mortals. And … it was a means to kill that which I couldn’t have.”
“Eternity,” I said.
My heart sunk in my chest. I understood nothing about fatal diseases. But with modern medicine could they not cure everything? Why had this gorgeous woman been chosen for an early death? Didn’t seem fair.
And yet another woman I had known had been chosen for the same fate. That hadn’t been fair, either.
I clenched a fist against Veronica’s stomach. Despite best intentions to forget everything, my past had just walked back into my life.
She lifted her head and stared into my eyes. “Alexandre, you changed me. Dancing with you. Making love. You’re so giving. You’re not a monster.”
“I try not to be.”
“I was only taught vampires are monsters. Some slayer I turned out to be, eh?”
“The stake lies a few feet away.”
“Forget the stake. I’ve been told I have a year to live. If I could dance every day with you, that would make dying easier.”
“No, please, you cannot …” I couldn’t say it. I would not. She needed strength. “I will be waiting for you on the dance floor every night, Veronica. Promise.”
CHAPTER SIX
WHAT HAD I done wrong? This man was supposed to be my enemy. An enemy to mortals who walked the streets, warm blood gushing through their veins. Yet he hadn’t bitten me, despite the fact I knew his fangs had been down when we’d made love.
If he did bite me, could he give me the eternity my disease would steal from me?
I couldn’t think like that. No mortal had eternity. An
d I didn’t want what the vampire had.
Or did I?
“I would offer to change your future,” Alexandre whispered.
He stroked a curl of hair from my cheek. The attention was so personal, so genuine. He wanted to be here, and I couldn’t imagine him giving anyone else such intense consideration.
“But I would not wish the life I have on anyone. Life is what you are given. To change you would be—”
“Cheating,” I finished. “I don’t want to be a vampire, Alexandre. I don’t think. You … didn’t bite me last night when we were making love. Is it because you had no desire to?”
“Veronica, I desire everything about you. Your lips, your body, your sweet, strained moans—and your blood. But I don’t need to drink more than once a week. I wanted you to feel safe with me, because you are.”
“But isn’t it a sex thing? I was taught sex and biting go hand in hand with vampires.”
“Most of the time, yes, but not always. And when I don’t bite you, yet make love to your entire body, it is so delicious. My focus is only on you, not on fulfilling my wants.”
“That was some damn good sex.” I turned in his embrace and put my bare feet on the window.
Completely naked, I was comfortable melting against him. So much had been taken from me with my diagnosis. I’d didn’t worry about the “living every moment to the hilt” thing so much as I mourned never having had a fulfilling and loving relationship with a man.
The disease made me feel unlovable, unattractive and disposable. Yet sitting here in Alexandre’s embrace I’d never felt so alive and noticed before. I arched my back, lifting my breasts, because I felt sexy, and it was an amazing release of my inhibitions.
“Do you need to leave soon?” I wondered.
“Yes.” He caressed my breast and kissed my shoulder. “But let’s talk until I must rush away from you. I like holding you like this. Is … your condition inherited? Or was it something you caught?”
