by Chloe Hart
Kit’s own words, spoken glibly out of the inexperience and naiveté of youth, but wasn’t there an element of truth there, even for someone like him?
If he gave in now, there’d be no turning back. He would take Kit with all the savagery in his nature, and even though she would enjoy herself—God, he’d make sure she enjoyed herself more than any mortal woman in the history of the world—it would be a rape. She wasn’t in her right mind and he knew it.
She would know it too, when she came back to her senses.
And she would never, ever forgive him.
Luke pushed Kit away with an abruptness he could apologize for tomorrow. “Sorry, kitten,” he said, striding across the room to the phone on the bedside table.
He dialed the front desk and spoke in a low, hurried voice to the concierge on the other end of the line. Luckily he’d stayed in this neighborhood before and knew exactly where to send the man to get what he needed.
When he hung up the phone Kit was beside him and oh, Christ…now her jeans and boots were gone and he was confronted by curving hips and gorgeous legs and a little triangle of satin and lace.
He tried to push her away, gently, but with a quickness and strength that astonished him Kit hooked her lower leg behind his knee, put her hands against his chest, and shoved. Before he knew what was happening he was falling back onto the bed behind him.
In less than a second she was on top of him, her knees on either side of his hips. He started to use his arms to free himself but she grabbed his wrists and pinned them above his head, and he was amazed to find he couldn’t immediately break her hold.
For a moment he was actually distracted from the fact that she was straddling him by the unexpected strength she was displaying.
Luke Cadris knew a little something about strength. And he knew immediately that the power Kit was showing had nothing to do with the spell she was under. His vampire senses told him that something within her was being unleashed, something that had been there all along, dormant and waiting.
Well, damn.
“You’re strong, Kit. Do you feel how strong you are? It’s not the spell, either. It’s you.”
She frowned at him. “What spell? What are you—no,” she said suddenly. “No more talking. I’m through talking, through waiting.”
She leaned forward, and Luke was almost undone by the feel of her heat against him, the scent of her arousal, and the sight of her beautiful face framed by the short golden hair that swung forward as she came even closer.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” she said softly, and Luke didn’t know where he found the strength to resist her.
“Sorry, angel,” he said. “You’re sexy as hell and you’ve gotten pretty strong all of a sudden—but you don’t have the moves yet.”
With a quick jerk he freed his wrists, and in the next second he’d twisted his way out of the sexiest cage he’d ever been caught in. He got to his feet beside the bed and looked down at her.
Kit rolled onto her back and gazed up at him like a thwarted child. “I don’t understand. I thought you wanted me. Don’t you want me?”
There was bewilderment in her voice as well as sexual frustration, and boy, could he sympathize.
“That’s a trick question,” he said gently. “I want you more than you can possibly imagine, but it’s not happening tonight. You’re under a spell. Daro worked some magic on you so you think you want to sleep with me. And when you wake up in the morning and come to your senses, you’re not going to be happy about it. To use your own phrase, you’re going to be really, really cranky.”
“I’m cranky now.” She squirmed restlessly on the bed, her back arching slightly and her legs falling open.
In spite of his new resolve Luke prayed that his package would arrive soon. It was all very well to have newly discovered self-control, but it probably wasn’t a good idea to test it past the point of endurance.
Kit’s head fell back against the pillows as her hands fisted in the blankets. “You don’t know how this feels, Luke. I need you. It hurts not having you—not having you inside me—”
Luke closed his eyes. Daro would pay for this.
The knock on their door came at last, and Luke went immediately to collect his delivery, going out into the hallway to protect Kit’s privacy and tipping the concierge generously. When he came back inside Kit’s eyes were closed, a little frown of pain on her face, and while it hurt to see her like that it would make his job easier.
In a flash he handcuffed her right wrist to the bedpost.
“What the heck are you doing?” she asked, opening her eyes and glaring at him.
“Just a little insurance, sweetheart. For both of us. Now all we have to do is make it through the next few hours. I can get my own room if that would—”
“No!” she cried out. “Don’t leave me alone. Do you really mean you can’t—you won’t—”
“Can’t and won’t. I’m sorry, Kit. I’ll stay if you want me too, but I’m going to stick to my own bed.” He hesitated a moment, looking down at her. “I’m going to turn the lights off now, all right? And then I’m going to lie down right over there. I’ll be here if you need me…just not in a take-advantage-of-the-ensorcelled-girl kind of way. In a few hours this will all be over.”
He turned out the lights and stretched out on the bed without bothering to take off his clothes or his boots. It was very quiet. For a while, as he stared up at the ceiling in the moonlit darkness—the clouds had blown away in the last hour—he thought that Kit might have fallen asleep. But after some time he heard her voice, low and trembling.
“I hate you,” she said.
He sighed. “I know you do.”
“You set this up, somehow.”
That was too much. “Sure, I planned the whole thing. I had your brother sent to the underworld so you’d come to me for help and we’d go to Daro and he’d cast a lust spell on you so I could watch you writhing like a sex kitten and not take advantage of you. Every vampire’s idea of a good time. Probably the most fun I could have without setting myself on fire.”
There was a long pause. “So you do want me.” Her voice was quiet and almost thoughtful. Luke wondered if the spell was starting to weaken.
He started to give her a flip answer, but instead heard himself say, “Kit, I wasn’t lying when I told you I want you more than you can imagine. I’ve wanted you from the moment you walked through my door. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and from a four hundred year old vampire that’s saying something.”
A slightly longer pause. “Then I don’t understand. Why won’t you take advantage of me? There’s nothing stopping you.”
Maybe the tiredness he was feeling, an unusual phenomenon for him, was making him honest.
“I’m not quite sure myself, Kit. Is there any chance we could stop talking about this?”
He heard her move, and felt rather than saw her turning onto her side to look at him.
“All right,” she said softly.
After that the silence between them remained blessedly unbroken.
Chapter Seven
Kit awoke with pain in her right wrist and sunlight in her eyes.
She blinked, dazzled by the brightness, and then gradually grew used to it until she could focus on the bed next to hers.
It was empty.
Luke had gone to sleep in that bed last night, and now there was no sign of him.
The white sheets and coverlets were almost blinding in the sunlight that streamed through the windows.
She leapt forward instinctively, only to be jerked backwards by the manacle on her wrist. Where was Luke? Had he been lying there, asleep, when the sun came to destroy him? What would happen to him if he were struck by direct sunlight? Would he go up in flames? Turn to ash? She didn’t see any signs of anything like that, but she didn’t see him, either.
“Luke!” she cried out. “Luke!”
The bathroom door burst open and Luke was there, a towel around
his waist and his dark hair dripping onto his bare shoulders.
“What is it, Kit? What’s wrong?”
Relief flooded through her. “I thought you were dead,” she said, shakily.
The vampire looked at her. “Well, actually—”
“Oh, shut up,” she said, feeling herself returning slowly to normal. As she did, she became aware that he was only wearing a towel, and that the body revealed to her gaze was the best looking male torso she’d seen outside of Michelangelo.
She became aware of a few other things, too.
She was wearing even less than he was. And she was handcuffed to the bedpost.
A second’s confusion, and then memory came rushing back.
Oh, God.
She turned her face away from Luke, too mortified to look at him. The way she’d behaved…the things she’d said…in all her life Kit had never allowed her body so much dominion over her mind.
Luke had been right about her: intelligence and the mind were what she valued. The humiliation of having lost control so completely was not one whit allayed by the fact that it was a spell. She should have been able to fight it. She should have—
“My God, Kit.”
Something in the tone of Luke’s voice made her turn back. “What is it?” she asked warily.
She was in the sun and he in the shadows; it was hard to read his expression.
His voice was husky. “You look like an angel.”
The words were spoken quietly, but Kit heard a depth of longing in his voice that startled her—because she sensed that, for once, the vampire wasn’t thinking about sex. After a few seconds she realized what he was thinking about.
The sun. She was lying in the sun, and because of that she was as far out of reach to him as if she were in heaven. She had a sudden image of herself as seen through his eyes: blinking in the light, her hair shining like white gold, her skin warmed by the sun’s rays.
It dawned on Kit slowly what it might be like to be exiled to the darkness, cut off forever from the light of the sun. She felt a stirring of pity in her heart.
Then, of course, he ruined it.
“Just my luck—I’ve got you chained up and I can’t even get to you,” he said, grinning wickedly.
Kit was actually grateful for his reversion to form. She didn’t want to feel sorry for the vampire. She didn’t want to feel anything for him at all.
“Well, you’d better find a way to get to me. If I’m not out of these handcuffs in two minutes, I’m—”
“Going to get cranky?”
“That’s an understatement.”
“You seem to be back to your usual, annoying self. I take it the spell’s worn off?”
“Obviously.”
“It’s almost a pity,” the vampire murmured as he moved towards the curtains, drawing them closed without exposing himself to the sunlight. The room was immediately darkened.
“Do you know anything about love magic?” Luke went on, opening the drawer of his bedside table and pulling out the key to the handcuffs. “It can’t actually make you do anything that’s not already within you. It just brings out feelings and instincts you’ve managed to repress.”
“That’s a lie,” Kit snapped. “What happened to me last night didn’t have anything to do with my feelings. It didn’t have anything to do with me at all. It was just a spell.”
“Whatever you say, sweetheart,” Luke said in a tone designed to provoke her.
Kit was on the point of being provoked when she thought of something. Why was she letting him do all the taunting?
“Speaking of instincts,” she said as he knelt down beside the bed to unlock the handcuffs, “What happened to yours last night? Not exactly in top form, were you?”
He paused with the key in his hand. “What do you mean by that?”
She probably should have heeded the warning in his voice, but the humiliation of her current position and a nagging worry that there might be some element of truth to what he’d said made her reckless.
“Nothing much. Just that you’re supposed to be the big bad vampire, indulging every depraved whim and not giving a damn about anything else. So where were your primal desires last night? You almost acted like a human being, Luke. Like you had a conscience.”
He moved so fast she didn’t even have time to gasp. One second he was kneeling next to the bed, the next he was on top of her, his weight pressing her into the mattress. His face was only inches away from hers, and Kit’s heart was pounding so hard it hurt her chest.
The worst part was that her body still wanted this. Wanted him. Wanted Luke Cadris on top of her, his smooth bare skin still damp from his shower. She wanted him so much she had to bite her lip to keep from moaning.
This had to be some lingering effect of the spell, she thought wildly. Didn’t it?
A droplet fell from his wet hair onto her cheek, and his blue eyes were burning into hers. The muscles around his mouth and jaw were hard and tight.
Both her wrists were above her head, one handcuffed and the other pinned in his right hand. She could feel his erection pushing against her, with nothing but her panties and his towel between them, and she held herself rigid so she wouldn’t open her legs to bring him even closer. Please don’t let him know, she prayed silently. Please don’t let him find out what I’m feeling.
“Listen to me very carefully, Kit,” he said in a low voice that seemed to vibrate in her bones. “I didn’t take advantage of you last night because when we come together it won’t be because you’re under a spell. It’ll be because you—you—want me so much you won’t be able to stand it anymore. And I’m going to make you beg for it.”
Arrogant bastard, Kit thought even as she had to stop herself from arching up into him. After that little comment she would have cut off her right hand before letting him know what she was feeling.
“Don’t hold your breath,” she said sharply.
Luke raised himself up slightly with his free arm, and Kit’s breasts ached at the lost contact. “I don’t have to hold my breath,” he said. “In fact, I don’t even have to breathe. Vampire, remember?”
He moved down her body until his face was just above her panties, and Kit wished she didn’t have to breathe.
“I just do it for fun,” he whispered, closing his eyes as he inhaled. His eyes snapped open and met hers. “Try telling me again you don’t want me.”
Oh, God. Oh, God.
This was intolerable. This could not be tolerated. If she didn’t put a stop to this right now she was going to die, or kill him, or something.
Without even realizing what she was doing Kit pulled her legs up and kicked Luke so hard in the chest he flew five feet in the air and landed on the floor.
It would have been hard to say which one of them was more surprised.
“Wow,” Luke said after a moment, getting to his feet and grabbing his towel from the bed where it had fallen. With modesty restored he looked down at her speculatively. “For a girl not five foot four, you sure do pack a punch.”
“I don’t understand,” she said blankly.
“Don’t worry that this will change my feelings for you,” Luke said with a grin. “I like strong women.”
“Shut up. What in the…what was that?”
“Don’t you remember last night?”
“No. I mean, yes, but I don’t remember being strong like—oh.” Her face flooded with color as memory came back: her on top of Luke, straddling him, pinning his wrists with almost as much strength as he’d pinned her this morning.
Luke was still grinning, damn him. “It’s coming back, isn’t it? Your cheeks just turned bright red. It’s a nice memory for me, too.”
“You’re despicable.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
Luke went back to the head of the bed, grabbed the key from the floor, and unlocked the handcuffs. Kit sat up and rubbed her wrist absently, trying to make sense of what had happened.
Suddenly she froze. “It�
��s Peter,” she said. “I’ve always felt a connection with him. This must have something to do with Peter. What if he’s crossed some kind of threshold in the underworld? Passed through some kind of gateway? What if he’s really gone now, really dead, and I’m being called as a warrior in his place?”
Peter…
Kit hadn’t shed a single tear for her brother since Celia had broken the news. Tears were a weakness she couldn’t allow herself. Besides, she had refused to accept that Peter’s loss was permanent. She was going to rescue him, wasn’t she?
But now the possibility that her brother might really be gone, gone beyond her power to save him, washed over her in a wave of despair.
It was too much. Exhausted by last night’s ordeal, shaken by the conflicting emotions warring in her heart, Kit, who’d been dry-eyed for days, broke down and sobbed.
It wasn’t pretty, feminine crying, with tears slipping delicately down her cheeks. Kit cried with her whole soul, with wrenching, gut-twisting sobs that shook her body and made her nose run. She buried her head in her hands as she wept, rocking herself back and forth and thinking only that her beloved brother might really be dead—and that everything she’d gone through in the last forty-eight hours might be for nothing.
Gradually the storm began to subside, and as it did she became aware of something very strange. There were arms around her, strong and comforting. She felt lips pressed briefly against her hair. And she heard words repeated over and over, quietly, fiercely—“It’s all right Kit, don’t cry, we’ll get him back, I swear to you, it’s not too late, don’t cry, sweetheart—”
When all this finally penetrated her consciousness, Kit froze. Luke was the one saying these things, Luke was the one with his arms around her, not to seduce but to comfort.
For some reason terror seized her. She twisted away from him violently, falling off the bed onto the floor and stumbling to her feet again.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked in a trembling voice.
She flew to the dresser where she’d put the other clothes he’d bought and jerked the top drawer open.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Kit?”
