by Harper Allen
But his broke first.
“Now.” The word sounded ragged, but since he accompanied it with action there was no mistaking its meaning. Grasping my hips, he lifted me toward him, his breathing a measured rasp. The next moment I felt him easing into me, and all of a sudden my control broke, too.
“Oh, God, yes,” I whispered unevenly. “Let’s rock, Mikey-baby.” I clutched the rumpled sheets tightly with both hands as he moved gradually deeper into me, his gaze fixed on mine. Just when I was beginning to think I couldn’t take anymore, he paused and then began withdrawing.
“This is completely against the rules,” he said tightly. “I’m your oboroten. Taking care of you this way probably breaks some ancient law.”
“Screw the ancient laws,” I murmured, pulling him into me again. “But not until you do me first.”
A crease of amusement briefly slashed his cheek and his eyes glowed a deeper hazel as he lowered himself to his braced arms and looked down at me, his movements hypnotically rhythmic and building in intensity. “Know what the second thing was that I thought when I saw you?” he breathed, his mouth brushing mine as he went in and out, in and out.
I shook my head from side to side on the pillow, my vision blurring and my whole body starting to burn. “No, what?” It was an effort to speak past the tiny explosions that seemed to be bubbling up through me.
“That if I ever found myself in your bed I’d be in big trouble.” Mikhail’s tongue slipped between my lips and he began moving harder into me. “I think I was right.”
In the part of my brain that was still capable of tracking, I decided I’d figure out what he meant later. Then even that small corner of my mind stopped thinking.
And now I really do have to fall back on the old dot dot dot, because there just aren’t any words in the human language to describe how it felt to go all crazy/ orgasmic/rocket blast/firestorm/melty with Mikhail Vostoroff. See what I mean? Maybe in wolfen I could convey how it felt, but I doubt it. We howled at the moon together. An hour later we howled again. Just before dawn—yeah, you guessed it—we howled as it slipped like a pale silver disc below the horizon.
And right after that Van called me on my cell phone and everything started falling apart.
Chapter 16
“You got what you deserve, you tramp,” Tash said in disgust as Colette finished slathering her with mud and drew the edges of a silvery heat-retaining sheet around her. With a melodious, “Enjoy, ladies,” Colette left the treatment room and Tash went on, “A total hotty like Van Ryder makes it clear he’s serious about you and you let him think you feel the same, but the next night when he finally gets you on your cell phone you’re doing the wild thing with a shape-shifter.” She lifted one of the cucumber slices that covered her eyes. “The man turns into a wolf,” she said with heavy emphasis. “He’s not completely human. What were you thinking?”
It was the afternoon after my howling-at-the-moon marathon with Mikhail, and my sisters and I were at the Beautiful You Salon and Spa—mainly for Kat’s benefit, since she looked like a wreck and wanly admitted she felt like one, too. “I staked two vamps last night,” she’d told me in a faint voice when I’d phoned the house this morning to ask her to drive me to my stranded Mini. “Grandfather made it official that I’m this generation’s Daughter. He insists that as I grow into the role I’ll find it easier to carry out my duties, but honestly, Meg, everytime I kill an undead I feel like I’m being torn in two. We’re going out again tonight and I’m so stressed my neck muscles feel like they’re tied into knots. I’ve booked a massage and a treatment, and Tash has, too. Want to join us?”
“I’m a teensy bit achy myself,” I’d confessed, congratulating her on her Daughter of Lilith status and deciding to wait until I saw her to divulge the reason for the ridden-hard-and-put-up-wet impression I gave when I tried to walk at any pace faster than a hobble. During our white tea soaks I spilled the whole story. I’d opted for a honey mask while I was soaking and my eyelids were stickily glued shut, so I didn’t see Tash’s increasingly outraged expression or Kat’s concerned one as I dished about Mikhail’s kissing and other techniques, Van’s inopportune phone call in which he’d guessed that his phone call had been, well, inopportune, and Mikhail’s reversion to asshole when he’d realized who’d called. But when I finally fell silent I sensed my sisters weren’t exactly with me on this one, especially when Tash exploded, and her reaming-out of me made it plain that she and Kat thought I’d crossed a line. She’d shut up when Colette had come to escort us to the mud-wrap room, but now she picked up where she’d left off.
“Where’s Mikhail now?” Her tone was thin.
“Outside in the parking lot.” I began to shrug but my mud-casing had dried to the consistency of cement. “Like Darkheart says, a strong vamp like Zena’s not restricted to the night as long as she avoids direct sun, but I don’t really expect her to show up without her cheering section. Anyway, with Mikhail’s ability to sense my emotions, he’d know if I was in danger so he decided it wasn’t necessary for him to accompany me in.” I tried to smile, but ditto on the mud-thing as before. “It feels strange not having him two feet away, glaring at me.”
“What right does he have to be mad?” Kat asked. “I have to agree with Tash. If there’s an injured party in all this, it’s Van, not Mikhail. You felt a real connection with Detective Gorgeous, and as far as I can tell, with Mikhail it was all about the sizzling sex.”
“I know,” I admitted. “And Mikey-baby knows, too.”
“That you used him?” Tash’s voice rose to a squeak. “Omigod, no wonder he doesn’t want to be around you anymore than he has to. Manimal or not, his ego must be totally trashed.”
“Don’t call him that!” I said sharply. “He’s a man who’s sometimes a wolf, okay? And who could read my mind when I was talking to Van and feeling incredibly guilty about standing him up for a night of multiple orgasms with Mikhail,” I muttered.
Kat’s eyes widened. “Multiple org—” She stopped herself. “You felt guilty. Did you also feel a twinge of regret?”
I nodded as much as my mud-pack would allow. “All I could think was that if I escape this vamp curse and actually have a future, Van’s the kind of guy I could see sharing it with me. When he realized I was with someone, I suddenly knew I’d jeopardized something that might turn out to be solid for a one-night stand.”
“Well, if Mikhail read all that from your mind, sis, all I can say is why didn’t you just kick the poor guy in the nuts while you were at it,” Tash declared. “I can’t blame you for seeing Van as serious boyfriend material and Mikhail as just a roll in the hay to see what it would be like with a shape-shifter, but talk about being a ball-breaking bitch. And now you’ve lost both of them.”
I gave her an irritated look, but since she’d replaced her cucumber slices it was wasted on her. “Not exactly,” I said. “I told you, Van’s one-in-a-million. I phoned him back while Mikhail was in the shower and said I’d been a jerk but that I really wanted a chance to make it up to him. I’m seeing him tonight for dinner, and then he’s coming vamp-hunting with us.”
“Smooth, sweetie, very smooth,” Kat said admiringly. “And with Mikhail carrying out his oboroten duties at a distance now, you and your yummy detective might have a chance to sneak in a smooch or two between stakings. We usually don’t leave the house until ten, so you’ll have time to mend your fences with him over dinner someplace romantic, like that new French bistro—”
“Uh, there might be a teensy problem with the dinner-and-a-staking date, sis,” Tash said in a small voice. “At least for tonight. Why don’t you reschedule for tomorrow?”
“What didn’t you understand about me just telling you how I almost screwed things up completely with the man?” I asked. “Of course I’m not going to blow him off with some lame request for a rain check.” Tash had removed her cucumber slices, and her eyes met mine with a guileless look I knew only too well. I sat up, my mud cracking off in huge chunks. �
�With you, teensy problem usually translates as catastrophe. What did you do, brat?”
Before she could answer, the door to the treatment room swung open to reveal a group of women, all clad in white terry robes and all wearing Kabuki-like masks of the spa’s special seaweed and mallow-blossom detoxifying facial. It was impossible to recognize them under the paste, but when the woman in front spoke her affected tone immediately gave her identity away.
It was Mandy Broyhill and her posse. And my sisters and I were as trapped as the citizens of Pompeii in our hardened mud.
“Well, well, the faaabulous Crosse triplets,” announced Mandy, advancing on us. She snapped her fingers at her fellow Kabuki actors and obediently they all came crowding into the room. “Take a good look at them, girls,” she ordered, leveling a poisonously bright stare at us. “They snatched Maplesburg’s three most eligible bachelors right out from under our noses and then found themselves standing at the altar with egg on their faces when their fiancés didn’t show.” She lowered her voice confidentially. “I don’t care what the police say, darlings, everyone who matters in this town knows you were jilted.”
Beside me I saw Kat struggling to break free of her silvery Mylar blanket, but Mandy continued. “Any other three girls would go into the Dumped Brides Protection Plan and disappear forever…or at least keep their heads down and hope that the scandal blew over in a decade or two. But what do the Crosse sisters do?” Dramatically she turned to her audience. “They throw a belated reception party for Megan! And instead of having it at the country club where everyone else has their reception, they pick the slea-ziest venue they can find—the Hot Box Club!”
“Don’t forget the male strippers!” one of her entourage squeaked excitedly. Mandy froze her with a look.
“With. Male. Strippers,” she said, her tone low and measured. “I nearly died when I got my e-mailed invitation this morning! How incredibly trashy, I told myself. How brazen! Do they really expect anyone in our crowd to show up to celebrate the fact that the Crosse girls had a narrow escape at the altar?”
I decided to grab the opportunity to do some damage control. “Of course not, Mandy,” I said placatingly. “You’re right, the whole thing’s just too trashy for words. But I think you should know that Kat and I didn’t have any part in—”
“You bet your ass I’m coming!” screamed Mandy, her Kabuki mask splitting into a delighted grin. “We all are! What an inspired idea—a big, drunken bash for girls only, to show the men in this town that we don’t need them to have one hell of a good time! Megan, Kat, Tashya—I never would have suspected it, but you ladies have balls! See you tonight at the Hot Box…and tell the strippers you’ve hired that I get the first lap dance!”
With a waggle of her fingers and an airy, “Toodles,” Mandy turned to the door. Her posse parted in front of her like the Red Sea in front of Moses, and she swept out.
“Before you kill me, hear me out,” Tash said rapidly as the door closed. “You’re about to turn vamp any day now, Megan, and we haven’t had any luck in finding Zena so we can stake her and save you. Well, you’ve seen her twice, but the first time you only broke her hold on you by somehow linking with Mikhail’s mind and growling at her, and the second time you were outnumbered.”
My fury at her was momentarily diverted. “What do you mean, I linked minds with Mikhail?”
She looked exasperated. “Well, duh. Where else would that growl have come from? On some level he’s probably psychically attuned to you all the time, whether the two of you are consciously aware of it or not.”
“This is because of what Darkheart said last night!” Kat broke in, her voice shaking with anger. “Don’t try to tell us it’s because you’re worried about Megan turning vamp, when what’s really eating away at you is the fact that Grandfather officially presented me with Mom’s stake and swore me in as this generation’s Daughter of Lilith. This whole farce of a reception party’s a trap for Zena, and you’re baiting it with a roomful of tipsy women, a bunch of male strippers and the Crosse sisters, knowing she won’t be able to stay away from such a tempting combination. All so you get a chance to stake her and prove to Grandfather he chose the wrong sister!”
Her mud-wrap cracking like plaster, she slipped off the table and walked to the corner of the room where her purse sat on a shelf. Opening it, she pulled out the silver-bound stake I’d seen her use on Maisel a week ago and threw it at Tash. “If you want it so badly, it’s yours! From the start I said I didn’t want Mom’s life—the killings, the loneliness, the knowledge that I’ll never be able to have a normal existence, because the fate of the whole damn world rests on the shoulders of the Daughters! But you wouldn’t believe me, and now you’ve set up this confrontation with Zena! What if I blow it? What if I don’t kill her, and she finishes what she started with Megan!”
Kat was falling apart before my very eyes, I realized in dismay. Inspiration struck me. “You forgot one important detail, Tash—the Hot Box is a crime scene,” I said coldly. In my second phone conversation this morning with Van, I’d learned that his PCP story was now the officially accepted theory for what had happened, and I went on, “I don’t know who you spoke to at the club when you made your last-minute booking, but there’s no way the police will let the place open for business two nights after a supposed drug riot. You’d better start calling everyone you invited and tell them my so-called reception’s been cancelled.”
“The Hot Box will be open for business tonight. I cleared it with Detective Ryder himself,” Tash said, not meeting my eyes. “Although he might have gotten the impression that the plan to trap Zena was yours,” she muttered. “The only way I could convince him to go along with the reception idea was to tell him you were terrified that time was running out for you.”
I stared at her. Then I hopped off my table and went for her. “You’re unbelievable!” I hissed as I began shaking her. Her terry turban fell off and her red-gold curls began bouncing on her mud-smeared shoulders. “It’s always all about you, Tash, and the hell with everyone else! The man I’m interested in is standing in the way of your plans? No problem, you just lie to him and pin the lie on me! You think Zena might be tempted by the thought of a bunch of new victims—hey, you e-mail every female we know and invite them to a party! But what’s really low is the way you’re forcing Kat into a confrontation she’s terrified she won’t win. I don’t care who you have to apologize to—you’re calling off that party right now!”
I punctuated my last sentence with a final hard shake before I released her. Tash glared at me pugnaciously, but then her chin began to quiver and her shoulders slumped. Tears slowly filled her china-blue eyes. “I felt that Kat becoming the Daughter made her closer to Mom, somehow, and I was so jealous I couldn’t stand it. But I know that’s no excuse for what I did. I’ll explain to Van you didn’t know anything about this, Meg, and then I’ll phone Mandy and tell her there’s not going to be a party. I didn’t mean to be so horrible to you, Kat,” she sniffled. “Please don’t stay mad.”
“I’m not,” Kat said slowly. She walked over to where she’d tossed her stake and picked it up. She raised her gaze to Tash and me. “We’re not canceling the Hot Box bash. No matter what your reasons were for arranging it, Tashya, it’s a good plan—one that I should have come up with myself, as a Daughter of Lilith. We’ve been letting Zena jerk us around like a bunch of puppets on strings, reacting to her instead of making her react to us. It’s time we forced her out into the open.”
“No, it’s not,” I said swiftly. “You said it yourself, Kat, you still haven’t fully grown into your role as a Daughter and everytime you stake a vamp it takes its toll on you. I won’t let you do this!”
Now, here’s the thing: even though we’re triplets there’s never been any doubt as to who’s the eldest of us, and whenever I’d taken a firm stand in the past, Kat had backed down. But as I saw the unshakeable resolve in her sapphire gaze, I knew our relationship had changed. She wasn’t my sister anymore,
she was a Daughter of Lilith.
“And I won’t risk you turning vamp just because I’m too frightened to accept the inheritance Mom passed on to me,” she answered. “This is what my life’s about now, Megan, and I’d better get used to it. Don’t fight me on this.”
Isn’t it funny how sometimes the words coming out of your mouth can have absolutely nothing to do with what you’re really saying? That’s what happened to me as I watched Kat wrap her grip more tightly around her stake while she waited for my reply.
“Okay,” I said heavily. “The Hot Box bash goes on as planned.”
As I say, isn’t it funny? Those were the words I spoke to her, but what I was really saying was goodbye. And what makes it funnier is that even as I did, I knew Kat had already gone from me…
There were three of us in the Mini as I drove through the deepening dusk to the Hot Box club that evening, and Van wasn’t one of the three. That fact alone didn’t account for the reckless clashing of gears and jackrabbit acceleration I was indulging in. Beside me, Darkheart checked his seat belt.
“Is not necessary to drive like Nikolai Fomenko,” he said, bracing himself as I came to a stop at a red light.
“Who’s he?” I said, my tone anything but interested.
“Russian race driver.” Darkheart was thrown back in his seat as the light changed and the Mini jumped forward.
“Never heard of him,” I said, shifting from first into fourth without bothering with the intermediate gears. From the back passenger seat came a low growl.
“What happened at house was upsetting, da, but does not mean change in you will definitely come tonight.” Darkheart’s hand rested briefly on my knee as he spoke.
I spoke through tense lips. “When I tried to walk into the house, I felt like I’d slammed into a brick wall. I’d say that’s a clear indication of imminent vamp-hood, wouldn’t you?”
