After what felt like an hour or two of this, it became apparent that I wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight. Not if I wanted to stay sane, anyway. Resigned to pulling an all-nighter before what was arguably one of the most important interviews of my life, I lay back, staring into the impenetrable darkness above me.
I suppose I could have thrown on some clothes and gone out to sit in the dark with Leonides, but given the current level of awkwardness between us, staying here and pretending to sleep seemed infinitely preferable. That decision struck me as completely reasonable for the next couple of hours, even as my fatigue continued to eat at me.
By the time I realized I’d made a mistake, it was too late.
Dhuinne swirled over me, smothering me, and this time it wasn’t because I’d started to doze. I was awake, but I was so thoroughly exhausted that when I jerked my attention to my pendant to strengthen the barrier around me, almost nothing happened. Life poured in, battering at me, but it wasn’t the friendly, familiar kind of life from Earth.
This life howled. It was angry.
I flailed, not sure if I were doing so with my body or my mind. Either way, it was like a gnat’s wings fluttering against a cyclone. A horrible wheezing noise reached my ears as though from a distance—someone sobbing and hyperventilating at the same time. There were things in the dark with me... slimy things with teeth and tentacles, itching to devour me and make me part of the maelstrom.
A scream tried to escape my throat, but the only sound I heard was an ugly choking noise amongst the wheezing. Something was clawing at my neck. I only realized it was my own fingernails when my wrists were forced away and pinned to the bed by a strength I couldn’t escape.
I braced, waiting for the monsters to tear into me... but instead, they cringed away, opening a bubble of space around me so I could breathe.
Well, I say breathe. ‘Sob hysterically’ might have been a bit more of an accurate description. The grip on my wrists loosened.
“Vonnie! Damn it—Vonnie!”
I knew that voice. And I knew the aura of magic, like dark, calm water buoying me up, holding me above the monsters hiding in the depths. All semblance of pride gone, I lunged forward and buried myself against Leonides’ chest, clinging tightly as I tried to burrow into his magic and disappear.
“Jesus.” His voice was hoarse as his arms closed convulsively around me.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I couldn’t sleep without dropping my barriers... and I tried to stay awake but I was too tired and I lost control of everything—”
I was babbling.
“I’m okay now,” I managed. “Your aura holds Dhuinne’s power at bay.”
“Vonnie, we need to get you out of here. Now.” His tone was grim... and maybe, possibly, just a tiny bit freaked out.
“No!” I pushed back, far enough to see his eyes glowing violet in the dark, but not so far that I left the shelter of his aura.
“You were choking and clawing at your own throat!” There was anger in his voice—at me, at the situation... I wasn’t sure.
I swiped at my face, trying to wipe away tear tracks as I dragged my emotions under control. “I made a mistake. I knew I was losing my grip, but I tried to tough it out instead of going to you for help.”
There was a longish pause.
“And... that ‘help’...” he began, only to trail off.
“I told you,” I said shakily. “As long as I’m inside the boundary of your aura, Dhuinne’s magic can’t seem to reach me.”
“Inside the boundary...? Which means, what, in terms of physical proximity?” he asked cautiously.
I swallowed, my throat clicking, becoming aware of exactly how close we were. With effort, I focused on the flow of magic around me, mapping it out in my mind.
“It’s... um... pretty big right now, actually. Maybe three feet or so in every direction.”
As I watched, the glow in his eyes dulled back to human—barely a glimmer in the darkened room. His aura retracted in tandem, until Dhuinne was once more licking at my back. I shivered.
“And it just got smaller when you stopped vamping out,” I reported. “Guess it’s connected somehow.”
Immediately, the glow in his eyes returned, his aura mantling around me like protective wings. My heart gave a little pitter-pat, and I swallowed again. “Thanks.”
“I still think we should get you out of here,” he said.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I know you do. But I’m not leaving. Yeah, I screwed up—but I’m new at this, and there isn’t exactly a users’ manual.”
“We’re talking about your sanity,” he said.
My voice hardened. “We’re talking about my son.” I paused, pulling myself together. “I can do this. I just might... need a bit of help.”
Was I about to ask my vampire ex-boss to tuck me in, and stay in my room to keep the nightmares at bay?
Why, yes.
Yes, I was.
“You need sleep,” he said slowly. “Or you won’t have enough focus to maintain your barriers tomorrow. And we’ll be a lot farther away from the gate then, if things start to go wrong.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “So, um, if there’s any way you could keep watch tonight from in here, rather than out there...”
Surely there was some point at which a person reached a sort of ‘awkwardness overload,’ and the feeling burned itself out. Right?
Right?
Maybe Leonides beat me to it, or something, because I felt the tension go out of his body on a sigh. “Sure. I guess I can do that.”
The mattress shifted, until he was sitting on top of the covers next to me, using the headboard as a backrest. “All right like this?” he asked.
I shuffled onto my side with my back to him, carefully not touching him while also not getting too close to the howling magic of Dhuinne beyond the edges of his aura. “Yeah. Thanks. Um... goodnight, I guess?”
“Or good morning. It’s probably past midnight by now, actually.”
I winced. “Great.” No matter what happened next, tomorrow was going to suck majorly. I should have told Leonides to bring along Red Bull instead of bottled water. What was that saying, about hindsight being twenty-twenty?
I lay on my side in the dark, trying not to fixate obsessively on Dhuinne’s magic with my inner eye, while listening to the eerie absence of breathing behind me.
You can sleep now, I tried to tell myself.
No seriously, I added a few minutes later. Sleep now.
But my body clearly wasn’t in sleep mode. As the minutes ticked by, one heartbeat at a time, it became obvious that if anything, I was returning to panic mode. What if I couldn’t hold it together tomorrow? What if I could, but there was no new information about Jace and the other kids? What if I hit a dead end, with no possible way of ever finding him? What if I’d lost my son forever?
My breathing had gone ragged again, and the muscles in my neck felt like they were about to cramp from the unremitting tension. When a gentle hand landed on my shoulder, I nearly yelped.
TWENTY-FOUR
“HEY. ENOUGH,” LEONIDES said. “Seriously, Vonnie, you’re killing me here. Just... roll over and try to relax, okay?”
The light grip nudged me to lie on my front. I’d just drawn breath to apologize, and to tell him that I was fine and not to worry, when both his hands closed on my trapezius muscles and squeezed. The sound that wrenched free of my lips in response... was not an apology. It definitely wasn’t reassurance.
Instead, it was the kind of sound that probably would have earned big tips if I’d ended up staying in sex work.
Preternaturally strong fingers kneaded my shoulders, pressing into the knots of tension that had been lodged there for weeks, if not months. It was deeply, inescapably painful—and simultaneously the best feeling I’d experienced in ages. My mind went momentarily, blissfully blank between one moaning breath and the next.
Distantly, it occurred to me that this was weird and I
should probably say something. Y’know—probably. This... was weird, right?
Did I care?
Leonides’ thumbs pressed into a cluster of nerves that sent hot tingles rippling outward from the point of contact.
Nope.
Apparently I did not, in fact, care whether this was weird or not. I made another phone sex operator noise, except I couldn’t recall ever actually making that noise when I had been a phone sex operator.
Had I been bad at my phone sex job?
Shit, I probably had been.
My brain gave me the mental equivalent of a bitch-slap, and the annoying internal monologue faded into silence.
“You’re one giant knot, and I’m guessing you’ve never had a massage in your life, am I right?” Leonides said.
“Mmph,” I replied into the pillow. “No, I... hnrgh.”
He let out a soft snort, and kept abusing my aching back muscles without mercy. Massages were one of those things that other women did. Karen from accounting paid seventy bucks a pop for massages. Vonnie the struggling teenage single mother did not pay for massages. Good god, forget about the money. Where would I even have found the time?
Thankfully, Leonides didn’t continue to quiz me about it. He didn’t stop, either. I was melting from the outside in, and it was a damned good thing his aura protected me—because the likelihood of me being able to concentrate well enough to focus magic right now was just about zero.
It was around the time that his thumbs started rubbing up and down the tendons running along the back of my neck that I realized I might have a different problem. The movement ruffled the fine hair on my nape, making every nerve stand at attention. Maybe I should have seen this coming—my infrequent appointments with a hairdresser had historically been some of the few times I’d ever felt physically aroused, because, yes, apparently I was some kind of a total weirdo.
Fingers sliding through my hair, massaging my scalp... the sensation tingled its way down my spine, pooling at the small of my back, spreading liquid warmth outward. I let out a pathetic little whimper—suddenly, viscerally aware of exactly whose strong fingers were drawing these feelings from me. My breathing went ragged once again, but for a completely different reason this time. And in the next moment—
“Ow, fuck!” The hands jerked away, just as the first teasing hint of smoke hit my nostrils.
Horror suffused me as I realized what had just happened. I started to roll away from him unthinkingly, intending to put space between us. A strong hand grabbed my upper arm just as I would have tumbled out of the protection of his aura and into Dhuinne’s invisible maelstrom.
He grunted, slapping at the sleeve of his shirt with his free hand. I cringed and curled into a ball, hugging my knees as mortification flooded me.
“Oh, my god,” I squeaked. “I am so incredibly sorry—”
The sound of slapping stopped, and I gathered the smoldering shirtsleeve had been successfully extinguished. Absolute silence descended over the bedroom for the space of several seconds before Leonides broke it.
“So... I think I’ve just figured out what brings out your pyrokinetic abilities.” Another pause. “Should I be flattered?”
I made a choked noise and hid my face against my knees. “Did I hurt you badly?” I asked, the words emerging muffled and indistinct.
He sighed. “I’m a vampire, Vonnie. It’s already healed.”
I looked up, trying to convince myself that because I couldn’t see him in the dark, it meant he couldn’t see me either. A lie, of course.
I cleared my throat, my humiliation complete. “Right. So... we established the night you hired me as an escort that I’m really bad at sex, yeah? Well... in the last couple of weeks, let’s just say I’ve taken my sexual incompetence to new heights.”
“So when you get hot and bothered these days, it’s literal?” he deadpanned. “Huh. Kinky.”
I groaned, and briefly considered throwing my pillow at him. After almost setting him on fire, though, it seemed rude.
“Please don’t tease,” I said instead.
“I’m sorry, Vonnie,” he said immediately... and he did, at least, sound contrite. His hand loosened its grip on me, his weight settling next to me on the mattress as he sat back. “So,” he continued. “I guess I was right about you not being on the ace spectrum, then. Or at least, not very far down it. Which brings us back to the other hypothesis—a history of shitty bed partners.”
“Are we seriously having this conversation while sitting in the dark, inside a faerie cottage on an alternate world?” I asked.
“Since I just got my arm hair singed off, it seemed relevant,” he replied.
I buried my face in my hands, scrubbing at my eye sockets. “You’re my boss,” I muttered.
“Not since I sold the club,” he said. “I believe you’ll find someone else signing the paychecks these days.”
I looked at the deeper smear of darkness that was Leonides sitting next to me, a sudden surge of anger and frustration hitting me. “So, what—are you going to remind me that your offer to show me what I’ve been missing still stands?”
“I was considering it, yes.”
A harsh bark of laughter escaped me. “Still think you can succeed where so many others have failed? I’m frigid, for god’s sake. Besides, it’s not like this is really the time or place.” The last sentence slipped out without my permission, because it implied—correctly—that I was thinking about a different time and place where I might say yes.
“I still have real trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that you were in sex work,” he said mildly.
I frowned into the dark. “Hey—if I’m not going to enjoy it anyway, I figured I might as well get paid for it. And it’s not like I can’t play the game.” I sweetened my voice, becoming Morgan LeFleur, the saccharine southern vixen. “C’mon, Leo... admit it. You want these hot lips wrapped around your cock. Would you like me on my knees, blinking up at you while I suck you off? I bet you’d drown me with the cum from that great big dick.”
When I’d been working the phone lines, that kind of bullshit sex talk didn’t mean anything. The words simply spouted from my mouth, barely registering in my brain on their way out. So why did saying them now, like this, make me feel queasy?
I wasn’t even sure what sort of reaction I’d been trying to provoke from him. Anger? Disgust?
Arousal?
“Don’t do that,” he said evenly, none of those things in his voice. “It’s not the real you, and it’s not remotely what I’m after—as I suspect you’re well aware. It’s late. We’re alone. You’re exhausted and freaking out. Frankly, you could use the endorphins, and I’d get enjoyment out of helping you experience something that everyone should have the option of experiencing, assuming they’re interested. It doesn’t have to mean anything beyond that. You already know I don’t seek out sex for sentimental reasons.”
It occurred to me that I couldn’t recall Leonides ever making a speech that long about anything before.
“No,” I muttered, knowing it was churlish. “I get it. You’re only in it for the arteries.”
“Painfully accurate, during the normal course of things,” he agreed. “But not in this case. There wouldn’t be much point, since you’d take it right back from me in the morning.”
I winced at the reminder of how much this man had been bleeding for me lately.
“You really in that much of a hurry to be set on fire again?” I asked, aware that I was wavering—my anger and frustration fading, gradually replaced by the subversive little voice that had gotten me into trouble more than once over the years.
What would it be like?
“That part’s an easy fix,” he said.
My eyebrows drew together in the dark. “Is it?”
I heard another sigh escape him. “Look... are you okay to keep your barriers up without me for a couple of minutes?”
I dragged enough of my focus away from the conversation to feel out the magic swir
ling around me. Adrenaline from nearly roasting the man beside me had chased away my earlier weakness, at least temporarily. I set my magic spinning, confident that it was strong enough to keep Dhuinne at bay.
“Yes,” I said cautiously.
“Good,” he replied. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
I felt a tug as one of the blankets was pulled off the bed. I sat there, still huddled in a ball, wondering if I’d really just agreed to let my former boss, who was also a vampire, try to pop my orgasm cherry, so I could fall sleep in the Faerie realm of Dhuinne without losing my marbles.
Yeah, that sounds pretty crazy, all right, said my troublesome inner voice. Maybe this is a dream. You should probably just go with it, okay?
I reminded myself that this was the same voice that had once assured me that having sex at fifteen would be perfectly fine. Yeah... what could possibly go wrong?
Leonides was back before I had a chance to really overthink things. At which point, the prospect of thinking went straight out the door. He was carrying a lit candle in one hand, and the tube of lotion I’d stuck in my pack in the other. Those weren’t really the important points, though. The important point was that he’d shed his worryingly flammable Earth clothing, and now wore nothing more than the borrowed Fae blanket wrapped around his waist to cover his lower half.
TWENTY-FIVE
EVEN WITH THE blanket, there was still an awful lot of rich, brown skin gleaming in the candlelight. I blinked. Was I staring? I was totally staring.
Leonides set the candle on the table next to the bed, and popped the cap off the lotion, squirting some into his hand. “Triggers?” he asked, as though this whole thing weren’t completely surreal. “Anything you particularly don’t like?”
“Men getting impatient,” I said blankly. “Name calling and insults.”
I was still staring. With difficulty, I dragged my eyes up from his pecs and abs to his face, feeling a sudden surge of empathy for every man who’d ever stared at my boobs while trying to hold a conversation with me.
Vampire Bound: Book Two Page 18