Hosts to Ghosts Box Set

by Lynne Connolly

  He cupped her jaw in one large hand. “I won’t let you regret it. Ever.”

  He sat up to take her in his arms, and press his hot, wet body to hers. When she lifted her head he took her mouth, plunging his tongue inside while she rocked on him, driving them both wild.

  She broke away to throw her head back and howl when her orgasm hit her like a rocket. Jordan kissed her neck, nibbled her throat and then pulled back with an agonized jerk of hard muscle. “No!”

  “Jordan?” He stopped moving, and Karey opened her eyes and blinked at him.

  “I’m sorry, I nearly did something unforgivable.”

  Watching him, she knew and she felt. He would have pushed her out of his mind, slammed his barriers down, but she was too deep seated for that, and she wouldn’t let him.

  He wanted her blood. If he’d told her, she might have been repelled, but she shared it with him, shared the bloodlust and the yearning. He wanted to join with her in every way possible and for a vampire, that included blood.

  “Jordan.” She whispered his name and at the same time brushed her hair away from her shoulders. Tilting her head to one side, she exposed her throat, and waited for him.

  “You can’t do this, Karey.”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t even know how much I want.” She knew how much he wanted it, though. His cock jerked inside her when she revealed her throat to him, and she understood that to a vampire it was a gesture of invitation as potent as opening her legs.

  “Take it. Take what you want.”

  With a long groan of desire he sat up and cradled her in his arms. A stinging pain, then a warmth, a connection like none she had ever felt before. When he’d taken from her before it was for practical purposes, and he’d deliberately restrained his bloodlust. Now she felt him in her, fangs and cock, thrusting up while he bit down.

  She’d always wondered what the virgins had got from Dracula. Now she knew. Heat surged through her, twin orgasms meeting in the deepest recesses of her body, joining at her heart to create a column of fire, burning right up to heaven.

  Because they were joined, she wasn’t sure who had initiated the emotion, but they both shared it. He withdraw from her throat and caressed her tender skin with gentle sweeps of his tongue, nibbling kisses replacing the pleasure-pain of a moment before.

  “Dear God.” He managed a shaky laugh. “I didn’t know that would happen.” He lifted his head, adoration replacing the burning passion of a moment before. “I can’t tell you how intense that was.”

  “You don’t have to.” She smoothed his hair back from his forehead and kissed it.

  When she pulled away he drew her back again and kissed her, long and tenderly. “Would you get bored if I told you I love you again?” He grinned. “How about in French? Je t’aime, Je t’adore, Je ne tu laisserai encore jamais, je t’aimerai jusqu’à ce que les mers courent sec.”

  “Jordan, I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Tell me.”

  He laughed, joy infusing his voice. “Wonderful, Karey! I said I would never leave you now, that I’ll love you until the seas run dry.”

  She nuzzled his cheek. “That’s wonderful.”

  “I mean it.”

  She couldn’t mistake his gravity now. She drew back to gaze at him. “You have a longer lifespan than I do. I don’t want you to throw it away, Jordan.”

  He lifted her away, but nestled her next to him, his arm firmly around her. “I won’t. I don’t intend to waste a minute.” He kissed her. “This is our honeymoon, and I want to enjoy it.”

  She returned his kiss with interest, a slow slide of sensuality, then turned to press her body against his. “We’ll talk later, then.”

  “Later.” He smoothed his hand down her back. “Much later.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jordan opened his eyes. He was slumped in a queen sized bed, in the best hotel in New Orleans, the woman he loved curled up to him. Life didn’t get much better than that. He still breathed, his heart still beat a steady rhythm in his chest and blood pulsed through his veins. Still alive. Just different.

  In any case, he didn’t care. He had everything that mattered and he meant to keep it. It was enough; more than enough, more than he’d hoped for. While the vampire life had attracted him, living without Karey did not. He was himself when he was with her, a whole being, not the half he felt when he was away from her.

  She purred and shifted in her sleep. He cuddled her closer, murmuring nonsense words from his childhood, in French. He’d grown up bilingual. His parents’ marriage had disintegrated while he was still very small, and he’d spent his youth shuttling between France, New Orleans, and his politician father’s work in New York. Not a bad way to grow up, if unconventional. His parents remained friends after their divorce. Better that they were half a world apart most of the time. They functioned better apart, but he’d never heard his mother say a bad word against his father and vice versa. His father had been at his mother’s deathbed, when she’d succumbed to heart disease brought on by her smoking habit, and he’d cried along with his son.

  Jordan decided he would take Karey home to Paris. It was time. A deep sense of contentment filled him when he thought of showing her his childhood haunts, the city he loved above all others, even more than New Orleans. He would walk with her in the Tuilerie Gardens, he would take her for a leisurely lunch on the Champs Elysées. Then he would take her home and make love to her in the warm afternoon sunshine.

  The apartment he’d lived in for the past six months didn’t really belong to him. He’d never considered it as such. At first ashamed and confused after his conversion, he’d avoided his former haunts, but now he was ready. Didiane could keep the apartment, and he would take his wife back to his mother’s place, which he’d inherited on her death. A spacious second floor apartment in the First Arondissement on the Rue Saint Honoré. Karey would like it. One of his reasons for visiting Paris had been to sell his mother’s old home, but he’d never done it, too traumatized by his conversion to take practicalities into account.

  A longer lifespan, or the possibility of one, gave him a more relaxed vision of his future. Even if he chose to die with Karey, which he did with all his heart, he’d lost the terrible, driving urge that had eaten away from him, eaten his life and nearly destroyed his marriage.

  He assumed they would take control of Hosts to Ghosts again, because Karey was even more enthusiastic about it, and that was saying something. But not yet. The extremely competent staff would keep the company ticking over until they returned. He could recruit vampires as mediums. That would make the TV programs even more riveting, give them the edge against other ghost-hunting programs. And enable the scientists to explore more possibilities. Vampires knew more than mortals about ghosts, but nobody knew it all. Cleansing was still a strenuous process, hit and miss at times, and they could work on that.

  He smiled, pressing a kiss to Karey’s head. It would be a long time before he would let her out of bed for any considerable time, apart from the unavoidable plane journey. If he managed it, he could get her out of here, on to the plane, and into bed at the other end without too much delay.

  If she hadn’t been asleep he would have crowed with laughter. He couldn’t think of anyone but her, or of anything but making love. He wanted to do it again, but he’d exhausted her, making love once more before they’d left the bath, and twice when they’d made it into bed.

  He doubted he’d ever be satisfied. He hadn’t realized what a sensual woman he’d married, but he could hardly blame her for that. His concentration on the success of the company had more or less finished any time they might have had to discover each other, to learn what pleased and what drove each other crazy with wanting. Now he’d begun to learn and he never wanted to stop.

  When the bedside phone rang his honed senses gave him the chance to snatch up the receiver before Karey woke, although she stirred against him in a way
that made his hormones jump.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Arcenaux?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have the man from Minton’s garage here. He wants to talk to you about your car.”

  Jordan sighed. “Tell him to keep it. It was a wreck. I’ll sort it out with the rental company.”

  The impersonal voice continued anyway. “We also have Captain Armstrong of the Indigette police force here. He wants to speak to you, too. Shall we tell him you’re not available or send him up?”

  Jordan sighed again. “Tell him I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

  While he was downstairs, he could order something delectable to eat.

  Jordan dressed quickly, throwing on a pair of denims and a white T-shirt. He took one glance at the still slumbering shape in the bed before he left the room, pulling the door carefully closed behind him. Perhaps he could find some flowers for her, too.

  Captain Armstrong proved maddeningly efficient. He’d turned up at the garage where they’d towed Jordan’s car and crowbarred the truth out of the mechanic. Now, sitting in a corner of the spacious lounge with an untouched cup of coffee in front of him, Minton seemed ill at ease and apologetic fidgeting in his chair. As well he might be, thought Jordan grimly. He’d have preferred to keep the police out of this.

  “Mr. Arcenaux, I’ve examined your car very carefully.”

  “What’s left of it,” Jordan commented. “I’ll pay for the damage.”

  “You didn’t have an accident, sir. The car had been tampered with.”

  Well, duh. Turning a corner at speed, he’d felt the brakes go, and when he’d jerked on the handbrake, that had gone, too. He’d hired the car from one of the best companies in the country, and there was very little chance that kind of tampering would have gone unnoticed by them. So someone had sabotaged the car after it had arrived at the house, and he would put odds against it being Bernard Foret.

  He tried to look surprised. “I thought the brakes were faulty, that’s all.” Before he could exert a little persuasion, the man spoke again.

  “No, sir, they were cut. You had a very lucky escape.”

  “They died when I was taking a corner.” A sharp corner, taken too fast, but that shouldn’t have resulted in brake failure.

  “If you’d been on the open road and going at speed, you would have been killed outright, Mr. Arcenaux.”

  He shuddered. If he’d been human, he’d probably be dead by now. Karey had seen the external injuries, but he hadn’t told her how badly he’d been injured inside. One of his ribs had pierced his heart, and a lung had collapsed. That was enough to kill anyone, but Sarah had linked with him, given him her strength. Otherwise, vampire or not, he would have died.

  Thank fuck he hadn’t. It gave him a chance to put things right. “I was lucky,” he urbanely agreed, picking up his coffee cup.

  He became aware of the close regard of the police captain. The man watched him take a sip of the steaming brew. He smiled at the captain and lifted a brow in query. “I wondered,” Armstrong said.

  “Wondered what?”

  Armstrong sighed and leaned back in the elegantly upholstered salon chair that barely took his weight. “I’ve lived here all my life, Mr. Arcenaux, and I’ve learned not to discount the improbable. I’ve seen things I wouldn’t have believed, if anyone had told me about them, but seeing them for myself made it impossible to deny.”

  Jordan continued to stare at him, allowing a slight smile of disbelief to quirk his mouth. “You mean the haunting of Belle Sauvage? I’ve seen a great deal, too, Captain, but I still believe there is a sound scientific basis for such phenomena.”

  “Not that.” The captain dismissed the house ghosts with a careless sweep of one large hand. “Mr. Arcenaux, do you believe in vampires?”

  Jordan almost choked on his coffee. Police chiefs weren’t supposed to believe in the paranormal. Perhaps one from this part of the country might have some unusual beliefs, but he hadn’t suspected it of the man. Armstrong had always struck him as the unimaginative kind.

  He pasted his disbelieving expression firmly on to his face. “You’re joking, right? I’ve known people who imagined they were vampires, especially here. It goes with the territory.”

  Armstrong’s steady gaze never wavered. “You grew up here. You know as well as I do what I mean.”

  Jordan attempted to recruit the mechanic to his cause. The man was middle aged, not easily diverted by romantic notions. “How about you? Do you believe in vampires?”

  The man shrugged. “I don’t ask. As long as they leave me alone and pay their bills on time, I’ll leave them alone.”

  So much for pragmatism. Jordan smiled and shrugged. “I keep an open mind. You have to in my business.”

  The policeman studied Jordan through narrowed eyes. “I’m told you looked like death when the woman brought you in after the accident. Legs broken, blood everywhere. How did you survive that?”

  Jordan wished he’d thought to fake a few bruises for the captain’s benefit. The real ones had gone, and his legs felt much better. The deepest scar was fading fast. He had nothing to show the police captain. “The cuts bled a lot, but they’ve been bandaged and stitched. No serious injuries, although I’ve pulled a muscle in my leg. What can I say?” He gave a deprecating shrug. “Surely I’m not the first person you’ve seen walk away from a major road crash.”

  For the first time in the conversation he entered the captain’s mind, prepared to plant a suggestion about the incidents. He was tired of this.

  “I guess I have,” the big man said slowly, rubbing his chin with one hand. “And I just watched you drink that coffee.”

  Ah, that was more like it. “And vampires don’t eat or drink.” Jordan reached for the coffee pot. “Want to watch me drink another one?”

  At last he raised a reluctant laugh. “I don’t think I’ll watch this time. Go ahead.”

  Jordan poured his coffee and topped up the other two cups. “How can you tell when somebody is a vampire?”

  The captain chuckled. “Most people hereabouts just know. There are wannabees, people who dress in black, wear white make up and hang out where they think they’ll find vampires. Like that poor girl who died. We get some trouble from them, even in a small place like Indigette. Here in New Orleans, they have nightclubs and shops. The real thing is far less obvious, but they can’t hide one thing. Vampires are allergic to sunlight. They burn up.”

  “It’s October,” Jordan observed mildly, “and the sun can still be too much for a poor human. When it’s not raining, that is.”

  “No, I mean it. They burn up, literally. I saw it happen once. Not a pretty sight.”

  Jordan wondered who’d put on that particular show. Vampires would sometimes stage a ‘show’ to demonstrate their ‘vulnerabilities.’ It had worked so far, but setting fire to oneself seemed a bit extreme. “Fascinating. Perhaps I should stay to study the phenomenon.”

  He finished his coffee and got to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.” He gave them an old fashioned half bow. “I want to get back to my wife. Minton, I’ll contact the hire company and make an arrangement to pay for the car. Thanks for your attention.”

  He’d rather the mechanic hadn’t been quite so perceptive. Foret would pay for what he did.

  He smiled at the captain. “I want to take Karey home in the next few days. She’s exhausted, and I want to make sure she rests. She’s spent far too many nights sitting up watching for ghosts that didn’t turn up.” And too many fighting the ones that did.

  The captain frowned. “You’re not under suspicion, Arcenaux. Not now, at any rate. But don’t disappear.”

  “Understood.” If he didn’t mention he was taking Karey to France, perhaps the captain wouldn’t ask.

  As he turned to walk away a sharp pain pierced him. Panic. Not his. “Karey!”

  Lengthening his stride, Jordan waited until he was out of sight before breaking into a run and taking the stairs three
at a time.

  He was too late. He knew it before he flung open the door to the suite. The bed was empty, the sheets thrown back as though someone left in a hurry. When he stretched out his senses he got no sense of her. Karey had gone. Unconscious. He wouldn’t consider the alternative.

  Fury lanced through him, almost doubling him up with its intensity. Whoever had done this would die.

  * * * * *

  Karey opened her eyes, wincing at the beam of light that shone directly into them. “What’s going on?” Her voice sounded thready, and when she moved a jagged pain spiked her head.

  “Hold still,” a male voice said, and a sensation of cold flooded through her. Ice pack. She struggled to remember and the memories flooded back. Jordan, telling her he loved her. Sleeping, warm and content. Now this. Nothing in between.

  She breathed in musty air, thick with a perfume she couldn’t identify. Sickly sweet. Blinking, she was glad when he moved the light a little so she could see where she was. Not that it was any help. When she tried to sit up something jerked her back.

  She was tied up, by ropes, if she could believe the rough sensation of friction on her wrists. Looking up, she saw a tall, thin pole, with figures painted on it.

  “My poteau-mitan,” said Bernard.

  She blinked again, trying to accelerate her night vision. Apart from the torch in his hand, candles dimly lighted the murky, dank room. That was where some of the smell came from, she realized, watching the musty smoke curl its way up to the low ceiling. The floor was sprinkled with whitish powder, carefully arranged in strange patterns.

  Vodun.

  “Welcome to my world,” Bernard purred. He was stripped to the waist, daubed with symbols in something red. Blood. Belatedly, Karey identified one of the smells. Fresh blood, from the chicken that lay headless on the floor. “My ancestor, Camille Benoit practiced her art here. Now it’s my turn. She wore the Blue Star to conduct her rituals. The stones gave her power. With it, I can have it all. I want it back.”

  “It’s just a pretty necklace,” said a voice from behind her. Karey didn’t need to turn around to identify its owner. Didiane.