“This is wrong,” she whispered, our noses touching and her chest heaving into mine. One of her hands slid downward to touch my chest. “I shouldn’t want this as much as I do.”
Turning around, I shoved her against the wall and trailed my lips down to her neck. “I care very little for what we should or should not do.” The fingers of one hand teased up her thigh and back to her breasts. “I only know what is before me and how much I want it.”
Her back arched when I gave her a firm pinch, eyes fluttering shut as the crown of her head rested back against the wall. The more harshly I rolled my fingers, the more she gasped until a frenzied moan floated past her lips. I nipped at her ear lobe and her nails dug into my shoulder. “Why me, though?” she asked through lusty gulps of air. “I’m sure I’m one of a long list of women you’ve had since Lydia.”
“Yes. I cannot lie about that much.” I paused, but just for a moment, taking a steadying breath before whispering in her ear. “I have been afraid. I feared this might merely be my vampire instincts clamoring to be sated. But I cannot deny what my heart says to me. You might not be the first whom I have slept with, but you are the first I have loved.”
When our lips met again, the kiss took on a deliberate manner. I allowed my hand underneath her shirt and she let her fingertips trace down to the buttons of my shirt. Her warm hands upon my cool skin contrasted with my cool hands upon her warm back. The frantic union of tongues and lips was only interrupted when Monica lifted her arms to rid her body of her shirt. I took in the sight of naked flesh and felt every inhibition within me melt onto the floor.
She pushed the fabric of my shirt away from my shoulders. It, too, dropped to the floor, with her hands wasting no time in searching my bare skin. I shuddered, staring into her eyes as she hitched up and scratched deliberately across my chest. My eyes rolled back. “Good fucking gods,” I murmured. “I want you, Monica.”
“Then take me.” Her mouth pressed against mine again. Both of us tumbled to the ground, landing half on the rug and partly atop our already discarded clothing. She tugged at my belt while I found the zipper to her skirt.
‘I am not taking advantage of you. ’
‘I know you’re not. ’
‘I am not merely seducing you. You know this, correct? ’
‘If you were just seducing me you wouldn’t be tearing at my clothes, Peter. ’
I laughed just as she lifted enough to shimmy from her skirt. The bout of merriment was short-lived, however. She kicked her boots and skirt to the side and as I opened my eyes, I witnessed the sight of her climbing on top of me, clad only in her undergarments. I swallowed past a lump in my throat and traced between her breasts with my fingers. “Say it again,” I whispered.
“Say what?”
“My name.”
She smiled and lowered her body down atop mine, kissing my cheek and speaking softly. “I love you, Peter.”
I barely suppressed another laugh, this one of delight. “And I love you, Monica.”
Monica nipped at my ear in response and I groaned with unsatisfied lust screaming at me for consummation. The remainder of our clothing found itself discarded piece by piece, with each of us becoming more daring with every item shed. Hands teased and lips caressed. Shivers were exchanged with moans and gasps with cries for more. My fangs strained as I rolled her onto her back. Slipping inside her was unparalleled bliss. She lifted her wrist and stared into my eyes as she captured me between her legs again. I bit down with our opening thrusts and lavished in the taste of her blood before licking the wounds shut.
The rhythm of our movements might have started as controlled and deliberate, but they rapidly became swift and frenzied. I provoked the moan of my name as many times as I dared. Each time she rewarded me with it, the humanity within me desperately vied for another invocation, and then another. Her body melted into mine and as she shuddered, I pushed harder, further, feeling awake and alive for the first time in years. Her cries reached a crescendo and I fell along with her into the throes of climax. Somewhere inside the haze of afterglow, I lost myself for interminable moments.
A kiss brought me back to reality, calling me into the present from the paths my mind traversed. I slipped from her and continued to kiss her, rolling onto my back and lifting her on top of me in one fluid movement. Her head rested on my chest, her hand settling above my silent heart. “That was so much better than I imagined it would be,” she said, her voice still breathy. “I don’t know what planet I’m on, but I’m sure it isn’t Earth.”
“Better than you imagined?” I followed the question with a chuckle while my fingers brushed through her hair. “That would suggest you have been fantasizing about this, Dearest.”
“Maybe I have. Maybe I haven’t. Can’t inflate your ego too much, can I?”
“A few minutes ago, you seemed rather determined to do just that.”
“Bastard.” A laugh floated past her lips which brought a broad smile to my face. As her hand crept up my chest, it settled on the necklace I kept draped around my neck, bearing Lydia’s pendant as homage. She traced its intricacies with her nail. “You have this way with watchers. We’re not supposed to get emotionally entangled with our seers, but you managed to rope in not just one, but two.”
“My good looks and charm, perhaps?”
“Oh shush, I’m trying to be serious.” She sighed, but the exasperation was half-hearted at best. After a brief pause, she continued. “You have a pure heart, Peter. I think that’s your bigger problem. You see the darkness so pointedly because you live in the light.”
I frowned. “Why does the darkness entice me so, then?”
“I think it’s even more tempting for the pure of heart than it is for anyone else. You had to create a whole other persona for it.” Monica lifted, her elbow resting on my shoulder and our eyes meeting. “I could go back to calling you Flynn, if you really wanted me to.”
“No.” I sighed, but managed a slight curl in the corner of my mouth for her. “Aside from in front of Wesley and the others. I have not completely found Peter again, but for once I believe you might be right. Perhaps my humanity is not as dead as previously thought.”
“I know it’s not.”
My grin broadened. Our lips met in a tender kiss, but as they parted again, I motioned for the clasp of Lydia’s necklace and freed it from my neck. Monica furrowed her brow, raising up enough to see me lift it toward her and holding still as I secured it around her. Her hand lifted to touch the pendant. “What was that for?” she asked.
“Someone special gave it to me, to protect me when I was in danger. I know I have been an ungrateful cad about your care over me. Consider this my promise that I shall always try to protect you as well.”
She smiled and kissed me again, lying with me for a few, peaceful moments. For once, my thoughts were neither melancholy, nor sadistic. They were, instead, consumed with Chloe’s assertion that my own miracle was coming to me.
Did I deserve a taste of the miraculous? Perhaps not.
But it seemed The Fates had their own agenda as far as I was concerned.
Part Four
An Uncertain Future
“I had a dream, which was not all a dream.”
Lord Byron
Chapter Fourteen
Had I been granted the ability to refuse, we would have never left the house. Between the moments of stillness and the heartfelt words we exchanged, I imagined an evening spent in either blessed calm or the throes of exploration until the sunrise demanded we finally rest. Our tenor remained light-hearted – even when Monica reached for her clothes – and I stole kisses along her shoulder, regarding the prickles of her skin as tells of how she truly felt about the matter. Her words possessed more severity, however. “We need to get back to work.”
She even punctuated the comment with a sigh.
I frowned, resting my weight on a bent elbow while she sat up and secured her undergarments into place. Her back to me, I could not see if she look
ed as crestfallen as I felt. “Could we not give it a rest for the remainder of the night?” I asked, my tone of voice soft. I still lay naked on the floor, unaffected by her sudden pull toward responsibility.
Monica hung her head for the briefest of seconds before pivoting to face me again. I perked an eyebrow and the slight curl of her lips in response bore more apology than mirth to it. She hesitated, not answering me at first in the form of words. As she inched closer, she rested on her elbow and faced me, her fingertips coasting across my face before brushing back into the locks of my hair.
“I wish we could,” she said, in the same quiet tenor as I had spoken. Her gaze fell to my lips before lifting back to meet my eyes. “You know as well as I do that Ian has something more up his sleeve, right?”
I sighed, but relented toward nodding. “Yes, I received that distinct impression. He wore his opinion regarding the Order on his sleeve.”
“There are no such things as coincidences. And I’m sorry, but he knew who the hell you were, human name or not.” The way Monica regarded me bore gravity to it, though I could not be certain what all laid behind the look. As she leaned forward, I shut my eyes and when her lips met mine, the rest of the world faded for a lingering moment. I allowed myself to immerse in it, not apt to care whether or not our new antagonist was indeed playing the game I had surmised we were playing.
As such, her first words upon pulling away were especially jarring. “I’m going to go call Wesley.”
My eyes snapped opened. I glowered, which prompted her to laugh as she came to a stand. “Why must we involve them?” I asked.
A pair of pants suddenly flew at me. I lifted my hands to catch them, but tumbled onto my back in the process. Her voice bore far more amusement than I thought the situation permitted. “After what just happened, you’re still jealous of him?” she asked as she padded around the living room, tossing various garments in my direction. I rose to a seated position when the deluge ceased, in time to see her hands on her hips with her skirt clutched in the palm of one. Her smile betrayed the sentiment of her words. “Go on and get dressed before I leave without you.”
“Bloody witch.” I pushed the laundry pile from my lap and sorted through it, locating my boxers and standing to put them on. She winked as I bent to pick up my pants and I could only grumble before she walked off and into the kitchen. A few lines of terse profanity made it past my lips by the time I finished securing the buttons of my shirt and fastening my belt back into place.
It only took a few minutes for exteriors to be polished, shoes to be slipped on and coats procured. Had I bothered to ask Monica what she said to her friends, she might have informed me she woke him and the others from their rest. As it was, seeing the disheveled appearances of the trio when they greeted us at the door bore enough evidence that we could have stayed in and left the theatrics for the evening following. I sat in a chair, allowing Monica to relay what had transpired to her friends while silently fuming. Mercifully, Wesley, Jesse, and Mark were yet too groggy to pose more questions.
The house itself had been a short bus ride over. The living area far more spacious than our apartment, I could see why Wesley preferred one residence over the other. The room we occupied had been furnished comfortably, yet bore enough disorder to suggest three men did indeed cohabitate there. I had positioned myself away from the large console television, in part to avoid giving away my lack of reflection. It was the person whose image had been captured by the dark glass who commanded my attention when she sat across from me.
As her eyes met mine, I fought against the grin wishing to tug at the corners of my mouth. A smile crept across her facial features and, unwittingly, I mirrored it. Monica blushed when I sighed, her fingers drifting to the pendant dangling from her neck. I was tempted to laugh, especially when she started stroking it gently.
Wesley interrupted the exchange, though, when he stood and began pacing. “This is mind-blowing, Flynn,” he said, surprising me when he addressed me and not my watcher. Tempted though I was to issue a snarky repartee, I merely sat back in my seat and studied the high strung human. He laughed. “You managed to convince a vampire elder you were one of them?”
“Yes,” I said, continuing the plan devised between me and Monica on the ride over. While I had not been inclined to inquire about her friends, she had made certain we had a story in place. I held steady eye contact with Wesley through the lenses of my glasses. “It is a trick we perfected in Philadelphia. My glasses prevent them from seeing the color of my eyes and she casts a spell to cloak my pulse. We were able to get rather close to the heads of the Philadelphia covens by orchestrating this ruse.”
“It’s bloody surgical, I’ll give you that,” Jesse said from the couch where he sat. Mark rested on the other side of the couch, eyeing me in a conspicuous manner while Jesse lit a cigarette. He set the pack and his lighter onto a table bearing an ashtray within arm’s length. “The bastard believed it?”
“Not without some suspicion. At least he did not require any empirical proof.”
“Brilliant.” He glanced at Mark and reached with his other hand to swat his compatriot across the shoulder. “You ever think of using the spell like that, mate? I know you and the other sods forced to do field work had to know that bit as one of the standards.”
Mark slowly diverted his gaze to Jesse and sighed. “No, we never tried anything like that.” When his eyes met mine again, I saw the barest hint of a smirk on his face. “Not many of us were pale enough to make it believable.”
“The benefit toward not spending much time in the sun.” I forced a tight-lipped grin in response and addressed the others with my next words. “Monica and I have become proficient at making the most of what we have. Necessities which come with operating outside the full cooperation of the Order.”
Wesley huffed. “You’re preaching to the choir with that one, buddy.” He shook his head and glanced away. “This is… incredible,” he said, but failed to follow the comment with anything else.
“Whatever the matter, it would appear as though providence has smiled down upon us.” My eyes shifted to Monica, the next comment temporarily lodged in the back of my throat. She looked to me again as though unable to look away and something foreign suddenly buzzed in the space between us. My stomach gave a slight twist. A strange sensation crawled through my skin, enough for me to force my gaze away and back to the others. “We are convinced your instincts on the matter are sound. He made several allusions which suggested he might have something up his sleeve.”
“Oh, he’s got his plans alright,” Wesley said, his pacing coming to a stop. As we regarded each other, I furrowed my brow at the way he frowned. “You did read the notebook, right?”
“Yes, I did.”
“All the secret meetings and visits from out-of-towners?”
Admittedly, I had not made it that far. “Yes, I read about them. As such, the tension exchanged in the few moments we shared gives me enough reason to believe we should pursue this further.”
“Tension?” Jesse asked, entering the fray again.
Reaching in my coat, I produced my pack of cigarettes, deciding to join Jesse in the indulgence. I lit one and drew from the filter, exhaling a cloud of smoke as I responded. “Because I was from out of town. I had to tell him I was a member of his former friend’s coven in order to earn his trust. I shall be able to determine more about him when he and I meet. Perhaps he might allow us to speak alone so I can interrogate him.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” Wesley asked.
I shrugged. “Then I shall have to snoop through their rooms should I be provided the chance to break away.”
Wesley stared at me for several beats. I held a steady gaze, but became unnerved at the pregnant pause until he finally spoke again. “You’re not going to do anything in the way of reconnaissance beforehand?” He laughed at the expression which surfaced on my face and sat on the arm the couch, forcing Mark to position himself more upright. “Flynn, I’m
sure you’re a god among seers, but pulling off the ‘I’m a vampire’ ruse isn’t going to be easy. Not for one whole evening. If they give you blood or ask you to feed with them, you’ll be fucked.”
I perked an eyebrow, drawing from my cigarette again. “I have blended with vampires before.”
“Well, this isn’t a matter of blending, it’s a matter of knowing what to expect.” He glanced toward Monica. “He hasn’t been trained?”
She winced. “We haven’t gotten him out to Seattle yet. I’ve been privately training him while following some of Lydia’s old research notes.”
The bold-faced lie hung unnoticed in front of Wesley’s face. He nodded. “That explains a lot.” And while I was tempted to ask what exactly that explained and what it had to do with Seattle, he looked to me and interrupted the question before I could even speak it. The mirthful dancing returned to his gaze. “This is standard practice for missions. Before we charge into the middle of a battle, we get as close as we can to ground zero and figure out what to expect.”
Suppressing the twitch of annoyance was a challenge. “I am familiar with the concept of reconnaissance.”
“Well, it applies to everything a seer does, including and especially what you’re planning. You should know what you’re walking into first.”
“Granted.” Sighing, I ignored his impudence, reminding myself he did not know of my experience as an assassin. I pondered the concept while glancing around for an ashtray and finding one situated on an adjacent shelf. “I suppose scouting the coven would be the best course of action prior to my meeting with Ian. I shall have to make it a point to do so.”
“Why not all of us?” Wesley asked eagerly as I tapped the ash from the end of my cigarette. “Five sets of eyes are better than one, after all.”
My gaze darted toward him once more. “Absolutely not.” The answer blurted past my lips in such a conspicuous manner, it begged for explanation. I visibly regrouped and ignored the shock registered on Wesley’s face, focusing my attention on Monica instead. “I do not think we shall need reinforcements for this, do you?”
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