“What time is it?” Gabriel asked as he straightened up.
I checked the Altiplano on my wrist. Part of Piaget’s Skeleton Collection. I refused to think about the sixty-thousand-dollar price tag because if I did, then I’d talk myself into giving the damn watch back. And I didn’t want to. Being able to see the inner workings of the timepiece fascinated me. “Six seventeen,” I said, answering his question.
“Sunrise,” he murmured. Un-tucking his T-shirt from the waistband of his jeans, he pulled it up over his head.
“Um . . . what are you doing?”
While Gabriel and I had had sex on every conceivable surface in his apartment, I was more than a little hesitant about this hunk of marble. The distinct possibility that my ass might slide off the glass-like surface was reason enough, but I also had the strangest feeling that fornicating anywhere near it would be akin to an act of blasphemy. Like having sex in a church. Any church. Any part of any church. There were just some things you simply didn’t do. At least I didn’t.
Gabriel’s fingers, now busy with the buckle at his waist, stayed their movement. “I thought it was time you knew where I am when you wake up alone.” He looked slightly puzzled by my question.
“And you have to take your clothes off to do that?”
He nodded. “Yes. I always sleep naked, Rowan, whether I am with you or not.”
“Oh, so you’re going to sleep then?” It was my turn to be puzzled.
He took both my hands in his, turning them over so he could kiss the inside of each wrist. The gesture always struck me as being seductively intimate. “Yes, and so should you,” he said, giving me a knowing look.
Of course, six a.m., sunrise—well, duh!
Like I said . . . a work in progress. That was the first and only time since moving in with Gabriel that I did not fall asleep in his arms.
Completely nude, he lay down on the top of the marble slab, arms by his sides, hands relaxed. It was difficult not to notice he also had a raging hard-on. I could have run a flag up the damn thing, except I had enough on my mind dealing with the unexpected flame that had ignited somewhere in my pelvis. After licking its way up between my breasts, it now scorched my face.
“Yes, I do,” Gabriel’s voice murmured to me.
“Yes, you do what?”
“Go to sleep with an erection. You are the last thing I picture in my mind, so it’s a natural reaction.” Keeping his eyes closed, he pulled his mouth into a grin at hearing me gasp. “I know that’s what you were wondering.”
I muttered something under my breath that I was certain he heard but was too sensible to comment on. And then I gasped for an entirely different reason.
A soft blue glow began to pulse from the marble, washing over Gabriel’s body and filling every part of the otherwise empty room. It took me a few moments to realize the light was keeping time with the beat of his heart, and it was slowing down. A moment later I covered my mouth to stifle a shriek as Gabriel’s body sank into the marble block and disappeared from view. I stood completely transfixed before a rush of adrenaline carried my legs to his coffin.
The top had changed from an opaque, impenetrable covering to one that was now transparent, allowing the inside of the crystallized rock to be viewed. Gabriel lay cradled in a depression that was shaped to fit his muscular frame perfectly. I stared down at him. His eyes remained closed, his features relaxed, and I knew that his mind and body had entered a quiescent state, completely closed off from his surroundings. The lack of stimuli would permit him to disconnect from the physical world and reconnect to the inner essence that made him . . . well . . . Gabriel.
It was something every Original Vampire had to do in order to stay sane through the passing of the centuries. And why, on a less-intense level, all vampires found it necessary to sleep during the daylight hours.
Movement dragged my eyes away from his face. The mystical runes carved in the top of the sarcophagus now began to move. Whether by their own inclination or responding to the presence inside the sarcophagus I had no way of knowing, but each throbbed with a soft glow. One after the other, they lit up and then darkened, reminding me of flashing Christmas lights. I covered my mouth with a hand to stifle a giggle, although I didn’t think Gabriel could hear me.
I took a moment to catch my breath, finding the entire spectacle mystifying, awe-inspiring, and breathtakingly beautiful. As my eyes moved from the runes to Gabriel’s still form, which I could see clearly through the top of the sarcophagus, I pressed my lips against the cool surface directly above his mouth. Almost immediately the room was filled with the most glorious scent of pine trees, crisp, fresh snow, and something that I recognized but still couldn’t name. It was an aroma I was all too familiar with. It was the scent of Gabriel’s blood.
And now my lover was crossing the threshold of the panic room, and I had a pretty good idea why. He intended to put me inside his own sensory deprivation chamber.
Carefully he set me down, placing my bare feet on the cool marble ledge that sat at the base of his coffin. The extra height didn’t put me on the same level as Gabriel, but I didn’t have to tilt my head back quite as much in order to look up at him.
His eyes were now almost all the way back to the neon blue I was used to seeing. I smiled, much preferring this color to the stormy sea shade they became when his temper was riled. The tips of his fingers brushed against the side of my breast, causing heat to arrow through me and making me realize I was naked. My clothes, the T-shirt and jeans I’d put on in a snit after our earlier disagreement, lay in a pile on the floor. When had he undressed me?
“What the—”
“You can’t wear anything to sleep with me,” Gabriel said in a low voice.
“Sleep . . . with . . .” Panic made me step back, or try to. The feel of cold stone against my ass propelled me forward, back into his arms. I looked over my shoulder at the sarcophagus, then at Gabriel, then at the sarcophagus again. “You mean in there?” I whispered.
“Uh-huh.”
“With you?”
“Yes, with me.” A frown appeared, marring his smooth brow. “You haven’t become claustrophobic over the years, have you?” I shook my head. I didn’t think so, but then I hadn’t put myself in a sensory-deprivation chamber recently. “Well, we’ll find out soon enough,” Gabriel said confidently.
“Yes, I suppose we—no, wait! I-I can’t get in there, not with you.”
He put both hands on my shoulders, and strangely enough I wasn’t bothered that one was caked in dried blood and other . . . stuff. Instead I was mildly disturbed to notice he wasn’t wearing any pants. Gabriel was now as naked as I was, only I didn’t recall at what point he’d stopped to undress not only me but himself as well. Had I passed out?
His hand moved from my shoulder and lifted my chin. He gazed at me. “Rowan, sweetheart, you have to get in there, and the only way you can be in there is with me.”
I shook my head and winced. The icepick throb at the base of my skull didn’t want me to forget it was there. I took hold of Gabriel’s hands, clutching them tightly, and forced myself to focus. “But why do I have to get in there?”
“Because I don’t know what that fucking bastard injected you with, but I do know what it’s doing to you isn’t good. This is the only way to purge it from your blood.”
I wasn’t so out of it I couldn’t tell that Gabriel was having a hard time holding on to his temper. If I pushed him any further, he might snap. “Oh,” I said in a small voice. There really wasn’t anything else to say, so I slipped my hand in his. “Then let’s do it.”
Gabriel lay on his back and positioned me on top of him. He tucked my head beneath his chin, and I put my hands around his neck while his arms encircled me. We lay together on the surface of the marble coffin, and then suddenly we were inside it. I sucked in a breath and raised my head, wanting to tell Gabriel his cock was poking me in the hip, but he just chuckled and moved his hand between my shoulder blades. I could feel the stone e
xpanding and contracting to accommodate my body, and then came a series of light, almost ticklish pricks as the protective runes moved over my skin. I felt them on the soles of my feet, the back of my thighs, and my buttocks, back, and shoulders. They clung to me, intent on completing their appointed task.
I pressed my head against Gabriel’s chest, breathing in his scent and hearing the steady beat of his heart and the hypnotic inhale-exhale of his breathing. Listening as each breath stretched out longer and longer, as each beat of his heart grew fainter, until I couldn’t hear either anymore.
And then I was all alone.
Awash in a sea of pitch black, I didn’t even realize Gabriel was no longer holding me until I stretched out my hand and connected with . . . nothing. How had I lost hold of him? One moment his arms were around me, and I could taste the sweat of his skin on my lips, and then he was gone. As far as I could tell, there was no violence to our separation. He wasn’t yanked from my arms, nor I from his. It was as if we had simply drifted away from each other. Loosened our hold and slipped away. Only I hadn’t noticed.
I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or shut, because there was nothing to mark the difference. Open or closed was all the same. The darkness surrounding me was absolute. Every grain of light had been snuffed out of existence. The energy used to produce such a phenomenon had simply been eliminated.
This is how it must have been before God brought forth the light.
If I was supposed to be afraid, I wasn’t. I didn’t really feel much of anything, truth be told. No fear, no anxiety pulling at me. Nothing sending my nervous system on a roller-coaster ride or making my heart skip a beat or two. Assuming, of course, that it actually was still beating.
And then I heard a whisper in the darkness. No, not a whisper, more of a . . . sigh. A sigh that sang my name.
Rooooowaaaaaan . . .
A sound that was capable of physical touch. It stroked my skin, brushed over my nipples, fluttered between my legs. It aroused me, making me feel warm and safe. Making me feel that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Making me feel like I had come home.
Chapter 9
I woke to find Gabriel on his side, propped up on one arm, watching me. My mouth stretched into a smile as his other hand made a lazy, circular sweep across my back. He smiled back, and I blinked sleepily at him through the tangle of curls that fell across my face. “You came for me,” I said in a voice that was still in awe of the vision I’d beheld.
He regarded me with a puzzled frown, halting his hand at the tattoo in the small of my back. The group of symbols that was his name in a language I’d never known existed. “You doubted that I would?”
“I didn’t know,” I confessed, pushing the hair from my face. “One of the drugs I was given . . . he said it was an inhibitor, that you wouldn’t be able to sense me. Actually it was meant for Anasztaizia so Aleksei wouldn’t be able to find her.”
“Ah, so that was the reason.” His fingers brushed lightly over my inking before resuming their course along my spine.
“The reason for what?”
“The reason you felt like quicksilver in my mind.”
Quicksilver, I knew from one of my high school science classes, was another name for mercury. The stuff they used to put in thermometers, and it’s also the reason for the phrase mad as a hatter. If memory serves, back in the day, mercury was used as part of the hat-making process, but prolonged exposure to its vapors resulted in madness. Having seen pictures of what passed as fashionable headgear during that time, I think the insanity was pretty self-evident.
“One minute I could reach you,” Gabriel continued, “and the next you were slipping away from me.”
“But it didn’t stop you from finding me.”
Well... duh.
“No, it just took me longer.” Frustration and anger flashed quickly across his face.
“Gabriel, it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known.”
He stroked a finger across my cheek. “Nothing will ever stop me from coming for you, Rowan, and I will always find you. Always.”
My stomach muscles clenched at hearing his words, and I found it incredible that this gorgeous man, this gorgeous vampire, was in love with me. “You’re so beautiful,” I murmured. Gabriel looked startled, enough so that I apologized. “Ah jeez, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“I’m not embarrassed,” he reassured me. “I’m just a little surprised.”
I sat up and looked down at him. “You don’t think I ever noticed how incredibly good-looking you are?”
“Oh, I figured you’d noticed,” he said, clearly distracted by the sight of my naked breasts. “I just thought it would take you longer to say it out loud.” His dimple winked at me.
Despite his teasing tone, Gabriel had a valid point. I didn’t verbalize nearly enough all the things I felt about him. And shrieking while on the verge of an orgasm didn’t count. We’d declared our love to each other, in word and deed. Any doubt about the latter could be confirmed by a certain demon still trying to make sense of it, but I think this was the first time I’d actually commented on his looks. Normally I was so overwhelmed by the sheer perfection of Gabriel’s features, I became tongue-tied. Which was quite shameful because he was always telling me how beautiful I was to him.
He reached up and smoothed a curl between his fingers, watching as it coiled in his hand. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Good. Did you . . . were you able to get it all out of me?”
“Not all of it,” he told me, looking a little troubled, “but what remains cannot hurt you.” I was about to ask him how he could be so certain some residue was still in me when I suddenly became aware of where it was located. If I concentrated, I could feel it moving in a lethargic roll in the cold place deep inside me. The place left empty by the missing piece of my soul. I wasn’t worried. Nothing could survive in there.
I was grateful to be alive, in one piece and relatively undamaged. It was too horrible to contemplate what Gus and Rat Boy might have done to me if Gabriel hadn’t stopped them. Saying thank you seemed so inadequate, but I didn’t know how else to convey what I was feeling. Fortunately, my brain decided to save me from blurting out something inane or wildly inappropriate or possibly both. It told my heart to take a road trip and lodge itself in my throat. Unable to speak, I began to tremble, and my tears went into overdrive.
Gabriel held me close, and I snaked an arm around his neck while at the same time pushing my leg between his thighs. There was nothing sexual about this; it was a gesture of comfort. Then, with my face in the hollow of his neck, I wept.
His voice was a soothing murmur as he spoke to me in a language I’d never heard before. It made no difference. The words were secondary. In Gabriel’s arms I was safe. What had happened to me, what had nearly happened to me, had been a mistake. A true case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, because it wasn’t me that Gus and Rat Boy were supposed to abduct, but—Anasztaizia!
I yanked myself rudely out of Gabriel’s embrace, saying, “I have to talk to Aleksei!”
His hands caught hold of my upper arms, preventing me from rolling off him. “Of course, and you can, but later—”
“No, you don’t understand—I have to talk to him now.”
“Rowan, you can talk to Aleksei all you want, but not right—”
“But you don’t understand—it’s important!” Surely the urgency in my voice, the way I was struggling to get out of his hold told him that?
“More important than Anasztaizia?” Gabriel asked, giving me a shake.
“Anasztaizia?” My voice became fearful. Oh, dear God, no! Don’t tell me Petrov had managed to get to her after all.
“Yes, she saw you on the news and became hysterical.” In a quick move, Gabriel reversed our positions, so I was now looking up at him.
“I was on the news?”
“Well, not you exactly, but there was a report about a traff
ic accident downtown. It seems a big pickup plowed into a little red sports car.”
“And they reported that?” I was incredulous. Vehicle accidents happened all the time. I couldn’t imagine anything less than a multi-car pileup being newsworthy.
“It arouses curiosity when there are no victims at the scene,” Gabriel said quietly. “For now it’s being passed off as kids joyriding or some such nonsense.” So much for Rat Boy’s proclamation about Petrov’s vehicular cleanup skills.
“And Anasztaizia recognized her car on TV,” I said. I don’t know why I was surprised. I would have recognized mine. Well, the POS anyway.
“Thankfully it was right before the police showed up at her apartment,” Gabriel said.
“The police?” Of course, they would have gotten her information from the registration. “W-what did she tell them?”
Gabriel raised a brow. “She told them she hadn’t realized her car had been stolen.”
Now it was my turn to be puzzled. “Why would she tell the police that?”
“Because, sweetheart, it was obvious you were missing.”
It made sense. Anasztaizia’s experience would tell her which events were best left in the hands of human law enforcement, and which were better suited to vampire retribution. And anything concerning me would automatically be turned over to Gabriel.
“But she gave me the key,” I told him, pointing out what I thought was an obvious flaw in the lovely Magyar’s explanation. “If her car was stolen, wouldn’t it have been hot-wired or something?”
“If the police ask, she’ll confess she might have forgotten to lock the car, might even have left the key in the ignition.”
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