Beautiful Danger

by Michele Hauf

  Yet an even younger vampire could be created if a vampire bit a child and left it to transform. Any vampire capable of biting a child landed lowest of low on Lark’s scale of humanity. What a bittersweet cruelty to have to stake that child to save both it and innocent mortals from its blood thirst.

  Again, Lark was thankful such an encounter had not occurred.

  Rarely did the Order take on a job from outside sources, though Lark had only been with them for a year, and couldn’t know all their dealings. Rook kept details close to his vest. If a knight was dispatched to hunt a vampire, the intel provided was on a need-to-know basis.

  Pack Levallois had hired the Order to dispose of a threat, yet it was the pack that had manufactured that threat through their vicious torture of vampires. As far as Lark was concerned, Levallois deserved what Domingos served them, and the Order should not have agreed to liaison as server of justice to one side when both were equally to blame.

  Only now, alone with her thoughts, could she finally begin to reason that out. Why was she working for the werewolves? She should have questioned this assignment.

  On the other hand, had she not received the job, she might never have met him.

  “Domingos,” she mouthed, not putting the name out in sound, but feeling every syllable form a tune with her heartbeat. Gorgeous night music, that.

  Sensitive Domingos LaRoque, with the scarred skin and blown-out pupil and a mad frenzy screaming in his brain. Skull clatter, as he called it. Their lovemaking had pushed all that torture aside for the moment. When they had been entwined, naked limbs seeking, holding and exploring, he’d seemed sane, whole. And if the noises had started to torment, he’d gotten them under control simply by focusing on her.

  Lark imagined lying beside him in bed now, her body warm against his. The damaged skin on his back had been sensitive to her touch, so she’d carefully hugged up to him, her hand clasped to his chest, feeling his heartbeat thunder against her breasts. So strong. Always he smelled of sweet smoke, like a peat fire burning low in the countryside on a lazy summer evening. It brought back memories of her childhood, a good time when the only nighttime frights the world had offered were spooks under the bed and rattling branches against the windowpanes.

  It didn’t matter to Domingos that she was mortal and hated his kind; he’d given of himself freely and without fear. She didn’t hate him. Couldn’t hate a man who had touched her soul as if with an inexplicable hush of his breath. The little he’d told her about his torture had drawn her up from the wondering and stalled fears regarding Todd, and now perhaps she could open her tightly grasped fist and let her husband’s memory move on, peacefully.

  Maybe?

  She believed Todd now resided with the tiny soul they’d lost early in their marriage. Together she would hold them both in her heart, but not so tightly they could not comfort each other where they were now. Heaven. She had to believe in that place, if only to know her family had made it there.

  Release them. Give them the freedom you are just beginning to claim.

  She wanted to. She needed to give them freedom so she could finally know her own freedom.

  Opening her palm now, Lark did just that. She closed her eyes and pictured her husband’s loving smile in her thoughts. He’d had his own path, and while he’d loved her, at the time, she hadn’t been fully prepared for where that path had led the two of them—into a horrifying darkness. But she loved him for pursuing his passion, and for being kind to so many homeless strangers, and for making her laugh and yes, even for those few occasions his absence because of his job had made her cry.

  Despite the need to form lies to protect his family and hers from learning about what he really did for a living, Todd Cooper had given her the best love he’d known how to give, even after the death of their child. And Lark had reciprocated.

  “Goodbye, Todd,” she whispered. “I will always hold you in my heart. Keep our child safe in your arms. I send blessings to you both.”

  Pressing her palm to the cold stone floor, she sent thanks three stories above to the man who risked his life merely by putting himself outside, above her, close and always there.

  A new anchor in her life that she clung to fervently.

  * * *

  The midnight bells rang and Lark took long minutes to turn over and sit up, allowing the blood to move through the parts of her body that needed it and tingling as sensation returned. A few yoga stretches were necessary. She bent forward, gripping the soles of her feet and bowing her forehead to her knees. That felt freakin’ outstanding.

  She’d been lying in the chapel all day. She needed a bathroom, stat. But more important, she prayed her vampire lover, who still lay above her, would not follow her escort home and risk being seen by the Order.

  * * *

  Lark unobtrusively lifted her head skyward as she got out of the escort limo before her building. The moon sat like a gorgeous disk in the starless night. She couldn’t see the rooftop from her position on the street, and so hoped that he was not above.

  For his own safety.

  Though she had no reason to believe Rook suspected her involvement with Domingos, she couldn’t take the chance he wouldn’t look into all reasons for her failure to complete the mission. Surely, a knight would be assigned to tail her for the next few days. See if she led him anywhere particular. Like a vampire’s lair?

  She wouldn’t make anything easy for the Order. Strolling through the building lobby and taking the stairs two at a time because she needed exercise after her long day spent inert, she entered her apartment and closed the door. Leaning over, she placed her palms on the floor and stretched out her spine and back again. A long session of yoga felt appropriate to work out the kinks, but she wasn’t about to linger in an asana.

  She couldn’t. A soul-deep compulsion moved her quickly through the apartment. She showered in less than five minutes, not washing her hair because she didn’t want it wet. Afterward, she combed her hair into a queue, then twisted it into a chignon and stuck a silver poniard through it. Stylish, yet functional as a weapon, if needed.

  Shuffling through the shampoos and body creams in her closet, she found the birth control pills. Not expired. She took one and placed the rest in the medicine cabinet, close at hand.

  Looking over her Order clothing, she shook her head. Didn’t need the protective Kevlar tonight. But the little black dress hanging from thin spaghetti straps on the velvet hanger had not been designed for the adventure she had in mind. Slender black leggings and a simple black T-shirt would serve. No underthings, because it was hot tonight and the humidity curled up tendrils of her hair against her neck.

  Slipping her feet into flat sneakers with good treads, she then opened the back door and scanned below. The iron stairs still lay below in the courtyard. Building maintenance would probably call it a loss and leave it as it lay until someone coughed up the euros to have it removed to a junkyard. Across the street, the rooftops were clear.

  The Order knights were like ninjas. You never saw them until the stake was aimed for your heart. But one ninja could always outsmart another if she was determined.

  Closing the door and balancing on the narrow wood threshold, Lark muttered thanks this side of the building was shrouded in darkness. Gripping the lip of the roof easement, with some difficulty, and more thanks for the workouts that had given her impressive biceps, she levered herself up and onto the roof. Admittedly, it had been much simpler when she’d had a vampire to hoist her up.

  Crouching low, she walked along the shingled surface, leaped to the next roof, which featured a border about two feet high at roof’s edge, and then looked out over and down to the main street below.

  Paris never slept, though her neighborhood was quiet and just far enough away from the main touristy areas to offer a peaceful lifestyle. So spotting someone moving about would raise c
oncern, if not alarm, since it was after midnight.

  As suspected, she located the knight lurking in an alley across the street and two buildings down from hers. What caught her eye was the glowing embers at the end of a cigarette. That surprised her. Most knights took better care of their health. Wonder which one that was. Couldn’t be Gunnar; he was a physical specimen of health, spending most of his free time in the gym the Order maintained for training.

  “One of Rook’s lackeys,” she decided.

  With a smirk, she took off across the rooftops, knowing he’d never think to look for her above, rather than on his level.

  She hadn’t gone farther than two buildings south when a hand reached out from behind a stairway entry door and grabbed her, clasping over her mouth to keep her from screaming. She had no intention of screaming because his smoky scent curled about her, softening her reactive muscles and melting her against his hard, lean frame.

  “What are you doing?” Domingos whispered.

  “I knew you’d follow me home, and I wanted to see you again.”

  “You did?”

  She nodded. He released his tight hold on her and she turned in his embrace, fitting her body against his seductive darkness. Lark kissed him in the shadows of the entryway, leaning into his body and finally, perhaps for the first time all day, releasing her tensions completely to the only one with whom she felt safe.

  “I knew you were up on the chapel roof all day,” she said. Another kiss. A stroke of her finger down his fang stirred up a wanting moan from her lover. “Good thing it was a cloudy day.”

  “I can’t stay away from you, Lark. I need you in ways even I don’t understand.”

  “It’s because I keep your crazy away. But I don’t want to question this attraction. I just want to have it for as long as possible.”

  “You don’t know how that makes me feel.”

  “I do, because I feel the same way. We belong together. I don’t know how or why, but we do.”

  “Mercy, Lark, you are too good for me.” He buried his face against her neck, his breath warm upon her skin. The press of his fangs to her skin didn’t make her cringe because it was not done with intention to bite; he just couldn’t help it. “Please, don’t ever change your mind. But I know if you do, and you have to stake me, I’d take the stake willingly, knowing it’s by your hand.”

  “Don’t say that, lover.” She lifted his chin and stroked the hair from his eyes. “I won’t harm you. Ever. And I’ll do whatever I can to keep anyone else from going after you with a stake. It’s not right. You present no danger to mortals.”

  He tilted his head. “I do need to drink their blood to survive. But I don’t kill. Never. I couldn’t do that to an innocent.”

  “I know that. And the Order understands that is how vampires must survive, and we normally only go after the ones who present serious danger to mortals. That’s why I’m so angry they accepted this assignment from pack Levallois.”

  “Let’s not talk about the dogs now. Come home with me? Let me make love to you until the sun comes up, and then we’ll close all the curtains and continue to make love until we fall asleep in each other’s arms.”

  “I’m right behind you, lover. Lead the way. But be watchful. There’s a knight on the street below, keeping an eye on my movement.”

  “I think you’ve given him the slip.”

  “There could be others.”

  “Then we’ll take my highway home, yes?”

  She slipped her hand into his and let him lead. With this man, she had no fear of falling.

  Chapter 12

  Domingos poured Lark a goblet of dark red wine, kissed her mouth, wet with wine, then whispered for her to go wait for him in the bedroom. She pulled the silver poniard from her hair, letting the soft darkness spill over her shoulders, and winked at him as she strolled down the dark hallway toward a glimmer of moonlight that drifted through a window.

  “Don’t be long,” she called back on a sexy chime. “Or maybe...yeah, take your time. I’ll be waiting, thinking of you.”

  She turned a corner, and he squeezed the neck of the wine bottle so hard, it cracked. He barely managed to get it to the sink before the bottle fell and he dropped the thick, shattered glass into the stainless steel basin. Gripping his head, he tugged his hair and clamped his jaw tight.

  “Go away!”

  The clattering in his brain rattled right back at him, defying him to expect that he could have another night of sanity with the sexy woman who had teasingly walked away from him.

  He scented blood, and his phoenix growled, slapping his cut hand to his mouth. The taste of his blood did not satisfy, but it reminded that it had been too long since he’d fed. He’d spent the entire day on the cathedral rooftop and had tracked Lark home, ignoring the insistent blood hunger.

  Normal vampires had but to feed once or twice a month. Since Domingos had escaped the pack? He needed blood daily. The madness demanded it—or perhaps it was the phoenix—and when he thought he could starve it, the world only went darker and his bones began to shake within his skin.

  He should have fed before bringing Lark to his home tonight. Slithery whispers coiled inside his brain in wicked agreement. Could he slip out and quickly find a donor? It was well after midnight, and he lived in a quiet neighborhood. Unlikely to stumble upon someone taking a stroll this late. Most of his neighbors were elderly and hit the mattress as soon as the sun set.

  Squeezing his fist forced out blood from the cuts that then dripped onto the crimson wine stains in the sink. He risked letting his hunger loose should he venture into the bedroom in search of the sensual pleasures Lark’s body teased him to enjoy.

  Go get her! We want!

  “If you keep quiet,” he muttered, “then I will give you what you want. But give me sanity this night. That is all I ask.”

  No reply clanged about inside his skull, so Domingos took that as an agreement. He washed the blood from his hand under the faucet, then claimed a new bottle of wine from the rack beside the fridge and padded down the long dark hallway.

  He could smell her, the sweet, dark richness of her blood mingling with the citrus scent that must be shampoo or body wash. It was a deliriously gorgeous flavor he could already taste on his tongue. And he knew her skin tasted salty-sweet, clean and warm. And bright, so bright. And there, between her legs, he liked to lick her until she moaned and grasped his hair, pleading with him to never stop, never stop—oh, he never would.

  Pausing outside the bedroom door, Domingos put a palm on the wall and bowed his head. Tendrils of discordant violin notes prodded the edges of his thoughts. He would not bite her. He must not, for he risked losing her trust, and that was all he had in his life. One woman who trusted him.

  Heh, echoed the repulsive nightmares in his head. Heh, heh.

  Blocking the intrusive madness, Domingos swung around the doorway and leaned against the frame, presenting a forced smile that he quickly erased for fear she would see the lie in it.

  Sitting on the bed, her back to the gothic, carved wood headboard and wine goblet lifted near her chin, sat the sexiest bit of flesh and blood he had ever known. A finger toying with her lower lip, she cast him a glance from under a fall of lush, thick hair as black as his own. Drawing out her tongue along her upper lip, she teased up the jittering desire that fizzed through his veins. Now it melted throughout his system, relaxing him, chasing the madness to the depths, and stirring his greedy wants to the surface.

  “Too perfect,” he said, thinking he was undeserving, and then not caring, because he wanted to take all of her while he was able and worry about the consequences of right and wrong later. “Mine.”

  She tilted her head. “Yes, yours. Come to me, my dark lover.”

  She stretched out a leg and drew the other to the side, opening herself to him
. She’d taken off her pants and wore only the long T-shirt, but the move revealed the soft darkness between her legs. Her eyes sparkled teasingly.

  Domingos set the wine bottle on the dresser and, taking off his shirt, approached the bed and glided forward like a cat, coming up between her legs. He kissed her there, upon her mons, a worshipful morsel for her beautiful design. Drawing his kisses down into the crease where her thigh met her torso, he then worked upward, pushing the soft cotton T-shirt higher with a hand.

  She sipped the wine and, with a sigh, imbued the air with the heady grapes from the Rhône valley. “You want to know what I was thinking before you got here, lover?”

  Had to be better than his struggle with the broken wine bottle in the kitchen and the resulting hunger pangs. Domingos moved onto his knees, straddling her. He tugged up her shirt, lifting it to reveal breasts unhampered by lacy things. “Yes.”

  “I was thinking about how much I love this wrong. The we wrong.”

  That label hurt him, but he didn’t lose his composure, and instead bowed to kiss her breasts, one, then the other. Small yet round, they sat upon his palms lightly and beckoned a good squeeze, which he gave each of them.

  “I am wrong,” he had to agree, “but we are not.”

  “We are, lover. Don’t deny it. But I’m okay with that. In fact, I think I need this wrong. Everything right hasn’t been working so swell for me lately.” She strolled her fingers through his hair, which always made his scalp tingle and tighten. “Will you be my wrong?”

  He didn’t want to be that for her, but he knew it was the only truth they could have. A hunter and a vampire defined wrong. And so Domingos nodded but couldn’t force himself to audibly agree.

  He dashed his tongue around her nipple, losing himself in the luxury of Lark’s lithe, toned body instead of dwelling on her wine-induced theory of their relationship. When he suckled her she responded with her entire body, arching her back, spreading her legs wider and moaning sweetly. Her stomach brushed his chest. One foot hooked about his ankle, and she drew her fingers through his hair and down the back of his neck, where her fingernails grazed, yet did not worry the tender skin on his back.