Ravenous

by Forrest, V. K.

  “Hey.” The Tiffany lamp on the desk shone a soft pink light over her, making her almost glow. She parked her bottom on the edge of the desk as she rubbed her neck.

  “Your dad go to bed?”

  “Sound asleep. Said he enjoyed his swim. Was thinking of making it part of his daily constitution.”

  Liam smiled and took her hand, turning it so he could study her palm. “He was restless, that’s all. He just went for a swim.”

  “What am I going to do, Liam?” she said suddenly. “Maybe the Weasel was just bluffing. Maybe he doesn’t know where I am. Yet. But he’s going to find me.”

  Liam wanted to deny it, but considering the facts that Anthony had never gotten back to him after the meet with the Weasel and he wasn’t answering his phone, he hesitated. What if Anthony hadn’t played it as safe as he insisted he would? What if the Weasel had figured out that Anthony had been talking to Liam? And even though it was by complete coincidence, the fact of the matter was that Anthony knew where Liam lived. At least he knew what town he lived in. A guy like Machhione wasn’t above torture to get information.

  Liam hung his head.

  “What is it?” Mai asked, sliding over until she was seated on the desk in front of him. She took his hand and raised it to her cheek.

  He shook his head. “I told you I’d get to the bottom of this. I don’t want you to have to run. This guy, he shouldn’t be able to do this to you.”

  “This is not your fight,” she whispered, letting go of his hand and leaning down to kiss him. “I should never have involved you.”

  He closed his eyes, his heart suddenly pounding. He didn’t want to feel this way, like he was letting her down. Like he had let those kids down, trapped in that cellar all those months in Paris while he paced that tiny apartment and waited as proof of the pedophiles’ heinous crimes piled upon proof.

  A lump rose in his throat.

  “Not your fight,” she whispered.

  Liam rose, wrapping his arms around her. He covered her mouth with his, kissing her hard, forcing his tongue into her mouth. She clung to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips.

  Her scent was intoxicating, the embodiment of a fragile, human female. Fragile of body, but strong of heart. He covered her face with kisses: her cheekbones, the tip of her nose, her eyelids. He kissed his way along her jawline, then downward until he pressed his lips to her throat.

  She moaned softly.

  He refused to think about the blood that pulsed through her veins. Instead, he drew his hand up under her T-shirt. She was braless. He cupped her breast in his hand, liking that it fit perfectly. Nuzzling between her breasts, he lifted her shirt.

  “The light.”

  “What?”

  “The light. Someone will see us.” She stretched out and turned the key on the lamp, surrounding them in velvety darkness.

  He didn’t have the heart to tell her that anyone who lived in Clare Point who walked by the shop and bothered to peer in the window would have seen them anyway. Not that anyone would pay any attention. It was one of those crazy unwritten rules pertaining to their super hearing and sight. They had just learned to look away or not listen, giving each other some semblance of privacy. Of course, this wasn’t typical vampire/vampire sex, but human/vampire, so someone might stop to gawk.

  He pushed her up onto the desk, her legs dangling over the front. Pushing up her shirt, he took a nipple between his lips, then his teeth, and sucked. Gently, then more eagerly. She pulled the shirt over her head and tossed it on the floor, then cradled his head, running her fingers through his hair.

  He could smell her, damp and ready. He tugged at the waistband of her sweatpants and she lifted her hips so he could slip them off her.

  Then, laughing, she sat up. “Why am I always the one naked and you’re always dressed?”

  Perched on the edge of the desk, she unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them down over his hips as she kissed him gently, then nipped at his lower lip. As she pushed down his boxer briefs, she ran her hands over his buttocks.

  “I’ve always liked men with nice butt cheeks,” she whispered in his ear.

  He nipped her back, this time a little harder than she bit him. She laughed, caught his lower lip between her teeth, then sucked it, digging her nails into his lower back.

  Liam wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her hard against him. She slipped her arms around his neck again, kissing him, liking the feel of his hot, hard body pressed against hers. She loved everything about this man’s body, about him.

  She loved him. Not that she was going to do anything about it. She had known from day one this was something that was never meant to be, that had no future. But she was thankful to have him right this minute. Maybe that was a fatalistic attitude, but it felt good to have someone looking out for her, if just for a few minutes.

  Breathing hard, Mai parted her legs, moving closer to Liam.

  He grabbed her by the waist, lifted her off the desk with his powerful arms, and knelt on the area rug she’d unrolled the other day.

  “The desk was working for me,” she said playfully.

  “Eh. Someone might see us.”

  She looked up into his dark eyes. “It’s dark, silly. No one can see us.”

  He silenced her with a hard kiss and Mai parted her legs again. She didn’t need foreplay tonight. She just needed to feel like a part of him; somehow that gave her strength. She lifted her hips to meet his, accepting his first thrust.

  Pausing for a moment, he nuzzled her neck, whispering something in a language she didn’t recognize. His voice in her ear sent delicious ripples of pleasure through her whole body.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  She raised her hips again, meeting him, taking him fully. She groaned and her mouth found his. They moved faster, finding a rhythm that sent her pulse soaring. She came almost immediately and he slowed his pace, giving her a second to catch her breath. Never had she known such a giving lover; she’d never forget Liam for that.

  After a moment, she pressed her hands into his bare buttocks and they began to move again as one. She rode wave after wave of pleasure until again, she cried out as her body convulsed in ecstasy. The man had amazing stamina; it wasn’t until her third orgasm that he finally let himself go. His last thrusts were so hard that he pushed her across the rough wool carpet, only adding to the sensations that still rippled through her body.

  She hugged him tightly as he came inside her, every muscle in his body tightening before his final release. Smiling and falling back on the rug, she kissed his damp forehead.

  “I love you,” she whispered. He was silent, but that was okay. She just needed to say it, because something told her she might not have many opportunities left.

  Chapter 21

  Kaleigh strolled into Liam’s shop midmorning. He was busy writing on boxes of silverware that Mai had separated into patterns and boxed in sets of twelve. He didn’t feel like messing with eBay but, in the past, he’d had Regan Kahill list items, mail them, and collect the money, taking a fee. Regan was Fia’s younger brother, twin to Fin. There had been a while there when Liam hadn’t been able to trust him with money; he’d developed a drug problem that had made him unreliable. But Regan had been to rehab the previous spring and was doing well, according to everyone Liam asked. He’d given Regan a call that morning and Regan offered to come over in the afternoon and see what Liam was ready to sell.

  “Hey. Heard you had some fun yesterday,” Kaleigh said. She was carrying a brown paper bag that smelled like fresh bagels. “Mr. Ricci okay?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Everyone in town was talking about it last night. My mom said everyone was looking for him. She said he was skinny-dipping.”

  “I wouldn’t bring that up to him, if I were you.”

  She grinned. “So why all the fuss over an old guy and his dog going for a stroll . . . and a dip?”

  “Mai was afraid something might have happe
ned to him.”

  “You going to tell me why they’re here?” she asked.

  He glanced back at the box of silverware on the counter. “Nope.”

  “I’ll find out,” she warned in a sing-song voice.

  He didn’t look up as he closed the cardboard box and wrote in black Sharpie on it: W. Rogers, Elberon so he could easily identify the pattern later. “Not from me you won’t,” he sang back. As he wrote, he blocked her thoughts from his head. He felt her tapping, but she didn’t break through.

  She exhaled with what sounded like a mixture of frustration and boredom. “I brought bagels.” She held up the bag. “Mai said you guys had cream cheese.”

  “You already talked to her this morning?” he asked, surprised.

  “I called her cell phone. Hello. I had to know if she liked ‘everything’ bagels or not. That a problem?”

  “No. I just don’t want you to . . . you know, get too attached to her.” He reached for another box to store another set of Elberon pattern silverware. It was unique because the nineteenth-century silversmith had extended the decorative edges from one end of the handle to the base of the working part of the utensil. “Because she has to go back to her life and we . . . we have to go back to ours.”

  She watched him for a moment, swinging the paper bag. “You like having a girlfriend, don’t you?”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.” He glanced up at Kaleigh. “Did she say she was my girlfriend?”

  Kaleigh smiled an I’ll-never-tell smile. “When you go back to work, if you go back to work, you’ll miss her.”

  “Things never work out between vampires and humans. You know that. It’s better if I just go before things get too complicated.”

  “But you’ll miss her?” She watched him. “Come on, Liam, you know you will. I mean, you do what you do because it’s your job, but you’re not as heartless and unfeeling as you want everyone to think.”

  “I missed Roxanne,” he said quietly. “For years.” Missed her and felt guilty about what happened, he thought. If I hadn’t gotten tangled up with her, gotten so involved, maybe she would have died of old age, instead of dying the way she had.

  “You weren’t responsible for what happened to her,” Kaleigh said, as if she could read his mind. Which, of course, she could, if he would have let her.

  “Maybe,” he agreed, counting out forks.

  “For sure. And she knew you were a vampire. But you haven’t told Mai. You’ve protected her from that.”

  “I just want to get her back in her house, safe again. Then I hope I’ll be on my way again. Back to Paris, or Beijing, or Dublin—wherever the sept wants to send me.”

  “You want to go back? You can still do it?”

  He frowned, dropping the twelfth fork into the box. “Of course I can do it. I wouldn’t be asking to go back if I couldn’t handle it, Kaleigh.”

  “And you don’t think you’d . . . you know, lose it again?”

  His hands fell still. He thought about the moment he walked into the room where the Gaudet brothers had taken that little boy. A rage had overcome him; he had done things he shouldn’t have done, but it had been a controlled rage. He had known what he was doing at every moment.

  “I’m not a risk, Kaleigh. I didn’t wait for the High Council’s okay, because they were going to get away again. What I shouldn’t have done was what I did once I got there. I fully admit that, but they deserved it.” He lifted his gaze to meet hers. “You know they did and maybe, just maybe, what I did will make someone think twice before they tie a child to a bed and do what they were doing to that little boy.”

  She reached out and ruffled his hair, like she was fifty and he was ten. But it didn’t make him feel bad. It made him feel good, as if she got him.

  She stepped back and swung the paper bag. “So, you think it’s okay if Mr. Ricci and I take Prince for a walk later? Maybe just over to the park? I asked Mai when I talked to her on the phone but she said I should ask you.”

  He glanced up. “I’m afraid it’s not safe.”

  “How about if we just go around the block?” she begged. “We’d practically be within sight of you.” She paused. “If you don’t give him a little leeway, he’s going to take off again. You know he is.”

  Liam frowned.

  “Come on, a walk around your block,” Kaleigh repeated.

  He thought about it. Kaleigh was a pretty powerful vampire, powerful enough to have faced a werewolf the year before. And she was perceptive; she knew when to be on the lookout for danger. Surely a couple of mobsters couldn’t best her. She could hold them off long enough to get help.

  His thoughts weren’t purely unselfish. If Kaleigh took Corrato for a walk, it would give Liam some time alone with Mai.

  It had disturbed him last night when she told him she loved him. He didn’t think she really expected him to say it back, but it bothered him that he couldn’t. Which was exactly why he needed to get the hell out of Clare Point as soon as possible.

  “Nice day,” Kaleigh said, stuffing her hands into the front pocket of her hoodie. Even though it was November, it was still pretty decent out, mostly because it wasn’t raining. Kaleigh hated the rain. It got dreary here in the winter, so dreary that it made her long for places like Southern California. Better yet, the south of France, Greece, Rome. Places she feared she would never, ever live again.

  “Blank for your thoughts,” Mr. Ricci said.

  “What?” She looked at him.

  “Blank for your thoughts. Five-letter word, second letter E, fourth letter N.”

  “Hmmmm,” Kaleigh said. They were still within sight of Liam’s antiques shop. It wasn’t much freedom for the old guy, but she figured it was better than nothing. “Five-letter word, second letter E, fourth letter N.” She looked back at the rat terrier that ran just a foot behind his master on a leash. “What do you think, Prince?”

  “He’s not good at crossword puzzles,” Mr. Ricci said, seeming apologetic.

  Kaleigh smiled. “Penny. But I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘penny for your thoughts’?”

  “It’s an old saying.”

  He crept along slowly, not seeming to mind too much that they weren’t even walking around the block, just up and down the street in front of the shop. It was all Liam would agree to. Kaleigh didn’t know what was going on with these two humans, but she was beginning to suspect it was something pretty interesting.

  “It’s the way we old guys ask you what you’re thinking,” Mr. Ricci went on. “But in broader terms, I guess it means, ‘Whassup?’ ”

  She chuckled at the way he said it.

  “You’ve been nice to me, Kaleigh. I appreciate it. I know a teenager like you has better things to do than to walk an old man.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “You say that like I’m walking you on a leash. End of the sidewalk. We have to go back the other way.” She turned around. “How about I carry Prince for a while? Give his little legs a break.”

  “He’s a tough dog.” Mr. Ricci, teetering on the curb, glanced back. “But if you want to carry him, he’ll let you.” He slowly turned around.

  Kaleigh scooped up the dog, taking the leash from Mr. Ricci. “I was thinking how nice it is outside, even though it’s November.” She lifted her face to the sun. “But it’s going to get cold here soon. And rainy. I get tired of the rain. I was thinking it would be nice to go somewhere, like California, or even Italy. You know, to live for a while.”

  Mr. Ricci walked slowly, kind of shuffling. He was wearing a cardigan sweater, a scarf around his neck that smelled like Liam, and a weird hat, kind of like Dick Tracy’s. The hat was definitely not Liam’s.

  “So why don’t you go to college in California? Wouldn’t be my choice.” He made a funny face. “Earthquakes. But you might like it. Or you could be one of those exchange students. I saw the world when I was a young man. It’s good to see the world. It makes you appreciate what you’ve got.”

  She held the dog over one a
rm, her opposite hand under his chest so that he sort of sat up in her arms, his little head thrust forward so he could see everything. It was quiet for a Saturday morning: not a lot of cars going by, not many people in their yards. Everyone in Clare Point was preparing for winter, getting cozy in their living rooms, or cleaning out closets, like her mother was doing this morning.

  “I thought about going to college somewhere like California.” She glanced at Corrato. Mai said he was seventy-four but he looked older to her. “But I also thought about staying here and going to the community college, at least for two years.”

  “Go to California,” he said, waving his hand.

  The way he talked, the way he acted, made her think of the old guy in the movie Up. She loved that movie, and the old guy in it.

  “You’ve got your whole life to stick around,” he told her.

  “Yeah, but I’ve got responsibilities here. I kind of think I should stay. It’s complicated,” she finished, knowing she couldn’t very well tell him she was a wisewoman for a bunch of vampires who needed her guidance.

  “I don’t need to know your business, but I can tell you as a person who’s done many things because he had responsibilities, you should think it through. Something tells me, any responsibilities a young girl like you has got”—he looked at her—“could wait a few years.”

  Kaleigh waved and smiled at Liam and Mai as they walked past the shop. Mai waved back. Liam looked as grumpy as Mr. Ricci acted.

  “I don’t know,” Kaleigh told Mr. Ricci. “It’s a lot to think about.”

  “It is.” He looked at her. “So what’s a girl like you do when you’re not in school? You have hobbies?”

  Kaleigh thought about how much time she spent practicing her mental telepathy, moving objects, reading minds, levitating, but that wasn’t the kind of thing she could share. “I like to read,” she said brightly.

  “Classics?”

  She made a face.

  “Me neither,” Mr. Ricci said. “My day, it was Westerns. Adventure books. Zane Grey was one of my favorite authors.”