Immortal Kiss

by J. K. Coi

  She could only hope that one of the perks of vampirism was the ability to shoot real daggers from your eyes when faced with someone so infuriating, but the longer Baron continued to stand there calmly without a long length of steel spearing into his forehead, the more she had to accept that whatever new abilities she had didn’t include that nifty little trick.

  Too bad.

  “Come on. I’ve had enough shit to deal with—I don’t need more from you. How did you find me? What is this place? If it isn’t some kind of military outfit, just what the hell have you been up to?”

  She was on a roll now, eager to let it all out of her system. “For two goddamn years your brother—your good, kind, sick brother who needs your support and misses you desperately—has been even sicker worrying where the hell you’ve been. You sent not one word, not even a ‘hey bro, I’m still alive, and by the way, the military dumped my ass back into the civilian world’. Why Baron? Your life was in service, Jackson told me how much you loved it. So what happened there?”

  He opened his mouth as if he were going to actually tell her, but then shut it again and shook his head. Damn! Granted, the old Baron might have shut her out like he was doing now, but he would not have deserted his brother so completely in the first place—at least Max wouldn’t have thought so…and yet it had happened.

  That was a lesson she thought she had learned a long time ago, one she should never have forgotten.

  Everybody leaves.

  It was true, but…this felt different.

  Baron had been overseas a lot after enlisting, but at least he had made an effort back when he could. He’d tried to keep in touch with Jackson. Something must have happened to change that.

  And she was going to find out what it was.

  Chapter Eight

  “What the hell is going on with you?”

  He looked up and met her eyes, but his expression had shut down tighter than a bank vault in the Caymans and she couldn’t read anything from him, which made her even angrier. She wanted to scream and pound her fists against his chest when he just shook his head at her again.

  “You assho—”

  The sound of a strange male voice clearing his throat behind her startled Max, and she swung around.

  “Uh, hey, Baron. Are we interrupting you two? Do you want us to go?” Max turned back to Baron and raised her eyebrows in silent inquiry. Was this the reason he wasn’t talking?

  Baron turned his attention to the couple standing at the kitchen doors, gesturing for them to enter. “No, of course not. Come on in—I just finished making some lunch,” he said.

  Max sighed, knowing she would have to let this go…for the moment. She wasn’t quite willing to make their personal history a public free-for-all—but if she didn’t get some answers soon, it might come to that.

  Baron introduced her to the man and woman. She tried not to gape at Alric, but he was so huge it was hard not to. Minus the green skin and shaggy dark hair, the guy could have been the Incredible Hulk. His hair was blond and he spoke with a low, Northern European accent that rumbled out of his chest.

  There was something about him that gave Max the impression he had seen his fair share of violence. A hard, implacable look that glittered in his eyes, even as he smiled at her warmly and extended his humongous hand to shake hers.

  She realized it was the same sort of look that shadowed Baron’s eyes—the two men even shared the same silvery eye color. Was it some kind of special contact lens? Because if that were the case someone should have told them it didn’t look all that natural. It was a little disconcerting actually, and she wondered why either of them would prefer the odd color to their own.

  Alric’s wife Diana was equally striking in an exactly opposite sort of way. With a tiny, slender frame, she looked über-feminine, especially with her light hair cut in a short pixie style that brought out the startling green of her eyes and accentuated the high cheekbones of her dainty, doll-like face. Her expression was completely open, and she seemed the type of woman who made friends easily because she was always willing to listen.

  “Alric. Diana. Maxine is a…friend of mine.”

  So she’d been relegated to “friend” status had she? It wasn’t the term she would have used, but “bitter enemies” probably would have come out sounding awkward.

  Fine, if that’s the way you want to play it. Baron’s apologetic look said he at least knew he was an asshole. But then, that had never been his problem. No, Baron was smart enough to know when he was being a jerk, he just didn’t care.

  “Hi, Maxine.” Diana came forward to take her hand in a warm and friendly handshake, and Max suddenly felt dizzy and off balance, unable to understand the sudden surge of sympathy and concern that flowed through her.

  Those weren’t her feelings. They were coming from the other woman, from Diana. But how was that possible?

  She shook her head to try to clear it, and noticed that both Alric and Baron were watching her very carefully. Pressing her fingers to her temple, she rubbed the throbbing pulse point. What? Had she grown two heads in the last thirty seconds?

  All of a sudden the deluge of images and emotions seemed to clear from her mind and she felt almost normal again. Wow, that was strange. She looked down, realizing that Baron had taken her hand.

  Because she liked it, she made herself draw her arm back and stuffed both her hands in the pockets of her jeans instead.

  “I’m so sorry about what happened to you,” Diana was saying, “Alric and I are here to help you get through this in any way that we can, okay?”

  “Uh,” Max wasn’t sure what was going on. She turned her head back and forth from Alric to Diana, to Baron. “Sorry, what was that? You guys…know?”

  Alric’s brow arched high on his forehead as he shot a questioning glance at Baron.

  Baron responded with an almost imperceptible nod, and Max was both intrigued and annoyed. He obviously knew these people well. Had Baron and Alric maybe been in the same spec ops unit together? It would explain at least a few things.

  Diana puttered around pulling out plates and glassware from the cabinets and handing them across the large island to Alric. She was certainly familiar with the massive kitchen. Did they all live here together?

  Max sighed and took a seat at one of the high stools, resigned to at least half an hour of polite conversation before she could get her claws into Baron once more.

  She found herself covertly watching Alric and Diana interact, noticing the soft looks and little touches. There was a visible glow surrounding them that no one could mistake for anything except love.

  Max slid a glance over to Baron, and to her utter embarrassment, she found him watching her, his expression serious and his eyes penetrating, seeing too much.

  She dropped her gaze and picked up her sandwich, forcing a bite. Her throat felt thick as she tried to pretend she felt normal when inside she was crying.

  You’re being ridiculous.

  Max had banished Baron from her memories long ago. She’d gone on with her life as if Baron Silver had never existed, and if it weren’t for Jackson she would have continued to do just that. But now this situation…the proximity was driving her crazy.

  She had to get out of there.

  All she wanted right now was to get her questions answered and get far away from Baron for good. She decided she would tell him about his brother and leave it up to him whether he was going to come home or not.

  Diana called her name, and Max was embarrassed to realize that it hadn’t been the first time. “I’m sorry. I’ve been wool-gathering, I guess,” she apologized.

  “I understand, believe me,” Diana replied, compassion obvious in her voice. “You’ve just come out of a pretty difficult night.”

  Had she come out of it?

  She may have survived the physical transformation, but inside her a monster still seethed, she could feel it with her every breath.

  What was she going to do? What kind of life was she stuck w
ith now? Max didn’t know anything about vampires, not real ones anyway. How close was the myth to reality? How often would she need blood to survive? Was she going to be able to go out in the sun? Eat garlic? Could she still enter a church, or was she damned to hell forever because someone else had stolen her future, taken her life into his foul hands and changed the course of it forever?

  Did she even have a soul anymore?

  Damn. She wasn’t going to be able to eat any of this sandwich. Her stomach churned.

  Max got up to take her plate to the sink and caught Baron throwing Alric one of those talking looks again. A minute later he and Diana had picked up the remains of their lunch and politely excused themselves from the room.

  An unbearable thought leaped into her head. “I hope they didn’t feel uncomfortable because of me. Because of what I…am now,” she said, horrified.

  Baron laughed, a surprising reaction to a very reasonable worry. “Don’t worry. They aren’t afraid of you, if that’s what you mean.”

  And why not? she wondered. She was afraid of herself. Why the hell weren’t Baron or his friends?

  With every minute, more and more about this situation felt wrong. Too many things about this new Baron were odd.

  Hah! The newly turned blood-sucking fiend should not be calling the kettle black.

  She would have laughed at her own private joke, but was afraid of it coming out sounding a mite hysterical.

  Whether Max was soon to be shacking up in crazy town or not, she knew one thing was true—something was very different about Baron, and it was more than the case of a boy maturing into a man or a boat-load of military training and discipline. It was something in the way he held himself, something in the eyes.

  He had devoured his sandwich in record time and was now reaching for her practically untouched one, which didn’t surprise her in the least. Baron had always been able to pack it away like no tomorrow, and the worst part of it was that he never gained a lick of weight.

  The way he approached her now put her in mind of a great black panther, stalking her. His movements were slow, careful. His eyes glowing. He stood close, both of them leaning against the counter by the sink, side by side. It was a familiar position, she remembered. Baron never could sit still long enough to eat a meal like a normal person. Pretty much any time she had walked into the Silvers’ bright, homey kitchen, she would find him there in the process of stuffing his face with something or other as his feet kept on moving back out the door to a basketball or football game, or a date with another one of his cheerleaders.

  When he was finished with her lunch, Baron turned toward her and reached slowly around her waist to drop the empty dish into the sink. He lingered, and Max dared to meet his eyes.

  What was she looking for there? Regret? Desire? Did he see the same in her expression?

  He moved in closer, crowding her, his arms braced on the counter, on either side of her. “What are you doing?” she asked. Wary. Uncertain.

  He leaned in, his breathing steady on the side of her neck, tickling the little hairs and making them stand on end. “You smell good,” he whispered, inhaling deeply. “Underneath the scent of my soap on your skin I can smell the essence of you. It never changes. I sometimes wake up in the night with that smell in my nostrils. That’s how I know I’ve been dreaming about you.”

  She didn’t want to hear that he dreamed about her. Especially when she knew it for a lie—although that didn’t stop her from imagining what they would be doing in those dreams. And unfortunately, she had a really good source upon which to base her imaginings.

  Max closed her eyes tightly against the images that popped into her head like a home movie porn flick with naked Baron in the leading role.

  No, not just images. Memories.

  A few years ago, Baron had returned home—for what turned out to be the last time—to attend his mother’s funeral. Lorraine Silver had passed away in her sleep from a massive stroke. It had been so sudden and so undeserved, Max had broken down and cried in public for the first time since she’d been a child. Lorraine was one of those people who, if you could choose your family, Max would have chosen her for a mother. Then maybe she would have had someone to walk her to the bus on her first day of school, or show up at her graduation… someone to maybe give a damn about whether she lived or died.

  Jackson had been so wrecked about his mother’s death that it had put his health into a tailspin and sent him back to the cancer ward. Thankfully, his remission had held, but he’d needed a session of transfusions to get his energy and platelet levels back up.

  That was when Baron had walked back into town.

  It was the day before the funeral. Max had long ago assumed the position. Camped out in the chair beside Jackson’s hospital bed. And then she’d promptly fallen asleep. When she woke, it was to find Baron standing by the door, his unreadable eyes watching her intently.

  She remembered wanting to be harsh and cold to him, but the emotions bubbling up from within had been too much, and she’d run to him instead.

  He had taken her back to the Silver house, fed her and forced her into bed. For some reason he hadn’t left her then, and Max hadn’t asked him to. The pain in his eyes was so starkly obvious, she’d given in to the urge to offer him comfort. After all, this was Baron’s family, not hers, and if she was devastated, he must be even more so.

  It wasn’t what she’d planned, but one moment they were hugging and the next they were kissing.

  Desperate kisses. Fevered touches.

  They’d come together in a wild explosion of passion too long repressed, of elemental need seeking to be satisfied. There was no working up to it, no gentle exploration. Their first kiss had been fierce, hot, urgent. He’d demanded and she’d yielded. She’d taken and he’d given. In minutes they’d both been naked, sweaty and panting. He’d fucked her hard and fast that first time, and Max had screamed her release with her legs wrapped tightly around his waist and her fingers digging deep crescent shapes into his shoulders.

  If only they had stopped there, perhaps Max could have shrugged the whole thing off as a poor reaction to grief and stress…but they hadn’t stopped. Not even close. Baron had brought her to climax over and over through the course of that one night, and each time she had begged him for more.

  Ah, the memories.

  Max inwardly shook herself. She didn’t want to be the one he practiced his slick Prince Charming routine on tonight, to be the one who got picked to scratch his itch. She didn’t want to go to that place with him at all, but especially today.

  She needed time to rebuild her walls, practice her indifference…remember the reasons why he was so toxic to her, and tomorrow she would be strong again. But not now, not when she was emotionally drained, weak, and the thought of letting him ply her with soft words and teasing touches was oh so tempting to her already hypersensitive awareness of him.

  When Max opened her eyes, he was watching her, his look intense…and focused on her mouth. Without thinking, she pulled the edge of her top lip between her teeth and watched the flare of heat in his eyes.

  Oh, disaster. She was courting disaster.

  She put a hand to his chest in a lame effort to push him back and put distance between them, which he wholly ignored, stepping even closer into her personal space. Baron had always been a very physical person. He had played sports constantly, his body always in motion—almost as if he’d been given an extra dose of energy to make up for what his brother lacked.

  Now all of that physical presence was concentrated on her, transformed into blistering, crackling, hot sexual energy. Her fingers curled around the soft cotton of his shirt. “Baron—”

  “Max—” he mimicked, his voice deep and husky and so damn sexy.

  He was close. So close.

  She was going to push him away now. Wasn’t she?

  Apparently not soon enough to avoid being kissed. Her body tensed with the initial contact of his mouth against hers. It was a sizzling, wet kis
s that ignited a fever in her blood, but he was gentle, almost careful with her as if he half expected to get kneed in the groin.

  Which was exactly what she should do.

  When it came to this man, though, Max had never operated on “should”. Baron had always been her one and worst weakness, the addiction she may never kick no matter how long and hard she tried.

  Her lips were opening of their own accord under his gentle but insistent pressure. Damn, this was dangerous.

  So freaking dangerous.

  Max groaned out loud at the first delicious slide of his tongue against hers, and tightened the grip she had on his shirt, pulling him full against her. Her nipples tightened against the hard wall of his chest, aching with the need to be touched, teased, licked, sucked.

  She couldn’t help but kiss him back, thinking that it would feel familiar, bring back memories of the last time he’d kissed her and all the reasons why she hated him for it. Then she could put it behind her again and push him away.

  But it didn’t feel the same. She didn’t know why—maybe because so much had changed for each of them—but being kissed by Baron right in this moment was just like a first kiss.

  Nervous and shivery, Max’s belly tumbled end over end in anticipation of his taking the kiss further, deeper—and he didn’t disappoint. His big hand rose to her hair and wrapped around the long strands in a gentle tug, angling her head to the side in just the way he wanted, forcing her to give him better, deeper access to her mouth.

  Baron hadn’t changed in this at least. The last time Max had been foolish enough to fall into his arms, she had discovered just how prone the man was to dominating behavior. And damn it, she mustn’t have changed that much either, because it still made her wet.

  His tongue thrust in and out in an intoxicating rhythm, demanding, fueling her own growing sense of urgency. Max’s hands trembled as she ran them over his muscled biceps, loving that obvious testament to his strength. She was a sucker for a big, strong, capable man who would take charge in the bedroom. Trouble was, she needed a certain level of trust between her and the man she was with before she could feel comfortable and let her guard down enough to enjoy it, and that kind of trust just wasn’t there with Baron. Max was turned on, there was no doubt about that, but she was even now drawing back, refusing to let herself go any further, allow him any closer.