This time she answered. Her voice sounded small, fragile.
"Hello?"
"It's Max." He closed his eyes, feeling both relieved and foolish.
"I guessed that," she said. There was a smile in her softly spoken words.
"By magic?"
The smile came through again, though Max knew in his heart of hearts that all was not right with Kristina. He was scared.
"No," she answered. "I was just hoping."
He wanted to hold her, to draw her into his arms and shelter her against whatever threatened her. He had never felt so protective before, even with Sandy—but then, he'd been naive in those golden days before his wife's death. He hadn't known how quickly and finally tragedy could strike. Hadn't dreamed.
"Are you all right?"
"Just tired," she said.
Max's gut clenched hard. He was torn between his children and the need to go to this woman who had finally caused him to put away Sandy's wedding band, which he had worn on a chain around his neck ever since his wife's death. He ached to see with his own eyes that she was safe and well.
"Do you need anything?"
He could almost see her shaking her head. He knew she was in bed, though he wasn't sure how, and he felt guilty because the image stirred him in a profoundly sexual way. So much for the altruistic wish to embrace Kristina and lend his manly strength. Max wanted more—a whole lot more—and he wasn't proud of the fact, given that she was so obviously vulnerable.
"No," Kristina replied. "I'm all right, Max, really. What about you? Are you okay? And the girls?"
"Don't worry about us," Max said firmly. "We're fine."
There was a short, pulsing silence, during which their hearts communicated.
I need you, Max told Kristina.
And I need you, was her reply.
"Can I see you tomorrow?" Max finally asked aloud. He was leaning against the desk now, the receiver clutched in his hand, still wanting to go to her right then. Not in an hour, not the next day, after football practice.
Now.
"I'd like that," she said. "I'll be at home, taking it easy. I've been meaning to read through the rest of those letters anyway."
Just the prospect of seeing Kristina again made Max ridiculously happy, even though he still wished he could go to her immediately. "Couldn't you just—well—blink yourself over here? You could stay in the spare room—"
"Not tonight, Max," she interrupted gently. "I need to sleep now."
A thick knot formed in his throat; he wanted to weep, could not imagine why. "Yeah, okay, me too," he said. "Good night."
Another pause. "Good night, Max." Kristina had not just spoken to him, she had caressed him. He replaced the receiver, crossed the room, and switched out the lights before heading toward the stairway.
If he'd looked out a window, he might have seen the strange, cloaked sentries standing guard in the night, but Max was thinking only of Kristina that night.
"Take this," Dathan said, holding out a spoonful of something.
Kristina, resting against her pillows and still fully dressed, eyed the offering suspiciously. "Like I told you, my mother warned me to be careful of warlocks and their tricks."
"Give me a little credit, will you?" Dathan demanded. "I didn't bring you here and tuck you into bed just to destroy you. I could have done that at any time if that was what I wanted."
"What is this stuff?" The spoon was closer; Kristina saw that it contained a brownish fluid, some herbal concoction, judging by the noxious smell. One she had never come across before and hoped never to encounter again.
"Call it witches' brew if you must," Dathan answered with a touch of impatience. "It will make you sleep, and thus restore some of your strength. Not a cure, but it's a start."
Kristina deliberated a moment longer, then opened her mouth and took the medicine. It tasted bitter, but she swallowed it. "I'm not going to grow horns, am I?" she asked, falling back against her pillows once more.
Dathan's expression said he wasn't about to dignify such a question with a reply.
"You'd better not take advantage of me while I'm sleeping, either."
He bent close and smiled wickedly. "I hadn't thought of that. What a delightful prospect—thank you for suggesting it, Kristina."
Already she was drifting, spinning, sinking. This, she thought, must be how it is for vampires when they lie down in their lairs, far out of the sun's reach.
Kristina did not dream and awakened many hours later, in the same position in which she'd fallen asleep, in the same clothes. There was no sign of Dathan, but Max was standing at the foot of her bed, wearing jeans and a bright blue sweatshirt, his face beard-stubbled and his hair rumpled.
"How long?" she asked. "Since we talked, I mean?"
"About twenty-four hours," Max replied.
She sat up, yawning. The room was brilliant with sunlight. "You're missing work."
"It's Saturday."
"The girls—"
"Forget about Bree and Eliette," Max said gently. "They're with my folks for the weekend. Kristina, what's going on with you? What knocked you out like this?"
She sighed. Dathan's potion, whatever it was, had certainly done its work. She felt strong again, energetic, almost her old self. Almost.
"Maybe it was the supernatural equivalent of the flu," she said. "In any case, I feel fine now."
Max grinned. He looked tired, though, and she wondered how long he'd been watching over her. "If you don't mind, I'd like to borrow your shower," he said. "And a razor, if you have a spare. I forgot mine."
There was a certain intimacy in sharing space with Max, letting him use her shower, her things. She felt a sensual, stretching sensation deep inside, just looking at him. "Okay," she said. "Help yourself to whatever you need."
Another silence ensued, rife with possible interpretations. Then Max turned and went into the bathroom, carrying a gym bag he'd apparently brought from home.
Kristina heard the water go on, imagined Max stripping off his clothes, stepping naked and muscular under the spray. He was so blatantly, unapologetically male.
She wondered what he would say, what he would think, if she joined him.
In the end she didn't quite have the courage. She took a peach silk robe from her closet and went down the hall to the guest bathroom, where she took a long, hot shower of her own. The flow of water did nothing to soothe the ache inside her, the one only Max Kilcarragh could reach and assuage.
Kristina toweled her hair dry, ran a brush through it, and then dried her body. The silk robe clung a little as she stepped out into the hall.
Max was there, clad in a pair of clean, worn jeans and nothing else. The encounter seemed accidental, but Kristina knew that it wasn't, that they'd both wanted to be together. That had been in the cards from the first moment of history.
Slowly, deliberately, Kristina untied the belt of her robe.
* * *
CHAPTER 11
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Max did not move from where he stood, just outside Kristina's bedroom door, until she was near enough to touch, her robe untied, hanging loosely from her shoulders. He put his hands on either side of her face and, with a low sound, part growl and part groan, took her mouth with his.
The kiss was passionate from the first; there was no hesitation this time, only a hunger that had been denied too long. Max entered her with his tongue, conquered her, his silent command presaging all that was to come.
Kristina sagged against him, weakened by her own wanting, by a yearning she had never felt before. When at last he drew back and lifted her into his arms, there were tears of wonder in her eyes.
He kissed her lids, her cheeks, and carried her over the threshold of her bedroom.
"Are you sure you want this?" he asked, still holding her.
Kristina was in a daze. "Oh, yes," she said. "Yes."
Max set her on her feet, ever so gently, and smoothed the robe back off her shoulders, down over her arms. He tos
sed the garment aside and consumed her naked form with his eyes, arousing her to a fever pitch of desire just by admiring and cherishing her.
"You are so unbelievably, impossibly beautiful," he said.
Kristina leaned forward, brushed his hairy chest with her lips, teasing hard brown nipples with the tip of her tongue. Her fingers strayed to the zipper of his jeans; he halted the motion with both hands, though he did not put her away from him.
"There's a problem," he confessed. "I didn't plan—"
She smiled. Her magic might be rusty, but it was still magic. She held out one hand, in a rather cocky gesture, and a small packet appeared on her palm.
Max chuckled, took the condom, and laid it on the night-stand, within easy reach of the bed. "Impressive," he said.
"Thanks." Kristina slipped her arms around his neck and tilted her head back to look up into his eyes. She knew she was casting a spell, and that it had nothing to do with supernatural powers. In that moment, in that private place, she was not a freak, but a woman, pure and simple.
He unfastened his own jeans and shed them, along with his underwear, and then simply held Kristina against him for a long, heated interval. Just that simple intimacy nurtured her on the deepest level of her being; she could have stood there, cradled in Max's arms, for an indeterminate length of time. Even that small contact was better than anything she had ever felt with Michael.
Finally, however, Max raised his hands to cup Kristina's small, firm breasts. A searing shiver went through her at his touch, for the contact was at once possessive and inexpressibly tender. Hard-edged thumbs stroked her nipples, causing them to stiffen into little peaks.
Kristina emitted a long sigh and closed her eyes. Max bent his head and kissed her again, teasing now, tasting and tempting.
She was still standing, was amazed that her legs would support her. She moved her hands up and down the muscled length of Max's back, in a slow yet conversely frantic motion. She had waited so long, suppressed the yearnings of her body so often, that patience was nearly beyond her.
"Max…" she pleaded against his mouth.
"Shhh," he whispered, and continued to caress her, to adore her with his hands.
Kristina made a soft, whimpering sound; it was all she could manage because he had stolen her breath, stilled her heartbeat, frozen her in one fiery moment of time.
Max laid her down on the bed and stretched out beside her. She wanted him to take her, but he was conducting some primal ritual; she knew he would make her feel every nuance of their lovemaking, that her responses were, to him, a vital part of the encounter.
He kissed her again and again, until she was drunk with the need to have him inside her, but it still wasn't enough. While Kristina entangled desperate fingers in his hair, Max brushed her earlobes with his lips, nibbled at her neck, finally moved down over the quivering rise of her breasts.
She gasped with pleasure and arched her back in an ancient, instinctive gesture of surrender as he took one nipple into his mouth and drew at it greedily.
He went on suckling, meanwhile parting her legs with one hand. She ached to accommodate him; her hips rose and fell as he parted the moist curls at the junction of her thighs and teased her with a soft, plucking motion of his fingers.
Kristina sobbed, with joy, with triumph, with frustration. Her body arched, again and again, seeking, reverberating like the strings of a fine instrument drawn tight.
At last, Max relented. He reached for the condom on the bedside table while kissing Kristina's belly. Once he was ready, he cupped both hands under her buttocks and raised her to receive him.
His eyes searched hers one last time, and then he plunged into her, delving deep, as if to touch the very core of her.
Kristina thrashed beneath him, in a physical plea for him to move faster, to thrust himself even further inside. She wanted all of him, not just his powerful body, but his mind, even his soul. She did not wish to own Max, it wasn't that, but to be a part of him, to meld the very essence of her being with his.
Max set an even pace, driving Kristina insane with long, slow, methodical strokes.
Finally, as she flung herself up to meet yet another thrust, a cataclysmic orgasm exploded within her, thrusting her legs even wider apart, splintering the heavens, altering the path of uncounted planets orbiting innumerable stars. While Kristina flexed beneath Max, seized by spasm after spasm, he stiffened upon her, and cried out in hoarse ecstasy.
Kristina lay still, stunned, spent, but Max got up and disappeared into the bathroom. He was back in a few moments, stretching out beside her again, gathering her close against him. She was trembling, even then, in the aftermath of satisfaction.
Max kissed her temple. "What are we going to do now?" he asked.
She snuggled even closer, loving the feel of him, the substance and power and the scent of him. "After that, anything else would be anticlimactic."
He groaned at the play on words, but there was a smile in the sound.
Kristina laughed and buried her face in his neck.
"What?" Max prompted.
She lifted her head to look into his eyes. "You're the first man I've slept with in a hundred years," she said. "That's got to be some kind of distinction."
Max rolled over so that she was pinned beneath him, his brown eyes bright with mischief and the beginnings of fresh desire. "Was I worth waiting for?"
Kristina put her arms around his neck, kissed his chin and then his mouth. "Oh, yes, Mr. Kilcarragh." She felt him growing hard against her thigh, while her own body prepared itself to receive him again.
"Do you think you could work that little trick again? This time without the package and all the groping around?"
She nodded, and Max was instantly outfitted with a fresh condom.
"Pretty fancy," he said, grinning.
"Stop talking," Kristina replied, putting her arms around his neck. "And let's skip the foreplay."
Max wouldn't hear of it; he worked Kristina into another fit of longing, and by the time she was in the throes of her second climax, a pleasure even keener and more strenuous than the first, she was glistening with perspiration and completely incoherent.
Much later, when Max was dozing, Kristina got out of bed, took another shower, and put on jeans and a T-shirt. Her earlier exhaustion was gone; making love with Max had restored her, it seemed.
She was in the kitchen, humming and filling the teapot at the sink, when Valerian appeared at her elbow, unheralded as usual. Kristina was so startled that she nearly dropped the kettle.
"I wish you wouldn't do that," she snapped.
Valerian folded his arms and glowered at her. "Wish away," he replied.
Kristina sighed. There was no reasoning with him when he was in one of his moods, and she could only guess at what was bugging this most temperamental of vampires. Her controversial arrangement with Dathan or her blossoming affair with Max? Or perhaps Valerian was finding parenthood to be less than wonderful.
"Okay, I give up," she said. "What is it now?" She moved around him to set the teakettle on the stove and switch on the burner.
"If you wanted to polish your magic, you might have come to me. I do know a thing or two about the craft, as it happens!"
Kristina hid a smile. She'd injured Valerian's formidable pride, without meaning to, of course. "You've been busy," she said reasonably. "With Daisy and your magic act in Las Vegas and now Esteban. I didn't want to bother you."
"So you took up with a warlock!"
"You sound just like Mother," Kristina answered, no longer smiling. She was an adult by anyone's definition of the word, and she was getting tired of being scolded about the company she kept. "I didn't 'take up' with Dathan. We have a bargain, that's all."
"What sort of bargain?" Valerian's magnificent face was thunderous, and his cloak and tailored tuxedo made him resemble some great, beautiful bird of prey.
Kristina sighed, hoping Max wouldn't awaken and come downstairs. He'd already met a warlock;
it was too soon to introduce him to a vampire. "You know damn well what sort of bargain," she retorted. "He's tutoring me in magic, and I'm—I'm going to help him find a bride."
Valerian loomed, in that singular way he had. Kristina drew herself up to her full if unspectacular height, trying not to seem intimidated.
"Great Zeus, is he still harping on that?" the vampire demanded. "I thought I'd cured him of the obsession by setting Roxanne Havermail on his trail."
"Dathan is as stubborn as you are. He won't rest until he has what he wants."
"You realize, of course, how dangerous he is—that he is the leader of all warlocks everywhere? That his mate will share in that power?"
Kristina knew only too well that Valerian could read minds when he tried; she hoped he was too annoyed and distracted to focus on hers and learn that Dathan had proposed an unholy marriage. "He has been an ally in the past," she said to deflect the vampire's attention. "It seems to me that you welcomed his help at one time."
"That was an armed truce," Valerian snapped. "There was never any question that we would be enemies again, once the common threat had been eliminated."
The common threat, of course, had been the vampire Lisette, who had reigned over the nightwalkers before Maeve. "That's silly. If vampires and warlocks made peace once, they can do it again."
Surprisingly Valerian subsided a little, and Kristina had a sudden insight. It wasn't just her relationship with Dathan that was troubling him, but something deeper and much closer to home. His home.
"Things aren't going well with Esteban, are they?" she said softly, touching his arm. She had been so occupied with her own concerns that she had not had the time to visit Daisy or Valerian.
The vampire, so imposing, so fearsome, suddenly appeared vulnerable. "He sleeps on the floor like an animal," he said. "He hides food in his room and won't acknowledge anyone except Barabbas."
Kristina considered the environment from which the little boy had been rescued. "Things like this take time," she said.
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