by Alyssa Day
Right. The money. He should have felt relieved at her practicality; perhaps she would be able to put him in touch with a more powerful witch than she; one who could break or at least alleviate the curse. Oddly enough, the emotion scratching at him wasn’t relief as much as disgruntled annoyance.
As if he’d expected her to want to be around him just for the pleasure of his company, which was ridiculous.
Nobody had wanted that for a very long time.
He started walking again, headed for the park, and wasn’t surprised when she matched his steps. A million dollars was at stake, after all. Not that he’d ever say the words ‘at stake’ to Amy, considering the bad vampire jokes she’d no doubt love to make.
“It’s William, not Will,” he finally said. “Don’t make me call you Amaryllis.”
She groaned and rolled her eyes. “Amaryllis. Who does that to a kid? Only the women in my family, let me tell you.”
“It’s a beautiful flower--"
“It’s stupid.” She scowled at the sidewalk. “You know what’s worse? They went with the whole shebang.”
“The whole what?”
She stopped and banged her hand against the button to engage the crosswalk light. “The whole shebang. Do you know what the flower’s full name is? Amaryllis Minerva. So my name sounds like the evil governess in a Gothic novel.”
She lowered her brows and began to speak in a deep, melodramatic tone. “Amaryllis Minerva Cardinal killed the children and ate them, and her ghost now haunts Black Swept Moor. Dun dun duuuuuun.”
A bicycle messenger riding by caught part of it and gave Amy a weird look, but she ignored him.
“You think being a vampire is hard, try living with a name like that.”
They crossed into the park in silence, while William tried to think of how to respond, but apparently she hadn’t been expecting a reply. Instead, she started talking about the park, and asking him if he’d been around when it was built, and when that had been, and what did he like most about living forever, and did he travel a lot.
Buffeted by the storm of words, William finally held up his hands in protest. “I can’t keep up. Wait. So, Central Park was built in the 1850s to be a playground for rich people. They paid thousands of mostly Irish people a dollar or so a day to do it. No, I wasn’t here, I think I was in Paris then, but I read about it in the newspapers.”
She swung around to face him, glorious in the afternoon sun, even in her faded blue jeans and ragged red cloth jacket. “Really? I don’t know why that’s funny, but it is. A vampire who reads newspapers.”
“Mostly I get news on my iPad these days,” he said dryly. “You were expecting stone tablets? Courier bats?”
She threw her head back and her bright peal of bell-like laughter rang through the clear park air. He found himself wishing he could capture the sound in a jar to pull out and listen to later, when he was alone again.
A pair of male joggers rounded the path and pounded toward them. William casually glanced over at them and then yanked Amy behind him.
“What the hell?”
He could hear the indignation in her voice, but he didn’t have time for it. The Juneau brothers were quite possibly his worst enemies in the city, and the last thing he wanted was for them to catch sight—or scent—of Amy. With any luck, they’d keep right on going.
He didn’t have that kind of luck.
They slowed to a stop ten paces away and started growling. Literally growling. The Juneaus were soldiers in the Manhattan branch of the Werewolf Mafia. They ran drugs, guns, and anything else illegal that came through the city, and they hated William because he’d stopped them from shipping a boat load of kidnapped young girls to buyers in Europe once, not so very long ago.
Myron snarled at him. “What are you doing here, fanger?”
The older of the two, Myron had a face that even his mother must have flinched at, and the rumbling voice of a lifetime of steroid use and bad decisions. He looked like a mutant bodybuilder even in human form, and his shifter form was a thing of nightmares.
His younger brother, who was even more muscle-bound than Myron, and also more of an idiot, went by the name of Rock. Rock was sniffing the air and leaning far over, trying to get a glimpse of Amy.
William bared his fangs. “Back off, boys. You remember what happened last time, right?”
“I don’t,” Amy said cheerfully, breaking out of his hold and walking up next to him, just out of easy reach. She grinned at Myron. “Why don’t you tell me all about it, Tall, Dark and Furry?”
Myron’s face contorted into a hideous grimace that William realized was the shifter’s version of a smile. “Why don’t I snap your bones and lick the marrow out for a little snack, human?”
Amy started laughing. “Bzzzt. Wrong answer, Fur Face.”
Myron snarled and launched himself at Amy, claws out.
Rock threw his head back and howled, long and loud.
William sighed. “Horse crap.”
5
“I’ll take care of you, William,” Amy shouted, grinning madly. For some idiotic reason, she’d had more fun with the vampire in one day than she’d had in years, and this only felt like an extension of the adventure.
William started to say something, but before he could move Amy flicked her fingers at the shifters, and they froze.
“See? No problem,” she said, sauntering toward him. “I’ll keep you safe--"
“Amy,” William said, his face gone hard and still for some reason. Must be a male chauvinist thing. Men from his generation didn’t always understand that women could hold their own these days. She benevolently decided to overlook it.
“You’re welcome.” She flashed a dazzling smile. “I’m earning that money already, huh? If--"
“Amy!”
She raised her chin, belligerence starting to rise in spite of whatever the heck generation he was from. “Don’t shout at me! What?”
“Shifters metabolize most magic really fast,” he yelled, but it was news she was getting a little too late, because that’s when Rock broke free of her spell and charged.
“Run,” William shouted at her, instead of running himself, so Rock hit him with the force of a freight train going at top speed. William slammed into the ground, face first, and the ground shook with the impact.
“William,” she shouted, wanting to freeze the shifter again, just to give William a chance to get away, but they were too close together and her spell would hit both of them.
William pushed off the ground, hard, with both hands and feet, flinging the shifter a good ten feet back through the air, and then whirled with vampiric speed so fast he was almost a blur. He shouted again and pointed at something over Amy’s shoulder, and she remembered that Rock was not the only shifter she had to worry about.
The air pressure changed, as if a tornado were coming, and Amy barely had time to throw herself on the ground before a huge body flew through the air where she’d been standing. Myron roared at her, but bodies in motion stay in motion, and he was too freaking enormous in his half-shifter shape to turn easily in mid-air. She rolled out of the way and leapt to her feet, throwing another freeze spell at him while still moving. It worked—thank the Goddess—and he froze in place, falling to the ground so heavily that the New Yorkers probably thought they were having an earthquake.
“I need to find Wolfsbane,” she told her primary Gift, concentrating hard on the purple flower that was almost the same shade as her eyes. “Wolfsbane, Wolfsbane, Wolfsbane.”
William and Rock were hurling themselves at each other, battering and beating and breaking bones, from the sound of it, still too locked together in battle for her to spell the shifter. She glanced down at Myron, who was starting to tremble, which meant the spell was wearing off already and she was in a massive amount of trouble.
A tiny tendril of shivering sensation coiled around her consciousness, though, and she suddenly knew exactly where to go. She took off running at top speed, knowing sh
e wasn’t anywhere near fast enough to outrun a shifter but she had to try.
Another pair of joggers, this time two women, came around the curve of the path and she shouted at them to get out.
“Danger, danger, get out,” she yelled, waving her hands like a crazy woman.
The joggers took one look at the scene and turned back the way they’d come, suddenly running flat out and probably breaking any personal bests they’d ever clocked before. The pull was coming more strongly now, but the roar behind her told her that Myron was up and after her already.
She saw what she was looking for at the end of a row of bushes near the pond, and she hurled herself to the ground, arms outstretched and hands grasping, just as the roaring and growling sounds behind her drowned out the world. She yanked at her quarry and then flipped over, just in time to see the shifter leap at her with his nightmarish jaws opened in an eardrum-splitting roar.
“Huff and puff on that, Big Bad Wolf,” she screamed, in triumph or in terror, as she jammed a giant handful of bright purple Wolfsbane flowers into his mouth. Then she rolled again, curled up in a ball, and flicked a third and final freeze spell at him over her shoulder.
As the saying goes, the third time was the charm.
Wolfsbane is dangerous and often fatal to shifters, if ingested in sufficient quantities. She was pretty sure that Myron hadn’t swallowed any, but just having it in his mouth was going to be enough to make him pretty damn sick for at least a day. Maybe even two days.
Before she could even think about getting up, a pair of large, strong hands grasped her shoulders and lifted her into the air. Suddenly she was looking directly into William’s hotly glowing amber eyes, and he didn’t seem to be even a little bit happy with her.
“Are you insane?” His voice was completely calm and controlled, and that worried her a little bit, because he was bruised and bloody, covered in mud and grass, and pretty much looked exactly like he’d just been in a fight with a giant, crazed werewolf. So the calm voice gave her the idea that he actually might be furious and trying to keep a lid on it.
Amy wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to be this close to a furious vampire.
When an experimental wiggle did nothing to break his steel grip, she decided to go with cheerful. “That was awesome! Never a dull moment with you, is there?”
William’s jaw twitched, like he was clenching his teeth—or fangs—and Amy sighed. Definitely furious.
“Okay, we can talk about it, but shouldn’t we get out of here now?”
“Brilliant idea, Amaryllis Minerva,” he said, biting off the words, and that British accent was definitely there this time, stronger than ever.
“It’s Amy,” she said hotly, but then the whirlwind of sound and light swept the words out of her mouth. It didn’t matter, anyway, because William was holding her so tightly that she knew she was safe, both from his anger and from shifters. And when the magic he used to transport them deposited them back in his ridiculously luxurious penthouse suite, she forgot everything she’d been planning to say, because he took her head in his hands and kissed her.
Amy didn’t hesitate. She reached up and finally gave in to the temptation to touch the rich gold of his hair, thick silk in her hands, as his mouth caught hers, taking, claiming, possessing. She made a sound, a tiny moan, against his lips, and he went mad, lifting her in his arms and striding forward until her back was pressed against the wall. He held her in place with his body; surrounding her, capturing her, until she couldn’t tell where she began and he ended.
“William,” she said, or moaned, or dreamed, but he shook his head, a tiny movement, and then he licked and nibbled and caressed his way into her mouth and her tongue was dueling with his, touching and tracing and needing, until she said his name again, filled with different and more intense meaning.
He lifted her legs and she wrapped them around his hips, straining forward to match his hardness with her softness; the adrenaline from the chase and the flight and the fight surging through her, surging with the tides of another, deeper, feeling. Her pulse raced and she wondered if he could hear it; if he listened to the secrets of her heart beating its rhythm of desire and madness, if he wanted her in not just this, but also with a darker and more primal need.
He raised his head before she even thought to stop, and stood, still holding her against him, breathing hard, eyes closed.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he finally said, and she felt a pain inside, but also a recognition, as if she’d expected him to reject her, so she could sink into the familiar loneliness of her existence.
But she still had her pride, so she unwrapped her legs from his hips and forced a smile to her lips--lips that felt as bruised as her heart. “Don’t kiss you again? I think you started it, my friend,” she said lightly.
He opened his eyes and pinned her in place with his molten gaze. “Don’t ever again put yourself in danger for me. If something had happened to you—for me—no. Never for me. I’m a monster. I don’t deserve your care.”
The epiphany of clarity shot through her, and with understanding came far more powerful emotion. He wasn’t rejecting her. He had been afraid for her. He was trying to protect her.
“Oh, this is a problem,” she murmured, lowering her hands from his hair to caress the lines of helpless anger from his face. “You want to protect me, and I want to protect you, and we barely know each other. What happens when we become good friends?”
He groaned, a harsh sound deep in his throat, and leaned his forehead against hers. “Don’t make me care about you, Amaryllis Minerva Cardinal. The world is in danger when a monster like me finds something to love.”
She didn’t know which word snapped her out of the sensual haze—monster or love—but whichever one it was, it worked better than any spell she’d ever cast. She nodded and dropped her hands to her sides, and he released her and stepped away.
“Maybe we should go back to Ohio,” she said, looking at her feet, at the graceful furniture, at the lights of New York beginning to sparkle in the distance. Anywhere but at William.
“I was hoping you would consent to have dinner with me,” he said, oddly formal for the man who’d just had his tongue in her mouth. But maybe that was the point of formality; it gave a much-needed distance to a situation.
She held out her arms, glancing down at her mud-stained clothes. “I’m not really dressed for dinner out.”
He laughed, and it was one of the first pure and unrestrained laughs she’d heard from him. The sound sent tingles shivering through her nerve endings, and she decided that it was the most dangerous thing about him, because she liked it far too much.
“I can fix that,” he said.
He walked to a table against the wall and picked up the phone. “I need a dress. Size…”
“Eight,” she said, surprised into going along.
“And shoes, size…”
“Also eight,” she told him, wondering what exactly was happening but willing to go along for the ride.
“Red,” he said firmly, and then he hung up and turned to her, flashing that sexy smile. “All set. You take the shower in the master bedroom, and I’ll take the one over here.”
“You ordered me a dress,” she said slowly.
“And shoes.”
She didn’t know how to feel about that. “Do you do that a lot?”
“Never before. But if it doesn’t work out, we can wear the hotel robes and order room service,” he said, so simply that she believed he was telling the truth.
“Okay. I guess we’ll see what happens.” She started for the door he’d indicated to the master bathroom, and stopped when he called her name.
“Yes?”
“We can keep this to just business. I give you my word that I will be a gentleman at all times,” he said, his face as serious as a vow.
“Fine. Good.” She escaped into the bathroom, telling herself it was exactly what she wanted. Trying to convince herself that she wasn’t disappointed.<
br />
Not succeeding at either.
6
William felt his fangs descend and had to make a heroic effort to retract them, because Amy in that red dress was enough to make him lose his mind. She’d pinned her hair up in some complicated way, but a few long, dark curls had escaped and lay against her shoulders, stark against her pale skin. The dress had a velvet bodice, scooped low enough to show a hint of cleavage, but no more, and a silky, swirling skirt that flirted with the tops of her knees. It fit her like it had been made for her, and he made a mental note to thank his personal concierge with an extra-large tip.
Or maybe a car.
“These shoes are amazing,” she said, a little shy, pointing a toe to display the elegant heels. “I’ll pay for all of this, of course. It might take me a while, because these are De Lange shoes, and I’ll be eating mac and cheese for a month or five, but I promise I’ll pay you back.”
“You can take it out of the million dollars,” he said, as smoothly as he could over the lump in his throat. He wanted to stay professional with her—to stay sane. He’d already admitted that he was a monster, and monsters didn’t get to win the girl in the end. They died in their towers, alone and vanquished, or lived forever, regret and bitterness their only companions.
Amy offered up a tentative smile, and picked up a cashmere wrap from the back of the settee. “They brought me this, too, since it’s cold. So, we’re going out? We skipped lunch, what with all the shifter battling. I’m starving.”
He offered his arm. “We’re going out. I know a wonderful Italian restaurant, small and private, no shifters allowed.”
She walked toward him, a study in grace and elegance, and he realized that it wasn’t the designer dress and shoes that made Amy look so good. It was Amy who made them look so good. When she put a hand on his arm, her fingers burned arrows of sensation through the layers of his shirt and jacket, straight through to his core, and he wondered how he’d make it through the night without breaking his promise to be a gentleman.