If asked about my fantasies?
Oh, I imagine her in my collar and cuffs and nothing else, kneeling on the floor in front of me, her spine perfectly rounded as her forehead touches my feet.
My hands leaving pink marks on her ass, enjoying every gasp she lets out as my flogger kisses her flesh.
Rubbing away the sting of a cane slicing across the backs of her thighs.
Sliding my cock inside her as my teeth pierce her neck—
Fuck. Now I’m hard again. And I wake up way too early and alone in that dark room and fist my cock, stroking, unable to help myself. This orgasm is totally unsatisfying because my fangs have also extended, hunger breaking through.
Once I’ve spilled all over myself, I go clean up and then retrieve a bag of blood from the small refrigerator in the bedroom. Ripping the corner of the bag with my teeth, I drink it cold, straight from the bag, like an animal.
It’s barely satisfying.
Dammit.
I desperately want her, and that means I must be even more careful. I don’t know why her and why now, but if I ever hurt her, I’d rather walk into the sunrise than live another minute.
* * *
Somehow, I manage to go back to sleep, even though it took a second bag of blood and another orgasm to fill my stomach and drain my balls.
When I finally awaken a little after four, I check my phone and find that John has sent me a text telling me he’s on his way to pick her up.
Moving carefully, I kick the doorstop out of the way and ease the bedroom door open, just a little. The suite’s living room is still safely dark. I walk over to the door, remove the doorstop and unfasten the safety bar and deadbolt, then retreat to the bedroom and replace the doorstop.
That done, I text instructions to Mark, confirm what I want him to get us for dinner, and that Connie, as she’s asked me to refer to her, is to be escorted into the suite’s living room and left alone after instructing her not to touch the windows or open the curtains.
I’m literally humming as I take my shower. Shaving is always interesting, since I can’t see my reflection, but electric razors make that chore much easier.
There’s an inner light growing within me. Even if tonight’s meeting ends with no deal being struck, I’ll be happy just to have spent it with Eilidh.
I’m hoping she’ll want to return here after the meeting to at least talk some more.
Yes, I know exactly when John and Mark escort her to my suite, and it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to dash out there wet and butt-naked to greet her.
Smooth, Van Sussex. Very smooth.
I down another bag of blood, cold, as I decide what to wear. Three-piece suit tonight, no tie. I finally settle on a charcoal blazer, slacks, and vest, with a midnight blue shirt, open at the collar.
I don’t care what the werewolves think of my appearance. I know they belittle Lucius’ men and think them too “perfect,” too “fake.” Too “pretty.” It’s a common complaint shifters make about vampires.
Shifters have all these blessings of power, combined with the best of humanity in their veins, the ability to run in the sun and have children, yet they can’t get past petty jealousy.
I’m aware of her out there, sitting in the living room and awaiting me. They’ll have dinner up for us shortly.
I’m actually hoping I can talk her into ice cream or coffee after the meeting. Doing something…mundane.
Once I’ve dressed and realize I am only stalling because I’m nervous, I finally nudge the doorstop out of the way and open the bedroom door.
Her scent hits me first—light, sweet, with a hint of apricot spice. She stands and…
My cock immediately hardens. Without thinking, I reach down and adjust myself because I just cannot even…
She’s gorgeous. Black hair flowing loose just past her shoulders, the barest hints of makeup, and a simple but elegant knee-length black dress with a black embroidered wrap over her bare shoulders…
Oh, fates help me, the three-inch black pumps expose her calves and make me drool.
“Well? How do I look?” she finally asks, and I realize how nervous she feels.
Even more than me.
“Breathtaking. Simply…perfect.” I force myself across the room and hold out my hand to her. “May I?”
She nods and places her hand in mine.
With my gaze on hers, I brush my lips over the back of her hand, lingering there, deeply inhaling her scent. “You look amazing.”
Her mouth quirks in a lopsided smile. “Thanks. I didn’t think you could look hotter, but you do.”
“Thank you.” I open my arms to her and she steps in, tense at first, but then relaxes against me. I bury my face in her hair and inhale again. No wig this time. “Your hair is beautiful. Thank you for not wearing a wig tonight.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it,” she mutters against me.
“What?” I look down at her. “Why?”
She sighs. “It’s a…story. Part of my story. The bitch of it is, I don’t know why, but it is why I wear wigs to work.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, well, neither do I.”
There’s a knock on the door, and I know it’s Mark. I release Eilidh and answer it, and he rolls in the cart with our dinner. I escort Eilidh over to the table, holding her chair for her and then help Mark set everything out. Once we’re alone again, I take my seat.
“I hope this is all right?” I opted for lasagna as our main course because Selene told me it was one of Eilidh’s favorites.
“It’s wonderful, thank you.”
Even if the meeting tonight fails, I’ve already succeeded in making Eilidh smile, so it’s a win. “What would you like to talk about?”
She takes a deep breath. “I guess I really owe you the full story about me. Because I have to be honest, I’m tempted to ask you later if you’d like to scene with me. It’s also not fair to do that to you before you know everything about me.”
Her violet gaze meets mine, and I read a heady mix of desire and fear there. “You’re not the only one who believes in informed consent. And I couldn’t live with myself if I’m the reason something bad happens to you.”
15
Eilidh
I mean, obviously Dexter’s attracted to me. I got that message loud and clear even before he had to reach down and adjust the boys. The jaw-drop when he saw me standing there in my dress and the Jimmy Choos would’ve been a clue if I hadn’t already spent last night with my head in his lap.
Tonight, he’s got a glass of water and a glass of bourbon. I settled for just water. “I can’t imagine that there’s anything you could say that would shock me or make me not want to take things to a more intimate level with you,” he says. “And I’ve gotten pretty adept at taking care of myself over the years.”
I think about my phone call with Amber today. “Oooh, you might not want to say that until you hear my story.” The lasagna’s fantastic. I make a mental note to send Selene a thank-you gift for giving Dexter great advice. “See, I learned something today I’m still trying to…process.”
“What?”
“Let me tell you the story as it stood before I woke up.”
His brows knit. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” I snark. “But please, bear with me.”
“Does what I witnessed last night have to do with it?”
“Kind of.”
When he shifts position in his chair, I fight the urge to crawl into his lap. “Where did you pick up your fighting skills?” he asks.
“Mom. She was a stuntwoman and underground cage-fighter.”
I get why his brow furrows again. “That’s…not a very common occupation for a woman.”
“No, it’s not. She was American. Her mom and stepfather were in the Air Force and stationed at a post in Wales when she was in high school. Mom was nineteen when her parents were going to change posts again, and she left home and stayed
behind. I guess her stepfather had her enrolled in martial arts classes from when she was little, and her four stepbrothers taught her how to fight dirty.
“She lived outside Cardiff, and, somehow, she got hooked up with the BBC and started working on shows as a stuntwoman. That’s when she first met my father, I guess.”
“Lived with your father?”
Here’s where it gets tricky. I’m still trying to…reconcile what Amber told me. “She really didn’t talk about him a lot. I was only eight when he died. I guess when he died, it scared her. That’s when we started moving all over the world. Because I had dual citizenship, we were able to come to the States. They homeschooled me even before he died. She worked a lot of waitressing jobs under the table, got hooked into fights that way. Sometimes as a ringer working with the organizer. Get some guy in the cage with her who looked like he could mop the floor with her, and she’d take him out in under fifteen seconds. Usually a knockout.”
His gaze widens. “Wow.”
“Exactly.” I lift my glass in salute to her. “As I said, Mom was a badass.”
“How did your father die?”
I take a deep breath. “Pin an asterisk in this part of the convo because we’ll double back shortly.” He nods, and I continue. “Mom wouldn’t talk about it. I remember her coming home in tears that day, with her arms and face all bruised up, her hands kind of cut up, like she’d been in a fight, and saying Dad was gone and not coming back.”
I couldn’t forget that day if I tried, even though adult me realizes there is probably more than a little distortion in my memory due to my age and the intense emotions surrounding the events. I remember her coming home wearing my father’s ring on her finger.
A ring he only wore when he was getting ready to leave “for work.” When he’d be gone days at a time. Otherwise, he kept it on a silver chain he wore around his neck.
He’d been wearing the ring the last time I saw him.
She dug the silver chain out of her jewelry box, threaded the ring on it, and never took it off after that, except to shower.
“What happened?” he asks.
“I don’t know, for sure. I get the feeling someone attacked them. We moved that night, and never stopped moving.”
“Where is he buried?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember a funeral. She didn’t have his ashes, so I honestly don’t know. I don’t have a death certificate or anything.” I shove away the familiar grief. “I don’t even know his birthday, or the exact date he died. I just remember we’d celebrated my eighth birthday not long before, and it was only Mom and me when I celebrated my ninth.
“And you still move?”
“Yeah. Tucson’s been safest by far. I’ve been here the longest.” My left hand reaches up and touches the ring through my dress. “I’m scared to let my guard down. Every time I do, I end up needing to move again.”
“You said your mother was killed?”
“She was mugged. Fell and sustained a severe head injury. There were two couples who witnessed it and tried to help her, but it happened so fast. They said it was like the guy appeared out of nowhere, tried to grab her, but she screamed and fought. Then she fell and hit her head. The guy disappeared before the bystanders could stop him. They were too worried about Mom to see which way the guy ran, and there wasn’t any video to go by. They never caught the guy.”
I remember standing next to her bed in the ICU, stunned, and the nurse handing me the bag with her possessions in it.
How the ring had been with her things, but not on the chain, like she usually wore it. She normally wore it around her neck. They told me she’d had it on her finger when she was brought in. I’d immediately strung the ring on the necklace and put it on, not wanting to risk losing it.
I remember the way the monitors slowed and eventually flat-lined after they disconnected her life support.
I remember how I felt, a new, unfamiliar rage deep within me, burning so white-hot I was terrified to express any emotions for fear of rampaging through the hospital and killing people just to be put out of my own misery.
“I’m sorry,” he says, snapping my focus back to the present. “How old were you?”
“Seventeen. Three months shy of eighteen. I’m lucky our neighbor let me stay with her, so I didn’t have to go into foster care. From the day I turned eighteen, I’ve been on my own.”
“What about your father’s family?”
“I don’t know anything about them. I’m not even sure if my father’s real name is on my birth certificate.”
“You have uncles, though. Right?”
“Step-uncles. My mom wasn’t close to them and lost contact with them. I don’t even know if they’re alive or where they are. I know her mother, father, and step-father all died when I was still a kid.” I sip my tea. “I’m a family of one. Except for ‘Uncle’ Lucius and ‘Auntie’ Selene. And Garrett and Amber. Found family, for the win.”
“Have you ever tried running one of those DNA kits?”
I shudder. “No. Because maybe it’s best some things stay in the past. If someone did kill him, maybe I don’t want them to have a way to track me.” I point at my hair. “This is my natural hair, but remember how I said don’t get used to it?”
“Yes?”
“It…changes.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the other day when we first met, my hair was sort of golden blonde. Then, the morning after I met you, when I woke up, it was…” I point. “This. It’s done this all my life. It might stay the same color for weeks or even months. Then I’ll wake up one morning, and it’ll be a different color. Eyebrows, too. I can’t tell you if the carpet matches the drapes because the floors are bare, if you get my drift.”
Yeah, I see the way his gaze quickly sweeps me, like he’s already picturing that. I won’t deny it fills me with more than a little heat, that I know I’m having an effect on him.
The long silence grows nearly uncomfortable. “That’s why you wear wigs to work?”
“That’s why I wear wigs to work. Because I don’t want people asking questions about my hair.”
“Why does it do that?”
I wave my fork at him. “Good question. No freaking clue.”
“None?”
“Nope. That’s not all that’s different about me. I can hear and smell and sense things in a way like vampires and shifters can. I probably couldn’t track someone by scent, but I can tell your scent from another vampire’s, from a human, from a shifter. Can hear the difference, too. Vampires sound different because they only breathe for talking, not because they, you know, actually need to. Ditto their pulse.” I decide to toss another nugget out there. “I can even smell arousal.” I let my gaze briefly drop to his lap and force myself not to giggle when his eyes widen, and he clears his throat.
I see the wheels turning in his head and I hope my chances of getting spanked and spooned aren’t heading into the crapper because of my honesty. “That’s…unusual.”
“No shit.”
“Do you think it’s tied to why you are immune to a vampire’s powers?”
“I don’t know. It might be. But know how I said stick a pin in the part about my dad’s death?”
“Yeah?”
“I talked to Amber earlier.” I explain who she is, her abilities, and then relate our conversation as I watch his expression.
He’s good, I’ll give him that much. Perfect poker face, even by vampire standards. “And you don’t think she’s wrong?”
“Not about something like this, no.”
“You can’t be half vampire,” he finally says. “It’s impossible for vampires to father children or get pregnant.”
“Right.”
He takes a bite of his dinner and slowly chews. “Most shifters are immune, at least to a certain extent, from a vampire’s powers. Strong shifters are. Sometimes, non-shifters are susceptible.”
“Yep.”
“I have met dozens o
f shifters from diverse species over the years,” he says. “You do not smell like any shifter race I’ve ever net.”
“That’s what other shifters have told me, too. And Lucius told me. There are fae, though, right?”
“Yes, but I have little experience with them.” He studies me. “If I’m not mistaken, Lucius has had more experience with them than I. If he recognized you as such, he would have said so.”
“Oh.” So, no help there.
“How can I help with the search for your father?”
How, indeed? “I can’t think that far ahead. I want to get through tonight first.” I poke at my food. “I’d understand if you would rather tap out now instead of taking things further with me. I don’t want to do anything that might draw attention to you. Being with me could get…weird.”
Dexter reaches over, his touch feather-light as he strokes the backs of his fingers along my cheek the way he did last night. “I’ve survived a lot in my life, including heartbreak the likes of which I never imagined possible. I’m not going anywhere, unless you tell me to.”
I dare to meet his gaze again. Those light blue eyes steadily looking at me turn my insides to liquid and not because of vampire powers.
That has to mean something, right? Maybe Amber’s correct.
Because inside this man’s cool facade lies a decent, caring soul. “You can’t control me,” I quietly say. “Your powers don’t work on me. You saw what I did to Tonio. And now…new insanity could be on the horizon. I’m still processing and don’t even know where to start looking for him.”
“Please, at least let me help you. I can hire detectives, I can pay—”
“No.” I can’t believe I said it, either. “I know how this works. What if I find him and it turns out he’s part of some vampire-hunting family? Like what happened to Selene. What if everything I know is a lie? What if I’m being manipulated, and I don’t even know it?”
“What if you aren’t, and you’re forcing yourself to do things the hard way out of fear? There is no power any vampire has that can make a human immune to vampire powers. Selene’s memory was wiped and manipulated.”
Her Vampire Obsession Page 14