Eleanor and Lucifer cruised past the pair of vampires guarding the door. She didn’t know whether that was because they recognized her as one of Sophia’s people, or if it was the palpable nimbus of power still surrounding Lucifer in the aftermath of his fight with Yamanaka. Probably Lucifer.
But while he was in a power overload after killing the other vamp, Lucifer’s insistence that he needed to feed made her think the power surge was taking a toll rather than boosting his energy.
“You okay, Luc?” She stood on her tiptoes to make sure he could hear her in the crowded club, and even then he had to bend down to catch what she was saying. Eleanor was 5 feet 2 inches on a good day. Add in the heels she always wore in one form or another, and she was anywhere from 3 to 5 inches taller. But Lucifer was well over 6 feet, and all of that was muscle. She had skills and strength, and deserved her position as Sophia’s primary bodyguard, but around Lucifer, she would always feel delicate and petite. She could have resented that. She’d worked damn hard to fight her way up the ranks of Sophia’s security contingent. But Lucifer didn’t make resentment possible. When she’d been human, he’d always treated her like a rare piece of fine porcelain, something breakable and precious. And he’d protected her accordingly, always making her feel treasured and safe. She’d expected that to be a problem in their new relationship. He still had more power than she did, and she’d been prepared to have to fight him for recognition of her strengths and abilities. But not Lucifer. He hadn’t once treated her as anything less than he was, or tried to shove her to the back of a fight. Well, except for when she’d tried to stop a bullet meant for him by using her body as a shield. He might not think twice about letting her kick some vampire ass, but there was no way in hell he’d ever stand by and let her bleed for him. He was still Lucifer, after all. And he protected the women he loved. The woman he loved.
After all these years, Lucifer still loved her just the way he always had. Eleanor wanted to hoard that knowledge, to tuck it into a safe spot in her heart and never let it go. Decades would pass, people would live and die, but she would always have that piece of Lucifer that no one else could touch.
“You with me, Elle?”
Lucifer’s voice drew her out of her romantic daydreams—were they still daydreams if she was only awake at night? Did a vampire’s reality turn the words on their heads?
“Elle?”
She looked up at him with a big smile. “I’m with you. What’s the plan?”
Lucifer took her hand and pulled her across the room. The blood bar was set up like an old-time supper club, with period décor that included large booths with velvet upholstered benches and matching curtains that could be closed for privacy. Eleanor eyed those curtains and wondered if that was all the privacy they’d get. Would Lucifer expect her to join him in one of those booths? The two of them feeding off some human, watching him thrash in the throes of sexual ecstasy, with nothing but a bit of velvet fabric between them and an entire bar full of people?
“Relax,” Lucifer murmured, and led her to one of the bigger booths where six vampires sat, watching them approach with varying degrees of curiosity and hostility. But a single look from Lucifer had them hustling to vacate the booth, murmuring words of respect as they passed him by on their way back to the dance floor.
Once they were gone, he waved Eleanor onto the padded seat with a grand gesture that made her laugh.
“Nice trick,” she said, gliding her hand over his flat belly as she sat down. She scooted her way around the table, with its lone, electric candle, and into the back curve of the booth. Lucifer followed, sliding around until he was right next to her, his arm along the top of the seat behind her shoulders. “What do we do next?” she asked, suddenly nervous all over again. She’d never hunted with another vampire before, and wasn’t sure how this was going to work. Feeding from a human was intensely sexual. Whatever evolutionary leap had been responsible for the creation of vampires had also made sure they could survive. And that meant making humans want to give blood. Granted, as recently as a hundred years ago, vampires had literally hunted humans on the streets and sunk fang without permission. But even so, once the biting commenced, the human donor did experience tremendous sexual pleasure. Assuming the vampire didn’t drain them dry. A century ago, that was more common than not.
But not anymore. Now, humans lined up to open a vein precisely because of that sexual high. And that was Eleanor’s problem. She didn’t know how she felt about sharing Lucifer with another woman, especially one who could provide him with the sustenance he needed to live. Actually, she did know how she felt; she didn’t like it. It was a scenario that fed right into the insecurities that had sent her running away from him in the first place—her fear that since she couldn’t feed him anymore, he wouldn’t want her.
Unfortunately, the only alternative was a male donor, which had its own problems. She’d been feeding from male humans ever since becoming a vampire, but she’d never fucked a single one of them. She’d occasionally gone as far as stroking the man off, if he’d been particularly charming, or if she simply liked him better than most. But usually, she’d let the euphoric do its thing without her participation, once the biting was over with.
“You’re overthinking this,” Lucifer commented, his voice like a brush of black velvet against her ear.
She shivered. “All right, so tell me how this goes. How do we get someone to join us?”
He chuckled softly. “Come on, Elle. Have you ever had a problem attracting a donor?”
She blushed, in spite of herself. “No,” she muttered, swallowing the word.
“What was that?” He leaned down as if he hadn’t heard her, but the laughter in his voice told her the truth.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Like you haven’t been fighting off hordes of willing women.”
“Fighting them off?”
She elbowed his rock hard gut. “Stop teasing. How do we . . . choose?”
“You mean, do we want a man or a woman,” he said, intuiting her real question.
“Yes.”
“You choose.”
“Me? Why me?” she asked in alarm.
“Because I sense you’re more uncomfortable with this than I am.”
“So you should do it then.”
“No, I want you to be comfortable. So you choose.”
She made an exasperated noise, but knew he wasn’t going to budge on this. “All right,” she agreed, and then had a sudden thought. “Have you, um . . .” She had trouble getting the question out. “Done it with men before?”
“If by ‘done it’ you mean sexual contact, then, yes, in a heavy petting sort of way—lots of touching, but no anal penetration by either one of us. I’m assuming your experience is exclusively male?”
“Why would you assume that?” she bluffed.
He dropped his arm over her shoulders and hugged her close, touching his lips to the side of her head. “It’s okay, baby.”
“What’s okay?” she demanded, knowing she was only putting off the inevitable, and covering her nervousness with aggression. “I don’t need your blessing for things that happened in the last twenty-three years.”
Lucifer stiffened, and then grew very still. “If you’re not ready for this, Eleanor, there’s blood at the hotel.”
Her blush was so hot this time that it flooded from her face to her neck and chest, leaving small drops of perspiration to pool between her breasts. He thought she hadn’t even fed from the vein yet, that she still needed the bagged blood stored back at the hotel. That was even more humiliating than her lack of sexual experience. Only the newest newbie vampires drank blood exclusively from a bag.
“That’s not—” Her lips flattened together, and she exhaled through her nose in frustration. “Just come out with it, Eleanor,” she scolded herself. But she couldn’t. She coul
dn’t admit to him that she hadn’t had a single lover since being made vampire, that there’d been no one but him since the day they’d met. He’d been her first lover, her only lover. And he still was.
“Okay, look,” she said finally. “I’ve never had sex with a woman, and I’m not all that comfortable with fucking strange men, either. So . . . I don’t. I bite them, and that’s it. I let the euphoric do its thing. No sex.”
He stroked a soothing hand over her hair, and down to her shoulder, which he squeezed gently. “That’s good, because—fair warning—if you ever touch another man’s dick, I’ll kill him.”
Eleanor blinked at the flat statement, then said slowly, “Then how—”
He didn’t let her finish. “Here’s how it’s going to work. We’ll pick a guy we both like, we’ll take him somewhere suitable—a private room, if this club has them.”
“It does.”
“Good. We’ll feed from him together, giving him twice the rush, and then we’ll kick him out the door, and take out our sexual frustrations on each other.”
“Kick him out the door?”
He shrugged. “We get him another room or, hell, one of those booths will do. Close the curtains and let him sleep it off.”
“No, I meant . . . him?”
“Or her. Whichever you like.”
Eleanor steeled herself mentally. If she and Lucifer were going to stay together—and if she had anything to say about it, they definitely were—then she had to do this. Besides, she trusted Lucifer implicitly. She drew a breath for courage. “Okay, a guy then. Who looks good and tasty?” She put her elbows on the table, and leaned forward to better survey the packed dance floor.
Lucifer laughed. “That’s my delicate princess. You pick.”
He was right about one thing, she thought as she studied the crowd. They didn’t exactly have to beg for volunteers. A virtual parade of human flesh almost immediately began gliding past their booth—men, women, and pairings of every possible combination thereof. Some of the humans simply walked slowly past, making eye contact, while others trailed their fingers suggestively over the table or themselves, and still others strode right up to the booth and stood there expectantly, almost demanding the right to be their dinner. It was a strange experience.
“You’re temptation itself,” Lucifer commented, for her ears only.
She leaned back, resting a possessive hand on his muscled thigh. “It’s a good thing I’m here, then. You’d starve without me, you poor thing,” she added dryly.
His chest shook in a laugh, just as a waiter approached their table.
The twenty-something male was of average height, lean and very fit, with a smoothly muscled chest and well-defined arms revealed by a tight, black T-shirt. He smiled and leaned closer, not stopping until the table’s edge was pressed against his thighs. “Can I get you anything?” he asked. His smile had spread to his eyes, a wicked gleam that caught the stray flash of light from the artificial candle.
Lucifer grinned back at the man, but he didn’t say anything, leaving the choice up to her.
“When do you get off work?” she asked.
The waiter’s smile widened. “An hour ago, my lady.” His studied first her, and then Lucifer, with equal appreciation. “Which one?”
Lucifer speared his fingers into her hair, and tugged her head back, giving her a long, hungry kiss, with lots of tongue.
She was breathing hard when he finished, so caught up in the kiss that she barely heard Lucifer’s drawling response to the young man.
“Both.”
The waiter gasped loudly, and seemed literally breathless for a moment, as if he was so excited that his lungs had seized up. Eleanor wondered if they’d gone too far, or picked the wrong human. But then the young man bent forward, both hands flat on the table, his expression full of lust as his gaze traveled between them, back and forth, as if he couldn’t decide which one he wanted to fuck first. He nodded decisively.
Hmm. Maybe he needed to know the ground rules before things got out of hand. “Okay, first, you need to—”
“Come with us,” Lucifer interrupted. “What do you think, bella?”
Eleanor turned so she could see his expression, wanting to be sure she understood the question. “You mean—”
“What’s your name?” Lucifer asked the young man.
“Josh Nelson, my lord.”
She blinked as she stared up at Josh, abruptly aware of the line she was about to cross. Did she want to do this? It wasn’t exactly a sexual ménage, but . . . She frowned. On the other hand, did she want the alternative? Lucifer feeding from strange women without her? Oh, hell, no.
“You like this one?” Lucifer whispered against her ear.
“Yes,” she said clearly. “Let’s go.”
Lucifer chuckled softly, then slid out of the booth and offered a hand to help her stand. Like she needed it or something. But she took it anyway, because such courtesies were simply a part of who Lucifer was. And maybe because she was feeling a little wobbly with nerves.
“Tell me, Josh, does this club have private rooms?” Lucifer asked.
“Yes, my lord,” Josh said eagerly. “I’ve one already reserved.”
“Well, aren’t you efficient,” he said, sliding an arm around Eleanor’s waist. “Lead the way.”
FOR THE FIRST time Eleanor wished alcohol worked on vampires. A nice double shot of something strong would have come in handy right about now. She couldn’t remember ever being this nervous, certainly not since she’d been made a vampire. Not even when she’d been standing on the gym mats with all of the other contenders, getting ready to prove that she deserved to be Sophia’s bodyguard.
“Relax, baby,” Lucifer murmured, as he closed the door to one of the private rooms along the back hallway of the bar. “Nothing gets done here unless you want it.” He reached out and dialed the lighting down to a dim, romantic glow.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, even though she knew Lucifer would hear the lie. This was ridiculous. What was the worst that could happen? For fuck’s sake, it wasn’t like Josh could take advantage of her in any way, shape, or form. She’d wipe the floor with him in a heartbeat. That realization, coupled with Lucifer’s warm hand at the small of her back, finally calmed her down. This was an adventure, a little fun. Something she’d had precious little of in her day-to-day life lately. She took her responsibilities to Sophia very seriously.
She drew in a deep breath. “Okay, I’m good.”
“You’re beautiful, my lady,” Josh purred, as he kicked off his boots and crawled onto the king-sized bed that dominated the small room. “You both are,” he added. He gave Lucifer a suggestive glance, and then lay back on the pile of pillows in the middle of the bed. He certainly wasn’t nervous.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Lucifer said dryly. “You’ve done this before?”
“With two of you?” Josh clarified. “Only once before, and they were nowhere near as lovely as the two of you. How do you want me?”
The question was pragmatic enough, but Eleanor could see by his eager expression that he was hoping the answer would involve nudity. Sadly for Josh, it didn’t. Not tonight anyway. Maybe years from now, after she and Lucifer had done this a few hundred times, and . . . . Eleanor’s thoughts came to a screeching halt. Years from now? Where had that come from? Oh, hell, she knew the answer to that one. She loved Lucifer just as much as she ever had. They’d been planning a lifetime together back then, and here she was doing it again. Except that everything had changed. Not just the fact that they were both vampires, but also that they served different lords. She was bound to Sophia and couldn’t imagine leaving her. Lucifer was sworn to Aden for now, but he’d be a lord himself someday, and who knew where that would take him? Hell, there was talk among the Council members of sending a few of the
more powerful North American vampires over to Europe, taking the war to them instead of waiting for their next attack here. Lucifer would be the perfect candidate for that.
So what future could they really have together? She turned a stricken gaze on Lucifer, tears burning the backs of her eyes as she drank in every familiar thing about him—his sudden smile and easy laugh, the deep rumble of his voice as he spoke to Josh, his unusual eyes, burning a burnished gold now as his power rose along with his hunger, his big heart . . . and the way he loved her.
Those unusual eyes shifted to Eleanor, and darkened in concern. “Eleanor?” He stepped closer and brushed away a tear with the back of his fingers. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Just happy,” she told him, honest in at least the second part of her response.
His too-perceptive gaze searched her face, and she knew she hadn’t fooled him. But she also saw his decision to table that discussion for later, when there wasn’t a human listening in. A human who, she saw from the corner of her eye, had just pulled his T-shirt over his head, baring his chest and the strong column of his throat. She could hear the racing thump of his heart, and knew his pulse was pounding the same beat.
Lucifer (Vampires in America: The Vampire Wars Book 11) Page 21