Harlequin Nocturne September 2014 Bundle: Beyond the MoonImmortal Obsession

by Michele Hauf

  When St. John stood, her eyes remained riveted to him. Having adjusted to the dark, she saw the expression of concern on his face.

  He was silhouetted by the light from outside the window. His shirt was open, and torn, revealing the phenomenally bare muscularity of his chest. Crossing his flesh, and easy to see in the dimness, were the scores of scratches she had made while trying to get at him. Each of them had drawn a thin line of blood. Dark blood, of a color approaching maroon.

  She couldn’t look anywhere but at those scratches, when the awful truth was that she wanted to be in his arms again, and couldn’t figure out how to get there.

  Sex hadn’t resolved anything. What they had between them hadn’t even begun to burn itself out. She had to speak. Someone had to.

  “I’m sorry.” She pointed to his welts with trembling fingers. “For that.”

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  “Someone has hurt you before. Those raised lines on your back.”

  He didn’t acknowledge that comment, or explain.

  “Did you come here tonight, to do this?” Her gaze dropped to the floor.

  “No,” he said.

  “That’s right. You came to warn me to be careful. Did you expect this, though? That this might happen between us?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “But I came here for another purpose, to warn that you’ve become an easy target for trouble, whether or not you realize it, and that until you leave England, that won’t change.”

  “I’m used to the spotlight, but the word you used was danger. You’ve insinuated that the man in the doorway of the club is the danger,” Madison said. “Why?”

  “You are prying into private business.”

  “I haven’t even begun to pry,” she said. “And I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m here to report on the missing girls. How could the interviews I’ve done in regard to that case get me in trouble?”

  “It brought you to the club, Madison, twice.”

  “Lots of people go there.”

  “None of them looking for Stewart Chase.”

  The mention of her brother’s name was like a slap in the face.

  “What has my brother got to do with any of this?”

  “I can’t tell you that, and suggest that you don’t return to Space in your search for answers. I’d ask you not to be alone right now, and that you keep your crew nearby for the rest of your stay.”

  “Are you in league with that damn detective? I’m not sure what right either of you have to suggest anything like that,” Madison said. “If you can’t tell me what’s behind those cautions, how do you expect me to give them credence?”

  “I’m asking you to believe me,” he said soberly, “because I actually have your best interest and safety in mind.”

  Madison’s hand went to her forehead, to the ache between her eyes that had made her world color and shine. “How do you know about my brother?”

  “I know that he also has disappeared.”

  “Why would my going to the club in search of him be dangerous?”

  “Because of his beliefs.”

  Madison blinked slowly, and repeated, “His beliefs?” She added softly, “You know about that?”

  “I know about it.”

  Madison had a hard time taking this in. “I’m not sure how many more surprises or warnings I can take at the moment, to be honest,” she said. “You, and what we just did, seem to be the biggest surprise of all.”

  It was a confession of her scrambled feelings. She knew this, and so did the man across from her. What they had just shared was different, special, mind-blowing, and possibly even scary as hell. But their intimacy, and what he had to say afterward, left her more confused than ever.

  Christopher St. John said he knew about her brother’s obsession. But she hadn’t known about it until recently. So, how did St. John know?

  “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me how you know about Stewart.”

  She waited for him to answer, but his nearness was creating more questions than that. Grinding their bodies together on the floor of her hotel room had left her with a desire for him that went far beyond any normal man-woman attraction. She was on fire, even now, with so much up in the air.

  “Take a minute,” he said without moving closer to her. “Then meet me downstairs.”

  Things might have been different if he had touched her, or if she had gone to him, and they had comforted each other, held each other. Maybe the questions wouldn’t have mattered so much if she had someone to share them with. But they were acting almost as if nothing had happened, when she...God, when she wanted more than anything for it to happen again.

  Why couldn’t she chalk this up to the one-night stand, and move on, when she so desperately needed to do that?

  How could one little spark derail something as important as finding Stewart?

  St. John finally moved. He took an item from his pocket, which he set on the sill. “Meet me in the lobby, Madison,” he said. “As soon as you can.”

  “I’m not going anywhere else tonight.”

  “You asked for my help. I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say when we’ve both had a few seconds of breathing time. Meet me downstairs. It may not be in your best interest to do so, but you will value the importance of what I’m going to show you.”

  “You will answer my questions? Why not do so first, and I’ll decide what to do next.”

  He looked at her for a long time. “I’ve had a tip about those missing girls,” he said.

  Madison leaned on her hands to hide how badly they quaked. She used the wall to keep upright.

  “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

  “We needed to get something else out of the way first.”

  The sex. Yes, they had needed to indulge in the thing that was gumming up the works. The problem was that it was obvious, by the tension between them, that it had only made the cravings worse.

  Priorities? Hell. Her brother and the Yale girls were at the top of the list, and the urge to straddle St. John had been powerful enough to make her almost forget that.

  Smoothing her dress over her hips took self-control. As she shoved the tangle of tousled hair back from her face, Madison’s gaze snapped to the window while she called up her courage and her wits.

  She stared beyond what was out there, at a city drenched in mystery and intrigue, all those things tainted in one way or another by her brother’s horrid files, because Stewart’s research haunted her, even now, in these moments with St. John, in a way that defied explanation. Stewart’s research just would not go away.

  Her feelings of being on the verge of an important discovery, right here, this minute, wasn’t only due to St. John’s knowledge of Stewart. It was more than that. It meant more than that.

  She heard St. John’s heart beating from a distance of two feet. She perceived his anxiousness as if it were her own. His voice sang in her mind with phrases she shouldn’t have been able to hear, and yet she had heard him whispering from the start.

  That wasn’t all.

  The blood rushing through her veins felt unnaturally hot. Her muscles twitched and danced across her bones. The room smelled like wool and musk and forbidden liaisons, and it tasted like sex—sweet and sultry on her tongue.

  Beyond those things lay the unmistakable metallic odor of blood. St. John’s blood, pooling on the scratches she’d made with her nails, though she could no longer see those marks because of the way he was standing.

  Then, there was the red haze that had cloaked the dark.

  Frowning, Madison glanced to her left, where the light on her laptop was a niggling form of harassment, telling her to beware of strangers and their intentions, telling her that not everything was always as it seemed, at least in her bro
ther’s world.

  And Christopher St. John stood there, among all those uncanny perceptions, looking not like a lover, but like some kind of dark, angelic avenger.

  “How archaic death by staking seems,” she said, voicing a thought instigated by her awareness of the computer. “Unlike using a gun, and firing a bullet, using a wooden stake for a weapon, with the intention of piercing a victim’s heart, would necessitate being close enough to look an opponent in the eyes.”

  St. John eyes met hers. She felt his rapt attention.

  “If there were such a thing as vampires, would I be able to kill one, if necessary?” she said. “Would I be able to take you out, if you proved to be a monster in disguise?”

  “That’s a funny thought,” St. John said. “What made you say it?”

  “Obsession.” Madison struggled for a breath that eluded her. “The tendency must run in my family. My brother was obsessed with London. I appear to be obsessed with you.”

  More time passed, uncomfortably, after that pronouncement.

  “If you won’t tell me about Stewart, what kind of tip do you have about the girls? Give me something. Anything,” Madison finally said.

  “The girls were seen at a hotel near here. I’ll take you there.”

  “Now?”

  “It’s not public information, Madison. This is for your ears only. The hotel is private.”

  “Who told you about this?”

  “I can’t say. You understand about protecting sources.”

  Madison set her shoulders. “Sex was the payment for that information? With sex out of the way, you’ll assist me in the job I’ve come here to do, in regard to those missing girls?”

  “You don’t really believe that what we did has anything to do with anything other than what’s happening between us on a personal level,” he said. “Why even go there.”

  “I don’t know what to believe.”

  Madison eyed the laptop and the blinking light that haunted her so mercilessly. “You just cautioned me about roaming around. You said going to the club in search of my brother was dangerous, without saying why.”

  “That warning still stands. More, I cannot say.”

  She knew that his tip had to be followed up on, no matter what she did or didn’t feel about the man who had given it to her, and how cryptic he could be. Other lives were at stake.

  “I’ll meet you. Give me that minute,” she said.

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Those simple words startled her in a way she couldn’t explain. She had heard them in her mind all day. It suddenly seemed that St. John used them here to prove that he truly had been inside her mind telepathically, first conquering that, and then her body.

  Christopher St. John appeared to be the bigger danger here, and Madison wondered how she’d move her feet, let alone face him in any kind of light. If he was so perceptive, how could he not know that she was suddenly afraid to leave her room, and that he was partly the cause of this fear?

  “I’ll bring Teddy,” she said.

  “I’m not the bad guy here, Madison. Not tonight, anyway. No Teddy. I’ll have a car standing by if that will make you feel better.”

  “You can’t carry me?”

  She was sorry for the sarcasm, but didn’t know what else to say. She longed for his touch as if truly addicted, and sorely needed time away from him in order to recuperate.

  When St. John stepped up to her, and again slipped his hands into her hair, she withheld what would have been a telling whimper.

  He let several strands of her hair slide through his fingers. He was close enough to kiss her and yet he didn’t. He wasn’t making this easy at all.

  Madison had to move away from the door, away from him, to get a grip on her flailing feelings. She watched him pull his shirt around his bare chest, and reach for the knob beside her.

  She stopped him with a question.

  “Do you believe in vampires, St. John?”

  “Really, Madison. I wonder why you’d mention death by wooden stake, and then ask such a question.”

  “As much as I wonder why you singled me out in that club and led me to believe...”

  “Believe what?” he prompted.

  “That you know about vampires.”

  “Isn’t it true that a small percentage of most populations believe in the supernatural?” he said.

  “Are you one of them?”

  “You’re asking if I believe in such things?”

  “I’m asking if you’re one of them. If you are a vampire.”

  Madison was sure she saw him wince.

  “Not a vampire,” he said. “Not in the way you mean.”

  “Is there another way?”

  “Anyone who preys on others, in any way, is a vampire, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “I suppose you’re right. But that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I’m not one of them,” he said. “Not one of those.”

  “You aren’t lying?”

  “I don’t lie, Madison. I never lie.”

  “Everyone lies.”

  “There would be consequences if I did, none of them very pleasant.”

  “Now you actually believe you’re a saint?” she said.

  “I have already confessed to having no aspirations in that direction.”

  “Then why don’t you just tell me what you’ve found out about the hotel and those girls, and save us a trip. That would be saintly enough.”

  “Because you’ll go there alone, without me, and that wouldn’t be a good thing,” he said. “No story is worth that.”

  “It would be dangerous to go there without you?”

  “You have no idea how much.” Christopher St. John left the room, taking his disarming, addictive presence with him, and leaving Madison, half-naked, completely unenlightened, and hungering for him in a way that was too crazy to be tolerated, staring after him.

  It was becoming a habit.

  A very bad habit.

  Chapter 12

  Small licks of leftover desire inhibited every step St. John took as he left Madison. Delicious heat. Monstrous heat.

  He could have stayed inside her forever. He hadn’t wanted the moment to end. But something had happened on that floor. Madison, he believed, had glimpsed her destiny.

  Through the closed door, he heard her sigh of relief, and longed to feel that breath on his face. He wanted to see her skin glisten with anticipation, and watch her cheeks flush pink, when going back to her, getting close to her again, wasn’t right, or to be condoned.

  He hadn’t meant to do this. Take her. Indulge. He had known he’d have to stay away from her for this very reason. In the heat of passion, with her body wrapped around an immortal, she had revealed her true colors. What might have been a fleeting glimpse for her of what lay ahead, was devastatingly real for him.

  And yet it truly had only been a glimpse for you, Madison.

  She had asked about vampires without realizing her special connection to them. In their lovemaking, she had perceived his Otherness without fully recognizing it.

  He had to soak this in, and see his next move. But he didn’t like it. How could he? In order to address this with her, he’d have to explain about himself.

  It seems that your brother has kept one particular secret to himself.

  That secret pertained to what the Chase twins actually were. When Madison had moved from beneath him, it was because her instincts for survival had inadvertently kicked in. Her latent genes had gone into action. Their intimacy had made her see him with half-closed perception.

  Madison. Hell. What now?

  This was an untimely mess. With repeated proximity to vampires, Madison was beginning to use her sens
es in a different, predetermined way. Taking that further, if a single dose of Other could awaken her, what might repeated sexual encounters with a centuries-old immortal instigate?

  Their blood was calling to each other. There was no doubt about this. Chemistry was sealing the deal. Created to be opposite, he had confused her because he truly wasn’t one of the vampires a Slayer could identify clearly.

  They were on the same side in the fight against vampires. Again, though, explanations for this would be necessary if she found out about her calling and mistook him for something dangerous.

  Why don’t you know what you are?

  Slayers were usually fully honed by the time they entered puberty. Madison was in her twenties. Her brother had also only recently stumbled on the new image of his future.

  Maybe being a twin has stifled some of your ingrained perceptions, overwhelming those perceptions with others.

  The dilemma was excruciating.

  If he were to remain close to Madison, in any way, there was a chance her nature might take her over completely. She’d be unable to resist following her instincts about going after vampires. It’s what they all feared. And what Simon Monteforte had warned him of. Notoriety. Secrets getting out.

  In a city teeming with freshly bitten, mindless fledglings and fanged rogues, and ruled by a hundred elegant immortals, how could she keep her identity safe from the Hundred? She’d be driven, compelled to find them, once she woke up. Whatever particles swam in her genetic makeup would demand that she did so. And there were more monsters in London than anywhere else on earth.

  Slayer.

  St. John shut his eyes to block out the image of Madison with a wooden stake in her hand.

  He had done this. In getting as close to her as a man could get with a woman, he had encouraged that dark thing inside her to blossom.

  Not only that, he was going to take her to an establishment that reeked of immortality and unedited extravagance, where women willingly came to bleed for the creatures who kept them in the lap of luxury, and who catered to their keepers’ monstrous whims.