With her words, her body began to move, undulating on his shaft, and of course, he moved with her. She smiled, spurring him on with her blatant triumph. “I think I’ve had more sex with you tonight than I’ve had in the rest of my life put together.”
“It’s about the quality as well as the quantity, you know.”
She bit his shoulder, caressing his skin with her lips, as her hands slid down to his buttocks, drawing him closer into her. “The quality seems just fine to me. I suppose you would get pretty good at sex after three hundred years.”
“You learn a lot,” he admitted, holding the pace, keeping it slow and gentle. “You learn that there’s more to good sex than technique. Although,” he added, giving her the slower version of the little twist she loved, “that’s bound to help. Have you ever been fucked to sleep before, Serafina?”
Something like a strangled laugh escaped her. She was exhausted and yet craving more of him. He was almost scared by how much he liked that knowledge.
“No,” she managed. “And I can’t imagine I ever will be. Unless it’s really boring sex.”
“Am I boring you?”
“Oh no,” she said fervently. “I can’t believe how often we’ve done this. I should be dead of sex.”
“No, you should just be asleep. Close your eyes; let me do the work. I’m told the happiest sleeps come when you drift off in orgasm.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“Believe,” he said, watching her eyes close. He kissed her eyelids and her lips, softly, gently rocking her toward orgasm. It must have been like a dream to her by the time she came. He felt her convulse around him, was smugly pleased by the smile on her lips as the last fringes of sleep fell over her.
A good man, he supposed, a gentleman, would civilly leave her body at this point to enjoy its sleep in peace. But Blair was a vampire, and, worse, a vampire damnably aroused by what he’d just done to her. Close as he was, he took all his weight on his elbows and helped himself to few more gentle thrusts, until he too fell into delicious climax. Since she was already used to the motion, it didn’t wake her, and afterward, it felt good to lie between her legs, still inside her body, and watch her sleep.
****
There was a new sort of pleasure too in observing the muted sun rise through the filter of her bedroom curtains, while she slept on, curled against his shoulder. But Blair was not a being who wallowed in either happiness or pain. Since her closeness seemed to numb his brain, he got up from the bed to think.
Pacing through the flat, he encountered his clothes in the living room and put them on while he bent his mind to the problem of Nicholas Smith and the banking vampires. He rather admired their bold plan, and the results would certainly make for a different world—no mean outcome for a bored, three-hundred-year-old vampire.
On the other hand, he didn’t care to share or to bow to the wishes of weaker vampires. And there was the promise he’d once made to Ailis. What was best for the community? The question made him uneasy, even though it was all that had kept him alive in recent years.
Hell, exactly how bored had he been since the banking vampires had come on the scene? They’d intrigued and annoyed him and led him to a strange, sweet psychic lover, a woman with whom he could communicate just as if she were a vampire.
Oh no, mind off Serafina. She’d only lead him back to sex and brain numbness. He wandered through to the messy kitchen and set about making coffee. While he waited for it, he thought and absently tidied a bit; then, when the coffee was ready, he paced through the flat, still thinking. Outside, the city had come to life. Car engines mingled with people’s voices and thousands of footsteps as humanity began its working day. Such everyday sounds had always been part of his life, and yet he was isolated from them, as all his kind were.
Except the new vampires like Jason, already at work in his office. Unnatural.
He heard people enter Serafina’s office below and supposed Sera herself should be down there with them. However, he preferred her where she was. She needed sleep, and plenty good food and drink to replace the blood he’d taken from her last night. No biting today, he thought regretfully, although another fuck would be nice…
A loud but perfunctory knock sounded at the door between the flat and the office. An instant later, the door opened, and someone ran lightly upstairs. A woman. Blair stopped pacing and glanced over his shoulder at the living room door. A rather pretty blonde head appeared round it, followed by a vaguely familiar girl. She’d been with Sera at the Bells’ party.
“Sera? Are you…?” She caught sight of Blair and stopped dead. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Blair. Who the fuck are you?” he returned pointlessly, because obviously she couldn’t hear him.
“Where’s Sera?” she asked in panic, perhaps because he hadn’t answered her and she was wondering whether he was a robber or an axe murderer.
Blair took pity on her and jerked his head toward the bedroom. Watching him all the time, the blond girl circled warily around him, then bolted past him into the bedroom.
“Sera? Sera, wake up! Are you okay?”
Some sort of sleepy, leave-me-alone noises came from Sera, followed by more urgent commands from the other girl. Blair strolled toward the bedroom and leaned in the doorframe to watch.
Sera’s friend sat on the bed, tugging and shoving at Sera’s shoulder. Sera herself had managed to lift her head from the pillow to say comfortably, “More sleep.”
“No more sleep, Sera,” the girl said sternly. “It’s after nine. Who’s the dude?”
“What dude?” Sera yawned, struggling into a sitting position. “Oops,” she added, discovering she was naked, and hauled the quilt up for modesty.
“There’s a strange man in your flat. Did you know?”
To Blair’s delight, Sera looked over her friend’s shoulder and smiled at him. “Oh yes. It’s Blair.”
Blair could only see the back of the other woman’s head, but he could imagine her shocked expression, if it matched the sudden rigidity of her back or the sudden increase in anxiety that radiated from her like an explosion.
“Blair?” she repeated, clearly appalled. Her head moved, and Blair knew she was taking in the rumpled state of the bed, adding it to her observation that Blair hadn’t been wearing shoes when they’d met and multiplying the whole by Sera’s sleepiness. “Sera, you bloody idiot, you didn’t, did you?”
The smile faded into something like guilt. The other girl pushed Sera’s head ungently from side to side as if looking for puncture marks. Blair curled his lips. Any wounds created by him would have healed long since.
“Get off, Jilly,” Sera muttered. “I’m getting up. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
The girl—Jilly—stood up. “What about him?” she asked aggressively, jerking her head in Blair’s direction. “Shouldn’t he go away?”
“He can’t, can he? It’s daylight.” At least she didn’t sound disappointed.
With quite obvious bravery, Jilly stormed up to him, her eyes narrowed and spitting with anger. “If you’ve hurt one hair on her head,” she began.
“For God’s sake, Jilly, he hasn’t,” Sera fumed. “Stop the mother-hen act! I can take care of myself!”
She couldn’t, of course. Not against him. And neither could Jilly, although he suspected that together they presented a pretty formidable opposition to the rest of the world. But at least Sera recognized that he was not, at this moment, a threat to either of them. Jilly barged past him.
He glanced over at Sera, twitching his eyebrows, and she gave him a slightly shy, rueful smile. “I need to shower and dress,” she said.
“I think you should eat first. You’ll be dizzy.”
“Don’t be daft,” she scoffed, swinging her legs out of the bed and wriggling forward. “Woo.” She held on to the bed to steady herself. “Shit. What’s the matter with me?”
“Blood loss. I took too much.”
She touched her forehead, rubbi
ng it gently. “Bastard,” she said without heat.
He walked over and lifted the fruit juice from the bedside table where he’d left it earlier. “Drink that. I’ll get you some sweet tea and breakfast. You’ll be okay then, if you take it easy for a couple of days.”
Obediently, she took the glass from his hand and drank half of it down without drawing breath. Then, lowering the glass, she glanced up at him. “You don’t seem very apologetic,” she observed.
In truth, he wasn’t. But the implication of her own regret hurt far more than it should. “Should I be saying sorry?” he asked lightly.
She stared at him, then slowly shook her head. Something like a laugh spilled from her throat. “No. Just don’t do it again.” She lifted the glass to her lips once more and drained it.
Blair left the room to make tea, but he discovered Jilly was before him, banging about in Sera’s kitchen. He watched for a few moments. When he came right in, she shrank away from him and frowned in obvious incomprehension as he spooned sugar into one of the cups.
By this time, the sounds of the shower could be heard from the bathroom. Blair politely handed Jilly the cup for Sera. She seemed almost mesmerized as she took it and scuttled out of the kitchen.
Blair rummaged for a suitable breakfast.
****
Some of it was probably blood loss, but Sera felt oddly numb as she showered and dressed. Somewhere, although her body ached from all the sex it had enjoyed last night, a warm, cozy glow burned, but she was too tired to analyze it. What she’d done last night, what Blair had done to her, almost felt like someone else’s story. But he was still here, in her flat. It had still been dark when she’d fallen asleep. It wasn’t far to his own place, and at the speed he moved, he could easily have made it home before dawn. He’d chosen not to, and she liked that. She liked it too much, considering he was a powerful, murderous being who’d drunk her blood without compunction and to whom one night of sex among centuries was a mere drop in the ocean.
Oh, but it had been good sex. And he’d liked it. He’d kept coming back for more. Was that why he was still here?
Her body flushed all over at the possibility, and she had to sit down on the edge of the bath to finish drying. Overcome with a shyness that was ridiculous after last night’s uninhibited debauchery, she’d taken a pair of jeans and a shirt into the bathroom with her.
“Sera, there’s a cup of tea on the table,” Jilly called to her. “Do you want me to stay? He‘s still here!”
“No, you’re fine. I’ll be down in ten minutes,” she called back.
Emerging, fully dressed apart from socks and shoes, she found a plate of bacon, egg, toast, and tomato on the table. Beside it was another glass of orange juice, a cup of tea, and a large chunk of melon.
Her stomach rumbled. “Tea indeed!” she murmured, smiling, before she realized Blair was standing at the window—the curtains were still shut—watching her. Her stomach flipped. He was one sexy devil, even dressed and barefoot. She swallowed. “How fab is Jilly?” she said lightly and sat down to tuck in.
Blair walked to the table and sat in the chair beside her. His knee didn’t touch hers, but she had the sudden urge to close the distance.
He said, “I declared against Smith’s vampires last night. They may consider it negotiation, which gives us time. But it may, by association, have put you in danger from them. I’ll be around at night, but in daytime, you have to remember that Smith doesn’t need the dark to operate.”
Sera waved her fork and swallowed. “I don’t believe he’ll hurt me. Can his vampires hurt you?”
“If there are enough of them, yes. And they’re creating more every day. I need more information before I can decide what to do.”
She frowned, reaching for the teacup. “We have to oppose them. We can’t allow them to dominate humans like that, use us as animals for feeding purposes and slaves while they hog all the wealth.”
“You speak like a human,” he mocked.
She took a sizeable swallow and laid down the cup. “Funnily enough, I am human.”
“I’m not.”
Her fork hovered over the final piece of bacon. She stared at him. “You wouldn’t go along with it, would you? Not now…” She bit her lip as if she’d said too much.
She had. She could see the implication register in his dark, fathomless eyes. Not now that we’ve had such fantastic sex. Would he imagine she’d done it to bribe him? Had she? Certainly she’d been very conscious of a desire to have him on her side. Because without him, they didn’t stand a chance against the other vampires. But the sex, the surrender, had been about pure lust. And this strange warmth still clinging to the region of her heart.
How the hell could she tell him that?
In any case, did it matter if he wouldn’t be on her side after all? Would she have to fight him too? How did she do that?
Grabbing the last piece of toast from her plate, she stood up, muttering, “I have to go.”
She couldn’t look at him, just walked swiftly to the door, a working girl late for work. It was good to have a role. She didn’t hear or see him move, but he was there at the door before her.
“Be careful,” he warned.
She nodded, raising her eyes from her chest to his face.
His lips quirked. “I’ll make inquiries.”
“So will I.”
He touched her face, tilted it up for his kiss. Her stomach melted, even before his lips touched hers. Sweet, and definitely too short. Then she was clattering downstairs to the office. She felt human again.
Chapter Twelve
While Elspeth bolted across to the shop to replace the bottle of vodka currently residing beside Sera’s bed, Jilly glared at Jack until he looked up from whatever it was he was reading.
“She’s been with Blair again,” Jilly said abruptly. “Last night. He’s still upstairs.”
Jack glanced upward as if he could see through the ceiling for proof. “Is that—safe?” he asked,
“Of course, it’s not bloody safe!” Jilly exploded. “The question is, what the hell do we do about it?”
“I don’t really see that there’s anything we can do, except keep an eye on them both. From what she’s said, whatever his reasons, Blair appears to be on our side.” He hesitated, even removed his spectacles for an unnecessary polish. He obviously knew he was on thorny ground and about to step on territory sacrosanct to Sera and Jilly, from which he was normally and quite rightly excluded. “Is she having some kind of relationship with him?”
Jilly nodded curtly. “Think so.”
“Phew.” Jack let out his breath in a rush. “Heavy. Makes any interference counterproductive.”
Jilly widened her eyes at such unexpected common sense. She always thought of Jack as an upper-class oddity, avoiding the reality of his own wealthy, high-achieving world by playing in one he didn’t really understand.
Jack put his glasses back on, and for once, Jilly let him speak. “I think we just have to be there for her. And warn the bastard that she’s not alone and that if he does her any harm whatsoever, somehow we’ll manage to stake him to hell.”
Jilly stared at him, but he didn’t back down. She grinned. “That’s the first time you’ve ever spoken like a sensible man.”
“Stop, Jilly,” Sera said, coming through from the inner office. “Such exaggerated praise is liable to go to his head. What’s happening?”
“Nothing much,” Jilly said. She decided not to care whether or not Sera had overheard her and Jack. In fact it would be good if she had—might wake her up to her own idiocy. “Elspeth’s gone for vodka, I mean milk, and as you asked, we’ve been researching a bit deeper into your Nicholas Smith. His name crops up in the membership of several groups and societies—what would you call them, Jack?”
“Esoteric,” Jack supplied mildly.
“Aye, what he said. Anyway, they’re to do with pretty heavy magic, witchcraft, Satanism, that kind of thing.”
“Yes?�
�� Sera eased her hip onto Jilly’s desk. She looked better than she had in the flat—well, who looked good when they first woke up? “That fits with what I heard, that he’s a ‘real’ sorcerer.”
“Does any of that stuff work?” Jack asked, almost apologetically. “Or is it just a symptom of the way he thinks, the power he’s looking for and found with the vampires?”
“Oh, some of it works. Some of it definitely works. Trust me, a friend of mine is a witch.”
“Mel,” Jilly remembered. Melanie Merrow had flickered erratically in and out of Sera’s life since childhood. Jilly had once wondered if, young as she was, Mel was Sera’s real mother, but Sera had laughed so hard at this speculation that Jilly had been forced reluctantly to drop the dream. Mel would have been a good mother to have. Or at least better than a drug addict who abandoned her baby at a clinic or whatever other wild or pathetic stories Sera produced for the entertainment of others. “Scary woman,” she observed.
“Very knowledgeable woman.” Sera frowned, staring at Jilly without really seeing her. “Why does he smell like me?” she said inexplicably. She stood up, reaching for the phone in her pocket. “I think I need to see Mel about many things.”
****
Although she was still pissed off at Ferdy, she’d be driving so close by his house on her way to visit Melanie that she decided to call in. There were more important things bothering her, personal things, like what she’d done with Blair last night and which way Blair would jump. And how she was going to feel about both of those things when he did.
Before she left, she ran back up to the flat to fetch the Christmas present she’d bought for Mel last year. And although it was only half an hour since she’d seen him last, her heart beat like a teenager’s on a first date with her long-time crush.
Silence rang in her ears. There was no sign of him in the living room. She could almost imagine he’d gone, had somehow found a way to leave in daylight, except the whole flat resonated with his personality. No echo of presence but the real thing. Slowly, she followed her instinct to the bedroom and found him lying stretched out on her bed, still clothed, staring at the ceiling. He looked dead.
Serafina and the Silent Vampire Page 17