by Anna, Vivi
“You want so many things. I can give them to you. Will you let me?”
Her hand moved toward him as if it wasn’t her hand at all. No! She shook her head and snatched her hand back. Frantically, she looked around. Everything was wrong. Where was the woman she’d been unable to save? Where was the blood?
Where was she?
She was no longer in the alley surrounded by death and carnage—she was in a room, a bedroom, facing a bed with red satin sheets and candles. Hundreds of candles. Candles everywhere.
Someone stood behind her—she could feel his presence and she both wanted to lean back into that solid mass and surrender to him and she wanted to spin around and shove her gun beneath his chin.
“Eden.”
It was him. The dark man. The one from the alley. She’d have recognized that voice anywhere. Deep, potent as the smoothest scotch, faintly accented. He had the kind of voice that spoke to her on more than one level.
“Eden, I want you. Please, let me touch you, for both of our sakes.”
His voice didn’t just sound like scotch—it had the same effect on her. Numbing her senses, dulling her inhibitions. She turned around to face him, fully intending to tell him off, but one look at him and all intentions evaporated.
She’d been with men before but never with one who looked like him. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be. He was too perfect, standing there with his silk pajama bottoms riding low on his hips and nothing else. His feet were bare. His chest was bare and smooth and sculpted like that of an elite athlete. But it was his face—his rugged jaw, his patrician nose, his dark, dark eyes—that pierced her with desire and longing, that affected her most.
And those fangs. They weren’t long—were almost invisible among the rest of his teeth—but she saw the curve of them, and the sharp tips.
“You want me, too. I can see it.” He approached her with the fluid grace of a panther and Eden was mesmerized by the unconscious play of muscles across his torso as he neared.
It took effort to lift her eyes, but she somehow managed, and when she met his gaze, she caught her breath. The intensity of his stare stole the air around her.
“How badly do you want to forget?”
“Very,” she whispered.
He touched her face, the softest of caresses. “Will you permit me to help?”
“How?”
“Like this.”
Up until that moment, everything had been happening as if in slow motion. But the minute the dark man said like this, time sped up. His hand whipped out to circle her neck, pulling her closer. His other hand lifted her chin, tilting her face toward him.
One second he was looking down at her, the next his lips were on hers. No, not on hers—they were a part of her.
If what he was doing was kissing her, it was like no kiss Eden had ever experienced. His kiss was hungry and desperate and controlling and possessive. She responded in kind, needing his mouth and his tongue and all of him. As if her life depended on it.
Her tongue laved across those fangs, and it sent another pang of lust between her thighs.
No amount of scotch could compare to the effect one kiss from this man had on her. She was drunk from him.
“More,” she whispered against his lips. “I need more.”
She could feel him smile against her lips.
He picked her up and carried her the few feet to the bed and ever so gently set her down on the cool silk before joining her.
“You are so beautiful.” He stroked her cheek, the edge of her jaw, down her neck to the base of her collarbone. “You have no idea how much I want you.” With a hand behind her neck, he pulled up as he lowered his head to kiss her.
It had been too long. That was the only explanation for the effect this man was having on her. His touch, his lips, his words—all of him made her forget everything else.
Was this what he’d meant when he’d said he’d help her forget?
“Tell me how. Tell me how to forget,” she said breathlessly.
He stopped kissing her neck and raised his head so that he could meet her gaze. “You need only give yourself to me.”
This time, when she saw the fire leap into his dark pupils, she didn’t care. She’d give anything to forget.
“I want to, but...”
“Lie down.”
He gave her a little nudge and Eden fell on her back. She didn’t even bother to wonder what had happened to her jeans, her shirt, her bra...her gun. The only thing she had on was her panties and that was it.
Lying there, with her hands above her head, she had never felt more desirable than she did at that moment—not even when she’d been with Charlie—as the dark man’s gaze devoured her from head to toe and back up again.
“Do you give yourself to me?”
Eden didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”
His smile was as dark as his bottomless pupils, and he leaned across her and kissed her. First her lips, then her throat, then lower.
“Please,” she sighed, arching toward him. “Please.”
He moved lower until his mouth found her breasts.
“Yes!”
The second his tongue grazed her nipple, Eden jolted with the fiercest arousal she’d ever experienced. Holy hell, if that was what he could do with a mere touch of his tongue, what would it feel like if he touched her between her thighs? Kissed her there? Made love to her?
Eden wanted to find out.
She needed to find out.
With fingers threaded through his dark hair, she pushed him lower. He didn’t need coaxing to leave her breasts as his tongue sampled and tasted all of her—her rib cage, her navel—until finally he hovered between her spread legs, his breath cool and sweet against her thighs.
“Eden?”
“Yes.” She lifted her hips. “Please. Yes.”
One side of his mouth turned up in a smile, one lovely curved fang flashing at her, before her perfect, dark stranger hitched his thumbs beneath the waistband of her panties and tugged.
The silky material slid over her hips and down her legs.
“Open yourself. Give yourself to me.”
Never had Eden been so brazen. Never had she been so uninhibited. She let her thighs fall open and reveled in the hungry expression of the man with the fierce black eyes.
With a long finger, he touched her exposed flesh. “This is how you will forget.” Then he lowered his head and engulfed the most sensitive part of her with his mouth.
It was like being caught between pleasure and pain, ecstasy and torture. Heaven and hell.
Eden’s hips shot skyward. “More,” she screamed. “I need more!”
Then there was another voice in her dream, a deeper one....
“Get away from her!”
Gasping, Eden jolted from her sleep and sat up in bed. What the hell had just happened?
Cold sweat slicked her face and body.
A dream. A fucking dream, that’s all it was. But it had felt so real.
She rubbed her face. Then again, lately all of her dreams had felt real. She shivered in the cool morning air. Her bedroom window was open and the breeze floated in, ruffling her gauzy blue curtains.
Staring at the window, Eden frowned. She couldn’t remember opening it before she’d passed out on the bed. But her mind was so muddled lately that it was possible she had done it.
Rubbing a hand over her sweaty face and into her tangled nest of hair, Eden tried to push the dream out of her mind. It was the same one she’d been having for the past year, except for the dark man. He was an unsettling new addition.
Swinging her feet over the bed, Eden stood on quivering legs and stumbled down the hall to her bathroom. After filling the sink with icy water, she submerged her face until the bite of the cold liquid stung her cheeks and her lungs burst with the need for oxygen. Behind her closed eyes, the comely face of the man in black flashed before her. He was smiling. And blood dripped from his wide, inviting mouth.
Gasping, she flip
ped her head up. Water ran down her neck and soaked her sweat-stained tank top that she always wore to bed. Shivers racked her body as she grabbed a towel and wiped at her face and throat.
Who was this man? Why was he invading her mind? And why did she find him so alluring? Was she attracted to him because he seemed to be offering her a way out of her consuming guilt?
If only there was a way out.
After drying off, Eden took the robe from the back of the door and wrapped herself in it. Even after seven months she could still smell her ex-lover Charlie’s cologne in the blue terry cloth. She had washed it several times since his departure, but still his scent remained to taunt her.
Just another thing to attest to her past failures.
Eden shuffled down the hall and into her kitchen to make coffee. Strong black coffee. Opening her refrigerator, she took out the white pizza box, opened it up and grabbed the last slice. Taking a bite, she poured a mug of coffee, then took it and her breakfast into her living room. Plunking down on the sofa, she grabbed the remote and clicked on the TV.
There usually wasn’t a hell of a lot on during a Thursday morning, but the background noise was all Eden was looking for. Something, anything, to drown out the incessant thoughts and images bombarding her mind. She only had an hour to kill before she had to head out to work anyway. Flipping through cooking programs, ridiculous talk shows and infomercials was just the mundane sort of distraction she needed.
After she’d folded the last of the pizza into her mouth, Eden flipped to a news station and paused. On screen was a picture of a young woman with black hair and blunt-cut bangs, dark eyes, and a thin, unsmiling mouth. Something about her made Eden shiver. Somehow, she knew that face.
The picture panned back to the newscaster, and he went on about how the woman in the photo, identified as Lilith Grae, had been missing since yesterday afternoon. A phone number flashed on the screen. Eden recognized it as the number for the missing persons’ division.
You tried before...
The woman’s voice echoed in her ears. Eden had no reason to believe that this was the same person, except for the churning and gurgling in her gut telling her it most definitely was.
Eden reached for the cordless phone on her coffee table and dialed a number.
A man answered on the third ring. “Moser.”
The timbre of his voice made her shiver even after seven months apart. Clearing her throat she said, “Hey, Charlie.”
There was silence for a moment, and Eden thought for a second that he might hang up on her. “What’s up, Eden?”
“What do you know about the missing Grae woman?”
“Not much. Twenty-one years old, troubled home life, last seen two days ago, no note, no phone call, no nothing.” He paused, and Eden imagined that he was popping a piece of gum into his mouth. He’d quit smoking years ago and replaced the habit with gum-chewing. “The question is, what do you know about the Grae woman?”
“I don’t know. Nothing probably.”
“Spill it, Swain. You wouldn’t be phoning me otherwise.”
Eden pinched the bridge of her nose. Her headache was getting worse, likely Charlie-induced; he possessed an innate ability to give her one. “I think I talked to her last night on the help line.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“I don’t know for sure. The woman on the phone didn’t give me her name, but there was something in her voice that told me she was scared, maybe even running from something.”
“Look,” he said, and she could hear the exasperation in his voice. “There’s nothing I can do with that. You know how this works.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You have anything else? Anything I could use?”
“No.” Eden didn’t want to mention the conversation about the devil and demons—for some reason she wanted to keep that to herself. “Maybe I just related the two because I was bothered by her call last night.”
He sighed and she could hear the rustling of paper. “What time was the call?”
“About midnight.”
“From a cell phone, do you think?”
“No, it sounded like a pay phone. It had that hollow echo to it, you know?” She chewed on one of her fingers, nerves zinging through her. A sense of urgency jolted her mind. Something was happening. And it was happening now. “Where did she work?”
“Why do you need to know?”
“Just humor me, okay?”
More rustling of paper. “Some club called The Gate. Does that ring a bell?”
“No.” The feeling of urgency increased. Eden felt as if her heart was going to burst out of her mouth. “Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“I think she might’ve been the woman from my shooting.”
There was a long pause, then a sigh. “Eden, you know that’s impossible. Lilly Cain died, remember?”
Eden dragged a hand through her hair. “I know. I know. She just looks exactly like her. And her name...so similar.”
“Have you been seeing Dr. Clarkson?”
“Yes.” She hated when people brought up her therapist as if she was going mental. Who knew? Maybe she was.
Eden jerked forward on the sofa, her fingers itching to grasp the cool glass of a bottle of scotch. “I got to go. Sean’s here to pick me up,” she lied.
“Yeah, I heard you were working for your brother.”
“It’s a job.” Eden stood. “I’ll talk to you.” She pressed the end button on the phone and tossed it onto the sofa. Pacing the room, Eden mulled over what Charlie had told her. Not much information, but enough that she could do her own investigation.
The urge to do something, to track down this woman, munched on Eden’s insides. Her gut told her something was seriously wrong. For some reason she was certain that Lilith Grae had called the help line to talk to Eden specifically. That the woman somehow knew her.
Fate. Normally, she didn’t believe in it. But it seemed as if fate was starting to believe in her.
Chapter Four
The heat was unbearable as Eden drove home from work. Sweat trickled down her back and pooled into the dip of her pants. She rolled down the window and took in some deep breaths of the smog-tainted air. She didn’t care—she just needed to feel some sort of breeze on her face. She was overheating from the inside out. Panic raced through her. Black spots started dancing in her eyes.
She rubbed her face hard, digging her knuckle into her eye to try and erase the dark dots. Something was wrong. She felt light-headed, dizzy even. She’d drunk water most of the day and she hadn’t hit her head at the job site. So what was the problem?
Gripping the steering wheel tightly, Eden wished for a drink. Scotch would calm her down, soothe her nerves. Just a little sip to take the edge off her anxiety.
Ahead on the right, the word liquor jumped out at her in red neon. Swerving, she cut across two lanes of traffic to take the turnoff. Car horns blared. Tires squealed. But all Eden could concentrate on was the cool, calm feel of a bottle of scotch in her hand and the way it would numb her tongue and throat on the way down to warm the hollow pit inside.
Screeching to a stop in front of the liquor store, she swung open her door and rushed in. She went straight to the back, knowing instinctively where the scotch was kept. She reached for a bottle, then stopped. This wasn’t right. She had to fight the urge. Instead, she snatched a bottle of Gatorade and rushed down the aisle to the checkout. A man in a black hoodie cut in front of her and set his purchases on the counter.
The clerk quickly put the man’s items into a plastic bag and rang him through. Eden tapped her foot impatiently as she waited, when all she wanted to do was run back and grab a bottle of booze and guzzle down half the amber liquid.
Finally, it was her turn. Setting the drink down, she tossed in a couple candy bars—chocolate soothed her urges sometimes—and slid a twenty across the counter.
The guy in the hoodie still hadn’t left. He had moved over to give her space, but
was busy putting the change back in his wallet. Eden glanced over at him. She couldn’t see his face because the dark hood obscured it. He was tall, though. Lanky like an athlete.
The clerk handed Eden back her change, smiling at her the whole time. His fingers fumbled against her hand and all her coins scattered onto the counter and floor. Swearing, Eden bent down to retrieve them. Tucking the money into her pants pocket, she stood up to get her bag.
The tall stranger had left. Funny. When she was down on the ground she didn’t recall seeing him leave. He had been there, but then he was gone.
Obviously more tired and upset than she realized, Eden grabbed her purchases and left. Once home with a glass in her hand, she’d feel better. Maybe then she could figure all of this out. Maybe then, she wouldn’t feel so disjointed and confused.
It took her only a half hour to return to her apartment. The second she walked through the door, she went into her kitchen and grabbed a glass and ice. Sitting down on her sofa, she slid the Gatorade out of the bag, already feeling the panic subsiding with the expectation of the sugary drink.
Except it wasn’t Gatorade in her hand, but vodka.
She never drank vodka. Angry, she set the bottle down on the table and looked in the bag. Her candy bars weren’t in there either. Just a newspaper. An alternative arts magazine by the looks of it.
“Damn it.” Sighing, she leaned back on her sofa. The guy in the hoodie must’ve taken her bag by accident, and now she was stuck with his stuff.
It just wasn’t her day.
Rotating her stiffening neck, Eden leaned forward and screwed the cap off the vodka. Well, she couldn’t let the ice go to waste. She filled her glass to the rim. Lifting it to her mouth, she took a healthy swallow. It burned on the way down. At least it was better than panic and anxiety drowning her in its swirling vortex.
She drained the glass and filled it again. Taking another big swallow, she absentmindedly flipped through the newspaper. Nothing but industry music news and club dates. Not something she was into. She liked her music hard à la Metallica, not with Mohawks and facial piercings.