“Because I never got my dessert the other night,” he said. He shifted closer and brushed aside her hair with one hand, exposing the column of her neck. With the motion of his hand, the strong scent of cardamom wafted around him and insinuated itself in her nostrils, so potent it started an ache in her head.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and shifted away from him on the seat of the booth. “Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Lee, but I don’t do dessert.”
“Liar,” he said, and stroked one long finger along the side of her cheek. The pad of his finger was slightly oily, his skin ice cold, dragging a shiver from her.
“Ready to go, luv?” Blake asked, as he took a spot before them, his arms crossed against his chest, his shoulders pulled back as if to make himself appear larger.
Lee chuckled, made a shooing motion with his one hand, and said, “Ah, the insolent bantam rooster has come after his hen. Go away, little man.”
Blake experienced the push of Lee’s hand as strongly as if the other man had actually touched him. The strength of the energy was much like the force of an elder, making Blake wonder again just how powerful the kiang-shi was in comparison. He summoned what power remained from his interlude with Stacia and shoved back.
A flicker of surprise flitted across Lee’s eyes before they narrowed as he examined him. “So the cock is not just all crow?”
“Never underestimate an opponent,” Blake said. He held out his hand to Meghan, who scooted from the booth and slipped her hand into his.
“Opponent? An interesting choice in words. I thought suitor might have been a more appropriate one, but at least now I know where we stand.” Lee held up his hand and the entourage of women who had been with him earlier returned, bringing with them three rather brawny males.
Undead males, Blake realized, as their energy brushed against him when the trio took up positions behind Lee. The energy had that strange force he had picked up from Lee, so he suspected they were Kiang-shi as well. He decided to confirm it to be sure.
“Kiang-shi like you, I suppose.”
Lee laughed out loud, a broad smile on his face that displayed an ever present hint of fang. As his mirth died down, a hint of a glow entered his eyes. The irises slowly became an intense red and seemed to dance like the flames in a fire. When he spoke, his voice echoed with a low rumble, like thunder before an impending storm.
“You will find that there are few like me, little man.”
As if to prove his point, a wave of energy flew away from Lee, forceful enough to drive both him and Meghan back a step. A cloying and disturbing residue of disquiet settled over him.
“Let’s go, luv,” he said.
He heard her whisper, “I so totally agree.”
They hurried out to the street and away from the crowd still lingering at the door. As he gazed at her, he understood she wanted to throw off the sensation Lee’s power had left on them. A quick race through the night would do it, he thought, but he was loathe to take her home and end their interlude.
She must have picked up on his feelings since she said, “You’re place isn’t far from here, is it?”
“Not far at all,” he admitted with a smile.
“Good,” she said, and raced off into the night with him hot on her tail.
They landed on the small patio adjacent to his apartment.
Not that it was really an apartment, Blake thought. He suddenly felt inadequate about what was little more than a large storage area he had converted into living space. He had finagled the rental of the space from the building superintendent who appreciated the decline in crime that Blake’s presence had seemingly wrought—along with the assorted chores and two hundred dollars in off-the-books cash that Blake paid out every month.
To someone used to an apartment that took up a floor on Central Park West, this was slumming.
He took hold of her hand as she took a step toward the French doors and said, “Maybe I should take you home.”
“No, not at all,” she said, and dropped his hand. She walked to the neatly organized pots along the edge of the patio. The soil was ready for planting, and he had started some spring lettuce and swiss chard in a few of the pots. She lovingly ran her hands over the plants and said, “My father’s already planting the early spring greens at home.”
He clasped his hands before him and shifted on his heels as she approached him once again.
“Do you see them often?” he asked.
“Not since…” She was aware that any explanation for her lack of contact with her parents might spoil the moment, yet she needed for him to know. To understand. Maybe with that understanding the healing would continue.
“They visit infrequently. That makes it easier to hide what I am.”
“I’m sorry I made it so hard for you.”
With a shrug, she said, “Part of the problem is that they’re not really city people, but being a vampire…makes it difficult to travel home. I talk to them a lot on the phone. Makes me not miss them as much.”
He sighed his relief. “It’s nice you still have them in your life.”
She placed her hand over the one holding his wrist and pulled him toward the edge so they could peer down at Gramercy Park below them.
“It’s wonderful to have the park so close.”
With a shrug, he said, “This place is tiny compared to Central Park. I bet you go there often.”
Nodding, she faced him and picked up her hand, laid it in the center of his chest. “I liked our game of follow-the-leader the other night.”
He covered her hand, gently rubbed his palm across it. “We could manage a little chase through the park tonight if you’d like.”
The spring night was clear and crisp, bordering on chilly. Meghan thought about the chase, but realized their games might be leading them to something that would be dangerous to her heart.
“You know I’m not sure—”
“You don’t need to be sure right now, love. You just need to believe in the possibilities,” he said, and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.
The possibilities…She thought about all that had happened between them and the transformation she had seen in him recently. She couldn’t deny that he had been trying to be different. To be a better man just for her.
Could anyone ask for more?
Wrapping her arms around him, she snuggled tight to him and said, “I’m sure of one thing. I’d like to relax a bit. It’s been a long day.”
“I imagine it must be tiring to be on your feet for so long.” Blake started a gentle massage of her shoulders and she shivered with pleasure.
“That feels good.”
“You feel good,” he said, and dipped his head to touch his cheek to hers. He rubbed his face against hers, and the soft bristle of his beard tickled her. She scrunched up her neck in protest.
“Stop that.”
“Really?” he said, but tickled her again. When she tilted her head to the side once more, he kissed his way down to the crook of her neck and playfully bit her.
“Yes, really. As good as it feels…” She sucked in a breath as he bit down again and then licked the spot.
“Feels that good, does it?” he teased, before raising his face to meet her gaze.
Meghan cradled his cheek and swiped her thumb across his lips. “You’d like me to admit that, but I don’t want to give you a swelled head.”
With a sexy grin and the press of his hips against hers, he said, “Too late.”
She chuckled and shook her head. “This is what got me in trouble the last time, so why don’t we try something different this time?”
Blake shifted away from her, a puzzled look on his face. “Like what?”
“How about just talking?” she said, stepping away from him and wrapping her arms around herself.
“Just talking? As in our lips moving but not doing anything else with them?”
“Yes. As in we move our lips and words come out. We listen to those words—”
He
placed his index finger on her mouth to silence her. “And after we put our lips to better use?” he teased,
“Possibly,” she admitted with a smile, unable to resist his charm.
At that he grinned, took hold of her hand and led her into his apartment.
Lee watched Foley as he made his nightly rounds at the Blood Bank. He had to give Foley credit for his efficiency and inventiveness. When he had won the run-down building in the early sixties during a mah-jongg game in Chinatown, he hadn’t known what to do with the space. It had been Foley who had perceived the need for a place where humans clamoring for a walk on the wild side could go. It had been an added benefit that those drugged-up, sex-crazed humans were perfect prey for the vampires.
In the nearly forty years since then, Foley had kept the place profitable. Lee had to say that this new Goth crowd was just as easy to ensnare as the hippies and yuppies before them. The vampires appreciated their easy availability, and up until recently all had been good.
It occurred to Lee, as he watched one vampire corral and lead a human to one of the back rooms, that it was only a small group of vampires who were giving them problems. Wannabes, he thought, recalling the exchange earlier that night with Meghan and her friend. They seemed to have no fear of him or if they did, they hid it well.
He didn’t like their spirit or the human way they seemed to care for each other. So unlike the immortal credo he ascribed to of taking what he wanted when he wanted.
Of course, that had been his credo all his life, not just during his undead existence. It was why as he lay dying on the battlefield, he had been cursed by his opponents and paraded around for all to see his defeat. Their hatred of him was why they had chosen to further dishonor him by refusing to bury him.
Even his own family had not claimed his body, ashamed as they were of the reputation he had built with his merciless attacks and slow punishment of those who had defied him. As his corpse lay rotting and alone, the evil within him had sprung back within his body, intending to seek vengeance on all who had defied him.
He would not be defied in this life, either, he thought. His hand clenched on the tabletop as he considered how he might punish Meghan and her little man. Chastise the circle of friends and the followers who disdained the vampire way for the stench of humanity. The more he thought about all that they believed in and cherished, all the goodness he had despised all his life, the greater his anger grew, until he had devised just the plan for his revenge.
A plan that would deliver his message to the human wannabes who had been busily spreading their sickening sweetness through the Manhattan underworld.
For now, however, he would have to satisfy his anger with someone else. As Foley came into view again, Lee smiled and rose.
He knew just the thing to bring some contentment to his soul.
Chapter 15
“So your pom-poms were purple?” Blake teased her and rubbed his hand up and down her arm, which was resting against his chest.
They were sprawled together on some kind of lounger, long and with a slight dip in the center. He had covered whatever was beneath with a chenille bedspread in a deep maroon hue that complemented the colors in the rest of the space. The lounger was surprisingly comfortable as they’d lain there for hours, talking and finding out all kinds of things about one another.
Like the color of her pom-poms in her past life.
“Not purple. Violet. And it’s ‘G-o-o Bobcats!’” she said, mimicking one of the cheers she’d had to perform as a cheerleader at NYU.
He didn’t say anything else; he just kept up the slow caress on her arm. After long minutes had passed, she said, “It’s getting very late.”
He nodded. “Dawn is in a couple of hours. I can feel it coming.”
As she could. It was one of those weird vampire traits that served as an early warning system, like being able to sense Lee’s peculiar power or Stacia’s elder strength.
“I guess I should be going.” She made a halfhearted motion to rise and immediately regretted the loss of contact with him. “Or maybe not,” she said, and plopped back down next to him.
“It’s okay if you stay. We never did get to the part about doing something else with our lips.”
She looked up at him. That sexy grin that caused her heart to do something funky in the middle of her chest was back, along with a wickedly inviting gleam in his crystal-blue eyes.
“You seem fixated on the lip thing.”
His grin broadened. He placed his index finger beneath her chin, then applied gentle pressure to urge her upward until their lips were nearly touching.
“I guess that’s what you would call an oral fixation?” He brought his lips to hers and rubbed them back and forth, inviting her to respond, reminding her that she had a choice about what would happen next.
Only Meghan suspected she had made that choice long before this moment.
She closed the distance between them and sampled his mouth, placing kiss after kiss along his top lip and then moving downward to the fullness of his lower lip. He gently snagged her bottom lip with his teeth and playfully tugged on it before soothing that spot with a lick.
Heat flared within her as she imagined him licking elsewhere. As she remembered the feel of that sexy mouth on other parts of her body. With a shaky sigh, she snuggled closer to him, throwing her thigh over his lower body and feeling the hard jut of his erection against her inner thigh.
She suddenly wanted more and shifted her body until she was covering him, the hard ridge of him nestled between her legs as she straddled him. Leaning over him, she braced her hands on either side of his shoulders as she brought her mouth back to his and dragged herself across his erection. He groaned into her mouth and it vibrated throughout her body, spreading need through every cell of her being.
“Blake, I know this is crazy…” she whispered against his lips, not wanting to lose contact with them for even a moment.
“Crazy, but right,” he murmured, and grasped her hips with his hands, stilling the motion of them.
Meghan didn’t know if it was right or wrong. All she knew was that he stirred something inside of her that she hadn’t been able to forget in nearly four years, try as she might. Maybe it was time to finally explore that feeling and find out if it was one meant to last or if it was truly the worst mistake of both her mortal and undead lives.
“Touch me, Blake,” she said urging her lips upward, but Blake was clearly in no hurry. He slowly trailed his hands up her sides, caressing each inch he traveled until he arrived at her breasts.
She sighed as he finally cupped them and began a gentle caress, squeezing tenderly before running his thumbs over their hardened tips.
He raised himself off the bed, bringing his mouth to her breast. He grasped the tip in his mouth through the thin fabric of her top and teethed it until she ached for more. She yanked the tank top up and over her head while he made quick work of her bra.
When she was bared to his gaze, he once again resumed his tarried loving, caressing her breasts, playing with her nipples, until with a bump of her hips against his she once again urged him to taste her.
Blake thought he would explode from the sensations buffeting his body. The feel of her along the length of him. The silk of her skin, soft to the palms of his hands. The hard tips of her breasts, a caramel color against the peach of her skin.
When she urged him on with the grind of her hips, he rose off the lounger once again, eager for a taste. Closing his mouth over one tight nub, he suckled the tip, and she held his head close and urged him on with a soft cry. He shifted his mouth to the other breast but continued the sure caress of his fingers on the breast he had just left. The tip was wet and slick from his mouth.
In response to his ministrations, she dragged herself across his length again in invitation. Considering how long he had been waiting, he wasn’t about to refuse.
With tender pressure, he reversed their positions until she was the one lying on the surface of th
e lounger, her upper body bare to his gaze to just below her navel, thanks to her low-riding jeans. He just loved those jeans, he thought, as he dipped his head down and planted a kiss right on the sweet indentation of her navel before placing a string of kisses along the softness of her skin above the waistband.
As she had before, she cupped the back of his head and lifted her hips, wanting more.
Blake wasn’t about to disappoint.
He undid the snap on her jeans and dragged the zipper open, kissing each bit of flesh that he exposed. When the jeans were fully undone, he eased them off, revealing the darker blonde whorls at her center and her long, toned legs.
He shot only a quick glance at her, hesitant until she parted her legs, making her desire clear.
But he wasn’t about to rush the moment he had been anticipating for such a long time.
Leaning against the edge of the lounger, he began with a kiss and nibble on the inside of her ankle, discovering the tattoo of a small heart with an intricate scrollwork of barbed wire.
It suited her, he thought. Meghan had shut off her heart to him for way too long. It had made any of his overtures at apology fall painfully short of reaching her until recently.
He slowly moved upward, trailing his lips and tongue along the inside of her calf, up to her knees. He paused there to glance at her once again and realized she was watching him, her gaze expectant but conflicted. The emerald of her eyes had darkened, reminding him of the shadows in the pine trees behind the cottage of his old home in Wales.
It occurred to him then that there were so many things about her that brought the comforting memories of home. He only hoped that whatever he could offer would bring such solace to her. That it would be enough to fend off the anger she’d felt.
But even as she lay before him, he could see that she was still reluctant, that the barbed wire still guarded her heart. Her hands were at her sides, clenched into tight fists, as if to keep from reaching for him and finally giving herself over to what was happening.
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