Any Given Doomsday (The Phoenix Chronicles)

by Lori Handeland

  I forced myself to stand again, to move away from the couch and closer to him. “The strega said you asked for me.” Jimmy stopped pacing. “Why?”

  “You thought I wanted to save you from death at his hands?” The amusement returned. His moods changed so quickly, I had a hard time keeping up.

  I had thought that, for the single instant it had taken me to figure out how foolish I was. “Actually, I thought you wanted to kill me.”

  “Eventually.”

  He moved again with that preternatural speed, so that it seemed he was standing by the window and then, faster than my eyes could track, he was grabbing me, hauling me against him, pressing his nose to my neck and inhaling deeply.

  “What’s happened to you?” I whispered.

  He lifted his head, but he didn’t let me go. “We are an ancient race.”

  “You aren’t,” I interrupted. “You’re more human than Nephilim.”

  He ignored me, continuing with the litany he seemed to have memorized, or perhaps had had implanted in his brain. “We will own this world. Humans will be our slaves, our food, whatever we wish. 1 wanted you to be my first.”

  “I was your first,” I whispered.

  Something flickered in his eyes. Memory? I hoped so, but it was gone so fast, I couldn’t be sure. Then he leaned closer, his lips hovering over my own as he whispered, “My first slave.”

  I jumped, even though I had to have known that was coming. “You think I’m going to wash your shorts and scrub your toilets?”

  His mouth curved, so close to my own I felt the movement, but didn’t see it because I could look nowhere but into his endless eyes.

  “Not that kind of slave,” he said, and kissed me.

  He still tasted like Jimmy, kissed like Jimmy, and my body knew him, even as my mind screamed, Monster!

  His hands were rough, holding me to him even though I wasn’t struggling to get away. When his mouth left mine, he pressed open kisses across my chin, down my neck. When I didn’t tilt my head to give him better access, his hand left my hip, capturing my face, fingers bruising as he held me still, inhuman eyes burning with lust.

  “You will be my slave for sex. Whenever I want it, however, wherever. You will wear nothing night and day.” He placed a hard, closed kiss on my mouth. “I want to walk into this room and have you ready all of the time.”

  “I bet you do,” I managed, even though he still held my jaw far too tightly for easy speech.

  “I’ll suck you dry slowly. Who knows? You may even find a way out of this with enough time. Keep me satisfied, I might keep you for centuries.”

  “Yeah, that’ll happen.”

  He leaned forward and caught my lip in his teeth, biting down until the pain began before releasing it. “You’d better hope it does, Elizabeth.”

  I hated it when he called me that. What I wouldn’t give now to hear baby just once.

  Jimmy released me. “Take off your clothes.”

  “Not.”

  He didn’t bother to cajole. Instead he fisted a hand in my shirt and yanked. I was drawn forward with such force I stumbled. The seams split, the shirt practically disintegrated. Ruthie’s crucifix spilled free and brushed against his hand.

  A hissing sound, the scent of burning hair. Jimmy jumped back, hissing himself, as smoke rose from his skin.

  I was left standing in my bra and jeans, mouth wide open. The icon hadn’t bothered him before.

  If I’d needed any proof that Jimmy had changed, that he was becoming less and less human and more and more vampire, I had it.

  “Didn’t care for that, did you?” I murmured.

  His hand snaked out, and he yanked the cross and Sawyer’s turquoise from my neck, then tossed them across the room. The chain made a tinny, slithery sound. The cross and the stone bounced like gravel. All three disappeared beneath a huge breakfront of cherry wood and glass. I was going to have a helluva time fishing them out.

  “Don’t think you can use that against me.” Jimmy held his hand up in front of my face. Despite the sizzle and scent, there wasn’t a mark on him. He’d already healed. “You can’t hurt me; you can’t kill me.”

  I glanced at the bank of windows, then at him in contemplation. Would he fry like bacon beneath the dawn’s early light? Once again my face gave my thoughts away.

  “The sun won’t do a thing. My father is a daywalker, and so am I.”

  “The others?”

  “A few daywalkers to keep things running smoothly. The rest only awaken at night. Peons.” He shrugged. “They have their uses.”

  That explained why everyone had been rushing in and out of the place after-hours as if the clock read ten a.m.

  “An entire building of beings that only work at night and no one’s noticed?”

  “Of course. People are breaking down the doors to hire us. No one else keeps those hours. We fulfill a service for all the scurrying nine-to-five drones.”

  “The vampire legion actually works for a living?”

  “Someone has to. At least for now.”

  No matter how supernaturally powerful they were, there was still the problem of cash flow. Amazing.

  “Enough,” Jimmy snapped, and tore off my bra with a sharp tug. My breasts spilled free and his eyes, if possible, became even darker.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” he murmured. “Dreaming of you as I touched all of them.”

  My eyes narrowed at the word all, but I let it go. I really didn’t want to know.

  “Why me?” I asked instead.

  He shook his head as if coming out of a trance. Sheesh. Get a grip. My breasts were good, but not that good.

  “I crave you. Father says your seer blood will give me more strength than the blood of a dozen others.”

  I thought if he called that thing “Father” one more time I might just lose my mind. But the longer he talked, the more I learned, and the less sex we had.

  “Is that what this place is all about?” 1 indicated the fold-out bed, the all-porn, all-the-time television.

  “My father’s idea.” I winced at the word; I couldn’t help it. “Sometimes it’s fun to seduce them. Sometimes it’s fun to just take them.”

  He was speaking of people, of women, as things. Not that a lot of men didn’t, but Jimmy never had. Ruthie wouldn’t have allowed it.

  “You’d like his suite.” His lips curved. “I’m sure you’ll see it. If Father wants a little seer sex. I don’t mind. Maybe we’ll have you together.”

  Do not gag. Do not gag.

  “You’re suddenly so pale, Elizabeth.” Jimmy laughed. “You’re a slave now. You’ll do anything I want.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “You die, and the whole world dies with you.”

  Choices, choices.

  Sleep with Jimmy, try to make him remember who he was, that he’d loved me once, and maybe, just maybe, discover a way out of this mess.

  Or…

  Attempt to kick his ass, die horribly, and fail at the big mission. Let’s see…

  I picked door number one.

  Chapter 34

  I couldn’t make this too easy for him. Jimmy would know something was up. So when he reached for me again, I ran.

  He let me. Where in hell was I going to go? The only exit was by elevator, and I didn’t have a key.

  Every door in the place closed but had no lock. What good would it do me to barricade myself in? He could knock anything down with one well-placed kick.

  To make things look good, I picked up a chair and tossed it at the wall of windows. Since Jimmy had taken a seat on the couch and watched me with some amusement, I knew it wouldn’t work.

  Sure enough, the chair bounced back at me so fast I had to scramble out of the way.

  “Done yet?” he asked.

  I didn’t have to fake my rapid breathing. Even though I knew what would come was inevitable, that I’d chosen it or perhaps it had been chosen for me long ago, I was still nervous. He wasn’t the man I’d l
oved. He wasn’t really a man at all.

  I raced into the bedroom, thinking I’d toss something heavy at the window, just for show, but there wasn’t a window. The draperies covered a wall. Behind me, the door clicked shut.

  I whirled just in time to see Jimmy punch in a code on a keypad, which I’d taken to be a security control. I guess it was, since bolts thunked home from somewhere inside the heavy portal.

  He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his loose trousers, pulled them outward until they cleared his erection, then dropped them to the floor.

  “Your turn,” he said.

  I scrambled for the bathroom, but he caught me before I took two steps and tossed me with an absent flick of his wrist toward the bed.

  I landed in the center, bouncing once. Before 1 could lift my head from the mattress, he’d torn the button and zipper of my pants apart.

  I struggled, which only made him laugh. Struggling seemed to be what he was after.

  Considering what he’d been through as a child, Jimmy had never been one for bondage games. In the bedroom he’d always been gentle, almost reverent. Probably one of the reasons the notches on his belt were legion. Women ate that stuff up. I had.

  He held me down easily with one arm while he yanked off my boots, then my jeans, and tossed them to the floor. I’d barely lifted my shoulders from the bed when he trapped me beneath him.

  His erection throbbed against my belly as he dragged his palm up my thigh, over my hip, the curve of my waist, then cupped one breast and stroked the nipple, which tightened on contact.

  His head lowered; his hair sifted across my chest. The scent of cinnamon and soap wafted over me and memories flickered.

  I drew in a sharp, loud breath as he took me into his mouth and suckled, tongue pushing the bud against his teeth again and again and again. The sensation was so familiar, so glorious, my fingers were reaching to twine in his hair before I remembered and forced my arm to drop back to the bed.

  I kept my gaze focused on the ceiling as he nuzzled my breasts while suckling, teasing. I shuddered as goose-flesh rose across my skin.

  I waited for him to sink his fangs into me, then realized he had none, or at least none that I could see. What did that mean?

  He lifted his head, ran a hand over my arm, chafing until the pebbled bumps went away. “You were always so sensitive right here.”

  He ran the tip of his tongue from the slope of one breast to the other, rolling a lazy lick around each nipple as he passed. My molars ground together as I tried to keep myself from arching into him, from opening my legs and wrapping my ankles around his back as I urged him to plunge deeper, take me harder. Despite my body’s response, I wasn’t ready.

  “No more fighting?” he asked.

  “I’m not going to give you the satisfaction.”

  His lips curved. “Struggling won’t give me satisfaction.”

  I lifted a brow. He laughed, flexing his hips until his erection seemed to make a permanent dent in my skin. “Well, maybe a little.”

  Annoyed, I raked my nails down his back, and he caught his breath, eyes flaring red. “You want to hurt me?” he asked. “Go ahead. I seem to have developed a taste for it.”

  I had a flash of him tied to the chair, moaning in ecstasy when the Strega had cut him. Pain would only send him farther away from me. To get him back, I was going to have to appeal to the gentle side he’d once shown. I had to make him remember the love.

  Because, despite everything he’d said and done, a friendship forged in the fires of our childhoods, a love found amid so little love, meant something. It had to.

  “What will give me satisfaction, Elizabeth”—he licked the side of my neck, pausing to nibble at my ear, before whispering—”is making you beg, then making you come.”

  He seemed to have the whole sex-slave gig backward. If I was the slave, shouldn’t I be making him come? I decided not to point that out just in case he had a strategy for changing my entire personality from aggressive to passive in one easy lesson.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on the feel of his body against mine, the scent of him. Those things hadn’t changed.

  His skin was soft at the hip, his long artist’s fingers still clever, the hair on his thighs tickled mine. His feet were knobby and large. He loved it when I ran my big toe along his arch. The back of his neck, beneath the fall of his hair, was still tense. When I touched him there, he sighed and rested his forehead against mine.

  If I wasn’t looking at him, if I couldn’t witness the strange flashes of red at the center of his eyes, if he didn’t speak and call me by the wrong name, if he didn’t talk like a porn star in a bondage flick, I could remember how it had been between us. I could remember how very much I’d loved him.

  I lifted my mouth and brushed my lips along his. For an instant he responded, kissing me the way he always had. Then he jumped as if he’d been poked with a stick and pulled away. The movement ground our lower bodies together, and I winced.

  “Open your eyes.” I hesitated. “Do it, Elizabeth.”

  I bit my tongue to stifle a nearly irresistible urge to knee him in the groin. I doubted that would even hurt him anymore.

  “You won’t like what happens when you disobey me.”

  “I’m not going to like what happens when I obey you either,” I muttered.

  “Oh, no. You will like it. I promise.”

  He was probably right.

  His face was so close I could see only myself in his eyes. We’d been just like this so many times, all I could do was remember. Couldn’t he?

  “Jimmy,” I whispered, and touched his face.

  For an instant I thought I’d reached him, wherever he was. He smiled softly and started to kiss me.

  Then his damned eyes flared red, and he lifted his body, plunging into me with a single furious stroke.

  I arched off the bed, which only made his thrust deeper. I cried out, the sound not one of pain but surprise and breathless wonder. His laugh wasn’t his own— deeper, crueler, not a laugh of joy or amusement, but of dominance. He’d won and he knew it.

  Even though what he was doing felt exquisite, I struggled to escape. But there was nowhere to go. I was trapped between him and the bed.

  “Hold on.” He slowed his thrusts, making me gasp, making me want. “Not yet.”

  My hands, which had clutched his shoulders when he attacked, no doubt leaving half-moon fingernail marks in his skin, now slid lower of their own accord, clasping his buttocks, urging him on. I had no will of my own, and I both hated and loved it.

  I fought the tide of eroticism. With us so close physically, now was the time to try and reach him emotionally.

  Think! my mind shouted. Remember!

  I closed my eyes again and reached for our past.

  The first time we’d kissed, the first time we’d touched, the first time I’d known that I loved him. I let those old feelings flow over me.

  My hands no longer clutched but caressed. I rubbed the small of his back, holding him still within me. My other hand twined in his hair, stroking, soothing. Turning my head, I kissed his cheek, his eyelids, his forehead.

  “We were so good together,” I murmured. “Remember how it felt to be in love?”

  He sighed, his breath cool against my burning skin. He kissed me and for a single instant I tasted the memories— grass, heat, sex, love.

  I wrapped my arms around him, my legs too. “Jimmy,” I whispered against his lips. “Jimmy.”

  Then he was gone.

  Not physically. No. We were still twined together, his body deep within mine. But mentally, emotionally, he disappeared between one breath and the next. Everything went cold, including me as he lifted his head.

  “Remember,” he growled, in a voice that wasn’t his, “the hate. I went from your bed to hers. You saw her, Elizabeth. How could I resist?”

  He was talking about Summer. Not that there hadn’t been more women than her. But she was the one who mattered the most. The
one I’d seen him with in my head the last time I’d touched him with love. He had to have known I’d see, so why—?

  He took my arms from around his neck and drew them above my head, circling both wrists with one hand, holding me captive though I didn’t try to fight. His bringing back that memory seemed to have drained everything from me—except the lust. That appeared to be getting stronger with every thrust.

  Faster and faster. Deeper and harder. My body betrayed me.

  Damn body.

  I fought the orgasm; the orgasm won. I came screaming, not his name. Not anymore. I screamed in fury and he laughed, scraping his teeth down my straining breasts, suckling me just short of pain, drawing the orgasm out, never coming himself so that he stayed hard.

  Then, when I went limp, he reached between us and used his fingers to arouse me again. The slide of his hand, touching me, touching himself, he seemed to get larger, stretching me until my head thrashed even as I opened my legs for more.

  “I wish I had time to go down on you, but I don’t think I can wait. I love the taste of this.” He rolled his thumb over me. “I love how it swells against my lips, how it feels when I flick it with my tongue.”

  “No,” 1 whispered, but I shouldn’t have bothered. I had no choice, and by now I didn’t mind. An orgasm like that is addictive. My mind might murmur no, but my body kept shouting yes.

  My skin hummed. It only took a few more thrusts for him to at last give in to the inevitable, and as he came, so did I.

  With Sawyer I’d seen the universe, felt the power all the way back to the beginning of time. He’d poured heat and magic into me when he’d given me himself.

  I felt the same heat, sensed the lightning, but what I saw was darkness, what I felt was madness, a duality that didn’t quite make sense.

  Jimmy’s head was bowed, his hair shading his face and mine; the only sound in the room was the syncopated rhythm of our breathing.

  “Don’t ever try that again.” Without warning, he shoved his forearm against my neck. I couldn’t breathe.

  “I remember everything, Elizabeth, and it doesn’t matter. All I want is to fuck you until I’m tired of you, then drink from you until you die.”