Fire in Her Blood

by Rachel Graves

  I took my time organizing my thoughts as Jakob pulled out of the parking lot. After a few minutes, my silence became a second sore point. Shouldn’t he be asking why I hadn’t said anything? How long would he quietly drive while I sat furious? I worked myself into a strong rage in the time it took to get halfway to his place.

  “She’s named after your wife,” I said finally, sure he would get the point.

  “The first girl in each generation is,” he agreed, oblivious to my anger.

  “That doesn’t bother you?”

  “No, actually it made it easier to trace the family tree.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I like the name.”

  “It’s a wonderful name. Just not one I want to hear connected with a woman I found you cuddling.”

  “I explained that, and I’m not sure I like what you’re implying.” His voice took on a hint of anger.

  “Then I won’t imply. It bothers me that she’s named after your wife. It bothers me more that she looks like her.”

  “That’s not a problem so much now—”

  “Now that her hair is short?” I interrupted, frustrated with the way this conversation was going.

  “Now that I’m in love with you,” he said simply. It mollified my anger, brought me back to a place where I could think straight. We drove on in silence for a few minutes while I thought about it all, my thoughts turning to something else entirely.

  “I want you.” I let my hand dance along the back of his neck, watching the lines of his face as he drove.

  “I thought we were fighting?” he asked.

  “We finished fighting. I won. Now I want my prize.” He pulled into the long driveway of the house. Above us, the sandy pines made a canopy. When he turned off the lights of the car, there was absolute darkness and the noisy silence of the woods. He moved to take of his seat belt, but I stopped him. “Don’t. Put the seat back instead.” I wanted to be in control. I wanted to give him a moment his wife had never had, to chase her ghost away. He slid the seat back confused and amused all at once. I took off my own seat belt and moved my hands under my dress. I took my underwear off while he watched, intent on my movements.

  “Should I ask what is going on?” he said, his voice thick with lust.

  “No.” I climbed into his side of the car and knelt in front of him. I delicately unbuckled his pants, my finger sliding between the cloth and his flesh. I drew him out, teasing the tip of him with my mouth as my hand wrapped around his growing shaft. I heard him moan as I pushed the fabric further down.

  “This would be easier if I could move more.” He touched the seat belt.

  “I want you held down a little.” I smiled, hoping he would play my game. Jakob threw up his hands in mock surrender.

  I sat on top of him, his body brushing mine but quivering outside it, not entering me. I slowly unbuttoned his shirt, opening it to the night air. Whether from the cold or my touch, his nipples hardened instantly to become tight pale buds in the moonlight. “Tsk tsk, no undershirt.” I shook my head at him and ducked my head down to nip gently. He gasped with the sensation. I ran my tongue along his nipple, tested it with my teeth, pulled on the sensitive flesh. He moaned and his body danced against mine. I brought my mouth to his neck and nipped there, tasting his cold flesh. I caught his earlobe with my mouth and sucked on its delicate skin.

  “You’re mine, and no one else’s,” I said, lowering my body onto his. If he had a reply it was lost in a deep moan as our flesh became one. I moved against him gently at first and then with a feral rhythm. I claimed him with every thrust, pushing my body to accept more of him, to take him deeper than it had before. I leaned back, my hair brushing the steering wheel, his hands riding the side of my hips, moving me up and down upon him.

  I came forward and pushed his hands down. I didn’t want his help. I grabbed the back of his neck and drew our faces close together in the moonlight. I watched the lust in his eyes as his pleasure began to build.

  He moaned then called my name. His voice was a warning but I ignored it driving myself feverishly down on him, desperate to watch that ultimate passion play across his face. I leaned forward, changing the way he filled me and held him tightly.

  “Now,” I demanded. He was as helpless as if I’d used magic, as my body brought him over the edge. He cried out, screaming my name as the pleasure ripped from his body. I took my own pleasure then, catching and slowly sliding his body into me, rubbing those places that were so rarely touched. He called to me in the language we shared with no one else, and I kissed him hard stopping him. It had been her language once, and I wanted nothing of her here. I grabbed him and pounded my body onto him, feeling the pleasure begin to take me. Primal screams and base suggestions tore from my mouth, and he took them, his body rising up to meet mine. It was too much for me, and in an instant I was undone.

  “You’re mine,” I whispered fiercely in his ear, my breath coming in rapid pants.

  “I want no other.” I glared at him, searching for a glimpse or a look that would make it a lie. He must have known what I was thinking because he added, “Not living or dead.”

  I leaned against him panting for a moment, feeling the cold night air on my skin. I let my hand drift to the seat belt and released him. He held me closer, not with the awkwardness his embrace had a moment before.

  “I’ve never been taken before,” he admitted sheepishly. “I think I like it.”

  I laughed. “I hope you don’t like it too much; this car is decidedly small.”

  ****

  Jakob’s car gleamed dark green in the morning sun, I got behind the wheel with a smile for the fun we’d had in that space last night. Of course, the car deserved more respect than that, it was a vintage Mercedes convertible and practically irreplaceable. When he was with me I didn’t notice, but alone, driving to work on the crowded highways, I was always extra cautious. Thankfully the underground parking for our building was very secure, once I stepped onto the elevator the only thing I had to worry about was the day ahead of me.

  Settling into my desk with coffee in one hand and a stack of clinic hate mail in the other, I smiled a hello at Danny and became engrossed in my reading. The Giving Tree Clinic made more than a few people angry. The worst seemed to be the folks who really believed the clinic was killing babies. The graphic images they included with their missives made me glad I’d only grabbed a bagel for breakfast.

  I couldn’t imagine the doctors and nurses who performed the procedures hadn’t seen the results, so the effort seemed wasted. The sheer volume of mail was daunting; when Mark dropped off the rest of it, I was going to need a bigger desk. Two or three groups stood out, for either their ferocity or persistence. I tucked those letters into a pile before heading down for an early lunch.

  When I got back, Danny stopped in the middle of opening another amazing lunch packed by Katie. “Here.”

  He passed me over a Tupperware container. I popped the lid to find a perfectly formed wedge of apple pie. “What’s this for?”

  “Come on, Mal, all the useless trivia I know and you didn’t think I’d pick up that leukemia is a type of cancer?” He gave me a look of disdain. “I might tease you about it but I cover my bets.”

  “Good to know,” I said around a mouth full of pie. “Where do you get all that useless trivia?”

  “I worked in my uncle’s pub growing up. Tuesday’s and Thursday’s were trivia night.” He looked wistfully at my dessert for second. “So enjoy your pie, you aren’t going to win many bets.”

  When people think of police work they think of car chases and forensic evidence, shoot outs and fingerprints, but the reality is most cops don’t ever draw their gun. It’s more paperwork than excitement, with forms to be filled out at every turn. The SIU was a bit of an exception, we drew guns, crosses, and salt more than any other squad, but when it came to paperwork, no one got a free pass. I was knee deep in the missive of a white power group that was sure the Giving Tree Cli
nic was aborting too many white babies when my phone started to ring. Since I wasn’t much of a fan of badly written, misspelled hate mail, I picked up the phone with a smile on my face.

  “Hello?”

  “Guten morgen mein leibchen.” Jakob’s voice sounded like the break I needed.

  “And how is the love of my life this afternoon?” I asked, leaning back to let my imagination run away with me. It did that when he spoke German to me.

  “Still half asleep and wondering where you’d like to go for dinner.”

  “Are you taking me out?”

  “We made plans last night,” he said, adding a soft “tsk tsk” under his breath.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve had a day.” I couldn’t remember what he was talking about but apologized anyway.

  “Nothing dangerous I hope.”

  “Only to my peace of mind, I don’t care where we go as long as you fawn over me.” Visions of soft lighting and decadent desserts dancing in my mind, for someone whose last meal was centuries ago Jakob had incredible taste in restaurants.

  “If you don’t have a preference I’ll let E decide.”

  “E?” The violins playing in my head came to a screeching halt. How did she get invited on my dinner date?

  “The case must be worse than I thought if you don’t remember talking about this last night,” he laughed.

  “Guilty as charged. Call me back when you two work out the details.” We said our usual loving good byes, but my heart wasn’t in it. I’d wanted to rant about my day and see his blue eyes fill with sympathy. I wanted him to distract me with some wonderful story from his past. I wanted a lot of things, none of which involved E. I could see my day wasn’t meant to get any better. I threw myself into the stack of letters in front of me determined to put my bad mood to use.

  I waited an hour after Jakob called to call Mark. I was fairly sure he’d already be up; he’d taken the ancient boxes of FBI/SIU files home in hopes of organizing them during the day when he couldn’t leave because of sunlight. At the time I’d objected to him cluttering up his new house with the moldy boxes, now I hoped it would work to my advantage.

  “Zollern.” It was only four-thirty, but he answered on the first ring.

  “Mors.”

  “An official call so early in the day, my, my. What can the FBI do for the SIU?” The name I used had been enough to tell him this was work related. When we were off the clock he was Mark and I was Mallory. He was good at picking up on subtleties, a skill developed when he’d been a foreign prince in Queen Elizabeth’s court.

  The kind of personal politics he’d played amazed me, the idea that a fortune could be had by making some woman smile astounded me. I was even more amazed when I compared it to how he had acted when we’d first met, four hundred years of pushing people away hadn’t done much for his personality. I was glad he was getting back to what he had been.

  “It’s only early for vampires, and I need your files.” It might be work, but I was willing to tease him a little.

  “Which ones? They’re still pretty rough, but if it’s urgent, I can stop everything and find something for you.”

  “You promised me the rest of what you had on the Giving Tree Clinic.”

  “So the files I sent didn’t help?”

  “Not even a little. I’ve got nothing but lots of vague threats.”

  “That’s tough. If I manage to find something important before sunset, I’ll messenger it over, otherwise I’ll deliver it myself.”

  After my phone calls, I headed down to the cafeteria for a mid-afternoon snack, then came up and got lost again in the stack of hate mail. The autumn sunlight faded from our windows as I moved from angry letter to angry letter. I’d never imagined there was such hate so close to me.

  I wanted to believe the extremists lived somewhere else in some mythical other town I’d never been too, but the reality stared up at me in an array of handwriting and type fonts. Hate lived in every town, even mine. Danny headed out for the night, eager to get home before it got too dark. I wasn’t anxious to get to dinner; I wished him good night and went back to my stack.

  I looked up to find Mark standing an inch from my desk and jumped half way out of my chair.

  “Don’t do that!” I shouted.

  “You’re incredibly easy to sneak up on, you should be more careful,” he said swinging into the chair beside my desk. It was reserved for witnesses, but it rarely saw any.

  “I wasn’t expecting a sneak attack in the middle of a police station at seven o’clock on a Friday,” I groused. I was willing to let it go, but my surprise got the better of me. “Good thing for you, too. Next time you pull that stunt you might end up permanently dead.”

  “Aren’t we touchy, too many photos of dead babies or too much time with nothing to show for it?”

  “Neither. Jakob’s taking me to dinner.”

  “And?”

  “And what?” I snapped, then took a deep breath. Mark enjoyed goading me too much for me to let him win. “And E will be joining us. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m a little nervous.”

  “Bullshit.” I gaped at him. “Sorry, Mal, I call bullshit on that one. You haven’t gotten over her hugging him, and you’re dreading dinner.”

  I struggled to find some retort, but he appraised the situation too perfectly.

  “Should I go on?” he asked.

  “If you think there’s more to say.” I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. In half an hour I was going to have to be witty and charming. I couldn’t do it.

  “She’s a difficult young woman—” I started to cut him off, but he held up a hand to stop me. “It’s not her fault but she is. The rest of us can’t fathom what she feels or what she has to handle and that makes people uncomfortable.”

  “I don’t care about the fire witch thing. It’s more that…” I took a minute to think about it. “I don’t want to spend my Friday night making polite small talk with someone I have nothing in common with.”

  “Lucky for you I’m here to save you.”

  “Save me?”

  “Indeed, you have two options. Option one, the files for the Giving Tree Clinic, which turn out to be rather thick.” He held up a file folder so stuffed it could barely close. “We’ve got everything here, from the first complaints to maybe some issues with the doctor who founded the place. Not to mention the ancillary files for every volunteer with a questionable background. You could easily spend the next five or even ten hours going over the file - more than enough time to miss dinner.”

  “I’m grateful, truly grateful, but avoiding her will only make it worse. What’s option two?”

  “Option two is I come along to dinner. We’re like oil and water. She’ll be completely distracted snipping at me. You won’t have to worry about her even noticing you, and if we’re lucky enough to get onto a topic where you agree with her and side against me, all the better.”

  “I like option two, but won’t Jakob be furious with you for showing up uninvited?”

  “He’s put up with me for centuries. I don’t think he’ll rip my throat out for crashing dinner, especially if I don’t order anything to drink.” Mark flashed me his adorable lopsided smile and gestured to the paperwork in front of me. I organized my desk for the weekend and called Jakob to let him know I didn’t need a ride in record time. Suddenly my Friday night didn’t look so bad.

  ****

  We made it to the restaurant with time to spare, which came in handy when we asked the hostess to change the reservation from three to four people. She directed us to the bar for a drink while they prepared the table. The restaurant was Italian; in the bar a man at a white grand piano treated us to tunes from old movies. I grabbed a high backed bar stool, and Mark leaned against the bar. I could roll my eyes at the old photos of dear Sicily on the wall, but the liquor behind the bar was the real deal. I moved a small candle out of the way to get to a drink menu.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” I asked, trying to see if the
y offered anything for vampires.

  “No thanks, I’m still incredibly picky.”

  “You really need to get over that, you know.” Mark only drank werewolf blood, and even then he preferred it from werewolves that had dined on humans recently.

  “Say that in front E, and your evening will go a lot smoother.” We both laughed, but when the laughter died away, I realized there was something serious for us to talk about.

  “I’m sorry about you and Phoebe. I found out last night.”

  “Don’t be,” he said with a shrug. “It lasted longer than I expected it to, she’s…” Phoebe told me almost everything about her love life, in detail that was sometimes too much. The way he hesitated was cute but completely unnecessary.

  “She’s Phoebe,” I replied.

  “Exactly. No harm, no foul, we just didn’t work out.” I hadn’t expected him to take his first lover in a few centuries dumping him so calmly. “Of course now that I have furniture, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before some nice girl comes along.”

  “And won’t you be happy that she has a place to sit?” I teased him back. We were both laughing over it when I felt the energy in the room change. The tiny candle in front of us flared for a second, and then it was normal again. I turned around to see Jakob and E walking in the front door.

  He was still smiling, but E, who had obviously seen Mark, wasn’t. She was wearing a light gray sweater that threatened to swallow her whole and gray and blue plaid skirt with tall leather boots. Her size made the outfit, she was petite enough and thin enough that she looked feminine and vulnerable. The look stopped at her eyes which seethed at the sight of him.

  “E,” Mark said it with a smile she didn’t return.

  “Mark,” her voice was tight but civil.

  “Hope I’m not intruding on anything. I thought it might be fun to catch up.”

  She started to say something, but the hostess interrupted her to take us to the table. I kissed Jakob hello. He seemed unaware of the tension between the two of them as E and I ordered.

  “You’re not getting anything?” E asked Jakob.