by F. J. Gale
“Okay.”
“That means you can’t walk in as you are now. You draw too much attention.” He eyed each of them in turn. Alna’s highly revealing shimmering silver outfit. Jenna’s rough and tumble huntress look. And…Mathias…well, the epitome of modern vampire stereotype. Warriors out of time and place.
“Light-weight tactical gear?” Mathias suggested.
“I’ll make it happen,” the General said.
He crossed to a filing cabinet at the back of the room and rummaged around in the top drawer before continuing, “Tomorrow night. I have some clean-up to do tonight thanks to our friends, Immortalia.”
“All right,” Mathias agreed.
The General handed him a card. Mathias moved to take it from him, but the General didn’t let go. Make up your mind. With some effort, the General relinquished the card. “Call this number. This guy owns a hotel nearby. Mention my name and he’ll give you three rooms for the night. Just to be clear, this is not a favor for you. It’s for her. Human women like the comfort of a hot shower and a clean bed every now and then.”
Mathias eyed Jenna. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t noticed it before, but her clothes were stained with mud and blood. Most of it he knew was from their liaison in the cave earlier. Her hair was disheveled and she looked tired and uncomfortable in her own skin. The General was right.
“Thanks,” he forced himself to say.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mathias rapped firmly on the door. They’d arrived at the hotel a couple of hours ago. He’d spent that time going over the blueprints and maps of the research lab and its surrounding area in preparation for tomorrow night’s mission. Alna and Jenna had retired to their own rooms on the same floor. It was the penthouse floor of the building and it had to be one of the swankiest places he had stayed at in a long while. General Clark obviously had a lot of pull. Every other room on the floor was vacant. And he wasn’t sure if it had been that way prior to the General's call and the dropping of his name, or whether the guests had been encouraged to move elsewhere. Either way, he was happy. He wasn’t much of a people person and it wasn’t just the vampire in him. He never had been. He liked quiet.
Finally, Alna opened the door. His words caught in his throat.
“Just the reaction I was hoping for,” she said with a sly smile. “Come in.” She stepped aside so he could enter. She shut the door behind him and watched him check out her hotel room.
“How did you—where did you get all this?”
The room was a mess. Clothes, make-up, jewelry and trinkets were draped over chairs, piled on the bed, and scattered across the lushly carpeted floor. He looked her over again. A skin tight black leather dress clung to her body, its corset bodice pushing her already ample breasts into the forefront. The slit up her left thigh left little to the imagination, a spectacle that she purposely drew attention to with her thigh-high black leather boots.
“You’re going out like that?”
She chuckled. “Mathias, you’re still so old-fashioned.”
“You look like…never mind.”
“Like what?” She stepped into his space and forced him to look at her.
Don’t make me say it. He looked away and stepped back.
“You’ve never been one to keep quiet,” she pressed.
“Like a harlot,” he said, shaking his head with disapproval.
She laughed. Harlot? He really had been cut off from the world. “Exactly what I was going for.”
“Alna—”
“We can’t do anything until tomorrow night. That means we have tonight off. I’ve decided to spend it with some company. It’s been a while…time to sow some of those wild oats.”
“What about your skin?” he asked, pointing to the prominent black veins all over her body. How did she plan on explaining those to humans?
She winked at him and then swept her hand over her body in one fluid motion. Mathias watched with surprise as the veins disappeared.
“Just a temporary illusion. It should last until morning, just like the rest of this,” she said, gesturing to the clothes littering the room.
“Just—” he began, but stopped short as he realized how ridiculous what he was about to say would sound. “Right. You don’t need to be careful. They do.”
She pressed her hands to his chest and eased him backwards towards the door. “Time for you to go. I don’t need a chaperone.”
“Fine, fine,” Mathias said, holding up his hands with resignation.
“It seems that it is you who needs a chaperone, sweetheart.”
“Alna—”
“A cave, Mathias?” she said, grimacing at the very thought of it.
“It wasn’t planned.”
“You’d better rectify that.”
“What?”
“Well, unless she's just another Gabriella to you.”
“What? How do you know about that?”
She smiled. You know very well.
“Stop reading me, Alna!”
“I can’t help it. Your thoughts scream at me. The Hunter destabilizes your meditative ability to control your thoughts and emotions. Even Liana didn’t have that power over you.”
He shook his head dismissively.
“Okay, then I am wrong.” Impossible.
“We’re at war! We need to maintain our focus on the mission at hand!” he yelled, becoming agitated by a discussion that he hadn’t wanted to have with her—or anyone—in the first place. He was a warrior, a strategist and a leader. He wasn’t good at…women. And there wasn’t time for it, especially not with the threat at their backs.
She resumed pushing him towards the door. “Take a night off,” she insisted, her eyes boring into his, trying to get through to him. She knew that if anyone could, it was her. She saw a brief flicker of understanding in his eyes, which he quickly tried to conceal from her. Always the stubborn one. He couldn’t accept that he had misjudged a situation as much as he had in the cave with Jenna. But Alna knew that she was wearing him down and he would come to accept it very soon.
“Don’t come to this room again tonight. I see now how out of touch you are with women, so just in case: the screams your vampire hearing might pick up on will be screams of ecstasy and—”
Mathias stood outside, rolling his eyes at her. Before she could finish her sentence he shut the door in her face.
Alna chuckled and resumed getting ready.
***
Jenna wrapped the fuzzy white hotel bathrobe around her torso and climbed into the queen bed. Oh yes. Luxury. The beige cotton sheets were unbelievably soft and clean. She pulled them up to her chest and then reached for the duvet. She felt the down feathers inside, scrunching them between her fingers. She purred peacefully and laid her head down on the most comfortable pillows she had ever felt beneath her head. She was going to sleep well tonight.
She had just closed her eyes when she heard a distinct knock at the door. Dammit. Reluctantly she threw the sheets aside and climbed out of bed. Her slayer instincts screamed a warning: Watch your back. She grabbed a stake out of her duffel bag on the mahogany desk and readied it in her left hand. With her other she cautiously opened the door a sliver.
She felt him before she saw him. Mathias. Her left hand relaxed and the stake lowered. She stepped aside and let him in. He shut the door and leaned against it awkwardly.
Say something. Anything. He cleared his throat. “Jenna,” he managed. Anything to end the excruciating silence that had followed him into the room. He saw the stake in her hand; “Working on your defense?” he asked in as light-hearted a tone as he could manage. He wasn’t one for small talk.
“Just a precaution,” she said, returning the stake to her bag.
He scanned the room. Jenna seemed to be the antithesis to Alna when it came to clutter. She was so tidy. He guessed that it was the years of experience of living out of a bag. She didn’t carry that many possessions on her to begin with, just the necessities. The bedside tables were
bare and her duffel bag was the only other sign that someone occupied the room. Oh, and the bed's rumpled sheets.
“Did I wake you?” I thought she slept during the day like vampires.
She smiled sheepishly. “No. I was just relaxing.”
“The bed’s a luxury, huh?” he realized.
“Yeah.” She perched on the end of it and eyed him expectantly. “What brings you here? Is there trouble?”
“Trouble? No, I…we need to talk.”
“All right.” She folded her arms defensively across her chest. “Are you gonna stay there by the door?”
“I think that’s best.” He tried his damnedest to pry his eyes away from her. He could smell her from where he stood. The coconut scent of the shampoo that she’d washed her hair with, the natural sweet smell of her skin, the blood from his bite on her neck.
“Look, Mathias, you don’t need to worry. I get it. I’m a big girl.”
What? Worry? Where is she going with this? “I don’t follow.”
She stood up and tightened the belt of the robe, hugging herself protectively. He watched her play with her long brown hair, twirling it around her finger. He could feel her anxiety. She seemed upset. Her words said otherwise, but her actions spoke volumes. The extent of her innocence struck him hard as he watched her continue to play with her hair, trying to seem aloof, but failing miserably and unwittingly revealing her emotions.
“I asked you for a favor. It was just sex. You don’t need to explain it to me.” Please don’t explain it to me. Just leave. Walk away. Now.
To her surprise, he moved from the door and stopped just in front of her. She watched him blink hard and shake his head as though he was trying to will away something. Desire?
“You don’t understand. Sure, yes, you asked me to do it. But that’s not why I did it.”
“Don’t worry about it affecting our alliance. I can separate it.”
“You can’t, but I appreciate the nobility. Virgins never can; the experience is too overwhelming for them. It unleashes a wealth of emotions that they’ve never had to deal with before.”
“That’s a broad statement if there ever was one.”
“Okay, then look me in the eye and tell me that you haven’t been obsessing about it since it happened, that you haven’t been consumed with the irrepressible need to do it again.”
She broke eye contact and her eyes darted around the room, looking anywhere but at him. “You think a lot of yourself,” she muttered.
“It’s not about me, Jenna,” he told her gently. He reached for her but she pulled back.
“Let’s just forget it happened, okay? Please just leave,” she said, turning away from him.
The air moved and he stood before her blocking her path. Before she could react his hands gripped her shoulders, pushing her against the wall. Instinctively, she looked up at him. He held her gaze, allowing her to see the truth in his eyes.
“I don’t want to forget it.”
“I know your M.O., Mathias.”
What was she talking about?
“Your vamp sluts? You don’t get involved with anyone.”
She purred as his fingers danced lightly over her hair. He was barely touching her at all, but something about his touch was so sensual, so intense. It set her senses on fire.
“It’s too late for that,” he whispered in her ear.
His words snapped her back to reality. She fought to regain her composure, to think straight with him touching her. She pressed her hand to his chest, easing him back.
“That’s what you came here to say?” she asked, surprised.
“I don’t regret what happened. I regret the venue. It’s not how I wanted it to happen. I lost control.”
“I came on to you. I pushed you.”
“Trust me, I didn’t need any pushing.”
A few moments of silence passed between them as they eyed one another with amusement. They’d both been so far off the mark, on completely different pages when it came to assuming what the other was thinking.
“Okay, so we don’t forget it. You may already know this, but—” she flashed him a smile, “I’m not really familiar with the ‘morning after’ routine. What do we do…now?”
“I believe the term you would use is ‘hang out’.”
She grinned. “We’re confined to this hotel for a whole day. We might as well,” she said, trying for a cool, detached demeanor. From the look of amusement on his face she could tell that he was seeing right through her.
She moved past him and then stopped short. Glancing around the room she suddenly felt at a loss. “Uh…what do you usually do to…entertain yourself?”
He shrugged. “Read? Take a walk? Train?”
“Wow, you’re really living the life, huh?” she teased.
“I’ve lived a long time, Jenna. There’s not much I haven’t already done.”
She racked her brain for a few moments. And then she had it. She grabbed his hand and pulled him onto the bed beside her. She reached for the remote on the bedside table closest to her and switched on the TV. A flood of noise filled the room. She pulled the blankets over them and sank into his embrace.
“Oddly, this is something I haven’t done,” he said.
“Really?” She craned her neck to look at him.
He nodded and patted her head gently, willing her to relax. He smiled as she guided his hands to her chest and gripped them tightly.
Jenna tried to relax and concentrate on whatever was on the TV, but it was impossible. The heat between them from earlier was still heavy in the air and she could feel the proof of his present arousal pressing against her. She rolled over to face him, breaking his embrace and propping her head up with her elbow.
“Let’s do it again.”
“That’s not why I came here,” he said, taken aback by her newfound sexual audacity.
“I know.”
“Aren’t you…sore?” he asked, eyeing her with disbelief. Things had gotten pretty rough in the cave, especially for her first time. He wasn’t sure she would be able to take it again so soon.
Her eyes sparkled and she smiled one of the most seductive smiles he had ever seen. “Let’s find out.”
“Jenna, I’m a vampire. Once we get going, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop, even if you need me to.”
She climbed up onto him, straddling his hips and whispered in his ear, “Make me scream, vampire.” She knew her comment would fire him up, because he hated it when she brought up the vampire thing.
And she was right.
Growling low, he ripped open her robe, stripped it off her, almost tearing it in half, and pulled her towards him roughly. His nails dug into her back eliciting a gasp from her. Her gorgeous breasts hovered just above him. He teased them with his tongue, his teeth, his lips, watching her grit her teeth, doing her best not to release a strangled scream.
She drew his lips to hers, devouring his mouth wantonly. He eased her back as they kissed ferociously. He released her and ripped off his shirt, tossing it across the room. His hands were back on her in seconds, her heat burning his ice-cold skin once again. He wrestled her beneath him and pinned her arms above her head.
He only let go of her to reach for his pants.
“Stay still,” he ordered as he shed his pants and boxers and straddled her. To his surprise she complied. That was when he knew she was completely at his mercy.
“Get ready to scream, slayer,” he whispered huskily in her ear, causing her to tremble with anticipation.
He brought her hands down to her sides and gripped her wrists tightly. He gazed at her hungrily, pausing to get her attention. And then he buried his mouth between her legs.
She gasped as his tongue lapped at her most sensitive area. In moments he was driving her crazy. She lost all ability to maintain rational thought. She was gone.
Mathias knew exactly what he was doing to her. She couldn’t keep still. She was all
sensation. He released her wrists and gripped her thighs, forcing her to remain still as he continued. Her breathy moans were music to his ears. He could feel her pulse reach fever pitch. She was on the edge. Any moment now.
And then he pulled back, just before she could taste bliss.
He saw the look on her face. She couldn’t believe it.
“Please,” she begged, writhing beneath him with pained frustration.
But he wouldn’t, not until she gave it up. She’d challenged him to make her scream and he was determined to do just that.
He shook his head with a faux apology. Before she could attempt a protest, he entered her suddenly, thrusting deeply into her. She screamed from the surprise of it and he felt her tense around him. She gripped him so powerfully that he wasn’t sure he could take the intensity.
“Fuck!” he cried out through gritted teeth.
He felt her hands on him trying to move him into another position. She was so incredibly strong that before he knew it she had succeeded, her atop him now. He smiled at her reassuringly as she cautiously started to grind against him. He kissed her deeply, encouraging her, spurring her on. His hand slipped between her legs, awakening a deep carnal lust within her and she drove him into her harder, deeper, faster.
“Yes! Mathias! Yes,” she screamed, finally giving it up to him.
He drew her lips to his, kissing her hard. He traced his tongue down to the right side of her neck. His teeth grazed his mark and he felt her shudder in response. And then he let the demon take him. Fangs pierced her already broken flesh, burying deep. The tantalizing taste of her sweet blood flowing into his mouth sent him over the edge moments before her. He pulled back when he felt her relax against him.
He looked away and forced the demon to leave him. And then he fell back on the bed, taking her with him. She lay on top of him still trembling. He lifted her slightly and pulled out gently.
“You screamed,” he murmured, exhausted, as he wrapped his arms around her tightly.
“So did you!”
“That was an utterance, not a scream.”