“Mmm, yeah. Yeah.” It was going to be the quickest climax of her life. Her wounds had healed. Her skin and eyes felt no more burn, only the flush of arousal. November was full of pure, sweet, blood, hot from the source, and this eager neg was sucking her clit like if he kept doing it, he was going to win something.
He’s fucking about to. Shit!
Her eyes rolled back. Lids fluttered.
“Leo, yeah.”
His other palm left the wall. There was a thumb, stroking slick tissues at her entrance.
“Nnn, like that!”
He latched on and the draw on her clit sent her eyes wide. No need for his fingers to penetrate, November wailed over the edge, raining profanities and encouragement down on the enthusiastic head between her legs.
Leo kept at it. Took her high and low and high again until her supporting knee began to wobble. November had to drag her other foot out from behind his back and graze his temple with a shaky hand to get him to stop.
“Okay,” she said, panting against the wall. “Fuck. I can’t take it.”
The guard sat back on his heels, looking as wrung-out and sated as she felt. He stood, bracing a palm on the wall at his side. Looked her over in frank disbelief. How long had she been conscious? An hour? Two? November started to smile.
Leo blinked and shook his head. “We should”—he gestured between them—“probably clean up.”
He didn’t wait for her to agree, and she admired the shape of his ass when he turned to start the water. The muscles in his back. His thighs. For the disaster of being on the surface, her gate partner was one hell of a consolation prize.
They scrubbed back down, brisk and, oddly enough, not handsy. It was as if the whole scenario was too impossible for him, and he wanted to respect her space, now. November could agree with the ‘impossible’ part. She might want to get her hands—and teeth—on him again, at some point, though.
There was a dull clunk from outside the bathroom. Leo’s head snapped around and he cut the water.
November’s heart leapt, and her ears, too, zeroed in on the noise.
More small sounds from the main room of the apartment, not confined to one location. She whipped her attention to Leo and hissed at him with wide eyes, “The fuck is that?”
The guard made a grim face and slid the enclosure open. “My roommate,” he said, stepping out into the bathroom. “Get dressed.”
Chapter 3
Torn and bloodied clothing was less than ideal to yank on after a good meal and a shower, but there weren’t options. Or time.
Leo was out the door, and November stood there, raking an indecisive hand through wet hair. Of all the times to be unarmed. Though her UV-80 would be worthless up here. For a heartbeat, she entertained the idea of just keeping silent and hiding out. But if the noises from outside were his roommate, her gate partner would have a hard time convincing anyone the bathroom was off-limits.
She growled to herself and left relative safety for who-the-fuck-knew-what.
The lights were on now in the living area: bright wall panels on every side. In the modest space, the sofa where she’d come awake, a bed against a wall, and the tiny dining table competing for room, Leo squared off with another man. There was a darkened, open door on the wall opposite the bathroom, and November could only assume it was a separate bedroom. The way these two were bristling, she couldn’t imagine them sharing the single bed.
The other man looked from November to Leo, narrowed eyes cataloging their ruined clothes. “The fuck is going on, Croix?”
When he spoke, November’s eyebrows threatened to climb off her forehead. Twin points disrupted the straight line of his upper teeth. Leo appeared to take no notice.
Vampire. On the surface.
Why did her partner act like this was normal?
“Rado, this is”—Leo turned to look at her, and she could tell he decided what to say—“this is November. My gate partner.”
“Your ‘gate partner?’ ” The vampire eyed her, skeptical. He wore black waves of hair, slicked back from his face to fall below his ears. Skin a darker olive than hers. And a trace of an accent. Eastern Europe, maybe.
“Rado?” November folded her arms, equally suspicious and not waiting for Leo.
“Radoslav,” the roommate said. Dark eyes looked down at her. Challenging. He knew that she knew.
And Leo doesn’t.
The drugs were supposed to prevent the use of hypnotics. If her gate partner was on mandatory Fortizan, why wasn’t he seeing what she did? Was this Radoslav maintaining illusion some other way?
November squinted and flicked the tip of her tongue over a fang, well out of Leo’s periphery. The vampires would address this. But not now.
“What is she doing here, Croix?” Radoslav addressed his roommate but left his eyes on November. “Why are you both a wreck?”
Leo explained, minus the mutual orgasm part.
The other vampire gave a disapproving humph when Leo finished. “You should have left her.”
“I told him that,” said November, right on top of her partner saying, “That’s what she said.”
“And she was right,” said Rado, who then stepped forward, neck craning to see something. “You let her feed?” He was pushing sleeves up his forearms, as though he expected a confrontation.
November dropped her hands and let her feet stand slightly apart.
Leo’s fingers went to the exposed marks at his throat. “Yeah.” He looked Radoslav up and down, defensive.
“Did she force you?” The vampire’s voice had lowered to nearly a growl.
“I’m right here,” said November.
“No.” Leo stepped sideways to intercede. “I offered. Take it easy. I didn’t know what else to do, okay? She was cut up pretty bad, and it wasn’t healing. I told you, they got her with sunshine.”
Radoslav inhaled at this, and exhaled slowly, eyes swinging between one of them and the other. Judging, no doubt.
“Look,” said Leo, “I know she can’t stay here. I get it.” He cast November a distressed glance. “I just have to figure out … how to smuggle her back down there. I guess.”
“You guess,” Radoslav repeated with a drawl. “We can’t have a vampire in our apartment.”
Leo pushed a hand back over the top of his head. “Telling me stuff I know.” His eyes scanned the room, distracted. “Listen, I have to go change. I have to get back there and do damage control. And not looking like this.” He gestured at himself.
“You’re just going to leave me here?” said November.
Her partner had stepped back into the room and was rummaging through storage drawers in the wall alongside the bed. Pulling parts of a clean uniform out and draping them in the crook of his elbow.
“You’re gonna have to sit tight,” he said, shutting the last drawer. “I don’t know what I’m gonna find when I get back there.” Leo moved to the bathroom door but paused on the threshold. “And if I don’t come back in a few hours?” He had looks for both of them, Radoslav last. “You need to help her.”
The other vampire lifted his chin. “Don’t drag me into your problems, Croix.”
“It’s gonna be your problem if I don’t come back and she’s stuck here.” The door to the bath slid shut behind him.
November turned to the roommate and opened her mouth to throw down, but Radoslav shook his head. Jerked a nod at the closed door.
Who the fuck did this asshole think he was? Showing up, asking too many questions. Assuming he could dictate the actions of everyone in the room. And not even bloodline—a vampire from birth. He had a set of stones on him, for sure. Only women were born V-positive. Men had to be turned. They had to beg, borrow, or dumbass their way into her reality, and then transfer underground and give up seeing the sky ever again. It was legal within only the narrowest set of approved and regulated criteria. And they’d never be bloodline. Neither would the women who’d been turned instead of born into it.
How old w
as he?
She ground her teeth and glared at him. Water ran behind the closed door for a few seconds, and then Leo emerged, fresh uniform in place. The collar of the dark blue shirt covered her bite where his undershirt hadn’t; probably the best if he was headed back to the scene of the crime.
Was it a crime, though? He saved you from those ‘nighters.
But he’d also smuggled her up to the surface. Which was illegal, for about a hundred safety reasons, rampant UV pollution chief among them. There were gate guards on both sides for a reason. People were stupid, vampire or not, and strict security kept certain chunks of the populace from getting themselves good and dead.
“Alright,” Leo said, wadding a ball of bloody clothes between his hands, “I’m going back.” He dropped the dirty uniform into a bin at the foot of the bed, and when no one else said a word, went to scoop up his ID badge from the table. “Can you two manage to play nice while I’m gone?”
“I will if your friend will,” said November, making strenuous eye contact with the roommate.
Radoslav only grunted.
“Hey.” Leo came to her side. Put a hand on her shoulder, “I’m gonna go, make my excuses, finish my shift if they’re not firing me or worse, and then head right back here. Will you be okay?”
She raised her eyebrows. “I’m gonna have to.”
Hazel eyes searched her, and the moment made November shift her weight to the other foot. He’d eaten her in the shower not thirty minutes ago, but they still weren’t in the sort of situation where people kissed goodbye. He gave her shoulder a squeeze and nodded. Stepped away. “If you need to sleep, you can use the bed”—he jerked his head in the direction of the back wall—“I can take the couch.”
She gave him a brief nod, not liking any of this.
“Take it easy, eh, Rado?” Leo spoke to the other man as though he expected a temper.
The vampire kept his eyes on November. “Just do what you have to and get back here.”
“Right.” Leo had a hand on the door that led out of the apartment. His eyes shifted between vampires. One of which he knew about. “Alright. Bye.”
And he was out the door. November caught a brief glimpse of a lighted corridor beyond, before the panel slid shut. Only a beat of silence passed before she laid into the roommate.
“I know what you are, convert.” She eyed him up and down. “Why doesn’t he?”
The vampire standing beside the dining table made a casual show of neatly cuffing his shirtsleeves back to his elbows, where he had shoved them in a hurry before. Crisp, black fabric showed forearms dusted with dark hair. A wrist ID of his own, but generic rather than the GateSec bracelet she wore.
“I’ve been assigned,” Radoslav said, “to keep an eye on Leo. To keep him safe.”
November snorted. “Wouldn’t he be safer if you were with him, instead of here?”
Cool eyes assessed her. “He is safer with me here watching you.”
“Yeah?” She took a step toward the other vampire. “And who assigned you to be here, Radoslav?”
He didn’t flinch at her approach. “That’s none of your business.”
“You never answered my question.” November had closed the distance, her tone a mild threat. “He should be on Fortizan. Why doesn’t he know?”
Radoslav lifted a brow. “He’s on a placebo. I can show him whatever I want. And what I want is for him to continue to think I’m his boring neg roommate. The less he knows, the safer he’ll be.”
Her jaw went slack. If this vampire was using pheromones on Leo … then she …
“You’ve been switching his drugs?” November curled her lip. “Why are you on the surface at all? How are you surviving?”
“That’s also none of your business,” he said, leaning over her.
“Fucking convenient.”
“And if you do anything,” he went on, ignoring her assessment, “to cause harm to Leonide Croix—or to expose my V-status—there will be consequences. GateSec will be the least of your problems. Do you understand?”
November sneered up at him. “And you’re making him safe,” she said. “He’s a gate guard susceptible to hypnosis and he has no idea.”
“Do you. Understand.”
With a fierce side-eye, November turned away. “I’m not trying to hurt your boy,” she said, and chose the edge of the offered bed to sit this time. “I never asked to be up here in the first place. And I didn’t ask him to feed.”
Radoslav gave her a long, narrow look.
“It’s almost morning,” he said at last. “You should sleep while you can.”
She watched while he cut the wall panel lighting, darkening the living area again to the way it had been when she’d still been burning from sunshine. It was only a few steps for him to move to the room’s other doorway, and to disappear inside it.
“Stay out of trouble.” His voice came from the space on the other side, just before the panel slid shut.
It was the first time since she’d started as a gate guard that November just wanted to go home to her shitty apartment on sub-level four. No one attacked her there. No one dragged her unconscious body to the surface. Or came looking for her. Or even gave a shit.
She made a face and dragged a pillow near. Screwed herself down into the mattress, on top of the covers. Yawned.
This surly vampire was right. There were always consequences.
* * *
Drifting awake without her eyes being on fire was an improvement November would take over last time. The foreign, but not unpleasant scent of the pillow smushed around the side of her face, and the odd angle of the light painting dim edges on furniture from just outside her field of vision, all served to remind her that this was not her apartment.
This was the surface. And someone was rustling around in the direction of the tiny kitchen.
The sound of a small object toppling, followed by a hiss of quiet profanity, assured her it was her gate partner awake and busy, and not his shady roommate.
How long had she been out? By the stiffness in her muscles, it felt like several hours, at the least. But then, when was the last time fresh blood had been at work in her system? It might have been days.
No. He’d wake you. He seems like the type.
And he wasn’t waking her, now.
November tracked his movements when he came into view. He had a plate of something in hand, and he sat with it at the little table. Whatever it was, Leo ate with his fingers while reading through something on a palm-sized projection that came from … the table? No. Probably his ID bracelet lying on the table.
His shoulders had lost some of the tension from their earlier encounter. If the man wasn’t bothering to come jostle her out of bed, then he probably didn’t have news yet. He was letting her sleep, and November took full advantage. She’d jump through some ridiculous hoops if it meant she didn’t have to start talking to people the minute she woke up.
While he finished eating, she let her eyes adjust to the darkened half of the living area, avoiding glances toward the kitchen where the light would reset her efforts. Her side of the room lay recessed in shadow, around the corner from where Leo stowed his dirty plate and cranked on a sanitizer. A low hum told her the appliance was working.
Off to her right, the door where Radoslav had disappeared now stood open, a black void where before he’d pulled it shut. November tried not to let paranoia win with the idea of the other vampire skulking around the place while she’d been asleep.
Creepy fuck.
Everything had been ‘none of her business.’ Why was this asshole on the surface? How was he on the surface? And why did Leo need someone to watch over him? He’d done just fine with those ‘nighters.
Her partner moved back into her sight, sideways as it was with her head on a pillow, and sank down into the center of the sofa. She could only see the back of his head. His ears, temples, and jaw went blue, white, and green around the edges from the light of the projection he’d flicke
d on again, this time right in front of his face.
For a time, he only sat there like that, reading or watching whatever had his interest, and November was on the verge of pushing herself out of bed, nosy and one hundred percent awake, at that point. And then he sat forward to shoulder his way out of his uniform shirt.
Oh, just kidding.
Shirt draped over the arm of the couch, November watched him contort in a specific way that meant he was ridding himself of pants, as well. Neck balanced on the back of the sofa, body planked from shoulders to knees, which she could only make out at a weirdly foreshortened angle. Leo was trying to head to bed. Or to sofa, as it were.
Bother him later. Maybe once he’s asleep, you can poke around in here.
But the gate guard did not lie down. He resumed his seat and glued his eyeballs to the projection some more. November tried not to fidget. Was it really that important for him to think she was asleep? Some part of her didn’t want to bother him by being awake. He’d saved her ass, now he was supposed to what? Keep her company?
But he’d also hauled her unconscious to the one place she didn’t need or want to be. Basement apartment or not, November doubted there was any sort of direct passage from the place Leo lived right back to Gate 0433. What was he going to do, stuff her in the trunk of a vehicle to get her through the UV? It would take one enthusiastic guard looking for a promotion to call for a search and burn her to a crisp.
A noise bloomed into the apartment, and November snapped out of her catastrophizing. An isolated bleat of a sound, not loud at all, but distinct in the relative silence. Leo’s head whipped to one side, and the light from his projection winked out. The sound had come from whatever had been absorbing his attention. He’d muted it in an instant, but if her ears didn’t lie …
Is he …
After the space of at least two or three minutes where her partner sat frozen, he swiveled his focus back, his head eclipsing the light from the projection again. He settled deeper into the cushions.
Bite Me: A Vampire Anthology Page 18