Oh, Lord, he thought suddenly. Babies. What with the emotional ordeal of telling her about Charlotte, then the battle with the overlords’ hired killers, he had completely forgotten about one vital fact.
He hadn’t been wearing a condom when he and Jessie made love in the shower room. She might be pregnant with his child even now.
That settled it, if nothing else did. She couldn’t go into battle when she might be carrying his baby. Even if she hated him forever because of it, he had to protect her.
“What were you about to say, Michael?” she prodded, even though he could tell by the look in her eyes that she knew very well what he’d meant. “Explain to me again your reason for lying to me.”
Clifford cleared his throat. “Come on, Max,” he said. “We’ve got things to do.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Max grumbled as he followed the smaller man out of the room. “You always drag me away just when things are gettin’ good.”
When he and Jessie were alone, Michael said, “I won’t risk the life of an innocent if I don’t have to. And I never lied to you. You took the things I said to mean one thing, and I took them to mean something else.”
“That’s it, then?”
Michael made his voice as hard and flat as he could. “That’s it.”
She came at him suddenly, but she didn’t attack him. She grabbed his hands and squeezed them. “I’m not Charlotte,” she said. “Do I kiss like Charlotte, make love like Charlotte? I’m sorry for all the pain you’ve gone through because of what happened to her, but she’s the past. I…I’m…I want to be…”
This time she was the one who couldn’t force the words out of her mouth, so Michael had to do it for her. “The future,” he whispered.
She nodded mutely, the stark emotion in her eyes so strong that he felt it almost overwhelming him, engulfing him like a swimmer being swept away by the tide.
“The future,” he said again, and his eyes moved from her lovely face, down over her breasts, to the flat plane of her belly. He thought again of what might have been created during that special moment they had shared.
“Michael?” Jessie said.
“You’re not going,” he told her again, and his voice was as cold and strong and impenetrable as the steel armor in that locker room door that had saved their lives.
Chapter 11
T he safe house was in a rural area west of Dallas and Fort Worth, farming and ranching country. In fact, it looked like a farmhouse that might have been sitting there in the midst of rolling, timbered hills for a hundred years or more.
But as with so much else connected to Michael Brandt, appearances didn’t equal reality.
Jessie quickly discovered that when Michael showed her around the place, pointing out its armored walls and windows made of bulletproof glass. Cameras provided coverage of the entire ten acres in which the safe house sat right in the middle, and one whole wall of a room in the house was taken up by monitors showing the feeds from those cameras. In addition, motion detectors ensured that no one could come within a hundred yards of the house without setting off an alarm. The ultra-potent garlic spray had been applied around all the windows and doors, making the place smell a little like an Italian restaurant and reminding Jessie once again of the bizarre mixture of the high-tech and the supernatural she had wandered into.
She and Michael had driven over here in another of his vehicles, this one a black SUV. He had followed a roundabout route that took them through Dallas, Fort Worth, and then several smaller suburban cities before winding up in the country. Jessie didn’t see how anyone could have followed them along the twisting blacktop roads without being spotted by either her or Michael. She had trailed enough people, trying to get a story, that she knew quite a few tricks of the trade. Nowhere near as many as Michael, though. His life depended on his abilities, not just his livelihood.
Although now, Jessie thought, her life might depend on the skills she could pick up in a hurry, too. Not only her life, either…and she wasn’t thinking just about Michael.
He hadn’t worn a condom when they made love in the shower room. Jessie had been aware of that at the time, and normally she would have called a halt to the proceedings before things got that far.
She had been too overwhelmed with need to tell him to stop, though. Not just the need to have him inside her, although that had been incredibly strong. She could have overcome that if she’d wanted to. The compelling attraction between them had driven her to be as close to him as she could, to merge with him not only physically but also mentally, spiritually, emotionally. On top of that had been the pain she’d sensed in him, the pain she had hoped to cleanse from him by joining with him completely.
Despite everything that had happened between them, that pain still lurked inside him. She knew that from the way he had grown chilly and distant from her during the drive over here. And no doubt it was the fear of deepening that pain that made him want to protect her. A part of her melted inside. But she didn’t like being shunted off to the side like this, regardless of his motivation.
She looked out a window at the fading afternoon light and asked him, “What are you going to do?”
“Our forces are converging on the area. We have surveillance on the castle to let us know when Rendell and the other overlords arrive. Once we’re sure that they’re all there, we’ll go in and take them out.”
“It really is like a war, isn’t it? D-Day for vampires.”
Despite his evident determination to remain terse and grim, a smile touched his lips for a second. “I suppose you could say that. This is nowhere like on that scale, though. Counting all the vampires and the humans who work for them, there probably won’t be more than seventy or eighty people at the castle.”
“And how many men will you have?”
“Fifty to sixty.”
“So you’ll be outnumbered.”
He nodded. “Yes, but we know what we’re doing. And there’ll be enough members of the Brandt family on hand to help even the odds.”
“No direct descendants other than you, though,” she guessed.
“This is my operation,” he said with a shrug. “I’m the one who got wind of the summit and planned the whole thing. There was some opposition within the family, too. Some of them thought it might be too risky. But it seemed worth the risk to me. How often are you going to find that many of the overlords in one place?” He paused and then laughed. “Do you know what the actual code name for D-Day was within the Allied command?”
Jessie shook her head.
“Operation Overlord,” Michael said. “So what you said was even more appropriate than you realized.”
Jessie didn’t appreciate the irony at the moment. “I’m worried, Michael.”
“You don’t need to be,” he said. “You’ll be fine. Clifford’s going to stay with you, once he gets here. He’s been injured enough over the years that he doesn’t take part in large-scale missions like this anymore.”
I’m not worried about me, you idiot, Jessie thought, but something else he’d just said caught her attention. “Clifford’s hurt?” she asked with a frown. “I never noticed him limping or anything like that.”
“He hides it well, but he’s been through the wars. He’s done his share of fighting. Even so, he didn’t like it when I told him he was going to be staying here. He agreed, though, when I said…”
“That you needed him to look after me,” Jessie said in an accusing tone as Michael’s voice trailed off.
“Well…yes. I can’t risk anything happening to you, Jessie. Not now that…that…”
She moved closer to him and put a hand on his arm. “Not such a suave, debonair playboy now, are you? You’re almost tongue-tied.”
“Damn it,” he said. “You’re the one who makes me that way.”
Almost before she had time to feel a surge of happiness that she could touch his emotions that much, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. His mouth swooped down on hers with an undeniable urgen
cy, a passion so strong that at this moment it left no room for tenderness, only an aching need. His left arm held her to him while his right hand came up and cupped the back of her head, the fingers burying themselves in her thick midnight-black hair.
Boldly, Jessie opened her mouth and let her tongue dance over his lips, savoring the taste of him. He responded instantly, his lips parting to invite her to explore even more. She reveled in her daring as she thrust her tongue into his mouth and he met it with his.
At the same time their bodies strained together, as if the heat generated by their desire might melt away the clothes that kept skin from skin, flesh from flesh. Jessie shivered with pleasure as Michael’s left hand slid under her shirt and stroked her back. His fingers glided down and insinuated themselves under the waistband of her jeans. Searing heat surged through her as he touched her panties, then moved under them as well, caressing the curves of her ass. That wonderful torment made her tilt her hips so that her pelvis drove up against the growing hardness of him. Even with all the momentous events swirling around them, all the tragedy of the past and the danger of the future, when she was in his arms and kissing him like this all she could think about, all she wanted, was to have him filling her again, transporting her to the same sort of bliss they had shared earlier in the day.
Suddenly she tore herself out of his arms. The desperate need she felt for him was reason enough not to give in to the temptation. She didn’t want him to think she was using sex to try to get her way, nor did she want to give him the impression that he could placate her by taking her to bed. As delicious and fulfilling as their lovemaking had been, it occupied a completely separate place in their lives from their disagreement over her standing in this war against the vampire overlords.
“Look, we have to settle this,” she said in a voice choked thick with emotion.
“It is settled,” Michael said. “You’re staying here, where you’re safe.”
“I’d be just as safe if I went along with you but didn’t actually take part in the raid on the castle.” She could make that concession, she told herself. She didn’t have to like it, but she could go along with it if she had to. “I’d stay out of the way, so you wouldn’t have to worry about me, but I’d still be close by.”
He shook his head and insisted, “I’d worry about you anyway. If we’re defeated…”
If they were defeated, it would probably mean that Michael was dead. And Jessie wouldn’t allow herself to even consider that possibility.
“The vampires won’t win, Michael,” she said. “You know that. Good always triumphs over evil, doesn’t it?”
She regretted the words as soon as she said them, and saw the flash of remembered pain and sorrow in his eyes.
A chirp from one of the sensors interrupted them, indicating that someone was approaching the safe house. Michael glanced at the wall of monitors, and Jessie’s eyes followed the direction of his gaze. On one of the screens she saw a nondescript sedan coming up the long driveway toward the house.
“That’s Clifford,” Michael said. “I’m glad to see that he made it here safely.”
Jessie felt a pang of disappointment. Not only would Michael have reinforcements for his point of view in the person of Clifford, but there went their privacy, as well. Any hope of making love again before he set off on his mission was gone.
The time they had shared together in the shower would have to be enough…for now.
But such a thing as “enough” didn’t really exist where she and Michael were concerned, Jessie reflected. No matter how many times she felt his hard-muscled body bringing earth-shaking pleasure to her, she would always want more.
To take her mind off those heated thoughts, she said, “That car doesn’t look like much, but I’ll bet it’s one of those James Bond specials, too.”
“I told you, no ejector seats,” Michael said with a hint of a smile. “Just armor and a few weapons.”
Jessie turned away from the monitor and went into the living room to watch from the window as Clifford drove around the house to park in the back, where a big shed served as a makeshift garage. The compactly built, gray-haired man came in a few minutes later, carrying a crossbow in one hand and a double-barreled shotgun tucked under his other arm.
“Any problems getting here?” Michael asked him.
Clifford shook his head. “No, I think I shook off any followers. Any sign of Max yet?”
“He hasn’t shown up.”
“We left at the same time,” Clifford said, a slight frown creasing his forehead. “I hope he’s all right.”
So did Jessie. Max had made it clear that he didn’t like her very much, but he and Michael had been partners in this fight for a long time, and anyway, they were family. She wouldn’t wish anything bad on Max, no matter how surly or sarcastic he could be around her.
After a while she could tell that Michael was starting to worry, too. He was in radio contact with the men assigned to watch the castle, and he told them to keep their eyes open for any sign of Max.
“You don’t think he’d go out there without us, do you?” Clifford asked.
“It’s not likely, but you never know what he gets into his head,” Michael admitted. “I’m going to see if I can raise him on the radio.”
Before he could do that, though, another alarm chirped. The sun had gone down now and full darkness had begun to settle over the Texas landscape, but the displays on the monitors were as bright as ever. The surveillance cameras switched over to infrared when night fell, Jessie realized.
Clifford heaved a sigh of relief as he looked at one of the monitors. “There he is now.”
Jessie saw a sporty little car approaching the house. As it came closer, though, she realized that it wasn’t slowing down. In fact, Max was taking the roughly paved road a little too fast, causing the car to bounce and weave a little.
Michael must have noticed the same thing, because he said in a suddenly tense voice, “Something’s wrong.”
He was at the front door almost before Jessie realized that he’d moved. Before he could jerk open the door and rush outside, Clifford reached him and gripped his arm. The older man’s face was pale and drawn with worry, but he said, “Wait a minute, Michael. You can’t just rush out there. It might be a trap.”
One of the muscles in Michael’s jaw jumped a little as he forced himself to slow down and think about what he was doing. Jessie saw that and her heart went out to him. She wanted to go to him and tell him that everything was going to be all right.
But she didn’t know that, of course. She didn’t know that at all.
Max’s car slowed to a stop in front of the farmhouse, raising a cloud of dust as it did so. All three of the people inside the house had abandoned the security monitors and now stood in the living room, which was furnished in an old-fashioned style suiting the outward appearance of the place. Clifford killed the lights in the room so Michael could push the curtain back over the big front window and they could all look out.
Jessie’s chest tightened with worry as she saw the driver’s door swing open, but no one emerged. Then, after a few seconds that seemed longer than they really were, Max appeared, gripping the open door and using it to brace himself as he climbed out. He stood hunched over as if in pain.
“He’s hurt,” Michael said.
With his face now white as a sheet, Clifford nodded. “We’ve got to do something, but it could still be a trap.”
A low growl came from Michael. “The hell with a trap,” he said, his voice so rough that it sounded almost like that of a stranger to Jessie. “If it is, we’ll just kill ’em all.”
And with that he yanked the front door open and hurried out onto the porch, heedless of anything Jessie and Clifford might say or do to stop him. At this moment he was unstoppable, Jessie realized, as much a force of nature as he was a man.
Because his friend and cousin was hurt, maybe dying, and Michael wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of helping Max.
Michael saw the dark stain on Max’s shirt as he sprang to his cousin’s side. Max swayed and seemed about to fall when Michael’s hand closed around his arm and held him up. Max managed a grin in the light of the rising moon.
“Sorry I’m…late,” he said, his voice weak and unsteady. “Ran into a little…trouble on the way.”
“How bad is it?” Michael asked.
“Not bad. Just…a scratch. Got in a firefight…with a couple of those bastards who…work for Spaulding and…the other overlords. A round…grazed my side.”
“What happened to the bad guys?” Michael asked, even though he had a feeling that he already knew the answer.
A grim chuckle came from Max. “That’s two less…we’ll have to worry about…when we hit the castle.”
Michael didn’t think it was very likely Max would be going along on that raid. The big man had lost a lot of blood. But the final determination of that could wait until he got Max inside the safe house and had a look at his wound.
Michael put an arm around Max’s waist and supported his weight as they started toward the steps up to the porch. “Can you make it?” he asked.
“Sure…I can. Just…watch me.”
Jessie and Clifford emerged from the house, Clifford carrying the shotgun he had brought with him earlier. He scanned the area around the house for any enemies as Jessie hurried down the steps and said, “Let me help.”
The Vampire Affair Page 13