by Eve Langlais
Wait. When had he forgotten that continued existence wasn’t why he was here?
She had made him forget.
Gently, he eased his fingers from her body as he trailed his other palm from her mouth down the arched column of her throat. She quivered, and he felt her neck spasm as she swallowed hard. He pressed one last soft kiss above her left nipple where the tiny pinpricks from his teeth were nearly invisible, then he eased the lacy bra into place and buttoned her blouse with hands that shook only a little.
She was still sitting tensed above him, her head tilted to one side so her hair fell across her face. But he sensed the disquiet in her hidden sidelong stare.
From beneath his drink, he whisked the napkin, damp with condensation, and soothed it across the tight curls of her pubic hair before letting her panties fall into place.
With a gasp, she clamped her legs shut, catching his hand. “I don’t need–”
Cutting off the thought–I don’t need you–he grasped her hips and lifted her off the table, spinning her in his grasp and setting her ass down on the seat beside him but leaving her knees tented over his lap and her boots up on the seat on the other side of him.
Just as well her knees were bent since his cock was jutting up hard enough to hurt if she sat on his lap.
He smoothed her stockings up over her knees, keeping his touch light and deft and trying to disregard the warm, musky scent wafting from beneath her skirt. Her uncertainty and doubt were harder to ignore. The mélange still swirled between them, binding them on a level deeper than intimacy.
It would fade, and soon, since he hadn’t drunk deeply.
Though he suspected the memory of her husky laughter would leave a scar.
She eyed him, her lower lip caught between her teeth in a way that severely tested his restraint.
He downed the last of his drink and set it down with a brusque clink on the glass tabletop. The napkin, damp with her juices, was wadded up in his pocket.
After a moment, she let out a short breath, a stunted version of the laugh that had been his undoing. “I can’t believe…”
Maybe the list was too long to speak aloud, or maybe she really did believe, but when she didn’t continue, he gave her a crooked smile. He knew this time there was a flash of fang. “Hey, baby. What happens in Vegas…”
Her gaze fastened on his mouth then flicked up to meet his gaze. “Don’t do that.”
He tilted his head. “What?”
“Pretend you’re one of those guys.”
He hadn’t realized pretending was an option. But maybe she was right; who would’ve thought a monster like him could still fear rejection?
“Give me your hand.”
She stared at him. Her knees, pressed tightly together above his lap, trembled imperceptibly, as if she wanted to run. “Why?”
“Do you want to know what kind of man I am?”
Oh, she couldn’t resist a challenge. Her curiosity would be her downfall, as it had been his.
Slowly, she unfurled her hand toward him, her fingers spread wide. “I thought maybe you were a street magician. Are you a palm reader?”
He grasped her wrist in a loose manacle. “No. I’m a vampire.”
Chapter Five
Avery yanked back.
But she didn’t make it far. The instant her muscles tightened, he locked down. All her backward weight didn’t budge his broad shoulders even a millimeter.
So, he wasn’t one of those “hey, baby” guys. He was one of those crazy guys. Just as she suspected. Damn, damn, damn. Did she know how to pick ‘em, or what? And he’d had those unyielding fingers inside her. Damn.
“Let me go,” she said through gritted teeth. “This is over.”
“I think you’d be surprised how many things continue long after you think they’re over.”
She glared at him. “What? Like vampires?”
“The true name for my kind is ravpyrii,” he said. Then he spelled it for her. “That’s the closest approximation in any human tongue. You’ll need that for your story.”
She knew she should scream. Yes, her plaid skirt was still hiked up and the enclosed booth smelled like sex, but those humiliations were nothing. Nothing at all compared to the vast void of crazy she sensed swirling around her.
But she didn’t scream. It had never been her way to scream. Even when she should.
“That’s why you’ve been stalking me? To write a story for Conspiracy Quarterly about you being a vampire?”
“Ravpyrii,” he corrected. “It means ‘the unburning’. We do not die. We endure through the ages, eternally renewed by the life forces of others. The energy of their emotions, your emotions, is a fire that feeds us. I am a ravpyr.”
For a second, she just stared at him, trying to see past his lies. But his black eyes never wavered from hers. The one guy who might have believed what she’d gone through, and he thought he was a vampire. Sorry. Ravpyr. She choked out a derisive laugh.
The breath made the lace of her bra shift over her skin, and her left breast twinged. Not quite pain, but a whisper of pleasure with an edge.
A sharp edge.
She clamped her free hand over the phantom ache. “You bit me,” she accused.
He quirked one black eyebrow. “Yes. I needed to show you.”
“You can’t just go around biting people!”
Those winged brows dropped in a deep furrow. “I don’t ‘just go around’. I chose you. You are the first in… a very long time.”
Her brain spun, going nowhere, as if he had as tight a grasp on her mind as he did on her body. “Show me your teeth.”
“Ah, the money shot.”
She glared at him. “If you’re an ancient vampire, what do you know about money shots?”
“I’ve been watching pay–per–view in my suite.” He shrugged. “I can’t follow you every hour of the day.”
“Because the light of the sun will turn you to ash.”
“The unburning, remember?” He shook his head. “We grant humans the solace of daylight, but it won’t save you. If ravpyrii are creatures of the night, it is only because you burn more brightly in the dark.” For the first time, his gaze slid away from hers, staring past her, unseeing. “And perhaps because we’d rather not see so clearly all we have lost.”
The bleak note in his voice made her stiffen. “You say human as if you aren’t.”
That brought his attention back to her, but the grim set of his expression remained. “I am not. Not anymore.” He raised her hand to his lips. “You asked, so let me show you.”
“Wait.” She strained away, but his iron–hard muscles didn’t so much as twitch, restraining her with ease. “Never mind. I believe you. Just… let me go.”
His breath feathered over her rampaging pulse. “Believing out of fear rather than discovering the truth for yourself? What kind of reporter are you?”
“The kind that writes made–up stories.” Her heart was pounding so hard she thought she might faint. But she wasn’t sure if it was fear… or anticipation.
“Anticipation,” he murmured.
She choked. “Are you reading my mind?”
“No, I’m reading your blood. Your energy flows through your body, through your sweat, your tears, your cum. The mélange I took from your earlier is still in me, and I know you. At least until it fades.”
“Then let it fade. Because this… no. No.”
He waited, poised over her wrist, staring at her through a lock of black hair that had fallen across his obsidian eyes. “Is that what you want? For me to fade?”
She opened her mouth to say exactly that.
But nothing came out.
So he angled his mouth over her wrist. And bit.
She sucked in a shocked breath. Not at the pain–it wasn’t much worse than a paper cut or a hypodermic injection, and she’d had plenty of those over the years–but at the bloom of sensation inside her. The naughty thrill she’d indulged earlier, the instinctive fear when she
’d realized she couldn’t escape him, the burgeoning awe that he might be what he claimed to be… It all roiled together like an exotic layered cocktail flowing toward someone’s mouth.
His mouth.
She focused on his mouth over her wrist. His thin, shapely lips were fastened like he was giving her a hickey, but she felt the pull all the way to her pussy. Her breast, where he’d bitten her before, ached to be touched, and she clamped her hand over the throbbing. Her nipple was peaked through her bra and blouse, stabbing the center of her palm.
She let out a soft moan, and after one last lingering swipe of his tongue, he lifted his head. Two tiny puncture wounds dotted the dark, raised vein in her wrist.
“Think of a number,” he said. “Any number.”
“What?” Her mind was still reeling.
“Sixty–nine.”
She gasped. “You pervert.”
“You thought it.”
She had, though not quite in the mathematical sense. “Lucky guess. What number am I thinking now?”
“Twenty–one.”
This wasn’t possible. How could she believe him? Her mind was whirling faster than any roulette wheel. She tried to cover her uncertainty with a wide–eyed smirk. “Oh my God. We could totally cheat at cards.”
He laughed.
It sounded rusty, as if he’d forgotten how, but she was too focused on his mouth to give that her full consideration. His white teeth glistened in the neon lights sneaking through the curtain beads.
No, not just teeth. Fangs. The two points were touched with blood. Her blood.
The incisors weren’t obscenely long, barely reaching below the level of his other teeth. And at a certain angle, they almost seemed normal, just in need of the retainer she’d imagined earlier. The strangeness would be easy enough to discount if she hadn’t been told…
His smile flattened, hiding his teeth. “Now you are thinking four twenty–one A. Which is the code here for mental illness. But you aren’t thinking I’m crazy. You’re afraid you are.”
She curled her fingers into a fist, and the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist twinged. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
His dark gaze softened, and his grip on her wrist shifted so he was holding her hand instead. “It was… your mother. She took you places, showed you things you still can’t understand. This was long ago, I think, but your mind still whirls with it all.”
She flinched. “You didn’t read that about me anywhere–”
“I didn’t have to. It’s in you, just beneath the surface.” He smoothed his thumb over the back of her hand where traceries of blue veins showed under her skin. “Like invisible ink. But you shared it with me.”
She watched the mesmerizing circle of his thumb. “My mom took me on some wild adventures when I was little. But when she was finally locked up for schizophrenia, I grew up mostly with my grandparents. They loved her, of course, like they loved me, but they explained how sick she was. Now I can’t be sure…” What she wasn’t sure of was why in God’s name she was telling him all this ancient history.
“Now you don’t know what to believe about what really happened when you were a child. Or what’s happening now.”
She wished she had the strength to pull her hand out of his. Not the physical strength, she knew she couldn’t match him there, but the emotional strength. Had he drained that from her with his bite? She didn’t want to run from him anymore; she wanted to curl against his chest. “It doesn’t help that almost everything I write about is a lie.”
He tilted his head. “You like the freaks and the weirdoes, the conspiracy theorists. You like the smell of temple incense and drinking unidentifiable teas. You write under your real name, but you wish you had a secret name–”
“Stop it.” Too much. She strained away from him. “Stop reading me.”
“You follow these stories because each lie you unveil brings you one step closer to the truth. Well, here I am.”
His grip was unrelenting, but it wasn’t so much that he was holding her as he was holding out a chance. A chance to finally know…
“Continue doubting yourself if you must,” he said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I am real. And I want you to let the world know I am real.”
She couldn’t doubt anymore, not with his direct stare and his fangs–not to mention her blood on those fangs–and the way he knew more about her than she’d ever told anyone.
“Why do you want me to expose you?” It wouldn’t go any easier for him than it had for her poor mother.
“Because more strangeness is coming,” he said. “And if those odd ones are to be stripped bare, they’d prefer it to be a pleasurable experience for all involved.”
“More coming? Right. You said there are other ravpyrii.” She stumbled a little over the strange word. “What language is that, anyway? French, like your name?”
He shook his head. “No language that you or any human would know. It doesn’t matter, though, since ravpyrii are so rare you will probably never encounter another. As far as I know, I am the only ravpyr here in the sunlit realm. The others who exist in secret among you are the werelings–shapeshifters who live between two truths: their human bodies and their animal souls. The third realm is the phaedrealii, the court of the phae. In times past, they were called the Shining Folk.”
“Fairies?” She thrust the fingers of her free hand–the hand that wasn’t still clinging to his, as if he wasn’t the one causing all her consternation–into her hair, rubbing her temple. “I can’t even…” Yes. Yes, she could. But if this guy was real, had all her mother’s hallucinations been real too? She let out a shaky breath. “Okay, which realm is yours?”
He hesitated. “Long story. I was human, like you, but I was cursed with a twisted perversion of phae magic. Now I belong nowhere.”
Avery couldn’t hold back a sigh. “Magic. Curses. Why not?”
“It might be a two–page article,” he said solemnly.
She gave him a narrow–eyed stare. He returned the look with a slight smile playing around his lips. The expression tempered the stern lines of his face, and his obsidian eyes seemed less scary abyss and more like the desert’s starry night sky.
He was handsome. She’d known that already. And sexy. Yes, definitely that. And he had dark secrets–hoo boy, did he ever–which had always been unreasonably fascinating to her. But there was also a deep empathy in him, as if he knew too much and yet he’d gone on anyway.
Maybe that came of being immortal.
“Good God,” she muttered. “Why did you all pick a vampire to be your standard bearer?”
He shrugged. “Humans love vampires.”
“On TV!”
“Exactly. They believe everything they see on TV.”
“They’re not going to believe this.” She paused, thinking. “But that’s why you chose me, isn’t it? Since I write things people don’t have to believe, if things go badly, you can throw me under the insanity bus.”
The lingering amusement left his face. “They won’t come for you with pitchforks and burning torches. Not in this time and place.” His fingers tightened around hers almost painfully. “I would never allow anyone to hurt you.”
She swallowed at the ringing tone in his voice. He wasn’t lying about this any more than he’d been lying about being a vampire. Ravpyr, whatever.
But she couldn’t afford to fall blindly under his spell. Did ravpyrii even have spells as fairies–phae, whatever–apparently did? “They might not kill me, but they could damn well lock me up in the cell Mom left behind.”
“Then I’ll break you out. They may all disbelieve in the beginning, but the seed will be planted. Which is all that matters.”
“Why? Why do you care if we believe in you? You aren’t Tinker Bell who dies if we don’t clap.” She paused. “Or are you?”
His dark lashes dropped halfway down over his eyes. “The places where we once hid are disappearing. It’s inevitable in tod
ay’s world that some human will stumble upon us. And I’ve seen what happens when people are confronted with their deepest fears. For everyone’s sake, we must influence how the story plays out.”
She tried to keep her tone light. “A vampire spin doctor.”
He let go of her hand. “I was not a doctor. I was a soldier. And I’d rather not see the return of the phae come to war again in the sunlit realm.”
“You come in peace. That’s what they all say.” Her fingers felt oddly cold without his lingering touch. Could fingers feel lonely? Ugh, that sounded pathetic in her own head. “So what do you want from me?”
“Conspiracy Quarterly goes out to half a million people who are… particularly disposed to hear our message. Starting with them and with your help, the phae and the werelings will open human eyes to their existence. In return, I’ll get you the interview with Barrows that you want so badly.”
The sudden diffidence in his tone made her hackles prickle. “What’s in it for you?”
“I have a promise from the king of the phae to undo my curse.”
She gave a hesitant nod. “So, win–win–win.”
Gently, he dislodged her legs still draped over his lap. She hastened to put her boots firmly back on the floor, where they belonged, not splayed over him like a junkie wanting one more fix.
Most definitely not that.
Despite the abrupt eviction, he held his hand out to her. “Shall we?”
As if she hadn’t just reprimanded her own self, she put her hand in his and scooted toward him, shoving her skirt down into place. “Shall we what?”
“See what’s on the other side.” He gave her a thin smile with a flash of fang.
Man, after what she’d already seen, what other surprises could the rest of the night possibly hold?
Chapter Six
His legs were shaky, his cock still hard as iron, and Avery’s emotions continued to throb through him like the aftershocks of the orgasm he hadn’t had.