He cut himself off, unable to go on. He dropped his hold and walked a few paces away.
“Why?” she prompted, taking a hesitant step towards him. “Go on. Why, Marcos?”
Marina was always good at remembering names. She had to be, in her business. It’s the only real talent she had – her memory for names, faces and personal information.
He looked up at her.
“‘And ye shall wander, alone and unfulfilled, awaiting a merciful angel that will deliver thee.’”
“What?” Marina asked softly.
“I remember,” Marcos said in quiet wonder. “I remember it all now. You’re the answer. You’ve broken the curse, my merciful Angel.”
“Curse?”
Marcos laughed softly. “I even forgot the answer to ending my torment. Even if I hadn’t, I doubt I would have considered that the ‘merciful angel’ would be one such as you.”
“What? A psychic? An erotic dancer?” Marina asked, scowling at him.
“A human,” Marcos answered bluntly.
The device of Clan Destrati remained unchanged over the centuries – a six-winged seraph standing with a blazing sword. The pendant marked the wearer as under the protection of the clan. Marcos lifted the chain with a finger.
“Even one wearing the device of my clan,” he continued. “How did you come by this?”
“There’s an old story my grandma used to tell, about how one of our ancestors lived after being attacked by a vampire,” Marina stammered, unsure. “Since there’s no such thing, and it was an old story – every family has one – we just thought it was, you know, something she told us just to get us to behave or the reason we had to go to church or something. In it a priest came by and gave my ancestor help of some kind, and this pendant. Grandma said it would keep me safe when she gave it to me, and it might be silly, but so far, it’s worked. I just wear it now because . . . you know . . . angels.”
She shrugged.
Marcos nodded slowly. “Humans are prey to my kind, and though I should do so, I cannot renounce you,” Marcos said softly, beside her again without her noticing him move. “No matter what symbol you wear . . . or what clothes you’re wearing . . . or not wearing . . . ”
His closeness was overpowering. Marina looked up at him. He was taller than she remembered, than he was in her dreams. He had no scent, except the smell of his long leather coat. His dark eyes were hard to look away from, and she found she didn’t want to. His arm found her waist, and he bent his head to place a gentle kiss on her brow.
“Mmm,” Marina murmured as she found herself leaning in to him, in spite of the fact that she’d sworn off men for a long time to come. She’d had enough of men to last her a while. “Why haven’t I been able to forget you since the night you stormed in here?”
“Because I’m in your blood, quite literally,” he replied. “It knows me. I acted upon the overwhelming hunger within me, and it realized, even if I didn’t, what it was I held in my arms. Had I known . . . ”
His lips brushed against hers lightly.
“How would you like to sleep elsewhere tonight?” Marcos asked gently. He brushed an errant lock of her hair back over her ear. “In a real bed?”
“Yours?” she asked wryly. “You’re gorgeous, honey, I’ll give you that, and seriously sexy, but I don’t do dead guys. That’s just wrong.”
Marcos laughed and lowered his lips to her neck.
“I’m not dead,” he whispered in her ear. “Do I feel dead to you?”
He pressed his lean body against hers. She felt his desire hard against her thigh as his hand moved from her waist to her behind.
She gasped as he caressed her bottom, so unlike the way some guys did when she’d been a waitress. Unlike the way they did at the club when they thought the bouncer wasn’t looking.
Oh, God, please never let him stop doing what he is doing. Marina surprised herself with the thought. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted a man to touch her. She didn’t like men fondling her. She didn’t like their closeness or their hot, heavy breathing or the way they looked at her when they were turned on. The way they wanted her. Men were pigs.
“I’m not a pig, Angel.”
Marina’s eyes widened as he spoke her thought aloud. The way he said her name, with that sexy accent. “Ahn-hel.”
Marcos laughed again at the incredulity in her mind. He nipped at her neck, teasing, and pulled back to smile at her.
“You have a great deal to learn about a great many things,” he said indulgently. “The first of which is that, though I am a vampire, I am not one of the ‘undead’. This body is soulless, to be sure, but it is still very much alive. I have never died. I traded my soul for immortality. I have spent the whole of a human lifetime drowning in desperate, unfulfilled hunger, and now that it is finally sated, I find another desire has taken its place.”
He lowered his lips to hers again.
Marina whimpered at the feel of his kiss. It was unreal, unlike anything she’d ever experienced, and she had more experience than she cared to think about.
She slid her arms around his neck as the kiss deepened, grateful he was truly there doing what he’d done nightly in her dreams.
Oh, God. What if he’d never come back?
“I would have come back,” Marcos assured her, hearing her thought. “If only because I was curious as to why I didn’t take your blood that first night. Now how about that bed? A decent meal, a bath . . . ”
“Hey now,” Marina said, pulling back to glare at him. “I just took a shower at the gym this morning.”
“And you reek of that foul incense, not to mention the sweat of lesser, though no less desirous men,” Marcos replied. “A thorough shower wouldn’t harm you. Those I’m going to take you to meet will insist upon it, besides. Their sensibilities are just as acute as mine are, and just as easily offended. Sometimes more so.”
“Where are we going?” Marina asked through a nervous laugh.
“To meet my family,” he replied quietly.
Clan Destrati. It had been so long. Would they remember him? Had they given him up for lost or slain? Clan wars still raged.
“Now?” she asked, pulling him back to her with an impish grin. “We were just getting acquainted and you’re ready for me to meet the family?”
Marcos laughed in spite of himself and smiled back at her, baring his fangs unashamedly.
Those were seriously disturbing, but nonetheless impressive.
“So you’re a vampire, huh? Have you come to suck my blood?” she teased, offering her neck playfully.
Marcos laughed again.
“Lead me not into temptation, señorita,” he replied as he nipped at her throat. “I am perfectly capable of finding it on my own, especially with your intoxicating nearness. I’ve yet to eat this evening.”
Marina whimpered. Her arms slid around his neck, her fingers curling into his dark hair.
Soft bites accompanied the kisses along her neck up to her mouth. Marcos looked into her eyes for a moment, wanting to see the breathless desire he knew would be there. Marinia was indeed finding it particularly difficult to breathe at the moment. Don’t lead him into temptation, huh? She remembered the Lord’s Prayer from Sunday school.
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
He was one evil she found herself praying not to be delivered from.
Blood and Thyme
Camille Bacon-Smith
“Have you fed tonight?”
Martin Harris looked up from the computer screen with forks and spoons dancing in his head – Rachmaninoff played softly on his iPod, so it was a strange dance – and blinked a minute to backburner the flatware counts. It was dark in the tiny office tucked next to the pantry, with nothing but the glow of the laptop screen for light, but he could see well enough. The dim light from the kitchen picked up the silver in Frank’s hair, carved shadows at the corners of his mouth as he waited patiently in the doorway, his sleeve a
lready rolled past his wrist. A quick sip wouldn’t hurt, but Martin had fed before the party. He didn’t need it right now, and Frank was looking a little pale anyway – Helene had kept him busy tonight.
“No, I’m good.”
“Do you need anything else before I go?”
Over Frank’s shoulder, the dimmed kitchen overheads cast a pale glow on the gleaming stainless steel refrigerators, reminding Martin of his singular failure. “Can you cook?”
Frank laughed softly. “No better than the last time you asked. Unless you need something else, I’m going to send everybody home.”
Martin thought a minute. Clean-up was done for the night. They could inventory plates in the morning. “No, that’s fine. Let the staff know they did an excellent job. They should be pleased with their envelopes.” Helene DeCourcy’s tip had been outrageous even by Red Heart standards. Worth it though. The staff kept their mouths shut and his clients fed, and they showed up for the next gig every time he called. Sometimes, they were a little too loyal.
“You’re sitting out the next one. And grab a roast beef sandwich before you go. It’s bad for my reputation when my headwaiter faints in the hors d’oeuvres.”
“Yeah, I know.” Frank laughed, stripped off his jacket, a black tuxedo with a discreet red heart embroidered on the lapel. “But it was Helene and I need a new transmission.” Frank never let the puncture marks show, but it would take a serious inspection to find where Helene DeCourcy had fed. Best customer, best headwaiter the company ever had, and Martin thought there was more than snacking going on there, maybe had been for thirty years. But he was no good to Martin if he showed up a quart low.
“One more thing. Second Street’s off-limits tonight.” Second Street had a couple of after-hours clubs where the restaurant crowd gathered for a drink when the customers had all gone home. But not his staff. Not tonight.
“Hunting?” Frank paused in the doorway, a silver brow raised speculatively.
Martin didn’t deny it. Helene had used Red Heart Catering for over a hundred years, and he was still the only game in town for a party like they had tonight, where the guests fed on canapés and the well-turned wrist. But Helene had already warned him about the next one. The mayor was invited.
Martin needed a chef.
“Have you heard of Rita DeLeone?” He waited while Frank went through his own mental filing system.
“Didn’t she run Prescot’s catering side for a while? Last I heard, she’d left him for a little ten-table place of her own in a strip mall in Cherry Hill. Good food, by all accounts. Don’t know what happened to it.”
“Snow.” Martin had done his homework. “The roof fell in. She’s doing pick-up work this side of Broad.”
Restaurant Row had a demanding clientele. Frank broke into a wide grin. “My God, we could finally get you out of the kitchen! For that I’d give up drinking entirely!” He left with a backwards wave of his hand. “Nobody will get in your way tonight.”
Then Martin was alone with the hum of the refrigerators. He had to do this, for the good of the company. So he ran his fingers through his hair to bring the short blond spikes back to some sort of attention, left his tailored overcoat in the closet and slipped into the bomber jacket instead. Out there somewhere was the answer to all his problems. He just had to find her.
“Card?” Let-out, when the bars all tipped their customers onto the sidewalk to fend for themselves, had come and gone but Stan’s place stayed open late for members only. At Stan’s, that meant five bucks and a job in the business. Rita flashed her card and slipped in past the guard at the door. The club wasn’t much wider than a railroad car but it went back for half a block under a narrow tin ceiling that hadn’t dumped a ton of snow onto the kitchen in all its 150 years. The crowd was comfortable, winding down after a long night serving other people. Rita said a few “hellos” on her way to the bar and grabbed the last empty stool, caught some guy with spiky blond hair and a leather bomber jacket staring. He looked away quickly, fussed with the bottle of Sly Fox IPA in front of him, but she knew the look.
Her lucky night, except she doubted his interest involved her legs, her curves, or the long dark hair she let down in unruly waves after work. He probably just hadn’t gotten the word yet. Her restaurant was still sitting under the rubble. She gave Doug behind the bar a halfhearted smile. “Yingling,” she said, ordering a decent, reasonable local lager instead of her usual, and mentally put another five dollars in the piggy bank. Doug had already gone for the wine bottle, or she might have gotten away with it.
Behind her, something caught his eye. “Courtesy of the gentleman.” He set a wine glass on the bar, filled it and left the bottle.
Bomber Jacket Guy angled in next to her, an elbow covered in old, worn leather propped on the dinged-up mahogany. She really was not in the mood. “Tell the gentleman I can buy my own drinks, thank you.” But Doug was already pulling beers for a crew at the end of the bar and pointedly not listening.
“Looking for a job?” Bomber Jacket Guy was about thirty-five, she guessed, with blue eyes pale as ice. She’d already noticed the hair – a little too metro for her tastes, if she’d been looking. Which she wasn’t.
She considered possible answers – Not in that line of work. It’ll cost you more than a bottle of wine – but Bleu’s chef was back on Monday and her restaurant, Sophie’s, was in shambles. Rita was pretty desperate for a job, so she lifted the glass and said, “What’ve you got?” instead.
He leaned in, set his beer on the bar. “Martin Harris. And it’s what I don’t have that’s the problem.” He held out his hand, realized the bottle had dewed it up and grabbed a napkin from a stack next to the beer taps with a self-conscious smile on lips that really weren’t bad. But that line? Awful.
He seemed to know it and was laughing at himself, so she had to laugh with him.
“Weak. I’d give it a six.”
“True, though.”
OK, she’d grant him the killer smile. Average height, average build. A little athletic, maybe, but he didn’t look like he worked out, which was a plus. It might not cost him more than a bottle of wine after all.
The woman next to her slapped a ten on the bar and got up to leave. Martin Harris slid onto the abandoned stool like he’d been waiting for it all his life. Another Sly Fox appeared in front of him and Rita realized that she’d lost track of the conversation . . .
“High profile . . . Four hundred . . . Wednesday.”
“I’m a chef. If you’re looking for waiters, there’re three of them down the bar.”
“You’re what I need. Really. My chef moved back to Paris. She taught me everything I know before she left but –”
“Right.” Then she fed him the punchline just to see what he’d do. “Not everything she knew.”
“She’s my mother and even she said I was hopeless. I pay really well when I’m desperate.” He slid a card across the bar – address printed on the right and a rounded red heart on the left. Red Heart Catering. They’d been around a long time. Very discreet, so she didn’t know much about them, but very high end.
“You don’t even know that I can cook!”
“Prescot’s liked you well enough,” he pointed out. And yeah, she could cook for a crowd. But then he said, “Sophie’s, on Route 73. It needed a serious upgrade on the décor, but the veal medallions with sweetbreads were perfect.”
If he thought the décor wasn’t much then, he should see the place now. But he’d liked the food, which started a warm, blanket-by-the-fire feeling under her ribs that Rita knew meant trouble. She was not going to fall for a guy who was not her type just because he liked her sweetbreads. She drank the wine anyway, and it felt soft rolling down her throat. Hadn’t expected the way his eyes warmed up when she tilted her head back. It threw her enough that she answered him with “Wednesday?” before she knew what she was saying, or offering.
Watching the play of muscles against the stretch of her throat as she swallowed, his mouth wen
t dry. A good beer was fine, and he’d told Frank the truth, he didn’t need to feed this soon. But his fingers itched for the nape of her neck and only force of will kept his points retracted. Her pulse filled his senses, throbbing on her skin and beating in his ears, and he matched her, heartbeat for heartbeat, without thinking. Oh, gods, the scent rising off her skin – warm living blood on the inside and the smells of a kitchen still clinging on the outside. Butternut squash and striped bass and truffles rising like the hope of heaven through the aloe and lilac of her soap. He’d pay anything she asked for just the occasional sip, but knew better than to make the proposition. He needed her too badly as his chef to risk a red-heart offer. Maybe after Helene’s party for the mayor . . .
Her chin came down and she set the glass aside. The moment passed and he hadn’t done anything to scare her away.
“Wednesday?” she said again, reminding him he had business to conduct here.
“At eight, with Helene DeCourcy, to finalize the menu.” He poured her another glass of wine. She was pretty – especially her wide, dark eyes and, well, her throat – which complicated things. He’d already figured her for smart, which helped on the business end, and that also complicated things. But Helene had been adamant about the food.
“We’ve got the Great Stair Hall and balcony at the Art Museum. If you’re free on Monday, around six, we can go over the plans. You can make any changes to the menu that seem appropriate, and we’ll meet with Helene on Wednesday. She just needs some reassurance that I won’t poison the mayor. When word gets around that we have a new chef, you’ll have plenty to do. In the meantime, you’ll want to revise menus, maybe make some changes in kitchen staff. I’ll leave that all up to you.”
Too much. He’d had her through the mayor’s party, but she pulled back when he started talking about a longer calendar. By the time he’d reached “up to you” she had pushed her glass away and Martin clamped his mouth shut. He wished he’d done it a few minutes earlier, before she felt the need to remind him, “This is strictly short term. I’m just waiting for repairs to my roof. Best veal medallions with sweetbreads in New Jersey, remember?”
Love Bites UK (Mammoth Book Of Vampire Romance2) Page 17