by Faith Hunter
Most blood-servants carry the scent of only one vamp, the result of the bonding that takes place over time. A blood-servant and vamp stay together for decades, the servant providing a safe and constant supply of blood, emotional stability, and other services—those which might, in a human household, be fulfilled by lovers, employees, and paid servants—services that the pair mutually agree upon, in return for a living wage and tiny sips of vamp blood. The sips keep the servants younger, healthier, and assure a long and vigorous life, assuming that they survive any rages, grieving, or other mental snaps by the vamp.
A blood-slave has a similar, but more casual, arrangement and may be passed around within a clan, therefore smelling like multiple vamps, but usually only one clan. Blood-junkies were a big step below, making themselves available at parties for most anything the vamps wanted, from a quick meal to a quick lay. They were the blood addicts of the vamp world, and a growing, call girl-type business in cities that catered to vamp travelers. Only a blood-junkie smelled like multiple vamps from multiple clans. Madame Melisende smelled like a blood-junkie minus the lingering smell of sex. So, weird, but not really worth worrying about.
The woman pushed me into position in the middle of the room, looking me over. She made little humming noises as she walked around me, repositioning me as she moved, arms outstretched, then down, feet together, then apart. Satisfied, she took measurements at waist, bust, midriff, above my bust, hips, butt, shoulders, arm length, and in-seam, calling them out as the assistant took notes.
When she was done, Madame Melisende took the clipboard, studied it a moment, then looked at me as if passing judgment. She said in an outraged French accent, “Hmmph. You are Amazon. However shall I accouter you in the designated time?” she demanded.
A hot, embarrassed flush shot through me. Rick whooped. Molly tittered.
Though I was brought up in a Christian children’s home and was raised to know better, I glared at Melisende when I said, “It’s okay, lady. I’m pretty sure I can’t afford you anyway. So you can just take a hike. Besides, I have a dress.”
“Let me see this dress you claim to have,” she said with an acerbic sniff.
She followed when I marched into my room and took the dress out of my hand even before I got it out of the closet. I followed her back into the light. She held it up and gaped. “Mon Dieu. This is dreadful, more dreadful than I can speak.” And then she let out a stream of French and threw the dress across the room.
Beast leaped into my eyes. Molly’s eyes bugged out; Rick’s amusement faded to be replaced by something very still and thoughtful. My voice dropped an octave. “That’s my only dress.”
Unperturbed by whatever the others saw in my eyes, Madame Melisende drew herself up to her full nearly five feet in height. “Good! Du chiffon. Des déchetes!” And she spat a bunch of words to her assistant, who scurried outside.
“That. Is. My only. Dress,” I said again, hearing the growl in my voice.
“No. It is not.” She sniffed again. “Now you will have three proper dresses, and I will take the rag away with me, never to be seen again. And when les Mithrans ask you tonight who accouter you as a queen on the throne, you will tell them Madame Melisende. And the elders and old ones will, at last, return to me as they should.”
The last statements brought me up short. The assistant came back in through the front door and piled dresses up on the couch, and went back out and came back in again with more dresses while I interpreted her comments. The woman, imperious and demanding, needed . . . help? She had lost some of her clientele? I was about to ask for clarification when Madame Melisende raised her eyes to mine and commanded, “Strip.”
Rick howled with laughter. Molly giggled.
“Get out,” I told Rick. Still laughing, throwing the dressmaker and me amused, delighted looks, he left, boots clomping. I closed the blinds, locked the door, and stripped. And became a dressmaker’s dummy. The next half hour was pure torment as I tried on dress after dress, looked over each one in the bedroom mirror, and started to like it, only to hear the dragon queen disparage it totally. I actually quit looking in the mirror to see if I had an opinion. My preferences didn’t count. Madame Melisende finally chose three dresses, brought in a portable sewing machine, and started altering.
I slipped into a robe, fell on the sofa, draped myself across the long seat, and accepted a cup of hot tea from a laughing Molly. I closed my eyes. “I’d rather be shot, stabbed, or chewed on by a rogue vamp,” I whispered to her, “than go through being fitted for a formal gown again.”
Molly just chortled as she settled near me on the wing chair Rick had vacated. “It does you good to be a girl once in a while,” she said. “Besides, now you need a new hairdo.”
I groaned. Molly laughed again, but this time I was sure I heard the timbre of a torturer in the tone. Minutes later, I was sitting on a stool while Molly brushed my hair and braided it with tiny gold beads before gathering it all up and wrapping the braids around my head in an elegant do that caught the light. Then she started in on the makeup.
It was worse than I ever expected. I hated it. It was torture, no matter how good Molly said I looked. Molly made my eyes stand out like Cleopatra’s, dusted something on my skin that made it glisten like gold dust, and put enough mascara on me to weigh down my lids. And she wouldn’t let me look over the work—kept turning me away from the mirror with a firm hand. I could have muscled her for my own way, but Molly is my friend and she was having too much fun for me to simply stomp out.
It was late when Madame Melisende and her nameless assistant were done stitching, hemming, letting out, and taking in. They stuffed me into a dress, brought in all the lamps, and led me, my eyes closed, to the full-length mirror. Molly, the madame, the mouse who had no name I’d heard, and a sleepy-eyed Angelina, woken just for the final show, gathered around. In total silence. And I opened my eyes. I stood there in my one good pair of black dancing heels, wearing only my gold nugget as jewelry, the dress slithering around me like, like, like nothing I had ever felt before, I stared at myself in the bedroom mirror.
I gaped. Turned. “Holy . . . uh . . . moly,” I whispered, in deference to Angie. I looked like a million bucks. A stylish, high-maintenance, girly, sophisticated million bucks.
The heels added three inches to my six feet in height. The silk knit dress started at my instep and rose in a loose sheath to my hips, which were banded by satin to my midriff in a tight cummerbund look. Above that wide band was a plunging neckline, the deep V crisscrossed with satin strips, the halter top strap a satin band about an inch thick. Oh—and the slash up my left leg, which made me look totally hot, was perfect for dancing. I did a little dance step, which showed an unseemly amount of thigh. “Perfect,” I said, thrilled despite myself.
Beast nudged herself into my thoughts. Prey clothes. She sent me an image of two cats reflected in a pool of still, black water in a clearly amorous position, the full moon over their shoulders, the male scent-marking the female by rubbing his jaw over her head and ears. Instantly I recalled the photograph of Leo and Katie, in their own clearly amorous position. Beast purred happily.
I sighed quietly so that Madame Melisende couldn’t hear. A nameless feeling tremored along my skin, lifting the fine hairs. I smoothed the dress along my body. I wasn’t wearing my own underwear. The madame had cut mine from me and tossed them into the garbage with a “One does not ruin the lines of a creation avec les culottes. Foolish girl.” And she had tossed me a body smoother that looked like a torture device. I had cussed under my breath while pulling on the nearly invisible wisp of discomfort. But the dressmaker was right. The smoother was perfect, and the dress would have been ruined by panty lines.
I smoothed my hands along my sides again, feeling the prickly sensation of Beast rolling over and stretching in my mind. Sex. It was the feeling of sex.
This full moon was going to be difficult.
A single knock sounded at the door and I looked at a clock. Which was
totally wrong, thanks to Ada. Molly checked through the windowed door, chuckled evilly, threw me a look, and opened the door. Rick walked in, boots loud in the quiet room. He searched the space and found me. And stopped dead.
“Good Lord Almighty,” he breathed.
Molly laughed delightedly, Madame Melisende chortled with pride, and Angie clapped her hands together. “Aunt Jane is a beautemous princess,” she said.
I smelled his reaction. Rick thought I looked hot. For some reason, that made me feel confident and shy all at the same time, and my palms started to sweat. I brazened it out. “Not bad, eh? For a vamp killer?” I glanced at the madame and added, “No offense to your clients.”
She sniffed, glanced at her watch, and said, “Monsieur Pellissier’s servant will arrive in eight minutes.” She made a little hand-sweeping motion to the mouse, who jumped up from her perch at the sewing machine, began gathering all the discarded dresses, and carting them outside. The madame hung my two other new dresses in my empty closet and turned to leave, giving me the once-over, and tucking a handful of her cards into my palm. “For the inquiries. By appointment only.” She sniffed one last time and went back out the door the way she had entered, as if she owned the place, the mouse scurrying behind her.
I whirled, showing a lot of leg and nearly as much cleavage. Rick sat down. As much to conceal his reaction as to keep out of the way. Molly took Angie by the hand and closed the door on the last of the fashion show. The van roared off into the very dark night.
Before Rick had a chance to say anything more about me in my dress, new headlights pulled in front of the house, the sound of an engine idling through the open windows. I had left a thigh sheath on the toilet, and while Molly went to the door, I strapped the weapon Bruiser had denied me to the back of my thigh, making sure that neither the knife hilt nor the sheath showed. Then I eased a slender blade into my hair and tucked several wooden stakes into my braids like hair sticks. A small cross I sheathed in a lead-lined packet and shoved it into the bottom of the V of the neckline. The dress held it nicely in place, and the lead would keep it from glowing by accident.
I had gone unarmed into the presence of multiple vamps once before. Not gonna happen again. With a final twirl to make sure the knife sheath didn’t show beneath the fabric, I took a deep breath and listened.
CHAPTER 7
Scent-marking me
Molly opened the door before the knock sounded and let Bruiser inside with a murmured “George. Come in.” His scent, clean and crisp and slightly citrusy, blew in on the night breeze.
The last time Bruiser had picked me up for a party, I didn’t have an audience. I looked down at myself, all gussied up, and discomfort shot through me like an electric pulse. I flushed and took a breath to force the embarrassment back down. There was no place for blood flushes where I was going. Or for sexual arousal either. Standing in the shadows, I breathed deeply, getting myself under control. My fingers rested on the thigh strap and I felt a measure of assurance return. One slender vamp-killer, one silvered knife, one cross, and stakes. The uneasiness blew out on a breath and I turned to the door.
Bruiser was in a tux. I had seen him in a tux before, but hadn’t taken the time to really study him. The suit was fitted to him, tailored to his form and cupping the curve of his butt like two smooth, happy hands. The coat sat on his broad shoulders and wisped down his chest as if it loved to touch him and couldn’t let go. The blood-servant of Leo Pellissier looked like sex on a stick. Something low down in my belly tightened and heated.
Bruiser offered a cordial, businesslike hello to Rick, masking any curiosity he might be feeling. He spotted me in the doorway. It was too dark for a human to see me, but he did. His eyes followed the dress from the floor to my breasts and on to my face. “Jane Yellowrock. You look lovely.”
I stepped into the front room and couldn’t think what to do with my hands. So I just stood there, fighting a blush, as the two men stared at me. Molly handed me a tiny black purse on a short, looped cord and said, “From the dressmaker. Your ID and a hundred dollars are inside. Try to be home before you turn into a pumpkin.”
“Miss Jane,” Bruiser said, holding the door for me. I stepped out into the humid night and into the chilled, leather-seated limo.
The slightly stretched Lincoln could hold six passengers on two bench seats, but just as the last time Bruiser took me to a vamp party, there were only the two of us, the privacy partition up between the driver and the back. He slid in beside me and sat close, his thigh touching mine.
The car pulled from the curb and into the dark streets, its armoring making it ride low and heavy, like a highly polished tank. I wondered if there were weapons in the body of the vehicle, like a James Bond or Batman car, but didn’t think I’d get a straight answer if I asked. Behind the limo, I heard Rick’s Kow-bike start up, and knew he was leaving. I glanced back just in time to see him speed away, and the wards’ formidable bluish sparkle encase the house.
We moved through the blacker-than-usual night and the unlit city. The last time I was escorted to a soiree, George played tour guide, pointing out landmarks and offering bits of history. This time, he settled back at an angle, arms bent at the elbows, hands laced across his stomach, and studied me, paying close attention to the slit in the dress and the wedge of leg I had left peeking out from thigh to toes. When he had taken in the long length of leg, he lifted his eyes to my cleavage and the gold necklace there. Not that I thought he was looking at the nugget. I didn’t have a lot of cleavage, but what I had was nicely plumped by the dress.
He stared. I lifted my brows at his blatant regard, and though he didn’t lift his eyes, a smile twitched across his face and was gone. He dropped his eyes back down. “You have stupendous legs,” he said.
“And you have a great-looking butt.” The words were out of my mouth before I could think them through and I bit down on anything else that might come out. Careful, I thought. Beast panted with amusement and kneaded my mind with her claws, pad-pricking back and forth from paw to paw. It was sharply painful, which was her intent.
Bruiser chuckled and finally met my eyes. “You’re a walking advertisement as a blood donor,” he said baldly. “Every male vamp and half the female ones will want a sample taste.”
Beast went still. Beast is not prey. I narrowed my eyes but Bruiser went on.
“I can protect you as long as you’re with me, but if you wander off on your own, all bets are off. It’s not too late to change your mind.” I didn’t reply. He sighed softly. “Of course, there are other methods we can employ to assure your safety.”
“Methods?”
Bruiser unfolded his hands and reached into his breast coat pocket. He removed a bit of white cloth and extended it to me. My nostrils flared. Vamp! Beast warned, recoiling.
The scent wafted out of the cloth, the peppery smell of fresh vamp blood. I drew in the air through my parted lips. It was the particular blood scent of Leo mixed with the personal scent of Bruiser. I put two and two together and scowled. “What? He offered you a taste tonight and you spat it into a hankie? How sweet of you. Sloppy seconds from a blood feeding.”
Bruiser sighed. “It’ll keep you safe.”
“And it’ll mark me as his. And yours. No, thanks.”
Bruiser sighed again and set the hankie close to his side, on the leather. And launched across the seat. At me. Over me. His body on top of mine. I slid down, landing hard.
I had a weird, time-warped moment to think, He’s attacking. He’s going to mark me whether I like it or not.
Beast hissed. Time slowed further, to the consistency of melting wax.
He landed on me, hands on the limo floor to either side of my head. His mouth inches away. One thigh between mine. Intimate, close, his flesh searing against me. Flashing like brown flame, his eyes captured mine. I could smell his anger.
And something changed, charging the air between us. Fury became desire. And I was pinned. For a long moment, he did nothing. Then his
mouth landed on mine. And time halted.
I sucked in a stunned breath, pulling it from his lungs. Hot mouth, lips punishing. He gripped the back of my neck. Holding me still. Holding me close.
Beast took over. Wrapped my hands behind his neck and kissed him back. Good mate. Strong. Fast.
Bruiser’s tongue raked my lips. Heat flamed through me, scorching, burning, my skin on fire. Breasts tightened into hard buds. I opened my mouth, positioned more firmly against his. Arched up at him. Heard my moan and was helpless against it. Wrapped my arms around him. Clasped him to me. Nails digging into the jacket. He shifted his hips into me, tight into my center, hard and ready. Swollen with need.
He rested his weight on an elbow and slid a hand into the fabric of my dress. Cupped a breast and teased my nipple into a tight hard peak.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Now.” Need drenched me. I lifted my hips toward him.
He shoved the dress strap to the side, freeing my right breast. Twirled his tongue around the nipple. Cupped the aching tip into his mouth and sucked so hard I nearly screamed.
His free hand slid down my body and along my thigh. And stopped at the knife hilt. He froze, his body so still he could have been a vamp. He eased away. Met my eyes, pushed the skirt aside, and took the knife hilt. Pulled it from its sheath with a smooth, tight shush of sound.
Our breathing was rough, unsteady, needy. I held his eyes. Thoughts raced through his, too fast to read.