“Were you,” I began in wonder, starting to realize that I should have understood the truth of it sooner; “were you with me in my room last night?”
She nodded. “When I found out your apartment had been broken into, I rode to your neighborhood and camped out under your bedroom window, just in case these knuckleheads got any more bright ideas. I was there when I spoke to you. When I said you were safe, I meant it.”
I was thunderstruck. Just when I thought she couldn’t possibly amaze me any more than she already had, she went ahead and did just that. She was like freaking David Blaine, that awesome magician guy on TV, pulling out trick after epic trick.
“It wasn’t the same then,” I told her. “Your voice was different. Like you were in the room, not in my head.”
“I was being polite,” she said. “After everything we’ve talked about tonight – I figured you might not mind if I came in.”
“No, I didn’t mind,” I breathed. It made me feel closer to her somehow. Like she was inside me.
“I’m glad,” she said, looking relieved. “Some people think it’s too invasive.”
“Let me guess,” I said drily. “Brooke?”
She laughed with genuine amusement. I was glad that I could take away some of the pain of it for her. “Yeah,” she said. “She hated it when I did that.”
“Remind me to track her down and kick her ass sometime.”
She smiled. “You don’t need to do that. The truth is, I don’t care about her anymore. The only thing that still hurts is my pride. I’ve moved on.”
She watched me unwaveringly as she said these three words, and my heart flip-flopped in my chest. Damn, she had to stop doing that, or I was going to have to start keeping an emergency defibrillator on hand.
“I’m not much of a dancer,” she admitted. “Do you want to go back to my room, where it’s quiet?”
For some reason, I had trouble answering that question. I was undeniably and irresistibly attracted to her – but I wanted to know her first. I didn’t want to jump headlong into the sack the way I always did. I wanted to give this a chance to actually work.
For the umpteenth time that night, she knew exactly what I was thinking. “We can just talk,” she promised.
I nodded. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
She led me across the club to the back exit, and we crunched through the gravel lot to a door at the opposite end of the building. She took a key out of her pocket and unlocked the door, holding it open for me. I passed inside, and she followed me, closing and locking the door behind us. I wondered how effective that would be, though, if an angry vampire decided he wanted in.
I decided not to worry about it. I trusted Risa, and I wanted to enjoy my evening with her, despite the fact that I was still kind of freaking out about being alone with her in her bedroom. Sometimes I had the decision-making skills of a drunk teenager when I was horny.
We were standing in a spacious living room, accented with black leather furniture, and there was a big screen TV on the wall. Opposite the living room there was a little corridor with a few doors on either side. Risa led me down to the room at the end on the left, opening the door and leading me inside.
The room was very . . . Risa. The carpet was red, and the curtains and bedsheets were black. There wasn’t a lot of furniture, just the bed and a little table next to it with a phone charger. There wasn’t even a bureau. It looked like she kept her clothes in a big box on the floor at the foot of the bed. There were dirty clothes strewn everywhere, jeans and tank tops and multi-colored bikini-style panties.
Oh my gosh. Seeing those panties lying all over the floor made me think of the ones on Risa’s body underneath her jeans – made me want to slowly pull her pants down to find out what color undies she was wearing today.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly, looking around in embarrassment. “I’m kind of messy.”
“So I gathered,” I returned with a wink, stepping over to the bed to sit down on its edge. It looked like a queen size, nice and roomy.
Probably best not to look at it too much. It might give me ideas.
Risa came to sit down next to me. I felt her eyes, and I looked to see what she was staring at.
My hands. She was looking at my hands.
I smiled teasingly. “Do you want to hold my hand?” I asked.
“Yes,” she breathed.
“You’ve held it before.”
“I know. It’s just – here, alone with you like this . . .”
I held my hand out to her, palm facing up, my eyes locked with hers. She took my hand, then looked down, tracing my delicate blue veins with her fingertip.
“You’re so beautiful,” she said quietly. “So strong and funny. I knew from the moment I first saw you – I’d never met anyone like you.”
She raised her eyes to meet mine again. “I’m falling in love with you, Dani.”
My heart stalled. Damn it – somebody grab that defibrillator, stat.
I hadn’t admitted the strength of my feelings to myself, but the truth was simple. I had never felt this way about anyone before. No one had ever cared for me the way she did. I was attracted to her – but it was so much more than that. She touched my heart, physically and emotionally.
“I’m falling for you, too,” I said in a barely audible voice. My hands were shaking, and she held them both steadily.
“You’ve had a complicated past,” she remarked. “I can see that much in your aura.”
I knew she was referring to my numerous sexual partners, but there was zero judgment in her voice. “Just know that I’m not asking anything of you,” she added. “I don’t want to take anything from you. I only want to give.”
I slid nearer to her, wrapping my arms around her. I hadn’t really been paying attention when she held my hand out in the club, but here in the dim silence of her bedroom, I noticed the temperature of her skin. It wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold, either. It was cool, like an early April morning. I buried my face in her neck, inhaling the scent of her. Musky and sweet, with subtle earthen undertones. God, she felt so good in my arms. So perfectly right.
She held me close, running her fingers slowly through my hair, making me drowsy. The day was beginning to catch up with me. Seeing that poor dead girl this morning, then being buried in paperwork all afternoon, and finally, getting attacked by a huge vampire on my way home, all conspired to suddenly drain me of energy. Well, I guess I didn’t have to worry anymore about trying to contain myself. Zero horniness going on here. I just wanted her to keep holding me like this . . .
And maybe kiss me. I’d never been big on kissing, because I never really felt anything when I was kissed. Other girls seemed to like it, and I complied sometimes, but it was more of a chore than anything else.
I raised my head from its resting place against her neck, pulling back a little to look into her eyes. I hadn’t seen them up close like this yet. They were such a beautiful color, like amber.
I closed the distance between our faces, parting my lips. She laid a gentle hand on the back of my neck, pressing her mouth to mine. The electricity returned, bolting into my mouth and down my throat, right into my gut. I moaned, clutching her against me. She moved her lips slowly over mine, so tender with me. My tongue touched hers lightly, dancing with it for a moment, tasting its sweet flavor.
I ended the kiss, feeling overwhelmed, but then I kissed her cheeks and her forehead, and the tip of her nose. I ran my hands through her feathery blonde hair, nuzzling her face with mine.
Okay, I guess I was a hopeless romantic now. So fucking sue me.
“I’m kind of tired,” I murmured. “Do you mind if I lie down?”
“Not at all,” she replied. “Can I hold you while you sleep?”
“I really wish you would,” I confessed, crawling up the bed to lie against the pillows. Risa lay down beside me, and I rolled into her arms, resting my head on her chest.
I’d set my purse down on the floor next to the bed, and i
t had my Smith & Wesson in it. Just in case anyone got any ideas.
“Risa,” I said drowsily, snuggling closer to her.
“Hmmm?” she replied, stroking my hair so gently that I was in danger of falling asleep at any moment.
“Would it kill a vampire if you shot them in the heart?”
“Why do you ask?”
I smiled against her chest. “’Cause I’m a crack shot, that’s why.”
She gave a low laugh, then kissed the top of my head. “Yeah,” she said. “That would kill ‘em.”
“Good to know,” I said with a yawn. “Night night.”
“Goodnight, Dani.”
I smiled again, snaking my arm around her hip, breathing in the already familiar, comforting scent of damp roses and musk.
Chapter 7
I probably could have imagined a million different ways of waking up the next morning. The best would have been stretching against Risa’s body, feeling her closeness, seeing her eyes opening beside me. Leaning in for a deep kiss like the one we’d shared last night . . .
Hell, I would have even settled for a cup o’ Joe and a “How’d ya sleep?” But nope, that wasn’t the way it was gonna go down.
Suddenly, the bedroom door flew open and someone came rushing in. I acted without thinking, rolling out of Risa’s embrace and down to the floor, pulling my pistol out of my purse with a smooth, fluid motion, then leaping up to my feet and aiming the barrel at the intruder.
I was shocked at who it turned out to be. Standing there in the doorway, eyes wide and hair a wild shock from probably running pretty damned fast, was Jed the bartender. His eyeliner was running, and he looked like a teenage girl whose boyfriend just broke up with her over the phone. Or worse – by text.
Risa hadn’t even gotten out of bed. She rolled over languidly and glanced at Jed with a sleepy expression. There was no surprise in it, though. Apparently, she’d already known who was barging into her room.
Vampire senses, I guess. I made a mental note to find out more about those later.
“What’s up, Jed?” Risa inquired pointedly, making it perfectly clear that he was intruding.
Seeing as Risa wasn’t alarmed, I figured it only made sense for me to lower my gun. I did so reluctantly, though. I really didn’t like Jed, and I would have been pleased to find an excuse to shoot him.
“Listen, boss,” Jed said in a rapid, panicky voice. Now – this was not the dead-goldfish/reindeer-killed-my-grandmother Jed that I was used to. He wasn’t being quiet, and he wasn’t being sullen. He was loud. He was anxious.
He was afraid.
Risa rose from the bed with an instantaneous, liquid grace. That was the first time I’d marked it so clearly. Well – apart from the time she’d knocked off Boris’s head.
She was a vampire. She was an unmistakably powerful, deadly entity. I had no idea what she was capable of.
She’d held me so close, so tenderly in the night. Her arms were woolen wrappers encircling their . . . whatever I was. I certainly wasn’t about to say I was any sort of prize. A slutty take-away who drank too much whiskey. Who excelled at her job but usually lacked human feelings. Certainly nobody to bring home to Mama.
But now – now Risa was something else entirely. She was a violent wind, filled with some kind of rage and fire. She looked at Jed with burning coals in her eyes.
“What’s going on?” she demanded to know.
“Lady Serenity heard what you did to Boris,” Jed blurted out. “She has a warrant out for your capture. It was announced this morning that when you’re brought to her penthouse – you’ll be executed.”
Now, these sounded like some pretty damned heavy words to me. My eyes went wide at the weight of them, and my heart began to pound. But Risa looked perfectly calm. Cool and collected, her ire having faded away. I guess I hadn’t realized how aptly I’d likened her to The Terminator the night before. She would have looked so freaking awesome in her Ray-Bans right then.
“Is that so?” she inquired in a mild voice. “Hmmm. Well – I’m not going to lie. This is annoying.” She peered carefully at Jed. “Are the Angels on my side?”
“Most of us,” Jed answered with a frantic nod. “But not Jace and Max.”
“I would have expected as much,” Risa replied with a snort. “Goddamned cowards. When was the warrant issued?”
“Only about an hour ago,” Jed said. “As soon as I heard, I came running.”
For the first time since Jed had come into the room, Risa’s face filled with a warm, appreciative expression. “Thank you, Jed,” she said. “You’re a good friend. If it wasn’t you breaking down the door, it might have been some bounty hunter looking to take me to Serenity’s penthouse. I owe you, man.”
I felt a little tingle at this show of camaraderie. It reminded me so much of my friendship with Kent. Speaking of which – he was really going to wonder where I was this morning. I made another mental note to call him as soon as I could.
“All right,” Risa said with a sigh, running her hands through her short hair, which was sticking up at weird angles from lying all night on her pillow. “Time for a plan. It’s obvious that we can’t stay here. The only thing I can think of is to crash at the hideout. What do you think, Jed?”
“Sounds good to me,” he said with another anxious nod.
“Round up the others and meet me around back,” Risa added. “We’ll head out in just a few.”
Jed nodded again, then left the room without another word. I heard his footsteps hurrying down the short hallway, across the living room and out the door.
I turned my head slowly towards Risa, utterly dumbstruck. I had no idea, at first, what I should say. I felt like a kid who gets caught playing with matches. You know you should say something – but well. What the hell is there to say?
She smiled softly. “You can put your gun down, Dani.”
I glanced at the pistol gripped tightly in my fingers. Yeah, I could put it down. But some crazy vampire bitch wanted to kill Risa – and if she came storming through that door, I wanted to be able to destroy her.
I was still staring at my gun, but I noted Risa’s movement out of the corner of my eye. She padded across the room, then stood in front of me, begging me wordlessly to look at her. I just gripped my gun more tightly.
“Dani,” she murmured.
I looked up at her slowly, biting my lower lip, my pistol shaking in my hand. She’d killed Boris because of me – and now that psycho bitch wanted to kill her. It was all my fault.
She reached out and wrapped her fingers around my hand. “Let go,” she said softly.
I was powerless to resist anything she asked of me. I let go of the gun, and she took it away from me, bending down to tuck it neatly back into my purse. Then she straightened up and faced me again, coming very close. She tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, smiling gently.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Can’t you tell?” I asked desperately. “Read my aura or something.”
She just kept smiling, slipping a hand behind my head to rub the back of my neck gently. Even in my distress, I melted into her touch, my knees going weak, my core heating slightly.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “There’s been animosity between me and Serenity for a long time now. It bubbled to the surface the other night – but if it hadn’t happened that way, it would have happened some other way.”
“Maybe not,” I argued, though I leaned closer to her, pressing my belly against hers. There was something about this woman – she made me feel something I’d never felt in my entire life. Vulnerability. I was pretty sure I didn’t like it. I was used to kicking ass and taking names, and I wasn’t accustomed to seeking comfort in the arms of . . . a lover. I’d never had a true lover before. But now, I pressed my tummy against Risa’s, wrapping my arms around her waist. I laid my head on her shoulder, and suddenly I felt better.
She ran her fingers through my hair, rocking me like gentle ocean waves.
“It’s not your fault,” she repeated. “Please believe me.”
“I still feel guilty,” I whispered, turning my head to bury my face in her neck.
“Well, don’t,” she said firmly, holding me close. “There’s nothing to feel guilty about. Boris was a bad guy – and he did a bad thing. He got what he deserved. End of story.”
I tilted my head to glance up into her face. “You make it sound kinda simple,” I said with a half-hearted smile.
“Because it is simple,” she replied. “Now – can I have a kiss?”
“Oh, God – please,” I murmured, straightening up to face her. She combed her fingers through my hair again, then laid a hand on either side of my face. She pulled me close, laying her lips over mine, moving her mouth slowly, passionately. A heady lightness touched the edges of my brain – almost like drunkenness. I was literally getting drunk on her kiss. It was as if I were liquifying, spilling out of my clothes and onto the floor, no longer solid, free-flowing and visceral.
Clean-up, Aisle 9.
“I love the way you kiss me,” I gasped, falling against her chest and clinging to her tightly, nuzzling my face against her soft neck.
“I’m glad,” she said in reply. Her voice was low and thick with emotion. “I plan on doing it quite often.”
“Mmmm,” I whispered, resting my head for a long moment on her shoulder. I knew we had to leave, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay here with her. I didn’t want to call Kent. I wanted to get back in bed and snuggle with her all day.
I guess aliens must have come around sometime over the past couple of days and performed some kind of personality transplant, because this sure as hell wasn’t me. All I knew was that I didn’t give a flying fuck.
“We have to go,” she said quietly, though her arms tightened around me, and I knew she didn’t want to release me.
“I know,” I groaned, pulling myself reluctantly out of the perfect circle of her embrace. “So where are we going?”
“Someplace safe,” she answered. “And I don’t want you to worry – but I’m not coming with you right away.”
Marked (Shadow City Book 1) Page 6