by Karen Chance
I stopped listening.
Mircea’s hands had tightened, holding me in place. But my hands found his shoulders anyway, because the support wasn’t enough. I didn’t know why; he was nowhere near an erogenous zone. Except that suddenly everything was, and my knees kept trying to buckle.
I had a moment of disconnect, of utter, mind-numbing disbelief. I wasn’t kneeling here, naked and dripping, in Mircea’s office. And he was definitely not licking the drops of water from my skin.
Only I was and he was, and I couldn’t seem to move, could barely breathe as the strokes became longer, slower, wider. Or when he followed the swell of a breast, the warmth of his breath only tightening my body more as he stopped short of the nipple, even though a drop of water trembled on the tightly furled tip. It shone in the lamplight, reflecting the room for a few seconds. And probably a tiny version of my increasingly desperate face.
Until gravity had enough and it finally dropped onto his lips.
He held my eyes as he licked it away, as he laved the skin around it, as he—
My head went back, staring at the wall behind his head because I couldn’t watch him anymore. But it didn’t matter. I could still see his shadow mingled with mine, moving together softly. Could still feel every stroke of the warm roughness dragging over me. Could still hear the sound he made, low in his throat, as he started to pull.
My back arched, my fingers in his hair tightened to fists, needing something, anything to ground me.
And trying to hold that damned head still before I went crazy.
But, of course, that did nothing about his hands, and they were busy. Smoothing down my back, over the curve of my butt and down my thighs, to the sensitive skin at the back of my knees. Only to retract their course in reverse a moment later. And every trip pushed me against that not-so-soft bulge, simulating something that wasn’t going to be simulation much longer, because I was going to rip those damned trousers off him and—
“Explain. Now,” I gritted out.
“That might be difficult,” he said, shooting Marlowe a look.
“‘Difficult’ isn’t the word I’d use,” Marlowe groused, returning to his chair with what looked like a triple. “Trying to plug up a city leaking like a sieve with damned portals everywhere. Even if we succeed, what have we done? Stopped some smuggling, maybe made things a little less convenient for the other side. But we aren’t going to win this playing defensive, and we both know it!”
“And the alternative would be?”
“You know damned well. Our enemies are in faerie, not here. We either go after them where they’re holed up, or—this isn’t going to go well, Mircea.”
Actually, I thought it was going perfectly. Mircea’s technique, formidable as it was, was also limited with his friend sitting right across the desk. But mine wasn’t. Kit couldn’t see me, couldn’t hear me.
Which left all kinds of possibilities, didn’t it?
I smiled and saw Mircea’s expression change. But he didn’t get up, and he could have. Because that would mean admitting there was something he couldn’t handle, wouldn’t it?
And we both knew that would never happen.
I smiled again and bent to lick up the water I’d been thoughtlessly shedding onto his chest.
“Close enough portals and it will start to matter,” Mircea said, ignoring me. “Kill off enough of the dark mages they’re working with, and it will hurt even more. The fey don’t know this world, can’t walk in it easily—”
“Some can.”
“Not enough. And even those who can, don’t like to try it. Their magic is weak here; it leaves them vulnerable.”
His voice changed slightly on that last word, maybe because he was feeling a little vulnerable himself suddenly. Because I’d just reached his neck. A human male would have been more affected if I’d gone in the other direction, but Mircea wasn’t human. And I’d recently discovered an Achilles’ heel I should have suspected before.
But it was always nice to learn something new, I thought, scraping the edge of my teeth over the strong cords in his throat.
“Then why do I feel like we’re sitting ducks?” Kit groused.
Mircea didn’t answer him that time, maybe because his throat was already busy, working under my lips. Like his pulse was pounding, pounding, pounding beneath my tongue. I was right above the jugular now, right above the source of a vampire’s life and power, his virility and strength. Right above his most vulnerable area, even for a master.
I wouldn’t take his blood, of course; didn’t want it, couldn’t use it. But it was still heady, having him like this. That big, hard body spread out under mine, the hands clenching on the chair arms because they couldn’t on me, the heartbeat under my mouth jumping when I closed my lips over the pulse point.
And began to suck.
And felt more than one thing leap against me.
“Mircea?” Kit prompted.
“Perhaps you need a drink,” Mircea told him, sounding a little strangled.
Marlowe looked down in confusion at his glass, which was still almost full. “I have a drink. What I don’t have is information—especially about the so-called light fey!”
Kit jumped up again and began to pace, but I barely noticed.
My god, it was good, the salty-sweet taste of his skin, the little shivers of his body beneath mine, the way he reacted to every draw of my lips. I squirmed on top of him, knowing I was playing with fire, but I couldn’t help it, didn’t care. Even when I pulled back enough to see his eyes, filled with heat and fire and the promise that I would pay—and pay dearly—for this, just as soon as Kit left.
But he hadn’t yet, had he?
He was pacing, still running on about the fey, gesturing and bitching—
And not paying any attention to the man behind the desk.
Who watched me as I slowly sat up, raising the stakes. Mircea could have asked his friend to leave, could have left himself, could have done a hundred things he wasn’t doing because he still didn’t believe it. He didn’t think I’d do it.
And why should he? I’d let him get away with a ton of crap these last months, things I wouldn’t have put up with from anybody else. I’d backed down every time he challenged me because he was Mircea and I loved him and he was Mircea.
But I’d just reached tilt.
He didn’t get to wander around inside my head. He didn’t get to decide who my friends were. He didn’t get to keep me in the dark even more than Jonas did, and tell me not to bother my pretty little head about it because the big, strong men would protect me. Because the big, strong men didn’t understand what we were facing any more than I did.
We were all stumbling around in the dark, even Kit, even the Senate’s chief spy-who-knew-everything—except about the fey, apparently. And the demons. And the crazy creatures from another world we’d been fighting, who called themselves gods and thought about humans the same way we thought about bugs. And killed us just as easily.
If we were going to survive, we needed to at least start stumbling around together. But we weren’t, because Jonas didn’t trust me, Mircea didn’t respect me, and nobody believed in me. And as long as I kept backing down, they were never going to.
I sat up slightly, pulled down those damned sleep pants, grasped him gently.
And then sat back down, taking him inside me.
“The dark fey aren’t as much of a problem,” Kit said, oblivious. “We’ve had so many refugees from them, especially lately, that my people have managed to build up at least a basic image of their power structure and main players. But the light worries me.”
I knew how he felt. Because Mircea’s eyes had just changed, tiny pinpoints of amber swirling up out of the velvety darkness, a signal that maybe, just maybe, I should have thought about this a little more. That maybe I was in over my head.
Way over.
And I didn’t care.
Not enough to stop me from squirming about, getting comfortable, while watching him get less so. Not enough to keep me from groaning when he abruptly hardened inside me, even more than he’d already been, filling me fully, deliciously. Not enough to keep me from beginning to move.
Kit was still droning on, but I barely heard him anymore. And God, if I’d thought the other was heady, it was nothing to this. Watching that powerful body squirm, feeling him moving inside me, hearing his breath speed up as I did, as I undulated on top of him, as I set the pace for once. It was glorious.
Until he suddenly sat up, shifting the weight of him, making me gasp. And grasped the back of my neck, jerking me within a hair’s breadth of his face. And abruptly let his fangs descend.
My heart was beating out of my chest, my breath was caught in my throat, my body was tightening around him enough to make us both gasp.
And I still didn’t care.
“What are you going to do?” I asked breathlessly. “Bite me?”
And, just like that, his eyes flashed gold, the brown of the man completely eclipsed by the power of the vampire.
“What was it Churchill said about Russia?” Kit asked, almost surreally at this point. “A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma—”
“Why don’t you go look it up?” Mircea growled.
“What?”
“Go!” he snarled, and simultaneously swept all the items off the center of the desk, sending books, papers, and the smirking, potbellied pen cup flying.
I’d have liked to have seen the expression on Kit’s face just then. Liked to have known how a first-level master took to being ordered about, especially so abruptly. But I didn’t.
Because I was busy.
Hitting the polished surface of the desk even before I heard the door click shut, feeling smooth hardness as my hands spread out, trying to find purchase that wasn’t there, discovering I didn’t need it when a furious master vampire grasped my hips, pulled me to the edge of the desk, and thrust back into me hard enough to make me gasp.
And then to laugh, like the crazy person I was really starting to believe I was, because I’d won. For once, he’d been the one to back down first. For once, I’d actually made the great Mircea Basarab cry uncle.
And then I was the one crying. And thrashing. And screaming as he took me harder than he ever had, harder than he’d ever dared, because human bodies break so easily.
But my body wasn’t here, was it? I was nothing more than a figment, a dream, an illusion. And illusions don’t break.
But they do feel, and this was raw and savage and everything, everything I’d wanted since that damned dream left me hot and aching and desperately unfulfilled.
Which wasn’t really a problem now, I thought deliriously. And then I didn’t think anything else. I just wrapped my arms around him and hung on as power slammed through me, into me, over me, a golden haze sinking into my skin that exactly matched the color of a pair of golden eyes.
“Well,” I said breathlessly, some moments later.
“Well?” Mircea replied, the voice muffled since his face was currently buried in my hair.
“Well . . . I hope . . . that taught you . . . a lesson,” I said, vaguely concerned that there was a flaw in my logic somewhere but too limp to care.
Mircea’s head raised. And I saw with some real satisfaction that he was almost as flushed and sweaty as I was. And his throat was working and his eyes were a little crazed. But he wasn’t out of breath, because he was a vampire and they didn’t technically need to do that.
“I told you, dulceat¸a˘,” he said grimly. “I am not in your head.”
“Really? Then what would you call—”
“Any more than I was in your room tonight, or in the shower last week.”
“The shower?” I began, confused.
And then I stopped. Suddenly, vividly, recalling a certain incident in the shower that, yes, had been fairly memorable. And which I probably should have thought about more, if I hadn’t already had too much to think about.
But it was coming back to me now. Along with the explanation I’d discovered later. Which, come to think of it, didn’t really have anything to do with Mircea at all, and—
And uh-oh.
“I think,” Mircea told me evilly, “that it is time we had a talk.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
“Cedar? You are sure that is how it’s spelled?” Mircea demanded, as he hustled me along a crowded corridor.
“I—I’m not even sure that’s how it’s pronounced,” I told him, feeling more than a little flustered. I’d just been dragged off the desk, barely in time to snatch up my crumpled bath towel, and then towed through a door I hadn’t noticed on the other side of the room. And then through a fireplace, of all things, and into a cramped little hallway with no windows and almost no light. And then through another fireplace and a room I didn’t have time to see before we exited into a wide, brightly lit hallway that didn’t feel all that wide at the moment because it was stuffed with vampires.
Masters, by the feel of them. Make that senior masters, I thought, as I stumbled through a body, which was almost impossible to avoid in a press this tight. They deferentially made way for Mircea, but closed up again right behind him, leaving me struggling through a sea of vampires. Or more like a sea of flashing colors and sounds and half thoughts:
“—so the masters can gut you with it?”
“I don’t care. I want my damned sword—”
“A gun has better range.”
“And a sword doesn’t run out of bullets!”
“Botas malditos están demasiado ajustadas—”
The vamps didn’t seem to like the situation any more than I did. Some seemed pretty oblivious, but others jumped and flinched and stared around as I passed through them. As if they knew something was happening.
And it was; I just didn’t know what.
“What’s going on?” I asked Mircea, trying to stay as close behind him as possible, to avoid freaking out any more vamps.
“We’ve been having a problem with some illegal portals that our enemies have been using to bring in weapons,” he told me.
“Portals from faerie?”
He nodded. “Even our allies don’t seem to care who they sell to, and it’s becoming a problem.”
“So you’re going to shut them down.”
“We’re going to try.”
“And if they don’t like that?” I asked, dodging one swiftly moving form, only to hit another slam on.
“They’ll learn,” he told me, and pulled me out the other side of the wildly staring vamp.
And then into a knot of several more going in the same direction as us.
The corridor was so small, and they were grouped so tightly that it was like being swamped by a wave at the beach. An unexpected deluge of color and noise and overwhelming sensory assault. And minds and limbs and the electric buzz of a master vampire times five.
“Have you seen the dhampir? Wonder where they’re keeping her—”
“It. And who cares?”
“I care. I’ve never seen one—”
“Which would explain why you’re still here.”
“Speak for yourself. I could take her—”
“It. And feel free to try.”
“Sure. And then have to deal with Daddy? I don’t think—”
“So the rumors are true?”
“What rumors?”
“The ones that say she’s not just any dhampir. That she’s actually—”
“Cassie! In here.”
That last was Mircea’s voice, and a second later, I found myself being pulled through a door into a tiny room. With nothing in it. And that included master vampires, thank God, because I’d been about
to drown out there.
But this . . . this was nice. Or calm, at least. We were in what I guessed was some kind of reception room, although it wasn’t very welcoming, without so much as a picture on the wall or a single chair, and then we were through a door on the far side and into—
“Don’t step on the rugs,” Mircea told me. “Just in case.”
“Just in case what?”
I didn’t get an answer. Because the room’s only occupant had just looked up from a small desk to scowl at us. Or at Mircea, I supposed, since his eyes passed right over me to fix on his colleague.
“Are you through with your little fit?” Marlowe asked acidly.
“No. Cedar. What do you know about it?”
“The tree?”
“No. The spell. We think that’s how it’s pronounced.”
“‘We’?”
Mircea looked at me. “I only heard it once,” I said awkwardly.
“But if you had to guess?”
“Say-duh? Say-drr? SAY-der? I’m not real sure. I was kind of—”
“Who are you talking to?” Kit demanded, getting up. His eyes swept over me again but didn’t stop. I pulled my bath towel a little higher anyway.
Mircea repeated my variations on a theme. “Some type of ancient magic,” he told Kit. “I need everything you have on it.”
“You realize we’re leaving in less than an hour?”
“Then you’ll need to hurry, won’t you?”
Kit scowled harder, but then he got that constipated look a lot of vamps used when they were communicating mentally.
Mircea threaded his way expertly through the carpets. I followed, a little gingerly, because the floor was slick, highly polished marble tile, and the slippery little rugs were everywhere. They were odd-looking, partly because none of them matched, partly because most weren’t more than a couple of feet wide, but mostly because they were the only attempt at décor.
Mircea’s office had lacked the stamp of his character, but at least it had been fairly attractive. This . . . was not. It didn’t have a plant or a picture or a pillow. It didn’t have a single chair other than the one Marlowe was sitting in. It didn’t have much of anything, despite being a fairly large room, just the small rolltop desk, a hell of a lot of carpets, and—