Chapter Seven
Hearth
After a nerve wracking yet uneventful drive back to the Reno airport, they were airborne a couple of hours later and headed to Chicago where they would stop just long enough to allow Xanthe to disembark before they flew to Miami.
During the car trip Vetta drank three bottles of water, ate a couple of protein bars and had a crying jag against Seremela’s shoulder as relief set in. As soon as they had cell phone reception, they called Seremela’s sister, Camilla, and Vetta cried some more at her mother. Once they boarded the jet and took off, the girl disappeared into the lavatory for a while to emerge some time later, looking pale and exhausted but somewhat cleaner.
After Vetta finished, they all took turns washing up. Seremela sighed with relief as she rinsed the desert dust off her face, arms and neck.
Dawn spilled over the horizon. After shuttering all of the windows to block out the morning sun, the co-pilot served Xanthe, Vetta and Seremela bistro-style breakfast trays with fresh fruit, rolls, cheese, hard boiled eggs and smoked salmon, hot coffee and cream and fresh squeezed orange juice.
Duncan accepted a glass of bloodwine. Seremela frowned. After a sleepless, stressful night she was starving. He must be too. While bloodwine might do in a pinch, it did not have nearly the same nutritive qualities as fresh blood did.
Somewhat haltingly, she asked him, “Will bloodwine be—sufficient for you, for now? I would be honored to help if you need fresh blood.”
Duncan smiled at her. He looked inexplicably sweet and roguish, and she thought he even looked somewhat embarrassed. Although she wasn’t sure what prompted his expression, she could not help but smile back.
“That is very kind of you,” he said. “Bloodwine will be sufficient for now, thank you.”
She felt her cheeks warm and her gaze slid away from his. She had never fed a Vampyre directly from her vein before. Their bites were famous for inducing a sense of euphoria in their donors. Perhaps that was why he looked embarrassed. She glanced at Xanthe and Vetta. It was probably just as well he didn’t need fresh blood at the moment.
Even though tiredness threatened to take her over, she ate quickly and drank several cups of coffee, fueled by a sense of purpose. She was not going to relax while they carried an unexamined item of Power on the plane.
As she ate, she listened to Duncan and Xanthe talk. Duncan asked, “Why kill Thruvial instead of taking him back to face trial?”
“He was the last nobleman involved in the conspiracy that killed the Queen’s family,” Xanthe said. “The problem with putting him on trial was that the evidence we managed to gather might not have been enough to convict him. Lord Black Eagle made the decision on the kill order.”
The unfamiliar name caused Seremela to pause, until she realized that Xanthe referred to Tiago, the Wyr warlord who had mated with Niniane. She had met Tiago when she had been a medical examiner in Chicago, and she shuddered as she recalled Tiago’s edgy demeanor. He had terrified her—she had no problem whatsoever imagining him taking responsibility for ordering someone’s execution.
The Dark Fae woman was continuing. “It took me the better part of the year to work my way into Thruvial’s household. He fled Adriyel as soon as the borders opened. The trials of his fellow conspirators had shaken him considerably, but it didn’t stop him from committing other distasteful crimes at Devil’s Gate—including sex trafficking, protection and blackmail.”
“He was a horrible man,” Vetta whispered, her head bent.
Seremela murmured gently, “Did he hurt you in any way?”
Vetta looked at her sidelong, and she could tell her niece knew what she was really asking. Vetta shook her head and told her telepathically, “He thought I was disgusting, but he wanted to put me out to customers who were interested in exotic experiences. The last time we talked—fought, actually—he threatened to scar my face if I didn’t do as he said. I’m glad he’s dead.”
Seremela breathed evenly, struggling to contain her rage as she listened. “I’m glad he’s dead too,” she said.
She finished her breakfast, swallowed her last cup of coffee, set the breakfast tray aside and reached for Vetta’s backpack. “Don’t relax too much yet,” she said to her niece who was drooping sideways in her seat. “You need to tell me about this Tarot deck from hell. Who did you steal it from?”
“I don’t know,” Vetta said. “She was just some woman at a rest stop. I lifted it from the back of her car when she went inside the gas station. I could tell it had a tingle of Power. At first I thought it was cool. Then every time I started to lay out a spread for myself, Death kept showing up. Every time, Aunt Serrie. It got so that I couldn’t sleep. I kept checking the cards. Then I started to pray. I was so sure I was going to die.” Her voice broke at the end.
Seremela touched the back of Vetta’s hand in silent sympathy. Vetta watched miserably as Seremela searched through the pack, and Duncan and Xanthe grew quiet to watch too.
The pack didn’t hold anything of much value. A couple packs of Marlboro Reds, a cigarette lighter, a scarf that smelled like patchouli and smoke, some cosmetics, a wallet with Vetta’s I.D. and some cash. It was unusual that nobody had taken the cash or the Tarot cards themselves, but she suspected that employees who worked for Malphas were scrupulously careful about their conduct.
A wooden box lay at the bottom of the pack. She pulled it out and set it on the table. It was clearly the source of the glow of Power. The box’s lid had a hand-painted, stylized face. One side of the face was male, the other side female. It was Taliesin, the god of the Dance.
She opened the box, pulled out the deck of cards and turned over the top one, a Major Arcana card. A picture of a golden woman, in a chariot with seven lions, smiled up at her. Inanna, the goddess of Love. She turned over a few of other cards, and each one was exquisite.
Aside from being an item of Power, the deck was a work of art. Oh, Vetta. She sighed and rubbed her forehead while she studied the deck.
Her initial impression remained the same. Underneath the veneer of quiet Power, the cards held a subtle but remarkable depth. Finally she sat back and shook her head, her mouth tight.
“I have no idea whose magic created this,” she said. “It’s not Light or Dark Fae, Elven, Wyr, Demonkind, human—or anything else I’ve encountered. It’s more Powerful than it looks on the surface, and I’m not even sure what the Power does. Perhaps it’s just meant to be a tool for divination. I don’t know.” She met Duncan’s gaze as she said, “I don’t sense anything overtly offensive in the magic, but I don’t like magic I don’t understand, and I don’t trust it.”
Xanthe reached out to touch one of the cards, her gray eyes wide. She said, “I think they’re beautiful.”
As the tips of Xanthe’s long fingers touched the card, Seremela felt the Power in the deck pull toward the other woman. She said sharply, “Do you feel that?”
All three of the others stared at her and shook their heads. Vetta sat as far back from the deck as she could get, her hands tucked under her arms. Duncan asked, “What did you feel?”
“It’s tugging toward you, like it wants to go to you,” Seremela said to Xanthe.
“Oh please take the deck with you,” said Vetta passionately. “Please take it far, far away.”
Seremela didn’t want to take responsibility for the Tarot deck, and Vetta refused to touch it. Xanthe was willing to take the Tarot deck to Adriyel, to see if she could discover any answers about its origins and its maker from Dark Fae elders, so in the end that was what they decided to do.
The Dark Fae woman disembarked at Chicago’s O’Hare with quiet thanks. As soon as the plane was in the air again, Vetta sprawled on the couch and fell asleep as soon as she went horizontal.
Duncan and Seremela moved to the back of the plane so that they didn’t disturb the sleeping girl. He settled in the seat beside Seremela. She looked exhausted, with dark shadows under her eyes, but her gaze was clear and bright. She whispered, “I cannot thank you enough, Duncan.”
“Shh,” he said, just as softly. “There’s no need.”
“There’s every need,” she said, her words quiet but forceful. Her mouth worked, and her expression was so beautiful, so intense, Duncan had to put his arms around her and kiss her.
Her mouth. It was like everything else about her, sensitive and lavish with softness yet etched with determination and character. He loved her mouth; he loved it and he kissed and kissed her, while she twined her arms around his neck and kissed him back. Roused by her gentle, heartfelt response, his sexual aggression was lying in wait, ready to pounce. He held it tightly in check. Now was not the time.
Reluctantly he pulled away, and laughter threatened to take him over as he realized all of her snakes had wrapped around him again. He smiled into her gorgeous eyes. “Why do you always look so surprised whenever I touch you?”
She glanced away as she lifted a shoulder. “Many people are disgusted by the thought of touching us, much like Thruvial was with Vetta.”
“Thruvial was a pig,” Duncan said. That jerked her attention back to him. He said deliberately into her wide gaze, “I think you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, inside and out.”
Wonder lightened her feminine features. “You do?”
“I do. I learned a lot about you in a day.”
“It was a long day,” she pointed out.
He laughed softly. “It was a very long day. You’re intelligent and curious, insightful and adventurous, and you’re generous and caring. Even though you’re gentle to the bone, you know how to shoot a gun, and you’re so brave, especially when you’re frightened.” His smile turned crooked. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m falling in love with you.”
There it was again, that look of hers, stricken with wonder and trembling at the threshold of delight. She breathed, “I don’t mind in the slightest.”
“That’s all right then.” Because he had tensed up as he waited for her response, he relaxed and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Did you know that Rigoletto is playing this season?”
She nestled close with a sigh. “I love Verdi’s operas.”
“I’ll get us tickets,” he promised, resting his cheek against her temple.
They grew quiet, and after a while Duncan thought she fell asleep. He couldn’t. He was too full of the fabulous sensation of her curvaceous, warm body pressed against his side. He closed his eyes and drifted quietly, letting his imagination have free rein.
He wanted to do things with her. He wanted to talk over morning newspapers, hold hands in a movie theater, walk along the beach on a full moonlit night. He wanted her to call him and interrupt him while he was at work. He wanted to watch her enjoy a good meal.
He wanted to suckle her to climax, and spear into her soft body until he climaxed. He wanted to fall asleep in her arms.
He wanted to bite her so fucking bad.
He was so absorbed in the dark red of sensual anticipation, she shocked him utterly when she whispered against his neck, “I love you too.”
Gods.
He’d known emptiness in his life, and he knew how to be alone. He’d had taken lovers for a time and then they had parted, and he had watched his human friends and family die. He had never known anyone to fill him up so completely by saying four of the most beautiful words in any language.
I love you too.
No longer immersed in a dark red quiet, he discovered himself in a place of shining light.
Seremela’s sister, Camilla, flew in from Atlanta. She was waiting for them at the airport in Miami when they arrived that afternoon. Camilla and Vetta fell sobbing into each other’s arms, and after a moment Camilla turned to Seremela and roped her into the embrace. Hands in his pockets, Duncan stood back to give the women a little space. He grinned at the look Seremela gave him as she succumbed to Camilla’s clutching hug.
Then it was his turn. “Thank you,” Camilla said as she gripped both his hands. “Thank you so much. I—I feel like there’s more I should say, but I just don’t have the words.”
“We’ll meet properly some other time,” Duncan told Seremela’s sister. “In the meantime, you are most welcome. Enjoy having your daughter back safe and sound.”
Seremela told her sister, “Vetta will fill you in on everything. I’m too tired to talk.”
Camilla said, “I’ll call you tomorrow?”
“That’s fine.” Seremela staggered as Vetta threw her arms around her, hugging her fiercely. They stood for a moment in intense silence. Whatever they said to each other was telepathic, meant for each other alone, which Duncan thought was fitting.
After Camilla and Vetta left, a valet brought his car around while Seremela turned awkward and tried to explain how she could take a taxi home. Duncan listened patiently then said, “Don’t be silly. Of course I will see you home.”
She gave him a deer-in-the-headlights look. He was so amused and intrigued by it, he strode two steps forward until his chest brushed the tips of her delicious breasts and he growled into her upturned face, “We have unfinished business.”
Her tremulous mouth formed two silent words. “We do?”
Falling in love was a beautiful feeling, as long as he fell with her. He grinned and bent his head until their lips touched. Then he said silently into her parted lips, “We do.”
The drive to her home was completed in fiery silence. She couldn’t sit still and fidgeted, and her snakes roamed restlessly around her.
He didn’t want her to sit still. He wanted her to fidget and flutter about, while he stalked his prey to capture her finally, finally—against a door, cabinet, couch, wherever the hell, it didn’t matter, any of the images his heated imagination supplied him were just fine, because he would capture her, it was just a matter of time. The red darkness took him over, and he held himself under savage control as he drove with immaculate care through the heavy Friday Miami traffic.
Fear and violence always touched a Vampyre’s life somehow. He had never realized how he had grown used to it, until he faced that goddamn pariah Djinn and grew shocked at Seremela facing danger and violence. She was too good, too fine; she loved opera and classic movies, and she lived in a civilized, lawful world, and she should never, ever have to face such violence again.
Dimly he realized he was allowing himself to react to what had happened, and by letting go, he was no longer in control.
The atmosphere in the car had grown excruciatingly charged by the time he drove into the underground garage at her apartment building. He pulled into a parking space. The quiet purr of the car engine faded. Seremela started to say something, her words stumbling and awkward.
Staring straight ahead, he interrupted her. “Invite me in.”
She took in a quick breath. It shook a little, and his cock hardened at the small telltale sign. He turned to her and discovered her staring at him with that wide eyed, wondering look. Three of her snakes peered sideways from behind her head, staring at him too.
Laughter spilled out of him as the sight broke his tension. He reached out to one of the snakes. It touched the tip of his finger with a light flicker of its tongue. He repeated unsteadily, “Invite me in, Seremela. Please.”
“I would love for you to come in,” she whispered all in a rush.
With that, he lost all capacity for words or coherent thought. Somehow they got out of the car and into the elevator, where he backed her into a corner. He planted one hand on the wall on either side of her head and stared into her eyes as he breathed in the scent of her arousal. Her breathing grew choppy, and he watched the muscles in her slender throat move as she swallowed, the iridescent pattern that marked her skin shimmering in the overhead light.
Her lovely, slender throat.
His fangs descended. His face twisted as he fought himself. This was too far out of control. He was a stranger to himself.
Her warm, trembling hands smoothed the material of his T-shirt across his chest. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “I want you to bite me.”
He hadn’t even been aware that he’d taken a useless breath of air until it rushed out of him. The force of his own reaction nearly sent him to his knees.
“Duncan,” she said. She sounded and looked dazed.
He lowered his head slowly, and ran his mouth along the leaping pulse at her neck, tonguing the delectable delicate flesh.
She pushed him, startling him out of his preoccupation. With a husky, drunken laugh, she pointed behind him. He looked over his shoulder. The elevator doors stood open. Ah, right.
The length of the hallway to her front door was all but unendurable. He said hoarsely, “After we go to the opera, what are we doing next?”
“I don’t know,” she moaned. She dropped her keys and bent over to retrieve them. “How about a weekend in bed?”
He blurred, snatched the keys out from underneath her hand and unlocked and opened her door before she could fully react. “Get inside.”
He glared as she exploded with laughter. Then he laughed too. This was crazy, ludicrous. He could say he hadn’t felt this way since he was a teenager, except he was certain he hadn’t felt this way then either.
Then finally they were inside, alone in her shadowed apartment. She tossed her purse onto the couch—he realized they had forgotten her case, in the trunk of his car—and then he lost that thought too as she leaped at him. He snatched her up as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, and he strode for the bedroom.
“Say it again,” he said. “What you told me on the plane.”
Her brilliantly colorful eyes were luminous with emotion and desire. “I didn’t think you heard me.”
He laid her on the bed gently and straightened. He tore off his shirt. “I heard you. Say it again.”
She pushed up to kneel on the bed in front of him, and she met his gaze as she reached for the fastening of his jeans. “I love you, Duncan.”
“That was even better than the last time,” he whispered, smiling as he palmed her full, soft breast. She pulled his jeans open and slid her hands inside them as she eased the material down over his lean hips. An odd sensation slid along his torso and up his arms. He glanced down at her snakes as they journeyed across his skin.
Seremela followed the direction of his gaze and drew back a little, her expression turning self-conscious. She offered softly, “I can wrap them, if you’d rather.”
He said firmly, “No.”
She pulled a few snakes away from him. “Are you sure it isn’t too—tentacley for you?”
He grasped her shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. “Listen to me. I did not say I was falling in love with you, if only you would hide some part of yourself or change some aspect to try to please me. I said I was falling in love with you—all of you. I don’t want you to curb yourself, deny yourself, cover up your face or head or any part of your body. I don’t want you to lose or gain weight, or watch what you say, or deny how you feel, or try to be anything but who you are, because who you are is the most beautiful person in the world to me.”
As she listened, the expression on her lovely features grew vulnerable, wide open. While he certainly hoped that he had not been the first person to ever tell her such things, he selfishly hoped that he had been the first male to do so. He grasped one of her snakes, kissed it on the nose and looked into its face. “You’re never going to bite me, are you?”
“They would never hurt you,” Seremela said. “They would die first.”
“Oh well,” he said, giving her a crooked grin. “There’s goes that fantasy.”
Her eyes went very wide, and she laughed, a joyous, surprised sound. She unbuttoned her top and shrugged out of it then slipped off her bra as Duncan kicked off his jeans and stood nude, his heavy erection jutting from his hips.
Her breasts were stunning, lush and full, the soft, plump nipples several shades darker than the light creamy green of her flesh. He bent, took one nipple in his mouth and sucked at it gently. The muffled noise that came out of her was urgent and incoherent. She cradled his head, ran her fingers through his hair and stroked his shoulders.
As he suckled her, a feather light sensation flickered along the sensitive skin on the head of his penis, creating a sharp, tantalizing pleasure. He looked down, as the sensation spread along the tight, drawn up sac of his testicles, and along the muscles of his lower abdomen.
Seremela’s snakes flickered their slender tongues along his skin.
Seremela cocked her head and looked down as well. “They’re tasting you,” she said, giving him a sidelong smile. “They know that I love you, and they’re curious.” She looked splendid and barbaric, and completely unfettered.
For a moment, the ghost of the human Duncan once was struggled with the image. But Seremela’s snakes were not mundane creatures; they were a part of her, and Duncan had not been human for a very long time.
His fangs descended. Seremela looked at his mouth and her gaze turned heavy lidded. She bared her neck to him in wordless invitation, and he gathered her soft, curvaceous body into his arms and eased his fangs gently into the pulse at her neck.
The moan that came out of her was full of sex and surrender, the sound shivering along his heated senses as hot blood spilled into his mouth, and it was so strange, so strange. He was twisted up inside, his desire for her out of control. He growled as he drank from her, while she arched against him, gasping. Her blood was stronger than human blood. It punched through him and made the world spin.
He lifted his head away from her, breathing raggedly, and only then realized she was struggling in his arms. For a terrible moment he felt sickened and disoriented—until he realized what she was trying to do.
“Help me get out of these damn jeans,” she whimpered.
His fingers shook as he helped her to ease the jeans down to her knees. Then she lay back on bed and raised her legs so he could tug them off the rest of the way.
Wholly naked, she stretched, her eyes glazed with the lingering pleasure from his bite, and she looked beautiful and mysterious at once, all woman and wholly inhuman. He stroked his fingers up her inner thigh and fingered the velvet soft petals of her sex that were already wet with pleasure. She grasped his cock in one hand, stroking it as she parted her legs and told him, “Come inside now.”
“I want to help you climax first,” he whispered. He found her stiff little bud, so delicate and luscious, and he rolled the ball of his thumb over it.
She jerked uncontrollably and gasped. “It feels too good. It’s too intense.”
“That’s partly from the bite,” he crooned. “Everything’s more intense right now.” He slid two fingers into her, and she was softer and wetter than anything he had ever felt before, and so goddamn snug, he knew when he finally entered her, she was going to grip him tighter than a fist. He fucked her gently with his fingers while he continued to massage her clitoris.
“I can’t take it,” she sobbed. She gripped his wrist.
“You can take it,” he told her. While he worked her, he bent over to take her nipple in his mouth again, suckling at her carefully because his fangs were still descended and he did not want to scratch her. He was drowning in his own pleasure, drowning, immersed in her escalating pleasure as she undulated her hips.
Then she put a hand to the back of his head and pulled him down hard against her breast. His fangs broke the tender skin at her breast, and her Powerful blood filled his mouth again. Astonished, he sucked her hard while he drove his fingers into her, and she bucked underneath his hold and screamed as she climaxed.
He was blind with his own euphoria and still throbbing with need. He held himself rigidly, his palm pressed firmly against her clit while her inner muscles pulsed against his fingers. He would not draw out, not leave her until her climax was done, but then she shocked him again as she pulled his hand away. She rose and pushed him onto his back, and as he acquiesced, she came up over him and straddled him. She was the most amazing sight he had ever seen, her beautiful face stamped with intensity as she took his cock, positioned him and lowered herself down on him.
“Jesus,” he said. His own climax shot like a bullet. He gripped her hips and bucked hard underneath her, swearing.
She collapsed on him, and he hugged her with his whole body. After a few minutes, she asked, “We’re going to do this a lot, aren’t we?”
“God, I hope so,” he said.
They slept just like that, with him still inside of her and her sprawled like a rag doll on him.
He woke first. His erection had softened, and he didn’t want to move and slip outside of her or wake her up. She was a soft, warm weight lying on him, and he loved it, loved it.
So he drifted a while and let his mind meander. Maybe she liked jewelry. Maybe she would enjoy a ring.
Maybe she would enjoy it especially if he went down on one knee to give it to her.
He had always thought he would enjoy marriage, and he believed he would make a good husband for the right woman. He had just never found the right woman, until now.
But he was getting way ahead of himself. They hadn’t even gone on their first date yet. Speaking of which, he had opera tickets to buy.
Wait. He yawned and asked, “What day is it?”
“Nnh.” Just when he was sure she had fallen back asleep, she murmured, “Think it’s Friday?”
“Excellent. I think our first date should start right now.”
She scratched her nose. “You don’t have opera tickets yet.”
“That’s going to have to be our second date,” he told her.
She opened her eyes and squinted at him. “What’s our first date?”
He rolled her onto her back, reversing their positions, and grinned down at her. “My vote is for that weekend in bed.”
She snickered. “Ooh, that’s my vote too. At some point we should call Carling and Rune and tell them we’re back.”
“We can do that Monday.” He palmed her breast as his cock stiffened against her thigh. “We should also plan our third date soon.”
“Mm, we should.” Her gaze grew heavy lidded as she fingered his penis. “I’m so glad to be back in my own bed.”
“I’m glad to be in your bed too.” He moved his hips lazily, pushing against her hand.
Her expression softened with equal parts pleasure and affection. “So do you have any ideas about that third date?”
Duncan cocked his head, considering her. He thought about telling her about buying a ring, and him going down on one knee, but he didn’t want to spook her. Instead he said, very casually, “I thought we might go shopping.”
“You like to shop?” she asked in sleepy surprise.
“Yes, I do, sometimes. When I know I’m looking for something special.” He bent to nuzzle her throat.
She made a purring sound and stroked his back. “It sounds like you’ve got something specific in mind for your shopping trip.”
“Our shopping trip,” he corrected.
“Okay, our shopping trip.”
“And I do have something specific in mind, but for now, I think we should focus on our first date.”
Giddy with happiness, he kissed her in a soft lingering caress. They lived in a crowded and dangerous world, but somehow she had become the only person in it. Right here and now, they were the only two people in the world, the only two.
“Duncan, do you by any chance play the piano?” she murmured.
He chuckled. “Why on earth would you ask me that?”
She stroked his face. “You just gave me a certain look.”
Amused, he asked, “A look that said I play the piano?”
She tapped his nose with one finger. “Tell me you have a Bogart suit. Oh forget it, you have lots of suits, and they’re all more beautiful than any of the clothes I own. Do you by any chance believe in precognition?”
He announced, “I am completely at sea in this conversation.”
“Then we should probably stop talking,” she whispered. She rolled her hips at him.
“I’m okay with that,” he said.
He proceeded to make love to her again on their most excellent first date, and neither one said anything coherent for a long time.