After a night spent traveling more tunnels with Duncan, Nathan suspected the man took them on a convoluted route to keep them from knowing where they were going. They came across one other group living below, but none of them had heard or seen anything out of the ordinary.
Duncan said there were more groups, but with dawn approaching, they decided to call it quits for the night. After leaving the sewers, Nathan and Vicky returned to his apartment. They showered and changed before he drove to her hotel. The entire time she was in the shower, he paced from one end of his apartment to the other, unable to stop himself from imagining her beneath the spray of water.
“They’re amazing people,” he said to Vicky as the edge of the sun broke over the horizon.
“They are,” Vicky agreed.
So are you, he held the words back. He would feel like a horny, self-conscious teen if he blurted them out. He’d never expected to discover Vicky knew of the existence of such people and that she visited them on a regular basis before her captivity. Every discovery he made about this woman amazed him more.
“Why don’t Sister June and Duncan live in a house somewhere if they have enough money to send all the kids to college?” Nathan asked.
Duncan had revealed they often, anonymously found ways to give the children money for school. “These kids have it tough enough and will be at a disadvantage throughout most of college, as they’re not accustomed to the straight world. The last thing they need is to be in debt when they get out.”
“The children wouldn’t trust them as much then,” Vicky said. “They also might not be able to find the ones like Elmo. Besides, sometimes when one way of life is all you’ve known, it’s difficult to change. Sister and Duncan have spent most of their lives in those tunnels; it’s their home.”
Nathan pulled up in front of her hotel. Her hand fell on the door handle, but when he placed his palm on her thigh, she stiffened before turning toward him. She didn’t try to fling his hand away, but he was about to remove it when she relaxed beneath his touch.
“If you prefer, you can bring your things and start staying at my apartment,” he said. “There’s an air mattress in the bedroom with brand new sheets and blankets. There’s even a TV in there.”
“Are you asking me to move in with you, Nathan Holter?” she teased.
He smiled tiredly at her. “It would be easier.”
And I’d like to know you’re there, in my place, waiting for me.
He waved the thought off instantly. Keep your head in the game. Sleeping with a vampire could be a disaster, and you’ll be engaged soon. And the hunters will oust or kill you if they ever learn you bedded a vamp. This arrangement between you is only to find Joseph.
But staring at her, he knew it wasn’t.
His thumb rubbed her thigh. She licked her lips before she bit enticingly on her bottom lip. Nathan’s gaze fastened on her mouth, and when her legs opened wider, his hand dipped briefly between them. For a second, neither of them breathed as they stared at each other.
If she moved her hips just a little forward, his hand would brush intimately against her. She wanted that so badly, she could almost taste it, yet she didn’t move, and his hand remained where it was.
Then, Vicky shook herself from the haze of passion he evoked and opened the door. “I’ll consider the invite,” she told him.
Before he could reply, she pulled away from him, leapt out of the truck, and closed the door. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the formfitting jeans hugging her ass as she strolled toward the entrance. The doorman opened one for her; she stopped to speak with him before glancing over her shoulder at Nathan. She cast him a sultry smile and sauntered forward with an extra sway in her hips.
He suspected she knew what she did to him, and she enjoyed it. The prospect of being teased or played with would bother him with any other woman, but not with her. With her, he craved more.
The sexual encounters he’d experienced over the years were all brief. The women were all more hesitant than Vicky was about anything. Hunters took virgin wives; it was the way of things, and what they were supposed to want, but he wanted something far different. And he wanted her now.
Without thinking, he pulled his truck into a parking spot and turned it off. He removed the keys and strode toward the hotel. The doorman opened the door for him and gave a nod of greeting. He barely glanced around the elegant interior of the five-star hotel as he made his way to the elevators, but he understood why Vicky insisted on showering and changing before returning here. This was the kind of place that looked the other way for money, but a woman stinking of earth, with dirt streaking her, was sure to attract unwelcome attention.
He should return to the stronghold, where he belonged, but he found himself watching the numbers on the panel until they stopped on the eighth floor. This was the worst mistake he would ever make with his people, and Vicky might tell him to get lost. He couldn’t get his feet to walk away from the elevator.
No matter how he tried, Nathan couldn’t deny this constant pull he felt toward her as he pushed the call button.
His foot tapped as he waited for the elevator to return. With a ding, the doors slid open in front of him. Vicky’s scent assailed him when he stepped inside and hit the button for the eighth floor. Out of habit, he kept his head down and away from the cameras as the elevator ascended. When the doors slid open, he stepped into the hallway.
He didn’t look at any of the other doors as he followed her scent to her room. Stopping outside her door, he hesitated there. What was he hoping for here? There could never be anything lasting between them. There shouldn’t be anything between them at all; they were far too different. He was the leader of the hunters, her vampirism should attract him as much as a dog did, yet it excited him.
He should walk away, go back to his apartment, take another cold shower, jerk off, or find any other woman to slake his lust before returning to the stronghold. However, the idea of anyone but Vicky repulsed him.
Before he could stop himself, he knocked three times on the door. There was only the briefest of pauses before it opened to reveal her. Nathan’s cock became so rigid, he feared breaking the button on his jeans.
His gaze raked over her curvaceous body, covered only by a skimpy red bra and matching, see-through thong. “Fuck.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Vicky said as she rested her hand against the doorjamb and stuck out her hip. When her gaze dipped to the erection straining against his jeans, a pleasant ache spread between her legs, but Vicky would stick to her guns on this. If she didn’t, she might be condemning herself to death. Doing this would push her toward dead-woman-walking status, but she couldn’t turn him away. “I can ease us both, but no sex.”
Nathan barely processed her words as he drank in the sight of her lush breasts pushed up by her bra. Against the lace of the bra, he spotted two silver hoops, and his mouth watered when he realized her nipples were pierced.
Then, his eyes ran over her flat stomach with its lean muscles and rounded hips before settling on the triangle of neatly trimmed blonde curls between her legs. Her skin was an enticing golden hue all over.
“Come in,” she said.
She crooked her finger, beckoning him forward with a look that somehow managed to promise sin and redemption. Too fixed on watching her as she sashayed away, he didn’t move. She stopped near the bed and turned to face him.
“Are you going to keep standing there, or are you going to get your ass in here so I can make you come?”
It was the best invitation he’d ever had. He stepped into the room, closed the door, and walked toward her. He’d always taken the lead with women, but he was very interested in seeing where this would go.
“Remember,” she said when he stopped before her, and her hands fell to the button of his jeans. “No sex.”
He buried his disappointment. “Nothing you’re not willing to do.”
She smiled at him as she stepped so close her breasts brushed his chest while she undid his button. “There are so many things I’m willing to do to you. Boots and pants off.”