Chapter Four
The moment Alec’s
orgasm claimed him was the moment the truly reprehensible part of
my mind pointed out two things that it felt were important—the
first was that I had just had mind-blowingly fabulous sex with a
murderous vampire, and the second was that I’d just had
mind-blowingly fabulous sex with a murderous vampire . . . right
out in the middle of the Akasha. That last point was driven home
when in the distance I heard a scream of anger.
Alec pulled back, his
breath as rough as mine, the sense of shared fulfillment fading as
we stared at each other.
“Good lord. I had sex
with you. Right here. Where anyone could have seen us.” The taste
of him lingered in my mouth, a sweet taste, one I doubted I’d ever
get enough of.
Stop it! I yelled at my little devil. Stop pointing things out like that! For god’s sake, look
what you made me do—I had sex with a vampire!
“You don’t have to
say the word “vampire” like it’s revolting. We prefer ‘Dark One,’
anyway,” he said, withdrawing from me with an audibly wet noise
that had me wincing in embarrassment.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
“I was a little bit . . . enthusiastic.”
To my utter
surprise—and inner delight—he grinned as he tucked himself away.
“You weren’t the only one who was enthusiastic, querida.”
I bent to retrieve my
underwear and jeans, not able to look him in the eye after my
wholly irresponsible and completely uncharacteristic behavior,
still a little weirded out by his choosing querida as a term of endearment.
It was clear he
didn’t understand that I was the woman who had been killed, hadn’t
put together the pieces of the puzzle I’d so disjointedly spilled.
And although god knew I was physically attracted to him, the last
thing I wanted was to be in Jacintha’s position—bound to him
forever.
Why not? the devil inside me asked before I hushed
it up, worried Alec might overhear it. You’re
here. You’re lonely. He’s in pain. You could comfort him. He’d be
grateful for that. He might even come to love
you.
I closed my eyes
against the pain that thought brought with it. I didn’t want to be
merely a convenience—I wanted a man who would choose me because of
who I was, not because of some connection that was lost several
hundred years before, and certainly not because of one random act
of sex.
Oh, dear god, that
was the single most erotic, most fulfilling experience of my life.
But as the endorphins faded, the thought returned to me that I had
had sex with a vampire. Jas would never
let me live that down if she ever heard of it.
“Who is
Jas?”
“Jacintha. My sister.
And stop reading my mind.”
“Stop projecting into
my mind if you don’t want me to read your thoughts. Jacintha, eh?
The one who is a . . .” I felt the brush of his mind against mine
for a moment. “A Beloved? Interesting. I do not know this Avery
Scott, but I do not get to Britain much.”
“I object to you just
marching into my head whenever you like,” I told him, my hands on
my hips now that I was decent again. “I don’t think it’s polite at
all.”
“That fact that I’ve
marked you isn’t right, either, but that doesn’t seem to concern
you.” He frowned at me. “Just who are
you?”
“I’ve told you three
times now!”
“Yes, I know your
name, and I know that you’re mortal, and that you hum when you
orgasm, but who are you? Why are you here, and why did you revive
me?”
“I felt sorry for
you, more fool me,” I said, pushing past him to glare at the gently
rolling landscape of rocks, dirt, and more rocks. “I hum?
Really?”
“Yes.”
“How mortifying.” It
was, too. I had no idea I was a hummer.
He shrugged. “I don’t
see why you’d feel that way. I think it’s charming.”
I stared over my
shoulder at him. “You’re . . . you’re a strange man.”
“That’s been said
before. Is that why you came on to me, because you felt sorry for
me?”
“I did not come on to
you! You were the one thinking all sorts of smutty thoughts about
me!”
“You thought them
about me, too.”
“Only because you put
them in my mind! Besides, you manhandled me!”
He raised one glossy
black eyebrow, looking me over from crown to toes. “If I had
manhandled you, love, you wouldn’t be standing right now. I will
admit to responsibility for a certain amount of what just happened,
but I don’t make a habit of engaging in sexual acts with women I’ve
just met.”
There was an odd sort
of mental twitch, as if his words weren’t quite the truth. I tried
to peer into his mind to see just what it was he was shielding from
me, but I lacked the ability to just go marching into his head as
he did mine.
“Well, thank you so
much for making me sound like a great big ho!” I slapped his arm.
“For your information, I have never, ever had sex with a man who I
knew less than six weeks. Minimum! So you can just stuff that in
your ‘I’m so incredibly sexy, women can’t keep their paws off me’
pipe and smoke it!”
He tipped his head to
the side, a lock of his hair swinging over his brow. “Can you keep your hands off me?”
“Of course I can!” I
pushed the lock of his hair back, my fingers trailing down his jaw.
Just the touch of his stubble on my fingers restarted fires deep
within me. “Look, we had sex, OK? It’s no big deal. I admit that
it’s totally against my character to do that, and that I can’t
wholly blame you for what happened, but the bottom line is that
it’s never going to happen again. I don’t like you. I don’t like
men who are prettier than me. And I especially don’t like
bloodsuckers!”
Is that so? His mind was filled with arrogance as
he pulled me up against him, his mouth like fire on
mine.
I put both hands on
his chest and shoved him back, slapping him before I realized what
I’d done.
“Oh!” I stared at him
in horror, one hand over my mouth, the other reaching out to touch
his cheek. “I’m so sorry! I’ve never hit anyone before. Did I hurt
you?”
Ire flashed in his
gorgeous eyes for a few seconds before it faded to amusement.
“Unfortunately, I have been struck many
times. No, you didn’t hurt me, although I do not like to be
slapped. Please refrain from doing so again.”
“I’m sorry,” I
repeated, appalled at my behavior. “Really, I seem to be all
discombobulated today. I think it’s because of this whole weirdness
of being in the Akasha.”
“What did you do to
end up here?” he asked, frowning again.
Even frowning, he was
the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
He
smiled.
“Stop
that!”
“You’re
projecting.”
“I am not! I never
project! And what did you mean, you marked me?”
He sighed. “Why won’t
you ever answer a question I ask?”
“Probably because I
don’t want to. Did you leave some sort of Dracula mark on my neck?
I don’t remember Avery doing that, although he sure gave Jas a
whole lot of hickeys that she just thought were funny.” I tried to
look at my own neck, failing as I knew I would. “What sort of mark
is it? Am I going to have to wear a scarf forever to keep the Van
Helsings of the world from staking me so I won’t become a female
vamp?”
He rolled his eyes,
and just walked away.
I stared after him
for a minute, not believing what I was seeing.
“Where are you
going?” I finally called once I realized he was really
leaving.
Away.
“Away
where?”
Does it matter?
“Yes, it matters! You
can’t just walk away! I gave you blood!”
Thank you for the blood. Good-bye.
I stared at his
receding figure, stunned. He was going to leave me? Just leave me?
After I’d given him blood and had the most erotic experience of my
life, he was just going to leave?
“Hey!” I bellowed.
“Alec? You’re leaving me?”
He stopped, and I
knew, just knew, he was
sighing.
I apologized for taking more blood than I should. I didn’t
berate you for reviving me. I made you hum. What more do you want
from me?
I bit back my pride
and ran after him, trying to follow the same path he took around
the rocks. “Well . . . geez, I don’t know. I just think that you
kind of owe me, you know?”
He turned, his
expression dark with anger. “For bringing me back to awareness that
I am doubly damned? ” He made a low, sweeping bow, his mind filled
with bitterness. “Thank you for tormenting me as no one else has
done.”
“I didn’t mean to . .
. you didn’t want to be woken up?”
“No.”
“Why
not?”
He gestured around
us. “If you had the opportunity of slipping into unawareness of
this torment, would you not choose to do so?”
“No. I’d choose to
leave.”
The look he gave me
was filled with scorn. “There is no way out.”
“Of course there is.
If there’s a way in, there’s a way out. Am I going to be a female
vampire now because of your mark?”
He just stared at me
for a couple of seconds, then took me by the wrist and pulled me
after him as he headed to what I thought was the north. “If your
sister is a Beloved, you must know that it doesn’t work like that.
The marking I referred to is the mental connection we have. It is
one of the seven steps of Joining, which is wholly impossible given
that my Beloved died six hundred years ago, but understandable
given the amount of blood you gave me.”
“Well, I don’t know
about this marking business,” I said, carefully locking away the
thought that reincarnation might very well mean his Beloved was
alive and kicking, and damned close to jumping his bones again
despite her desperate attempt to stay away from him, “but as for
the other, I don’t know that much about you guys. Jas went off to
live with Avery, and . . . well, I’m not very comfortable around
him. Or his brothers. Plus there’s the fact that Jas has been
trying to fix me up with Avery’s youngest brother, Daniel, and
I—”
The word Alec snarled
wasn’t at all polite, nor was the face he turned on me as he
gripped me with both hands. But what was most intriguing was the
hot spurt of jealousy that I could feel rip through
him.
He was jealous? Of
me? Why did that delight me so much?
I am not jealous.
No? So the thought of me having sex with Daniel does
nothing—Alec!
His tongue was there
in my mouth again, his thigh shoved between mine, his fingers
working my zipper down again. Mine! he
snarled into my head.
Oh, I am so not yours!
You are. You gave yourself to me.
We had sex, Alec. That’s all. Get over yourself. Oh, holy
mother, do that again first, though. Hooyeah!
Another shout from
the distance, somewhat louder, brought sanity back to us. Alec
removed his hand from my underwear, his eyes burning with passion
as he rezipped my jeans.
“That ‘mine!’ crap?
It’s so not happening. I don’t like possessive men,” I told
him.
“At this moment,
love, I don’t particularly care what you like,” he snapped,
grabbing me by the hand and hauling me after him.