Books by Maggie Shayne (228 page)

He brought his shields up again. "Nothing, Alby. Why can't you believe me?"

"I know better, that's why. I'm not stupid, Edge. You want to use me… "

"In every imaginable way." He moved up behind her, and when he spoke those words, his cold breath caressed her neck. "I haven't tried to hide that fact from you, Alby."

She shivered.

He stroked his hands down her shoulders, outer arms, alt the way to her wrists, then closed his hands on hers. "It's all right. I can be patient."

"There's more. There's more you want from me. I know it."

"I swear there isn't."

"I dreamed about you, Edge."

He went very still, as stunned as if she'd hit him right between the eyes.

"I've been dreaming about you for nearly a year now."

"Really?" He didn't know how to react, what to say.

But he had to know; he had to ask. "What happens in these dreams?" he asked.

"Well, most recently… " she whispered. Then, suddenly, he could see inside her mind as she opened it to him, revealing the same erotic images he'd painted for her only moments earlier. He felt as if his blood turned to lava in his veins. His mind raced, and his hunger for her burned. "Jesus," he muttered.

"Oh, there's more.'' She leaned back against his chest, let her head fall to one side. He nuzzled her throat, let his lips slide over it, licked softly and felt the pounding beat in the jugular. God, he wanted to taste her.

"God, yes," he muttered against her skin. "What else?'' he whispered, parting his lips against her neck to speak the words.

"A couple of things. I'm overwhelmed with feelings of passion, fear and grief. You give me something."

"Yes?" He sucked the skin of her throat just a little, scraped his teeth over it without allowing himself to bite down, and he felt the heat and the passion in her, rising to equal his own.

"Oh, yes. You give me death."

Edge froze. Slowly he lifted his head from her neck, and, hands to her shoulders, he turned her to face him. "I… kill you?"

She nodded. "I don't know. I only know you bring me a gift, and the gift is death. Now maybe you see why I'm a little bit wary about trusting you, Edge."

Amber watched him as carefully as she would have watched a coiled cobra. He'd seemed stunned when she told him about her dream. She thought his shock was genuine.

"I'm
not
going to get you killed." The way he said it, she could almost believe he was trying to convince himself as much as her. "I swear, Alby, I'm not. I wouldn't do that."

She shrugged. "That's a funny way to put it."

"What is?"

"You said you wouldn't get me killed. I didn't say you got me killed in the dream, I said you gave me death."

"It's the same thing, isn't it?"

"I don't think so. Not exactly."

He lowered his head, pacing away from her. "Hell, how could I kill you, anyway? I don't even know if anything can kill you.
You
don't even know."

She shrugged. "Well, no, but I know what won't. Drowning, electric shock, poisons, sunlight. Blood loss makes me pretty helpless, but who knows if it would kill me or not? I would imagine burning or beheading—"

"Stop it!"

She smiled, because he looked shaken by the images she'd painted in his mind. Turning away from him, she spent a few minutes pounding the punching bag with hooks, jabs, crescent kicks and back kicks. She was showing off, and she thought he knew it. When she stopped for a breather, he stood aside, hands on his hips, watching her. He said, "Do your dreams always come to pass?"

She sent him a glance. "So far? Always." She gave the bag one last kick for good measure. "Walk me back to the house?"

"And give me a chance to attack?"

"I think I could take you."

"I wish you would."

She smiled slowly.

He said, "Why aren't you running away from me as fast as you can? I don't get it."

"Neither do I. Partly because I want to know what the dream means. And partly… " She lowered her eyes, not finishing the sentence.

"Yeah, partly that. That I understand."

She brushed the comment aside. "I want you to spend more time with the others. Get to know them a little."

"I'm a loner, Alby."

She tilted her head. "It's okay, Edge. They don't know about the dreams. No one does, except Will, and he doesn't know the content. Only that I dreamed about you."

He pursed his lips, lowered his head. "Besides, they're better mind probers than you are, right? They might pick up on my ulterior motives. That's why you really want to drag me back there, isn't it?"

"You weren't lying when you said you didn't trust anyone, were you?" She sighed heavily. "Hell, Edge, if that's what you think, it's fine by me. So long as you have nothing to hide, why do you care?"

He seemed to mull it over for a long moment. Then he brightened a bit. "What's in it for me?" he asked her.

She was surprised, but less so as she examined the spark in his eyes. "You mean I have to resort to bribery to get you to spend time with me?"

"I'll spend every night with you, Alby, if you want. But with those others? Yes, it requires compensation. So what will you give me?"

"What do you want?"

He smiled, an evil smile. She knew, right to the core of her, what he was going to say. Sex. Or blood. Or both. He wanted to take her, own her, possess her, drink her, and God help her, the idea heated her to the verge of meltdown.

"A kiss," he said then.

She blinked at him as her brain registered what he had said, and that it did not match what she had been expecting. "I'm sorry?"

"A kiss. I want one long, passionate, uninhibited kiss."

"You've already kissed me."

He shrugged. "Doesn't mean I won't do it again, but that's beside the point. I want you to kiss me."

She frowned at him. "And if I do, you'll come back to the house with me?"

"And stay until a quarter to dawn, if that's what you want. But it has to be a real kiss. No little peck. Kiss me like you mean it."

She wasn't sure she would be capable of kissing him and
not
meaning it, but she wasn't about to tell him that. "All right, it's a deal. Pucker up."

He wiggled his eyebrows at her and sat down on a bench that had probably once belonged in front of an organ. "Just so you can reach," he explained. "Without standing on tiptoe."

"Mmm-hmm." She moved to the bench and turned to sit beside him, but he stopped her, hands on her waist.

"No, no. Here, like this." He moved her sideways until she stood right in front of the bench, facing him. Then he slid his hands down her sides, over her hips. His fingertips touched her backside as he moved his hands lower, to her thighs, then downward to the hollow behind her knees. Then he tugged gently, so she moved closer, until his knees were between hers and his head was level with her breasts. Pulling on one knee until she bent it, he brought it up, over the bench, around him. Then he tugged at the other.

Amber put her hands on his shoulders, and moved the other leg where he wanted it. He pulled her down, until she sat on him, straddling him.

"There. That's better now, isn't it?" he asked her. His voice had gone soft, rough. She felt him getting hard underneath her. Her belly twisted, and she wanted to do a lot more than kiss him and wasn't even bothered by the fact that his hands had settled on the curve of her ass, so they could keep her hips imprisoned against his. He moved his hips a little, rubbing his erection against her. "Yeah, that's much better. Now kiss me."

Amber licked her lips. His eyes followed the motion. She lifted her palms to his cheeks, tipped his head up a little and lowered hers. He didn't close his eyes but left them open, and she couldn't seem to break the grip they had and close her own. Not until she pressed her mouth to his.

He did not kiss her. He remained still, passive and expectant. She moved her lips over his, opening and closing, adding a little suction that tugged them into her, and she liked that. She experimented then with her tongue, pushing his lips apart and slipping inside. She traced his lips with her tongue, tickled the roof of his mouth with it, then slid over his teeth. She felt his incisors, long and razor-sharp. Then she played with his tongue until she managed to elicit the response she'd been craving.

He closed his arms around her waist, and he kissed her in return. His fangs scraped her lip, and he lapped the taste of blood from the scratch. His fingers tangled in her hair, and he seemed intent on drinking her very soul from her lips and her mouth. That was how deeply he kissed her, how much he took.

When he finally lifted his head away the blood lust was raging so strongly in him that his eyes seemed to glow. Amber was breathless, panting, her heart pounding like the bass-line of a rap song. Her entire body shook and trembled, and she felt light-headed. She twined her arms around his neck and lowered her head to his shoulder, resting against him, waiting for the high voltage charge pulsing through her to fade away.

"Alby?" he asked.

"Hmm?"

"Is this another part of your… you know, abilities?"

She lifted her head slowly. "What?"

He seemed to be searching for the correct way to rephrase his question. "Have you kissed other men?" he asked, finally.

"Of course I've kissed men before." Boys, she thought. No men. Not really.

"Did they… did it… was it like this?"

"Like this?" She smiled at him, realizing it had been as mind-blowing for him as for her. But she wanted to hear him admit that, so she put on her most innocent expression and asked, "Like what?"

"Like what," he repeated, giving her a look that told her he knew exactly what she was doing. "Did their eyes roll back in their heads, doll? Did their tongues loll out to their knees? Did they go into core meltdown?"

The smile broke wide across her lips; she couldn't prevent it. "That's what it felt like to you, too?"

He thinned his lips, averted his eyes. "I didn't say that." Giving her a little nudge, he moved her off his lap, onto her feet, and got to his own. "Let's go, then." He flashed into motion, and before she could speak again, he was out the window, standing on the beach and waiting for her.

Amber went to the window, too, vaulted the sill and landed in a crouch, bouncing quickly upright again. She walked to where he stood, slid her hand into his, laced her fingers through his and began walking along the beach.

He looked down at their hands, a deep frown etching itself between his brows. It wasn't exactly one of dismay or dislike. More like… confusion.

"It's never been like that before, Edge. Never, not with anyone."

He pursed his lips. "Then again, that's not saying much, is it? Given your lack of experience, I mean?"

She looked up at him, and thought,
You know better. It's got nothing to do with my virginity. There's something powerful here
.

He pretended not to have heard her, though she knew he had. And together, they walked back to the house.

"I don't like this. I don't like it one bit," Morgan said softly. She was sitting in a chair on the patio, a notebook computer open on her lap. It painted her worried face in a soft electric blue glow. "Where is she, anyway? Not with that Sting wanna-be, is she?"

"Sting?" Dante asked. He sat nearby in a reclining lawn chair, beside a glass topped umbrella table. The umbrella, of course, was absent. It would have shaded them only from the moonlight. Sarafina sat beside him, and Willem was at the fourth spot.

"I don't think he looks anything like Sting," Amber said, tightening her hand around Edge's as she walked him up the redwood steps to the patio overlooking the beach. "Billy Idol, maybe?"

Everyone looked their way. She'd felt Edge stiffen just a little when they'd first come up and overheard the conversation. He hadn't relaxed, even when she'd turned Morgan's comment back on her.

Dante rose at their approach. "I'm afraid I don't know either reference." He smiled, nodding hello to them.

"It's just as well, since neither is accurate, anyway," Edge said. He glanced at Morgan, and at the laptop. "Bad news, I take it?"

She pursed her lips, shot a look at Amber.

"I'll probably tell him anyway," she said, interpreting Morgan's look correctly.

Morgan sighed. Sarafina said, "If Amber trusts him, we should, as well. She's the one in jeopardy, after all."

Edge lifted his brows. "What makes you think Alby's in danger?"

"Amber Lily is always in danger," Willem said. "She's one of a kind, Edge. Prize quarry for certain hunters."

"Like Frank Stiles," Amber explained in an aside. "That's who they're worried about."

"And now someone has leaked word that she's here, in Salem," Morgan said, and she speared Edge with her eyes when she said it. "It's all over the Internet."

"Well, don't look at me." Edge glanced from one of them to the other. "I'm not exactly a technophile."

"Edge doesn't even have electricity where he's been staying, much less an Internet connection." Amber tugged him by the hand to a thickly cushioned swing that hung from chains and a wood frame. She sat there, and he sank down beside her. She drew a breath. "So do you think Stiles has heard I'm here yet?"

"If he's alive, he's heard," Willem said softly. "I think you should leave, Amber Lily. Go down to Wind Ridge and join Rhiannon, Roland and your parents at Eric and Tarn's place."

Edge looked at Amber. "If Stiles knows where you are, will he come for you?"

She smiled slowly as she thought about her answer, then let the smile widen as it came to her in full. "There's not a doubt in my mind,'' she said. "And that's not necessarily a bad thing."

"Not a bad thing? In what world?" Morgan asked. "Amber, he had you once. You, of all people, should know what he's capable of."

Amber looked at her. "We need him," she said. "He might be our only chance of saving Will. If my being in Salem will bring
him
to us, then I should stay right here. Let him come. It'll save us the time and trouble of hunting him down. Frankly, if I'd thought of it, I'd have posted that information myself."

Will met Amber's eyes. "I'm not going to let you act as bait, Amber."

She shrugged, not holding his gaze. "If I were to go join the others at Wind Ridge, what makes you think I'd be any safer? What's to stop whoever leaked this information from leaking that, as well?"

She knew when she looked to Willem again and saw his jaw tighten that she'd scored a point. Dante said, "She has a point, Will. We can't be certain she's safe anywhere until we know who's spying on us and why."

Will nodded at the computer. "Can you track those posts back to the bastard who sent them?''

Rather than answering, Dante looked to Morgan. She nodded. "We can trace them back to the computer that sent them. Not necessarily the individual. And it'll take sometime."

"How long?" It was Edge who asked the question, and it rather surprised Amber that he was this interested.

"A day, maybe two. There's a tangled mess of screen names and identities to wade through, but I'll get there."

He nodded, then glanced at Amber. "Maybe they're right. Maybe you should go off to…Windy Hill or wherever that princess and the rest of your family are hiding out."

"Wind Ridge, and they aren't hiding out, Edge," she told him gently. "Rhiannon doesn't believe in it."

"Whatever. We could sneak you out of here quietly. As far as Stiles would know, you would still be here."

She tipped her head to one side, searching his eyes until he looked away. "You trying to get rid of me, Edge?"

He slanted her a look, maybe caught the teasing light in her eyes, sent her a wink. "Trying to keep you around, Alby. Alive and kicking."

She felt a little better, but she wasn't sure she believed him. It was odd, she thought, being so drawn to a man and second-guessing every word he said. "It doesn't matter," she told him. "I'm not leaving."

She eyed the others. "I'm as capable of defending myself as any of you, and you know it."

Will nodded slowly. "We know it."

"Then let's move on to another topic."

"Such as?" Dante asked, a little light of admiration in his eyes.

"Well… Stiles may be on his way here. We should plan for that, figure out what we intend to do about it."