Books by Maggie Shayne (74 page)

She examined the room itself, noting a chandelier of brass and crystal suspended high overhead. Yet at one end of the room shelves had been built to hold thousands of dollars worth of stereo equipment, and rows of CDs, LPs, and cassettes. Nearby, a rather ordinary-looking bar seemed out of place in the antique-filled room, with the parquet floors. She saw oil lamps on every stand, yet a light switch on the wall. The sun sank lower, and she walked toward the bar, snapped on the light and licked her lips. She could use a drink. She was still shivering intermittently, despite the warmth filling the room. If Eric could forgive her for breaking into his home, she reasoned, he ought to be able to forgive her for stealing a small glass of—of whatever he had on hand.

She went behind the bar and ducked down to look at the nearly-empty shelves underneath. Not a single bottle rested there. Glasses, yes. A couple of expensive cut-crystal decanters. She stood, frowning, turning only when she heard the almost silent hum of the small refrigerator, built in to the wall behind her.

Smiling at her own oversight, Tamara gripped the handle and tugged. . . .

A tiny chunk of ice placed itself in the center of her chest, and slowly grew until it enveloped her entire body.

Her jaw fell. She took a step back, blinking, unable to believe what she was seeing. Blood. Plastic bags filled with blood in two neat stacks. She felt as if she'd been dropped into the fury of a cyclone. She saw nothing all at once, except a thin red haze, heard nothing but a deafening roar. Mindlessly she shoved at the small door. It swung, but didn't quite close, and slowly it slipped back to its wide open position. Tamara didn't notice. She turned away, face buried in her hands, fingertips pressing into her eyelids as if she could erase what she'd seen.

"It wasn't real. It couldn't have been real. I'll turn around. If I turn around and look again it won't be there because it wasn't real."

She didn't turn around, though. She lifted her head, focused on the French doors and hurried toward them. She wanted to run, but couldn't. Just walking in her socks seemed absurdly loud on the parquet floor. She felt eyes on her, seemingly from everywhere. Her own gaze darted about, like a bird flitting from branch to branch on a tree, in constant motion. She couldn't shake the feeling that someone was right behind her, no matter which way she turned. She moved forward, then whirled and walked backward a few steps. Only a yard to go. She'd grab up her boots. She'd snatch her coat as she ran outside. She wouldn't wait to put them on first. Another step. An invisible finger of ice traced a path up her backbone.

"Too crazy," she whispered, turning fast and walking backward again. "It's all too crazy—this place—me. I'm too crazy." Her mind cartwheeled out of control and she pivoted once more, ready to make a lunge for the door. Her path was blocked by a broad, hard chest covered in crisp white cotton.

She automatically drew back, but Eric's hands clamped down on her shoulders before she'd moved a half step. Frozen in place, she only stared up at him as her breaths began coming too quickly and too shallowly. Her head swam. Against her will she studied his face. His eyes glistened, and she knew more than just bald terror of this man. She felt a sickening sense of loss and of betrayal. Daniel had been right all along.

"What are you doing here, Tamara?"

She tried to swallow, but her throat was like a sandy desert. She pulled against his hands, surprised when he let them fall from her shoulders. A strange voice behind her made her whirl between heartbeats. "Snooping, of course. I told you not to trust her, Eric. She's DPI." The man standing near the bar waved a hand toward the opened refrigerator. That first glimpse of him nearly extinguished the small spark of reason she had left. He was dressed all in black, with a satin cloak that reached to the floor all but blanketing him. He moved like a panther, with inconceivable grace and latent power. He exuded a sexual magnetism that was palpable. His dark good looks were belied by the ageless wisdom in the depths of his smoldering jet eyes. As she watched he lifted a decanter to the bar, and then a matching glass. He reached into the open fridge and took out a bag.

Tamara had never fainted in her life, but she came very close then. Her head floated three feet above her shoulders and her knees dissolved. For just an instant black velvet engulfed her. She didn't feel herself sink toward the floor. Eric moved even before she knew what was happening. He scooped her up as soon as she faltered, carried her to the settee and lowered her carefully. "That was unnecessary, Roland!" She heard his angry shout, but knew he hadn't moved his lips. Her sanity slipped another notch.

She sat with her back against one hard wooden arm. Eric sat beside her, his arms making walls around her. His right hand braced against the back of the settee, his left against the arm on which she leaned. She cringed into the warm green velvet. "Get away from me." Her words tripped over each other on the way past her lips. "Let me go home."

"You will go home, Tamara. As soon as you tell me what you are doing here. Is Roland correct? Have you been sent by your employers? Perhaps by St Claire himself?"

Deny it, Eric thought desperately.
Deny it, Tamara, and I'll believe you. If it costs my existence, I'll believe you
. He watched her chalky face go even paler. He honed his senses to hers and felt a shock of paralyzing fear. Fear. . .of him. It hit him painfully.

"Tamara, you needn't be afraid. I'd sooner harm myself than you." He glanced toward Roland. "Leave us for a time." He spoke aloud to be certain Tamara understood.

He had no doubt Roland did so for the same reason. Slanting a derogatory gaze in her direction, he said, "And if she would lead a regiment of DPI forces to the back door?" He stepped out from behind the bar and came nearer. "Well, girl? Speak up. Have you come alone? How; did you get in?"

Eric shot to his feet, his anger flaring hot. "I am warning you, Roland, let me take care of this matter. You are only frightening her."

"
I
? Frightening
her
? You think I felt secure when I woke and sensed a human presence in this house? For God's sake, Eric, for all I knew I was about to be skewered on a stake!"

"Th-then it's true." Tamara's voice, shaking and sounding as if every word were forced, brought Eric's gaze back to her. "You're—you both are, are—"

"Vampires," Roland spat. "It isn't a dirty word, at least, not among us."

She groaned and put her head in her hands. Roland shook his head in exasperation and turned away. Eric took his seat beside her once more. He wanted to comfort her, but wasn't certain he knew how. He pulled one of her hands into his own, and stroked her palm with his thumb. "Tamara, look at me, please." She lifted her head, but couldn't seem to meet his gaze. "Try to see beyond your fear, and the shock of this revelation. Just see me. I am the same man I was last night, and the night before. I am the same man who held you in my arms... who kissed you. Did I frighten you then? Did I give you any reason to fear me?"

Her eyes focused on his, and he thought they cleared a bit. She shook her head. More confident, he pressed on. "I am not a monster, Tamara. I'd never harm you. I'd kill anyone who tried. Listen with your heart and you'll know it to be true." He reached one hand tentatively, and when she didn't flinch or draw away he flattened one palm to her silken cheek. "Believe that."

Her brows drew together slightly, and he thought she might be thinking it over. Roland cleared his throat, her head snapped around and the fear returned to her eyes. "If it is me you fear, you need not. I do not choose to trust you as my dear friend does, but neither would I lift a finger to harm you. My anger at finding you here is directly related to my wish to continue existing." The last was said with a meaningful glance at Eric.

"Tamara." When he had her attention again, he continued. "There are those who would like nothing better than to murder us in our sleep. We both thought my security system infallible. Please, tell me how you breached it."

She swallowed. Her throat convulsed. "Where the fence ends," she said hoarsely. "At the cliff." Her gaze flew to Roland. "I didn't bring anyone here. I didn't even tell them where I—" She bit her lips before she could finish the sentence, but Eric had barely heard her words.

"At the cliff?" he repeated. For the first time he looked at her closely. Her denims were damp and caked with dirt. A streak of mud marred her high cheekbone, and her hair was wild. The scent of blood reached him from the hand he held, and he spread her fingers wider with his own. Drying blood coated her palm. Fresh trickles of it came from narrow slices at the creases of three fingers. It pulsed a bit harder from the fourth. "How did this happen?"

"I—I fell. I had to cling to the fence, and the vine patterns are sharp. They cut—"

Roland swore softly and whirled to leave the room. Eric could clearly see what she described. He sensed what had happened, her fear, her panic and her pain. The memory embedded itself in his mind as firmly as it had in hers, and it shook him to think of her coming so close to death while he slept, helpless to save her. Roland returned, dropped to his knees beside the settee and deposited a basin of warm water on the table beside it. He squeezed a clean white cloth and handed it to Eric. As Eric gently cleaned her hand, Roland looked on, his face drawn as if he, too, could envision what had happened. The wounds cleansed, Roland produced a tiny bottle of iodine. He took Tamara's hand from Eric's, and dabbed each cut liberally with the brownish liquid. He recapped the bottle, and took another strip of white cloth from some hidden pocket beneath his cloak. Carefully he began to wrap her four fingers at the knuckle.

"It—it's only a couple of scratches," Tamara croaked, watching his movements in something like astonishment.

Roland stopped, seeming to consider for a moment. He grinned then, a bit sheepishly. "I sometimes forget what century this is. You've likely been vaccinated against tetanus. There was a time when even minor scratches like these could have cost the entire hand, if not treated." He shrugged and finished the wrapping with a neat little knot. He glanced up at Tamara, caught her amazement and frowned. "You assumed we would go into a frenzy at the scent of your blood, like a pack of hungry wolves, did you not?"

"Enough, Roland," Eric cut in. "You cannot blame her for misconceptions about us. She's been reared by a man who loathes our kind. She only needs to see for herself we are not the monsters he would have her believe." He studied Tamara, but found she wasn't looking at either of them. She was staring at the white bandage on her hand, turning it this way and that, frowning as if she didn't quite know what it was, or how it had got there.

His stomach clenched. She'd had a scare out there at the cliff, and now another shock, in learning the truth about him. She was shaken. He'd have to go gently. "Tamara," he said softly. When she looked up, he went on. "Will you tell me why you came here?"

"I... had to know. I had to know."

He closed his eyes and made himself continue. "Then St. Claire doesn't know you've come to me?"

Some of the fear returned to her wide, dark eyes, but to her credit she answered honestly. "No one knows I'm here."

He swallowed, and squared his shoulders. He had to ask the next question, no matter how distasteful. "Did you come to discover my secrets, and take them back to your guardian, Tamara?"

She shook her head emphatically, straightening up in her corner of the settee. "I wouldn't do that!" When she met his gaze again, her eyes narrowed. The fear seemed to be shoved aside to make room for another emotion. "I was honest with you, Eric. I found myself telling you things I had never told anyone, and every one of them was the truth. I trusted you." Her voice broke, and she had to draw a shaky breath before she could continue. In that instant Roland nodded toward Eric, indicating he was satisfied that she posed no threat, and would leave them alone now. Roland vanished through a darkened doorway. Tamara found her voice and rushed on.

"I told you about the nightmares, about how I thought I might be going insane. I bared my soul to you, and the whole time you were deceiving me. Daniel was right. You were only using me to get closer to him!"

Eric felt a shaft of white-hot iron pierce his heart. All she wanted at this moment was to get away from him. He swallowed his pain. "I never deceived you, Tamara."

"You deceived me by omission," she countered.

"And I would have told you the rest of it, in time. I didn't think you were ready to hear the truth."

"The truth? You mean that you've been plotting to rid yourself of an old man's harassment, and you were using me to do it?"

"That I am not like other men. I had no idea you were under St. Claire's hand until you told me yourself, and after that my only goal was to protect you from the bastard!"

"Protect me? From
Daniel
?"

Eric let his chin drop to his chest. "If I was lying to you, you would know it," he told her slowly, carefully, enunciating each word and giving each time to penetrate her mind. She was angry now. He didn't suppose that should surprise him. He met her probing, questing eyes. "We have a psychic link, Tamara. You cannot deny that. You've felt its power. When you called to me in your dreams, when I summoned you out onto the balcony. Have you realized yet that you can cry out to me, across the miles, using nothing but your mind, and that I will hear you?"

She shook her head fast. "The dream was a fluke, and beyond my control. I couldn't do it at will."

"You could. Put it to the test, if you doubt me."

"No, thank you. I just want to go home. . . and—"

"Do not say it, Tamara. You know it is untrue," Eric cut in, sensing her declaration before she uttered it.

She met his gaze, her own unwavering. "I don't want to see you again. I want you to leave me alone. I can't let myself be used to betray Daniel, or DPI."

"I would never ask you to do either one. I haven't yet, have I?" He grabbed her shoulders when she would have stood, and held her where she was. "As for the rest, now you are the one lying, Tamara to yourself and to me. You do not wish for me to leave you alone. Quite the opposite, in fact."

She shook her head.

"Shall I prove it to you, yet again? You want me, Tamara. With the same mindless passion I feel for you. It goes far beyond the past we share. It exceeds this mental link. I would feel it even if you were a stranger. Our bond only strengthens it, and vice versa."

She stared into his eyes, and her own dampened. "I can't feel this way for you.
I can't,
dammit."

"Because I'm a vampire?"

She closed her eyes against the glycerin like tears that pooled there. "I don't even know what that means. I only know you despise the man I hold more dear to me than anything in the world."

"I despise no one. It is true that I distrust the man. But I wish him no harm, I swear to you." Her eyes opened slowly, and she studied his face. "I could not long for something that would cause you pain, Tamara. To harm St. Claire would also harm you. I can see that clearly. I'm not capable of causing you pain."

She shook her head. "I don't know what to believe. I—I just want to leave. I can't think clearly here."

"I can't let you go in this frame of mind," he said softly. "Stop trying to rationalize, Tamara. Let yourself feel what is between us. You cannot make it disappear." His gaze touched her lips, and before he could stop himself he fastened his hungry mouth over them, enfolding her in his arms and drawing her to his chest.

She remained stiff, but he felt her lips tremble against his. Barely lifting his mouth away, he whispered, "Close your mind and open your heart. Do not think. Feel." His lips closed the hairbreadth of space again, nudging hers apart, feeding on the sweetness behind them. With a shudder that shook her entire body Tamara surrendered. He felt her go soft and pliable, and then her arms twined around his neck and her soft mouth opened farther. When his tongue plunged deeply into the velvet moistness, her fingers, clenched in his hair. One hand fumbled with the ribbon that held his customary queue. A moment later the ribbon fell away, and she swept her fingers again and again through his hair, driving him to greater passion.

He pressed her backward until she lay against the settee's wooden arm and still farther, so her back arched over it. His own arm clutching her to him rested at the small of her back, protecting her from the hard wood. His other arm stretched lengthwise, up her spine so his hand could entangle itself in her hair. His fingers spread open to cradle her head. He moved it this way and that beneath his plundering lips to fit her to him. His chest pressed hard on hers. He drank in the honeyed elixir of her; he tasted every wet recess his tongue could reach. He caressed the roof of her mouth, the backs of her teeth and the sweet well of her throat.

She groaned, a deep, guttural sound that set an inferno blazing through him. She shifted beneath him so that one leg, bent at the knee, pressed into the back of the settee, while the other still hung off the side, onto the floor. He responded instantly and without thought, turning into her, pressing one knee to the cushion and lowering his hips to hers. He brought one hand down, sliding it beneath her firm backside and holding her to him while he ground against her. He throbbed with need, and he knew she could feel his hardness pushing insistently against her most sensitive spot, as his hand kneaded her derriere. He felt her desire racing through her, and the knowledge that she wanted just what he did added fuel to the fire incinerating his mind.

He trailed a burning path over her face with his lips, moving steadily lower, over her denned jawbone, to the soft hollow of her throat. Her jugular swelled its welcome, and her pulse thundered in anticipation. He tasted the salt of her skin on his stroking tongue, and the stream of her blood rushing beneath its surface tingled on his lips. His breathing became rapid and gruff. His own heart hammered and the blood lust twined with the sexual arousal, enhancing it until both roared in his ears as one entity.

Another moment—another of her heated, whimpering breaths bathing his skin, or one more shift of her luscious body against his straining groin—and it would take over completely. He'd lose control. He'd tear her clothing off and he'd take her. He'd take her completely. He'd bury himself inside her so deeply she'd cry out, and. he'd drink the nectar from her veins until he was sated.

She arched against him then, pressing her throat hard against his mouth, and her hips tighter to his manhood. She shivered from her toes to her lips. Even her hands on his back and in his hair trembled, and she moaned softly—a plea for something she wasn't even fully aware of craving.

He gathered every ounce of strength in him and tore himself from her so roughly he almost stumbled to the floor. He whirled away from her, bent nearly double, holding the edge of the table for support.

He heard her gasp in surprise, then he heard the strangled sob that broke from her lips, and when he dared look at her, her knees were drawn to her chest, her face pressed to them. "Why—" she began.

"I'm sorry. Tamara, you make me forget common sense. You make me forget everything except how badly I want you."