Duet in Blood (6 page)

I would swear that in all my long life I’d never had an orgasm of such intensity. As Micah murmured softly in his sleep, I kissed his sweet lips and stroked his burnished hair from his damp brow. I wondered if he would remember this dream when he awakened.

DUET IN BLOOD

J.P. Bowie

35

Micah

I awoke from a sexy, dream-filled sleep and stretched like a contented cat. The evening and early hours of the morning had been more that I could have ever imagined. God, but it had been fantastic—he was fantastic. In my whole life, I had never been able to go for it so many times. I felt as if I was becoming insatiable, just not getting enough of him—but boy, he’d been up for it every time, too! Plus, I’d dreamed of him making love to me—what a fantastic dream! It had seemed so real.

I rolled onto my side and put my arm around his chest, snuggling close to him as he slept. I kissed the nape of his neck, stroked his chest and hard stomach, willing him to wake up and make love to me again. Talk about insatiable.

Then some instinct made me glance at my watch. Shit…almost eight. I’d have to move it if I wasn’t going to be late opening the store. Damn…where were my clothes? I peered into the darkness of the room, stumbling from the bed and cracking my shin on a corner table.

“Ow!”

Joseph stirred and sat up. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, but I gotta go. I’ll be late for work.”

“It’s Sunday.”

“I work Sundays. It’s so dark in here…”

“Sorry.” Joseph flicked on the bedside lamp. “Just, please, don’t open the drapes.”

“I need to find my clothes.”

“Wait, I’ll get up.” Joseph rose and strode into the living area, turning on another lamp.

“It’ll be light outside,” I said, heading for the window.

“I said, do not open the drapes!”

His voice was like a thunderclap. My hand froze in the act of doing what he clearly did not want me to do. I turned and gaped at him. He was glaring at me, his beautiful grey eyes now turned hard as shot steel.

DUET IN BLOOD

J.P. Bowie

36

“Jeez. I’m sorry.” My hand nervously dropped from the blackout fabric I held. What had happened to the sweet guy from last night? I stared at Joseph’s naked body, now tense as a tightly wound spring. What was the big deal, anyway? “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

He seemed to relax. “No, no, it is I who must apologise,” he said, his voice again low and husky. “You could not know, after all. I have an aversion to strong sunlight. My eyes…they are defective.”

Those beautiful eyes?

I hurried to where Joseph stood and threw my arms around him. “I wish you’d told me.

I would’ve hated to have caused you pain.” The sensation of his nakedness against mine gave me a deep visceral thrill. What a bummer I had to leave.

“Don’t leave…” Joseph’s husky whisper in my ear made me shiver with desire.

“I have to go to work.”

“I’ll order you a cab.”

“I have to go home and change first. I really have to go.” I smiled into his eyes, glad to see that their former warmth had returned. I started to pick up the clothes I’d thrown off the night before. “But, maybe we could get together again…”

“Tonight?” Joseph prompted, turning slightly to pick up a silk robe from the sofa. “For dinner?”

“You’re not busy?” I asked, staring at the tattoo on his right shoulder blade. I hadn’t noticed it until that moment.

“Not all of us have to work on Sundays. When can I expect you?”

“Uh, where’d you want to meet?” I asked, pulling on my jeans.

“What about right here? I can order room service.”

“That sounds great. How about seven?”

“Seven is fine.” Joseph smiled at me. “I will live for the moment when I see you again.”

I grinned at him. “Me too.” I pulled my tee over my head. “You talk so nicely. I love your accent.”

“I had a very formal education.”

“In France?”

“There and Germany…and some other places.”

DUET IN BLOOD

J.P. Bowie

37

“I didn’t notice your tattoo last night.” I rubbed my hand over his chest. “I guess we were too busy. Can I see it?”

He slipped the robe from his shoulders so I could inspect the strange design imprinted on his smooth skin.

“What is it?” I murmured, tracing the scroll-like pattern with my finger.

“The sign of the Master,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Master? What Master?”

“When I was a young boy, I joined a secret society. All who joined had to have this sign tattooed on their skin. It was foolish of me, but it seemed exciting at the time. The older boys called it the sign of the Master.”

“Hmm, sounds kinky,” I said, chuckling.

“It wasn’t, and of course, there was no Master. Just little boys’ fantasies.” He shrugged the robe over his shoulders and took me in his arms. “Last night was very special for me, Micah.”

“Yeah, it was.” We kissed, and again, I felt an instant erection coming my way. I groaned. “I gotta go, Joseph.”

“I know…” He walked with me to the door. “
A bientot
,” he whispered, kissing my cheek.

My French is sketchy at best. “
A bientot
—what’s that?”

“See you soon.”

“Mmm…” I kissed his lips. “You bet you will.”

Joseph

After Micah left, the suite seemed cold and empty. Even more cold and empty was the bed I now had to lie in. The memory of his sweet, warm body pressed to mine filled me with longing. I regretted my earlier outburst, of course, and the fact that I had lied to him. It was not my eyes that had an aversion to sunlight—at least, not just my eyes. But it was too soon for him to know the truth about me. When the time came to tell him, it would be after much DUET IN BLOOD

J.P. Bowie

38

more intimacy had passed between us. It would be done gently…not like the soul-searing experience I had endured.

Willingly, I let myself remember the hours Micah and I had spent together. I already knew he was to be mine, and it had been hard for me to let him leave. I could have been more persuasive and made him stay. Even though he would have thought it all his idea, I still did not want to put any undue pressure on his mind. I would be patient and let him come to me when the time was right.

I smiled as I brought a clear vision of his sweet face into focus in my mind. When I had first seen him in the bar the previous night, it was as if I recognised him from some bygone age. We had not met before, but there had been a connection when our eyes first had met. He had felt it too, I know, for in his thoughts I had sensed he knew our meeting had been preordained. Out of all the young men in LA who had offered themselves to me in one form or another, he was the first to truly touch my heart. From the others I accepted the gift of their blood, given willingly and taken with gratitude—and given a gift of my own – the memory of a moment of intense rapture, though with whom they would not recall.

Of course, I had been tempted by the scent of Micah’s blood, but the self-control I have willed upon myself over the years served me well while in his company. He had asked about the tattoo—not a tattoo really, but the cursed emblem of which I never can rid myself even after all the years that have passed since the night those monsters branded it into me. To this day, I am seized with a sense of outrage at the degradation they subjected me to—all for their own perverse satisfaction. The later realisation that, in fact, they could have induced in me a degree of pleasure during those vile moments, made me hate them all the more. Instead, my pain and humiliation added to their enjoyment.

Now, I fingered the blemish they had burned into my skin. The sign of the Master—

that’s what I had told Micah it was, a young boy’s fantasy. How could I ever have told him what it really represented? Not the sign of a Master but of a slave. A plaything for the vile creatures who had enslaved me, keeping me for their wicked purposes year after long year, locked away from everything I had once known, condemned to live in darkness and survive on the cup of blood they fed me now and then to keep me aware of how they had debased me.

DUET IN BLOOD

J.P. Bowie

39

After they had told me of Bernard’s death, I had fallen into despair. Apart from the desolation I felt at the thought that I would never see him again, any hope I had of ever leaving that wretched place had now been taken from me. He had been my one hope of salvation—and they had killed him. They had also lied to me, for with each passing day I felt a change within me. I grew weak and nauseous. Where was their magic they had claimed would keep me eternally young? My face in the mirror exposed their lies. I was aging—and with a rapidity that defied explanation.

The wizards were baffled. For the first time since I had been brought to that house of horrors, I saw them vexed and uncertain. Then one night, they brought another vampire to my cell. Under torture, he had told them what ailed me. To avoid his further torture, I confessed that I had drunk deeper from Bernard than I probably should have, and that we had indulged in a sexual union, during which he had climaxed inside me.

Because of that, the vampire said, Bernard’s powerful blood and semen had initiated the change in me and even the wizard’s magic could not stop it. I had to die and be reborn.

That was the only way now to save me, he told them. What had been begun must now be finished.

I would be a vampire.

They bade him to change me. He was not as gentle as Bernard, and this time, they did not leave us alone. When it was done, and I lay dying, I gazed into the vampire’s eyes and said, “Tell Marcus Verano how I died.”

“One day, you may tell him yourself,” he murmured, holding his bleeding wrist to my lips.

The vampire had told the truth. When I awoke from my death, my face and body were, once more, young, smooth and supple. But what did I care? I was still there, a slave to the monsters who would now revile me as well as defile me.

I was a beautiful vampire, to debase and humiliate.

“He is even more beautiful,” I overheard Tito telling one of the other wizards before bringing him in to peer at me.

I was like a pet to them, but a pet they abused like malicious children would a stray puppy or a kitten. Their abuse went beyond the mentionable.

DUET IN BLOOD

J.P. Bowie

40

My only salvation during that terrible time was the young man who tended me after each visit, when my captors would leave me violated and sickened. With gentle hands, he would wash the sweat and the product of their vileness from my naked flesh, and he would speak soothing words of comfort in his own tongue—a language that I quickly learned from listening to him over time.

His name was Angelo, and I told him he was well named, for indeed he was an angel.

He would smile, his pretty lips parting to reveal his small lovely teeth. They had not changed him. He was still mortal, but I knew that one day they take him to the other side, just as they had taken me from all I knew and loved so many years before. I tried to warn him, begged him to escape before my fate became his, but he would lightly laugh at my pleadings, placing his finger upon my lips to silence me.

It was obvious they had spun him some tale of how perfectly safe he was amongst

them, and that my ranting was not to be believed. Often I would wonder just what it was he thought was happening there, and why I was chained and kept only for their pleasure. It was not long before his caring and tenderness made me love him, even though I could never tell him of it. If my captors ever guessed, they would forbid his visits, and I would be left to lie in my own filth until their needs necessitated my cleanliness. But Angelo sensed my feelings for him, and his soothing hands became instruments of pleasure, caressing my naked body while his mouth lent its own magic, bringing me an ecstasy that I deluded myself into thinking was happiness.

Of course, eventually the monsters discovered our secret, and Angelo, despite trying to cling to me, was dragged from my cell. When next I saw him, they had changed him and branded him with the identical devilish mark they had scarred me with years before. But his punishment did not match mine. He came to me, tears flooding his eyes, to tell me that he was being taken to another of their strongholds to learn the way of the Dark Arts. He was to be one of them.

As the deep sleep began to take me away, I pushed all those tormenting thoughts of the past to the back of my mind.

It was the present I lived for, and I smiled at the thought that when I awoke, there would be only a few hours before I would see Micah again. Perhaps I could conjure up the dream we had shared together.

DUET IN BLOOD

J.P. Bowie

41

Micah

It seemed as though I had been rushing all day. From the time I’d left Joseph’s hotel, caught a bus to my apartment, showered then run the six blocks to the bookstore, I hadn’t stopped to catch a breath. For some reason, Sundays tended to be one of the busiest days in the bookstore, and this Sunday was no exception. And of course, my assistant, Alice, called in sick, like she always did on Sundays.

“Liar,” I told her. “You’re hung over. I can hear the pain in your head from here.”

“Sorry,” she groaned. “Ramon and I went to a party. Is Jesse there?”

“He’s on his way. He tried to pull that shit too, but I told him I’d fire his ass if he didn’t show.”

“Sorry,” she whined again. “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Once Jesse arrived, all pissed off that I’d forced him to come in, I took a short coffee break in the back room. It gave me time to think about the wonderful night I’d spent with Joseph. God, but he was great. What a hunk—and so nice…pity about his eyes. I shivered as I considered how awful it would have been if I’d actually opened the drapes and blinded him.

Jeez, I’d have to be more careful in future.

In future
. Funny but that word really seemed to apply to Joseph and I—at least, I hoped it did. There had been something special about the way he’d looked at me, how we’d fitted so well together, and how sweet yet wild our lovemaking had been.