Kiss of Pride (13 page)

“I just meant—”

“Save it for someone who cares.”

He winced. “I thought you cared.”

“I might have . . . until I realized what a rat bastard you are.”

“I am not a rat bastard, Alex. I am just a vangel trying to do the right thing.”

“Blah, blah, blah. Now get off me, you big oaf. Forget about tomorrow morning. I’m out of here tonight.”

“Your nipples are blushing.”

“Huh?”

There was indeed a flush coloring her skin from her neck to . . . well, her pleasure place. No doubt due to her warm bath and his towel rubbing. Whatever the cause, he couldn’t help himself. He leaned down and framed the areola of one breast with his fangs, then sucked on the nipple. She tasted like sunshine and raspberries. He hummed his appreciation against her breast, alternating laves of his tongue with nips of his teeth with rhythmic suckling.

“Do. Not. Do. This.” Her moaned words were belied by her hands gripping his head and holding him fast.

By the time he moved to her other breast and used a fang to flutter the peak back and forth until it engorged and grew rosy with arousal, her legs were crossed behind his buttocks in a futile attempt to bar his escape. Futile because he had no desire to escape.

“You have to let me go, Vikar,” she said, even as she arched her back for more of his ministrations.

“I know,” he said, even as he moved upward, ripped off his shirt, and rubbed his chest hairs and his own erect nipples back and forth across her breasts. If he hadn’t known before, he knew now that his male nipples were sensitive.

“You have to let me go,” she repeated, as she used the bottoms of both feet to caress the backs of his thighs and calves.

He’d had no idea he was so sensitive there, either. Especially the backs of his knees. “I know,” he said, as he licked and blew lightly into the inner whorls of her ears.

She moaned, a continuous sighing expression of erotic delight. “I want you so much,” she choked out. “I have never wanted a man like this before. Never.”

The pride in him reared its head, but, no, it was more than pride. It was the man to her woman that delighted in her words. “In truth, I have ne’er felt this way, either. And I have been around a lot longer than you.”

He kissed her then, long, and deep, and hungry. He kept tilting his head from one side to the other, trying for the best fit, but they were all good. The wetness, the heat, the soft sounds of aroused woman were almost his undoing. He had to stop. He had to. “Alex, I must take a little blood from you. Not much because I already have too much Lucipire blood in me from Harek.”

“Then don’t.”

“I must. Truth be told, the Lucipire taint is no doubt causing me to be more tempted than usual by your charms.”

She stiffened. “Are you saying that you want me only because you have some sinful blood in you?”

“You know that is not true. I have wanted you from first I saw you standing at my front door like an angry Valkyrie. It is a fact, though, that the Lucipire taint weakens the will against sin. And that goes for you, too, sweetling. Part of your lack of resistance to me is due to the Lucipire taint.”

“Oh.” Clearly, she would rather be attracted to him for normal reasons. He felt the same way.

Before she could raise any objections, he sank his teeth into her neck and he almost fainted at the sheer ecstasy. There was pleasure for her, too, in the feeding. He could tell by the way her body relaxed into the mattress. And her arms went about his shoulders, caressing his hair and nape.

He soon stopped, though he could drink from her endlessly if given the chance and it were not so dangerous. For a brief, scary second he wished she had fangs and could take succor from him, too. While she gazed up at him through glazed eyes, he pulled the sides of her robe together and knotted the tie securely. Kissing her lightly, he then moved up to sit against the headboard, pulling her onto his lap. He could tell she was weak. And confused. Good. If she understood what was to come, she would be fighting him wildly again.

While he held her face against his chest and crooned Old Norse words softly into her ear, Sigurd returned, opening and closing the door softly before moving up to the bed. He chuckled when he tripped over Vikar’s shirt on the floor. “Shall I take off my shirt, too?”

“Only if you want me to beat the shit out of you.”

Sigurd chuckled again and asked, “Shall I present my neck? The blood from the neck is purer.”

Vikar shook his head in refusal. Too intimate.

Sigurd shrugged and ripped the vein at his wrist with his own fangs. Then, hopping onto the bed beside them, he attempted to use one hand to turn Alex’s head, at the same time keeping his other hand palm up to avoid blood dripping onto the bed linens.

Vikar slapped away Sigurd’s hand on Alex’s chin. He did not want his brother touching her. He would be the one to turn her for the feeding.

Alex’s eyes shot open as she realized another person was in the bed with them. Her body went stiff with shock.

“Shh, shh, settle. It is only Sigurd.”

“Only Sigurd!” she yelled. The arousal mood that had hazed her senses was fast evaporating.

“Don’t worry. He’s a doctor.”

“I don’t care if he’s the pope. Get him out of here.”

Thinking quickly, Vikar arranged himself so that Alex sat on his lap, frontways, her legs trapped by his. He pulled a sheet up to her shoulders to cover what he was about to do. While he kissed her neck, and whispered soothing words to calm her, she continued to struggle, but then he stuck one hand inside her robe and caressed a breast. The other hand heeled her pubic bone in a rhythmic fashion.

He saw Sigurd’s eyes follow his movements with interest, and,
yes
, arousal. It was an automatic reaction, but Vikar hated it nonetheless.

Alex continued to protest and struggle futilely to get up. Turning her head to look at him pleadingly, she whispered, “Vikar. No. I don’t want this.”

“You will, dearling. You will.” He pierced her neck again with his fangs and sipped slowly. Just little drips at a time, but enough to get her back in stasis.

When she stopped struggling, Sigurd arranged himself on a side facing them on the bed and put his wrist to her mouth, refusing to lift it when she attempted to turn away. But then her eyes drifted shut and she moaned her surrender.

As she drank from him greedily, Sigurd’s gaze connected with Vikar’s. “She
is
sweet,” Sigurd conceded.

“She is
my
sweet,” Vikar emphasized.
Please, God.

“How many years do you think this sweetness will cost you?”

“Some things in life are worth the pain.”
Please, God
, he prayed again, though he was not sure what he was praying for, exactly, whether it was to keep her with him or for the strength to let her go.

Sigurd just laughed and rolled away.

With eyes still closed, Alex groaned her dismay over her blood supply being cut off. She had no chance to actually voice a protest, though, because Vikar had shoved Sigurd off the bed and pointed to the door.

Sigurd licked his lips and laughed at the frown on his brother’s face, but then Vikar’s attention was directed only on the dazed woman in his arms. She was still aroused from his earlier fondling, and he had every intention of bringing her to peak. But not in the presence of his brother.

“Out! Now!” he demanded.

“Why can’t I stay and watch?” Sigurd wanted to know. “I get so few pleasures that I deserve a bit of voyeurism from time to time.”

Vikar said a foul word in Old Norse.

Sigurd left, shaking his head at Vikar’s possessiveness that was clearly going to cause him trouble.

Alex’s eyes were opening slowly. She was disoriented and it took several moments for her to realize where she was and what had happened. She ran her tongue over her lips and tilted her head in puzzlement at the taste.

He arranged her on the bed so that he was on his side leaning over her. “Are you all right?”

With a shake of her head, she said, “No, I am not all right. I will never be all right again.”

He thought a moment, then shrugged. Clueless Viking man that he was, he just blundered on, “So, do you want to have near-sex now?”

Her growl would have done a grizzly bear proud.

Eleven

Cluelessness: a manly trait through the ages . . .

Transylvania feature, Kelly      Page 1

Draft Seven

Why are vampires so popular? The dark princes of the night monopolize almost every aspect of popular culture, and yet no one seems able to pinpoint why. What happened to transform these evil monsters into heroes?

Unbelievably, some people blame it on
Sesame Street
. Could it be that the sweet-natured Count on the public TV show is responsible for this softening of the bloodsucking villain so familiar to us starting with Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
? And what about Count Chocula breakfast cereal? Is it really possible that from a young age, our youth are being subconsciously influenced to view vampires as friend, not foe? If so, why?

That subject and more would be interesting topics for doctoral studies at any of our major universities. In fact . . .

“You have crossed the line this time, buster,” Alex seethed, shoving Vikar on the shoulder for emphasis.

“Now, sweetling . . .”

“How could you? How could you?” She continued to shove his immovable body. Like a monument he was. Lying on his side. A monument to cluelessness.

When he flinched away from her pummeling fist, she moved herself up onto her knees and glared down at him with consternation. “Not that you haven’t crossed the line before, but two men in bed with me? Unbelievable!”

“We weren’t
in bed
in bed,” he tried to argue.

“That doesn’t even pass the giggle test.”

“Does that mean you do not want to have near-sex with me?” The look of disappointment on his face was priceless.

She shook her head at him. How could a man be so infuriating and adorable at the same time? “Can you say ‘clueless’? Really, men do the stupidest things and still expect women to have monkey sex with them.”

“Monkey sex?” His forehead furrowed with confusion, and, yes, interest.

“Like watch ten straight hours of football, reek of cigar smoke and hot wings, and have the nerve to say, ‘Hey, babe, wanna play with my balls’?”

“I do not like cigars.”

“What you did was ten times worse.”

“Than cigars?”

“Aaarrgh!”

“And I rarely eat hot wings. They stain my fangs.”

“Aaarrgh!”

“Do not deny it, dearling, you are still aroused from our earlier love play.” He smiled lazily. As if to tempt her.

She frowned. She was tempted. “No, I am not aroused,” she insisted then.
Aroused would be an understatement. More like crawling the walls, I-want-you, I-want-you, I-want-you, please, please, please.

“I can smell your ardor.” He reached up a hand to caress her hair.

She slapped his hand away. “Maybe it’s the lemonade I drank earlier.”

“Sin scent smells like lemons. Arousal smells like woman musk.” He sniffed the air and pretended to shiver with delight.

The idiot!
“I swear, your IQ is dropping by the second.” She drew the robe tighter around her nude body when she realized the idiot was staring up at her cleavage. “What I don’t understand is how you got me to acquiesce. Am I in a cult or something? Did you spike the Kool-Aid . . . uh, lemonade?”

“Cult?” he asked hesitantly. “No, vangeldom is not a cult.”

“Mind control is so not my thing. There has to be a reason why I let you do”—she waved a hand at the bed—“these things.”

“There is mind control, and then there is mind control.”

She rolled her eyes. “That is such a bullshit answer.”

“Well, I can tell you for certain that Jim Jones is not going to jump out of the woodwork.”

“Is that your idea of a joke?”

“You told me you liked my sense of humor.”

“I take it back.”

He sighed, no doubt because he saw prospects of sex going out the window. “When a human is bitten by a vangel . . . or a Lucipire, for that matter . . . the body goes into stasis,” he explained with a blush that told her he was either lying or withholding something important. Since he was supposedly on God’s team, she imagined lying was not in his repertoire.

“And . . . ?” she prodded.

With a grunt of disgust, Vikar slid off the bed and walked barefoot over to a dresser, where he opened a door that hid a compact fridge. He still wore only jeans, which rode low on his hips, drawing attention to his tight butt.

Aaarrgh! I am not looking at the moron’s butt.

Taking out two bottles of water, he came back and handed one to her, which she declined, and uncapped the other, drinking deeply. Bloodsucking apparently didn’t satisfy thirst totally. Personally, she intended to quench her thirst in a different way later . . . with about a quart of vodka.

Unable to avoid her questions forever, he sat down on the edge of the bed where she still sat propped against the headboard, her arms wrapped around knees she’d drawn up to her chest. When she saw the direction of his startled stare, she made a tsking sound and covered her knees with a sheet.

“I deliberately aroused you each time I took blood from you to make your stasis engage more quickly and with more intensity.” His eyes—blue now, not the silver they’d been when he was aroused—held hers with an honesty she couldn’t deny.

She jerked her head to the side as if he’d backhanded her and blinked her eyes rapidly to stem the tears that welled there.

Seeing her dismay, he reached out a hand to her.

But she shook her head in rejection.
It was all a ploy. He doesn’t love me
, she thought, then immediately added to herself,
Of course he doesn’t love me. He doesn’t even know me. Just like I don’t love him. Of course I don’t. And I definitely don’t know him.
But all that was beside the point. “You manipulated me, sexually,” she accused him.

He looked as if he’d like to argue the point, but nodded instead. “I did.”

His admission crushed her. No woman liked to know a man had been putting the moves on her for some ulterior purpose, not overwhelming attraction. “I’ve been so confused about what’s happening here. I can’t understand why I stay. Have you manipulated my mind, too?”

“No, not specifically, but your brain is dazed by the Lucipire taint and the cleansing rituals. So, in some ways, I may have inadvertently altered your thinking. Just a tiny bit.” He held up a thumb and forefinger about an inch apart to demonstrate.

Well, that does it! The jerk has stuck his wicked fingers not just in my libido but my mind, as well.
“I hate that you’ve done this, Vikar. I trusted you.”

He finished his water and tossed the empty plastic bottle on the floor with disgust. “I never lied to you. Whatever else you may accuse me of, dishonesty was never in play.”

“That’s debatable,” she said. “I really want to leave here, Vikar. I need to be in my regular surroundings to clear my mind.”

“It isn’t safe for you. Not only is your demon taint still there, though to a lesser degree, but the Mexican cartel is after you, too. Even your boss agrees with me that you should stay.”

“Yeah, well, I appreciate your concern for my safety, but I’m a big girl. I got along fine before. I will in the future, too. Besides, I’ll take precautions.”

“Like what?” he scoffed. “How will you repel Lucipires? With a fly swatter? Or that pistol you have in your luggage? Just so you know, regular bullets are as useless as throwing rice at a Lucipire.”

Really?
“Aren’t you being a little dramatic?”

“You know I’m not. You saw what happened in that restaurant parking lot. You saw what happened to Harek, and he is a highly skilled warrior.”

She nodded. The way Harek had looked when Vikar carried him in would stay in her mind forever. One arm clearly broken since it canted at an awkward angle midway between wrist and elbow. A deep wound in his thigh exposed by the torn fabric of his jeans, possibly caused by a sword. Skin lacerations. Fang marks. Bruises. On a human, those injuries taken as a whole would prove fatal. They still might, depending on what
fatal
meant to an already dead person.

Luckily, they’d had Sigurd here, soon after their ritual blood healing. A physician, no less!

“I live in a secure high-rise, Vikar. There’s a doorman, and dead bolt locks, and alarms.”

“And how will you prevent a bullet from entering your heart when you leave your home?” He put a hand to his own heart. “I could not bear to have you taken by those evil creatures.”

“It’s not your problem.”

He shook his head. “You were sent here to me.” He held up a hand to halt her protests. “Hear me out, please. Mike influenced your employer to send you to Transylvania.”

What? No! Never! That did not happen.
“You’re delusional.”

“Then, the moment I saw the fang marks on your neck and smelled your scent, I had no choice but to invite you inside.”

“Invite? You are definitely delusional.”

“From then onward, I have done only what was required of me. No, that is not true,” he conceded. “I have done more. I could not help myself.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Explain yourself.”

He reached over and unclenched her fingers that were still clutching her knees. Taking both hands in his, he said, “You say you are confused. Well, you are not the only one. Ever since you arrived, my emotions have been banging against the walls, and, believe you me, Vikings do not do emotion well. I do not know if this is a test Mike is tossing my way, or a punishment of some kind.”

Alex tried to pull her hands away, but he held fast. “I’m a punishment, like a whipping? Or a test, like a freakin’ angel SAT?”

“You missay me. It would be a punishment if you entered my life, bringing it light and joy, and then left. The dark place where you’d leave me would be the cruelest punishment.”

She could feel her anger fading.
If I’m no longer angry, who knows what I’ll do? Jump his bones, probably. I can’t have that.
“And the test part?”

“Mayhap you are a temptation Mike sent to test my resistance to . . . um . . . uh . . . to you.”

Stutter much, baby?
“What you are trying so hard to avoid saying is that you equate me with sin . . . that you need to resist sin, i.e., me.”

He shook his head. “You deliberately twist my words. Why can you not understand?”

“Oh, I understand, all right. Bottom line: When are you going to let me leave?”

He stared at her bleakly, raised both her hands to his mouth, where he kissed one set of knuckles, then the other, before setting her hands back on her lap. “My first inclination is to say never, but—”

“Now see, Vikar, you say things like that so lightly. Women take such words seriously, but you toss them out like popcorn. How can you say that you might not want me to leave? What does that mean? In what capacity would I stay? As your lover? Or near-lover? Wife? Girlfriend? Friend friend? What does
never
mean to you?”

His jaw dropped at her tirade.

And Alex was mortified that she’d reacted so strongly. She was behaving like a teenager with her first crush.

“It does not matter what I want. I suspect the decision will be taken out of my hands once Mike arrives.”

“And that will be when?”

“About two weeks.”

“And what about my wishes? Don’t I have any say in my future?”

“You do. You will.”

“I just don’t understand,” she said for about the hundredth time.

“Trust me. Just for a little while longer,” he pleaded. The mistiness in his blue eyes might have been tears.

And that was almost her undoing. “How can I? Especially after what happened here with your brother?”

“I should have notified you first.”

“Now there’s a left-handed apology. You aren’t sorry you did it, just that you failed to inform me ahead of time.”

He blushed. The big brute actually blushed.

“If I stay, and I’m not saying I will—Ben will have a heart attack if I leave without notifying him first—do you promise not to bring anyone else into the bed?”

“I promise, if you will agree to let me further cleanse you once I am pure.”

She nodded hesitantly. “How much longer is this blood thing going to last? I mean, how many more times?”

“Only a few. I am being extra careful with you. Most times I can cleanse a sinner on one try.”

“And then when I’m ‘clean’?”

“And then I hope you will not commit that great sin you were . . . are . . . contemplating.”

“Back to that again.”

“We never got away from that. It has always been about the sin taint.”

“There are evil people in this world, Vikar.”

“You think I do not know this?”

“I’m talking about human people. Ones who deserve to die.”

He shook his head sadly at her. “That is not for you to decide.”

“They took everything from me. Everything. They are monstrous . . . as monstrous as the demons you kill.”

“That may very well be, but vengeance is not yours, sweetling. Yes, I know it is hard to accept, but you must. You
must
!”

“If I stay, are you going to try to stop my writing a magazine article about everything I see?”

He hesitated. “You can write whatever you want. Whether you can publish it remains to be seen. The matter is not up to me entirely.”

“St. Michael the Archangel again?” she scoffed.

“Exactly.”

“Well, tell me this. Will I get to meet the guy?”

“Unfortunately, I think you will.”

“Why unfortunately?”

“Your life will never be the same.”

She started to laugh. Hysterically. “Oh, honey,” she said finally, using the edge of a sheet to wipe the tears off her face. “Meeting you has already altered my life forever.”

Doing the devil’ s work . . .

Chaos reigned down in Horror, but that was nothing new at Lucipire Central. Satan’s acolytes thrived on pandemonium.

Jasper paced his cave lair with its new bank of computers set up to coordinate the Sin Cruise. What a job it had been for him to find ten geek Lucipires! The imps and hordlings claimed to be all thumbs . . . or claws . . . when it came to typing. And the mungs kept dripping slime onto the keyboards and shorting out the hard drives, so he’d had to sacrifice full demons, taking them from their regular trolling duties. But it was worth it. This would be the biggest event for mass annihilation ever planned by Lucipires.