Powerful Moves [L.U.S.T.] (Siren Publishing Classic) (13 page)

Tavius snorted a laugh. He turned from the window to lean against it. “You’re kidding, right?”

Cedric shrugged. “I suppose you’re still steaming because she kicked us both to the dog house.”

Tavius and Elena had met up with Cedric at the Hilton Hotel shortly before daybreak. They hadn’t bothered to comb the city for Le Mort, knowing he would be seeking shelter from the sun. Though Elena hadn’t admitted it, Tavius knew she’d been exhausted. Collectively, they decided to catch a few hours or sleep before hitting the streets. That’s when the battle began.

One hotel room. Two beds. Three people. The solution had seemed a no-brainer to Tavius. He and Elena would take one bed while Cedric took the other. Cedric being Cedric, as Tavius was quickly learning, found it necessary to argue the point until Elena threw up her hands and put both men in the second bed, claiming the first for herself alone.

“No.” Tavius let the man have it point blank. “I’m steaming because you won’t butt the fuck out. You took an instant dislike to me in your boss’s office. Why? What’s between you and Elena that I don’t know about?”

Cedric studied him, unspeaking, unmoving. Something simmered in the man’s cobalt eyes, something Tavius couldn’t define. Power? Yes. Concern? Yes. Temper? Hell, yes. But that wasn’t all.

“Am I going to have to separate the two of you like unruly children to prevent you from butting heads all day?” Elena stepped between them looking sexier than Tavius had seen her yet with her clothes all rumpled and her hair matted from sleep.

“Probably.” Cedric smirked.

Elena rolled her eyes as she turned to Tavius.

Tavius shrugged. “I could claim he started it, but I bet you would only accuse me of sounding like a child.”

“You’ve got that right.” Her frown would have been more effective if he hadn’t seen the twitch at the corner of her lips.

“We need to get out there.” Tavius tipped his head back at the window behind him, indicating the city. “We’re wasting time standing here.”

“In case you failed to notice, hot shot, it’s daylight out there. Le Mort is a vampire. Ergo, he’s gone underground until night fall. Wearing the soles off your shoes”—Cedric leaned over in his chair to peer around Elena and cast a pointed glance at the tennis shoes Tavius wore—“correction, wearing the soles off
my
shoes, isn’t going to do much good.”

Tavius had wondered where Elena came up with a complete set of male clothing down to the socks and tennis shoes in her apartment. He supposed now he had his answer. Not that he liked it much.

“I think you’re wrong, Cedric.” Elena turned her back on Tavius to speak to the other man. “If we can get out there, walk the streets in the daylight hours, we might get a sense of where he went last night, maybe even anticipate where he will go come nightfall.”

“Then we split up.” Cedric got to his feet. He moved to Elena, leaning down to brush a kiss to her cheek. “Stay safe, stay alert, and stay in touch.” He straightened, tapped a finger to his temple, and left the room.

* * * *

Magic surrounded Elena. Not of the metaphysical variety. New Orleans during Mardi Gras possessed a power all its own. She beamed a smile at Tavius as a handful of colorful beads flew through the air toward them from a Mad Hatter atop an Alice in Wonderland float. Jesters and druids, Disney characters and ghouls danced about the street between parade trucks pulling elaborately decorated floats with blaring music and laughter.

“I’ve never seen anything like this.” He snagged the beads from the air and slipped them around her neck. “It’s chaos!”

Elena would bet there wasn’t anything like it in any realm. Tavius took her hand, and she sucked in a breath at the zing of power that went straight to her head. He’d touched her very little since the episode in the hall, but when he did she felt the dizzying intoxication all over again. She knew from the electric pulse in his eyes when he looked at her that he felt it, too.

“It’s easy to get caught up in the fun.”
Easy to get caught up in you
.

“There’s another parade in a couple of hours.” Tavius pulled her closer, hooking his arm around her waist as he looked at the crowd around them. “It will be dark by then. It’s going to be easy for Le Mort to get lost in a crowd like this. He’ll blend in. Gods, Elena, he could do almost anything tonight and no one would notice.”

Fear tingled down Elena’s spine. She’d already thought of that, already considered the myriad of things a vampire could do in a city that didn’t sleep, partied first, and asked questions later.

If they remain alive long enough to ask those questions
.

“He’ll be here tonight,” Tavius said again, and Elena saw the dread, the anguish on his face, heard it in the thickness of his voice.

She cupped his jaw, pulling his face to hers. “So will we,” she assured him, brushing her lips to the worried line that creased the corner of his lips. “We’ll stop him tonight.”

* * * *

Regulus studied the blonde that stepped under the harsh intermittent glow of a streetlamp and felt the hunger rise around an unfamiliar pull of recognition. He swiped the back of his sleeve over his mouth, not sparing the smear of blood a glance, and released the now-lifeless female in his grasp.

He didn’t hear the dull thud of the body hitting the pavement in the alley any more than he’d heard her cries as he drank the last of her life from her frail body. Her blood, warm and sweet, supplied his blackened heart with the force it needed to live another night. Satisfaction, however, remained something to be found.

“Shall we dispose of the body, Master, or leave her here to be discovered?”

“Leave it here,” Regulus ordered dismissively. He didn’t care who found her or when. Someone would be looking for her eventually. As he drank from her, he’d gained more knowledge of her humanity than he cared to be given. He found it a revolting downfall to his vampiric powers. Blood couldn’t be taken without getting the memories gift wrapped in the warm red package.

Power came with the substance, too, if the being possessed any. The discarded female had been human to the bone. She’d been a wife, a mother, a hot little number dressed in the costume of a hooker who got separated from her party in the chaos of the night parade and wandered into this alley.

Regulus had followed her here.

Across the busy street, the blonde raked her hands down her front then held them up laughing. The gleeful sound travelled on the air, teasing Regulus, reminding him of another laugh belonging to the only love he’d ever known. It latched onto the unfamiliar pull and intensified.

“Master?”

Regulus ignored the hesitant question in Armand’s tone. Mud had splattered the blonde’s clothing and proved the object of her hilarity. Humans found amusement in the oddest things. Though, she was not merely human. She possessed powers he couldn’t get a sense of at this distance. He only knew they were there. The same as he knew Tavius Zolan to be the man at her side.

The Terrian wasn’t a tracker. Yet, he followed Regulus to New Orleans in short order. Regulus hadn’t doubted Zolan would find him. When he heard from Lerak that the Terrian followed him through the realms, he’d known it was only a matter of time before Zolan caught up with him. It happened quickly enough.

Because of the blonde? Regulus wondered if that was one of her powers. Sensing vampires obviously wasn’t, he mused as she turned and walked with Zolan into the lobby of the Hilton Hotel. Neither of them gave any sign of knowing he stood such a short distance away.

Disappointment curled as he stepped from the shadows of the alley. He thought to follow them, to close the distance, test the boundaries. He thought to discover more about the blonde, the powers she wielded, the others in her association. He knew there must be others. Humans, especially those in the Earth realm, rarely operated alone. Zolan served as a prime example of that. He’d been in the realm barely more than twenty-four hours and already hooked himself to the blonde.

For sex or practicality? Given Zolan’s reputation of intelligence in Atnalta, Regulus figured both. The blonde likely controlled powers Zolan needed, and why not take advantage of her curvy, tempting body at the same time?

“What’s our next move, Master?”

Regulus started to answer when his attention fell on a flier posted to a power pole near his right shoulder. The blood he recently ingested pumped with a fury of shocked excitement through his veins. The grainy photo of the necklace, the first of four parts, sparkled in a tormenting invite beneath the words “The Morrigan Museum of Arts.”

“Where is this?” Zolan, the blonde, and his true mission here on Earth forgotten, Regulus tore the flier from the post, fisting it tightly as he waved it in Armand’s face. The Lycan took a startled step back, his eyes dancing over the flyer and vampire in turn.

“Where is this?” Regulus repeated more forcefully. In that instance, nothing else mattered. Nothing else would matter until he reclaimed what had once belonged to him. “Take me there at once.”

“He’s out there somewhere.” Tavius pushed the hotel room open, letting Elena enter first and then following her inside. “I, ugh, I can’t get a sense of him in all that commotion out there. My perception abilities aren’t strong to start, but I can usually get a power read off a being, if nothing else.”

Elena could, too. So far the only power she managed to read tonight sizzled between the two of them with a rapidly growing intensity that made her head spin. It wasn’t his power, or even hers. No. This was what she’d felt in the woods, what she felt in the hallway of her apartment, the controlling, passionate energy looking for an escape. What would happen when it found that break in their resistance again stirred her fear as much as her hormones.

“Maybe we should try something else.” She moved past him, able to draw in a deep breath for the first time in hours. Being so close to him had become almost suffocating. She felt like she had to be near him, but she needed distance to breathe. More, she found she needed the space to think. “A different tactic. Something.”

“I’m open to suggestions.” A small refrigerator sat on a table in the corner of the room, and he walked to it, pulled out a complementary bottle of water. He twisted the lid as he turned back to her. “I figured Cedric would have something by now.”

Elena frowned. She drove a hand into the backpack she had brought up from the trunk of her car and removed the extra suit of clothes inside. She’d have to hand wash her muddy ones if she wanted fresh clothes tomorrow.

“I tried to reach him, but…” She trailed off and shook her head. He kept shielding against her. She didn’t understand why, but her frustration with him was growing by leaps and bounds. They barely had two minutes to talk privately in weeks, mostly because along with shielding his mind, he seemed to have kicked into avoid mode when it came to her.

“You’re worried about him.” Tavius’s hands on her shoulders startled her as much as the zing of power that shot to her toes.

The sensation of suffocation was back, and she struggled not to gasp for air. Her body’s reaction to this man kept her on edge from the start, but it seemed to be getting worse, more unbearable by the minute. It didn’t make any freaking sense.

“He’s been acting strangely for awhile now.” She needed to keep the conversation moving. She needed to move herself, to get Tavius out of her personal space. She couldn’t. It felt as if Tavius were a magnet and her body was a sheet of metal placed in front of it. The pull against her back felt that strong, that unyielding.

“So have you.” His voice lowered, grew husky as he leaned in to nuzzle his nose against the place where her neck and shoulder met.

“You don’t know me well enough to say that.” Elena leaned into him despite her need to get away.

“Don’t I?” His teeth nipped the tender flesh. Elena sucked in a breath. “I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”

Oh, Gods
.

His hands skimmed her sides, gripped her hips, and yanked her bottom against him. His cock nudged the small of her back, a rigidly enticing pressure. “Want to know something else?”

“Hmm.” She wanted to grind her back against his erection. She wanted to turn around, free his cock from the confines of his jeans, and take it in her hand, in her mouth. He held her hips too tightly to do anything more than stand motionless and allow herself to be teased to insanity.

“I feel like I’m going to die if I don’t get my hands on you again.” Said hands skimmed her front, one taking a tantalizing rise to her left breast while the other went low to palm her pussy.

Whips of indescribable power lashed through her. Spasms made her writhe in his embrace. She slammed her eyes shut on the sensations, unsure how to control them, if they could even
be
controlled.

“Gods, Elena, do you feel that?” Tavius’s whispered words against her neck sent slivers of icy-heat raining through her. Wonderment filled his tone even as it thickened, as it resonated with an echoing power within her.

“Stop. Tavius, please, stop.” Elena felt dizzy, intoxicated by the strength of whatever it was he did to her. It felt more intense than it did the night in the hallway, heavier, headier.