Wait (Beloved Bloody Time) (6 page)

He glanced at her.  She was smiling and when he looked at her, she nodded. “Very well,” she said, copying his accent and tone.

So he bent back over the form, a rare lightness of spirit making him smile. Then he realized: He was happy.

* * * * *

When Christian finally knocked on the door, four hours after he said he would be there, Tally blew out her breath in relief and hurried to drop the chain and let him in. On the way, she peered in the mirror mounted on the door of the wardrobe next to the door. The hair cut was radical – now her hair barely brushed her shoulders. It curled in at the edges and the hairdresser had teased and brushed the hair on the top of her head so that it settled into high dome. It was very modern.

So were her clothes, which she had spent an hour picking out, looking for something that a doctor’s wife would wear. The polyester pants suit was stylish and had cost a fortune. She had forgotten what it was like to buy fashionable clothes and was looking forward to doing more of it.

Satisfied, she opened the door, her welcoming smile completely unforced.  “You’re late....”

It was Christian, but he wasn’t alone. And he wasn’t smiling.

The two men behind him wore suits. Badly fitting and old fashioned suits. One had a pork pie hat that looked like he had sat on it more than once. They also wore hard expressions that didn’t move at all when she opened the door. Tally absorbed their presence, her heart sinking. Police detectives, she guessed. Or FBI. Or perhaps even CIA.

She looked at Christian expectantly, already knowing what he was going to say.

He looked over his shoulder at the men. “Can I go inside?”

“No,” one said instantly.

The other stirred. “Five minutes. The door doesn’t shut or we kick it in and you’ll be sorry it did shut.”

“Frank...” the first said warningly.

“We’re on the thirty-first floor, for chrissake,” Frank snapped. “Grow a heart. Give him five minutes to say goodbye to his girl. It could be the last time.”

Frank shot a glance at Tally where she stood waiting, holding the door open. His expression was one of startled guilt. “Five minutes,” he said gruffly.

“Thank you,” Christian told them. He stepped through and Tally pushed the wastepaper basket up against the door frame so the door wouldn’t swing completely closed. She picked up Christian’s hand and drew him further into the hotel room.

He kissed her. Hard. Deep.

When he let her go his eyes were shut, and his forehead etched in lines that made it seem like he was in pain.

“They’re the FBI,” she coaxed.

He nodded, looking at her. “They were waiting for me when I got back to the clinic.”

“What’s going to happen to you?” she asked, trying to ignore her thundering heart and the high pitched note playing in her mind. It was hard to think. Always, she’d had options and alternatives, when things got tight. But now, there was nothing. They could not overpower the agents. They would become hunted criminals, and that put them and their images on the wrong sort of files. As much as possible, they had to move within human laws to avoid drawing attention to themselves. That left no alternatives at all.  “Are they taking you to jail? Did they arrest you?”

“I can’t afford to be arrested and processed,” Christian said. “So we came to an agreement. They’re driving me to Fort Dix. Now. Tonight. If I volunteer for service, they won’t pursue this any further.”

“Oh, Christian....” She stared at him, appalled. “Will the Army use your medical training?”

“I don’t know,” he said heavily. “I’m completely out of guesses about how it goes from here.”

She pressed her hands against his chest, over the top of the black shirt, and looked up at him. “This isn’t something I anticipated, either,” she murmured.

Christian closed his eyes again. Then: “You need to contact Gabe. You have to warn him that if he uses the exemption, he’ll be arrested.”

“I will,” she assured him.

“He’ll have to run for Canada. Stay there indefinitely. You’ll need to find a new life, too. Christ, this is such a mess.”

“Shh...” She curled her hand around his neck. “Kiss me.”

It was a bitter-sweet kiss. Afterwards, he held her and she closed her eyes, trying to extract as much from the moment as possible. Christian’s heart was thudding heavily in his chest.

“You have to find a way out,” she whispered. “You have to find a bolt hole somewhere and disappear. Run until it’s safe and you can start a new life.”

He drew in a deep, slow breath. “I don’t want to lose contact with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“But I
will
. If I dive down that bolt hole, they’ll come looking for you, Tally. You have to move on, now, too. You have to help Gabe disappear, too – his life has effectively ended and it’s my fault.”

She looked up at him. “These things happen,” she told him.  “The blood are as affected by world events as any human, especially while we pass as human.”

“Damn it, I don’t want to lose you.” He caught her face in his hands. “Meet me. Meet me somewhere when this is all over. In ten years’ time – they will have given up the chase by then.”

She shook her head. “Too soon,” she whispered, thinking. “Make it the turn of the century. The last day of 1999.”

“Midnight, as the century turns.”

“Yes, midnight, on New Year’s Eve. Where?”

“The New York Library,” he said, with a small smile. “Just in case the Waldorf Astoria disappears again.”

“It will be closed at midnight,” she pointed out.

“Wait by the lions. I’ll meet you there.”

She took in a deep breath. “I will.”

His thumb stroked gently along her bottom lip, as he studied her. His green eyes kept her gaze locked on him. “Have a nice life,” he whispered and let her go.

“I’ll be there,” she said as he walked to the door.

“So will I.”

One of the agents kicked the trashcan out of the way, and the door closed behind them, leaving Tally alone.

Again.

12:13 a.m., New York Library, New York, January 1, 2000 – 32 Years Later

The snow was blowing southward, in an icy spray that was uncomfortable, so Christian stayed close to the side of the lion they called Fortitude, who protected him a little. Patience, the other lion, could barely be seen through the thick snow. It was a record dump, they were saying.

It felt like it.

He looked at his watch once more, but it showed that exactly as much time had passed midnight as he had measured it for himself.

Thirteen minutes. It was only thirteen minutes, he told himself. She could have had trouble getting a cab in this weather. Maybe she was flying in and her plane was delayed. He had no idea where she was coming from. She could even live here in New York once more, in which case, where was she?

He mentally marked the passing of another seven minutes, which made her late by any standard of protocol.

There were very few people out on the street, but every time a human shape appeared through the driving snow, shuffling along with their head down, he found himself holding his breath, only to let it go once they passed him.

Had something happened to her?

His heart squeezed. So did his gut. What if something had happened to her that even she, with all her resources and skills, could not wriggle or fight her way out of?

Then he dismissed the idea as overly paranoid. Actually, it was stupid. But once he’d had the thought, he couldn’t get rid of it. It kept creeping back into his
thoughts, each time a new form of disaster. There were very few ways a vampire could die, even accidentally, but those that were possible were gruesome and involved painful, slow endings. Except for having her heart ripped out.  That would be painful, but it would be faster than, say, freezing in the Arctic. The temperatures there would kill a vampire and freeze her – she wouldn’t even have a chance to disintegrate.

There was another solo pedestrian pushing head-first into the almost horizontally driven snow. They had passed Patience, the other lion, before he noticed them. He peered through the white flakes dancing and swirling in the air. It looked like a woman. They wore a thick coat with a fur-trimmed hood pulled down low, and a scarf over their mouth and nose. He couldn’t see their eyes, because they had their head down, to protect them from the spitting flakes.

He watched her – it had to be a woman – come closer. She was ten yards away when she lifted her head to spot him standing on the fourth step.

His heart responded by slamming itself against his chest. Christian gripped his hands together tightly.

She climbed the steps to stand on the one below him and look up at him. “You picked a hell of a night for this, Christian.” Her voice was muffled behind the scarf, but her wonderful brown eyes were skewering him with that frank stare he had never forgotten, not since Seville.

He picked up her gloved hand. “Come with me. I know where it is warmer.”

* * * * *

Tally had known what she was letting herself in for if she chose to meet Christian like they had arranged. When she had started out from the hotel, she had been resigned to this inevitability. But now that he was holding her hand and standing next to her while the elevator rose through the floors, it did not seem like such a bad thing at all. She was tingling, and her heart was trying to break free and beat on its own. She was abruptly aware of her breasts beneath the silk tee-shirt, and her pussy
and how her jeans were brushing against it with each step. She could feel how damp and ready she was.

The elevator chimed, announcing their floor, and the doors glided smoothly open. Her heart slipped loose and began to thud. She could hear Christian’s heart doing the same thing and it drove her anticipation even higher.

They stepped out of the elevator, moving around the people still on it. He drew her along as he walked down the thickly carpeted corridor, pulling out his room key as he walked. His pace was neither fast nor slow, but Tally felt like the corridor stretched on forever.

Until, finally, he halted at 716.

She drew in her breath, aware of it pulling down into her lungs. She was trembling.

But instead of unlocking the door, he pressed her against it. His hands slipped inside her coat, passed the long cardigan she wore beneath, to settle on her waist over the silk. His thumbs moved restlessly against her hips, above the band of her jeans, as he studied her, his gaze flicking over her hair and face. She could feel the keycard held between his fingers, pressing into her waist.

“You’re here,” he breathed and kissed her.

Oh, how she had ached for this kiss! Too many times over the last thirty years, she had found herself recalling their last kisses and thinking ahead to this moment, wondering what it would be like.

It was beyond her expectations. Decades of anticipation had not come close to the reality of the moment. She had forgotten just how good his lips felt against hers. The sweep of his tongue into her mouth.

His hands on her. The big swordsman’s hands….

Then she forgot to think. She let herself be pulled away from petty concerns by the spiraling pleasure of kissing him.

When the door gave way behind her, she gasped into his mouth.

“I have you,” he murmured, his hand around her back. He walked her backwards into the room, still kissing her, and she heard the door shut behind them. But Christian was already removing her coat and scarf, then the cardigan. His hands swept up to her shoulders and on the way they caressed her breasts through the silk shirt.  She was bare beneath, and his fingers hesitated, giving tiny strokes along the sides of her breasts and he groaned and tore his mouth from hers.

He stepped away from her, his gaze holding hers, and stripped quickly, with economical movements. For a tall man, he was surprisingly graceful. It was, in part, what made him so good with a sword.

His shoulders were wide, and nicely muscled, but not heavily so. His chest gleamed in the low light coming from the lamps beside the big bed, the pecs flexing as he took off his jeans and the rest of his clothing. He straightened and looked at her. There was a hot look in his eyes that made her shiver.

Tally reached for the button on her jeans, but he caught her hand. “I’ll do that.”

He drew her to the bed, then surprised her by sitting on the end of it. His cock was already erect and jutted from between his spread thighs, pulsing and red with blood. To use that much of his supply of blood, he had to be powerfully aroused.

He put her between his knees and held her steady, his hands on her hips. Then he opened her jeans, pulled the zipper down and spread the fronts open. He leaned forward and kissed her belly, just below her navel, and her hips thrust helplessly.

Tally reached for his shoulders, to steady herself.

Christian slowly removed her jeans, his lips following where the denim revealed, trailing down over her hip, to her knee. Then he tossed the denim, stripped her of her socks and boots, then trailed his lips back up the other leg, tickling and stroking with his tongue and teeth. He slid his thumbs under the thin sides of her thong and glanced at the mirror behind her. “Delicious,” he said hoarsely and pulled them from her.

Tally couldn’t wait. She yanked her tee-shirt off over her head and threw it toward where her coat lay on the floor. Even before her hair settled back around her shoulders, Christian’s hands were on her breasts, sliding over them. His thumbs tugged as they slipped over her erect and painfully taut nipples and she moaned.

His mouth replaced one hand and Tally let her eyes drift closed as her pleasure spiked. He was doing things to her breast that no man had ever done before. There was a sweet sucking sensation, and sharp spikes of pleasure that made her moan and all normal thought halt. She wanted the sensations to go on forever, but there was a growing sense of urgency. Her climax was beginning to build. How long she would last, she didn’t know. She had never responded this quickly.

For the first time in a very long while she actually felt hot. Her runaway heart was responsible for most of that, but the heat spread a lethargy through her that was equally as thought-blanketing. She had no thoughts at all, except for a wordless need to have Christian batter his way inside her.

“Christian,” she whispered, reaching for him. She slid her hands down his chest, aiming almost directly for his cock. There was no time for subtleness or teasing. She needed him now.

Christian must have heard something in her voice, for he picked her up, his hands around her waist, and lifted her over him. Her heart lurched as she realized what he intended. She spread her knees so they landed on the bed next to his hips, as he lowered her down directly onto his cock.

Then he paused, the thick head of his cock nudging the entrance of her very slick pussy.

Tally beat at his shoulders. “No! Don’t wait,” she said breathlessly.

“I’m savoring. Don’t rush me.”

She groaned aloud her dismay. So close, and yet he had her hovering, on the very brink of getting exactly what she wanted.

“Tally,” he murmured.

She met his gaze.

“This is something I have been dreaming about and planning for a very long while,” he said.

“This? This moment right now?” she asked.

His cock eased inside her another fraction of an inch, spreading her slippery opening. She closed her eyes and moaned again.

“This moment right—” He thrust his hips up as he slammed her down upon him. His cock thrust inside her with the force of a battering ram and she threw her head back and groaned at the sheer pleasure of being impaled and possessed.

But he gave her no time to absorb and appreciate the taking. He stood up, while keeping her riding upon his cock, and turned and laid her down upon the mattress, still staying inside her. Then he leaned over her so that he was looking down into her eyes.

He withdrew and thrust again, and Tally wrapped her legs over his hips, lifting herself up so that he could push deeper.

The next thrust made her gasp, for his cock pushed up against her cervix. It was good, so good….

Christian began to thrust in earnest, his breath as unsteady as her own. His eyes were very nearly shut, as he strained over the top of her.

Tally found she was looking up at him in something like awe. Here was a man more powerful than her. Stronger. Not older, but it didn’t matter. He knew her. He knew her for what she was. There was no pretense.

Her climax caught her by surprise. It gripped her, making everything squeeze. Her pussy clamped hard around him, and her breath was snatched away. The pleasure washed over her in strong waves, one after another.

Christian strained over the top of her, as he came in tight, hard little thrusts, then grew still, his gaze upon her face.

“Wow…” she whispered.

“We can do better,” he assured her as he withdrew.

Before she had a chance to respond, he rolled her over onto her tummy, then picked up her hips, lifting her butt up into the air. Her knees folded under her hips and he settled her onto them. Tally pushed herself up onto her hands and drew in a sharp breath as he ran his fingers through her cleft, from clitoris to ass. His fingers circled the tiny aperture. “We can do much better.”

A fresh spurt of excitement spread through her. “You have been planning this for a while, haven’t you?”

He reached into the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a tube of lubricant. His smile as he uncapped it was filled with heated wickedness. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

She shivered again, as he settled back in behind her.

* * * * *

They didn’t sleep, of course, but they rested. Christian curled himself around her and felt an odd sense of relaxation. He examined it while he stroked the hair back from her face and neck.

There was no pressure to remember who he was, this lifetime. No need to guard against slips – the wrong word, the wrong sentiment, moving too fast, showing too much strength. He had been moving among humans for decades, so mostly, those concerns were almost automatic. Pure habit. But the sentinel that stayed permanently on guard in his mind, watching for possible errors, had turned off.

Finally, she was in his arms.

He kissed her cheek, then indulged himself by caressing her mouth. The fullness and softness of her lips fascinated him. The feel of them against his fingers and his mouth were intoxicating.

Tally smiled, her lips brushing his thumb as they moved. “You like doing that.”

“I’m still trying to decide if you taste like apricots or peaches.”

She caught his hand in hers and kissed the back of it. “So, where are you right now?”

“Right here, with your ass pressed against my cock. You have a great ass, too.”

“You should know. You’ve examined it, licked it and been inside it.” Her silent laugh shook her. “But you know what I meant.”

He did and found he was shifting uncomfortably. “I told you. I’m right here.”

Tally rolled her head along his arm until she was looking at him over her shoulder. Her warm brown eyes regarded him. “You’re between lives? That’s interesting timing.”