Absolution (14 page)

There was a short, sharp stab of pain when he bit, and she waited for it to blossom into agony. Instead, wave after wave of pleasure swept through her, wiping out the sting. His mouth at her neck pulled gently, each draw of blood bringing a new food of sensations that pooled well south of her heart.

After what she’d been through, she hadn’t thought she’d ever want another man to touch her again, much less a vampire. But as Mirren’s big hands stroked her back, she surprised herself by wishing his hands were on her skin, not touching her through the fabric of his own shirt.

He pulled away from her too soon, then kissed the spot where he’d bit. She wanted to ask what he’d done to keep it from hurting, but she didn’t want a clinical explanation, didn’t want to spoil with words a moment when she felt so close to him.

Words were what she used to cover up nerves or fear or bad emotions.

Mirren shifted under her, and she moved to stand. “No, wait. I was just trying to find a knife or…oh, hell.” He sank his fangs into his own inner forearm, then held it up toward her. From two small puncture wounds wept small trails of blood, more magenta than crimson. “You don’t have to take much.”

Ugh, ugh, ugh. OK, need to do this.
Glory grasped his arm, marveling that she couldn’t even wrap her hands around it completely. Lowering her mouth, she touched her tongue to one of the blood trails and discovered it wasn’t at all what she’d expected. It wasn’t metallic, but rich and a little sweet. She wouldn’t want a bowlful of the stuff, but it wasn’t a complete gross-out.

OK, go for it.
She rested her lips on his arm, pulling in the scent of him, clean and outdoorsy, even as she pulled on the wounds. Closing her eyes, she drew a little of the blood into her mouth.

“That’s enough. Don’t need much.” He groaned around the words.

She raised her head and looked into his eyes, which were kind of glazed and more the color of steel than his usual thunderclouds. He didn’t make any move to get her off his lap, and from the feel of a telltale hardness pressing against the back of her thighs, he wasn’t in any hurry for her to go. She’d thought her feeding from him might hurt him, but the expression on his face had no relation to pain.

She raised her mouth toward his again, but he pushed her back and cut his eyes toward the front door. “Aw, f…damn.” He stood up, taking her with him, then deposited her on the sofa as if she weighed no more than one of his DVDs.

“What’s wrong? Did I…” Her words trailed off at the sound of a car door closing outside, a few seconds of silence, then a knock. Guess vampires heard better than humans, or he’d had her very preoccupied, which was a possibility.

Mirren made no move to go to the door, but glared at it as if he could send some super X-ray mojo through the wood and dissolve whoever was there into a puddle of goop.

“Mirren, I know you’re in there, you antisocial bastard. I need to talk to Glory Cummings.” The voice was male, generic American and without the hint of accent both Mirren and Aidan had.

“Who is that?” Glory swiveled on the sofa to look at Mirren and was struck anew at just how big he was. Tall, broad shouldered and slim hipped, his dark hair that might have a hint of curl if it were longer, the intricate tattoos. She’d love to hear the story of those tattoos one day but wasn’t sure he’d tell her. Come to think of it, he hadn’t talked about himself much. He’d talked about Aidan. He’d talked about Penton. He’d talked about Matthias. He had said very little about Mirren. It was something she’d have to work on.

“Will Ludlam, Matthias’s son. He’s a good guy. Mostly. For a smartass.” Mirren strode to the door, opened it, and stepped back for Will to enter.

So this was the handsome young blond she’d spotted briefly in her room at the clinic yesterday. Well, the first day she’d really been aware of her surroundings. He could’ve visited her every day the past week and she wouldn’t have remembered.

Glory stood up, clutching her hands into fists, wishing she hadn’t followed the impulse to put on Mirren’s shirt. She felt exposed with Will in a way she hadn’t with Mirren, which was odd.

Mirren and Aidan had something old-world about them, as had most of the vampires she’d encountered among Matthias’s acquaintances. Not Will. He could pass for a wealthy twenty-first-century college student, from the style of his hair, moussed and intentionally tousled, to the golden-brown sweater that matched his eyes, to the perfectly pressed black slacks that hit the tops of his stylish black lace-ups at the right point.

The type of guy who’d never give someone like Glory a second glance, in other words. She’d sold beer to plenty of them at the Circle K, where they would stock up before driving back to college over in Athens.

He was grinning at Mirren. “Did I interrupt dinner?” He stared pointedly at Glory’s legs. “Or something else?”

“I’ve gotta go on patrol.” Mirren grabbed his keys off the sofa table, unlocked a cabinet, and pulled out a monster-size handgun and shoulder holster, which he strapped on with practiced speed. Reaching back in the cabinet, he extracted a pair of handcuffs and clipped them to his belt loop.

After relocking the cabinet, he strode to the door, then paused as if reconsidering. He looked back at Glory and opened his mouth to say something. Finally, he growled a few incoherent words and left, slamming the door behind him.

“I have got to work on that man’s social skills,” Glory muttered. She hadn’t understood a word Mirren had said, although it might have been something like,
See you later
. Until he burst out laughing, she’d forgotten Will Ludlam was even there. His timing sucked.

“Sorry, but hearing
Mirren
and
social skills
mentioned in the same sentence is…well, it’s pretty hilarious.” His smile faded, and he gave her a somber, appraising look. “I’m Will Ludlam. Matthias Ludlam, the man who took you, is, unfortunately, my father. I am so sorry for what he did. I swear if there’s any way I can make it up to you…” He shrugged.

The distress on Will’s face made Glory wonder if vampires could cry or if they cried blood like in all the movies. Will’s guilt was misplaced, though, and she didn’t want it. “It’s not up to you to apologize.”

She was a firm believer in owning what you did and not expecting anyone else to take responsibility for it. She sure didn’t plan to take responsibility for the way her parents behaved, not that they’d kidnapped anybody. But they’d made their only child feel like an embarrassment, someone to be locked away or tamed or controlled. She’d decided a long time ago it was their sin, not hers.

Will didn’t look convinced. “Still, what you’ve been through…” He shook his head, not meeting her eye.

Impulsively, she stepped toward him and pulled him into a hug. “Just forget about it. It’s done. It’s over. You got me out of there, me and Mirren both. And that took a lot of courage, especially to go up against your own dad like that. So I thank you.”

Confronting family was a hard, hard thing. Glory knew about that. It’s why she’d run away from home at sixteen, taken charge of her own life even if it had meant working crap jobs and earning her GED on her own. “You can beat your head against a wall trying to change the people you’re supposed to love, or you can walk away and make your own way.”

Will’s arms wrapped around her and squeezed. “That is the ever-freaking truth.” He stepped back and gave her a smile. Her first assessment of him had been right—he was almost pretty. Bet he broke his share of hearts, but he wasn’t her type. “I’m going to like you, Glory Cummings.”

She smiled. “I hope so.”

The sound of gunfire drew Will’s attention to Mirren’s massive electronics setup. Glory didn’t know what half the stuff was, but Will resembled a kid who’d just spotted a pile of chocolate in the window of a candy store.

“Holy shit. Mirren, my man, you have been holding out.” He walked over and examined each piece of equipment, fiddling with knobs, turning dials, flipping switches.

“Uh.” Glory hadn’t been here long, but she’d figured out fast that this was Mirren’s pride and joy. “He’ll kill me for letting you touch it—he’s kinda prickly about his stuff.” He’d be cursing again for sure if Will messed anything up.

Will grinned. “Mirren? Prickly? Say it ain’t so.”

Glory started laughing, and as it happened with her sometimes, she couldn’t quit. She laughed harder, and Will started chuckling. She caught a glimpse of his fangs, and that made her laugh even harder. She flopped on the oversize sofa, giggling until tears rolled down her cheeks. This whole situation was so insane.

“I’m…sorry,” she gasped, finally taking a deep breath and getting herself under control. “Don’t say anything funny for a few minutes.” It wouldn’t take much to set her off again.

Will sat beside her on the sofa, staring at the TV. “What the hell is this?” He picked up the stack of DVDs Glory had pulled from Mirren’s shelves and set on the coffee table, flipping through them. “Westerns? Mirren Kincaid watches horse operas?”

Glory felt the silly giggles threatening again and didn’t answer until she was sure she could string more than two words together without losing it. “Oh yeah.” She pointed at the floor-to-ceiling shelves on either side of the television. “I swear he has every Western ever made, including complete sets of
Gunsmoke
and
Bonanza
.”

She expected a wisecrack from Will, but he simply smiled. “I’ll be damned. You’ve already gotten further in Mirren’s life than any of us, except maybe Aidan. He needs somebody like you.”

Well, it wasn’t like Mirren had exactly invited her into his life. She’d been thrust on him. Still, she had to ask. “What kind of somebody do you think I am?”

He’d just met her—what could he possibly know about what type of person she was?

Will leaned back and propped his feet on the coffee table. “Somebody who doesn’t know his past, who isn’t afraid of him, who sees behind the asshole he tries to be, who can break down those walls of crabbitude he puts around himself.”

Glory watched the gunfight on TV for a few minutes. Matthias had called Mirren
Slayer
and said he was good at killing. “What is his past? Or do I really want to know?”

“That’s his story to tell, not mine.” Will reached out and took her hand. “But you’re safe with him. And, good Lord, he’s letting you live here. You’re even wearing his shirt, I’m guessing.” He wagged his eyebrows at her a couple of times in a parody of lechery. “He even let you cook in his house.”

“He misses food.”

Will stared at her and smiled, his brown eyes practically dancing. “He told you that?”

Glory shrugged. “He didn’t have to. I could tell. He did say he likes to smell it.”

“Huh. You should find out what he liked to eat before he was turned, and then you eat some of it an hour or so before he feeds from you.” Will gave her a probing look. “It gets in the bloodstream, and we can taste it a little—some foods more than others. I don’t miss food, so it’s no matter to me, but if Mirren does, well…” He shifted his gaze back to the screen. “If you want to please him, anyway. Just a thought.”

Did Glory want to please Mirren Kincaid? Did she want him to want her? The memory of his mouth taking nourishment from her body, his hands stroking her back, came back in a rush. Not to mention the kiss whose memory heated her up from the inside out. Glory was glad Will seemed to have gotten interested in the antics of Dean Martin.

Otherwise, he’d have seen her blush.

CHAPTER 14

M
irren eased the Bronco around the corner of Cotton Street, cruised down the street slowly, looped in a wide arc around the end of the cul-de-sac, and drove back. A movement of shadow in the moonlight bouncing off the brick hulk of the old cotton mill caught his eye.

Or what was left of the old East Alabama Mills. After Owen Murphy had set up his headquarters first in the mill itself and then in an underground storm shelter, Aidan had torched the place. Now only parts of the redbrick hull stood against the brilliant night sky like a monument to the industry that had built this town and whose demise had eventually killed it. By the time Aidan began buying up property here, the death of the textile industry and the pandemic had combined to make Penton little more than a ghost town.