Absolution (18 page)

M
irren unlatched the lock and opened the hatch into the cottage’s main level, following his nose. Rich scents of butter and sugar drew him into the kitchen, where a glass pan sat on top of the stove, filled with…stuff. It looked like something a cat would yack up.

Glory’s voice was soft. “I made it for you.”

He’d been able to sense her in the house but had gotten so preoccupied with the aromas he hadn’t seen her sitting on a stool in the shadows that stretched before the closed and shuttered kitchen windows.

“I can’t eat it.” Pity, because it did smell fine.

“Well, maybe you can.” She hopped off the stool, and Mirren noted with satisfaction she wore a simple button-front shirt and jeans that molded perfectly to her figure. She’d taken his money, after all. He’d half expected her to throw it in his face when he rose for the night.

Glory didn’t wait for a response but walked past him into the hallway. Suspicious, he opened a couple of cabinet doors and saw a perplexing assortment of boxes and cans. What had she done with his tools?

“Where’s my stuff?” He wandered into his living room, where she sat on the sofa, unbuttoning the top buttons of her shirt. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Getting ready to feed you some bread pudding with whiskey sauce.” She bared the side of her neck and part of one smooth shoulder. The old Mirren wanted to grab her and take her, maybe on the living room floor. The Mirren he was trying to be wanted to caress her. The Mirren he currently was wanted to get in his Bronco and drive far, far away at a very high speed.

“You don’t have to be my fam.” God, what a jerk. “I mean, I’d like you to. If you want to. But if you don’t…” What an idiot. He couldn’t string two sentences together.

“I want to. Now, come over here and see if you can taste all that sugar and butter and whiskey sauce I ate on your behalf.”

He sat on the edge of the sofa, where he could make a quick escape if he needed to. “You really made that for me?”

“Good Lord, Mirren. I’m not going to bite you.” She scooted closer to him, sliding onto the same sofa cushion. Once her leg rested against his, she began laughing. “I’m not going to bite you. That’s kind of a funny phrase, considering. I wonder if I’m the first human to ever assure a vampire no teeth marks were coming his way.”

Mirren frowned. What the hell was she talking about?

“Never mind.” She got up on her knees and swung one leg over his until she straddled him on the sofa. Mirren stifled a groan. The woman had no idea how she tested his self-control. Or maybe she did. Sometimes, like now, he suspected she knew exactly what she was doing.

“I tried to think of some food that you might be able to taste in my bloodstream.” She rested her hands on his shoulders and leaned toward him. “Sugar and butter seemed like a good place to start. If it works, we can experiment a little with some of the foods you used to like. If it doesn’t”—her shoulders rose and fell in a quick shrug—“then I had an excuse to eat bread pudding, although if I eat too much of it, you’ll have to widen your doorways. And then I—”

“Stop.” Mirren had finally figured out she babbled when she was nervous. He settled a hand on each of her hips and lowered her onto his lap so she could feel the hard-on she’d already caused just by her nearness—and by the idea that she wanted to do something to make his life more enjoyable.

Her breath quickened, and he felt the throb of her heartbeat through her skin. He lowered his head, trailing his tongue along the side of her neck, across the scar tissue.

“I’m ready,” she whispered, tilting her head to the side.

Mirren groaned as he bit down and took the first rush of blood into his mouth. She was right—he could taste traces of the sugar in its sweetness and butter in its richness, on top of her own unique taste. He closed his eyes and fed in a gentle rhythm, not realizing at first that Glory was rocking against him with her hips, mimicking the same pulsing ebb and flow.

Without thinking, Mirren quit feeding and, shifting his mouth to hers, used his hands to guide her hips against him. They set up the same rhythm in the tangle of their tongues as they explored each other. Such a bad, bad idea, but he didn’t seem to have the will to stop.

“So, did it work?” Glory pulled away with a gasp, her breath coming in bursts.

Mirren shifted beneath her, his erection getting downright painful and demanding to be set loose. “Ah, yeah. I’d say it worked.”

“Good.” She laughed, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him again. “I’ll have to find out the things you like.”

What he’d like is to lay her out on the living room floor and take her hard, but she deserved better than that. Look what she’d done for him already. “Can’t do this.” He pulled away from her, moving her off his lap.

“Why?” Glory held onto his arm when he started to get up. “I want you. And if you say you don’t want me, I won’t believe you.” She reached down and wrapped her fingers around the evidence that he wanted her, and wanted her now. Mirren’s self-control was shredding like a worn-out gear shaft.

“You deserve better than me.” His mouth said the words, but his body didn’t do what it should—which was to haul ass out the front door, get in the Bronco, and drive to Atlanta for a quick, hard, one-night stand to get it out of his system. But no, his body stayed where it was, letting her stroke him, letting her coax him into another kiss.

The vibration of his cell phone froze both of them. “Saved by the…salsa ringtone?” Glory laughed and moved so he could dig the phone out of his pocket. “You really need to change that. It’s not very manly.”

He scowled at the screen and pressed the talk button. “What’s up, William?”

Will’s voice was muffed, and Mirren could hear shouting in the background. “We’ve got a…wait.” The distinctive sound of a .45 Smith&Wesson fired at close range sounded through the phone.

“What’s going on?” As he talked, Mirren levered himself off the sofa and pulled his own gun from its locked drawer.

“We’ve got a…shit, Randa, shoot the son of a bitch already. We’ve got a problem downtown.”

“On my way.” Mirren ended the call and looked back at Glory. She stood next to the sofa, fear widening her dark eyes and thinning the reddened lips on which he’d been feasting just a minute earlier. He had to make sure she was safe, no matter what. “Follow me.”

“What? Where are we going? Is it Matthias?” She trailed him into the hallway, her barrage of questions ending when he knelt, threw aside the area rug, and deftly slid wooden panels in a clockwise, then counterclockwise, sequence of moves. When the lock clicked, Mirren slid his fingers beneath the now loosened center panel and lifted the hatch to the basement.

Mirren rocked back on his heels. “I don’t know. But we’re not taking chances—you’re going underground.”

Mirren had a sword. Glory sat on the obscenely large leather sofa in Mirren’s rec room—she didn’t know what else to call this multipurpose living space—and went back over the chaotic last five minutes. Mirren had moved like a freight train on a high-speed run. No man that size should move so fast, and with such quick efficiency. No wasted movements.

He’d herded her down a narrow, enclosed staircase that brought back sickening memories of her trip to Matthias’s dungeon. He’d told her to stay put. He’d strapped on knives. He’d pulled on a bulletproof vest. And then he’d unlocked a big armoire and pulled out the sword.

A freaking sword.

It was probably three feet long, but appeared well proportioned to his size, with a funny-shaped—and deadly looking—double-sided blade and one of those fancy handles with the shield that went over the user’s hand. It reminded her of something she’d seen in that Mel Gibson movie
Braveheart
. Mirren had pulled it out of a long leather scabbard with fringe, looked at it with reverence, and then slung the whole thing over his shoulder by its worn leather strap.

Finally, he’d laid his hand on her shoulder, unspoken words hanging heavy between them, and left. He’d disappeared up the steps, clicked the lock shut behind him, and was gone.

What if he never came back? What if he died? Even vampires could die, obviously, since he’d killed one last night for threatening her. How, in a week’s time—most of which she didn’t remember—had she come to care so much for this man that the idea of losing him made her want to weep?

Part of her feelings for him came from the fact he’d been meant to kill her, but saved her instead—even knowing it would draw more danger his way. But Glory knew her heart, and her feelings for Mirren went deeper than gratitude. He was sexy as sin, with that dark hair and deep-set, storm-gray eyes that could harden or soften in an instant, but her feelings went deeper than physical attraction too. They seeped straight down to her soul, where she recognized someone not so unlike herself, a person who’d judged himself harshly and found himself lacking.

Glory had grown tired of the self-condemnation that had arisen inside her when she was a teen, and she’d run away from the family who fueled it, learned to be strong, discovered how to trust herself. Mirren’s condemnation came entirely from within, though, and he obviously didn’t know how to escape it. She could tell him what she saw when she looked at him, but he wouldn’t listen. He’d just order her to stop talking. Unless she tied him down with his own silver-laced rope, which she’d noticed sitting coiled on a table in the rec room. Then he’d have to listen to her.

She grinned to herself. Oh yeah, that was brilliant.

She explored Mirren’s rec room for a while after finding the rope. Besides the sofa and another big fat-screen TV, he had one corner devoted to weights. Barbells and tension machines. She’d never thought about a vampire having to keep in shape. Maybe he did it out of habit or just for enjoyment. Could they actually build muscle, or had that abundance of heavy muscle come from his prevampire life? She had a feeling if she asked, he’d tell her it was none of her business. She’d ask Melissa instead. She def nitely had the vampires’ number.

In another end of the room was a rectangular space with a motorcycle resting on a heavy pad to protect the floor. Or at least half of a motorcycle, with lots of shiny red steel and the word
Indian
written in script across the side. Well, how ironic was that, given her heritage? She laughed a little as she examined it.

The bike was big and bulky, and its style ft Mirren perfectly, except she’d have expected him to have a black bike. Scattered around it were parts and tools. Good to know he didn’t have them all in his kitchen.

What Glory didn’t see in Mirren’s space was anything personal. No clothing, except the odds and ends thrown around on the furniture. The man needed a housekeeper in the worst way. No bed. God, she hoped he didn’t sleep in a coffin. What
did
vampires sleep in? She’d never had the displeasure of seeing any of the vamps around Matthias’s estate go into their daysleep.

Because it wouldn’t be safe, would it? For the fist time, Glory realized how much trust Mirren had shown by letting her see even this much of his personal space. The house upstairs was for show. This was where he lived.

Except, there had to be more. Beginning at the stairwell, she carefully walked the large room, staring at the wooden floor. If this was the original basement to the house, as Glory suspected, it probably had concrete underneath the wood flooring. But Mirren wouldn’t have a space down here without more than one way out. She’d been around enough vampires now to know their paranoia ran deep, and with good reason.

There were no windows, so it made sense that there would be either a wall panel or floor panl that could be shifted around like the one leading into his upper hallway. Pacing the room, moving aside area rugs, she focused on the sound of her footfalls.
There it is.
A square space in the back corner of the room, opposite the other stairway, that sounded different when she walked across it, less solid. It was covered with an area rug that wouldn’t move.

Dropping to her knees, Glory felt beneath the edges of the rug and thought her fingers detected a crease in the wooden flooring, slightly rougher than the place where the planks came together.

She sat back on her heels and thought about it. If it was another hatch, it probably had some kind of intricate locking system like the one leading upstairs. Manual, not electronic. She closed her eyes and visualized the rug lifting up, the movement of wood beneath it in the clockwise-counterclockwise rotation Mirren had used above. She sensed power gathering, but lost her concentration and had to start over. The second time, the wooden pieces seemed to be straining against a barrier or against each other.

Damn it
. She thought a few seconds and tried again, visualizing the tiles moving opposite the direction Mirren had used earlier. At the sound of a click, she was so startled she lost her footing and fell on her butt on the floor.
It worked!

Cautiously, Glory pulled on the rug and grinned when the whole thing lifted, big square of flooring and all. She leaned over the hole and peered down. The opening was narrow—probably not much wider than Mirren’s shoulders—with a metal ladder attached to one wall. A dim light shone from the bottom.