Books by Maggie Shayne (172 page)

He was hard and aroused and hungry. Damn hungry. He knew far too little about these Chosen mortals and their link with the undead. But already he sensed it was far more powerful than he had ever understood.

He needed to know more.

He needed to feed. And not on her. God, if the fantasy had been that mind-numbing, what would the reality be like?

He would kill her. If he touched her, he would lose all control and take everything she had. Her body. Her blood. Her life.

Shaking off the lingering images of the woman's fantasy, but unable to so easily rid himself of the arousal it had stirred in him, he strode to the arching steel door at the far end of the room, slid the bolt free and stepped into the cave-like tunnel that led to the outside. Then he headed into town.

To feed.

Morgan soaked in the cool water of her opulent bathroom, and tried to erase the images from her mind. Oh, she had dreamed of Dante before, but it was always very clear that it was just that. A dream. And she saw through his eyes and thought with his mind every day when she wrote down his stories, embellishing to her heart's content. But when she did, she always knew it was only make-believe. All writers lived in the heads of their characters. But they knew what reality was. And what it wasn't.

This time she had felt him. This time she had felt his hands on her skin, his breath on her neck, his teeth piercing her flesh, his mouth sucking at her throat.

It had been real.

And it had been incredible.

Sighing, she sank lower into the water, closed her eyes, tried to think about something else,
anything
else.

The awards ceremony. The dress she still hadn't chosen. The time she would need to spend in L.A. Minimal time. Something was happening here. Something she needed to explore fully until she understood it.

She wasn't going anywhere until she did.

What the hell, she might as well begin now. She closed her eyes, visualizing again the scene she had just written. Bending her knees until they rose up out of the water, she slid her hand down her thigh, touched herself and imagined it was his hand touching her. She shivered and whispered his name. "Dante… "

He could travel very quickly when the need arose, and it had indeed arisen tonight In an hour's time he was in Bangor, walking the streets, his eyes sharp and watchful.

He found her easily enough. She didn't need to work, not with what he paid her to be available to him. And he didn't have time to seduce an innocent. or to hunt down a victim deserving of death. Not tonight. Tonight he needed his gratification given swiftly and unquestioningly.

She opened the door when he rang the bell, smiled at him. "It's been a while."

He nodded, stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

"You want something to—"

"No. Come here."

Blinking, she seemed a bit afraid, though she shouldn't be. This was something they'd done often enough before. He supposed, however, that his mood had something to do with the flash of fear in her eyes. He tried to soften his expression, even attempted a smile. "Come here."

Swallowing, she stepped closer. Her hands pressed to his chest, slid up his shirt, curled around his neck. She let her head fall backward.

Dante didn't hesitate. He bent and bit into her. She gasped, went stiff, then relaxed very slowly and melted against him. Her blood rushed over his tongue, coating his throat, filling him, warming him. Life coursed through his veins; he felt it tingling there, making him alive with it. Sexual desire stirred in him, and he arched against her as he drank, his hands sliding lower to cup her hips to him. God, how he needed, craved, hungered! Her blood pulsed into his mouth with every beat of her heart—but then it began to slow.

Alarm shot through him, and he lifted his head away, licking his lips—God, she was delicious—and looking down at her.

The blond woman's head slumped to one side. Her eyes were closed, and her skin was very pale. There were two tiny holes in her neck, a thin ribbon of blood twisting from each of them.

Jesus, had he killed her?

"Belinda? Come on, wake up." He shook her gently, patted her face.

Her eyelids fluttered but didn't open. Sighing, he scooped her into his arms, carried her to her sofa and laid her down. He propped her feet on pillows, then tucked a blanket around her.

By then she was stirring, her eyes slowly opening. Her smile was weak. "Damn, you do me good," she whispered.

"Are you all right?"

Inhaling slowly, she seemed to take stock. "Dizzy. Lightheaded as hell. That's never happened before." Her words were slightly slurred, as if she were drunk. He'd taken too much.

"I'm sorry," he said. "My fault. I… it won't happen again."

She smiled weakly. "I like it. I just wish you'd take me the other way while you're at it. I'd like to fuck you raw, baby. Why won't you let me?"

He shook his head slowly. "Not part of the deal." He drew a breath, sighed. "You're going to be fine," he said. "Just sleep, all right?"

"Whatever you say, baby. You're the boss." She closed her eyes, and he sensed her falling asleep almost at once.

Getting to his feet, Dante tugged ten one hundred dollar bills from his pocket and laid them on the coffee table. A bonus for Belinda, who used to sell her body for a living but now sold her blood and made ten times the money. She was his personal whore. He made a point never to get too close, to spend much time, to touch her any more than was necessary. And he only fed from her a few times a year. He had others, around the country, in Europe. Belinda willingly moved between three East Coast cities so she could be where he needed her, when he needed her. He kept her in lush apartments, paid her a generous monthly salary. She never complained.

He didn't know what she or the others like her thought of him. Whether they realized what he was or believed he was simply a rich man with a vampire fetish. He did know they would never breathe a word. He paid them far too well, and he had made it clear well in advance that the money would vanish, as they themselves would, if they spoke of him or his peculiar appetites to anyone.

He'd found them on the streets. In the gutters, for the most part. When you pulled someone up from such misery, they were usually grateful enough to be loyal. You couldn't trust anyone who had been born rich. That had always been his opinion, at least.

That woman, back there at his house in Maine. She had been born rich. He smelled it on her.

He didn't trust her.

And having sated his blood lust, he thought he would be safe to return there now. To have a closer look at this woman who knew so much about him.

To begin the task of learning her every secret.

He came to her again that night. And again she knew it was only a dream.

She'd gone to bed after her bath. And she had left the balcony doors open, almost as a challenge. Almost as if some ridiculous part of her mind clung to the fanciful notion that he might, somehow, be real.

Fictional characters did not come to life and visit their authors, she told herself. Why, then, did she brash her hair until the repeated movement of her arms had made her breathless? Why did she wear the small, sheer black peignoir to bed?

She was a fool. She was obsessed. In love with a man who didn't exist In fact, she was probably in love with a man who never had, except in the mind of a deluded writer. The dark loner, Dante, immortal, utterly sexual creature of the night, had never been real. He was a figment of the journal writer's imagination.

And yet she was completely and utterly obsessed all the same.

She lay awake for a long time, silently begging him to come to her dreams, if only as a way to ensure that her own mind would comply and bring him there while she slept. Finally she drifted off.

And then she felt a cool breeze wafting from the open balcony doors, and she knew he was there. In her dream, she opened her eyes, and she saw him, standing at the foot of the bed, staring at her, his gaze onyx fire. And again it wasn't like the dreams she had had before. If she didn't know it was impossible, she would have believed this to be real.

"Dante," she whispered.

He lifted his brows as if surprised. "Most women would react quite differently to waking and finding a stranger staring at them as they slept."

"You're not a stranger," she whispered. "I know you."

"So I have gathered." His voice was exactly as she had known it would be. Deep and very soft. Erotically soft. But clear and rich, too. "What I would like to know is… how?"

Her dream self sat up in the bed. She let the sheet fall away from her. Let him see her. She wanted him to see her. "How?"

He responded as she had wished he would. Of course he did. This was her dream. His gaze slid down her body, Lingering on her breasts, clearly visible beyond their sheer black filter. "How do you know me?"

She closed her eyes, felt her body respond to his gaze as if it were a touch. "I'm not sure myself. It's as if I'm completely possessed by you." Opening her eyes, she fixed them to his. "Or perhaps it's just that I want to be."

"Do you?"

She nodded very slowly. "It's odd, you know. I've never felt for any man what I feel for you. And you—you're just a fantasy. Just a dream." Looking away from him, she said, "I suppose that's just as well. Better, maybe. No one gets hurt."

He tipped his head to one side. "A dream, am I?"

She nodded. He smiled just a little. "Is that what you want me to be? A dream? Like the one you had earlier in the evening?"

Her eyes widened, and she felt a rush of desire and fear coursing through her in a heady combination. She didn't answer, but he moved closer to her, until he stood beside her bed. Reaching out with one hand, he took the sheet and tugged it slowly down her body, slowly exposing her hips and legs and feet.

"Tell me all I wish to know, and I might just comply with your… request" He sat now on the side of her bed. She was half reclining, back against the headboard, and he reached out, dragged the back of his hand over her breast, his knuckles just grazing her nipple. "Beginning with your name."

"Morgan. Morgan De Silva."

"That's very good." He turned his hand, gave her nipple a tiny pinch, her reward, and she gasped in pleasure.

"I wonder, Morgan, would you be so submissive if you thought I were real?" he asked, lazily stroking the nub now, squeezing, tugging now and again.

"If you were real, you would make me as you are."

Those words seemed to startle him. He paused in his ministrations to her breast, his eyes shooting to hers. "Why would I do that?"

"Because we were meant to be together, Dante. You're a part of me, and I am a part of you." She lowered her eyes. "Fantasy, yes. But if you were real, then these feelings would be real. And you could no more resist them than I."

For just a moment she thought there was a flash of fear in his eyes.

She covered his hand on her breast with her own. "But you're not real. Even though this fantasy of mine has suddenly become more real than it has ever been before." She looked down at his hand on her breast. "I can feel you."

His fingers resumed their steady, delicate manipulations.

"I want to feel everything with you, Dante. Everything I have imagined."

He drew his hand away. "Impossible."

"Of course it's possible. Anything's possible in a dream."

"I must leave." He got to his feet, but before he'd gone a step toward the door, she was on her feet, too, clutching his shoulder, turning him.

He turned, reluctantly, as if he would rather not have, and when she had his attention, she slid the straps of the peignoir from her shoulders, pushed it down and let it fall to the floor. She stood there, naked, and his eyes moved over her body, boldly inspecting every inch of her. Taking his hand, she tugged him back to the bed, then lay down on her back.

"Take me, Dante." She pushed her hair away from her neck. "Taste me. I want to feel it again, the way I felt it earlier. Possessed by you, blood, soul and body."

She saw him tremble, but she still had hold of his hand, and she pulled him gently closer. Again he sat on the edge of her bed, and this time, she sat up and pressed her mouth to his, her arms twisting around his neck.

He kissed her, fed from her mouth, suckled her tongue, nipping it with his sharp teeth and drawing tiny droplets of blood. As he did, he pressed her down again, until his body pressed hers to the bed, and he devoured her mouth. One knee was wedged between her legs, parting them, and she felt his erection now, beyond the barrier of his jeans, pressing to her naked, open center.

Reaching down, she grabbed his zipper.

He covered that hand with his own and gently pulled it away as he broke the kiss.

"I'll hurt you," he whispered.

"You can't hurt me. It's my dream."

Sitting up, panting for breath, he whispered, "Close your eyes, Morgan. And I'll give you what you want."

Lying still, she did as he asked. She closed her eyes.

He leaned close to her again, and his lips now were very near to her ear. "Surrender to me," he whispered, slowly, repeatedly. "Open to me. Let me inside you. Inside your mind."

"Yes," she whispered. Her legs parted, but he didn't touch her. And yet he did. Somehow, he did. Without touching her, he caressed her. Like phantom fingers on her skin, he stroked and rubbed and slid around her body, touching her nowhere and everywhere at once. She could see it in her mind, feel it as if it were real, but she knew he hadn't moved. Not a muscle. He was sitting as he had been, staring at her.

"That's it," he whispered. "Give yourself over. Feel me, Morgan. I'm inside you, around you. Do you feel me?"

"Yes!"

"Around you, inside you, possessing you, owning you. Your body is mine to command at this moment, isn't it, Morgan?"

She nodded, as she twisted and writhed on the bed, craving more, craving so much more.

His lips very close to her ears, he whispered, "Come, Morgan."

The orgasm broke through her like an explosion. She screamed his name, her arms lashing around his neck and pulling him close. And then she felt it, his mouth parting and snapping closed on her throat, his teeth piercing her skin, and then the delicious sucking.

"Yes, yes, yes," she whispered as the climax went on and on, driven further by his drinking from her.

And then she faded. She faded and vanished, lost herself utterly in him.

Dante licked the blood from his lips and lifted his head away. He shouldn't have tasted her. Dammit, he hadn't meant to. Her arms fell away from his neck. He eased her onto her pillows. Straightening away, he pulled the covers over her, then turned and closed his eyes.

Already he was hungering for more. He had only meant to pleasure her with the power of his mind. But God, it had as potent an effect on him as it did on her. And when she'd pulled him to her, cradling his face to her neck as she shivered and bucked with her climax, he had lost himself in the scent of her. The blood, rushing just beneath the skin, her hands pressing him closer, her neck arching toward him.

And so he'd taken her. Just like that, he'd plunged his teeth into her luscious flesh and drunk.

Only a little. God, only a little. But the power of it was beyond understanding. It rocked him, the force of her life inside him. It made him shudder. It made him want more.

Rising from the bed, Dante took two staggering steps toward the window before he caught himself in a grip of iron will. No. He couldn't leave, not now. She was asleep, and while he had seen very little inside her mind while he'd been there, probing, he had seen pages of what looked like his own handwriting and a room—a familiar room. His study.

He didn't know what it meant, but he had come here to find out.

Glancing back at the bed, where she slept deeply, he made his decision. He refused to let the heated affections of some strange mortal female sway him from his task. And yet he had trouble drawing his gaze away from the two tiny holes in her neck and the trickle of red from each of them. He nearly leaned down to lick the stray droplets away, but he resisted. God knew he could as easily rip out her throat.

He moved silently, soundlessly, past the foot of her bed, toward the door. Then he opened it and slipped into the darkened hall, pulling the bedroom door closed behind him.

And then—then he went still, as the mists of time parted and he seemed to be looking a century into the past. The hall's hardwood floor gleamed with finish so new he could smell it. And the wide stairs, wider at the base than at the top, spilled downward into the great room that was exactly as he remembered it. The vaulted dome ceiling housing the crystal chandelier. The pristine woodwork with its intricately carved trim. God, he had missed this place.

As he walked slowly down the stairs, his palm gliding over the highly polished bannister, he saw the differences. The paintings on the walls were not the ones he'd put up himself. The chandelier was electric, not gas powered, as it had been when he had lived here. The furniture was different. Oh, she had the period right. How she knew he'd decorated the entire place in rugged-looking reproductions from the time of the Norse invasions, he couldn't begin to guess. But she had done likewise. The chairs were like the thrones of a barbarian king. Solid square legs and arms, with the heads of bears or lions at the ends. Boxy tables to match, and in the corners stood pedestals of granite bearing sculptures of legendary warriors. Eric the Red, with his two-homed helm. A muscled valkyrie astride a winged horse.

His choices hadn't been exactly the same. But that she'd chosen this culture, the Vikings, as her theme was beyond coincidence. The woman knew him. Study of the period had been a hobby of his. A chill whispered up his spine. He glanced toward the dark-wood double doors that led to his study. Or had once. It had been his haven. His shelter against the world.

He was almost afraid to go in there, almost couldn't make himself do it. But then he did. He moved to the doors, gripped the brass handles, turned them and pulled the doors open.

His study opened out before him as if he were looking again into the past. The fireplace on the far wall had been restored to its original design. The huge antique desk in the corner was not exactly like his, but the size was right. The chair before it was modern, of course, with casters, and the computer on top of the desk seemed completely out of place.

It occurred to him suddenly that that must have been the spot where she had been earlier tonight, when he'd been inside her mind. When he had felt her fantasizing about him. Felt everything she imagined as if it were real.

Before he could dwell on that for much longer, he caught sight of something else, something that drew his head around fast and then captured his full attention.

Drawings on the walls. Some in frames, some just tacked up haphazardly. God, there were a dozen of them. And they were all… him.

He stared as if stricken, moved closer against his will, and scrutinized every line, every shade and shadow that made up the contours of his face. And as he did, he ran his hand over his own chin and cheek and jawbone. So unnatural to be able to look at himself this way, when he had been unable to see his own reflection for so long. Centuries. Was his face that angular? Were his eyes that deep, that shadowed? God, he looked haunted.

How did this woman know him? How?

The room suddenly seemed too small and felt like a vacuum. He sucked in a breath, then another, but couldn't seem to find enough air. The shock, he supposed, of seeing himself depicted so clearly. He opened every desk drawer but found no evidence, and he scanned the bookshelves, as well, to no avail. The computer mocked him. He knew very little about the machines. Searching its contents would be challenging. And still, he supposed, he was going to have to attempt it.

But first, air. He was still having trouble digesting all of this. Particularly when he glimpsed the drawing of him as a child, near the campfire of his family, while Sarafina danced. His breath caught in his throat then.

Dante dragged himself to the nearest window, flipped the catch at the top and opened it easily. Then he took a deep drink of cool, bracing night air.

A shrill, piercing tone split the silence of the night and shattered his renewed composure. Hell, it was some kind of an alarm. He clasped his palms to his sensitive ears and lunged through the open window, running from the house into the welcoming arms of the night.

As he paused, crouching in the bushes while deciding what the hell to do next, she came. Morgan. Awakened by the alarm, she had gone directly to the study where he had been. As if she knew. God, how connected they were.

She stood in the open window, looking out into the darkness, her face completely confused, utterly vulnerable. She would remember their encounter only as a dream. And yet she knew someone had been inside her house. The way she was staring out, squinting, searching the darkness, it seemed almost as if she were hoping to see him, rather than fearing she might.