Department 57: Rubies of Fire (17 page)

Reluctantly, Ellie promised to hold off telling Cristos until Andreas had seen Roz. “But we’ll have to tell him soon. I only came to tell you first because—well, because you’re Andreas.”

He nodded. “Because we’re friends, right? Good friends.”

“Yeah.” She smiled at him, a terrifyingly vulnerable smile he wished he hadn’t seen. “Friends.”

* * * *

Roz would never sleep as well anywhere else. Dreamless, blissful lengths of time with no nightmares, no shadows.

She awoke and touched him, instantly bringing herself to a sense of anticipation, but instead of accepting her unspoken invitation, he paused and nestled her next to him. “I have to ask you something.” She didn’t need to sense his removal from her to know it was nothing to do with their recent avowals of love. When he’d arrived at her apartment tonight, he’d fucked her with a relentlessness that had a desperation to it.

“Go on.”

“Did you see Fabrice just before he disappeared? In the street?”

She frowned. “No.”

“Not a quick, accidental meeting?”

“No.” Had she forgotten something? No, she couldn’t remember anything.

He stared at her for a long time, then shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve probably been in this business too long.” But it did matter; she could tell by his slight withdrawal, his frown.

But his next words took the first question out of her mind. “I have to go to London for a while.”

“London, England?”

“That’s the one.” He watched her face anxiously. “I can flash to see you.”

“You’ll wear yourself out. Long-distance flashing is very tiring, even for you.” The news came as a shock. She needed to assimilate it, decide what to do. “How did this come about?”

“The trail from the DIB turned in on itself and then went abroad. It’s only an assignment. I won’t be there forever.”

“Is it dangerous?” She pulled him closer, not wanting to think of him in peril.

“Not really, I don’t think it should be any more dangerous than what I’ve done here. Mainly investigation; so far I’ve not been asked to do anything more than that.”

Then maybe she should go with him, but she couldn’t ask him. It would seem too needy, too much.
He
had to ask
her.

He didn’t. Either he wasn’t telling her everything, that the assignment was more dangerous than he’d thought, or he didn’t feel as involved as he claimed. Her happiness went down a notch.

But she’d grown up a long time ago; she’d get over it. Still, the niggling suspicion remained. What was he hiding? “Do you have somewhere to live?”

One corner of his mouth turned up in a gesture of resignation. “I’ll find somewhere. Hopefully I won’t be there long enough to put down roots.” He kissed her gently. “My heart won’t be there.” He sounded more melancholy than warm.

So he didn’t expect to stay long, but she’d have liked him to ask her. “Maybe we can take turns flashing across. All you need is a webcam.”

They used webcams to send live pictures. The Internet was full of seemingly pointless live webcam pictures, with coded details of the precise spot.

That way, vampires escaped too many questions.

A spark lit in Roz’s mind, an idea, a thought. “Do you think—”

What she was going to say was lost in his next kiss, and her ideas flew away as he took her on another journey into passion.

No, not this time. She had just enough thought left to swing him over and sit up, triumphant, straddling his hips. She stroked her finger down the length of his nose, letting her nail prick him at the very tip. “My turn,” she purred.

He looked gorgeous like this, his eyes dark with passion, his mouth slightly open, lips curved. “My pleasure. Just call me your slave.”

“All right,
slave
.” Chuckling, she bent forward to kiss him, but pulled back when he tried to curl his arm around the back of her head and drag her closer. “Hands behind your head.”

Smiling, he lifted his arms and folded them, tucking his hands behind his neck. Then he raised a dark brow. “What now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Then I’ll just wait here until you decide, and enjoy the view.” His gaze swept over her naked body.

Instead of embarrassing her, it emboldened her to see him so obviously absorbed and turned on by the sight of her body. She cupped her hands under her breasts, lifted them a little, then hoisted them higher, pushing them at him. But when he would have surged up, she leaned back, taking them just out of his reach. He could have got to her, but he sank back, laughing. “I’m putty in your hands, sweetheart.”

She snuggled back, feeling his erection nestle between the cleft in her buttocks. It felt good, stimulating her sensitive skin. “It doesn’t feel like putty to me.”

She was in no mood to resist the temptation the feel of his skin next to hers always brought her. She began by stroking his body up and down, then tracing the muscles with the flat of her hand, pressing them when she covered his nipples, as hard as hers felt, taut and begging for attention.

She gave it, bending to suck at one small nipple without warning, hearing his shout of delight, feeling his erection twitch behind her, moistening her ass as it moved. He liked it. His shout softened into a groan. She licked around the nipple and lifted, letting his cock rise before sinking and taking him into her body.

A soft sigh was her reward, a sigh replete with delight, satisfaction. “Oh, darling, you can make me your slave anytime you want.”

Looking into his eyes, she saw his soul there, and for that moment, she knew he meant every word he said. For now, he belonged to her.

And she belonged to him.

Her turn now. Her turn to drive him crazy with wanting her. As she moved, that part got stronger, until she felt him wanting, needing, to pleasure her.

Before he could move, she pressed the palms of her hands to his chest, pushing down. “No. This is for you. You can please me by letting me please you. Let go, Andreas. Let go.”

He stared up at her before smiling and relaxing against the pillows.

“I mean it. Stop thinking about me. Share what I’m feeling.”

She felt his mind caress hers, bathing it in warmth, and she laughed as she began to move again.

They had no way of counting time. Minutes or hours could have passed, but her rhythm remained steady, up and down, working a regular beat, keeping her tension the same. She didn’t want a quick, explosive climax, although they had their place. She wanted to feel every surge, every time her libido took another step up.

He understood; of course he did. Smiling, his eyes sparkling, he put his hands over hers and held himself rigid for her to do whatever she wanted to him.

His growing excitement fed hers, and he took from her. Feeding and being fed, an endless circle toward a building peak.

She felt her orgasm grow, warmth seeping through her, sparkling trails building, building, until the sudden explosion took her with it. Dimly she heard him crying her name, but she felt him in her, surrounding her, exploding with her.

For the first time in this encounter, she closed her eyes.

When she came to, she was leaning back against his upraised legs, his cock still embedded inside her, though softer than before. He reached for her, hands open, palms uppermost, and without conscious thought, she put her hands in his. He tugged her down to lie against him, moving her so he tucked her to his side.

“That was pretty special.” His voice rumbled through her body.

“Yeah.”

They slept.

When they awoke, Roz had enough presence of mind to check the little digital alarm clock on her bedside table. Still only midnight. She glanced up to find him watching her, his eyes grave. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

He drew her up so he could kiss her. “I’ve been watching you sleep.”

“Good?”

“Yeah.” He gave her another gentle kiss. “Hungry? I attacked you before I could ask.”

She chuckled. “Now he asks! No, I don’t need to feed as often as you do. I’m—”

“I know. Older. But I fed earlier tonight. I didn’t want to come to you hungry. Not for blood, anyway. I can go between feeds for longer when I get older, I guess.”

Vampires only needed a small amount, but like a diabetic needing insulin, regularly taken. Taking blood could be deeply personal, intensely sexual, but it didn’t have to happen that way. When a vampire took blood, he could enter the mind of the donor, and most vamps tried to give something back. Reassurance, some kind thought, a strengthening—not necessarily sexual.

Or so Roz told herself. But the easiest way to repay the donor was to give a quick pseudo-orgasm straight into the mind, which, if she believed what some people said, was the most potent sexual organ in the whole body.

She didn’t want him doing that. As a young vampire, Andreas needed to feed frequently, almost every night, but the thought of him wandering around administering orgasms to anyone but her made her see red. She wanted all his orgasms, everything he had to give her.

Her possessiveness shocked her. She’d never felt like that about anyone before. Her late husband had been mortal, and she’d always known her love for him had to be finite, so she’d maintained a slight distance, preparing herself for his death, which had come too soon anyway. This time she’d fallen deeply in love with another vampire, one of her kind. Less problematic, she’d have thought before she met him.

But Andreas Constant was a special kind of vampire. Young, without family, more mortal than vampire in his habits. So yet again, she’d gone against type, against what her family wanted for her.

Tough shit. She wanted this man. She would give anything she had to, as long as he wanted her. Family, reputation—she would give it up for him.

And that thought terrified her.

He was still staring at her, seemingly content to wait. What had he said? Oh yes, about going between feeds. “You’re what, thirty?”

He nodded. That seemed so long ago to her. Before John, when she still wore corsets every day and kept her head down in society so as not to attract attention to herself. Of course, shortly after that, she’d met her first suffragette, and the rest was history. Literally.

“Thirty. You can start spacing out your feeds now, making them every other day instead of daily. But don’t push it.”

“I wish I could feed wholly from you.”

She laughed. “We both need mortal blood, but we don’t have to be intimate with our prey.”

“Yes.” He caressed her neck with one strong hand. “We can work that out.”

“But?”

He sighed. She knew he had something else on his mind. He’d closed part of his mind to her, and she didn’t want to probe. It indicated insecurity, a lack of trust, and she trusted him. Truly she did.

“Tell me. You’ve already said you have to go to London for a while. What else? There is something else, isn’t there?”

“Yes.” He drew the covers up over her. “Yes, there is. It’s probably nothing. I don’t want to mention it again, but I think I have to. Just to make sure.”

He didn’t split his mind off from her, but she felt him withdraw, giving her the choice. What was he about to tell her?

“Are you sure you didn’t see Fabrice just before he was taken?”

This was so far away from what she thought he might ask her that she just gaped at him. What the fuck did he mean? Hadn’t she already told him no? Pulling herself together, she thought back. “The last time I saw him I was with you, remember? The day before he was kidnapped, at the Department when he read us.”

“No other time?”

“No.” Alarmed, she sat up. “What? What is it?”

“You were seen.”

He hadn’t dropped his shields, but she couldn’t reach him anymore, no more than his outer thoughts, the part of him he would present to any Talent. It hurt, more than she’d imagined possible. In response, she slammed down her own shields, almost instinctively protecting herself.

“Seen where? Who saw me? What were we doing?
Supposed
to be doing?”

He gazed at her, his eyes flat and expressionless. “Standing in the street chatting. On Seventh Avenue.”

She hadn’t visited Seventh Avenue for weeks. What was he talking about? Who did he trust over her?

In a heartbeat, she knew. Ellie. She saw the image of the young girl flash through his outer mind before he suppressed it. Andreas trusted her like nobody else. Their shared bond had drawn them together long before she, Roz, had met him. So he’d take her word as he would nobody else’s. “I wasn’t there, Andreas.”

She watched him, felt him withdraw, and it bit like a knife to her soul. Nothing had ever hurt so much. Not her husband’s betrayal with another woman, not even his death, because with the advent of war, everybody expected death, although they dreaded it. She hadn’t expected this. After their closeness earlier in the evening, she’d dropped every barrier.

He sighed and fell back against the pillows, disentangling his legs from hers, withdrawing body and mind, but never slamming the door on her.

What could she say? She hadn’t gone there, period.

“Sweetheart, I have to know. I have to eliminate all possibilities. Let me read you.”

“You don’t trust me?” Letting him in wouldn’t tell him anything. “Fuck you, Constant. I’m screwed if I let you in or if I don’t. There’s no memory of any such meeting in my mind, but that doesn’t tell you much, does it? I could have wiped it.”

Now or never. If this didn’t persuade him, she would give up. She sat up, stared at him, willing him to listen to her, to believe her over the kid. “I didn’t see him. Believe me or not, that is the truth.”

She watched him, for once on the outside. He’d closed his eyes, lay beautiful and passive in her bed, next to her but entirely separate. “I’m an agent. I’ve been an agent all my adult life. I have to think.” He opened his eyes, but his inner being was locked deeply within him once more. The courage he’d had to join with her, risk all to give her what she wanted, what she needed, had gone, or he’d subdued it. “Fabrice is my best friend, and he could have disappeared because of me. Because I trusted people I shouldn’t have trusted.”

“Me?”

He looked at her as though he were looking at a stranger, and she resisted the urge to pull the sheet up around her body to protect it from him. “I don’t know.” He paused. “I wanted you to say you’d seen him, that you’d forgotten to tell me. But I have to know the truth.”