Devil's Gate: Elder Races, Book 3 (11 page)

Xanthe reached out to touch one of the cards, her gray eyes wide. She said, “I think they’re beautiful.”

As the tips of Xanthe’s long fingers touched the card, Seremela felt the Power in the deck pull toward the other woman. She said sharply, “Do you feel that?”

All three of the others stared at her and shook their heads. Vetta sat as far back from the deck as she could get, her hands tucked under her arms. Duncan asked, “What did you feel?”

“It’s tugging toward you, like it wants to go to you,” Seremela said to Xanthe.

“Oh please take the deck with you,” said Vetta passionately. “Please take it far, far away.”

Seremela didn’t want to take responsibility for the Tarot deck, and Vetta refused to touch it. Xanthe was willing to take the Tarot deck to Adriyel, to see if she could discover any answers about its origins and its maker from Dark Fae elders, so in the end that was what they decided to do.

The Dark Fae woman disembarked at Chicago’s O’Hare with quiet thanks. As soon as the plane was in the air again, Vetta sprawled on the couch and fell asleep as soon as she went horizontal.

Duncan and Seremela moved to the back of the plane so that they didn’t disturb the sleeping girl. He settled in the seat beside Seremela. She looked exhausted, with dark shadows under her eyes, but her gaze was clear and bright. She whispered, “I cannot thank you enough, Duncan.”

“Shh,” he said, just as softly. “There’s no need.”

“There’s every need,” she said, her words quiet but forceful. Her mouth worked, and her expression was so beautiful, so intense, Duncan had to put his arms around her and kiss her.

Her mouth. It was like everything else about her, sensitive and lavish with softness yet etched with determination and character. He loved her mouth; he loved it and he kissed and kissed her, while she twined her arms around his neck and kissed him back. Roused by her gentle, heartfelt response, his sexual aggression was lying in wait, ready to pounce. He held it tightly in check. Now was not the time.

Reluctantly he pulled away, and laughter threatened to take him over as he realized all of her snakes had wrapped around him again. He smiled into her gorgeous eyes. “Why do you always look so surprised whenever I touch you?”

She glanced away as she lifted a shoulder. “Many people are disgusted by the thought of touching us, much like Thruvial was with Vetta.”

“Thruvial was a pig,” Duncan said. That jerked her attention back to him. He said deliberately into her wide gaze, “I think you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, inside and out.”

Wonder lightened her feminine features. “You do?”

“I do. I learned a lot about you in a day.”

“It was a long day,” she pointed out.

He laughed softly. “It was a very long day. You’re intelligent and curious, insightful and adventurous, and you’re generous and caring. Even though you’re gentle to the bone, you know how to shoot a gun, and you’re so brave, especially when you’re frightened.” His smile turned crooked. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m falling in love with you.”

There it was again, that look of hers, stricken with wonder and trembling at the threshold of delight. She breathed, “I don’t mind in the slightest.”

“That’s all right then.” Because he had tensed up as he waited for her response, he relaxed and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Did you know that
Rigoletto
is playing this season?”

She nestled close with a sigh. “I love Verdi’s operas.”

“I’ll get us tickets,” he promised, resting his cheek against her temple.

They grew quiet, and after a while Duncan thought she fell asleep. He couldn’t. He was too full of the fabulous sensation of her curvaceous, warm body pressed against his side. He closed his eyes and drifted quietly, letting his imagination have free rein.

He wanted to do things with her. He wanted to talk over morning newspapers, hold hands in a movie theater, walk along the beach on a full moonlit night. He wanted her to call him and interrupt him while he was at work. He wanted to watch her enjoy a good meal.

He wanted to suckle her to climax, and spear into her soft body until he climaxed. He wanted to fall asleep in her arms.

He wanted to bite her so fucking bad.

He was so absorbed in the dark red of sensual anticipation, she shocked him utterly when she whispered against his neck, “I love you too.”

Gods.

He’d known emptiness in his life, and he knew how to be alone. He’d had taken lovers for a time and then they had parted, and he had watched his human friends and family die. He had never known anyone to fill him up so completely by saying four of the most beautiful words in any language.

I love you too.

No longer immersed in a dark red quiet, he discovered himself in a place of shining light.

Seremela’s sister, Camilla, flew in from Atlanta. She was waiting for them at the airport in Miami when they arrived that afternoon. Camilla and Vetta fell sobbing into each other’s arms, and after a moment Camilla turned to Seremela and roped her into the embrace. Hands in his pockets, Duncan stood back to give the women a little space. He grinned at the look Seremela gave him as she succumbed to Camilla’s clutching hug.

Then it was his turn. “Thank you,” Camilla said as she gripped both his hands. “Thank you so much. I—I feel like there’s more I should say, but I just don’t have the words.”

“We’ll meet properly some other time,” Duncan told Seremela’s sister. “In the meantime, you are most welcome. Enjoy having your daughter back safe and sound.”

Seremela told her sister, “Vetta will fill you in on everything. I’m too tired to talk.”

Camilla said, “I’ll call you tomorrow?”

“That’s fine.” Seremela staggered as Vetta threw her arms around her, hugging her fiercely. They stood for a moment in intense silence. Whatever they said to each other was telepathic, meant for each other alone, which Duncan thought was fitting.

After Camilla and Vetta left, a valet brought his car around while Seremela turned awkward and tried to explain how she could take a taxi home. Duncan listened patiently then said, “Don’t be silly. Of course I will see you home.”

She gave him a deer-in-the-headlights look. He was so amused and intrigued by it, he strode two steps forward until his chest brushed the tips of her delicious breasts and he growled into her upturned face, “We have unfinished business.”

Her tremulous mouth formed two silent words. “We do?”

Falling in love was a beautiful feeling, as long as he fell with her. He grinned and bent his head until their lips touched. Then he said silently into her parted lips,
“We do.”

The drive to her home was completed in fiery silence. She couldn’t sit still and fidgeted, and her snakes roamed restlessly around her.

He didn’t want her to sit still. He wanted her to fidget and flutter about, while he stalked his prey to capture her finally, finally—against a door, cabinet, couch, wherever the hell, it didn’t matter, any of the images his heated imagination supplied him were just fine, because he would capture her, it was just a matter of time. The red darkness took him over, and he held himself under savage control as he drove with immaculate care through the heavy Friday Miami traffic.

Fear and violence always touched a Vampyre’s life somehow. He had never realized how he had grown used to it, until he faced that goddamn pariah Djinn and grew shocked at Seremela facing danger and violence. She was too good, too fine; she loved opera and classic movies, and she lived in a civilized, lawful world, and she should never, ever have to face such violence again.

Dimly he realized he was allowing himself to react to what had happened, and by letting go, he was no longer in control.

The atmosphere in the car had grown excruciatingly charged by the time he drove into the underground garage at her apartment building. He pulled into a parking space. The quiet purr of the car engine faded. Seremela started to say something, her words stumbling and awkward.

Staring straight ahead, he interrupted her. “Invite me in.”

She took in a quick breath. It shook a little, and his cock hardened at the small telltale sign. He turned to her and discovered her staring at him with that wide eyed, wondering look. Three of her snakes peered sideways from behind her head, staring at him too.

Laughter spilled out of him as the sight broke his tension. He reached out to one of the snakes. It touched the tip of his finger with a light flicker of its tongue. He repeated unsteadily, “Invite me in, Seremela. Please.”

“I would love for you to come in,” she whispered all in a rush.

With that, he lost all capacity for words or coherent thought. Somehow they got out of the car and into the elevator, where he backed her into a corner. He planted one hand on the wall on either side of her head and stared into her eyes as he breathed in the scent of her arousal. Her breathing grew choppy, and he watched the muscles in her slender throat move as she swallowed, the iridescent pattern that marked her skin shimmering in the overhead light.

Her lovely, slender throat.

His fangs descended. His face twisted as he fought himself. This was too far out of control. He was a stranger to himself.

Her warm, trembling hands smoothed the material of his T-shirt across his chest. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “I want you to bite me.”

He hadn’t even been aware that he’d taken a useless breath of air until it rushed out of him. The force of his own reaction nearly sent him to his knees.

“Duncan,” she said. She sounded and looked dazed.

He lowered his head slowly, and ran his mouth along the leaping pulse at her neck, tonguing the delectable delicate flesh.

She pushed him, startling him out of his preoccupation. With a husky, drunken laugh, she pointed behind him. He looked over his shoulder. The elevator doors stood open. Ah, right.

The length of the hallway to her front door was all but unendurable. He said hoarsely, “After we go to the opera, what are we doing next?”

“I don’t know,” she moaned. She dropped her keys and bent over to retrieve them. “How about a weekend in bed?”

He blurred, snatched the keys out from underneath her hand and unlocked and opened her door before she could fully react. “Get inside.”

He glared as she exploded with laughter. Then he laughed too. This was crazy, ludicrous. He could say he hadn’t felt this way since he was a teenager, except he was certain he hadn’t felt this way then either.

Then finally they were inside, alone in her shadowed apartment. She tossed her purse onto the couch—he realized they had forgotten her case, in the trunk of his car—and then he lost that thought too as she leaped at him. He snatched her up as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, and he strode for the bedroom.

“Say it again,” he said. “What you told me on the plane.”

Her brilliantly colorful eyes were luminous with emotion and desire. “I didn’t think you heard me.”

He laid her on the bed gently and straightened. He tore off his shirt. “I heard you. Say it again.”

She pushed up to kneel on the bed in front of him, and she met his gaze as she reached for the fastening of his jeans. “I love you, Duncan.”

“That was even better than the last time,” he whispered, smiling as he palmed her full, soft breast. She pulled his jeans open and slid her hands inside them as she eased the material down over his lean hips. An odd sensation slid along his torso and up his arms. He glanced down at her snakes as they journeyed across his skin.

Seremela followed the direction of his gaze and drew back a little, her expression turning self-conscious. She offered softly, “I can wrap them, if you’d rather.”

He said firmly, “No.”

She pulled a few snakes away from him. “Are you sure it isn’t too—tentacley for you?”

He grasped her shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. “Listen to me. I did not say I was falling in love with you, if only you would hide some part of yourself or change some aspect to try to please me. I said I was falling in love with you—all of you. I don’t want you to curb yourself, deny yourself, cover up your face or head or any part of your body. I don’t want you to lose or gain weight, or watch what you say, or deny how you feel, or try to be anything but who you are, because who you are is the most beautiful person in the world to me.”

As she listened, the expression on her lovely features grew vulnerable, wide open. While he certainly hoped that he had not been the first person to ever tell her such things, he selfishly hoped that he had been the first male to do so. He grasped one of her snakes, kissed it on the nose and looked into its face. “You’re never going to bite me, are you?”

“They would never hurt you,” Seremela said. “They would die first.”

“Oh well,” he said, giving her a crooked grin. “There’s goes that fantasy.”

Her eyes went very wide, and she laughed, a joyous, surprised sound. She unbuttoned her top and shrugged out of it then slipped off her bra as Duncan kicked off his jeans and stood nude, his heavy erection jutting from his hips.

Her breasts were stunning, lush and full, the soft, plump nipples several shades darker than the light creamy green of her flesh. He bent, took one nipple in his mouth and sucked at it gently. The muffled noise that came out of her was urgent and incoherent. She cradled his head, ran her fingers through his hair and stroked his shoulders.