Hunting Daylight (9781101619032) (32 page)

I stepped back, and his hand fell away. I wiggled my damp feet into the pumps, and then his hand caught my cheek. My nipples tingled, and I leaned into his hand. He looked into my eyes, then lowered his head until his lips were almost touching mine. I slid my hands along the back of his neck, knotting my fingers in his hair, and gently tugged his face closer to mine.

“You’re still thinking,” he said.

“Not that much.” But he was right. My mind was on premeditated orgasms.

His hands tightened around my waist, and he lifted me off the floor. I felt a rush of cool air on my feet as my shoes slid off and clattered against the floor.

“
La sua bellezza porta via il mio fiato
,” he said.

It took a few seconds for my brain to translate:
Your beauty takes my breath away.

He was such a good liar. He moved me higher, and my toes brushed over his shins, scraping over the rough khakis. I felt a massive hardness behind his zipper. I locked my ankles around his waist, and pleasure unfurled deep inside me.

My face was just a little above his, and I leaned down to kiss him. He tasted like grape juice, the kind that’s served at communion, just a dribble in a tiny glass, never
enough to fill you. One of his hands moved to my face. The other slid down to my bottom. I was dimly aware that the music had changed, something a mermaid might listen to, all wordless and watery. He slid the tip of his thumb into my mouth, and I gently sucked the plump mound until his breath came in short gasps.

Inside me, a wave rose to a peak, quivering, then crashed through me so fast I barely had time to catch my breath before the next swell moved in. His lips felt cool against my neck. My head tipped back, and I shuddered against him.

Raphael’s iPhone rang. He ignored it and kept kissing my throat. The phone stopped trilling abruptly, and the phone in the elevator buzzed. He went on kissing me, moving his lips up and down my neck.

I put a little more energy behind the kiss, and he moaned.

His cell phone went off again. Arrapato’s muffled barks echoed from the elevator shaft. I dragged my lips away from his.

“Raphael, something’s wrong.”

“No.” His lips went back to my neck.

But I was distracted by the ringing, and I eased away.

Raphael groaned. He set me down and pulled the phone from his trouser pocket. In the seconds before he raised it to his ear, I heard La Rochenoire’s excited voice, but I couldn’t make out the words.

Raphael’s eyebrows slammed together. He abruptly turned. “What does she want?” he said. From behind he looked tall and chiseled, and I had no trouble imagining him naked.

“Yes, yes. I’m on my way,” he said, and dropped the phone into his pocket. His hand caught my arm. “I won’t be long.”

He was leaving me in the cellar? Renovated or not, I wasn’t staying here.

“I’ll come with you.” I started to follow, but the terror on his face stopped me.

I drew back. “What’s wrong? Has something happened to Vivi?”

“No, no. Just a household disturbance. Please wait for me.”

He’d spoken with a light tone, but he’d looked at the elevator, as if he were impatient to rush upstairs.

He hadn’t been gone three minutes when I heard shouting—a woman was cursing in French. “Fucking incubus,” she yelled, her voice soaring down the elevator shaft. It seemed to be coming from the first-floor drawing room.

Raphael’s told the woman to leave—loudly. There was a crash, and I heard weeping. Okay, it didn’t take telepathy to figure this out. One of Raphael’s girlfriends had found out he was in town.

I stepped into the elevator. Before I reached the first floor, I heard Arrapato’s yelp, followed by a scrabbling noise. The elevator door slid open, and I walked into the hall, hurrying to the ice-blue drawing room.

The heavy doors stood ajar, as if someone had shoved them. I peeked inside. The room was empty. The air smelled odd and sulfuric, as if a match had been snuffed out. The windows were shuttered except the one in the
middle; the wooden panel gaped open crookedly. Had it been wrenched from the frame?

A wedge of sunlight glimmered on the floor, where a copper bowl lay upside down, dozens of antique keys spilled around it. I knelt beside the bowl, lifted a dark bronze, baroque key, and studied the fleur-de-lis on its bow. When I’d been an undergraduate at King’s College, I’d studied etymology; the Old English word for
key
basically meant a solution. A tool to unlock hidden places. Uncle Nigel used to say that if you owned a key, you owned something you didn’t want to lose.

I heard a noise from the doorway and looked up. Monsieur La Rochenoire stood just outside the room, his face bland and unreadable. “Dinner will be served at six in the dining room,” he said. “Unless you’d like a tray sent to your room.”

The key made a decisive clink when I set it in the bowl. “I’m not hungry.”

“As you wish,
madame
.”

“Where’s Raphael?”

“I do not know.”

I hadn’t expected him to lie. I pushed the bowl aside and glanced at the gilt mantel clock. A quarter after two. Raphael couldn’t leave the house until dark. I turned back to La Rochenoire. “But he’s home?”

His face still held no expression. Then one wooly eyebrow began to twitch.

I got to my feet. “I heard shouting.”

La Rochenoire tucked his hands behind his back. “If you change your mind about dinner, let me know.”

After he left, a deep weariness pushed in around me. I couldn’t stop yawning—a sure sign of anxiety. It was still daylight, but I went up to my room and slumped onto the bed. Now I understood why I’d kept my distance from Raphael all these years. I was the opposite of cool. I couldn’t settle for casual sex, although
casual
was the wrong word, because sex with a vampire wasn’t laid-back, though it involved getting laid. Over and over. It was addictive. Once you’d had sex with one of
them
, you had no desire to be with a human.

This reaction has a physiological basis. Vampires are built for predation, and all good predators know how to attract whatever they want. When vampires become aroused, they exude some type of chemical that causes euphoria in the victim, along with temporary numbness—luckily, I was immune to the latter symptom.

But I wasn’t immune to the next phase: an exaggerated sexual response. A male vamp doesn’t experience a refractory period after orgasm. He can literally make love for days. Or he can send his partner into a climactic frenzy with the barest touch. When Jude had kissed me, sometimes I climaxed. And I’d already witnessed what Raphael could do.

As for Raphael…well, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened by the pool. Then I heard Arrapato’s muffled barks, and I knew that they were in this house.

PLACE DES VICTOIRES

PARIS, FRANCE

I slept through supper, breakfast, and lunch. I awoke at four
P.M.
, and when I finally got moving, I found a note wedged under my door.

I turned over the note to see if he’d written on the back, but it was blank. That was all? No explanation about the screaming woman? I carried the note to the window and pushed back the curtain. The afternoon sky was
packed with gray clouds, and I remembered Monsieur La Rochenoire’s weather prediction. Rain was headed to Paris. Before I shut the curtain, a golden shaft of light cut through the dirty clouds and brightened the slate rooftops across the street. Somehow that made me feel better.

A maid with curly gray hair brought a tea tray and set it on the table. Sugary beignets sat on a paper doily, next to pots of butter and gooseberry jam. Steam drifted from the teapot’s curved spout.

“Where’s Monsieur Della Rocca?” I asked.

“Upstairs,
madame
,” she said. “He and the little dog were injured yesterday.”

I felt all the blood leave my head. The room swirled, and I sat down on the chaise longue. “Are they all right?”

“
Oui, madame.
A small injury.”

“What kind?”

“You must ask Monsieur La Rochenoire.” She backed out of the room, her forehead puckered. “If you need anything, ring the kitchen on the house phone.”

I poured a cup of tea and sat back down on the chaise longue. Had the screaming woman punched Raphael in the eye? No, the maid had said that Arrapato had been injured. What could have happened to them? I remembered the broken window panel and the scorched smell. They’d been sunburned?

He’s well enough to host a picnic
, I reminded myself.

I’d almost slept with him—again. I shouldn’t be thinking about Raphael. I should be thinking about my daughter. Was she still in Paris? Or had Sabine taken her away? Maybe when Vivi returned, we could go shopping like a
regular mother and daughter. I had such fond memories of the time that Uncle Nigel and I had gone to the Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen. If you pumped a flea market with steroids and added a dash of caffeine you’d get the Marché aux Puces.

Vivi would love the flea market. I’d buy her earrings, bracelets, vintage dresses, anything she wanted. And we’d come home on the Metro like normal people.

I took a sip of tea, and as the warmth moved through me, I thought of Jude. When we’d gone into hiding, I had believed the danger would eventually end. Perhaps my parents had thought the same thing when they’d moved to Tennessee. Their narrow, carefully constructed world hadn’t saved them. But like Jude always said, if they’d lived in the open, they would have died sooner.

Jude and I had made the same choices that my parents had made, except we’d kept moving. We’d been convinced that my parents had died because they’d stayed too long in one place. But now, I realized that Jude and I had overlooked a critical point. My parents knew who’d been chasing them, and why. I couldn’t put a face or name to the threat.

Who were the players? What did they want? To kill my daughter or put her in a cage? Who’d slaughtered Keats and put my husband’s ring on his finger? Who’d sent assassins to Scotland?

I’d had a decade to think about evil, but now it seemed as if fear was my biggest enemy. Fear is portable. It fits into the tiniest suitcase and speaks all languages. It can reduce your life to the width of a pin head. Maybe it was better to spend one morning at the flea market, with your
senses fully engaged, than to spend a hundred years in a fortress.

Just before seven, I got dressed. I found a white, ankle-length tank dress in my plaid bag. I put it on, then slid my feet into purple flip-flops. I wasn’t sure what to expect at the picnic, but I hoped my clothes would telegraph my intentions:
I’m not sprucing myself up for you. I’m a slob who doesn’t even paint her toenails.

As an afterthought, I tied back my hair with a thin black ribbon. Then I grabbed a white sweater and buttoned it up to my neck. I walked down to the first floor. The courtyard was just off the blue drawing room. Lamps burned softly on the tables, warming the icy color scheme. The panel on the French doors had been repaired, and one stood open, letting a breeze stir the curtains. I stepped outside, my flip-flops ticking over the pavé stones. Lavender and rosemary grew in pots, and their pungent scents blotted out the gritty exhaust fumes that clung to Place des Victoires.

“Mia cara.”
Raphael stood near the fountain, smiling in a way that made my pulse whoosh in my ears. His navy twill shorts hit just below his knees, showing athletic calves. The wind kicked up the edges of his white shirt. His hair had been freshly shampooed and hung just below his chin. A red flush spread across his cheeks, as if he’d just returned from a day at Cannes.

Arrapato shot across the courtyard, his singed fur sticking up. I bent down to pet him, and I felt a knotty patch. “What happened?”

I was looking at the dog, but from the corner of my eye, I saw Raphael shift his feet.

“The burns are almost gone,” he said.

I nodded. Vampires healed rapidly thanks to an abundance of stem cells—a crucial component in immortality.