Hunting Karoly (5 page)

I was held helpless, stunned by his sheer, irresistible strength. But even through the upsurge of fear, I was aware of the wild, almost animal beauty in him. Fascinated, appalled, I couldn’t look away. Even though it hurt my eyes to strain them so far to the side.

He still wore his kilt, though the chest plaid hung loosely down from his waist. His long, fair hair tumbled free about his face and shoulders. His shirt was open and askew, the old-fashioned lacing untied to reveal his naked chest, broad and muscled. I could see one of his prominent dark nipples pointing at me accusingly. Droplets of water glistened on the smooth skin, as if he’d been washing himself as well as his clothes. Above, I caught a glint of murderous ice in his handsome face and realized too late that against this monster, I hadn’t a prayer.

He could puncture my vein in an instant, drain me completely, break my neck as easily as a doll’s. The choice was entirely his.

My helplessness brought with it a pang of frustration that I would not now be able to show off to Nigel and his cohorts. Probably they would never know that I had even tracked the vampire to his lair.

“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep in your coffin?” I blurted irritably.

Recognition spread across his face. He actually looked pleased to see me, which was hardly flattering in the circumstances. His teeth disappeared and his whole body relaxed, although he didn’t release me. In fact, they drew me closer in against him. His brutal hand on my jaw shifted subtly from a potent threat to something approaching a caress. His eyes gathered a hint of warmth. He even smiled.

“Coffins are so constricting,” he complained. “Besides, I don’t sleep.”

“Just my bloody luck. An insomniac vampire!”

For a second, his eyes held mine. I wondered if he was actually hurt by what he must have been able to read there.

He mocked, “Little vampire hunter, don’t you ever just say hello?”

He was still devastating. Humiliatingly, my body greeted his with a flood of sexual moisture. Through my jeans and the heavy fabric of his kilt, I could feel the outline of his lean hip bone and, surely, his hardening cock against my abdomen.

“It wasn’t meant to be a social visit,” I managed.

He moved, deliberately rubbing against me. My pussy clenched and I swallowed hard, fighting a losing battle against desire.

He said, “What were you going to do? Throw holy water over my sleeping face? Stab me through the heart with a wooden stake?”

Guiltily, I released my grip on the stick in my pocket. Almost as if he knew it, he dropped his arms and let me go. Disappointment raged, warring with relief. And yet the danger wasn’t passed. It had only begun.

“Actually,” I said, while he had the gall to hold out his hand toward my nervous Dog, “I thought I’d just leave the trapdoor open and let nature take its course.”

“Cruel if fitting,” he acknowledged. My treacherous hound, who’d merely sat back on his haunches growling with what he no doubt imagined was quiet menace while the stranger assaulted me, moved forward to sniff his long, pale fingers. Not exactly reassured by whatever he smelled there, Dog flattened his ears and shook his shaggy coat, spraying us both with canine-scented rain, then lay down watchfully. “On the other hand, I should tell you I have another way out.”

“You would,” I muttered.

The vampire stepped back, gracefully waving one arm into the room. “Please, make yourself comfortable. I’d offer you some refreshment, only I don’t keep anything in.” He smiled faintly. “As you know, I dine out.”

My breath caught on unexpected laughter. Against my will, I still liked the bastard.

“I can’t stay,” I said hastily, wildly. Jesus, how was I to get out of here now?

“No?” he said, still watching me. “You just dropped in to kill me?”

“Well you needn’t say it like that!” I exclaimed, suddenly and for no reason incensed. “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t kill me, just to improve your
mental health
!”

A smile began to play around his oddly decadent lips. “Actually, you are excellent for my mental health. I have no intention of killing you today.” He walked away from me, turning his back without compunction and going toward the mattress I had already glimpsed in the corner near the drying shirt.

Well, I’d clearly put the fear of God into him!

As I watched he reached up to the wall above the mattress and flicked a switch. A battered electric lamp came on with an ominous buzz, flickered and settled down. By its pale light, the vampire folded himself gracefully onto the mattress, propping his back against the far wall and drawing one knee up to his chest. Behind him, shadows loomed up the wall. Carefully, I didn’t look at the gaping kilt.

“Please, sit down,” he invited, indicating the mattress space beside him. I hesitated. Beside me, Dog stood up and began to trot around the room, sniffing. I could have fought him for control of the lead and tried to drag him back toward the trapdoor, but I knew from experience who would win that fight and for some reason it seemed important to keep what dignity I had left before the vampire.

Sighing, I moved slowly across the room and sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress. To avoid looking at the vampire’s legs, I watched the dog as he sniffed his way about the room. I just hoped the vampire didn’t keep any of his left-over meals lying around for him to find.

“So,” said the vampire conversationally, “did
you
find me, or was it the dog?”

My mouth was already open to claim my own skill, not without pride, when I remembered Dog sniffing the bushes around the trapdoor. Sighing, I confessed, “It was the dog, of course.”

As I spoke I cast him a quick, fierce glance, daring him to make fun of me for it. I’d get enough of that tomorrow from Frank and Hilda. But somewhat to my surprise, the vampire’s smile was openly disbelieving.

“I was joking,” he assured me. “I know it was you.”

“And how do you know that?” I demanded, scarcely immune to flattery, but innately suspicious of it.

“Because I could find you just as easily.”

My breath caught in a sudden slam of fear. Stupidly, I had never even considered that. There were so many things I had never even considered, through my drunkenness and subsequent hangover, not least of them being that the vampire, quite unaware of my total incompetence, could easily regard me as a threat to be eliminated. If it was true, if this recognition worked both ways, then he could easily have tracked me to my mother’s house and killed both of us while I slept the dead sleep of the inebriated.

His terrible green eyes held mine easily, mockingly. “Relax,” he advised. “I’ve already said I’m not going to kill you.”

“Today,” I pointed out. “You said, ‘today’.”

The vampire shrugged. “No point in looking further ahead. Live each day as it comes.”

“Lessons in life,” I muttered, “from Bonnie Prince Karoly of the Undead!” A second longer, I withstood his amused, unblinking gaze. Then, restlessly, I looked away. I knew I couldn’t kill him face to face even if he spread his arms and let me. I had to get out of here before… before I wasn’t very sure what, but I knew I had to leave. Quickly.

Dog snuffled about the far corner, making his slow way back toward me. Soon… My anxiously searching eyes fell on the bare mattress beside me, on my own grotesque shadow, on a twisted black ribbon like the one that had tied his hair back last night, on a jewel on a gold chain. Part innate curiosity, part desperation to be doing something, anything other than looking into his hypnotic green eyes, made me pick up the chain.

It seemed to hold some kind of locket, made of solid gold, intricately carved in a vaguely Byzantine design. To me, it looked very old. I risked a quick glance at him to see if he objected, or even noticed.

He noticed. His gaze was not on me, but on the locket held in my hands. I said, “Can I open it?”

“If you like.” Slowly this time, his eyes lifted to mine. I lowered my own to the locket, inserted my nail and pried it apart. Inside was a miniature portrait, faded but still colorful, of a dark-haired woman with large, laughing eyes and a quizzical smile. It was old, too, I thought, possibly as old as him.

“Beautiful,” I observed. “Who is she?”

He didn’t answer until I looked up at him again and then he held my eyes deliberately, a faint smile playing on his lips. “My wife.”

“You’ve kept her
picture
all these years?” I taunted, suddenly fiercely glad of the opportunity to mock back. “Couldn’t you cope with the real thing?”

“
She
couldn’t,” he said, and when my eyes widened, ashamed, for some reason, of my ill-natured remark, he added, “Well, could you?”

“Could I what?” I muttered, standing up and dropping his wife’s portrait back on the mattress. He moved too with that blurry grace I remembered from last night, so that suddenly he stood facing me, his kilt close enough to brush my legs.

“Become a vampire. Live forever.”

“On the blood of others? No!” I said, revolted.

The vampire sighed. “That’s what she said. Who wants to live forever?”

Unexpectedly, I read something behind the self-mockery in his cool, green eyes.
Hurt?

“You miss her!” I blurted. Suddenly I wanted to know everything about him, how he’d become a vampire, what his life had been like before, how and why he had continued to live his old life in his new state for so long…though the locket at least gave me some clue.

But the vampire clearly did not like pathos. His long, fair lashes swept down across his cheek. He said, “After five hundred years? Hardly. I’d have missed you, though, if you hadn’t come to me.”

My heart thumped harder. Fear and something else swirled around the base of my stomach. I began to deny, “I didn’t
come to you
…!” But he interrupted, his hand lifting to ruffle through my short, spiky hair.

“Yes you did. You came to kill me, which is hardly polite. I have to tell you in all modesty that you could not kill me. On the other hand, I could kill you as easily as you breathe. I spare you, for a price.”

“What price?” I forced myself to be still under his hand. His fingers in my hair made every nerve ending shriek with an awareness that might have been fear. Some of it certainly was. The vampire smiled, sliding his hand around to the back of my head, stroking harder there with two fingers until I gasped without meaning to.

“A kiss,” he said.

“No!” I gulped, slapping my hand to the side of my neck.

“Not there,” he reproved, bringing up his other hand. “
There
.” And one cool finger touched my lips, so gently that I barely felt it. “There are many ways of tasting a vampire hunter…”

My breath caught and his finger moved, light as a butterfly wing, tracing the outline of my upper lip and then my lower. Anxiously, I began to close my mouth against his touch, before I realized I would only shut it around his caressing finger.

I couldn’t talk, couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out. And yet my trembling body was speaking, I just couldn’t understand the words. His thumb joined his finger, slightly bolder, firmer in its exploration. His green eyes still teased, the gold flecks dancing. Then, as I watched in helpless fascination, the gold grew darker, blending with the green into a whirling spiral that seemed to draw me inside. My whole body flushed hot, afraid and indescribably desperate.

His head bent unhurriedly. Fighting the weird hypnosis, I flung up my own hand to grasp his wrist, to pull his fingers from their relentless seduction of my lips. But my tugging had no effect. His fingers, warm now, did not stop, his head continued down to mine until he could cover my mouth with his.

For a second, I felt his lips and fingers both. I heard my own shuddering breath. Then his fingers slid free to hold my head and his mouth took mine ruthlessly.

The vampire could kiss. I suppose five hundred years of practice helps. Certainly with the first touch of his sensual lips, I was lost. They stroked mine over and over before drawing my upper lip into his silken mouth to let his tongue explore. His tongue wound itself around my mine, pulling it into his own mouth and his lips clamped harder. He turned his tongue in my mouth over and over, kissing deeper and deeper until I felt I was drowning in him. His teeth were sharp, nibbling my tongue, my lips, warning me of the danger and yet only arousing me further.

And God, I was aroused. Even before I had found him here, I had trained my senses to be aware of him, so I suppose it wasn’t surprising that every sensation seemed impossibly heightened now. My poor, ravaged body didn’t know what hit it, completely lost in the most powerful desire it had ever known, a willing slave to a mere kiss. I hung helpless in his hands, aware of nothing but his mouth and its terrible, tender ravishing.

I don’t know how long it lasted. It seemed forever since I was oblivious to everything before it and everything outside it. And yet when he began to draw back I knew it was too soon. I heard myself moan in protest. Though his lips left mine, they were still so close that I could sense their every tiny movement almost brushing against my mouth as he whispered, “Sweet, so sweet…”

Then, as I realized several things at once, my eyes snapped open. I knew I could not feel his breath on my lips, because he had none. And I understood at least some of what he had done to me. Defeated me utterly with one kiss.