Secrets in the Shadows (12 page)

“We went to U of P together. The guy was a natural-born loser, and in my arrogance I thought I could help him. I made him into my own special pet project.” He tried to rein in some of the bitterness that had seeped into his voice, without much success. “I thought he was just socially awkward, so when he said mean-spirited, shitty things to people, I made excuses for him. I took him with me to parties he wasn’t invited to. I loaned him money. I introduced him to girls.

“He was a wannabe-rake, but he didn’t get that you actually have to be nice to your date to get laid. He acted like he was granting these girls a supreme privilege just to let them be near him.” Jules shook his head, amazed at how much bad behavior he’d overlooked in his naiveté.

“Sometimes, we’d go out drinking and gambling together, and we’d end up in places where Ian could buy female companionship—with my money, of course, because he was always broke. He was into some things that made me uncomfortable, but since the women were willing professionals, I figured it was none of my business.” He grimaced. “What kind of idiot doesn’t realize that a guy who pays prostitutes to pretend he’s raping them is pretty damn twisted?”

Hannah looked at him, her head tilted. “How old were you at the time?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Twenty, twenty-one. I met him my sophomore year.”

She nodded sagely. “If there’s a creature on the planet stupider than a twenty-year-old guy, I don’t want to meet it.”

He couldn’t help chuckling, despite the memories that haunted him. “You have a lot of experience with twenty-year-old guys? I didn’t take you for a cradle-robber.”

She slapped his arm with the back of her hand. “I have three older brothers. Each one of them was twenty for a really long, really miserable year.” She frowned. “Actually, it was probably more like five years for them. But you get the picture. They were hormones on two legs, with maybe one fully functioning brain between the three of them.”

Her pert little nose wrinkled with distaste, sending her glasses sliding, but he heard the undertone of affection nonetheless.

“Three brothers, eh?” he teased. “That explains a lot.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t change the subject. If you’re beating yourself up because as a twenty-year-old kid you weren’t sophisticated enough to figure out Ian was a creep, then I officially give you permission to forgive yourself.”

Once again, she surprised a laugh out of him. Nothing ever seemed to quell this woman’s spirit! “Thank you. I’m all better now.”

“Hmpf! You’re still not telling me everything.”

He heaved an exasperated sigh. “Since when am I obligated to tell you everything?”

He’d expected Hannah to respond with another lighthearted quip, but instead she laid her hand on his arm and peered up at him.

“Look” she said, “I may be a tomboy, but I’m still enough of a woman to want to help when I see someone in pain. And you’re in a lot more pain than you’re willing to admit.”

A hint of resentment stirred in his center, then quickly subsided. How could he be angry with someone who so clearly meant well? He took her hand and raised it to his lips, meaning only to thank her for caring. It should have been a courtly, but gently dismissive, gesture. But the moment his lips touched her bare skin, the room seemed to hold its breath around them.

There was a warm, slightly earthy scent to her skin, and he tasted a faint hint of salt on his lips. He heard rather than saw Hannah lick her lips. A nervous gesture, he thought. He stared at the small, olive-skinned hand in his and found himself unable to let go. He raised her hand to his lips again, this time turning it over so he could brush a kiss over her vulnerable palm. She shivered and sucked in a quick, startled breath. But she didn’t pull her hand away.

He shouldn’t be doing this, he knew, as he pressed another kiss to the underside of her wrist, where he could feel her pulse throbbing steadily. He inhaled her scent—not clouded by perfumes or lotions—and told himself to stop immediately. After tonight’s dramatics, he was not in his right mind, and neither was Hannah. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he liked the little spitfire! He had no business kissing her.

His body couldn’t have cared less about his logical arguments. His pulse kicked up and his gums tingled in a prelude to his fangs descending. Hannah moved closer to him, so that her body was tucked neatly up against his side. Her scent changed, a musky hint of arousal adding to her enticing bouquet. That scent shot straight to his groin.

When he raised his eyes to hers, he took in her expression of stunned desire and briefly battled with himself. This was some kind of freaky aberration, a reaction to the stress of the night, a mindless desire for pleasure to ward off pain. And yet, even knowing this, he couldn’t help bending his head forward, wrapping one arm around her back and drawing her even closer.

When he brushed his lips over hers, they both gasped. Jules pulled away a moment, overwhelmed by the power of that simple kiss. His fangs were fully descended, his cock fully hard, a lightning-fast arousal that shocked him to his core. With a little groan, he moved in for another kiss.

Then jumped backward when he heard the distinctive click of a card key in the door.

“Marde,” he muttered, glancing at Hannah’s flushed cheeks and darkened eyes, then glancing at the noticeable bulge in his pants. He willed the fangs to recede as he heard the door swing open.

Biting her lip, Hannah moved to sit on the bed across from him instead of beside him. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, though the flush of desire remained in her cheeks. He crossed his legs in an effort to camouflage his state of arousal as Drake walked into the room.

Drake’s nostrils flared briefly, and Jules realized that no amount of playing innocent would fool his superior senses, for the scent of arousal lingered in the air, a scent that would not escape a vampire’s nose. Drake gave him a faintly disapproving look, but otherwise pretended not to notice.

“As I suspected, we’re surrounded,” he said. “We’ll just have to brazen our way through this interview with Camille.” He shook his head. “I’ll be glad to put this cursed city behind me.”

For a fraction of a second, Jules actually agreed with him, until he remembered that putting this city behind him meant leaving Ian alive and well and killing. Somehow, he was going to have to find a way to resign himself to that fact. He just didn’t know how.

***

Hannah wished she felt as brave about this as she was pretending to be. She held her chin up high and tucked her hands in her jacket pockets so she wouldn’t fidget as she walked. Drake walked on one side of her, Jules on the other. She sneaked a peek at Jules from under her lashes and wondered what he was thinking.

She’d gotten him to talk some in the hotel, but not enough. Whatever it was that caused his pain was still buried deep, hidden from the light of day. If only she hadn’t let her stupid hormones take over, he might have let it out.

And, speaking of hormones—how many times did she have to learn by experience that alpha males and her were not a good combo? She wasn’t the type to let some guy dominate her just because of that Y chromosome, and they couldn’t stand being with a woman who was just as insistent on getting her way as they were on getting theirs. And yet, every time she was attracted to a guy, wouldn’t you know it, he was one of those alpha males?

For a year and a half now, she’d gone cold turkey on men of any type, sick of the struggle. What was the point of playing these silly games, anyway? She’d never come close to falling in love—whatever, exactly, that meant—and as for the physical pleasure a man could give her … Well, that’s what vibrators were for.

Now, suddenly, she found herself faced with the ultimate temptation—a sexy, wounded, alpha male in deep trouble. And she forgot all her resolutions and promises to herself.

He reminded her so much of the men in her family—except for the being-a-vampire part, of course. Her policeman brothers and fireman father were all quintessential, testosterone-laden alpha males, and all of them adhered to a strict I-don’t-need-help-from-anyone policy. Which she couldn’t help thinking had something to do with why her father was twice divorced, her two oldest brothers drank too much, and her youngest brother suffered from what she felt sure was clinical depression. Not that he would see a shrink about it or take Prozac or anything. Real men don’t take Prozac, he’d told her when she’d gently suggested he might feel better on medication. He’d made it into a joke, but it had been a brush-off all the same.

She should have learned her lesson about trying to help this particular brand of male long ago. But some hopelessly romantic part of her, a part she wished she could exorcize once and for all, kept hoping that this time would be different. Which was no doubt why she was letting herself get all hot and bothered over a guy like Jules. He was probably even more fucked up than her father or brothers. Sternly, she ordered herself to keep her distance from now on.

Drake called a halt a few yards away from an impressive-looking columned doorway, looking down his nose at Hannah repressively. “I would ask you to please not say anything unless you absolutely have to. I doubt Camille would appreciate your sense of humor, and Jules and I aren’t strong enough to protect you in there.”

She forced out a nervous laugh. “Oh, goody. Sounds like fun.” The corners of her mouth were lifted into something that was supposed to be a smile, but she didn’t think the expression was very convincing.

Looking satisfied with himself, Drake started forward again.

“Enculé,” Jules muttered under his breath. He gave Hannah’s arm a squeeze. She didn’t want to know how intimidated she must look if Jules thought she needed the comfort.

“What does that mean?” she asked in a whisper, figuring it was okay to encourage his habit as long as she wasn’t the one being insulted.

Jules bent his head close to hers, his voice so low she could barely hear him. “Loosely translated, it means ‘fucker’.”

“Hmm,” she said with a frown. “I was imagining something more colorful.”

He chuckled. “Well, it actually means he’s being fucked, but there’s no exact English equivalent.”

“How about ‘fuckee’?”

He made a sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh, covering his mouth with his fist as Drake gave them a narrow-eyed look over his shoulder. The twinkle in Jules’s eyes ruined his “I was just coughing” act.

Hannah smiled, glad to see that sparkle back in his eyes when his expression had been so miserable before. When he smiled with genuine good humor, his whole face came alive and he looked so damn good her pulse hiccupped. She averted her gaze before her hormones could go into overdrive again.

The momentarily playful mood evaporated when they climbed the steps and rang the bell. Hannah’s palms went distinctly clammy and she cursed herself for being such a chicken. She swallowed past her fear and stiffened her spine. She would not disgrace the Moore family name by acting like some faint-hearted female. She could just hear her brothers’ playground taunts ringing through her head—afraid of heights, little girl? You gonna scream like a girl? Who wears the panties in your family? These were the taunts they’d thrown at each other, and Hannah had learned her lesson well. To show fear was to be girlie, and to be girlie was bad.

None of this stopped her heart from pounding as she walked through the foyer of the palatial house of the Master of Baltimore. When the butler ushered them into the living room, Hannah swore she could actually feel the power in the air. The door closed behind them, and Hannah felt like the Christian who’d just been thrown into the coliseum with a lion.

The Master of Baltimore sat in a regal chair, staring at the three of them without speaking. She was, as Drake had described her, a handsome woman. Her dress and bearing screamed of old money—it wasn’t just the opulence of the house—and Hannah felt grubby by comparison.

Camille’s face held little expression past a certain curiosity as she examined them. However, her son, whom Drake had aptly described as a young punk—but a very dangerous young punk—wore a very definite expression. Seething resentment, Hannah would label it. He was leaning over a chair, his elbows resting on the back, his hands clasped in front of him. His eyes pierced them one by one, and it took all of her willpower not to cower under that chilling, malevolent gaze.

“So,” Camille said, drawing everyone’s attention to her, “please introduce me to your companions, Drake.” Her voice had a slightly sing-song quality to it, fluid and melodic. Pleasant, even, though Hannah doubted the woman was anything like pleasant.

Drake made the introductions, and there followed another short period of staring and assessing.

Gabriel rose from his slouch and came around the front of his chair, his stare as frightening as before. “I hear you’re a Guardian,” he said to Jules. His lip curled up in a sneer at the word. “And you’ve never felt the pleasure of a kill.”

“That’s right.”

Hannah was surprised at how level and calm Jules’s voice came out. The sneer on Gabriel’s face and in his voice would usually have roused Jules’s temper. But perhaps even he was too smart to let his temper go at a time like this.

Gabriel looked disgusted. “Pathetic.”

“Gabriel.” Camille’s voice held a distinct tone of command, and Gabriel shut up. But his eyes still shot daggers at the three of them, and his body language said he was on the verge of attack.

Why? Hannah wondered. As far as she knew, they hadn’t done anything to him.

“I hear you were on the verge of killing my fledgling,” Camille said, directing the words at Hannah.

Hannah shoved her fear aside and met Camille’s eyes boldly. “Well he was on the verge of killing my friend.” The word felt odd on her tongue. Was that what Jules really was to her? A friend?

“So why didn’t you pull the trigger?”

“I’m not used to murdering people.” Oops. That was probably the wrong thing to say. Or at least the wrong way of saying it. Beside her, she felt both Jules and Drake tensing.

Luckily for her, Camille didn’t seem particularly insulted. “Well, it’s a good thing for you that you didn’t. My son would have greatly enjoyed punishing Drake and Jules for that death.” She glanced over at Gabriel, whose sudden wolfish smile revealed wicked-looking fangs. Maybe she was just imagining it, but Hannah thought those fangs looked bigger than the ones she’d seen on other vamps.