Sex and the Single Vamp (6 page)

Chapter Seven

Cici kept time with the driving beat of the music, letting it wash through her and take with it all the stress and worries of the day. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone out like this, soaking up the energy of the crowd around her. The vibe here was definitely highly charged with sex and vice, and it was luring her right into the mood to sin.

But it wasn’t what she’d envisioned. Yes, couples of all shapes and configurations were grinding it out on the dance floor. Dimly lit alcoves around the room were filled with people kissing, touching, giving each other pleasure. But there was no air of desperation or coercion here. Participants were into it, enjoying it, and willing. Not at all what she expected, but definitely something she was responding to.

It was as though the anger and desire roiling in her veins were heightened by the thrumming, sensual mood in Sanctuary. Each beat of the music and flicker of lighting amped the heated rage burning under the surface of her too-tight skin. And she
was
angry. Furious that her business was in jeopardy and her friends had been murdered. Livid that she was the number one suspect. Outraged that her very belief system was being challenged at every angle. Appalled that she wanted the one man who embodied everything she didn’t want for herself.

But she also desired. Craved. Her blood ran hot with it. Her skin tingled with a jolt of electricity. Her fangs ached to descend. This was a moment two hundred plus years in the making and she was so ready.

Deacon eye-stalked her from across the room, watching her dance and writhe in the crowd. Cici felt like a provocateur. A tease. Every sway of her hips, every grind of her body against the one of a stranger was calculated to make him watch, make him want, make him take. She was a siren, calling Deacon to her. To finish what they’d started.

The kiss earlier today was a temptation, and a preview of just how hot it was going to be between them. She couldn’t wait any longer. She was past the point of denial. Beyond passing this up because of the danger in her life.

Cici turned to fully face Deacon, locking eyes with him across the swell of writhing bodies. Wedged between two young men—humans—she ran her hands over her breasts, her belly, her thighs. She slid the hem of the miniskirt up higher, giving him a good look at more skin that tingled and burned for his touch.

Deacon leaned back in his seat, one hand holding a drink while the other grabbed the erection bulging in his jeans. He traced the length and her mouth watered. Fuck, he was big and she couldn’t wait to taste him, to feel that filling her up. She moaned, low and deep, but he heard it. His eyes flared, glittering like fire as she caressed the silky material draped across her aching breasts. Her nipples were hard points, stimulated by her own arousal and the glide of her top.

“Have you slept with him yet?” Mya purred in her ear from behind. She shook her head in the negative. “Well, you will, because here he comes.”

Cici tracked his progress across the room. He did not hurry; no one jostled him or got in his way. The crowd parted like the Red Sea in a straight line between the two of them. The men on either side of her disappeared as he stopped in front of her.

Deacon did not dance. He slid his big hands around her waist and dragged her to him. She gasped as the entire length of her body, every over stimulated nerve ending, was touching a part of him. Heat and moisture rushed to her sex and she could feel the dampness between her thighs.

“You’re such a cock tease,” he murmured in her ear, his hands moving around to cup her ass, her skirt riding so that his hot palm was covering her bare cheek exposed by her thong. She was bare to anyone who wanted to sneak a peek, but she didn’t care. All she gave a shit about was his touch, his one hand sliding lower and finger teasing under the edge of the scrap of silk to slide along her wet folds.

“I’m only a tease if I don’t fuck you,” she said on a gasp as the digit slid into her body. She grasped his shoulders, clinging to him as tremors of pleasure racked her body. “Please.”

“Are you sure?” Deacon murmured, his lips soft against her skin. “This place. It affects people. Makes them ignore warning bells, do stuff they might regret in the daylight.”

“It’s not the club.”

“Is it what you expected?” His lips slid along the tender skin of her earlobe, causing her to shiver in response. “Is it the seventh circle of hell like you predicted?”

“Yes…” She smiled when he paused in kissing along the exposed skin of her shoulder. She liked teasing him, keeping him on his toes. It was their version of foreplay and they’d been perfecting it for over two hundred years. “…and no.” Deacon chuckled and she felt and heard the deep rumble. “It proves my theory.”

“What?” He pulled back to look into her eyes but his body kept perfect rhythm with their own song.

“There…” She leaned in close to him, her mouth brushing softly against his ear as she pointed out various couples around them. “That couple in the booth in the back. He’s a were and the woman straddling his lap is a human. And over there…” She deliberately let her tongue touch the skin just behind his ear, his taste like spice in her mouth. “…the threesome dancing together…two vampires and a human.”

“And how does that prove your theory?”

“These people gravitate to each other. What they
are
doesn’t matter.”

“For sex. Pleasure,” Deacon said.

“You don’t know what happens after they leave the club.”

“And you don’t, either, but I’d bet money that it doesn’t end in wedding veils and joint mortgages.” Deacon shook his head, taking her mouth in a kiss calculated to stop this age-old argument. His hand returned to her ass, his long fingers sliding under her skirt. “I don’t give a fuck about anyone else. I just want to know what you’re feeling right now.”

“I feel…”

He hauled her closer, her legs spread to ride his hard thigh in time with the beat. They moved together in a perfect rhythm. She’d known it could be like this, intense enough to make her forget her problems, all the crap pouring down on her. Oblivion wasn’t a place she liked to dwell, but tonight it sounded like a dream vacation.

“You feel?”

“I’m turned on. Angry.”

“At me?”

“Especially you.”

“Why?”

Oh, this one was easy. “For turning everything upside down for me. You do this all the time.” She wove her fingers through his long hair, tugging until he hissed with the sting. “You don’t want me but you won’t let me go.”

“Two hundred years is a long time to hold a grudge over something that didn’t happen.”

“I know what I heard.”

She leaned in for a kiss, chasing his mouth, but he pulled back. Even the grip on his hair couldn’t bend him to her will. She let out a snarl of fury, feeling her fangs descend with the rise of her emotions.

“I think we need to get a few things straight before we do this.”

“No. Shut up.” This time she caught his mouth, the mesh of their lips and tongues a brutal tangle. She bit down and nipped his lower lip as she pulled away. “Weren’t you the one who said we’ve waited too long for this? For God’s sake, don’t start being a gentleman now. If you don’t give me this, I just might have to kill you.”

He groaned, low and deep enough for her to feel the rumble where her chest was touching his. “I can’t be your soul mate.”

“All I’m looking for tonight is a bedmate.”

Deacon’s eyes blazed with copper at her words.

“Let’s go.”

He picked her up, his mouth taking hers in a kiss as he made his way blindly through the crowd on pure vampire instinct. Cici had no idea where they were going. Her entire world focused on this man; nothing else mattered.

…

Deacon stopped at the back of the club, near the private entrance where they’d entered only a short while earlier. He let her go and she slid down his body, swaying slightly until she regained her equilibrium.

“We’re going to my place.” He kissed her shoulder, pulling her back to him for another kiss on the lips.

“Are you asking or telling me?”

He watched her face, gauging her mood, how she wanted him to play this. Her mouth lifted slightly in one corner, her eyes daring him to back down.

Oh, she wanted to play with fire? He’d burn her up.

“I’m telling you.”

“Just give me a minute to freshen up.”

He walked around, punching a code in the cipher lock on his private office door. “I have a private bath in here. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Cici winked at him and he turned away and headed over to Antonio. He nodded at some of the patrons but discouraged anyone coming over for a chat. He was done with Sanctuary for tonight,

He heard Cici yell—a muffled scream—and then a thud. With the music pounding through the club he would have missed it but for his vampiric hearing. And yes, it could have been any woman, but he knew it was her and the blood in his veins turned to ice.

Deacon took off at a run, shoving customers out of the way in his haste to get to Cici. He saw Antonio jump up from his table out of the corner of his eye and follow him at the same pace. They crossed the room at different angles, reaching the back hallway that led to the private office and entrance and the employee-only area of the club. A crowd had already formed around the figure on the ground. He shoved through, desperate to see if it was really her.

The red hair gave it away. It pooled out around her head on the floor, reminding him of a night many years ago when he’d almost been too late. He dropped to his knees, checking her body for sign of injury, sign of blood.

Nothing.

Chapter Eight

The bastard had attacked Cici in his club.

His
club.

Deacon stood outside her room in the Others’ wing at Washington Hospital Center. The doctor had forced him to leave. And now she was in there unprotected and it took everything in him to resist ripping the door off its hinges and taking the head off the next person who dared to look at her.

The taste of her was still on his mouth, the feel of her supple, responsive body imprinted on his hands and skin like a brand. His kind didn’t mate for life; their emotions and desires were as nomadic as their living habits. In the past, staying too long had resulted in their being noticed and that led to wooden stakes in your heart at dawn when villagers figured out what you were. And while they might associate with a coven on occasion, they were lone creatures who took their nourishment and pleasure, and disappeared into the night.

But nothing could separate him from her right now. Nothing.

This realization about the strength of this emotion sat in his gut like a bomb, and he had no idea when it would go off and what kind of damage it would cause. He’d heard that this was what happened between a Maker and his Turnling—blood shared at the turn created a connection that strengthened as the two vampires bonded during the First Phase.

The link between the two of them had never progressed beyond the initial stages because he’d left her behind. Turning her was only part of what he’d hidden from her, and he dreaded confessing any of it because he doubted that time had lessened the pain for her.

“Hey.” Andy walked up to him from down the long, sterile hallway of the hospital. The decorator had tried to give it the feel of a comfortable, nonthreatening hotel but the overpowering smell of acrid cleaners and medicine reduced that illusion to ash. “How is she doing?”

Deacon answered without thinking, his senses overwhelmed by the different emotions and sensations radiating out to him from her room. “She’s in pain. They haven’t let her feed yet and she hurts.”

“What?” Andy moved in close, his eyes narrowed as he considered whatever he saw in Deacon’s face. “Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Explain.”

But how did he explain this? He’d always been finely tuned into Cici, but tonight his Cici-radar had morphed into something so acute he could sense every touch the doctor laid on her body just beyond the door. Fear and their physical connection had amplified their bond.

“I felt every blow against her body by the asshole in the club.” Andy opened his mouth to speak, confusion as clear as the sun that was just now rising on the DC skyline. “She was shocked, then angry, and then afraid when she realized how helpless she was at that moment. I felt it.”

“Fuck,” Andy breathed out in a low voice as they both noticed the two police detectives making their way down the hallway. “That’s…intense.”

“No shit.” Deacon rubbed his face, noticing for the first time how his hands shook. Adrenaline, the leftover endorphins from almost-sex with Cici, and anger were a perfect cocktail that left him jacked up. He also needed to feed. A little blood would take the edge off. “The fucker did this to her in
my
club.”

“I know. We have Sanctuary tricked out with security. Cameras. Facial recognition software. We’ll figure out how he got in and who he is.”

“If I can’t protect her in my own goddamn club, then how am I supposed to keep her safe anywhere else?” Deacon growled through gritted teeth, his fangs cutting into his bottom lip. He tasted blood, felt the prickle of pain, but it only made him angrier. “I came around the corner and saw her lying on the floor…” The fear at that moment had been almost crippling. He didn’t remember every detail, but he could perfectly recall the choking paralysis that seized his throat as he frantically searched for injury, for blood. The last time he’d found her like that there had been so much blood soaking through her clothes. Matting her hair. Stealing her life, her fire.

“Vampire!” Deacon turned toward the voice, watching Mya approach in almost a run, the long legs of her large male form closing the distance. David followed closely behind and Deacon instantly gave the guy props—not every guy was open enough to accommodate a girlfriend who was sometimes a boyfriend. “The police wouldn’t let me go. I came as soon as I could. How is she?”

“I don’t know yet. We’re waiting on the doctor.”

“He says she’s in pain. They haven’t let her feed,” Andy said and Deacon could have killed him for oversharing.

Mya wasn’t letting that go. “You can feel her?”

He nodded.

“That’s interesting, vampire.”

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“I never took you for a liar.”

Mya watched him and he swore he could feel her dissecting him, inch by inch. He just needed to take Cici and get away from all these fucking people and pull his shit together. He felt raw, and way too vulnerable to withstand the scrutiny of a Grand Fey.

Fuck no. He wasn’t having this conversation with her, now or ever. Deacon looked at her companion, David, who was trying to blend in with the beige wallpaper behind him. “How did you find out?”

“Mya called me from Sanctuary. I always keep the phone with me when she is at that club,” he said, casting a quick glance at Mya. He stared at her for a few seconds, turning back to Deacon with a shrug when she did not react. “I knew I’d get a call someday that something terrible had happened there.”

“Vampire, how did this happen in your club? I thought you had this,” Mya said.

She could save it—nothing could make him feel worse than he already did. “I
am
on it,” he growled.

The door to Cici’s room opened and a doctor stepped out into the hallway. “Mr. Deacon? She’ll be fine with a little blood and rest. She’s asking for you.”

“Is she able to go home?”

“I want to keep her overnight but she refuses to stay. I’m writing up her discharge papers now.”

Deacon brushed by Andy and the doctor. He found her propped up in bed, her red hair spread out in a tangle against the white pillowcases. She was pale, bruises and scratches all over her skin, but the IV drip pouring blood into her body meant they would soon disappear as she healed. He closed his eyes for a moment, sensed that her pain was fading, and he relaxed a little bit inside.

“You okay, sweetheart?” he asked. He scooped her hand into his, leaning over to get a good look into her eyes.

“I thought I was doing okay, but if you’re calling me sweetheart then I must be dying or something.” Her lips twisted into a small smile, but she winced and touched fingers to her battered lip.

The endearment had slipped from his lips without him realizing it; he wouldn’t take it back. “Tonight’s been a bitch. It makes me overly sentimental. Don’t get used to it.” He softened his words with a caress of her cheek, satisfied when she leaned into his touch with a little sigh. The blood was kicking in and the temporary high of feeding would dull her pain as she healed and also make her a little loopy for a while.

“Cici.” Mya pushed forward on the other side of the bed, leaning down to deliver a fierce hug. “Are you well, sister?”

Cici smiled at her friend and a little of the tension left his shoulders at how her expression lightened. “I’m fine.”

“Ms. Trent.” A deep voice behind him interrupted their conversation and Deacon turned around to see the two police detectives enter her room. The speaker was the younger, pretty boy wonder of the duo. Slick and self-satisfied, and a total dickhead. Deacon had worked with guys like him on the Force and hated him on sight. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

“She’s feeding. You’ll have to wait,” Deacon said.

“So?” Detective Dickhead asked, reaching in and pulling out a notebook from his jacket pocket. “She’s a person of interest in two murder investigations.”

“She was attacked tonight.” Deacon took a step forward, towering over the other man, and letting his fangs flash.

“Allegedly,” Detective Dickhead oozed out with a feral smile.

That was it. Deacon was still buzzing from earlier and he wanted an excuse to hit something and this guy’s face looked like the perfect target. He was quick, but the second detective and Andy were just as fast. They both grabbed him around the waist and halted his progress just inches from the Dickhead’s throat. Fear flared in the other man’s eyes and Deacon let out a low growl in response.

“Deacon, stop,” Andy said.

“Don’t do this,” the other cop murmured and Deacon realized he was a Were. He shouldn’t have been surprised; protocol required in cases like this to have one human and one Other cop working the case. “Don’t give him an excuse to take you in. You can’t help her if you’re locked up.”

Deacon eased off, the truth of the utterance pulling him slightly back from the edge. He held his hands up in a show of nonaggression but he kept his fangs out to remind everyone in the room just who they were dealing with.

“Fine, but only you get to talk to her.” He pointed at the Were detective, glancing down at his badge to get a name. “You got it, Ramirez?”

“Sure,” he said, shooting a glance at his partner to shut up.

Deacon walked back to Cici, leaning down to ask, “You up to talking to them?”

She nodded. “Stay with me.”

“You got it.” Deacon stood up, keeping a tight grip on her hand as he nodded to Ramirez to begin.

“I’d like everyone else to leave,” Ramirez said.

“There is no way in hell you’re making me leave,” Mya said, her tone and expression underscoring her point. And in her current form, anyone would think twice about messing with her.

Ramirez sighed and shook his head, resigned to the fact that he’d never had control of the situation. “Ms. Trent, we’re glad you’re okay and I’m sor—”

Deacon made the “hurry up” gesture with his free hand. He was feeling generous to let them talk to her right now. Protocol said that refusal by a hospitalized witness to be questioned at that time should be honored. They needed to speed it the fuck up so he could get her of here and someplace safe.

Ramirez shot him a dirty look but picked up the pace. “Ms. Trent, did you see your attacker? Can you give us a description?”

“No, he was wearing a dark hoodie pulled over his head and shielding his face.” Cici squeezed his hand and he pulsed hers back, feeling her anxiety rolling off her like waves. “But I could tell he was medium height. Strong and muscular, and fast.” She shook her head. “That’s it.”

“Vampire fast? Do you think he was an Other?” Ramirez asked.

“No. He was human. I could smell him.”

Detective Dickhead snorted behind him, murmuring something that sounded a lot like “fucking freaks,” and Ramirez shot him a dark look before continuing. “Fey perhaps?”

“No, human.” She closed her eyes, clearly trying to remember. “Fast isn’t the right word. He was…trained. He knew how to catch me off guard. Knew how to avoid my defensive moves until he could Taser me.”

“You were coming from the employee-only area of the club? Why were you back there?”

“I used the restroom in Deacon’s office to freshen up. I came out and he got the jump on me.” She shrugged. “I was distracted, so…”

“Distracted by what?” Ramirez asked.

Cici’s cheeks pinkened slightly and while it might be attributed to the infusion of blood into her system, Deacon knew it was more.

“I…um.” She licked her lips and shot a glance at him. He bit back a smirk at her strange burst of modesty. Yeah, she was a twenty-first century woman when she allowed him to finger her in the middle of three hundred people, but admit it when she’d inadvertently introduced the topic to the cops? Nope.

“We were leaving to go to my place. To have sex,” Deacon said. “We were both a little distracted.”

“Hell yeah,” Mya said, her smile wicked as she winked at Cici. David blushed at her side, suddenly very interested in the fake wood pattern on the laminate floor.

“I see,” Ramirez said, his head dipping down as he scribbled something in his notebook and tried to hide his slight smile. “Any idea on why he attempted to kill you?”

Cici’s voice was firm. “He’s with the Fellowship of Adam’s Race.”

Ramirez eyebrows shot up with disbelief. “FAR? That’s just a bogeyman. It’s our kind’s version of the monster under the bed. They aren’t real.”

“Bullshit.” Deacon didn’t temper the edge in his voice. He couldn’t afford for the police to continue to delude themselves about what was really going on here. Cici’s life depended on it. “FAR is real. I fought them a long time ago and they’ve popped up from time to time, but never gained traction until we were all exposed by Rothman.”

Andy spoke up from his perch on the other side of the room. “They’re as real as the KKK or other supremacist groups. They just don’t walk around in white hoods or with swastikas on their sleeves.”

“The department has no official knowledge of the group,” Detective Dickhead said

“And the Department has their head up their ass once again,” Deacon said, barely sparing the guy a glance. He wasn’t worth his time. “You’ll find insulin in the syringe that I found next to her at the club, the same stuff that killed her friends. They’ve been threatening Cici for months and now they’re trying to kill her.”

“And I don’t want to know how you have information that is only contained in the official police record,” Ramirez said, his expression showing how torn he was about this conversation. “Deacon, you were a good cop and your military record tells me you probably know what you’re talking about. But you and I both know that the department is not going to chase down rabbit holes after a ghost.”

“You don’t have to. I’m going to catch this guy and take care of the problem.”

Ramirez sighed. “Deacon, you can’t interfere with a police investigation.”

“You just said the department isn’t going to recognize the FAR threat. I’m following my lead and you follow yours.” He let a fierce smile twist his lips. “We’ll see who gets him first.”