The 13th Step (3 page)

A familiar, sick feeling washed over
him, driving away the euphoric warmth of afterglow. His cock slid out
of her as he straightened. She didn't move, so he fixed his pants and
then dragged her back up to sit on the table. "Look at me."

Her eyes drifted open. "Yeah?"

He steeled himself against the
almost relaxed look on her face. Ella didn't relax, didn't let her
guard down. She was untouchable. Stone.

It should have been harder for him
to tilt his head, to expose his throat to her. "Drink."

"No." One slim hand
pressed against his chest, pushed him back a step or two and forced
him to remember her tiny body held a strength that matched his own.
She slipped from the table and peeled the pants back up. "Not in
the hallway. I have a room upstairs."

Panic surged in him for a split
second before he tamped it down. He couldn't go to her room. He'd end
up tangled in sheets that smelled like her hair. Tangled in
her
.
"Fuck you, Ella. Do it here."

"No," she said again, and
this time he could hear the edge under her voice. The fear. She
struggled with the zipper of her pants for a moment, her usually deft
fingers clumsy. "Please, Blake."

He'd never heard her say that word
so many times in so short a time period. He gritted his teeth and
nodded. "Fine. Fifteen minutes." With any luck, he could
find a room, get some sleep, and head back home to New Mexico at
first light.

Her relief was almost palpable as
she led him around a corner to a service elevator. The metal doors
were polished until they gleamed, giving him a clear reflection of
her face as she slipped a slim card out of her back pocket and swiped
it through a card reader above the panel. A green light flashed on,
and she punched the top button, still silent as the elevator started
a smooth, quiet ascent.

"Is this your place or
something?" He stayed perfectly still behind her. "You seem
to know your way around."

"I own it," she admitted
after a quiet pause. "I own a couple places in town, now."

"Good for you." The words
held no rancor, no bitterness, and it surprised him. "Really."

"Except now I'm in a bit of
trouble." The elevator made a soft
ding
,
and the doors slid open, revealing an almost spartan apartment
completely at odds with the lush decorations downstairs.

Ella stepped through the doors and
then turned, holding out her hand in invitation. "Welcome to my
evil lair."

Blake arched an eyebrow at her and
ignored her proffered hand as he walked into the apartment. "Where
do you want to do this?"

The doors whispered shut. Ella took
a breath and stayed where she was, her gaze on him. "You don't
even want to know why?"

"You said you were in trouble,
and that you needed it." He half-sat on a nearby table and
ignored her vulnerable expression and the way it made his chest ache.
"Did you lie?"

"No." She leaned down and
unzipped her boots, and the fall of her hair shielded her face from
him. "I'm backed into a corner. I have to challenge the City
Head."

The words were vintage Ella. He'd
stayed with her long enough to understand that vampires played power
games like no one else. Their immortality gave them the time and
patience for social plots of Machiavellian proportions. The politics
of humans seemed simplistic in comparison, and they found the
shifters laughable. Animals.

He also knew that men still
dominated the schemes. For all their superior posturing, vampires
weren't all that different from the other races. Just another boys'
club, one into which Ella had insinuated herself. She didn't play by
the rules, no matter whose they were. She'd been challenging and
defeating men long before he met her, and she'd be doing it long
after he was gone.

The knowledge had once depressed
him. Now, it only amused him.

"No one
has
to go looking for dominance, Ella," he noted blandly. "Leaders
have to defend, but challengers have a choice."

She paused in the act of pulling off
her second boot, lifting her head to study him. Then she snorted and
rose to her feet again, leaving her expensive boots crumpled by the
door. Without the added inches she seemed even smaller, a delicate
looking woman who could bend steel. "I've always found it odd,"
she admitted, crossing the room in a graceful prowl. "You know
that the betas may challenge you. And yet you simply...wait. Wait for
it to happen."

"What else am I supposed to do?
Kill everyone who might pose a threat?" Blake scoffed. "I'll
leave that to you vampires. It's no way to live, if you ask me."
He studied her and tilted his head again, exposing the side of his
neck. "This is cheating, you know. You deserve to be beaten."

She braced her hands on her hips,
and the look she gave him could have flayed flesh from bone. "
I'm
cheating? At least I'm
asking
you." Her hand tangled in his shirt, yanked him down until his
face was even with hers. "How do you think Raul has gotten so
much power? He keeps people like you chained in his fucking basement
for midnight snacks. And he's sent three assassins after me this
month."

His heart thumped painfully. She was
always her most beautiful when she was angry. "Doesn't make you
any better. Just means you're both sorry bastards." He bared his
neck again. "Now fucking
drink
so I can get the hell out of here."

Ella hooked her foot around the leg
of one of her dining room chairs and yanked it out. A moment later,
she threw him onto the chair, rocking it back on two legs. Then she
jerked him forward with the grip she still had on his shirt. The
fabric ripped with a sound that seemed to satisfy her.

"I like this shirt." He
steeled himself against her anger, her excitement. God, he'd come
again if she bit him the way she used to. The mere thought was enough
to stir arousal, and he was way too damned old for that. "Remember.
Stay out of my head."

She swung one leg over his lap,
straddling his knees as she looked down at him. "You want it to
hurt?"

"I want it to feel like
someone's biting the hell out of my neck," Blake snapped. "I
want it to feel like what it is."

"I'll try." Cool fingers
brushed his hair away from his neck, and she settled onto his lap
with a serious look on her face. "You're the Everclear of
shapeshifters, lover. A girl can get drunk on your power if she's not
careful."

Her touch made him shiver, and he
arched up against her, already hard again. "I'm not your lover,
Ella. I'm just some stupid bastard you fuck when it serves your
purpose."

She curled her fingers in his hair
and tugged his head back. "I wish that were true. More than
you'll ever know." She didn't wait for a response, didn't give
him a chance to make one. She breathed against his neck, hot and
damp, then bit him.

The sharp sting bloomed into searing
agony. He wanted to throw her off of him. He wanted to throw up. He
just wrapped his hands around the bottom of the chair and held on,
gritting his teeth.

Ella made a distressed noise against
him and brought one hand up to gently stroke the side of his neck. He
felt the brush of her tongue before she lifted her head. "Just a
little," she whispered, pleaded. "I don't want to hurt you
like this...."

He lifted his hand to his neck and
grimaced when it came away streaked with blood. "It hurts worse
the other way. It always has."

She pulled his hand away and lowered
her mouth again, running her tongue over the wounds until the magic
inside of her had healed the puncture marks.

Then she slipped from his lap and
fled.

Blake watched her go, fury building
inside him. She knew he'd chase her, was using his own instincts to
manipulate him. She wouldn't stop until she got what she wanted—
him
,
back in her thrall. Under her spell.

Fuck that shit.

He followed, slamming through the
door and into her bedroom, his chest heaving. He grabbed her by the
arms and hauled her up until they were nose-to nose. "I should
leave. You got yourself into this mess, put yourself on the City
Head's radar by being so goddamned power hungry." He pressed his
mouth to her ear. "And stop fucking playing me, Ella. It's no
good anymore."

She snarled, a sound that was
anything but human. "I hate you. You make me weak. I should have
just done it, done what I wanted. I shouldn't
care
."

"Yeah, maybe you should have."
He let go of her and scrubbed his hands over his face. "You have
no
idea
,
Ella. No idea how long it took me to get the taste of you out of my
mouth. There were times I couldn't
come
unless someone was biting me, unless I was pretending—" He
bit off the words with another curse. "And here you are, wanting
me right back in that hole, just because you can't stand to watch me
hurt. Well, guess what? If you ever stuck around, you'd see me hurt
plenty."

"Oh, you couldn't come unless
you pretended?" Her hand struck his chest, driving him back
against the door. "Well I couldn't come at all. Before you, the
last guy who could get me off with any consistency fought in the
Revolutionary War."

He should have known she'd think
reliable orgasms were the point. "That's not me, Ella. That's
your obsessive need for control." He framed her face with his
hands and stared down at her. "You destroyed me once, and you're
about to do it again."

Blake slid his hands down to the
back of her neck and unfastened her silk halter. It fell to her
waist, and he cupped her breasts, his eyes fixed on hers, and
whispered, "Why is the power so important? Why is it more
important than me?" The question and its possible answers
haunted him. He had to know.

"Because I'd lose you
eventually." Her head fell back, and her eyes drifted shut,
leaving him staring at the way her long eyelashes stood out so
starkly against her pale skin. "You would keep me safe for a
decade or two, but I'd be weaker when you were gone. Maybe too weak
to protect myself."

"I won't live forever," he
agreed. He closed his own eyes and nuzzled her face, then sighed.
"Tonight, Ella. Then no more. I—I can't do it. I can't
live like this."

"Tonight." Her fingers
rose to his shirt. She tugged open the first two before slipping her
fingers underneath the fabric and touching his chest. "If this
is the last time, I want everything."

He kissed her as they undressed each
other. It took forever, both of them bumbling over buttons and
zippers, but it didn't matter. His mouth moved over hers, gentle and
caressing. Loving.

Blake was panting by the time he
picked her up and laid her across the end of her bed. He lowered his
mouth to her stomach and traced his tongue around her navel. "What
do you want?"

Her hand fell to his forehead and
brushed his hair back. "Remember San Diego?"

"The part where I tied you up,
or all the stuff I did after that?"

Ella twisted onto her stomach and
rose to her knees, giving him a torturous view of her ass as she
crawled up the mattress. A sturdy, plain-looking dresser sat next to
the bed, and she dragged open the middle drawer before sliding back
onto the pillows. "Anything you want." She smiled slowly,
flashing those tiny fangs at him. "Anywhere you want."

He snagged her halter from the floor
before following her to peer into the drawer. "Christ, Ella.
What do you
not
have in here?" He pulled out a thick piece of metal shaped
vaguely like a cock. He twisted it and it began to vibrate. "We
didn't have one of these in San Diego. It's nice."

She just twirled a lock of hair
around her finger. Her expression fell far short of innocent. "I
don't know how I survived almost four hundred years without the
internet."

He dragged her hands up to the
headboard and wrapped the ice blue silk around her wrists, binding
them. He knelt over one of her legs and flashed her a wicked grin. "I
imagine you got creative with whatever you had on hand."

"And now you're going to do the
same?"

He murmured his assent and warmed
the metal, then touched it to her inner thigh. "The only
question now is what to put where." He leaned over her and
licked her nipple lightly as he slid the vibrator up, letting it
flutter against her clit.

The reaction he got was even better
than he'd hoped for. She spread her legs and thrust her hips up, her
breath escaping as a hissed curse. The scent of her arousal filled
the room, making it hard to concentrate on anything other than how
much he loved having her stretched out and at his mercy.

He twirled his tongue around the
stiff peak of her breast and then bit her. "Remember the safe
word?"

"Y-yes…"