The Merzetti Effect (A Vampire Romance) (23 page)

“Ask your question.”

“You got carried away with Reina because you’d been celibate too long, correct?”

“A long time, yes.”

“But why? I mean, if it’s as wondrous as you say‌—‌and I have no doubt it is‌—‌why would you cut yourself off from that? From what I’ve observed, you don’t seem to have any particular hang-ups about sex.”

Her voice grew slightly husky as she delivered that last comment, and he almost groaned. Man, he had to get through this and get her out of here before they wound up horizontal on the bed again. Or maybe in some other position…

He cleared his throat. “I married the woman I loved, and wanted no other.”

Her mouth softened. “You stayed true to her until the end?”

“Of course.”

“Even though she aged while you stayed young and virile?”

“When I looked at her, I saw only the woman I married.” He dropped his gaze to contemplate his left hand, which still bore the very slight indentation from the wedding band that now sat in the jewelry box on his dresser, with Gitta’s. Like the length of his hair and the beard stubble on his face, it would persist, no matter what. He could take the scissors to his hair, shave his face clean, and plump that wedding band hollow with collagen, and look like a new man. For a single night. Because with one day’s sleep, all would be restored to its original state.

“To the end, she was beautiful to me. I appreciate that might be hard to comprehend, in a culture bent on turning adults back into teenagers, but it’s the truth.”

She made a little noise, one of those “awwww” sounds that women made when they saw kittens or puppies. “Delano, that’s just about the most wonderful thing I’ve ever heard.”

Wonderful, indeed. He was now on par with a puppy.

He glared at her. “She stood by me when this affliction was foisted on me. The vampress who turned me counted on Margitta rejecting me in horror, but by some miracle she didn’t. You think I’d repay that kind of loyalty with the most base of betrayals?”

“Of course not. She sounds wonderful. I’m sure I would have liked her.”

She would, he realized. And Gitta would have liked Ainsley. The thought was oddly comforting.

“Yes, you would have liked her. Everyone did. She was very strong, and incredibly brave. Can you imagine what courage it took for her to confront what had happened to me? To accept me?”

“It sounds as though she helped you accept yourself.”

“She saved me. Had she turned me away, I think I would have walked out into the next sunrise, to perish.”

Ainsley took his hand. Oddly, he didn’t feel the need to wrench it back.

“But she didn’t turn me away. She sheltered me. She told the townsfolk I suffered debilitating migraines by light of day, allowing me to practice medicine under cover of night. Which in truth suited many of my patients.”

“I can imagine.”

“And she nourished me. Between the blood she freely gave me and the blood I collected from patients seeking venesections, I survived quite handily, without harming a soul.”

“Bloodletting! I’ve read about it. Was it as widespread as historical accounts suggest?”

“Fortunately for me, yes. It was especially prevalent among the wealthy, who practiced it as a preventative measure. Of course, it looks barbaric in this day of molecular medicine, but at the time, it reflected medical thinking.”

“So you remained faithful to her until she died?”

“And well beyond.”

“And then?”

“Then I succumbed to the blood lust. When Reina sought me out … well, you know the rest.”

“Omigod!”

“What?”

“She was the first, after your wife died?”

“Yes.”

“And since then?”

“Since then, I keep to myself.”

She leapt up, clapping a hand to her chest to hold the knotted sheet in place. “Delano, you can’t be serious!”

“I warned you I’d win the celibacy contest, hands down.”

“But why? I mean, after that experience, I’m sure you would have exercised better control.”

“Possibly, but I wasn’t prepared to bet an innocent life on it.”

“So, just now…” Her gaze drifted to the bed. “That was the first time since Reina?”

“And it wouldn’t have happened had I not been in the middle of the twilight sleep.”

“Twilight sleep?”

“A transitional stage between the day sleep and full wakefulness.”

“What’s it like?”

“The twilight sleep?”

“The day sleep?”

“I don’t know.”

“How could you not know? You do it every day.”

“It’s like a mini-death. I just … go away. The little I do know about it, I know from attaching electrodes to my own shaven head and recording EEGs.”

She blinked. “Tell me about it.”

“Not much to tell. In the first hours, the cerebrum might as well be switched off, so profound is its state of rest. But somehow, in that SWA state, all the patchwork gets done.”

“SWA? As in slow wave brain activity?”

“Precisely. It’s roughly comparable to your Stage 4 sleep, but we don’t cycle up to REM sleep and back down again through all the stages, as you would do three or four times in the course of the night.”

“What do you mean by patchwork happening? The erasure of the day’s aging?”

“Exactly. But there’s more. If I’ve cut myself, it will heal completely, leaving not the slightest trace. Hell, if I’ve cut my hair, it grows back. Shaved? Back comes the two-day stubble.”

Her jaw dropped. “Really?”

“Really. And let me tell you, it’s an eerie thing to watch at high speed on videotape.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing, for about five hours. That’s how long we‌—‌or least I‌—‌stay in SWA. No dreaming, no awareness, no waking. But eventually we surface into something that approximates normal sleep, but it’s not really normal since it’s dominated so heavily by REM sleep. Whereas you might have three or four dreams a night, our dreams are packed into the last hour or two of sleep. At this point, we can be wakened. But as you can imagine, in a secure environment, I’m not accustomed to being roused before I waken naturally. Which is why I presumed you were just a part of my dream.”

“I see. So I take it I must have been a frequent visitor in your other twilight dreams, and you just figured it was more of the same?”

“Guilty.”

“Guilty?” She laughed. “Delano, that’s the last thing you should feel. You hadn’t had sex since when?”

He scowled. “That’s hardly an excuse.”

She refused to be distracted. “Since when?”

He looked at the carpet again. There was that blond hair. “1927.”

“
1927?
Oh, fuck me!”

“I believe I did.”

D
RESSED AGAIN IN
her t-shirt and shorts, Ainsley stole back to her own rooms. Mercifully, she managed the quick trip without encountering Eli. She couldn’t have dealt with that just yet.

She started the shower running, stripped her clothes off and tossed them in the hamper, then stepped under the hot spray.

Her body still tingled from their lovemaking. And when she closed her eyes to shampoo her hair, images rose to fill her mind. Delano’s dark head at her breast. His head between her thighs, driving her wild with his lips and tongue and fingers. Delano hauling her back up the bed as easily as though she were a rag doll, and God, there was just something so hot about that! His strength, the way he’d taken charge… He’d spread her legs, pushed into her without ceremony, driving her back up again to a third shuddering, helpless climax.

No doubt about it, she’d been well and truly ravished, unable to do much more than just hang on. Passivity was definitely not her usual style in the bedroom, but he’d taken complete control. Of course, he thought he’d been dreaming, and no doubt steered the dream accordingly.

What would it be like if they both went into it with eyes open, consciously choosing to make love?

“Stop it, Ainsley! It’s never going to happen.”

Concentrating on the very excellent reason why they couldn’t indulge in sex again, she stuck her head under the spray and rinsed the shampoo from her hair. Briskly, she rubbed conditioner into the wet strands, resolving not to torture herself anymore.

But when she started to soap her body, more erotic thoughts crowded in. He’d said that if he took her blood, he would feel what she felt, and she would feel what he felt. If he were here right now, in the shower with her, and sank those fangs into her throat, would she be able to feel his intense arousal, amplified a hundred times by the infusion of her blood? And if he were to take the soap from her and run it over her breasts and between her thighs, would he feel the bolts of desire shoot straight to her core? And if she knelt and took his phallus into her mouth while the water beat down on them…

“Argh!”

Rinsing quickly, she shut the shower off, toweled herself dry. Completing the rest of her toilette quickly, she dressed and prepared to go in search of coffee. A glance in the mirror assured her she looked normal. Well, almost normal. She reached for her cosmetic bag and applied some foundation to smooth out a few reddened blotches where his stubble had rasped her smooth skin. There. Much better.

Okay, coffee, breakfast‌—‌or what passed for breakfast at supper time‌—‌and more coffee. Then she’d call Lucy.

She started out the door, then stopped. Retracing her steps to the bathroom, she retrieved her t-shirt from the hamper. Pressing the soft cotton to her face, she inhaled. Yes, there it was. His scent. Before she could think too much about it, she folded the t-shirt, walked to her bed and slid it under her pillow.

There. Now breakfast.

The conversation with Lucy was every bit as hard as she knew it would be. After the initial pleasantries, she said, “Remember I told you that my new boss was old?”

“But hot, too, right?”

“Good looking, I think I said. And yes, he’s very handsome. But getting back to the age thing, I don’t believe I mentioned just how old he was.”

“What? Did you seduce him into your bed and give him a heart attack or something?”

“Good Lord, no.” Except she had crawled into his bed, and it might yet be the death of him. She crushed the thought. “But he is considerably older than I led you to believe.”

“Okay, so how old are we talking?”

She drew a deep breath. “I don’t know for sure, but based on what I’ve learned this past month, I’m thinking he’s probably about 200.”

Lucy laughed. “Okay, okay, I get the picture. He’s too old to be fooling around with. Now can we get to the point of this discussion?”

“No, Luce, you don’t understand. He really is 200 years old.”

A pause. “Ainsley, that’s impossible.”

She closed her eyes and just said it. “He’s a vampire.”

“Oh, God, I knew it. When you quit the hospital and took this job, I knew something was up, but I had no idea…”

“Lucy‌—”

“This is all my fault … the pressure of supporting me and Devon. I knew you were working too hard.”

“Lucy, I’m not crazy. I mean, I know this sounds crazy, and I don’t blame you for thinking I’ve cracked up‌—‌or maybe that I’m hopped-up on crack‌—‌but I swear it’s true.”

“A
vampire
? A 200-year-old one? I’m supposed to just accept that?”

Ainsley gripped the receiver harder. “Hey, I was just as skeptical as you, until I found myself on the business end of a pair of fangs in an alley back in St. Cloud.”

“You were attacked by a vampire? Omigod, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. That was almost a month ago.”

“This vampire boss of yours … is he the one who attacked you?”

“Oh, no! He saved me.” She opted to skip the bit about his facilitating the attack. “He drove off my attacker, then provided the medical attention I needed. Otherwise, I’d have died from the blood loss.”

“Ainsley, you almost
died
? And you never told me?”

She hadn’t intended to tell her friend about any of this, until she’d learned about this whole Merzetti blood thing. Or rather, until Janecek learned about it, putting her friends in danger. “I’m sorry.”

“I should hope so. Omigod, you almost died!”

“But I didn’t, and I’m fine now. A hundred percent.”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Okay. Now, explain to me what it is you do for this … um … vampire boss of yours.”

“He really is a legitimate clinical researcher. His aim is to develop a vaccine to drive these predators off the streets.”

“But you said he was a vampire himself…”

“The overwhelming majority of them are peaceable citizens, no more of a threat to the public than you or I. The rogues are a minority.”

“God, Ainsley, you’re talking as though they’re all around us.”

“They are. Remember I told you I was drawing blood samples for Delano’s research? All the subjects who roll up their sleeves in our clinic are vampires. They let me take a vial of blood, and in exchange, I hand them a unit of whole blood as their reward.”

“You’re taking vampire blood samples?”

“Yup.”

Another pause. Ainsley could practically hear her friend’s thoughts.

“This isn’t payback, is it? Retaliation for that April Fools joke I played on you when we were eleven?”