Hunting Daylight (9781101619032) (38 page)

MARRAKECH, MOROCCO

Night air blew around Raphael and me as we walked through the crowded streets of Marrakech. We passed through the medina, where Berber storytellers’ voices mingled with the snake charmer’s music, and then we turned down a narrow alley. Two Moorish guards followed at a distance.

We stopped in front of Riad le Pavilion. It was an eighteenth-century house, the color of burnt cinnamon. A brass knocker dominated a carved wooden door. I touched it.

“How unusual,” I said. “Why is the knocker shaped like a human palm?”

“It’s a Hamsa,” Raphael said. “A symbol that spurns the evil eye.”

“We’ll need it.”

Our Berber houseman carried the luggage into a second-story bedroom. After he left, Raphael and I fell onto the mattress, then pulled off our clothes and drew the gauzy mosquito netting around us.

Two nights later, we’d barely moved, except to wander through the Djemaa el-Fna Square. Although many blond-haired couples were wandering in the medina, Raphael hadn’t wanted to draw attention our way, so we’d worn traditional Moroccan attire, tucking our hair under the hoods.

The warm evening breeze stirred the hems of our black djellabas as we passed through open-air food stalls, where steam wafted up into the darkness. We worked our way through the souks, the colors fanned out like spilled crayons, the aisles rimmed with silk slippers, brass bells, baskets, rugs, and silver teapots.

By the third evening, I’d almost forgotten why we’d come to Morocco. The 112-degree heat had made me drowsy. That night, Raphael and I lay in bed, the mosquito netting stirring around us, tepid air skimming over our sweaty limbs. Through the shuttered window, I heard the final call to prayer.

“That’s the
Isha
,” Raphael said. “The twilight prayer.”

The tinny voice spiraled from the minaret at the Koutoubia Mosque, a shimmering, ethereal sound, intricate as the threads in a silk slipper. I rested my cheek on Raphael’s shoulder, and my hand drifted along his arm. His bullet wound had faded to a pink line.

He lifted my hair. “I’m trying not to read your mind,” he said. “But you seem pensive.”

“I was just thinking about
Brideshead Revisited
,” I said. “Didn’t Sebastian Flyte come to Marrakech?”

“And to Fez.” Raphael wove a strand of my hair around his wrist.

The call to prayer ended, and I heard the snake charmer’s music uncoil from the medina. I slid my fingers up to Raphael’s neck and brushed over the stubble, past his chin, and traced the outline of his mouth.

He kissed my fingertips. “I love you,
mia cara
.”

I turned up my face, remembering the night I’d waited in the cellar passage. I still hadn’t pinned the
L
-word on him. Why was I afraid?

“I love you, too,” I said.

“You mean, you’re falling
in
love with me,” he said.

“I’m already there, Raphael.”

The sheets rustled, and then he pulled me on top of him. He stared into my eyes. “Say it again,
mia cara
.”

“I’m in love with you, Raphael Della Rocca. I am so in love with you.”

I leaned in to kiss him, and he caught my face in his hands. “I can’t lose you. Ever.”

“You won’t.”

“You’re not immortal.”

“No.” I frowned. I thought we’d settled this—for now, anyway. I rolled off him and moved to my side of the bed.

“But you want to be with me forever, don’t you?” he asked, pulling me against him.

“It doesn’t matter what I want. I saw what Jude went through after he’d been transformed. He had stomach pains, headaches, nausea.” I paused. “You and I are on
the move. I don’t know where we’ll be in a week. And I’ve got to think of Vivi.”

“But when you are ready—and I hope you will be someday—it doesn’t have to be a difficult process. I talked to Dr. Nazzareno. You can receive immortal blood through an IV infusion.”

How long had he been thinking about this? Before or after we’d made love? Dr. Nazzareno lived in Venice. When had Raphael talked to him? And why hadn’t he mentioned it sooner?

I pulled away from him and lay on my side. As I traced my finger over a wrinkle in the sheet, I glanced at him. “When did you talk to Dr. Nazzareno?”

“I called him before we left Paris.” He turned on his side and inched closer to me. “Please don’t be angry.”

“I’m not. But immortality is a dead issue, so to speak.”

“I’m pushing you too hard, aren’t I?”

“A little.”

“I don’t mean to. And I would never do anything to endanger my godchild.” He sighed. “I can’t stop thinking about the time we have left. I want to live with you for a thousand years.”

I ran my fingers over his lips, brushing against his teeth. They were white and radiant, with slightly prominent incisors. Sometimes when we made love, I would become so aroused, I bit him—not hard, of course, just a nibble. But I hadn’t allowed him to bite me. I was too frightened of the biochemical backlash. If only we’d thought to bring antihistamines; then he could give me a little nick, and I would give him one—at the same time.
To a vampire, the mutual exchange of blood was equivalent to simultaneous orgasms. But my blood would make him ill. Besides, where could we find Benadryl in Marrakech?

“Un momento.”
He scooted out from under me and dropped his arm over the side of the bed. I heard him fumbling in his leather travel bag, and then he brought up a small square box. “I brought an EpiPen, too,” he said.

I tried to hide my surprise. “You’re just full of secrets,” I said.

I imagined his teeth on my neck, and something streaked through my belly.

He shook the box. “Are you ready for a field trial?”

I nodded. “Just don’t bite too hard, okay?”

“Never.” He opened the box, ripped open a bubble pack, and swallowed two pink pills. Then he lifted my arm and glanced at my watch. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “Might as well be fifteen thousand.”

I put my arms around his neck and drew his mouth toward mine. Our lips touched and his tongue moved in lazy circles, searching and probing. I sucked the tip, and a low moan started in his throat.

I slid my hand away from his neck and touched his throat, feeling the soft vibrations move against my palm. I breathed faster and faster. His hand covered mine, and he guided it lower, down his chest, through the springy, blond hairs, across his flat belly, to the silky curls between his thighs.

Still kissing me, he placed my hand against him. The girth of this man never failed to surprise me. When I curled my fingers around him, they were separated by a
wide gap. His hand dropped away, and a moment later, it pressed firmly into my buttocks.

My fingers were still caught between us. I squeezed him. He stopped kissing me and released a breath. I slid my hand over his firm plushness, and with each stroke, he swelled.

“
Innamorata di te
,” he whispered.

His teeth grazed over my bottom lip. I felt a tug deep inside me, and a tiny, half orgasm rippled through my belly. He lowered his head to my breast and ran his tongue around the beaded tip of my nipple. A pulse began to thump between my legs.

“How many more minutes?” I said, my voice echoing in his mouth.

“Patience,
mia cara
.” He pulled away from me, then moved lower in the bed. His knees dented the mattress. He leaned forward, slid his hand under my calf, and raised it from the sheet. He kissed my instep and moved up to my ankle. As he kissed it, fluttery sensations darted to every part of my body.

My leg began to tremble when his mouth grazed down the inside of my knee. He licked my flesh, then blew on the wet streak. A burst of coldness make me tremble. His thumb and index finger came together and he traced his nails over my skin, as if he were writing a secret message.

“Slowly,
mia cara
,” he said, gently lowering my leg. He reached for the other one and ran his teeth over the backs of my toes. I arched my back.

“I want you now,” I said in a shaking voice.

“And what do you want,
mia cara
?” His tongue skated over my shinbone, and then he reversed the direction.

“I want you to bite me.” I shivered again.

“We must move slowly,” he said. “Give the medicine time to work.”

“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.”

He kissed my fingers, nibbling the tips. Little pulses surged inside me, then gathered strength, pounding between my legs.

“It’s almost time,” he said.

“Thank God.”

He moved on top of me, and I sank into the mattress. I was conscious of the pressure of his knees as they nudged my thighs apart, first one, then the other. He slipped his hand between us and found me.

“You are so ready,
mia cara
.” He kissed the side of my mouth.

I sighed, moving my hips in a circle, urging him to move closer. But a vampire’s sense of time is different. He slid his full length inside me, then pulled out halfway.

“Deeper,” I whispered.

Again, he sheathed himself and began to thrust. Each stroke made me gasp. Still pumping, he flattened his hands against the mattress and rose up. Tiny drops of perspiration fell against my breasts. I lifted my hips, meeting him again and again. I wanted to feel his teeth against my neck; I wanted him to taste every part of me.

“Mia cara.”
He stopped moving and held my gaze. “Are you ready?”

Oh, yes. I am ready. I was breathing so hard, it took me a second to answer. I cupped my hands under my breasts. “Do it.”

He lowered his mouth to a spot just below my
collarbone and pressed his teeth against my flesh. His incisors sank down, and he began to suck. An icy sensation moved through my chest. Raphael drank, pulling harder, and my climax began to build. It seemed as if hundreds of bells were ringing, moving in wider and wider arcs, the clappers rocking back and forth, louder and louder, faster and faster, into a hammered sound.

When it was over, he blotted the sheet against the marks, and a tiny red carnation bloomed on the linen. He held pressure.

“Are you all right,
mia cara
?”

I couldn’t answer. I lay there, panting. He’d taken only a little bite, but every pore on my body felt alive. Between breaths, I said, “It was like bells. Cathedral bells. Now, we do it together.” I pushed him against the mattress, then lowered myself onto his chest and put him inside me. He groaned, caught my waist, tugged me closer. My teeth broke the skin on his shoulder. The taste of salt and iron filled my mouth, and as I began to drink, orgasms rang through me again and again.

Raphael pushed his face agaist my neck, and his teeth pricked the flesh below my ear. He swallowed, his throat clicking, his hips thrusting against mine. The sensations grew stronger, the way music builds, rushing to the place where we were merged. He lifted his mouth from my neck. “You’re making me come,” he said.

“Don’t stop.”

He put his mouth back on my neck. And then we were in the music together, a holy, incandescent sound that moved between us, something beyond the physical, a fitting together of our minds. Pleasure spun around us like
music. It felt as if we’d stepped into a Puccini aria, the notes spiraling up, then plunging down, weaving around us, until we were part of the air.

I had made love before. I had loved before. But not ever this way.

Later that evening, we decided to make an unsolicited visit to Dr. Nick Parnell’s
riad
. Raphael and I slipped on djellabas and pulled up the hoods. It was a bit warm for a pashmina scarf, but I added one anyway, tucking it around my neck, hoping it would hide the bite marks.

Raphael gave me a long, searching look. “Parnell is a skilled telepath. You must guard your thoughts around him. Do not think about Vivi.”

I nodded. I’d read the Interpol intelligence report, but I still had a few questions about this man. Twelve years ago, Dr. Parnell had been a popular lecturer on the academic circuit after he’d discovered a new and interesting insect in Cameroon. He’d gone to work for the Al-Dîn Corporation. After the expedition went awry, Parnell had dropped off the grid. It was easy to understand why. He was involved with international drugs and arms trafficking. After the coup in Guinea-Bissau, he had double-crossed a heroin kingpin.