Kiss Me Deadly (8 page)

“Don’t come back.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Because of the spell.”

“Because…I love you, Ravin. See you soon.”

The front door closed. Ravin rolled to her back and spread her hand over the wrinkles on his side of the bed.

Why did something so wrong have to feel so right?

T
he vampire had gone.

Ravin sat up in bed and stretched out her arms. Her legs ached and her wrists were sore from Nikolaus pinning her down as he’d slaked his lust. She hadn’t minded being pinned down. In fact, it had turned her on more than she’d thought possible.

Most of her sexual encounters had been brief affairs with near strangers. Not the kind of men who knew how to satisfy a woman, much less
care
about her satisfaction.

After two centuries it now took a lot to impress her sexually. She’d once chosen her lovers for their handsome appearance and roguish manner, and then had graduated to wealth and a certain unavailability that came from a married man. Over the centuries, such vain, selfish requirements had ceased to matter, and, not sure anymore what she needed, she lately resorted to one-night stands. Quickies.

So why did she do it?

Contact. Validation. Every woman required connection, if only for a few moments of bliss.

Sure, she’d had some great lovers in her history. Daniel had been a printer who aspired to engrave monograms, but his eyesight wouldn’t allow him to do the detail work. Hadn’t kept him from learning her body with his lips, though.

Dominique San Juste, a faery changeling, never left her memory. Unfortunately, he’d been more in love with absinthe, and the memory of his dead wife, than Ravin. She hadn’t told him about the pregnancy, a surprise to her at the time. There had been no need to tell him.

The miscarriage brought up an awful longing. Ravin had never considered herself maternal, but with a child in her belly, she’d quickly taken to the prospect of becoming a mother.

She still didn’t know if it was because a faery and a witch should not procreate, or if it had simply been her womb, unable to carry to term.

Was it possible, after so long, that she may have finally found a man who could satisfy her in every way?

She felt sated. Beyond satisfied. A slip of skin lying on the sheets, empty and waiting to be filled again.

“Sex magic,” she suddenly said. Ravin sat up abruptly and sat cross-legged on the sheets. “Blood sex magic.”

Her heart started to pound. She pressed a hand over her chest.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

It had always been mere legend to Ravin. Tales told and passed down over the ages, from one witch to another. The history of their kind. The reason why vampires and witches rubbed against one another like oil to water—and the result of what could happen should the two succeed in coming together.

Blood sex magic. When a vampire drank the blood, and/or had sex with a witch, he took into him some of her magic. It made him stronger, fortified his soul, and even gave him some of the same abilities the witch possessed, such as earth, air or water magic, but to a lesser degree.

It used to happen all the time, when the vampires had once enslaved the witches for just such a purpose. But then the witches got smart and cast the great Protection spell, which rendered their blood poisonous to vampires.

“He’s stolen my magic,” she gasped.

No, not stolen.

“I
gave
him my magic, willingly. Oh, damn, this is not good. Not only is the man a freaking phoenix who cannot be destroyed, now I’ve decided to go ahead and toss a little magic into the mix. What have I done?”

No matter. It wouldn’t happen again.

Scrambling off the bed, she paused in the center of the room. What to do?

She had to set up wards to keep the vampire from again crossing her threshold. Until she could convince Himself to reverse the spell for her, she was responsible for—For what? For contributing to the destruction of a perfectly sane vampire.

Or was she enhancing him?

At the risk of her own enslavement. She would not become Nikolaus Drake’s supplicant. That way lay danger.

“Oh hell, don’t even go there. He is not for you, Ravin. Get that into your thick skull. So the two of you had awesome sex. That was it. No more. There will be hell to pay should he ever return—aggh!”

Sudden, vicious pain in her sternum streaked outward through her muscles and flailed her backward so she landed outstretched on the bed. Invisible claws ripped flesh from her body.

Slapping her hand to her chest, Ravin felt the burn of a very familiar touch. Moaning, she slid from the bed and landed on the floor in a sprawl, and then snapped abruptly upright.

Beneath her fingers, the slash mark had been erased. “No.”

“Oh, yes. Can’t be having a cheat in my ranks, now, can I?”

She didn’t look. The brimstone was evident.

In fact, if Ravin could keep from looking she wouldn’t be forced to gasp at his utter beauty. That was how it worked with the Old Lad Himself. He appeared to all others in the guise of their greatest temptation. To a man he could look like a gorgeous woman; to a woman, an attractive man.

In the few times she had seen him over the past decade, Himself appeared to her looking like Johnny Depp, pre-pirate days, with dark, shoulder-length mussed hair and a sexy aloofness that made her drool and want to break out the condoms.

Condoms?
Damn.
Not once had she considered using a condom with Nikolaus.

“You have been a naughty girl, Miss Crosse.”

He even sounded like the actor. But Ravin suspected the actor did not wear the horrid perfume of sulfur on his person. The scent was strong, unmistakable.

The bed sagged next to her as she felt Himself sit across from her.

You’re naked, girl.

Oh, hell. She tugged up a corner of the sheet but a gorgeous man—
just a
figment
of handsome, Ravin—
sat on it, so she was able to barely cover one breast.

Ravin wouldn’t give the bastard the pleasure of showing shame, so she dropped the sheet and stretched back her shoulders.

“Did you think you could put that little trick past me?”

No fooling the devil.

“No.” She winced once more at a streak of pain in her chest. “There was an accident. The potion spilled. I didn’t have time to make more before the pickup imp arrived.”

“Demon, not an imp.”

“Looked like an imp to me.”

“So you thought to send along a sip and hoped I’d not question it.”

“Sometimes a sip will do the trick. Erm…” It wouldn’t do to lie to one of the greatest deceivers ever. “Goddess of Mercy. So I screwed up. You have every right to be angry—”

He scoffed.

Ravin didn’t dare turn around.

“I don’t subscribe to frail mortal emotions,” Himself announced.

“Anger isn’t—”

“Of course it is! It is for the weak. The ridiculous. Anger is nothing more than jealousy and the inability to express sadness. I prefer the sublime human emotions such as grief, curiosity or envy. Of course, lack of anger does not disqualify the need for punishment. Your soul is still mine, witch.”

Heat flayed across Ravin’s torso, burning deep into the middle line that no longer bore the slash mark of a completed obligation.

Ravin clutched her chest and rolled to her side, coiling her body inward to fight the pain. There wasn’t a thing she could do to stop it, and no argument would suffice. The hot poker pressed deep—it felt as though it seared her lungs. She gasped, choked and clawed at the sex-scented sheets.

“Sorry?” Himself asked.

She nodded.

“I didn’t hear that,” he sing-songed gaily.

She forced herself to react, to push beyond the pain, and springing to an upright crouch, shouted, “I’m sorry! Forgive me!”

And like that, the pain stopped.

Ravin collapsed onto her back. The room felt too large, too pale and no longer warm.
As it had been when she had been in Nikolaus’s arms.

It wasn’t fair that she was to be shoved back to reality so quickly after an afternoon spent in fantasyland. But it was just. And she was all for standing up and accepting punishment when punishment was due.

Opening her eyes, she looked up at the face looming over her. “Oh, hell, why him?”

The actor’s face cracked a brimstone smile. He looked to the left where a full-length mirror was attached to the back of the bathroom door. Himself didn’t know how he appeared to others until he looked at his reflection.

“What is it with you and actors? Who was it last time?”

“It’s always Johnny.”

And keep it that way, she thought. At least it wasn’t Nikolaus Drake leering over her now. That gave her immense hope that this afternoon truly had been just a tumble in the sack. A very wrong tumble—that had felt so right.

A glance to the side sighted a horned red reflection in the mirror. When viewed in the mirror by others, Himself’s true diabolical form showed. Ravin looked away. The image was too horrific for any eyes not demonic.

Himself leaned forward and sniffed loudly over the sheets. “Who have you been banging? Ravin, my wicked little witch, it’s been months.” He took another sniff. “Strong. Tainted with salt, sweat…hmm, coconut. That’s yours. But what is that? A hint of expensive men’s cologne? Not your usual stud. You must have come over and over.”

“Six times.”

“Good for you, girlie.”

“Yeah. Well. Why the hell not.”

“’Bout time you found someone to satisfy you.”

And she so did not need to be having a girlfriend-after-sex chat with the King of Hell.

“What was it this time?” he asked. “Let’s see…you’ve done a faery, a familiar and countless others. Was it a wizard? A dragon-shifter?”

“None of your business. I’ll make you another batch,” she offered.

“Of course you will. And I’ll watch.”

“Why not? I’m all about sharing the love. Let me get dressed first.”

He gripped her arm as she edged toward the foot of the bed. The contact crawled over her flesh like corpse worms wriggling from the light. No, never Johnny.

“I prefer you this way. Love spells in the nude, it’ll be. Now, get to work.”

Sighing, Ravin consented with a nod. A shower to rinse the sex from her body was all she wanted. Remove all traces of the vampire from her pores. It was as though he’d entered her, and now he lingered in her soul.

On the other hand, she wasn’t currently in possession of said soul, so there was that.

And perhaps keeping the vampire’s scent on her for a while was the thing. A reminder of her mistake.

“Rough night?” Himself asked, stretching out across the bed, and again inhaling the sheets.

Ravin wandered to the mirror and shrugged her fingers through her tangle of hair. Cream rinse was required to smooth out this nest. “What makes you ask that?”

“You’ve a bite mark on your ass.”

She swung her hips around to study her rear in the mirror. “That is so not funny.”

“Did I laugh?”

“No, but you were think-laughing.”

“I’d guess a vampire, but I know how you abhor them, witch. Perhaps it was a wolf?”

Thrusting about, hands on hips, Ravin had no intention of giving the devil his due, at least not on the matters of who or what she’d been sleeping with.

The Don Juan DeMarco version of Johnny starred at her, his hair falling to chin length and a billowing white shirt open to reveal his taut, smooth chest. Too perfect. Too tempting.

But could he make her come with but a lick of his tongue and a smoldering wink? She didn’t think so. And she wouldn’t. No sense in giving Himself fodder.

“Do you have to look like him? I mean, it’s distracting, especially when one is naked.”

“Do you want me, Ravin?” He flicked out an inordinately long tongue and waggled it. “Come and get it.”

Steeling herself, she forced herself to think of worse troubles than the devil’s teasing sensual temptation. Like having sex with a vampire. It worked. She couldn’t summon an ounce of desire for the man lying on her bed.

“I think I hear a grimoire calling my name.”

He shuddered, wracked by nightmare—the
danse macabre
.

Nikolaus found Gabriel in the hallway, kicking and dragging his boot heels across the hardwood floor, and pulling at his hair as he struggled against the inner demons. His victims’ nightmares.

The
danse
only came with the kill.

Nikolaus sucked in a breath as he realized his friend had killed. Had to have been recent, either today or no more than a few days ago.

Bending before Gabriel, he tapped his knee, offering silent support. This was wrong. Kind, gentle Gabriel had not killed since he was first created two years earlier. He knew better than to steal life. What could have made him do such a thing?

For twenty years Nikolaus had successfully led the tribe. He had mentored many a new vampire confused by his transformation and unsure of the new life given him. And he’d weaned just as many from the kill to watch them grow stronger and confident, a humane creature of the dark.