Vampire Instinct (14 page)
Authors: Joey W Hill
Tags: #Vampires, #Horror, #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Fantasy, #Erotic Fiction, #Erotica, #Fiction, #Occult & Supernatural
“The girl could probably help with that.”
“She’s concocted all sorts of sentimental notions about it.” Mal snorted. “I’ll have to wade through that claptrap to get to the useful things she knows. But stop your scowling. I plan to take her to see them soon. Don’t tell her that, either. I may very well change my mind.”
Moving into the house, Mal headed toward the lower level.
Elisa started awake. She’d been staring out over that beautiful puzzle of light and earth, and then there’d been a fog rolling in, a darkness. She hadn’t felt fear, just a need to come back to herself, a sense that someone was calling for her, and she needed to answer.
She pushed herself up on one arm, orienting herself. The precipice and the cougar were still so close, it was difficult at first to realize she was in a bedroom, an unfamiliar one.
Oh, Lord in Heaven, had she really fallen asleep on his bed? What was the matter with her? She galvanized her sluggish limbs into motion and then, on top of that mortification, she realized she wasn’t alone.
Mal leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, thumbs hooked at his armpits. He was barefoot, which somehow suited him, made him look more wild and untamed. Or maybe it was just the lingering effect of her dream. In a sudden spurt of panic, she clapped her hands to her body, and confirmed she was still wearing her work dress, and not an animal skin. However, looking down, she felt a little faint when she noticed there was dirt caked under her fingernails that hadn’t been there before.
In her dream, she’d dug her hands into the soil, to smear more of it on her. Lying flat out on the ground, looking up at the sky, she’d liked the way earth felt across her abdomen, over her breasts, the tops of her thighs. The cougar had lain on her legs, a heavy, solid warmth.
Don’t be silly. You just didn’t wash your hands properly after cleaning the windows and porch.
Despite her reeling head, she managed to get off the bed and began to smooth it. “I’m so sorry, sir. I just . . . I don’t know what happened. Must be the jet lag. I didn’t mean to nod off like that. I got on the bed to make it, and I was touching the animal skins, and next thing . . . Anyhow, it won’t happen again. I’ll just go see if Kohana needs anything . . .”
She’d been gathering up the old sheets while she babbled. That was another mistake in judgment, because the sheets smelled like him. For some reason, her mind was flooded with a detailed image of him standing before her if she
had
been wearing only an animal skin. Not the one in her dream, but the tiger skin, gathered around her, her hand clasping it loosely just above her breasts as she knelt in the center of his bed. What if he’d crossed the room, closed his hand over hers, loosened those fingers and pushed it away, so it coiled around her like the actual beast? He’d bear her down against the pelt and put his mouth on her flesh . . .
had
been wearing only an animal skin. Not the one in her dream, but the tiger skin, gathered around her, her hand clasping it loosely just above her breasts as she knelt in the center of his bed. What if he’d crossed the room, closed his hand over hers, loosened those fingers and pushed it away, so it coiled around her like the actual beast? He’d bear her down against the pelt and put his mouth on her flesh . . .
Scurrying around the bed, she caught her toe on the heavy wood frame. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, God forgive her, a toe stubbing hurt like a son of a bitch, and on top of that it was an embarrassing reminder that she’d slipped off her shoes to get on the bed. She hopped, biting back the curse, and gathered up the tails of the sheets that were trying to unravel from her grasp. He was watching her with unfathomable fascination. Then, before she could rattle off something else, he spoke.
“I didn’t take their lives.”
She stopped, trying to push her mind past the throbbing. “Excuse me?”
He nodded toward the bed, the pelts. “I didn’t kill them.”
“No, of course not. I didn’t think you did.” She knew hunters who respected their prey, even as they had to hunt them for food. Dev was one of those, as were most of the men on the station. But cats were predators, not food, and it wouldn’t have made sense, no matter what kind of hunter Mal was.
“Their spirits help protect the island. They were poached by men, so they know the dangers, and that adds to the strength of their protection.” He pushed off the doorframe then, moved across the room toward her. She stayed frozen by that bedpost, toe aching and mind confused. He stopped at the side of the bed, catty-corner from her, and laid his hand on the skins. She realized now the one she’d been lying upon most squarely was the cougar’s. That grayish brown color with touches of white.
“Still warm,” he murmured; then he glanced at her. “The cougar is sometimes the gentlest of the large cats. They even purr. Which doesn’t mean much. She’ll still disembowel you if you do the wrong thing around her.”
Elisa remembered that throaty rumble as the cat sat beside her on the precipice. She’d thought she’d merely merged her own fancy with the house cats she’d seen earlier, and maybe she had been, but apparently a cougar did purr.
He moved again, this time toward her. It was instinct to step back, to clutch the sheets tighter. She was in his bedroom, alone with him, a male far more powerful than her. And she’d been thinking unseemly things. He would have seen it.
“I didn’t mean it,” she burst out, trying to step around him. “I don’t . . . It doesn’t mean . . . I need to get back to Kohana, get these sheets to him.”
Mal shook his head, took the sheets from her arms, dropped them to the side. Putting his hands to her waist, he boosted her onto the high mattress. She clutched his forearms. She wouldn’t beg. She wouldn’t make a fool of herself.
“Stop your shaking,” he said quietly, a firm rebuke that perversely reassured her because of the familiar irritation in his voice. It was his form of growling, and apparently a regular feature of their conversations. Not really the sound of a man about to be overcome with a fit of lust. Or so she thought.
“The thought was mine, not yours, Elisa. I let it slide into your head. It was a picture too pretty not to share.” He gave her an absent smile that made the bottom of her world drop about two feet, her stomach with it. Lifting her left foot, the one she’d stubbed, he studied the toe, which had an extra pink tone from the agitated blood vessels. There was also a small cut in the cuticle, since the bedposts were unfinished wood.
He squatted onto his heels, which drew the fabric of his trousers taut along his haunches, and bent his head over her toes. His hair fell forward, teasing the top of her foot, and he flipped it back impatiently to see whatever it was he was trying to see.
She was going to protest, tell him it was fine and pull her foot away, but instead, maybe because the natural impulse that had taken her over in that dream was still with her, she leaned forward, folding her body over her knees, and reached toward his face. He stilled but didn’t glance up, and she wondered if he’d learned that from dealing with shy, uncertain animals. Appear as if what she was doing was unremarkable, so that she’d have the courage to follow through with it. It worked for her.
Gathering up his hair on both sides, she handed it off to her other hand so she could pull the majority of it to his left shoulder, her knuckles resting there as she held the shoulder-length locks out of his way. Like all vampires, his hair was a treasure of thick silk that made a woman want to bury her fingers in it, like those pelts. There was something fascinating in touching a wild creature so intimately, wasn’t there? Only this one still inhabited his skin. Of course, after her dream, she thought the ones on the bed did, too, a magical notion.
He looked up at her then. It increased tension on the strands, tightening them over her fingers. “So you can see what you’re doing,” she managed. Just being helpful, because that was what she did. It didn’t mean anything.
That regard continued for a long moment; then he bent his head again. This time he brought her foot to his mouth and she drew in a breath as the heat of his mouth closed over that smallest toe. His tongue swirled over the cut, tasting the tiny revelation of blood, and soothing the pain at once. Since the capacity of his mouth was far greater than her littlest toe, he was able to include the pad of her sole and the toes next to the injured one in that sensation of heat and moisture, though he kept his focus on the one that needed his attention.
Her fingers had curled inward, holding the hair tighter. She was also conscious of his hand supporting her ankle and heel, holding her fast. As he licked the cut and teased her flesh, his own grip increased, so that sensation rippled up her leg, toward the inner thigh and higher.
Just like the image of her on the bed, in nothing but one of those skins, now she saw him commanding her to lie back on her elbows, the skirt of her dress slipping back to her thighs because he would rise, lifting her leg higher, continuing to hold it. Only now his heated palm would move from her ankle to behind the knee, his fingers caressing that sensitive part. His gaze would travel down the length of the leg to the shadowed folds of the dress, pulled back enough to reveal her undergarments, the panel of her panties, which were . . . She swallowed. They were actually, truly damp, not just in her vision. He was doing this to her, with nothing but his mind, but she couldn’t tell if it was his imagination or hers.
“Does it matter?” He lifted his head at last. “You’re calmer now, aren’t you? Less afraid. There’s nothing to fear from pleasure, Elisa. Your body still responds to arousal, as it should.”
It made her stiffen. She let go of his hair so it fell back down over his shoulders. Slowly, she exerted pressure to bring her foot back into her own care. Sitting back on his heels again, he let her go. She didn’t look at him as she slid off the bed, somewhat awkwardly since she had to maneuver around him, and circled to gather up the sheets again.
Once she did, she faced him. He’d stood up, one hand high on the bedpost. “Mr. Malachi, sir, I don’t want you to play such games with me. That’s not why I’m here. What happened to me . . . that’s mine to deal with, and Lady Danny sent me here to be of use with the fledglings, and your household, when they aren’t occupying me.”
“I don’t need a house servant.”
“Kohana is a man with one leg. As capable as he is, there are things that are harder for him to do. You might as well let me be useful while I’m here. I can’t keep you out of my mind.” She spoke carefully now, staring a hole in his chest. “But I’m asking you, as a courtesy, not to do what you’ve been doing here.”
“It helped.”
“I’m not here to be helped.” She snapped it, ducking her chin into the sheets, hugging them to her body. “Don’t play with my mind, Mr. Malachi. I can’t handle that. I truly can’t.”
Darting forward, she ducked under his arm, giving the edge of the bed a straightening tug where the cougar skin had flipped back and wrinkled. Then she spun and headed for the door. Once she reached the upper level, reality and the dawn would clear this nonsense from her head.
“Elisa.”
She stopped. For just one second, she thought of pretending she hadn’t heard him, but of course that would be unwise and unlikely. She couldn’t turn and face him, though. She just waited, afraid of what he might say, her heart pounding in her ears. He didn’t have to listen to anything she wanted. She had no idea what hold Danny had on him, but for all she knew, he could do as he liked. She needed to talk to Thomas. And oh, God in Heaven, Thomas would be leaving after those three days.
He sighed, that impatient sound as if she were a bug he’d prefer to squash and dismiss from his existence. “Tomorrow night I’m going to handle your orientation of the preserve personally. You’ll learn what rules you need to observe if you go off the compound.”
Did that mean he was already considering letting her stay longer? Why would he teach her the rules for such a short time, otherwise?
“Whether you’re off the compound once or a hundred times, you still need to know the rules. And I told Danny I’d show you our setup, so you know what kind of place this is for the fledglings. Don’t read more into it than that.”
She nodded, swallowing her disappointment. “Will I see the chil—fledglings?”
“We’ll see how it goes. Be ready at dusk. I’ll have Kohana scare you up some trousers and boots. You can’t go out there in a dress.”
She nodded, dug her fingers into the sheets and fled with as much grace as she could muster. Her body was still throbbing and her mind a confused tangle from that dream, and though she’d been here a day, she felt mired in all the mysteries and puzzles of this place, the most dangerous of which was going to spend tomorrow evening with her.
9
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