Blood and Kisses(7)

No one was for him. Passion was much too close to violence. He could never forget that the monster lurked, omnipresent, waiting for his opportunity to take over. His opportunity to destroy.

The hairdryer turned on, purring industriously. Several minutes passed.

Before sleep could take him again, her door opened. He listened to her progress throughout the house, jolting upright when he heard her run for the front door. It opened and closed, but she didn’t leave. She called out for Cam.

Footsteps entered his study. He heard drawers slide open.

She was going through his desk.

Anger twisted the threads of desire still entangling him.

So, the little witch thought to take advantage of him while he slept. Well, she wouldn’t find anything.

Her footsteps on the stairs brought him back to the moment. What was she up to now? The floor creaked outside his door. Her heart was pounding now. He could smell the adrenaline flavoring her blood. She was going to come in. The little fool.

He should end this right now. Instead he lay back on the bed and pretended to sleep.



Thalia licked her dry lips and placed her hand on the brass door handle of Gideon’s door. She pressed the other hand against the wood. For a moment, she imagined she could feel heat on the other side, as if there were a fire. Her witch senses warning her?

There might not be a fire, but danger sure as hell lurked on the other side.

She hesitated. He’d saved her bacon last night, brought her into his home. Snap out of it, Kent! He’s still a vampire. She blew out a gust of air.

Sure, he was hot, but the strange connection she felt to him was a biological advantage of vampires, nothing more. Without their magnetism, where would they get their next meal?

Gideon, like all vampires, was a predator. Only her poisonous blood prevented her from being a vampy snack. What made it so hard for her to remember that?

She couldn’t afford to trust him. Might just as well plant his teeth in her own neck, metaphorically speaking. Lily had no doubt trusted the monster who’d tapped her dry like a beer keg at a frat party.

Evoking the image of her cousin’s lifeless face once more, lips tinted blue, skin blanched, Thalia huffed, once twice, three tines. She could do this. She had to do this.

Pep talk over, she took one more deep breath, turned the handle, and stepped cautiously into the predator’s lair.





Chapter 4



It was dark in the room. Light from the hanging fixture in the hall spilled onto the wide bed like a spotlight, highlighting the still figure sprawled on its vast surface. Inky shadows hovered thick in the corners, disguising their contents.

Thalia whispered the final word of an illumination spell, and a cool yellow flame sprang to life above her curved palm. She raised her hand to dispel the shadows, revealing a room furnished in dark wood. She’d seen this suite in the catalog of a furniture company way out of her price range. A deep, rich red colored the walls. Dark wood plantation shutters decorated the window, but she knew the same heavy metal shades that covered the windows in the rest of the house were present behind them. She owned several of the same colorful prints that hung in the room, but she had a feeling these weren’t prints.

Her gaze drifted back to Gideon, who lay on his side. A white sheet covered him below his smooth chest. It emphasized the trim line of his waist and made his skin look like pale honey. Thalia drew a ragged breath. Even unconscious he was magnificent.

She tore her hungry eyes away from his large form and surveyed the room. A dresser against the far wall seemed a logical place to start. With one leery glance in Gideon’s direction, she crossed to the dresser and slid open the first drawer.

“That’s my underwear.” Gideon’s voice was soft as liquid velvet and as difficult to read as a Sanskrit text, but he had to be furious.

She sighed, closed the drawer, and spun to confront him, pressing back against the dresser. A knob dug into her hip, but the minor pain couldn’t compete with the danger on the bed. She stayed put. “So I see.”

He propped himself up on one strong elbow. “Find what you were looking for?”

She stared at the flexed muscles of his bare shoulder. How could such an innocuous body part be so beautiful? The light in her hand played golden over the planes and depressions of his torso. Her other hand flexed and her fingers tingled, as if already forging a trail over forbidden territory. She gulped and tore her eyes away. “Obviously not.”

Gideon waved his free hand and the lights came up. His eyes were burning pitch in the stern frame of his face. He reached out and grasped her slim wrist, pulled her toward him, brought the flame in her cupped palm close to his lips and blew it out. His breath both tickled and cooled her sensitive skin. She shivered.

He skewered her with his scorching gaze. Thalia’s fevered brain seemed to lose the ability to command her body. She watched helplessly as his dark head lowered over her hand once more, his fingers iron bangles around her arm, not tight enough to hurt, but unbreakable. His mouth was a smoldering coal on the tender flesh of her palm, and she gasped. She felt as if he were drawing a different sort of flame from every fiber of her body down her arm and out through the place where his lips burned. The pleasure was so intense it verged on pain.

She moaned, and he was out of the bed, her body clasped against his.

He took her mouth.

She had never been kissed, not like this. She wasn’t even sure she’d been alive until this moment. Her lips reveled in his taste, sweet and spicy, and in the stroke of his tongue against her own, slick and wet. A more intimate touch than she had ever known.

She fought for air, placing her hands on his shoulders and pushing away. But that only brought her soft breasts into contact with his hard, bare chest. The sensation fed the fire, and she pressed closer. Her eyes fell shut. Her hands strayed up to his nape, her greedy fingers burrowing into his silky mane, kneading his scalp. He groaned and slid his scalding mouth to her cheek, laving the edges of her birthmark with his tongue. As if plunged into an ice bath, she froze, coming to her senses. She ripped away from his grasp and fled from the room.



Thalia gazed out her bedroom window. The navy sky was singed with the last fiery streaks of sunset, the trees mere charcoal shadows against the darkening sky. Gideon was due to arrive any minute, and she still hadn’t answered the question of how she could possibly face him after the events of that morning.

The growing darkness turned the transparent windowpane into a mirror. Her face reflected back at her, pale and indistinct, like a ghost. The memory of the kiss brought her hand to her full lips. Despite the hours that had passed, they seemed to have retained the imprint of his mouth. She could close her eyes and bring back the feeling of his lips feasting on her own, remember the taste of him, his scent.

Tears glazed her vision. It hadn’t been her first kiss, but it might as well have been.

“Idiot!” she said to her reflection and stalked downstairs to the kicking bag in the basement, warming up her neck on the way. Once in front of the red column, she kicked off her shoes and punched the bag hard enough to rock it on its black, water-filled base.

Her first real kiss. Why couldn’t she let that go?

Thump. She struck the bag again. Knuckles still stinging, she palmed her birthmark.

Her family had carried the mark for generations, but none of them had ever had one so large. Her mother’s mark had been a tiny crescent near the corner of her left eye. It had seemed more like a beauty spot.

A rueful laugh shook her chest. If the size of the mark were equal to the size of her talent, she’d be hell on wheels.

She leaned her forehead against the cool plastic of the kicking bag. Of course, she’d never thought anything about her mark, except to be proud of her family’s heritage, until she’d gone to school.

She could still remember walking to the bus stop that first morning. Her mother had sent Spirit with her, although actually he’d watched, invisible, from afar.

It’d been a warm, sunny day. They’d had an unusually wet summer. Only a few leaves had begun to turn, and the grass was still bright green, but the tree growing at the bus stop corner had turned early. Its leaves glowed ruby-red in the morning sun. The sky was a brilliant blue, unmarred by clouds.

She’d worn a pretty new dress, pink gingham with white daisies embroidered on the bodice, and shiny white shoes. God, she’d loved the dress.

Then the other had children arrived, one by one, until there were five in all, and the whispering began.

The stares didn’t bother her at first. It was an awfully pretty dress.

A boy about her age, or maybe a year older, showed up. He possessed a shock of dark hair, a snub nose, and thick red lips. He walked around her silently in a slow circle. His eyes fixed on her mark. Not knowing what he was doing, she stood still, looking down at the shiny white patent leather of her shoes.

Then he spoke. “What’s that on your face?”

“A birthmark,” she said, peering up at him. Her mother had told her not to tell the other children the significance of her mark.