"Dates From Hell" - читать интересную книгу автора (K K K, H H H, Sands Lynsay, Armstrong Kelley, Handeland Lori)

3

Even with her intentions to leave at midnight, the sun was up by the time Ivy was idling her bike through the Hollows’s rush-hour traffic, winding her way to the waterfront and the spacious apartment she and Kisten shared above Piscary’s restaurant. That she worked for the force that policed the underground he controlled wasn’t surprising or unintentional, but prudent planning. Though not on the payroll, Piscary ran the I.S. through a complicated system of favors. He still had to obey the laws—or at least not get caught breaking them lest he get hauled in like anyone else. It reminded Ivy of what Camelot had probably really been like.

Her mother had worked in the top of the I.S. hierarchy until she died, and Ivy knew that was where she and Piscary wanted Ivy to be. Piscary dealt in gambling and protection—on paper, both legal ways to make his money—and the master vampire had more finesse than to put her where she’d have to choose between doing what he wanted and what her job required. The corruption was that bad.

Or that good, Ivy thought, checking to see that the guy behind her was watching before she slowed and turned left into the restaurant’s parking lot. If it hadn’t been for the threat of Piscary coming down on aggressive vampires in backstreet justice, the I.S. wouldn’t be able to cope. She was sure that was why most people, including the FIB, looked the other way. The I.S. was corrupt, but the people actually in charge of the city did a good job keeping it civilized.

Ivy slowed her bike by the door to the kitchen and cut the engine, scanning the empty lot. It was Wednesday, and whereas any other day of the week the restaurant would be emptying out of the last stragglers, today it was deserted. Piscary liked a day of rest. At least she wouldn’t have to dodge the waitstaff and their questions as to why her eyes were half dilated. She needed either a long bubble bath before bed, or Kisten, or both.

The breeze off the nearby river was cool and carried the scent of oil and gas. Taking a breath to clear her mind, she pushed the service door open with the wheel of her bike. It didn’t even have a lock to let the produce trucks make their deliveries at all hours. No one would steal from Piscary. For all appearances he obeyed the law, but somehow, you’d find yourself dead anyway.

Purse and twin wine bottles in hand, she left her bike beside the crates of tomatoes and mushrooms and took the cement steps to the kitchen two at a time. She passed the dark counters and cold ovens without seeing them. The faint odor of rising yeast mixed with the lingering odors of the vampires who worked here, and she felt herself relax, her boots making a soft cadence on the tiled floor. The scent brought to memory thoughts of her summers working in the kitchen and, when old enough, on the floor as a waitress. She hadn’t been innocent, but then the ugliness had been lost in the glare of the thrill. Now it just made her tired.

Her pulse quickened when she passed the thick door that led to the elevator and Piscary’s underground apartments. The thought that he would meet her with soothing hands and calculated sympathy was enough to bring her blood to the surface, but her irritation that he was manipulating her kept her moving into the bar. He wouldn’t call her to him, knowing it would cause her more mental anguish to come begging to him when she could take no more, desperate for the reassurance that he still loved her.

It was comfortingly silent in the restaurant proper, and the low ceilings and dim atmosphere seemed to follow her into the closed-party rooms in the back. A wide stairway behind a door led to the private second floor. Her hand traced the wall for balance as she rose up the wide, black-wood stairs, eager to find Kisten and an understanding ear that wasn’t attached to a manipulating mind.

She and Kisten lived in the converted apartment that took up the entire top floor of the old shipping warehouse. Ivy liked the openness, arbitrarily dividing it into spaces with folding screens and strategically placed furniture. The windows were spacious and smeared on the outside with the dirt and grime of forty years. Piscary didn’t like being that exposed, and this granted the two of them a measure of security.

Wine bottles clinking, Ivy set them on the table at the top of the stairs, thinking she and Kisten were like two abused children, craving the attention of the very person who had warped them, loving him out of desperation. It was an old thought, one that had lost its sting long ago.

Shuffling off her coat, she set it and her purse by the wine. “Kist?” she called, her voice filling the silence. “I’m home.” She picked the bottles back up and frowned. Maybe she should have gotten three.

There was no answer, and as she headed back toward the kitchen to chill the wine, the scent of blood shivered through her like an electrical current. It wasn’t Kisten’s.

Her feet stopped, and she breathed deeply. Her head swiveled to the corner where the deliverymen had put her baby grand last week. It had dented her finances more than the bike, but the sound of it in this emptiness made her forget everything until the echoes faded.

“Kist?”

She heard him take a breath, but didn’t see him. Her face blanked and every muscle tightened as she paced to the couches arranged about her piano. The dirty sunshine pooling in glinted on the black sheen of the wood, and she found him there, kneeling on the white Persian rug between the couch and the piano, a girl in tight jeans, a black lacy shirt, and a worn leather coat sprawled before him.

Kisten lifted his head, an unusual panic in his blue eyes. “I didn’t do it,” he said, his bloodied hands hovering over the corpse.

Shit. Dropping the bottles on the couch, Ivy swung into motion, moving to kneel before them. Habit made her check for a pulse, but it was obvious by her pallor and the gentle mauling on her neck that the petite blond was dead despite her warmth.

“I didn’t do it,” Kisten said again, shifting his trim, pretty-boy body back a few inches. His hands, strong and muscular, were shaking, the tops of his fingernails red with a light sheen. Ivy looked from them to his face, seeing the fear in his almost delicate features that he hid behind a reddish blond beard. A smear of blood was on his forehead behind his brown bangs, and she stifled an urge to kiss it away that both disgusted and intrigued her. This is not who I wanted to be.

“I didn’t do it, Ivy!” he exclaimed at her continued silence, and she reached over the girl and brushed his too-long bangs back. The gentle swelling of black in his gaze made her breath catch. God, he was beautiful when he was agitated.

“I know you didn’t,” she said, and Kisten’s wide shoulders relaxed, making her wonder if that was why he was upset. It wasn’t that he had to take care of Piscary’s mistake, but that Ivy might think he had killed her. And somewhere in there, she found that he loved her.

The pretty woman was Piscary’s favorite body type with long fair hair and an angular face. She probably had blue eyes. Shit, shit, and more shit. Mind calculating how to minimize the damage, she asked, “How long has she been dead?”

“Minutes. No more than that.” Kisten’s resonant voice dropped to a more familiar pitch. “I was trying to find out where she was staying and get her cleaned up, but she died right here on the couch. Piscary…” He met her eyes, reaching up to tug on a twin pair of diamond-stud earrings. “Piscary told me to take care of it.”

Ivy shifted her weight to her feet, easing back to sit on the edge of the nearby couch. It wasn’t like Kisten to panic like this. He was Piscary’s scion, the person the undead vampire had tapped to manage the bar, do his daylight work, and clean up his mistakes. Mistakes that were usually four foot eleven, blond, and a hundred pounds. Damn it all to hell. Piscary hadn’t slipped like this since she had left to finish high school on the West Coast.

“Did she sign the release papers?” she asked.

“Do you think I’d be this upset if she had?” Kisten arranged the small woman’s hair as if it would help. God, she looked fourteen, though Ivy knew she’d be closer to twenty.

Ivy’s lips pressed together and she sighed. So much for getting any sleep this morning. “Get the plastic wrap from the piano out of the recycling bin,” she said in decision, and Kisten rose, tugging the tails of his silk shirt down over the tops of his jeans. “We open in eight hours for the early Inderland crowd, and I don’t want the place smelling like dead girl.”

Kisten rocked into motion, headed for the stairs. “Move faster, unless you want to have the carpet steam cleaned!” Ivy called, and she heard him jump to the floor from midway down.

Tired, Ivy looked at the woman’s abandoned purse on the couch, too emotionally exhausted to figure out how she should feel. Kisten was Piscary’s scion, but it was Ivy who did most of the thinking in a pinch. It wasn’t that Kisten was stupid—far from it—but he was used to having her take over. Expected it. Liked it.

Wondering if Piscary had killed the girl on purpose to force Kisten to take responsibility, Ivy stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes going to the filthy windows and the river hazy in the morning sun. It sounded just like the manipulative bastard. If Ivy had succumbed to Art, she would have spent the morning at his place—not only obediently taking the next step to the management position Piscary wanted for her, but forcing Kisten to handle this alone. That things hadn’t gone the way he planned probably delighted Piscary; he took pride in her defiance, anticipating a more delicious fall when she could fight no longer.

Warped, ruined, ugly, she thought, watching the tourist paddleboats steam as they stoked their boilers. Was there any time she hadn’t been?

The sliding sound of plastic brought her around, and with no wasted motion or eye contact, she and Kisten rolled the woman onto it before her bowels released. Crossing her arms over her like an Egyptian mummy, they wrapped her tightly. Ivy watched her hands, not the plastic-blurred face of the woman, trying to divorce herself from what they were doing as they passed the duct tape Kisten had brought around her like lights on a Christmas tree.

Only when she had been transformed from a person to an object did Kisten exhale, slow and long. Ivy would cry for her later. Then cry for herself. But only when no one could hear.

“Refrigerator,” Ivy said, and Kisten balked. Ivy looked at him as she stood bent over the corpse with her hands already under the woman’s shoulders. “Just until we decide what to do. Danny will be here in four hours to start the dough and press the pasta. We don’t have time to ditch the body and clean up.”

Kisten’s eyes went to the blood-smeared rug. He lifted a foot and winced at the tacky brown smear on it, tracked downstairs and back again. “Yeah,” he said, his fake British accent gone, then took the long bundle entirely from Ivy and hoisted it over his shoulder.

Ivy couldn’t help but feel proud of him for catching his breath so quickly. He was only twenty-three, having taken on Piscary’s scion position at the age of seventeen when Ivy’s mother had accidentally died five years ago and abdicated the position. Piscary was active in his control of Cincinnati, and Kisten had little more to do than tidy up after the master vamp and keep him happy. Stifling her tinge of jealousy that Kisten had the coveted position was easy.

Piscary’s savage tutorial had made her old before she had begun to live. She wouldn’t think about what she was doing until it was over. Kisten hadn’t yet learned the trick and lived every moment as it happened, instead of over and over in his mind as she did. It made him slower to react, more…human. And she loved him for it.

“Is there a car to get rid of?” she asked, already on damage control. She hadn’t noticed one in the parking lot, but she hadn’t been looking.

“No.” Kisten headed downstairs with her following, his vampire strength handling the weight without stress. “She came in with Piscary right around midnight.”

“Off the street?” she asked in disbelief, glad the restaurant had been closed.

“No. The bus station. Apparently she’s an old friend.”

Ivy glanced at the woman over his shoulder. She was only twenty at the most. How old a friend could she be? Piscary didn’t like children, despite her size. It was looking more and more likely Piscary had orchestrated this to help Kisten stand on his own. Not only planned it, but built in the net of the woman’s cryptic origins in case Kisten should fall. The master vamp hadn’t counted on Ivy catching him first, and she felt a pang of what she would call love for Kisten—if she knew she could feel the emotion without tainting it with the desire for blood.

Ivy caught sight of Kisten’s grimace when she moved to open the door to the kitchen. “Piscary killed her on purpose,” he said, adjusting the woman’s weight on his shoulder, and Ivy nodded, not wanting to tell him about her own part in the lesson.

Tucking a fabric napkin from the waiting stack into her waistband, she yanked up the handle of the walk-in refrigerator and slid a box with her foot to prop it open. Kisten was right behind her, and in the odd combination of moist coldness Piscary insisted his cheese be kept at, she moved a side of lamb thawing out for Friday’s buffet, insulating her hands with the napkin to prevent heat marks from making it obvious someone had moved it.

Behind the hanging slab was a long low bed of boxes, and Kisten laid the woman there, covering the blur of human features with a tablecloth. Ivy had the fleeting memory of seeing a similar bundle there once before. She and Kisten had been ten and playing hide-and-seek while their parents finished their wine and conversation. Piscary had told them she was someone from a fairy tale and to play in the abandoned upstairs. Seemed like they were still playing upstairs, but now the games were more convoluted and less under their control.

Kisten met her eyes, their deep blue full of recollection. “Sleeping Beauty,” he said, and Ivy nodded. That was what they had called the corpse. Feeling like a little girl hiding a broken dish, she moved the slab of lamb back to partially hide the body.

Cold from more than the temperature, she followed him out, kicking the box out of the way and leaning against the door when it shut. Her eyes went to the time clock by the door. “I’ll get the living room and stairs if you take the elevator,” she said, not wanting to chance running into Piscary. He wouldn’t be angry with her for helping Kisten. No, he’d be so amused she had put off Art again that he would invite her into his bed, and she would quiver inside and go to him, forgetting all about Kisten and what she had been doing. God, she hated herself.

Kisten reached for the mop and she added, “Use a new mop head, then put the old one back on when you’re done. We’re going to have to burn it along with the rug.”

“Right,” he said, his jaw flushing as it clenched. While Kisten filled a bucket, Ivy made a fresh batch of the spray they wiped the restaurant tables down with. Diluted, it removed the residual vamp pheromones, but at full strength, it would break down the blood enzymes that most cleaning detergents left behind. Maybe it was a little overkill, but she was a careful girl.

It would be unlikely to have the woman traced here, but it wasn’t so much for eliminating her presence from a snooping I.S. or FIB agent as it was avoiding having the restaurant smell like blood other than hers and Kisten’s. That might lead to questions concerning whether the restaurant’s mixed public license, or MPL, had been violated. Ivy didn’t think her explanation that, no, no one had been bitten on the premises—Piscary had drained a woman in his private apartments—and therefore the MPL was intact, would go over well. From the amount of aggravation Piscary had endured to get his MPL reinstated the last time some fool Were high on Brimstone had drawn blood, she thought he’d prefer a trial and jail to losing his MPL again. But the real reason Ivy was being so thorough was that she didn’t want her apartment smelling like anyone but her and Kisten.

Her thoughts brought her gaze back to him. He looked nice with his head bowed over the bucket, his light bangs shifting in the water droplets being flung up as it filled.

Clearly unaware of her scrutiny, he turned the water off. “I am such an ass,” he said, watching the ripples settle.

“That’s what I like about you,” she said, worried she might have made him feel inadequate by taking over.

“I am.” He didn’t look at her, hands clenching the rim of the plastic bucket. “I froze. I was so damn worried about what you were going to say when you came home and found me with a dead girl, I couldn’t think.”

Finding a compliment in there, she smiled, digging through a drawer to get a new mop head. “I knew you didn’t kill her. She had Piscary all over her.”

“Damn it, Ivy!” Kisten exclaimed, lashing the flat of his hand out to hit the spigot, and there was a crack of metal. “I should be better than this! I’m his fucking scion!”

Ivy’s shoulders dropped. Sliding the drawer shut, she went to him and put her hands on his shoulders. They were hard with tension, and he did nothing to acknowledge her touch. Tugging into him, she pressed her cheek against his back, smelling the lingering fear on him, and the woman’s blood. Eyes closing, she felt her bloodlust assert itself. Death and blood didn’t turn on a vampire. Fear and the chance to take blood did. There was a difference.

Her hands eased around his front, fingers slipping past the buttons to find his abs. Only now did Kist bow his head, softening into her touch. Her teeth were inches from an old scar she had given him. The intoxicating smell of their scents mixing hit her, and she swallowed. The headiest lure of all. Her chest pressed into him as she breathed deep, intentionally bringing his scent into her, luring fingers of sexual excitement to stir along her spine. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, her voice low.

“You’d be a better scion then I am,” he said bitterly. “Why did he pick me?”

She didn’t think this was about which one of them was his scion but his stress looking for an outlet. Giving in to her urge, she lifted onto her toes to reach his ear. “Because you like people more than I do,” she said. “Because you’re better at talking to them, getting them to do what you want and having them think it was their idea. I just scare people.”

He turned, slowly so he would stay in her arms. “I run a bar,” he said, eyes downcast. “You work for the I.S. You tell me which is more valuable.”

Ivy’s arms slipped to his waist, pressing him back into the edge of the sink. “I’m sorry for the pizza delivery crap,” she said, meaning it. “You aren’t running a bar, you’re learning Cincinnati, what moves who, and who will do anything for whom. Me?” Her attention went to the wisp of hair showing at the V of his shirt. “I’m learning how to kiss ass and suck neck.”

His gaze hard with self-recrimination, Kisten shook his head. “Piscary dropped a dead girl in my lap, and I sat over her and wrung my hands. You walked in and things happened. What about the next time when it’s something important and I fuck it up?”

Running her hands up the smooth expanse of silk to his shoulders, she closed her eyes at the deliciously erotic sensation growing in her. Guilt mixed with it. She was ugly. All she had wanted to do was console Kisten, but the very act of comforting him was turning her on.

The thought of Art and what had almost happened hit her. Between one breath and the next, the muscles where her jaw hinged tightened and her eyes dilated. Shit. May as well give in. Feeling like a whore, she opened her eyes and fixed them on Kisten’s. His were as black as her own, and a spike of anticipation dove to her middle. Warped and twisted. Both of them. Was there any way to show she cared other than this?

“You’ll handle it,” she whispered, wanting to feel her lips pulling on something, anything. The soft skin under his chin glistened from the thrown-up mist, begging her to taste it. “I save your ass. You save mine,” she said. It was all she had to offer.

“Promise?” he said, sounding lost. Apparently it was enough.

The lure was too much, and she pulled herself closer to put her lips softly against the base of his neck, letting his pulse rise and fall teasingly under her. She felt as if she was dying: screaming because they needed each other to survive Piscary, pulse racing in what was going to follow, and despairing that the two were connected.

“I promise,” she whispered. Eyes closed, she raked her teeth over skin but didn’t pierce as her fingers lifted through the clean softness of his hair.

Kisten’s breath came fast, and with one arm he picked her up and set her on the counter, forcing his way between her knees. She felt her gaze go sultry when his hands went behind her hips, edging over the top of her pants. “You’re hungry,” he said, a dangerous lilt to his voice.

“I’m past hungry,” she said, twining her hands behind his neck as if bound. Her voice was demanding, but in truth she was helpless before him. It was the bane of the vampire that the strongest was the most in need. And Kisten knew the games they played as well as she did. Her thoughts flitted to Sleeping Beauty in the refrigerator, and she shoved away the loathing that she wanted to feel Kisten’s blood fill her not ten minutes after a woman had died in their apartment. The self-disgust she would deal with later. She was eminently proficient at denying it existed.

“Art bothering you again?” he said, his almost delicate features sly as he slipped a hand under her shirt. The firm warmth of his fingers was like a spike through her.

“Still…” she said, stifling a tremor to entice the feeling to grow.

His free hand traced across her shoulder and her collarbone to slide up the opposite length of her neck. “I’ll have to write a letter and thank him,” he said.

Eyes flashing open, Ivy yanked him to her, wrapping her legs around him, imprisoning him against her. His hands were gone from her waist, leaving only a cool warmth. “He wants my blood and my body,” Ivy said, feeling her lust for Kisten mix with her disgust for Art. “He’s getting nothing. I’m going to drive him into taking my blood against my will.”

Kisten’s breath was against her neck, and his hands were at the small of her back. “What’s that going to get you?”

A smile, unseen and evil, spread across her as she looked over his shoulder to the empty kitchen. “Satisfaction,” she breathed, feeling herself weaken. “He promotes me out from under him to keep my mouth shut or he becomes the laughingstock of the entire tower.” But she didn’t know if she could do it anymore. He was stronger than she had given him credit.

“That’s my girl,” Kisten said, and she sucked in her breath when he bent his head, his teeth gently working an old scar to send a delicious dart of anticipation through her. “You’re such a political animal. Remind me never to cross stakes with you.”

Breathless, she couldn’t answer. The thought of having to deal with the contaminated scene flitted past, and was gone.

“You’ll need practice saying no,” Kisten murmured.

“Mmmm.” Eyes open, she found herself moving against him as his hands pulled her closer. His head dropped, and her hands splayed across his back curled so her fingers dug into him. Kisten’s lips played with the base of her neck, moving ever lower.

“Could you say no if he did this?” Kisten whispered, grazing his teeth along her bare skin while his hands under her shirt traced a path to her breast.

The two feelings were joined in her mind, and it felt as if it was his teeth on her breast. “Yes…” she breathed, exhilarated. He worked the hem of her shirt, and she gripped the hair at the base of his skull, wanting more.

“What if he made good on his promise?” he asked, dropping his head, and she froze at the wash of a silver feeling cascading to her groin when he set his teeth where his fingers had been. It was too much to not respond.

Pulse racing, she jerked his head up. It could have hurt, but Kisten knew it was coming and moved with her. She never hurt him. Not intentionally.

Lips parted, she tightened her legs around him until she nearly left the counter. And though she buried her face against his neck, breathed in his scent, and mouthed his old scars, she didn’t break his skin. The self-denial was more than an exquisite torture, more than an ingrained tradition. It was survival.

The truth was that she was very nearly beyond thought, and only patterns of engraved behavior kept her from sinking her teeth, filling herself with what made him alive. She lusted to feel for that glorious instant total power over another and thus prove she was alive, but until he said so, she would starve for it. It was a game, but a deadly serious one that prevented mistakes made in a moment of passion. The undead had their own games, breaking the rules when they thought they could get away with it. But living vampires held tight to them, knowing it might be the difference in surviving a blood encounter or not.

And Kisten knew it, enjoying his temporary mastery over her. She was the dominant of the two, but unable to satisfy her craving until he let her, and in turn he was helpless to satisfy himself until she agreed. His masculine hands pushed her mouth from his neck, forcing his own lips against her jugular, rising and falling beneath him. Her head flung to the ceiling, she wondered who would surrender and ask first. The unknowing sparked through her, and feeling it, a growl lifted from her.

Dropping her head, she found his earlobe, the metallic diamond taste sharp on her tongue. “Give this to me,” she breathed, succumbing, uncaring that her need was stronger than his.

“Take it,” he groaned, submitting to their twin desires faster than he usually did.

Panting in relief, she pulled him closer, and in the shock of him meeting her, she carefully sank her teeth into him.

Shuddering, Kisten clutched her closer, lifting her off the counter.

She pulled on him, hungry, almost panicked that someone would stop them. Blessed relief washed through her at the sharp taste. Their scents mixed in her brain, and his blood washed into her, making them one, rubbing out the void that loving Piscary and meeting his demands continually carved into her. His warmth filled her mouth, and she swallowed, sending it deeper into her, desperately trying to drown her soul somehow.

Kisten’s breath against her was fast, and she knew the exquisite sensations she instilled in him, the vamp saliva invoking an ecstasy so close to sex it didn’t matter. His fingers trembled as they traced her lines and reached for the hem of her shirt, but she knew there wasn’t time. She was going to climax before they could work themselves much more.

Breathless and savage from the sensations of power and bloodlust, she pulled back from him, running her tongue quickly over her teeth. She met his eyes, pupil-black. He saw her teetering.

“Take it,” she breathed, desperate to give him what he needed, craved. It wouldn’t make amends for the savagery of the act, but it was the only way she could find peace with herself.

Kisten didn’t wait. A guttural sound coming from him, he leaned in. Sensation jerked through her, the instant of heady pain mutated almost immediately into an equal pleasure, the vampire saliva turning the sting of his fangs into the fire of passion.

“Oh God,” she moaned. Kisten heard, and he dug harder, going far beyond what he usually did. She gasped at the twin sensations of his teeth on her neck and his fingernails on her breast. Body moving with his, she pulled his hand from where he gripped the back of her neck and found his wrist. She couldn’t…bear it. She needed everything. Everything at once.

His mouth pulled on her, and with elation filling her, she bit down, slicing into old scars.

Kisten shook, his grip faltering as sexual and blood rapture filled them both. He pulled away from the counter, and her legs tightened around his waist.

She heard in his breathing that he was going to reach fulfillment, and content that they would end this with both of them satisfied, she abandoned all thought. Everything was gone, leaving only the need to fill herself with him, and she took everything he gave her, not caring he was doing the same. Together they could find peace. Together they could survive.

Ivy’s grip tightened, and she sank her teeth deeper. Kisten responded, a low rumble rising up through him. It sparked a primitive part of her, and fear, instinctive and unstoppable, jumped through her. Kisten felt it, gripping her aggressively.

She cried out, and with the pain shifting to spikes of pleasure, she climaxed, her pulse a wild thrum under Kisten’s hand, and in his mouth, and through him. He tensed, and with a last groan, his lips left her as he found the exquisite mental orgasm brought on by satiating the hunger and blood.

No wonder she was screwed up, she thought, even as her body shook and rebelled at the rapturous assault. Evil or wrong didn’t matter. She couldn’t resist something that felt so damn good.

“Kist,” she panted when the last flickers faded and she realized she still had her legs wrapped around him, her forehead against his shoulder and her body trying to figure out what had happened. “Are you okay?”

“Hell yes,” he said, his breathing haggard. “God, I love you, woman.”

As his arms tightened around her, an emotion she seldom felt good about filled her. She loved him more than she would admit, but it was pointless to plan for a future that was already mapped out.

Slowly he settled her back on the counter, his muscles starting to shake. The rim of blue about his pupils was returning, and his lips, still reddened from her blood, parted and his eyebrows rose. “Ivy, you’re crying.”

She blinked, shocked to find she was. “No, I’m not,” she asserted, swinging her leg up and around to get him out from between them. Her muscles protested, not ready to move yet.

“Yes, you are,” he insisted, grabbing a cloth napkin and pressing it to his wrist, and then his neck. The small punctures were already closing, the vampire saliva working to stimulate repair and fight possible infection.

Turning away, she slipped from the counter, almost stumbling in her need to hide her emotions. But Kisten grabbed her upper arm and turned her back.

“What is it?” he said, and then his eyes widened. “Shit, I hurt you.”

She almost laughed, choking it back. “No,” she admitted, then closed her eyes, trying to find the words. They were there, but she couldn’t say them. She loved Kisten, but why did the only way she could show him involve blood? Had Piscary completely killed in her how to comfort someone she loved without it turning into a savage act? Love should be gentle and tender, not bestial and self-serving.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept with someone without blood. She didn’t think she had since Piscary first turned his attentions fully to her, warping her until any emotion of caring, love, or devotion stimulated a bloodlust that seemed pointless to resist. She had carefully built the lie to protect herself that blood was blood and sex-and-blood was a way to show she loved someone, but she didn’t know how much longer she could believe it. Blood and love had become so intertwined in her that she didn’t think she could separate them. And if she had to admit that sharing blood was how she expressed her love, then she’d have to admit she was a whore every time she let someone sink his or her teeth into her on her way to the top. Was that why she was forcing Art into taking her against her will? She had to submit to rape in order to keep herself sane?

Kisten’s eyes roved the kitchen, and she saw his nose widen as he took in their scent. They’d endure a ribbing from the entire staff for having “relieved their vampiric pressures” in the kitchen, but it would cover up the smell of the corpse, at least. “What is it then?” he asked.

Anyone else would have been pushed aside and ignored, but Kisten put up with too much of her crap. “All I wanted to do was comfort you,” she said, dropping her head to hide behind the curtain of her hair. “And it turned into blood.”

Making a soft sigh, Kisten took her in a slow, careful embrace. A shiver lifted through her when he gently kissed away the last of the blood from her neck. He knew it was so sensitive as to almost hurt and would be for a few more minutes. “Hell, Ivy,” he whispered, his voice telling her he knew what she was not saying. “If you were trying to comfort me, you did a bang-up job.”

He didn’t move, and instead of pulling away, she stayed, allowing herself to accept his touch. “It’s what I needed, too,” he added, the smell of their scents mingling inciting a deep contentment instead of a dire need now that the hunger had been satisfied.

She nodded, believing him though she still felt ashamed. But why is that the only way I know how to be?