Chapter Ten

Max kept his eyes on Erica from across the room while Benton Carlisle asked him mundane questions about security. He didn’t need to wonder if this forced separation from Erica was planned.

When he saw Vera try to give her a glass of wine, he bared his fangs. “I’ll report your concerns to my superiors, Mr. Carlisle,” he said as evenly as possible. “It’s nothing we can’t handle.”

“Of course, of course,” Carlisle grinned back and tugged on the chain of his captive vampiress. She growled. “Would you like to join in some of our private activities tonight? Your new feeder looks especially interesting.”

“She’s not ready.”

“She looks ready to me.” Carlisle inclined his head to the dance floor where Vera was dancing in sensuous circles around Erica. When the other woman leaned over and kissed Erica on the lips, Max growled, too. “I’ve got to go. I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

Carlisle nodded absently. “I’m sure you will, Maxwell, I’m sure you will.” He laughed and pulled his captive female to him as Max walked away.

Walking across the dance floor took forever, and by the time Max reached Erica, she swayed in a dreamy haze while Vera ground their bodies together. She smelled of vampire wine.

She giggled when he grabbed her wrist and dragged her toward him. “You were supposed to stay on the couch.”

“I wanted to dance!” She delivered her protest through a feathery laugh. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pushed her hips against him. Vera tried to sidle between their bodies, but Max shoved her aside.

“She’s finished,” Max told Carlisle’s woman. “Hands off.”

“So selfish. Couldn’t we share?” Vera tried again to come between them and Max pushed her aside once again. This time he pulled Erica away, toward the Round Room’s grand entrance. She stumbled after him with a mild protest.

“Do we have to go? I was actually having fun.”

“Yes, we do. There’s nothing more we can accomplish here tonight.”

Erica giggled again. “Okay.”

When they reached the door he had to physically push her through it. Out in the corridor, he had to hold her up. This wasn’t normal. He hadn’t seen her drink the wine. She’d had nothing except her meal and the drink he’d ordered for her with dinner.

Max draped Erica’s arm over his shoulder and hoisted her onto his hip. “Come on. Time to go home.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I’m sure you don’t. But you need to sleep this off.”

She looked up at him and with adoration in her eyes. It stung him. If she’d looked at him that way when she was sober, he’d probably have fallen in love with her on the spot. “Are you going to punish me, Max? I was so bad.”

“We’ll talk about that later. Right now, let’s concentrate on keeping you on your feet.”

* * * *

The trip back to Erica’s apartment was a struggle. Though she dozed during the car ride, she woke as giggly and unsteady as before and he had to carry her to the front door. He searched her purse for the keys while she leaned on the doorjamb and fixed a seductive gaze on him. When he opened the door and pushed her inside, she lurched toward the couch and fell across the fluffy cushions, kicking her shoes off as she did.

“Oh, it feels good to get those off!” She laughed again as Max closed the door and shrugged off his jacket. He crossed the room and looked down at her, sprawled on the sofa, the hem of her dress cresting on her thighs just above the band of her stockings. The sliver of pale skin exposed above her garter beckoned him. Had he been a lesser man--a lesser vampire--he’d have been unable to resist a taste.

“What am I supposed to do with you?” he asked as she rolled on her side to make room for him on the couch. “I can’t leave you like this and by the time you sober up it’ll be daylight.”

“Sober up? I’m not drunk, Max. I only had that spritzer with dinner and ... hmmm ... What else did I have?”

“It’s not how much you drank, it’s what you drank. Someone drugged you tonight.”

Erica’s response was a sensuous sigh that rasped against Max’s heightened senses. She rolled onto her stomach and gave him a seductive grin over her bare shoulder.

“I don’t believe you.”

He sighed. This wasn’t how he’d pictured the evening ending.

“Come on.” He grabbed her wrist and dragged her to her feet. She fell against his chest and slithered one hand inside the front of his shirt.

“Take this off, Max. Let me touch you.”

“Maybe later. Right now you need to go to bed.” He held her up and guided her gently toward the bedroom, but halfway there she dug her toes into the carpet and stopped.

“Let’s do it right here, Max, on the floor. Make love to me right here.”

With her warm and pliant in his arms, how could he resist? He wanted her, in fact he’d wanted nothing else since the moment he saw her at After Dark. Why couldn’t he just give in and do as she asked?

“You don’t know what you’re asking, love. If you did, you wouldn’t have to say it twice.”

“I need you, Max. I need to feel something. Pleasure, pain, I don’t care. Just make me feel something.”

Max growled. The loneliness in her voice tore through him, touching memories he’d worked hard to suppress. How could he tell her he knew how she felt? He’d spent so many years not sure if he was living because nothing touched him since the night he’d been turned, lured by what he thought was a hot-blooded woman into a cold-water flat on the East End. No warm-blooded being came near him for decades after that unless he willed them to so he could feed from them. All he’d wanted for so long was to be touched, to be wanted like Erica wanted him now.

He allowed himself to caress her neck and shoulders, then slid one hand to the zipper of her dress. He tugged it down inch by inch to the small of her back exposing an expanse of perfect skin. When he ran his fingertips down the elegant ridge of her spine, her skin pebbled and she shivered deliciously.

He parted the V of black satin and let the dress fall over her hips and into a puddle on the floor. The sound she made as she leaned against him caused his aching cock to pulse with need. This is wrong, he told himself. If he indulged his fantasy too much longer, he’d lose control completely.

Before she made another sound, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her down the hall to the bedroom. The darkness made no difference to his enhanced eyesight. He saw as clearly as if the lights were on. The bed was larger than he’d have imagined for a woman who lived alone. Covered with a plumb-colored spread just a shade darker than the carpet, and heaped with satiny throw pillows, it invited much more than comfortable sleeping.

He drew aside the covers and placed her on the bed where she stretched sensuously. Her breasts jutted as she arched--begging him to touch the tight pink nipples and ivory mounds. She mumbled incoherently to him and reached out to draw him down on her, but he resisted.

He took her wrists in one hand and held them over her head. She writhed with pleasure at his demand, reveling in the power he held over her. Her reaction was almost too much for him. He could have her like this, dominate her and feel no guilt because she obviously enjoyed it.

If not for the drug, he’d have mounted her and shown her everything she wanted to learn.

Instead he took a deep breath and commanded her to remain still. She obeyed, and her eyes fluttered closed. He touched her face but she remained that way, finally asleep.

He sighed and reached down to unfasten the garters that held her stockings in place. One at a time he rolled the black silk down her legs, exposing the honeyed skin beneath. Behind her left knee he found a beauty mark that begged him to taste it. He would have, but the aroma of her skin, her arousal even in sleep, drove him mad. He had to finish his task and leave her before he gave in to his desires.

Now, wearing only a black thong, she sighed and stretched in her sleep. He removed the skimpy scrap of cloth, lowering it over her thighs slowly and reveling in her final secrets revealed.

He’d won. He’d undressed her, touched her and drank in her perfection with his eyes. Satisfied with his own resolve, he dragged the blankets over her, tucked her in and walked away.

Tomorrow, when she regained control of her senses, he’d tell her all about it in excruciating detail and thus begin her punishment.

* * * *

Erica floated in a sea of sensations. Ribbons of colored sound carried her high up to a cool mountain peak and down to a warm ocean of golden sand. She felt wonderful, but uncertain as well. She remembered tasting the color red, candy sweet and tempting on Vera’s sumptuous lips. She’d never been kissed by a woman before, never would have imagined that it could excite her.

Erica abandoned the troubling thought and concentrated on her dreamscape. The horizon stretched forever toward a blue sky filled with buttery clouds.

Elena looked down on her from those clouds and for an instant Erica tasted death. She cried out and reached for her sister. As she did, Elena’s face shattered and fell to earth, making a sound like hail on glass.

She woke to that sound.

Oh God. What had she done?

She turned to look at the window and the movement caused her head to throb. Sunlight peeked in around the drawn shade but the thrumming sound continued. So where was it in coming from?

The shower. She clutched the blankets to her body and shivered when she realized she was naked beneath them. Her dress lay neatly over the bedroom chair, her shoes and stockings sat on the floor beneath it along with her garter and black thong underwear. Her careful chignon hung around her shoulders and her mouth and eyes felt gritty.

Whoever was in the shower was whistling.

She cringed.

Then it came back to her in a flood of disturbing memories. The odd hangover cleared and her stomach, which moments before had been threatening to rebel, now rumbled for food.

She remembered only vague details from the night before and though her recollection was fuzzy, it didn’t include undressing herself. Max Hart had some explaining to do.

She threw off the blankets and hurried across the room to retrieve her bathrobe from its place behind the door. She looked in the mirror and smoothed her hair, then checked quickly for new bite marks before she closed her robe. Other than the spot on her neck that he’d drank from the night before, her skin remained flawless. Lucky for him, she thought.

“Max!” Standing before the bathroom door, she yelled once as loudly as possible, which only made the throbbing pain in her head resume with a vengeance. When Max didn’t answer, she pounded on the door. “Get out here, now!”

She waited a beat and stepped back when the bathroom door flew open. He wore only a towel, draped around his neck.

Their eyes locked for a moment, and Erica managed to hold her comments in check while he slid the towel off his shoulders and wrapped it around his waist.

“I see you’re up.” He greeted her with a raised eyebrow.

“You too.” She smirked and for a moment, the self-conscious look on his face made her forget her anger. Only for a moment. “What the hell did you do to me last night?”

His eyes darkened and he tilted his head. “Not half as much as I wanted to.”

Erica swallowed. She felt flushed and she was suddenly aware of the fact that she wore nothing beneath her thin cotton robe.

“What was in my drink last night?” she demanded stepping back as he left the bathroom. He headed for the living room and she followed him, clutching her robe around her.

“Some vampires use a combination of herbs to relax their feeders. Normally it isn’t that potent but you must have gotten an extra large dose. You’re lucky I got back to you when I did.”

“You shouldn’t have left me alone.”

“I didn’t have a choice. Benton Carlisle is a powerful vampire. I had to go with him. And while I was gone you were supposed to be following the other rules.”

“Well, I tried.”

“Not very hard by the looks of it.”

Erica crossed her arms over her breasts and watched him while he rooted around her living room gathering his clothes. A blanket from her linen closet lay over the couch attesting to where he’d spent the night.

“You wandered off and left me alone at a vampire orgy, where I got drugged and groped by another woman and--”

“And kissed. Don’t forget kissed.” He leveled a sardonic gaze at her.

Erica gaped. That memory came back, too. It hadn’t been a dream. Vera had been all over her. “And I’m to blame?”

“You were supposed to be obedient.”

“You told me to be disobedient. Didn’t you? Or did I misinterpret one of your many mixed signals?”

“What mixed signals?” He spread his arms wide leaving his towel unattended and hanging precariously.

“Oh let’s see--every one. I don’t know what to make of you, Max. Before we left here, you were acting like you wanted to.…”

“Like I wanted to what?”

Erica flushed hot. She couldn’t say the words. “Then you apparently brought me home, undressed me, and dumped me in bed ... alone.”

* * * *

Max dropped his gathered clothes and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest in a pose similar to Erica’s. Acutely aware of the fact that she’d already seen what was under his towel, he wasn’t sure he liked the direction the conversation was taking. Of course, with the sun up, he was trapped. Their argument would have to work its way to some type of conclusion and if they both didn’t get dressed very soon....

“What would you have preferred? That I took you in the state you were in? Don’t think I didn’t want to. Don’t think it was easy for me to peel that dress off you ... to slide your stockings down over your legs, inch off your underwear and leave you there, in bed unconscious and completely vulnerable.” Max paused and watched her reaction to his words. A faint tremor racked her and her breathing grew shallow. He knew she was contemplating how easy it would have been for him to do whatever he wanted with her.

“I’m a vampire, Erica. We come into the world ready to take what we want. It requires a lot of effort for us to act human sometimes. We’re governed by certain desires, needs we can’t ignore. Believe me when I say, it was all I could do to walk away from you last night because if I hadn’t ...”

“What?” Her voice was raw. He saw the hard tips of her nipples through the thin fabric of her robe and he remembered how badly he’d wanted to taste them last night. He remembered holding her close to him while he undressed her. The memory of her stretched on the bed, reaching for him made him hard all over again.

He could have taken her so easily then. But he didn’t want her that way. He wanted her with him--awake and aware and begging him to do things to her she’d only dreamed about letting a man do. He wanted to see her eyes go dark with desire and her lips part as she sighed his name.

“If I hadn’t ... I’d still be inside you right now.”