Chapter Seventeen

Erica paced back and forth in Kyra’s living room while Max made phone calls. She’d grown tired of listening to his conversations and started straightening the place up to pass the time.

The other vampire, whom Max called Lucas, had come and gone and when he left, Erica followed him to the door and looked for rain. The sky was a beautiful clear blue and there wasn’t a cloud anywhere.

When Max finished his last call, she met him in the kitchen.

“Where’s the rain?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“When the neighbors left before, I thought I heard someone say it was raining. Am I going crazy?”

“No,” he laughed. “It’s a trick we use when we have to move around in the daylight. We use the capes and we give people around us the impression of a sudden downpour so they see someone huddled under an umbrella, or a newspaper. Whatever people do so they don’t get wet.”

“I guess you prefer days when it really is raining.” She managed a faint smile.

He nodded. “It’s not the daylight so much as direct sun. It burns--but not like in the movies. We won’t burst into flame. We just start to blister. It would take hours to actually reduce a vampire to ash.”

Erica held up her hand. “I don’t really want to know.” She sat wearily in a kitchen chair and leaned back as Max began rubbing her back. “Will she remember me? Will she feel pain?”

“Yes and yes. The change is difficult. It can be violent. If she wasn’t expecting it ....”

“You don’t think she wanted to be turned, do you?”

“Kyra never mentioned it. Some feeders, it’s all they talk about. Their ultimate goal is to become one of us.”

“But Kyra wasn’t like that?” The name felt strange in her mouth, like she was talking about a stranger. Technically she was.

“She never mentioned wanting to be turned. At least not to me.”

“How often did you feed from her?” Erica hated herself for asking. Like a self-inflicted wound, the sudden pain of it shocked her. Her eyes stung.

“Don’t do this, Erica.” Max sounded tired. She looked up at him and saw something in his eyes that touched her heart. She’d wounded him, too.

“I want to know.”

“We feed every two to three days by necessity. More if we have a regular feeder. I visited Kyra ... maybe three times a week.”

“And you slept with her all those times?”

Max gave Erica a dark look. If she insisted on opening up wounds, he could be coaxed into adding salt to them. He saw it in her eyes. She wanted to hurt. She wanted him to inflict pain.

“Most of the time.”

“Did you love her?”

“No.”

“Does Lucas love her?”

Max laughed, but the sound was cold. “Lucas doesn’t love.”

“Why not?”

“Do you want to talk about Lucas or Kyra? What do you want to know, Erica? Do you want to know if I enjoyed it? Yes, I did. Do you want to know if Elena enjoyed it? She said she did. She was always ready, so I guess she liked it. Did I feed from her the night I met you? Yes. Why? Because I wanted you so badly that if you’d let me, I’d have drained you. I’d have turned you just to make you mine and keep you with me forever, because I never met anyone who made me feel the way you did. Did I have sex with Elena that night? No, because I couldn’t imagine wanting anyone but you under me.” Max rose and grabbed her shoulders. He shook her gently until she looked up at him. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks.

“Max...tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do about you.” She sank into his arms and he held her. At first the contact was merely for comfort. He wanted to sooth her and calm her trembling but unbidden his body began to respond to her. Pressed against him, her heart beating against his chest, she felt like part of him. She was the part he’d been missing for so long.

He rocked her in his arms for a while longer, then tilted her chin up and kissed her. “Let me love you,” he whispered against her ear. “Let me make you feel something besides pain.”

She nodded and tilted her head farther back. He put his fingers against the fluttering pulse at the base of her throat, reveling in the rhythm of her body. He matched his phantom heartbeat to hers and, breath by breath, in unison, they moved together.

He led her to the living room. With all the shades drawn, it was night inside even though the sun was just about to set.

“Stand still,” he told her. “Don’t move.” She obeyed and he began unbuttoning her blouse. She wore nothing underneath, which pleased him. He opened the shirt and let his hands roam. She sighed as he cupped her breasts and kissed them.

Next he opened her jeans. The snap and the zipper were quick, but the slide down her thighs was slow and sensuous. She obediently stepped out of the soft denim and kicked off her shoes. He pushed the open shirt from her shoulders and let it fall, then explored beneath the waistband of her panties. His fingers found her wet center and delved inside. She gasped at the gentle intrusion and closed her eyes.

“Take them off.”

She didn’t hesitate. He guided her to the couch and stretched her out beneath him. He remained dressed for a time, lazily stroking her, kissing her and tasting her until her breathing became shallow. A gentle movement of his hips against her produced a low moan. He swallowed the sound with a deep kiss and guided her hands so that she could begin to undress him.

He took her slowly, watching her eyes dilate as their bodies joined. She sighed through parted lips each time he moved within her. This time he used his abilities to hold her reaction steady, to keep the ache from building so high that she’d beg for release. He thrust slowly, gliding in and out so that she could focus only on the sensation of friction within her. When she arched against him, he wrapped his arms around her and held her until she settled back again, content to feel nothing but the increasing pressure of his strokes.

“Let me...” she moaned. “Let me.”

“No. I want to hold you like this forever. I don’t want it to end.”

She smiled through the haze of sensation. “We can’t stay like this forever, but we can do it all again ... and again. Let me come and then we’ll start over.”

He kissed her and let her feel his tongue against hers. “You have to make another promise if you’re to get what you want.”

Her eyes widened. “Don’t ask me for promises I can’t keep.”

“Then make a promise you will keep.” He punctuated his question with a movement that brought her to the edge. She shuddered and clung to him, ready to dive. “Be with me, Erica. Stay with me. Don’t make it end.”

She looked up at him, her cheeks flushed with sexual heat, her lips parted. He moved again, a gentle thrust that brought him deep inside her. He felt the first pulse of her orgasm. “Love me.”

“I do!” She gasped the words out and rocked against him as she came. The rhythm of her body brought on his own release and he gave her the sensation of liquid heat spilling inside her. She moaned. “I love you, Max. I need you.”

He slammed into her, roused by her words. Even if she only meant it for the moment, for now it was enough. He clutched her to him and held her tightly as she shuddered against him. He breathed her name over and over until she slept, wrapped in his arms, sated.

* * * *

He left her in Kyra’s apartment, asleep on the couch. Before he rose and disengaged his body from hers, he’d whispered to her to wait for him and not to think about her sister.

He hated using mind control. Some vampires relied on it to get away with everything, even murder. The ability kept those around him from becoming suspicious about his true nature, but it made him feel dishonest to use it. A side effect of the change, it relied more on pheromones than mental powers, but either way, it was a form of manipulation. Necessary now and then perhaps, but dirty as far as Max was concerned.

With someone as stubborn as Erica, what choice did he have? The last thing he needed was for her to go looking for Elena and find something she still wasn’t ready to accept.

He wanted to find a way to make it easy for her.

Lucas didn’t answer his cell, but that didn’t mean much. Max knew where to find him.

Gregori Nachevik’s old estate had changed hands relatively easily when the balance of power in the vampire world shifted abruptly last December. When Gregori chose Jake Beaumont as his successor, the entire vampire infrastructure in North America rattled. Rumor had it, there was a faction brewing that planned to remove the new king from power and a faction that remained dedicated to Gregori’s choice. It didn’t matter to Max either way, as long as he had an ally in power when he needed it. He planned to make sure Jake Beaumont was that ally.

The gothic mansion had a modern flair, bright lights, and cleaner lines than before. The spiked wrought iron rails that had adorned the parapets and widow’s walks when Gregori ruled now lined a perennial garden and gave purchase to flowering vines.

Fresh blood in the vampire world meant lots of changes but not all of them were good.

A distinguished older man in a dark suit met Max at the front door. He bowed as Max climbed the front steps.

“Mr. Hart. Mr. Vitale told us to expect you this evening.”

“Is Mr. Beaumont here? I’d like to speak to him as well, if I may.”

“Not this evening, sir. Come inside. You can leave him a message.” The butler stood aside to allow Max to step into the huge foyer. Max stood in the center of the room for a second, looking up at the enormous chandelier dangling overhead. The place seemed so different since his last visit, larger somehow and just a shade more inviting.

“I’ll see Mr. Vitale,” he said. “And I’d like to leave a message for Mr. Beaumont.”

“Very good, sir. This way.”

The man gestured to the dark paneled wall and a hidden door slid open at his approach. A narrow, dark corridor stretched beyond. Max eyed the butler skeptically. The lower levels of the mansion had always been reserved for the darker aspects of Gregori’s world. He had to wonder how they were now being used.

The man bowed. “Mr. Vitale is in the room at the end of the corridor.”

“Thank you.”

Max entered the hallway and crossed cautiously to the far door. He knocked.

“Yeah?”

Max opened the door and peered inside. Candlelight illuminated the small room beyond. A round bed draped in red satin dominated the room. As Max entered, Lucas rolled to the edge of the bed. He gave a sardonic look as he pulled the blood red sheet around him.

A sleek, dark head bobbed up from the nest of pillows at the top of the bed. Kyra grinned at Max as she arched languidly to a sitting position, licking her newly acquired fangs.

“I’m ready for more,” she purred. “How about you, Max? Come let me show you the new me.”

Max’s gaze bounced from Kyra to Lucas and back as his partner began collecting discarded clothes from the floor.

“I guess I don’t have to ask if Kyra woke up all right,” he said. Thoughts of Erica plagued him. While she worried and mourned for her sister, Lucas was welcoming Kyra into the vampire fold with a good fuck.

“I’m great!” Kyra slithered from the bed and padded naked across the room. She sidled against him and draped her arms around his neck. He avoided her gaze, too similar to Erica’s, and disengaged her slender fingers from his collar.

“So this was planned. Benton Carlisle turned you by request.”

She nodded, gave him a quirky grin that showed her fangs. “He had permission, too. He did it to save me from myself. Poor messed up Elena--drowning in booze and strung out on drugs. He offered me a new life.”

“I’ve never seen you drunk or stoned.” Max crossed his arms over his chest, kept his gaze leveled at a spot on the wall above the bed while Lucas yanked on his jeans and shirt. Kyra accepted the discarded sheet and draped it artfully over her thin frame.

“Of course not. I had to get clean first. Now, I can stay clean. I don’t need all that stuff anymore.”

“Didn’t it occur to you that if you could kick your habits as a human, you didn’t need to be turned?”

Kyra laughed. “No. Do you know how many times I tried? How many times I swore to Ricki that I’d give it up, I’d let her sign me into some rehab where some half-assed counselor would tell me my problems stemmed from the fact that I didn’t get a pony for my seventh birthday? And that I need to ‘own’ my addictions in order to conquer them? Just the thought of spending twelve weeks in a ‘share circle’ sent me running for a fix or a drink. I don’t need that anymore. All I need is a ripe feeder.” She turned a sultry grin toward Lucas. “Can you get me another one, Luke? I’m hungry again already.”

“What about Erica? Why did you drag her into this?”

Kyra’s laugh was ice cold. She shrugged her pale shoulders and reached for the door but he blocked her path. When she looked up at him, he saw vampire in her eyes.

“Erica will do anything for me. If you know her, you’ve seen that already.” Kyra leaned toward Max again and she breathed in the warm essence of Erica that lingered on his skin. “Mmm. You do know her, don’t you? She’ll do whatever she has to in order to see that I get what she thinks I need.”

Max grabbed her wrist and twisted. Kyra snarled, fangs extended. Lucas came up behind her, trapping her shoulders with his massive hands. “What do you mean, she’ll do anything she has to do?”

“Whatever Benton Carlisle expects of her. He owns her now. In exchange for turning me, I gave him Erica.”