Blood Bound (5 page)

Grinning, he said, his hand at the small of her back, “Good. I was hoping.”

That made her laugh again. He liked that about her, her easy laughter.

He opened the door to the house for her.

“Shouldn’t you have servants for this? A butler or something?” she asked with a wave of her hand, giving him a teasing look from beneath her lashes as he escorted her into the foyer.

Her gaze was appreciative as she looked around the entry, taking in the thick Persian carpet on the floor and the antique table with the flower arrangement centered on it. Real, fresh flowers, the scent of which filled the room.

Much entertained, he said, “I gave him and them the night off.”

She looked back at him and raised an eyebrow as she said, “Did you now? Anticipating, were you?”

Oh, she was quick
.

There was a hint of challenge in her eyes.

Julian let his hand slide down to the small of her back once again to guide her into the library, enjoying the contact even as he tried not to let his nervousness show. He hoped she was the woman he thought she was. He liked the look of her in his home.

Mahogany hair spilled over her shoulder as she glanced back at him, blue eyes twinkling intriguingly, her lips curving.

She fit. She was a work of art in herself, a fine sculpture wrought of ivory and expensive wood.

That look alone was fascinating, engaging.

Her heels tapped lightly on the intricately tiled mosaic of the entryway before the carpet in the library muffled the sound.

“Let’s say I was hopeful,” he said, smiling in return, enjoying the banter despite his tension as they walked from the foyer into the library.

The room was impressive, with brocade draperies and dark wooden furniture that was clearly antique. Ancient tapestries decorated the walls between the bookcases. Art deco lamps illuminated the room, slender feminine figures reaching upward gracefully. A large screen was set above the fireplace. Despite the eclectic mix of styles and eras, it all worked somehow. It was lush, plush, and appeared to be surprisingly comfortable.

A laugh rang out, startling them both. “Oh, I do like her, Julian. She’ll do very well.”

Rafi turned, to find they weren’t alone.

Holding up a hand, Julian said, “Rafita, don’t be alarmed. As I told you, I wanted to introduce you to my cousin, Nico. Nico, this is Rafi.”

Rafi glanced at Julian and then looked at his cousin.

A glass of golden wine, too dark to be a white. in his hand, Nico stood at the back of the room. He eyed her with evident curiosity, his head tilted slightly.

Leaner than Julian, Nico’s eyes were more almond-shaped, a long-lashed golden brown instead of Julian’s depthless black. As aristocratic as his cousin in looks and bearing, Nico’s features were narrower, not quite as aquiline.

Where Julian was exotically handsome, Nico was simply beautiful.

“Would you like some wine?” Nico asked, as he held up his glass to admire it in the light. “Or something stronger, perhaps? Please not a puerile Chablis or Chardonnay.”

There was something in his voice, a bit of a dare.

Rafi remembered the vineyards that had stretched out on both sides of the driveway. A Chablis or Chardonnay would be a safe choice and one most women would take, appropriate for dinner or sitting on the terrace but not for a slightly cool evening.

“I would, please,” she said, giving him a look of amusement as she glanced from him to Julian. “If what you’re having is a sherry or something just as rich but not too sweet, I’d like some of it, please.”

His eyes glinting in return, Nico bowed his head a little.

Judging by that look, she’d passed his test.

Julian took her hand and raised it to his lips, smiling. “One for me as well, Nico, if you don’t mind?”

Rafi smiled back at him. Her pulse fluttered at the approving look in both their eyes.

Dressed more casually than Julian in jeans, a white shirt, and long bare feet, Nico crossed the floor toward them, two glasses of wine in his free hand.

Where Julian moved loosely, easily, Nico stalked like a tiger and yet Rafi sensed no real threat from him. For all his sardonic air, she sensed kindness in him, a warmth he hid carefully.

She’d known more than a few men like him, more sensitive in nature than they wanted to appear. The ironic tone of his voice was a nothing more than a defense mechanism. That vulnerability appealed to her, it brought out her protective instincts.

Nico handed her one glass and bowed with a little smile. His fingers brushed hers as he did, they lingered for just fraction of a second too long, his golden-brown eyes slanting toward her.

She sipped at the sherry as he walked behind her, warmth from the fortified wine filling her. He leaned a little close to breathe in her scent as he went past. The curiously intimate gesture somehow made her as intensely aware of him as she was of Julian.

*****

Both were incredibly handsome, very attractive, men and her body reacted to them naturally.

For a moment, she indulged in brief erotic daydream, one that had her areole pebbling and her pussy dampening. Her own private fantasy – both men making love to her, Julian with his lovely mouth on her throat while Nico ran his tongue lightly around her bared nipple. In an instant she was hot and aching, but careful not to show it.

The sherry was very good, rich, the warming her to her toes. That didn’t help.

Rafi waved a hand at the walls, looking at Julian and his cousin. Outside of a library, bookstore, or the piles scattered around her own house, she’d never seen so many books.

“Have you read all these?”

His expression softening, Julian eyed the bookshelves with evident satisfaction as he sipped his wine.

“Most, yes,” he said, and then smiled wryly. “All but the computer books, those are Nico’s. To me they’re incomprehensible.”

Nico grinned, as mischievous as a boy when he looked at Rafi. “He’s a complete noob. He feels the same about texting. I had to teach him how to use a cell phone for something other than phone calls.”

The mischief in his eyes made resisting his smile impossible.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t help but be aware of an undercurrent in the air. It was something about the way the two men kept glancing at each other. A silent communication. She sensed a strange tension, an invisible elephant in the room. As a cop, she had to be good at reading the signs that passed between people, the language of glances, the turn of the body. It was what she did. There was an air of…calculation…about the whole thing. Not that it bothered her much, since neither seemed threatening and she rarely went on a date unprepared.

Looking from one handsome man to the other, Rafi said, “All right, do you want to tell me what this is really all about?”

Calmly, Rafi sipped from her glass of wine and lifted an eyebrow, trying not to notice how her heart twisted at the possibility of disappointment.

Nico burst out laughing as Julian looked from one to the other of them, clearly nonplussed.

“She has you pegged already, cousin,” he said, amused, as he leaned back against a table.

Shooting Nico a warning look, Julian looked at Rafi intently. It wasn’t funny, not really.

“I want you to know I liked you from almost the moment we met and that this is very much about you, Rafi, the person,” he said. “About finding the right match. I, we, would very much like that person to be you.”

He looked at Nico, who nodded, a simple incline of his head.

Julian took a breath. This would be the difficult part.

He liked Rafi very much. She was mercurial, able to go from serious to laughing in the blink of an eye, she was bright and beautiful. He liked her but he wanted more. Much more. They both did.

“We have a proposition,” he said carefully, trying to find the right words. He didn’t want to lose her before they’d begun. “A personal, not business, proposition.”

They’d tried something like this before and learned from experience that they needed the right person. Finding her, finding that right person, had proven far more difficult.

His – their – wealth was a powerful but short-lived aphrodisiac. They had little need to work, save for the challenge their jobs provided them. Money, however, was cold companionship as those who loved it rarely loved anything, or anyone, else.

It had been painful each time and harder on Nico than it had been on him, as Nico had never known any other life than this one. Unlike Julian. It was an experience neither of them wished to repeat.

Rafi’s eyes were still, watchful, waiting as she looked at them. Her gaze moved from one of them to the other.

It gave him hope that she seemed so unimpressed by it all. This next though, was the hard part.

There was no way to sugarcoat what he needed to say. In the past he’d tried euphemisms, had tried to approach it obliquely. None of it had worked.

Julian took a deep breath, looked into her deep blue eyes. And took a leap of faith.

Listening, watching him, seeing the earnestness and the care with which Julian was taking in choosing the right words, Rafi sighed. That wasn’t a good sign. Her heart twisted a little more.

Propositions though weren’t so bad, though. Maybe. Especially personal ones.

First she would hear what it was they had to say. She liked Julian and Nico, too. Perhaps more than she should on such short acquaintance. There had been that instant sense of connection between her and Julian that first night. Something that made her heart yearn and her body ache.

She felt the same about Nico, his diffidence oddly charming.

“All right,” she said, keeping her heart and head still for a moment, seeing the need in Julian’s eyes. “I’m listening. Try me.”

“Rafi,” Julian said bluntly, “we’re vampires.”

There was a long, long, silence as she took it in.

Vampires. Paranormals.

Well, that explained a lot.

She looked at them, considering it.

In her job at one time or another she’d seen it all - the nutcases, the wannabes, the Goths and such. The posers and the real deal. The ones who not only walked the walk but talked the talk. Vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters of all kinds, zombies, voodoo, all of it.

There were fakes, of course.

It still surprised her how many people wanted to be paranormal, especially considering the number of paranormals who wanted to be normal. And some who were normal who wanted to be paranormal and yet were unable to make the final commitment to the change. And the ones that did. Not to mention all the paranormals who didn’t want to add to their numbers for whatever reason.

As a result there were parts of the city even cops stayed out of at certain hours or on certain nights, like the full moon. No one spoke of it, it was just understood.

Except for she and Sasha.

Walk into any convenience store or bar past a certain hour on certain days and you couldn’t be sure who or what you’d run into. They’d answered calls in vampire bars where the music was loud, the clientele were Goth, and younger vampires mixed with humans. Sometimes it was hard to tell one from the other. There was a strong aftermarket in ‘fangs’. Some dentists actually specialized in them. It was strange to walk into one of the clubs and watch the couples in the shadowed corners, one feeding from the other, the ecstasy on both their faces astonishingly erotic.

It had felt oddly voyeuristic. And a little exciting.

You quickly learned which were real and which weren’t.

Julian and Nico were very real.

Just the idea of it had her a little hot and damp between the thighs. The mental image of Julian’s mouth poised at her throat now had a new meaning. A meaning that had her pussy aching more than a little. Not that she let it show.

Rafi studied them, her senses on alert. She relied on instinct and it was usually dependable. Very dependable. She was proof positive of it. She’d ventured more than once into that uncharted territory and she was still alive to talk about it.