Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1) (13 page)

“Somewhere away from you, I hope,” she mumbled to herself. It wasn’t quite low enough to where he couldn’t hear her. His eyebrows raised a little, and he shook his head as he focused on slicing the meat.

“God, I wish,” he mumbled right back.

Sarah pushed her stool back and threw her still-empty coffee cup into the sink. She was amazed it didn’t shatter.

“What the hell do you mean,
you wish
? Look, I know you see me as nothing but snack time, but damn it, you don’t have to be mean!”

Taris stared at her for a minute, knife in one hand, a bloody piece of roast in the other. He watched her chest heave, watched the anger bloom on her face in a crimson rush. Damn, she was royally pissed off. But wasn’t that what he wanted? He wanted her to be a royal pain-in-the-ass bitch to him. That way, he would have every reason to stay away from her. It wouldn’t do him any good to tell her the truth—that if he had his way about things, they would have already been playing a rousing game of naked Twister right there in the kitchen. Yeah, her being angry at him was the best tactic.

But damn him if watching her lash out and show that temper didn’t somehow shred any ounce of control he had over his libido to confetti.

Play it cool, Taris. Play it cool. Push her away. For everyone’s sake
.

Screw that.

“I would love to sit here and pretend like I don’t want you to hang out here because I find you repulsive, but the fact of the matter is that I find you to be quite the opposite. Now you can be a bitch and put on that whole stonewall act with me, but I know better. So zip it, and let’s do this thing.” His temper was flaring, and without thinking, he flicked his wrist and buried the carving knife into the countertop. The granite countertop. Sarah’s eyes went wide, and the anger in them melted into something else.

“Oh, look at you, big man, trying to scare a little girl.” She pushed her stool back up to the counter and sat down. “You gonna make me a sandwich, or do I have to do that for you, too?”

“Okay, that shit is not gonna fly. You’re not playing that card with me.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“My ass!” Taris pulled the knife out of the stone as if it were no more solid than butter. “You aren’t going to make me feel guilty about keeping you here to help us. We need you. Kalin needs you.”

Taris finished filling a plate with slices of beef, simultaneously throwing the plate in the microwave and nudging the fridge door open with his boot. He put the remainder of the roast back in and took out some cheese and other sandwich accoutrements. He held them all in one arm, reaching for a loaf of bread that was twisted shut.

“I’m sorry about what happened earlier.”

Sarah raised her head. “What was that?”

He threw four slices of bread on the counter and twisted the lid off of the mayonnaise jar. With the same knife he had used to cut the beef, he spread a thin layer on two pieces of bread before looking up at Sarah. “You want?” She nodded her head in agreement, and he went back to fixing the sandwich. Once he had loaded them both down with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise, he grabbed the plate out of the microwave and piled both sandwiches high. He topped them with a few slices of cheese and placed the other piece of bread on top. He threw hers on a plate and handed it to her, grabbing his with one large hand and taking a huge bite as he loaded the condiments back into the fridge. When the door was shut, he leaned against the counter next to it, crossing his legs at the ankles.

“I said,” he swallowed, “I said I was sorry about earlier. I lost my cool, and I shouldn’t have. You would have come around, and I forced the issue.”

“S’okay,” she mumbled, placing a hand over her mouth. “This is really good.”

“Kalin is the best chef on the planet, if you ask me. Always has been, though.” He took a huge bite of his sandwich, and Sarah had to force herself to look away as he absently licked some mayonnaise off his palm.

“I didn’t think vampires ate regular food.”

“Hmm,” he let out a grunt and shook his head as he chewed. “See,” he swallowed the bite, “common misconception. There seem to be a lot of those floating around about us, which is cool. I mean, I don’t get bent out of shape about it like a lot of people do. But, yeah, we eat regular food.”

Sarah leaned over and accepted the napkin that he held out to her. “If you eat regular food, then why do you have to…you know?” She didn’t finish the sentence but pointed to her canines and then to his.

“Oh, these.” He touched the tip of one white pointy fang and sucked at his finger when the touch drew blood. “We have to feed.”

“I get that, but why? I mean…from a physiological standpoint?”

“You ask a lot of questions, you know that?”

“I’m a doctor. That’s my job.” She paused for a moment.

Taris finished his sandwich in one enormous bite and turned to the fridge for a beer. For reasons even his own brain couldn’t comprehend, instead of twisting the cap off, he hooked the metal lip with one fang and popped it loose into his mouth. He then spit the cap across the room.

“That how you pick up chicks?” Sarah smirked.

“It’s been known to turn a head or two.”

“Yeah, I didn’t really need to see that.”

He took a huge gulp from the bottle. “Can we get back to this explanation?”

Sarah narrowed her eyes as he leaned forward against the island. “You drink a lot?”

Another gulp. “Lately, I do. Now can we get back to business, please?”

She sat back and crossed her arms. “Fine.”

“Thank you.” Taris tipped the bottle up and finished it off, pulling the empty glass away from his lips with a
pop
. Instead of throwing it away, he held onto it. “Now, you asked me about the blood feeding, and then you interrupted me because you think you know everything. Simple explanation is, our blood cells need to eat other blood cells to survive. Plain as that. It wasn’t evolution that made us what we are, we just…are. Born to this earth, just like you, and just like you, we have a right to be here. Technically speaking, we are higher than you on the food chain because we need human blood to survive. Because of His divine wisdom, God saw fit to give us certain, shall we say, talents to mask our activities. People don’t usually know they have been bitten.”

“Oh, please.” Sarah sat straight up, unaware that her gaze had been fixed on his long fingers, which had been toying with the edges of the label on the bottle. “That’s such bullshit. You mean to tell me you can manipulate the mind? How gullible do you—”

Think about it, Doctor. There are many wonders of the universe. Do you think people are so highly developed that they have figured it all out?

“Oh my God!” That voice, in her head. It was Taris. She watched the smirk bloom across his face.
Holy shit, they
can
read minds
.

Which was really, really bad. If they could read minds, then he knew every dirty thought she’d had about him, and if that was the case, then maybe that was why he wanted her to leave.

“And before your brain starts going haywire, don’t worry—we can’t read your thoughts.”

“But you were just in my head,” she whispered, almost to herself.

“I put a thought into your head. It’s what we do. We feed, and then we kind of overpower the mind to make it think something else happened. Look at your finger.”

Sarah looked down at her finger and saw it was bleeding. How did that happen? She didn’t remember cutting it or bumping into anything.

“You don’t remember that happening, do you?” Taris leaned over and took her hand in his. “You just spent your last few thoughts thinking about how and where this happened, right?”

She nodded her head.

“While you were listening to me chitchat in that incredibly intelligent brain of yours, I bit your finger.” Before she could protest, he lifted the finger and stuck it into his mouth. She stared wide-eyed as she felt his tongue play on her skin. Abruptly, he pulled it out again. “See? All better.”

Her chest was heaving. All she could do was stare at him. And he stared back, those amber eyes of his beating down every ounce of reason she had. She was angry with him, despised the methods he’d used to get her there and to prove his point, but every glance, every interaction, every fleeting nip he’d taken was dissolving the barrier she’d built. He was gorgeous, and there was no denying it, but her admiration of his manifold attractions were turning more and more into a kick-start for her sex drive.

“We, um,” Taris stood up straight, “we need to get going. We are expected elsewhere. I will make sure you have some clothes and personal items, but for right now, we need to go.”

He grabbed his trench and walked toward the hallway. He stuck his head into the room that she knew was Kalin’s and muttered something before he shut the door again and stormed down the hallway.

“Well. Come on.”

It took her a minute to feel her feet, but she was finally able to steady herself and follow him, the whole time looking at that broad back, creaking underneath yards of leather.

Vampires. Impossible, and yet it was sinking in. And there were two of them. One of them she couldn’t help but already be madly in love with. Kalin was a gentle soul, one who wanted to love and comfort, one who needed solace in her life.

The other one, she had to stop thinking about. Otherwise, anything she managed to accomplish would be nothing short of chaotic disaster.

Taris lifted the large knocker and let it fall back into place. The thud of the metal hitting the door was so loud that it shook Sarah.

“Don’t say a word.”

“I didn’t.” Sarah cocked an eyebrow and looked up at him. His hazel eyes were heated, intense, and staring right through her.

“When we go in here, let me do all the talking. These are extremely old beings. They are more than willing to help, but they are also very private and incredibly territorial.” He turned his face back to the door. “They don’t like outsiders.”

“You mean they don’t like humans.”

He turned back to her, those eyes once again beating her down. “No, Dr. Bridgeman, I mean they don’t like outsiders.” He let out a sigh and looked away. “And they are just as human as you are.”

They both shot to attention when the pitch black suddenly turned as bright as the daylight when the floodlights that flanked either side of the monster mansion kicked on. Her heart began pounding in her chest like a racehorse, and for the first time since they had made that hike up the million-mile driveway, she realized where she was, what she was doing there, and what was lurking on the other side of that door.

The metallic sound of sliding locks echoed into the chilly evening air, and with every one that was pulled back, she felt her blood pump even faster.

The door creaked open, and on the other side stood a female being that defied every natural law known to God and man. She sat perfectly still for a minute, and then suddenly launched at Taris. Taris, in turn, grappled with her, taking the being into his arms, swinging her around in circles, lifting her feet off the ground. The more he spun, the more the noise coming from her filled the air. The sounds blended until Sarah could no longer even tell from whom they were coming. All she could do was hang back, in complete and utter shock and silence, and watch. It felt like ages before he set the female down onto the concrete walkway.

“You look…well, you’ve looked worse.” She smiled up at Taris, and as she did, her brilliant white fangs flashed in the floodlights.
Great, more vampires
. Her voice was husky, and the rich accent of it rolled in Sarah’s ears. It was different from the randomly touched words that both Kalin and Taris let out when they spoke. Occasionally, their speech was flavored with what she could only assume was once an incredibly pompous British accent, but this was different. She rolled her
R
’s. The accent sounded comfortable, like a brogue that lullabies were invented for.

“And you, Rhiannon, have never looked better.”

“Thank you, my darling, but why on earth did you knock? I knew you were coming.” She pointed to the nine-pointed maroon star tattooed on the inside of her wrist. The being, whose name was apparently Rhiannon, ran a hand through her mane of long red hair. The thick waves stopped at the middle of her back. She had piercing, almond shaped blue-green eyes that were framed by thick, dark lashes. Her skin was fair and smooth. Sarah could have sworn she was made out of porcelain. Her long body was trim and fit. In spite of her lithe form, she was very curvy and extremely well endowed. In addition to her ethereal face and gorgeous body, the woman also had some interesting ink. On her left hand was a black band tattooed where a wedding ring would normally be. In the center of her back, between her shoulder blades, she had some kind of foreign writing—similar to whatever Taris had on his arm. Sarah began analyzing it, wondering what it meant. Wondering what
they
meant, to each other, actually.

“Seriously, why in the name of all that is holy did you knock? When did you start doing that? Come into the house. It’s freezing out here.” Rhiannon wrapped her arms around her shoulders and began to rub them furiously. As she turned toward the threshold, Taris caught her by the arm.

“What are you pulling me back for? It’s cold out! I want a fire and a whisky, and you look like you could use the same. I dare say you’ve been working yourself too hard and…”

“Have you talked to Judah? About why I came tonight?” he asked.

“Oh, sure,” Rhiannon replied, still rubbing her arms. “He said you were going to be bringing that doctor by, the one with the cure. He just got back from getting supplies to help her, although he and Achan did cause a bit of a stir. Drew down some security guard with a gun. Judah took a graze to the shoulder, but nothing that his eighty-eight keys and a cold pint won’t fix. Why do you ask?”

Taris spun her around and set her firmly in front of Sarah, who was still taking in the awesome sight that was the vampire Rhiannon. The instant their eyes locked, she felt inadequate…yet again.