Claimed by the Immortal (The Claiming) (7 page)

He could finish her this way. He knew he could. But why hurry things needlessly? She had other delights he wanted to enjoy, delights she would enjoy, as well.

He pulled open her jacket, pulled down the neck of her sweater and pressed his mouth to the pulse in her throat. He licked her, feeling new shivers run through her with every movement of his tongue. He had promised not to drink but suddenly realized that was going to be a difficult promise to keep. This close to the throbbing vein in her throat, he could smell the perfume of her blood. It filled his nostrils and lungs, and his Hunger grew until it seemed to hold him in steel bands of need.

Just as he thought he might lose control, he snapped his head back. While his one hand continued to torment her below, squeezing, pressing, kneading, he slipped his other up inside her sweater and found her breast.

Her nipple had already engorged for him, feeling huge and hard in his palm. When he squeezed, she gasped, and finally she brought her arms up to grab his shoulders. Now she was participating, at last, holding him so he wouldn’t pull away.

He had no intention of doing so. He might be denied his ultimate prize, but her powerful sexual reaction was the next best thing. His own body hardened in response, throbbing and demanding, but he ignored it for now. Instead, he accepted her silent invitation to lower his head and suck and nip at her breast.

The shudders that gripped her as he nipped at her told him she wasn’t as far removed from his world as she might like to think. A little pain could amplify pleasure for some, and she was apparently one of them.

Satisfaction penetrated his heat-filled, Hunger-filled mind, and he bit just a little harder. Her response was instantaneous as she groaned and arched into him, and that response felt almost like his own.

It would have been better only if he had drunk from her.

He felt the moment when she crested, and he crested in response, like a snapping bowstring. Dimly, and with no little pleasure, he suspected that nothing she had wanted to settle had been settled at all.

Chapter 5

N
othing was settled. The thought floated vaguely into Caro’s mind as the spasms of her climax ripped through her in powerful waves long after she had passed the peak. Nothing.

Because pressed to a cold brick wall, with a vampire’s hand between her legs, holding her as hard as a vise, with her breast still aching from his ministrations, she knew she had just gone somewhere she had never gone before. Never had she experienced such a powerful orgasm, and she would certainly never have expected to experience one like this under these conditions. She still wore her clothes, even her gun and badge. And it was not a bed that sustained her as her legs weakened and wanted to give way, but a hand, a single hand, that had elicited pleasure she hadn’t even guessed she was capable of.

It appalled her to realize that she’d been settling all her adult life, never dreaming there was so much more to be had.

And it angered her that it had come from a vampire. She had wanted to put an end to this, to clear the air, and instead all she had done was discover something that could only lead to ultimate disappointment when she could no longer experience it again.

She was still trying to catch her breath when he removed his hand and steadied her against the wall by leaning gently against her. Her hands still gripped his shoulders, an unmistakable sign of her weakness, but as much as she wanted to pull them away, she didn’t seem able to yet.

He had left her as weak as a kitten. She didn’t like that at all.

Yet, whispered some honest corner of her mind, she wouldn’t have missed it for anything, although it left major problems in its wake. Now she would forever wonder what delights he could give her if she removed her limitations.

But anger returned her strength, and at last she pushed him away. He slipped back two steps immediately.

“Damn it,” she said.

“Did I disappoint you?” But his eyes, not quite golden, not quite black right now, said he knew he had not.

“Shut up, Damien. Let’s get over to Jude’s and look at the freaking books.”

He didn’t say another word, merely accompanied her back to the car meekly.
Meek? Hah!
Nothing about that vampire was meek and she had deluded herself right into a peck of trouble.

Well, see if she would let that happen again. She had learned her lesson: no more vampire sex. Ever.

* * *

Damien let her be. He’d made his point about how much she wanted him, though why he had he was now unsure. He should have just disappointed her and let her go her way. After all, he had a life to return to in Germany, and he had no intention of hanging around here for long.

Not that that had ever been a problem in the past. The women he shared sex with were women who intended to move on every bit as much as he did. This time he might have made a mistake.

But everything about Caro indicated anger, so that was probably good. If he tried to approach her again, she would probably shoot him, and while that wouldn’t kill him, it would certainly dampen his ardor.

The thought managed to amuse him enough to ignore the power her scents seemed to hold over him. He had just slaked one of his needs adequately enough, as he had slaked hers, yet the throbbing Hunger had already returned. That was a different experience for him.

He glanced her way and saw she stared straight ahead, her jaw tightened. Perhaps he hadn’t slaked anything for anyone. Maybe he’d just made it worse for both of them.

He wasn’t used to that. In the past, when he was done he was done, whether or not he’d drunk from his lover. Never before had the urge returned so swiftly.

Caro, he realized yet again, had quite an unusual effect on him. She had from the very start. His first slip just might have been an aberration, but what had just happened...that was no aberration. He could simply have ignored her scents and taken her out of there. He had
not
had to give in.

What was it about her that was causing him to act so irrationally?

There didn’t seem to be an answer, other than that something about her kept pushing him well past caution. Maybe he needed to worry about that a bit. In some way, this woman was dangerous to him.

Worse, he was beginning to realize it wasn’t just his Hunger for her. He liked her strength, her determination, her sense of humor. Perhaps that was the greatest danger of all.

* * *

Never had Damien imagined when he’d departed for the bookstore just how happy he was going to be to get back to Jude’s office.

Jude was alone, reading a stack of papers at his desk. He looked through the door of his office as the two of them entered. Damien saw his nostrils flare and realized the other vampire knew pretty much what had happened. Jude was suave enough not to mention it, though.

“Blood?” he asked Damien.

“Yes.” The need to drink had grown to an overpowering thirst since his encounter with Caro. Since those little nips he had given her had allowed him to taste a single droplet of her blood.

No other blood had ever tasted so good to him.

Making no effort to conceal what he was doing, he bit, fangs extended, into the bag of blood Jude gave him and drank. Let her see. Maybe that would throw up a barrier she would never let him cross again.

Instead, Caro barely spared him a glance and revealed no surprise at all. Evidently she had figured out how he must feed if he wasn’t robbing his sustenance from unwilling humans. And evidently, as a cop, it took more to disgust her.

Jude, once he ascertained what they had learned at the bookstore, announced he was going out for a while and taking the car. He didn’t say where, and no one asked. The tension in the room was enough to consume them.

Damien tossed the bag into a biohazard container when he was done, then settled at Chloe’s desk to read the parchment manuscript Alika had entrusted to him. Caro settled as far away as she could get on the couch and resumed reading her grandmother’s journal.

He could smell the anger around her still, along with the remnants of desire. He spared a moment to try to recall if ever in all his centuries he had relied on a human’s anger to protect him from his own loss of control.

No. Never. He’d have been amused if it weren’t so troubling.

He made up his mind then and there to return to Cologne the instant this matter was resolved. It had been a long time since he’d felt a need for self-preservation, but right now it looked like it might be necessary. The danger of a claiming hovered at the edge of his awareness, a folly he had managed to avoid for millennia. The fact that such a thought even edged toward consciousness was warning enough.

* * *

Sometime later, Caro closed her grandmother’s book with a snap. “This is no help.”

“Why not?” Damien asked.

“Because my grandmother was all about using power for good. All she says about misusing it is a big warning to never do so.”

“There’s often a price,” Damien agreed. “What people these days call
blowback.
Or, as they say, what goes around comes around.”

“Yeah, that seemed to be Grandma’s view, too.” She cocked a brow at him. “Did you never misuse yours?”

“I never called on dark powers. Ever. But I’ve known some who did.”

She leaned forward a bit, sensing deflection. “Never?”

He shook his head. “There are many ways to use power, Caro. Views of right and wrong change with culture. But this I can say with absolute certainty—I never called on dark powers. But this thing that is haunting you—I don’t feel it’s a dark power. It might have been summoned with a dark wish, but the power is neither good nor evil. It just
is.
I’m beginning to think it’s probably an elemental of some type.”

“Elemental? As in just a force?”

“Just a force. I feel as if I’ve encountered this particular one before, but I can’t place it. At any rate, there are plenty of these forces around us. They have no mind, they have no intent or thought. But they can be directed by a mage.”

“The bokor that was mentioned. Except I’m having trouble with that. I was scanning a book on voodoo...well, actually
vodoun
is the preferred name now, and it didn’t strike me as being the kind of thing the movies show. It seemed mostly benign.”

“It is. It’s a combination of animism with Christianity for the most part, and most practitioners intend no ill. But like any belief, it can be twisted and misused. Animistic religions have one advantage over the mainstream—they believe in elemental powers, and call on them. Variants of vodoun, from Santeria to hoodoo, call on elementals. And anyone, if they get angry enough or feel threatened enough, could turn to one of these elementals for protection. Even for murder.”

Caro thought that over, trying to recall anything her grandmother might have said about elementals. Well, maybe she had spoken of them, in terms of nature spirits. More of the stuff Caro had found so hard to swallow. “If you’re a mage, why can’t you just cast a spell to shut it down? And if it has no mind, why would it follow me?”

“First, I’m not absolutely certain it’s an elemental, although I’m inclined to think so. Second, I don’t know what summoning was used or for what reason. All of those things matter if I’m to be effective against it. As for why it would follow you, my guess is that it was simply ordered to leave no witnesses. Or it may be that the mage or bokor who summoned it was using his power to watch what it did and then attached it to you. Do you see the difficulty here? Until I know exactly what we’re dealing with, I have no way to counter it. Take those youths outside the store. I could cast no spell against the force driving them because I don’t know what it is or its purpose. I’d have had to resort to physical action.”

That did nothing at all to brighten Caro’s mood. Apparently there was a cliff on the edge of reality, and through no fault of her own, she had tumbled over it and was now in free fall, her every attempt to avoid this notwithstanding.

She looked over at the vampire who had done his own part to toss her into the abyss, and she hated him. But even as she hated him, she wanted him. How messed up was that?

To be fair, though, she had to admit she was the one who had wanted to “settle it,” and she had achieved exactly the opposite. She almost blushed when she remembered being pressed up against a wall, supported only by it and by the hand he’d so expertly used on her most private of places.

She hadn’t thought herself capable of such things. Glancing at him from the corner of her eye, she wondered how much more she might have in her to do. He certainly brought to mind things she’d never really thought about before.

Then she blurted, “What happens when you drink someone’s blood?”

He looked up from the parchment pages he’d been reading so swiftly that they seemed to be blown by the wind. “In what way? To a human? To a vampire?”

“I didn’t realize it was so complex.”

“That depends on how much and what you want to know.”

She hesitated, half-sorry she had brought this up but filled with curiosity anyway. Short-term, at least, she had a relationship with this vampire. Understanding was always useful for getting along, and for self-protection. While she mostly believed that Damien wouldn’t physically hurt her, there were other ways he could harm her. Best to be prepared and informed.

“Start with threats to me,” she said bluntly.

“Ah.” The pages had stopped turning, and now he rested one hand on the open book. His eyes seemed to darken, and she made a mental note to ask about that, too.

“Threats to you? None that are serious. I may want to share sex with you and I definitely want to taste your blood, but I wouldn’t take as much blood as you’d give as a donation to a blood bank. So, as you see, I wouldn’t debilitate you in any way. The only danger to you is one I believe Jude exaggerates.”

“Which is?”

“Some people enjoy it so much that they become addicted.”

Addicted to having your blood drunk. “That’s possible?”

“It is. I have seen it. An unscrupulous member of my kind would take so much and give so much pleasure while doing it that the experience becomes like cocaine. There are people who have become so addicted from a single encounter with a vampire that they haunt the vampire clubs seeking another such experience. Unfortunately, they become victims of the unscrupulous, who take but don’t return the pleasures.”

Caro was aware of more than one vampire club around town. “Most of those clubs seem relatively harmless—people just getting off on a fantasy.”

“Most of the time that’s all it is. They play little games and pretend.”

“It bothers me that some of the people pretending to be vampires actually drink blood, though.”

He lifted a brow. “Why, if it’s by mutual consent?”

“Because I can’t imagine a normal person wanting to drink blood.”

“Ah.” He thought about that. “The world is full of kinks, isn’t it? But for me this isn’t a kink. It’s reality. Blood repels you?”

“In and of itself, no. But I know I couldn’t drink it without getting sick.”

“I suppose that would be a common reaction among humans.”

Then she snapped back to what she had originally been trying to understand, and it wasn’t how some humans could drink the blood of another. She understood enough about the range of kinks from her job. She had seen far more dangerous ones than simply allowing someone to poke you or give you a minor cut to drink a few sips of blood. Worse than wanting to drink blood or give blood to someone who did, some fetishes were absolutely deadly.

“So the only way you could harm me is to make me addicted to you?”

“Not the only way. But I’d get no pleasure from having you addicted. I’d regret it. So far I’ve managed never to do that.”

“But what is so good about it?”

His gaze darkened even more. “I can’t really explain. You’ll have to take my word. There’s a place between life and death where only a vampire can take you, a place so full of ecstasy that words simply aren’t enough to describe it.”

Ecstasy.
He said it with such calm assurance that she found it hard to argue. What was more, the way he said it made her tingle and throb again. The experience he had given her such a short time ago had awoken cravings in her entire body. If he could give her even more than that...