Deep Desire: The Deep Series, Book 1 (3 page)

“Do you expect me to believe that you are…? I can’t even say it.” Adin raised his brows. “The undead. A creature of the night. The prince of darkness.”

Donte pursed his lips. “I believe
that
was Satan.”

“Yes. Well. Do you really expect me to believe such nonsense?”

“Your lack of faith doesn’t alter the facts. The journal is mine. I drew it. I illustrated it. I
lived
it. It belongs to me, and I want it back.”

Adin sighed. “You’ll have a hard time proving that in court.”

Donte looked out over the skyline. “Did you ever hear the story about the brothers who were camping in the woods? A bear crashes into their campsite and begins to chase them. The first brother says, ‘I must outrun the bear,’ and the second says, ‘I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.’” He shook his head. “You know I cannot take this to a court of law, caro.”

Adin peered out at the city and the darkness beyond it. “Fair warning?”

“Yes.”

“I liked you a lot better without the glamour, you know? Whatever causes it.”

Donte’s teeth shone even and white as he smiled, and Adin wondered about that, Renaissance dentistry being what it must have been. Looking at Donte, he wondered about a lot of things.

His most immediate question, which he framed with a smile of his own, crowded out all those other thoughts. “How long do we have the elevator?”

Donte’s bark of laughter caught them both by surprise. “Caro, you imp. This is almost as unseemly as that airplane bathroom. There are cameras…”

“Then in the morning we can Google ‘gay elevator sex video’ and see if we get a hit on ourselves.” Adin approached Donte and pressed their lips together, which seemed to be the last thing either of them expected. “I find I very much like tight spaces if they have you in them, Donte.”

“This is a
glass
elevator,” Donte countered, kissing him back hungrily. “I think you should know that whatever you have planned needs to be accomplished before we reach the tenth floor or everyone in the lobby court will be witness to our passion and subsequent arrest for indecent exposure and lewd conduct.”

Adin snorted. “I think you might be that quick off the mark, at your age, but—”

“Invite me to your room,” whispered Donte.

Adin froze. “Ah, yes, well.” He backed up, regret in his eyes. “Sorry. I can’t do that.”

“Superstitious? I could make you do it.”

“Actually, I don’t believe you could.” This seemed as good a time as any to test it. If Donte could get Adin to do anything he wanted, then the game was over before it began anyway. A tremendous wave of emotion washed over him, deep fear that crawled up his spine like a vine. It was an interesting sensation, but because he expected it, he could hold himself apart from it. He could acknowledge and explore it without letting the frightening emotions touch him.

Adin sorted through his fear, probing at it like a sore tooth. At its core was the desire to reach out to Donte for protection.

Donte watched him curiously.

“Hey, nice,” said Adin. “If you could make people think they’d eaten, you’d be a remarkable diet aid.”

“I am the very apex of the food chain on this planet, Adin. Try to have a little respect.” Donte’s mouth quirked, the beginnings of a smile forming on his luscious lips.

“Nevertheless, it isn’t going to work on me now that I can feel it coming.” Adin smoothed a hand over Donte’s jacket and tie. Adin’s
own tie
, which Donte had taken from him. “The color suits you.”

“You spent on
my
tie, Adin. I had to have it cleaned.”

“Ah.” There didn’t seem to be much more to say. Adin looked back at the numbers.

“Well,” said Donte. “Isn’t this awkward?”

“Give me a minute. I’m warming up to asking you out for dinner.”

“Really?” Donte’s perfect mouth formed in a small O of surprise. “If I go with you, does that qualify as takeaway for me? I wonder…”

Adin laughed again.

“You seem remarkably calm in the face of what could be a very short, very frightening night on the town. Do you realize this?”

“Yes, I realize you could kill me to get your manuscript back. But you haven’t, yet. Instead, you’ve stopped using your mojo and turned on that personal charm. I have to figure I stand a chance, at least, to greet the dawn alive.”

“You think my personal charm is all that, do you, Adin?” Donte leaned toward him.

“As if you didn’t know you were
every
month in my Undead Playmate Calendar.”

“I like you, Adin,” said Donte warmly.

“I hope you don’t mean that in the epicurean sense, love.”

“Of course.” Donte smiled. “First course, entrée, dessert. I’d serve you between the cheese course and the après-dinner coffee.” He lowered his lashes. “You were delicious. A hint of Irish butter. A note of berry. A little sweet, a little tart.”

“I admit I have been called a little tart before.”

Donte tilted his head back and laughed. “Where shall we go, caro? Someplace where you will sparkle for me all night, yes?”

“Oh no. Am I sparkling again?” asked Adin. “I have just the place, Donte, but first tell me, do you eat? Or just drink?”

“I won’t be eating.”

“Ah, then no porterhouse for two at Table 8.” He sighed. “Too bad, it’s rather wonderful. I think in that case we can head over to Vin, my sister’s favorite.”

“All right, do you have a car?”

“No, we can get a cab. It’s over on Santa Monica, in West Hollywood. On the way, perhaps you can fill me in on the whole garlic thing. Is it a dating do or don’t for vamps, and will I get kissed if I eat it?”

“You are remarkably sanguine, no pun intended, for a man in an elevator with a vampire.”

“Little reality check.
If
I believed in vampires, and I’m not saying I do, you haven’t proved you are one to my satisfaction. You fucked me in an airplane bathroom, bit my neck, and tried to steal a million-dollar manuscript from me. I think I’m being remarkably optimistic about the whole affair. I’ll even pay for dinner. No stakes, I promise, just poultry or fish.”

“Very funny.”

The elevator lurched as it picked up speed.

Adin glanced at the floor numbers, now lighting up sedately in descending order. “Ladies and gentlemen, how does he do it?”

“I’m beginning to feel mocked,” said Donte sourly.

Adin caught his hand. “Apologies, Donte. Truly. If you are who—and what—you say you are, then I apologize from the bottom of my heart. I’ve read only a few pages of that manuscript. It’s beautiful, the art and the entries. They were highly skilled and lyrical.”

The elevator doors opened at the lobby.

“After you,” Donte said, ignoring the looks on the faces of the maintenance men who had apparently been called in to deal with a rogue elevator. “When people of this age look at that journal, all they will see is sex. It is
Boys Gone Wild
, the Florentine edition.”

“Donte—”

“Don’t look at me like that. You called it Renaissance pornography. So thought de Sade, that
awful
little shit.”

“Don’t you dare—” Adin stopped in his tracks “—compare me to the Marquis de Sade.”

“You collect manuscripts like mine, yes? You are the quintessential American reading those glossy sex rags for the articles. Certainly, it is compelling that Tanya enjoys long walks on the windy moor at night, needlepoint and Labrador retrievers. But is that why you read it? I think not.”

“I’m sorry,” Adin said as the doorman called over a cab for them. Donte tipped him generously.

“For what?”

Adin gave the address, and the cab pulled out. “I don’t think you understand my interest in that manuscript.” Adin pulled his seat belt across his body and clicked it into place. He raised his brows when Donte didn’t do likewise. Donte raised his eyebrows back, as if to say,
Hello, already
dead
.

“Oh, right, where was I?” Adin asked. “I’m a professor of literature, and among other things, I specialize in antique erotica. In fact, my credentials are such that people pay me to search out and authenticate manuscripts for private collections, museums and academic institutions.”

“So this makes you the Indiana Jones of smut?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Adin teased.

“All I see is an acquisitive man with a healthy disrespect for authority.” Donte looked out the window. “Someone for whom the private lives of kings and princes and priests are merely fodder for prurient speculation.”

“That’s harsh.”

“Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you see the authors of your manuscripts as people, like you, with a tiny little sliver of mortality to sustain or enjoy or endure in any way they have to.”

Adin had no answer to that.

“I speculate that you cannot place yourself in the shoes of these men. You think you are far superior. Above the normal cravings and desires these books represent.”

Adin shook his head. “You can’t really believe that.”

“But I do,” said Donte. “I believe you have it all very neatly sewn up. Tariq in Frankfurt, who offers the opera and his perfectly lovely flat. There must be others, perhaps located in major cities all over the world. Tonight, I am Don Giovanni de Los Angeles. Will someone else be disappointed this evening? Was someone expecting you?”

“Only my sister. We were going to have dinner, but I asked her if we could do lunch instead.”

Donte rumbled with laughter. “Because it will be daylight?”

“Yes.” Adin admitted.

“In the interest of fairness, while you dine I will fill you in on what you can and cannot expect from me. At least some of it. It wouldn’t do to give out all my secrets.”

The cab pulled up to the curb, and Adin removed his wallet to pay the driver. “Thank you,” he said to the man, who looked at him with curiosity. Adin smiled and exited, Donte followed him, rising easily to his full height and closing the car door behind them.

Chapter Three

As usual, Vin was packed; even late at night, a crowd thronged the bar. Adin figured they’d have to wait for a table, but Donte turned on the full power of his charm and the electrified host sat them at a lovely, private table immediately. Adin noticed others staring hard in their direction, no doubt wondering who they were that they got the star treatment. Adin shrugged, and Donte took it as his personal due, nodding regally at those who gazed at him.

“Noblesse oblige?” asked Adin.

“It never hurts to be kind, Adin.”

“Said the aristocrat vampire pornographer.” They sat in silence until it was time to order wine.

“Hartford Court Pinot Noir 2005,” Donte told the sommelier. “If you have it.”

“We do,” the man said. “A good choice.”

Donte returned his attention to Adin. “He’s thinking, ‘not an
excellent
choice,’ and wondering why I would order a small California wine here, in a restaurant famous for its cellar.”

“So, you read minds?”

“No, I read faces. And to be honest, they are all beginning to look remarkably similar. It puts me in rather a quandary. For instance, how much of my attraction to you is because of you, and how much is because you remind me of a certain French portrait artist named Gilbert who completely rocked my world during
la Terreur
?”

“I can see the dilemma.”

“Can you? Do I remind you of anyone?” Donte asked idly.

“No, Donte,” Adin admitted. “You are like no one I’ve ever known in my life.”

The wine arrived, and the sommelier enacted the wine drama that never failed to make Adin wish he’d just ordered a Bushmills. Donte didn’t play along much, refusing the cork, then simply breathing in the aroma of the wine in the glass.

“Fine.” He smiled. “Thank you.”

The sommelier retreated.

“This wine is delicious, but to be honest, I picked it because it goes very well with—and I hope you won’t take this wrong—you.”

“Ah.” Adin was almost speechless. “Well.
I
was going to order the roast pork.”

“Oh, that has a cherry sauce. You’ll find that dish goes with the wine as well, as there’s a complex cherry-berry note that comes right through. Taste it if you want. You’ll notice it right away.” Adin lifted his glass and took a small sip. Donte was right. In its dry elegance, it had a definite note of cherry, and something indefinable and sweet, like winter food.

“It tastes like Christmas.”

“Ah, that’s the allspice. You noticed? You have a good palate.”

“Not really,” Adin demurred, absurdly pleased.

“So, you wonder about the garlic, which is a myth, by the way. And you hope daylight will prevent me from taking what’s mine.”

“Yes.”

“Well, in theory, it would. But I am sorry to tell you that a number of things make it easier, including modern pharmacology, which I believe is your sister’s purview, is it not? Sunblock makes the world a safer place for me. Better living, as they say, through chemistry.”

“So you use sunblock?”

“Yes, and hats and gloves. It’s a tedious process, and far too hot in Los Angeles, but in the end, I can go where I like, whenever I like. Even if I look odd while I’m doing it. Still, there are few, if any, things I choose to do during the day, especially now that baseball is played at night, with lights, even at Wrigley Field.”

“You like sports?”

“No.” Donte took a sip of his wine. “I don’t like sports much at all. I like
baseball
, which is not a sport. I thought you were a literature professor. Baseball is a metaphor for innocence.”

“I see. And the current controversy over performance-enhancing drugs?”

“Once again, man bites the apple. It’s the oldest story in the book, literally. The sons and daughters of God are again thrown from Eden.” He lifted the corners of his lips in a half smile. “Only now they are wearing high-performance sneakers.”

“And what about you, Donte? What did you do to earn immortality?”

Donte’s eyes met Adin’s curious gaze without answering.

Adin relaxed as the wine traveled its path through his body, warming him and loosening his tongue.

“Let me tell you why you will eventually give the journal back to me,” said Donte.

“Yes, why?” Adin was beginning to feel thoroughly pleasant in a toes-wrapped-in-cotton-batting kind of way. “What is in your own journal that you couldn’t write again?”

“As if I could begin to explain to you the complexities of Italian noble life in the time during which I wrote that journal.” Donte leaned his chin on his hand. “Everything we did was ruled by the season of the year. By the church. By primogeniture and custom and fate. We had little control over our destiny.”

“I can imagine.”

“I doubt that very much. We were boys, Auselmo and I. I was called Niccolo then, and we were fostered together, destined—as third sons—for the church.”

“Really?”

“Yes, although fate has a way of changing one’s plans. We were both remarkably well suited to religious life. At the time, we were serious and studious, yet filled with passion. Our thirst for knowledge was insatiable. But then we noticed each other; how could we not?”

“Yes. How?” Adin played along.

“You probably don’t have the first idea of that kind of passion. If Auselmo sighed, it came from my lungs, Adin. I might have been kilometers away, but I felt every beat of his heart. From everything we knew about the world, this was madness! We were completely incapable of understanding. Completely innocent. Then one day Auselmo caught me in the kitchen gardens and kissed me as no man has been kissed before or since.”

Adin could imagine that. Two boys, whose attraction went against everything they were taught. Whose passion was delicious and forbidden and fraught with peril.

“You may believe the persistence of that memory has been made more intense by the time afforded to me as an immortal. Yet when you read the journal, when
I
read it, that kiss is as fresh on my lips as the day my lover placed it there.”

“Then he’s not—” Adin hesitated “—like you?”

“No.” Donte was silent for a moment. “Auselmo died. After five hundred years, it’s as if he was barely more than a breath of air that once caressed me. Yet not a day goes by that I do not wish to feel it again.”

“
Motherfuck.
” Adin raised his glass and drank to soothe the ache in his throat. “If it meant that much to you, how did you lose the journal in the first place?”

“It was stolen from me.” Donte cleared his throat. “But I’ve turned morose here. Perhaps this would be a good time for you to sparkle?”

“I—” Adin swallowed around the lump in his throat. “I would have liked to sit and read the journal, but I haven’t had the time to go over it carefully in a safe environment. Above all, I would like to protect it so it’s not lost.”

“So that everyone may see my most intimate—and sometimes painful—thoughts.” Donte’s lips thinned into a brief line. “Over my dead body.”

Adin refrained from pointing out the obvious. Then the waiter arrived with Adin’s dinner so beautifully plated he nearly gave in to the desire to take a picture of it.

“This is nice.” He hovered over his plate, fork in the air. “Usually, when I find a manuscript, there’s no one around, living or undead, who can lay claim to any part of the intellectual content inside it. This is utterly new to me. Can you understand it’s Auselmo that I’m trying to preserve? If the journal is lost, everything that was Auselmo is lost with it. Well, except for your remarkably well-preserved memories. He is gone as irrevocably as if he never existed. I’m not a panderer, Donte. I’m not just some pimp looking for erotic cartoons.”

Adin returned his attention to his food. Donte watched him without speaking. It was in this silence that Adin felt Donte’s hand cover his on the table—those long, elegant fingers stroking gently, thoughtfully, over his more square ones.

Adin’s gaze rose to Donte, who was then in the middle of taking a sip of his wine. He took in Donte’s demonically beautiful face, long and angular, with its hooded eyes and high cheekbones, its wine-darkened lips. He watched as Donte savored his wine, imagining it warming Donte’s lips. His tongue. He could almost feel it slide down the column of Donte’s throat, teasing his Adam’s apple into a subtle bob.

Suddenly Adin was the wine, slipping down that throat, and just as inexplicably, Adin felt Donte’s mouth on him everywhere at once, biting…licking…sucking. Adin’s breath sped up. His skin warmed with the beginnings of a flush brought on by arousal. He shifted in his seat, and where his clothing touched his cock and balls, the sensation was electric, setting intimate little fires along his nerve endings, which were so sensitive they were painful.

“Donte,” he murmured as arousal arched his back. He slid a little farther down in his seat, his fork clattering noisily to the table. “Oh.”

He sighed as the sensation of being invaded physically broke over him in waves—in pulses of pleasure so deep and sweet his head dropped back while his body rang like a bell.

As he dragged in a lungful of air, he shuddered around what felt like the fullness of Donte driving his cock into him over and over. All he could do was breathe through the throes of sexual stimulation that gripped him like a vise.

Donte watched him, his own face completely impassive. Adin’s whole body flushed. He huffed in little gasps of air. His face slackened. His mind whited out in the moments before his release. Donte smiled into his glass like a ventriloquist as Adin’s body jerked once, twice, and a third and final time, his hips snapping below the tiny bistro table. When it was over, he sagged with release and relief and shame.

Adin snatched his hand out from beneath Donte’s and sat up. He looked around him in an agony of embarrassment before carefully picking up his fork and placing it on his plate with the knife to signal he was done with his meal.

“
Complet, mon cher
Adin
?
”

French, was it then?

“
Salopard,
” Adin ground out.
Bastard.
He threw his napkin on the table and got up to find the men’s room.

Adin squeezed himself between patrons in the wine bar and edged through to the bathroom, where he could be alone for a few minutes in the single tiny stall.
Alone
was a relative word since he’d met Donte, as his blood was doing its peculiar whispering; Donte’s voice in a myriad of different languages, singing to him, lighting fires all along the shallow capillaries below the surface of his skin. As he cleaned himself up, Adin had his first very real frisson of fear.

Donte could be amusing, entertaining, urbane, even boyishly charming. But it would never do to forget for one second that he was—in his own words—the apex of the food chain on this planet. As Adin washed his hands, he looked at himself in the small mirror over the sink. He’d never been the type of man to back down. To back
away
, maybe. To reevaluate his options, certainly. He prided himself on being pragmatic and shrewd and slow to panic when the shit hit the fan. He’d caught Donte off guard more than once.

Yet faced with the kind of power Donte seemed to possess, faced with Donte’s charisma, and his experience, Adin had to acknowledge he was intimidated and afraid. It had been so long since he’d felt either of those emotions, he hadn’t even recognized them for what they were.

Faced with imminent danger, yet subject to a perverse and powerful erotic longing, he was fucked. Entirely and completely fucked.

Adin looked at his face in the mirror. He saw nondescript brown hair, slightly long, slightly on the wavy side, atop what he thought was an unremarkable face. Blue eyes looked back at him. When he smiled, people told him they found it charming. He rarely got angry, yet was known around the school for a badgerlike determination to get what he wanted.

He shoved at the large round knob on the hand dryer and rubbed his hands together briskly under its jet of hot air.

I am Donte, the apex of the food chain on this planet.
“And that,” Adin said to himself, “makes
you
beer snacks.”

He turned and bumped into Donte, who had come up behind him as silently as fog and whose face didn’t seem to appear in the mirror unless Adin looked at it obliquely, so as to catch him out of the corner of his eye. Neat trick that, but just a trick, like all the others.

“
Caro.
I’ve frightened you.” Donte sighed, running a thumb over Adin’s trembling lower lip. “I meant only to tease.
Sono perdonato? Mi perdoni?
”

Adin brushed his hand away. “You absolute shit. I’d have done anything you wanted, yet you took what I would have given freely. I don’t know how to feel about that. I don’t know—”

Dark eyes narrowed. “I meant it as a lesson, Adin.”

“I did not
consent
, Donte. You did not have my consent, and therefore—”

“So you’ve learned I’m a monster.” Donte leaned toward him. “I
take
what I want. I’m not bound by the rules of decent society.”

“Then why not kill me and take the journal back? Surely you can pick a lock. Open a safe. Surely you can—”

“Perhaps it’s because you’re so earnest. So determined to believe you’re not in mortal danger here. Perhaps it’s because I once rescued a drowning kitten that had eyes exactly like yours.”

Adin flushed. “Good night, Donte.” He turned on his heel but Donte caught his arm.

“Wait. Come have a cigar with me.”

“Cigars are foul. How much do I owe you for dinner?”

“I’ve paid our tab, Adin. They have already given our table to some other young couple, who ordered an execrable wine that they read about in a magazine.”

“Would you just—” Tears stung Adin’s eyes. He would not let this man—this creature—see him as weak. “I need to leave now.”

“Come, Adin. I regret what I’ve done to make you feel so out of sorts. Let me make this up to you.” Adin let Donte take his hand and lead him through the busy bar to a cluster of comfortable chairs around a fire ring on the patio, where he ordered a cigar and Courvoisier for himself and a Bushmills, neat, for Adin.