King of Darkness (19 page)

Quickly, she grabbed Lee’s forearm and placed the flat of her tongue beneath the flowing rivulet, tracing upward to the source of the bleeding, like she was licking the drip from an ice-cream cone.

That really wasn’t necessary, but… oh,
hell
… The warm trail of her tongue turned into a gentle lapping and suckling at his wrist and then very quickly to more urgent pulls. The suction of Alexia’s mouth pulled Lee’s skin between her teeth, which made him immediately, achingly, unbelievably hard.

Nothing hotter than being bitten by a female.

Some of his kind were able to separate the blood exchange from sexual urges, but he wasn’t one of them. Given his unwanted attraction to Alexia, he probably should have recused himself from this duty, but he’d always been a masochist. And truthfully, he hadn’t expected to react quite like this.

Alexia began to writhe a little as well. The pads of her fingers turned white as they dug more urgently into the flesh on his arm. A tiny little moan sounded from the back of her throat as she continued to suck harder at his arm. The pale olive of her skin flushed pink across the chest, and the stain spread up her neck to her cheeks. It wasn’t too difficult to imagine what she would be like on her back in all those pillows, minus the clothes.

Lee’s breathing quickened and his heart tried its damnedest to escape the walls of his chest. Already his fangs crowded his mouth, and the biological urge to push Alexia onto her back and have his way with her before biting into that delicate-looking vein was gripping tenaciously at the base of his skull. The whole situation was on the verge of going straight from zero to FUBAR.

On the verge of snapping completely, Lee placed a hand over one of hers. “Easy, there.” Her eyes lifted to his, a desperate plea shining in them. Her face was flush with desire. She wanted more, and damn him straight to Hell, he wanted to give it to her.

Instead, he said, “Time to take a break. You’ve had plenty. Trust me.”

Alexia pulled back but maintained possession of Lee’s arm. Her breath hit his skin in warm puffs. “Oh, man. I feel like I had too many martinis.” She paused, her mouth hanging slack. Her tongue explored her lower lip tentatively, sliding out to taste the traces of blood that lingered there. Lee very nearly helped her lick the remnants away.

God, he despised how badly he wanted her.

Determined not to let on about what was happening in his pants, Lee shifted subtly on the bed. He nodded his understanding as he licked the cut on his wrist. Her saliva tasted of chocolate and Earl Grey tea. Knowing that only made his cock throb harder.

“Even for us, it gets a good buzz going.”

“Holy mother of—I had no idea it would be like that.”

The implied “or else I would have done it before” was left hanging in the air. Dumb son of a bitch that he was, Lee couldn’t deny a perverse pleasure in giving her that first experience. And then he shut himself down before he dared think of her having a second.

“Yeah, well, brace yourself. You just put high-grade synthetic in an engine that’s used to running on the stuff they make for lawn mowers. You should be feeling better in no time.” The analogy was insulting, but pissing her off was for the better right now. Seriously. He started to rise from the bed.

Her hand shot out to grab his before he made it all the way to standing. “Wait.”

“I have some questions,” Alexia said softly. Boy, that was one bulldozer of a cocktail. Her lids were heavy, and she was afraid to close them. When she’d had too much to drink, that was usually when the room started spinning. She forced herself to focus on Lee’s face. That kept her grounded, while looking at any other part of him only spurred her desire to crawl over and give him a lap dance.

She always had been an affectionate drunk.

Lee returned to his seat on the bed, rubbing his hands over his face. “Right. Questions. I just thought, you know, maybe you’d want to rest first. Let yourself level out. Your body’s gonna need some time to adjust to the blood.”

“I’d rather do it now.” She paused, giggled a little at the absurdity of the moment, and then tried her damnedest to put a serious expression back on her face. “Man, it really is like I’m drunk.”

“Uh, yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway… what do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with where am I? Ivy said I’m at the king’s estate, which doesn’t tell me much. So far I’ve got a weird guy—with robes, for God’s sake—coming up behind me in my own bedroom, waking up in a strange place, you feeding me blood, and Mrs. Peacock in the library with a candlestick.” She rolled her eyes at his questioning look and continued. She should have guessed he wasn’t into pop culture. “Anyway, all of it adds up to a whole lot of ‘holy shit’ in my book.”

“Okay.” Leaning forward he rubbed his hand across his face and chin stubble. Some guys looked sloppy when they hadn’t shaved. Lee didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He clasped his hands together. “So. The wizard—that was the weird dude in the robes that attacked you.” He paused, tapping his index finger thoughtfully against the bottom of his lip for a moment. “You said he came up behind you?”

“Yeah, I was standing in front of my closet, and all of a sudden,
blammo
!” She clapped her hands together for illustration. “He was just there. Like, out of nowhere.” She sat up straighter in bed, her mental fog was already beginning to clear. Thank God.

“You tried to attack him?”

How did he—“Yeah, well. Tried is the operative word.” Embarrassment washed over her. She’d taken self-defense classes, dammit; she should’ve been able to do some damage to the bastard.

The corner of Lee’s mouth quirked. “That was brave… but stupid.”

“Well, I didn’t manage to get any hits in, so I guess you’re right about the stupid part.”

In what Alexia must have guessed was a very rare gesture, Lee put his hand over hers. It was nice. Big, warm, and reassuring.

“Hey, listen up for a minute. These guys aren’t really any more human than I am. We’re talking evil men who deal in black magic and steal supernatural powers for kicks and giggles. I don’t mean this as an affront of any kind, but you didn’t stand a chance.”

Alexia tried to make sense of that. “So that’s the deal with these guys—they steal powers from you?”

He seemed amused. “Well, not from me personally, but yeah. That’s pretty much what they do.”

“You have a sick sense of humor.”

“Thank you.” He smiled. God, he was wicked hot. The smile showed off his fangs, which seemed surprisingly long and prominent. Much more than Isabel’s or even Ivy’s had been.

Enough
already, Lex.

“So why do they do it?” She couldn’t believe what an effed-up concept this was. Why hadn’t Isabel ever told her anything about it?

“I’m pretty sure power for the sake of power has generally been a good enough reason.”

“So how—” Oh, sweet merciful God, his hand hadn’t left hers. Lord, she was such a loser. One tiny crumb of affection and she would all but run off to Vegas if he asked.

Act
casual, dammit!

“How do they steal your powers?”

Lee’s head gave a side-to-side waggle, like he was waffling a bit on his answer. “Well, we don’t know all the details. There’s some kind of black magic involved. What we do know at least is that it involves eating the heart.”

Oh.
Nasty
.

Alexia gagged. “You’re not serious about that.”

Oh, but he was. She didn’t know much about Lee, but as sure as she lived and breathed, she was sure he would not joke about that sort of thing. Still, she searched his face desperately for a sign that he was just messing with her. In keeping with her feelings of inebriation, her gut churned with the intense urge to hurl. She tamped it down, unwilling to ruin the whole Lee’s-hand-on-hers moment by getting sick in his lap.

“I wish I were joking,” he said grimly. “If what they did was as simple as jacking an old lady’s handbag, my job would be a lot easier.”

“Shit, that’s… oh, my God… that’s just so disgusting.” Alexia gave a little cough, trying to head another gag off at the pass. She’d always been squeamish about blood-and-guts stuff. As a child she’d wanted to go to veterinary school until she found out the job often entailed much ickier responsibilities than just petting puppies and kittens all day.

“Yeah, well…” He shrugged a little. A chill traveled up Alexia’s arm when his hand lifted from hers and landed again on his inner thigh. A shadow of emotion flashed briefly across his face but she couldn’t quite name it.

“Yeah. It is. Anyway,” he continued. The tiny hint of whatever it was disappeared as quickly as it had come.

“As far as the where part, we’re in Ash Falls, Virginia. About an hour outside Washington D.C., in horse country more or less.”

“Horse country.”

“Yep.”

“I can’t believe there’s horse country outside Washington. I always thought it was, you know, like a big city.” She wanted to smack herself for the number of times she’d heard herself use “like” in the course of this conversation. She must sound like a freaking idiot.

“There’s actually lots of land around here if you know where to look.”

Farm country. Yikes. She swallowed. “Swell.” Then again, they probably wouldn’t be here long, right? That begged the question she really wanted to ask: “So when do I get to get to go home?”

Lee’s responding throat clear did not fill her with warm fuzzies, nor did the way he crossed his arms and leaned away from her. It was a defensive posture. But hey! Here she was, finally using that psychology degree she’d worked so hard for. “Yeah. I have to talk to Thad about how we’re gonna handle that.”

“How you’re going to handle what, me?” He was talking about handling her like she was some kind of golden retriever. And it hadn’t escaped her notice that he’d compared her to a lawn mower earlier in the conversation. What the hell was up with this guy? And why the hell did she want to jump him so badly despite what a total
dick
he was?

Another throat clear. “Here’s the thing: you were attacked by a very dangerous enemy, and we don’t know how he found us or you. We don’t know exactly what his intentions were, or whether or not one of his cronies might try to return to where I killed him. We’re in a war with these wizards, and we’re not used to having humans in the mix this way.”

“You killed him. Right.” The quiet voice she managed to push past her lips was little more than a whisper. Her head began to swim again. Killed him. Lee…
killed
the man who attacked her.

Duh. It made sense. Of course it did. Big-ass vampire, built like a brick shithouse and packing all kinds of heat versus some kind of black-magic junkie who was out to get the vampire’s race. Of course he’d… kill… him. She had assumed that was the outcome, but the reality hadn’t hit her until he’d just said it.

Talk about going for the bad boy.

Holy
shit.

Lee shrugged. “It’s kind of an ‘us or them’ thing.”

“I guess so,” she said, nodding like an idiot.

“Anyway,” he continued, and this time his voice had a softer edge to it. “Even if we knew you were safe from future wizard attacks—and that’s a big if, given that you’ve been seen associating with us by our enemy—going back there could get you into any number of problems. It’s a security risk for you and for us.

“So. I’m not just trying to be an ass here, but there’s no way we can let you go home at this point.”

Alexia blinked. “Didn’t you say before that it was a bad idea for me to be here?”

“I did.”

“So what’s changed?”

Lee rubbed his hand over the back of his neck like he was tense. Good. Because the news flash that she was not allowed to go home had sucked her out of her drunken warm fuzzies fast enough to make her head spin, and now she was tense, too. May as well share the love.

“Nothing changed, really. It’s still a bad idea for you to be here. However, it’s an equally bad idea, possibly a worse idea, to let you go. It’s a lesser-of-two-evils decision, and I will not make that call without going over the options with Thad first.”

Suddenly Alexia’s body was hot. Her blood was on a hard boil. She was getting damn tired of Lee’s game of insult the human. “What the hell? First you compare my blood to freaking two-stroke engine oil, and now I’m a problem you have to handle?
A
lesser
of
two
evils?
Look, I get it that you aren’t very fond of humans, but I didn’t do a damn thing to deserve your ire so you need to back the fuck off. You can’t make me a prisoner here!”

Her breath sawed in and out. She was fairly sure her nostrils were flaring. Lee did nothing, said nothing, but continued to regard her with the same cool, impassive demeanor. All at once she wanted to shove his cocky, well-toned ass off the bed.

The heady buzz in her veins after drinking his blood made her wonder if she might really be strong enough to do it. Not that she’d actually try. Her famous temper had caused enough embarrassment. But for Pete’s sake, she did not do helpless and powerless. She did not wait and see at the mercy of others.