Rise of the Fallen (15 page)

"I guess I laid a lot on you tonight," he said,
picking up the second half of his sandwich.

"I'll get over it."

"You shouldn't have to."

She shrugged and sipped her tea. "It's okay, Micah.
I'll be fine."

He wanted her to be more than fine. Micah wanted her safe,
and he wanted her happy. This affair with the drecks wasn't meant for someone
like her, exquisite and perfect in every way.

"So, maybe I should answer your questions now,"
she said. She popped the last bite of the first half of her sandwich in her
mouth and shrugged as she grabbed the other half. "Not like we're getting
any sleep, anyway."

"The fear of someone trying to kill you and being in a
vampire's home has a way of keeping you awake, doesn't it?"

Sam issued a short laugh that made Micah draw in a breath as
if he could catch the sound and hold it forever, tasting it and swirling it
around in his mouth.

"That's one way to look at it," she said. She took
another bite and watched him in the darkness as she chewed. "So, what do
you want to know?"

"Why do you work at the Black Garter?" he said.
That had been eating at him for hours.

"Wow, that was fast."

"Sorry, but I don't like it." In fact, he hated
it.

"You don't like it?" She arched an eyebrow at him.
"Well, too bad."

"It's just that you seem…well, better than that place. You're
smart, Sam. And what I don't understand even more is why you live in that small
apartment. You can surely afford better than that. You're Scarlet, for
Chrissakes."

She fidgeted uncomfortably then shrugged. "Well, shit.
I guess I owe you answers, right?"

"Yeah, that was the arrangement. I answer your
questions, you answer mine."

She finished her sandwich and with unceremonious bluntness
said, "I'm married."

Married?! Micah nearly choked and started coughing. Despite
all his poking around in her head, he hadn't seen that coming.

She held up her hand. "Hold on, don't get your panties
in a wad. I left him."

He gulped down tea and got his coughing under control.
"Okay, married and left him. Got it. Go on, because I can tell there's
more."

"I married him too young. That was my first
mistake." She leaned back against her pillows, relaxing. "Then I was
an Army medic for eight years, so I wasn't home a lot. But when I was, it was
bad."

It took all of Micah's restraint not to probe into her mind
to see the whole story rather than just the parts she wanted to share with him.
She lifted her shirt slightly and pointed to a scar on the side of her abdomen.

"He gave that to me the last time I was home. He had
just found out I had been secretly taking birth control to keep from getting
pregnant." She stared at him for a second, silent.

His blood boiled.

"He beat me hard that time. Actually knocked me down on
the glass coffee table. It shattered. I got stabbed. He's a surgeon so he just
sewed me up right there in the house. Nice, huh? Kept anyone at the hospital
from seeing the shape I was in and figuring out his wicked little secret."

"I want to kill him." Micah's voice sounded almost
primal even to himself.

Sam reached out and touched his arm. "Calm down,
Tiger."

What a turn-on. This woman knew no fear. He had to be one
scary-looking SOB right now, but she simply touched his arm and told him to
calm down like it was nothing.

"Anyway," she said, casually pulling her hand back,
"I ran away and work hard to keep my trail invisible so he can't find me.
The Black Garter pays well and they pay in cash, and I live cheap so I can save
enough to buy real freedom someday."

"Real freedom?" Micah admired Sam more and more.
She was a lot stronger than he had originally credited her for.

"A new identity. A fresh start somewhere he can't get
to me."

"Maybe I can help with that."

"We'll see." She simply smiled at him then
finished her tea.

He moved the tray to the dresser, sat back down beside her
and propped the pillows on his side of the bed against the headboard so he
could sit back. "Okay," he said. "New topic. How is it you know
so much about knives?"

"I was in the Army, right? I became acquainted with
knives. It became kind of a personal interest for me."

Micah reached over and took his Bowie off the nightstand and
handed it to her. "Take a look. Here, let me get my Ka-Bar." He
hopped up and retrieved it from the shelf in the closet where he had stowed it
earlier.

Sam already had the Bowie unsheathed, its silver blade
glinting in the faint light from the hall, when he returned. What a turn-on
seeing his knife in her hands. She glanced up and he handed over the Ka-Bar.

"These are serious blades," she said, admiring the
long, black knife. "Tell me you're not just a collector."

He shook his head and settled down next to her again, his
cock twitching as he watched her handle his weapons. "No, I'm not a
collector. I know how to use them."

* * *

Sam couldn't explain it, but holding the knives in her hands
and catching the tone of his voice as he said he knew how to use them turned
her on.

"Show me," she said, flipping the Bowie in her
hand so she could give it to him handle first. "Teach me something."

Maybe Micah could show her how to disembowel someone. That
way, if Steve ever did find her, she could have some fun. The thought
immediately filled her with guilt. Could she really do that to someone? Even an
abusive ass like Steve? Put a bullet between his eyes, maybe, but cutting him
up like she was Jack the Ripper? Okay, so under the right circumstances, she
probably could. Better to be prepared if it happened.

Micah's gaze shot to hers and he reached out almost
tentatively to take the knife. It was as if he wasn't sure he should.

"Oh, go on," she said. "I won't hurt
you."

With a smirk, he took the knife and flipped it around, the
blade shimmering as it danced in the light. He tossed and sliced it through the
air then grabbed it backhand and lunged for her, pushing the blade toward her
throat and stopping a couple of feet away. She barely flinched, knowing in her
heart that he would never hurt her. Their eyes met and he seemed almost as
breathless as she felt, and not from exertion.

Biting her lip, she clutched the Big Brother with the same
grip he was using on the Bowie.

"Like this?" She batted his arm away and surged
toward him.

He fell to his back as she cut the knife through the air and
stopped within inches of his throat. She loomed over him, feeling her pulse
quicken as his eyes smoldered up at her.

"Where were you a few days ago?" he said, his
voice deep and seductive.

"Apparently waiting to rescue you." She barely
pressed the edge of the blade to his skin, biting her lip, liking the thrill
she got from the look in his eye. It was a mix of fear and lust, the way she
imagined a cuffed masochist looked as he prepared for his master to flog him.

"Any regrets?" he asked.

She shook her head, heat pooling like warm honey low in her
belly and between her legs. "No."

Sam felt him relinquish himself as the Bowie thudded to the
floor. His free arm swooped around her and pulled her on top of him. She had to
swing her leg out from under the covers, but with the knife still held to his
throat, she straddled his hips and skimmed her other hand over his smooth, bare
chest, as surprised at her reaction to him as he was.

"Tell me you're not using some mind trick on me to make
me feel this way," she said.

His hands crept up her bare thighs and inside the legs of
her shorts. "I'm not compelling you, if that's what you mean."

Raking her blunt nails across his pec, she smiled as he
hissed and pushed his chest toward her hand. He looked good, still thin but
more puffed up, like someone had hooked him up to a hose and blown air into
what had looked like a deflated body the other night.

"You look better, by the way. The other night you
looked like you needed a couple or a dozen sandwiches."

"Oh?" His hands pushed further inside her shorts
and she shifted her weight so he could explore further if he wanted to, but he
only went so far before pulling his hands back out to continue exploring her
elsewhere.

Sam hadn't reacted to a man like this in a long time.
Actually, she had never reacted to a man like this. Was it just the danger
Micah represented, or how safe she felt with him despite all the peripheral
shit she still wasn't sure she had wrapped her head around? Or was it the knife
at his throat, or just the fact that she had been through a lot in the last
twelve hours and simply needed an outlet for all that unspent adrenaline? Maybe
it was a combination of everything. Who knew? What she did know was that her
body craved his in a way that felt almost criminal.

Shifting her hold on the knife, she dragged the tip of the
blade lightly over his skin, to the hollow of his throat, down his sternum, and
over to one dark, gathered, quarter-sized nipple.

Normally so straight-laced and proper, Sam wanted nothing of
either right now. Some would say that after so long without, her body now felt
the need to make up for lost time, spilling over with arousal. A dark,
mysterious man, possibly – probably – a vampire, lay under her, bent to her
will as she flicked the tip of the knife across the puckered hardness of his
nipple.

"Aren't you scared?" She bent forward so that her
face was directly over his and her hips rose from him. His hands skated up the
sides of her legs and into her shirt to blister her skin with desire.

"I'm scared you'll stop." His hips thrust upward
to keep the connection between their lower bodies, and his hardness pressed
against her.

"I don't want to stop." She strengthened the
contact between her legs by pushing and dragging her pelvis along the length of
what lay inside his sweats.

The rumble in his chest sounded like the purr of a jungle
cat. The sound mixed with a quickened breath as his palms covered her breasts with
a demanding grip.

"Do you want me to stop, then?" It was clear he
was only teasing.

Rolling her pelvis over him again, she bent down further,
moving the blade back to his throat. "If you stop, this knife will cease
to be a sex toy and you will have to move very fast to make sure I don't stab
you. Do you understand?"

* * *

Micah's mouth drew up in a mischievous grin and he purred
again – the sound of an aroused male vampire. Sam had him harder than a
two-by-four. Who would have known that a knife would be such a turn-on? In his
dom days, Micah had tried a lot of kinky shit, but never had he allowed anyone
to put a knife to his throat. Usually, it had been him that did that kind of
thing to his subs.

"Take off my shirt," she said. She sat back so
that her full weight pressed against his aching hard-on. "Use this." She
lifted the knife from his throat and held it out for him.

He had seen inside her thoughts and knew she had never done
anything like this. Where this vixen had come from Micah didn't know, but he
liked her. He would have to tell Sam to let her out again sometime soon. Like
maybe tomorrow.

He took the knife and licked his lips as he gathered the hem
of her T-shirt in his free hand and pulled it away from her body. The force
drew her toward him again, although she resisted. Her shirt stretched between
them, the fabric straining. Never looking away from her heart-shaped face and
her twinkling eyes, he hooked the blade under the hem of her shirt.

"You sure about this?" he said. He felt her
desire, but also her fear, so he wanted to give her one last chance to say no.

"Yes."

With an easy upward thrust, the blade sliced into jersey
knit like it was nothing more than butter. The satisfying hiss of fabric being
cut filled the room as he continued the dissection. Watching the blade slice
slowly upward held its own kind of eroticism as it parted the fabric of her
shirt like an opening stage curtain. More of her creamy soft skin and smooth
stomach revealed itself with each inch of the blade's upward climb. Getting to
all that bare skin on a slow reveal had him holding his breath with
anticipation until the last inch severed at her collar and the two halves fell
loose.

With a brush of his free hand, he pushed the T-shirt off one
rounded shoulder and down her arm to expose her breast. Budded with a nipple so
pale he could barely delineate the change of pigment, the supple swell of her
flesh was natural and firm. And her stomach was smooth and flat with a single,
tantalizing ridge down the middle. He ran the tip of the knife down that ridge,
watching her shiver at the metallic caress.

"You're a runner or a swimmer, aren't you?"

"Both. How can you tell?" She shirked the other
half of the shirt with a seductive dip of her shoulder so that the wasted
material fell down her back and over his legs.

"I can tell." He grinned and set the knife on the
mattress then undulated beneath her with a groan as he stretched and
contracted. He needed to touch her, feel her, experience her femininity.
Another purr, deeper than before, trembled the back of his throat as he shoved
his hands up her stomach and under her breasts so that they rose and pressed
together in the middle.

The air between them quickly heated, sizzling, crackling,
burning, and he flipped her to her back, rolling with her, pushing his sweats
down with one hand as his mouth found hers. He nearly came from just her taste
and the mewling noise she made as their lips fused together, twisting and
holding, drawing in and urging each other for more.

She shifted beneath him, and he felt her hands pushing down
her shorts, their mouths never letting go of the other, grunting in frustration
that they couldn't get free of their clothes fast enough, urgent to feel the
other, wanting, needing, and demanding.