Serafina and the Silent Vampire (15 page)

“I never had sex with Tess. You took her away.”

“Sorry.”

“No need. I only picked her because she looked like you, and when you showed up in person, the desire for her vanished.”

She twisted around to see him better. Half smiling, he held out his hand. She took it in her fingers and sensed no lie. She didn’t need to touch the undead to spot their lies, of course, but neither of them mentioned the fact. She liked to touch him, now she’d got used to the cool skin and the black, terrifying depth of memory that came with it.

“Mind you,” he added, presumably in the interests of truth, “I was still damned hungry, and I could have done with a drink.”

She couldn’t help smiling. “Is that why you were so narked when I took her away?”

“That and the fact I couldn’t drink from you either. Or at least not in a civilized manner.”

“You say the most disgusting things in such a reasonable way.”

He leaned forward to touch her hair with his free hand. “It isn’t disgusting,” he said softly. “It’s sensual and powerful and deeply satisfying. The blood drink intensifies orgasm for both lovers, and for you, a psychic… We could set the whole world alight and keep it there.”

“Oh, be quiet,” she said shakily as his hand dropped to the back of her neck, caressing. “I haven’t even agreed to the orgasm yet.”

“Yes, you have. In your mind.” He slid onto the floor beside her, setting his own mug and hers to one side. He placed his hands on her shoulders, yet made sure some of his fingers brushed her bare skin. “I want you, Serafina. More than I’ve wanted any woman in a very long time.”

Again, truth hit her, warming her, lifting her, and yet he was… He was a vampire. “You move too fast for me,” she whispered. “I can’t even adjust to what you are. I don’t know what relationships you have with other women.”

“Other lovers? None, right now. I’m an opportunist. I did have an arrangement at the local brothel—nice girl, knew her business, was happy enough to be bitten—but trust me, it
was
business.”

“You’re telling me you’ve never had a relationship?” she said in disbelief.

“Alive, I had one or two I can barely remember now. Since then, a very few with humans. If you think being psychic freaks them out, you should try undead.”

“And female vampires?”

“A couple.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing much. Eternity is a long time to stay in love. We parted.”

She smiled. “Thank you for not insulting me with eternal love.”

“Would present love bother you?”

“Do you mean love or sex?”

He slid his palms under her T-shirt. “Right now, I’m having difficulty telling the difference.” One tug and her top was over her head. His avid gaze swept over her before he reached behind her to unclip her bra.

“Blair…Blair this is
so
the wrong thing to do.”

“How can it be when we both want it so much?”

“I wish you didn’t read my mind.”

“You’ll be glad I do, in just a little.”

With trembling hands, she reached up to his chest, leaned closer until she could make out every tiny texture of his sensual lips. Then she kissed them. His hands lay flat on her back, caressing, moving down inside her jeans. She tugged his T-shirt until, obligingly, he tore it off. Muscles rippled up his chest and arms.

He pushed her backward until she lay on the rug, then deliberately set about unfastening her jeans. When they were removed, together with her underwear, she smiled like a cat with the cream while he undid his own jeans and pushed them off.

He was beautiful, as she’d known he would be. Lean hips and long, strong legs. And jutting between, the cock she yearned to have buried inside her. Desperate to touch, she sat up, but he knelt, folding his arms around her and pushing her gently back so that he could kiss her breasts. He lay between her legs, letting her feel his delicious weight and his smooth, cool skin on hers, the arousing hardness of his erection against her pubic bone. He shifted position so that it slid between her thighs, and, gasping, she wriggled to give him better access.

But it seemed he was in no hurry. He spent a long time kissing her breasts, teasing her nipples with his clever, arousing tongue, and then he found her mouth once more, and she felt him pushing against her moist, eager entrance. This was it. She’d given herself into the power of the vampire.

“Blair,” he whispered, sliding his teeth along her lips to her jaw and her throat. “My name is Blair. I just happen to be a vampire. As you happen to be psychic. Open your mind and your body to me, Serafina. I’m coming in.”

He pushed inside her, and she cried out with pleasure. Perhaps it was surprise that ripped open her mind, but suddenly he was there, and she saw every ounce of his overwhelming lust, the blissful effect of her every caress and his. She knew he could see her pleasure too, and didn’t mind in the slightest. For the first time ever, she gloried in her desire, in her arousal, in the absolute pleasure of sex. She wanted him to see. It made her powerful, it made her sexy, and she loved it. She loved what he was doing to her body and what she was doing to his.

She arched her hips wildly to take him deeper, ran her hands all over his cool back, feeling crossed lines of raised tissue.

“What are those?” she murmured breathlessly. He lifted his head to gaze into her face as he moved inside her.

“Scars from my human existence. Do they disgust you?”

“Nothing about you disgusts me right now.” She clung to him, moving with him, twisting on him as he changed his angle and found the special place she loved best. “Oh Jesus,” she whispered.

He smiled, his eyes alight with triumph, and kissed her mouth while she came. He continued to thrust inside her all through the orgasm, holding her there, spreading the joy through to every nerve in her body. And when she was calmer, he rose up to a sitting position between her legs, took hold of her hips and increased the tempo. He seemed to be even deeper inside her, holding her on the edge of another tide of pleasure as he rode her. He didn’t even look out of breath, just overcome with lust. His eyes were excitingly dark and clouded, his parted lips curving and moving with every spark of bliss he took from her body. He looked like some golden, beautiful god, all powerful. And Sera, who had never voluntarily given up any control to anyone since she was eleven years old, surrendered utterly to Blair.

As if he felt it, he smiled and laid one hand deliberately on the junction of her legs, his finger slipping over her clitoris. Pleasure exploded like dynamite in her head, her whole body, twisting her into a writhing, gasping, moaning animal. He fell forward into her, his discipline finally vanishing into his own climax. His groans were music in her mind, feeding her orgasm and her happiness.

His kiss was huge and sensual, his mouth trembling with pleasure as it ravished hers and slid across her jaw. He buried his face in her throat, thrusting hard into her once more, and as she gasped at the fresh waves of pleasure opening from the last, she felt his teeth graze her neck. There was pain, sharp enough to make her cry out and yet not bad enough to halt the pleasure still tearing her apart.

Somewhere, she knew he’d bitten her; knew that he was sucking the blood from her veins into his own body. But what she felt was only an incredible stream of wild, new ecstasy as the blood whizzed through her veins and into his greedy mouth.

“Oh Jesus Christ, you taste amazing,” he whispered in her mind. “Strong and sweet and—oh fuck, I’ll never have enough of you.”

His body still contorted in the throes of orgasm, he seemed to gather strength for a mighty effort before he dragged his teeth from her flesh. His tongue, sweet and soothing, licked her throat, and it felt exactly right with the profound satisfaction of fading orgasm.

She held on to him tightly, lost in the moment, as was only right. Hovering at the edge of consciousness was the knowledge that something huge had happened to her, was still happening, and that she didn’t want it to stop.

He said, “There. I told you you’d like it.”

She smiled into his shoulder. “The biting? I never realized I was so kinky. It seemed hard for you to stop.” Later, she thought, she would worry about that.

“It
is
hard to stop,” he admitted. “Which is why young vampires often drain their prey without meaning to. In conjunction with sex, it’s even harder. There was never a harder moment for me.”

She wriggled and took his face between her hands to look at him. “Then how do you do it? What made you stop there?”

“The knowledge that I’d kill you if I didn’t.” His lips quirked. “And then there’d be no more blood or sex.”

Sera laughed and pushed at him. He rolled, swinging her up onto his body until she straddled him. She gazed down at him. “You really are devastatingly honest, aren’t you?”

“Just devastating,” he said modestly. He ran his hands up her hips until they covered the sides of her breasts and he could play with them. “So are you.”

It sounded genuine. For some reason, she wanted to cry. Instead, she smiled. “I’m just a mixed-up psychic with an unhealthy penchant for bad guys.” She reached across him for her old coffee mug, setting off a whole new set of pleasure sparks, since he was still inside her, and wrinkled her nose. “Cold.”

“It’s the wrong time for coffee, anyhow. Don’t you have any booze?”

“No,” she said regretfully. Then, remembering, “Although there’s bound to be a bottle of vodka downstairs in Elspeth’s desk drawer.”

He took her by the waist and slowly lifted her off him. “I’ll be back there in just a moment,” he promised, standing with her in his arms to kiss her breast and then her mouth before he let her slide slowly to the floor.

It felt deliciously decadent watching him pad off naked to the office—presumably using his affinity with doors to unlock them—and then, quite nude herself, collecting glasses and an old bottle of tonic and taking them into the bedroom to wait for him.

This is me, Sera MacBride
, she thought with awe.
I’ve just had astoundingly good sex with a man
—
well, a male being
—
and now I’m going to lounge around in bed with him drinking someone else’s vodka. I don’t want to kick him out, and he doesn’t seem to want to leave. Wow.

Blair swaggered into the bedroom still mouth wateringly naked, his semi-erection swinging as jauntily as the nearly full bottle he carried in his hand.

“Why does she keep vodka in her desk?” he asked, climbing onto the bed. “To revive your overcome clients?”

“No,” Sera sighed. “For herself. I suppose she’s an alcoholic.”

“Does that make for a good employee?”

“Well, it doesn’t make her a bad one,” Sera said defensively. “She did turn up late for work a couple of times in the early days, and just occasionally, she does slur on the phone after lunch.”

“Can’t you sack her?” Blair asked, pouring a generous measure of vodka into each glass on the bedside table.

Sera passed him the tonic. “No. I knew what she was like when I took her on. If anything, she’s got better. Look, there’s hardly anything out of that bottle.”

“Couldn’t you find anyone else?”

“I wanted Elspeth,” she said uncomfortably. “I owed her.”

“For what?” Blair passed her one of the glasses, and they clinked cordially.

“She stood up for me in court when I assaulted my last foster father.”

“Good for her. In fact, give her a raise. Er—why did you assault your foster father?”

“He hit me first. I may have riled him,” she admitted. “I was a pretty obnoxious teenager. Whatever, by that stage, I didn’t allow anyone to hit me, so I floored him, and he charged me with assault. This was in the garden, and Elspeth, being our neighbor, saw it all over the wall.”

Sera took a drink. “Funny, really, because she’d never spoken to me before. I didn’t think she liked me. Anyway, that was before her husband died. I had a load of applicants for that job, but hers was the name I recognized. She turned up pissed for her interview and was completely stunned that she got it.” Sera smiled reminiscently and took another sip. “I don’t think she even knows I’m the teenager she got out of trouble.”

She became aware that he was gazing at her without blinking. “What?” she demanded. “You’d better not tell her, Blair. If she thinks she got the job by favor, God knows what it’ll do her self-esteem. And her drinking.”

Blair’s lips quirked. “You’re amazing.”

“Not that amazing,” Sera said, raising her glass over her blush. “I nick her vodka. Cheers.”

“Cheers,” Blair said, knocking back the remainder of his drink. Over the rim of his glass, his gaze locked with hers. She could have sworn sparks flew from his eyes as he lowered the glass and set it deliberately on the bedside table. Her heart thundered. “A little more sex, Miss MacBride, would be acceptable at this stage.”

“Would it?” She set down her own glass and spanned her right hand across his broad, smooth chest. “I was thinking a lot more teasing might be in order.”

“First?” he asked, with just enough anxiety to make her smile.

She lowered her head to his nipple and licked it. “Probably.”

****

“How
did
you become a vampire?”

He’d thought she was finally asleep. He’d watched in fascination as her long, tangled eyelashes had flickered and fallen over her flushed cheek and she’d drifted into unconsciousness. He’d meant to watch her until she awoke, because this night of drinking and fucking that he’d finally achieved with her had done nothing to end his obsession. On the contrary, she fascinated him all the more: the brash, look-after-number-one and make-a-fast-buck attitude, which, of course, he thoroughly approved of, hid a far deeper, compassionate and touchingly vulnerable soul. She’d been hurt in her young life, physically and emotionally, but from sheer strength of character had dragged herself through it without losing who she was. And the fun and tragedy inextricably bound in her personality drew him like a moth to a flame.

Aside from which, she was a rather wonderful fuck. All that beauty and all that passion, excitingly eager and inventive—after they’d passed the first delectably straight bout on the living room floor—inflamed him with an intensity he couldn’t recall ever before. Or at least not for a very long time. She wasn’t the most experienced lover he’d ever had, but she’d been happy to try whatever he threw at her, and he’d made sure she knew exactly how much pleasure she gave him.

She’d even let him drink from her again, not once but twice. The first time, she’d been half hesitant, half eager as he’d asked silent permission, but the second time, there’d been no inhibitions at all. In the throes of orgasm, she’d simply turned her head to expose her throat to him, gasping out incoherently something that sounded very like “Please.”

He was a vampire. Of course, he’d taken what was offered, even though he knew it was too much, that she’d feel a trifle weak the following day. He’d taught her to love it, to associate it with the ecstasy of sexual climax. And that, he thought, was a damned good night’s work.

After so much enthusiastic sex and bloodletting, it wasn’t really surprising that she’d fallen asleep. And despite his vow to watch her and learn from her dreams, he’d begun to drift off into the semiconscious state that passed for sleep in a vampire of his age. Until she asked her question: “How
did
you become a vampire?”

She was looking straight into his eyes, her own exhausted, happy, but insatiably curious.

He said, “A beautiful vampiress bit me and made me.”

She touched his cheek, ran her hand slowly down his face to his shoulder and arm, as if trying to learn who he was from touch. Under her sensitive fingers, his body stirred yet again. “Ailis,” she remembered. “Who were you?”

“When I was alive? Nobody important. My father was a poor Highland farmer, fought and died with the Jacobite army in 1745. Afterward, in the oppression, my mother and I came south to Glasgow to get work. It was a rich city in those days—the height of the tobacco trade with America.”

Her eyes laughed, half admiring, half teasing. “You were a ‘tobacco lord’?”

He hesitated. He’d played the part so often over the centuries that sometimes he almost believed he’d been a rich merchant or a wronged aristocrat. He certainly never went out of his way to prove that he hadn’t been either of those things. He could look haughty and superior with the best, and she was already inclined to be impressed.

He said, “No, I was a low-paid factory hand until I discovered I could supplement my income by
stealing
from the tobacco lords. I was a pickpocket when I died.”

Her eyes widened at his stark words, but she looked more intrigued than disappointed. “What happened?”

He shifted restlessly, and she followed, fitting her body into his, and somehow his hand was full of her breast. “I was ill and too slow for the job that day, but I wanted the money, and some bastard stabbed me for my pains. I lay there dying in the darkness for what seemed like hours. Then Ailis came.” He smiled. “I thought she was an angel, wondered how come I was going to get to heaven rather than hell. And then she bit me and gave me back—not life, but existence.”

“Were you happy with that? Did you like being a vampire?”

“Sure. My mother was dead by that time, but I used to go and keep company—hang out, you would say—with my disreputable old friends.”

“Is that how you met Phil?”

“Oh no. I met Phil in Edinburgh later. Because, of course, my old acquaintances grew old and died and naturally wondered why I didn’t. I began to understand the difficulties of this existence and traveled for a long time. Europe, America, Africa, Asia, even Australia. I did them all over the centuries, but I always ended up coming back to Scotland. Never where I used to live. I avoid Lochiel and Glasgow, but Edinburgh suits me very well.”

Her eyes were steady on his, uncomfortably perceptive. For the first time, he began to wonder if she’d managed to learn anything about him by touching something in his home last night. She was appallingly sensitive. He’d spoken quite naturally, and of course, she’d sense any untruth, but there were certain things he was not willing to think about, let alone discuss.

Distracting her, he said, “Phil was a philosophy student at Edinburgh University when he died of tuberculosis. Can’t even remember what his real name is.”

A soft light of amusement crept into her eyes. “‘Phil’ is short for ‘philosopher’?”

“Afraid so.”

“Weird that you’ve lived so long… Do you still like being a vampire? Do you never get bored?”

This was the conversation he didn’t want to have. Not yet.

“Boredom is the curse of the vampire,” he said lightly, and to distract her, he rolled her under him and pushed inside her once more. She gasped, and rather to his surprise gave a weary but instinctive wriggle to welcome him. “And you are the best cure I’ve found in decades. So much so that I find it hard to leave you alone. Tell me to stop, tell me to leave you now, or I’ll make love to you again and be trapped here with the dawn.”

A frown twitched at her brow—impossible to tell if it was desire or irritation, but her deep blue eyes were serious, almost luminous as they gazed up into his. He held her helpless, captive, and gloried in it. He wanted to take her, absorb her whole body, sex and blood, and he could do it so very easily with so much pleasure. She’d die happy in the throes of the best orgasm of her short life.

But she
would
die.

He couldn’t remember the ambiguity of vampire sex ever being this strong before. He stroked her hair, smiling ruefully as he began to ease out of her.

Unexpectedly, she clung to him, holding on to him with her arms around his back and her legs around his hips. “You wouldn’t go now, would you?” she whispered. She sounded almost frightened. “Stay with me. Make love to me again; sleep with me.”

With her words, her body began to move, undulating on his shaft, and of course, he moved with her. She smiled, spurring him on with her blatant triumph. “I think I’ve had more sex with you tonight than I’ve had in the rest of my life put together.”

“It’s about the quality as well as the quantity, you know.”

She bit his shoulder, caressing his skin with her lips, as her hands slid down to his buttocks, drawing him closer into her. “The quality seems just fine to me. I suppose you would get pretty good at sex after three hundred years.”

“You learn a lot,” he admitted, holding the pace, keeping it slow and gentle. “You learn that there’s more to good sex than technique. Although,” he added, giving her the slower version of the little twist she loved, “that’s bound to help. Have you ever been fucked to sleep before, Serafina?”

Something like a strangled laugh escaped her. She was exhausted and yet craving more of him. He was almost scared by how much he liked that knowledge.

“No,” she managed. “And I can’t imagine I ever will be. Unless it’s really boring sex.”

“Am I boring you?”

“Oh no,” she said fervently. “I can’t believe how often we’ve done this. I should be dead of sex.”

“No, you should just be asleep. Close your eyes; let me do the work. I’m told the happiest sleeps come when you drift off in orgasm.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“Believe,” he said, watching her eyes close. He kissed her eyelids and her lips, softly, gently rocking her toward orgasm. It must have been like a dream to her by the time she came. He felt her convulse around him, was smugly pleased by the smile on her lips as the last fringes of sleep fell over her.

A good man, he supposed, a gentleman, would civilly leave her body at this point to enjoy its sleep in peace. But Blair was a vampire, and, worse, a vampire damnably aroused by what he’d just done to her. Close as he was, he took all his weight on his elbows and helped himself to few more gentle thrusts, until he too fell into delicious climax. Since she was already used to the motion, it didn’t wake her, and afterward, it felt good to lie between her legs, still inside her body, and watch her sleep.

****

There was a new sort of pleasure too in observing the muted sun rise through the filter of her bedroom curtains, while she slept on, curled against his shoulder. But Blair was not a being who wallowed in either happiness or pain. Since her closeness seemed to numb his brain, he got up from the bed to think.

Pacing through the flat, he encountered his clothes in the living room and put them on while he bent his mind to the problem of Nicholas Smith and the banking vampires. He rather admired their bold plan, and the results would certainly make for a different world—no mean outcome for a bored, three-hundred-year-old vampire.

On the other hand, he didn’t care to share or to bow to the wishes of weaker vampires. And there was the promise he’d once made to Ailis. What
was
best for the community? The question made him uneasy, even though it was all that had kept him alive in recent years.

Hell, exactly how bored had he been since the banking vampires had come on the scene? They’d intrigued and annoyed him and led him to a strange, sweet psychic lover, a woman with whom he could communicate just as if she were a vampire.

Oh no, mind off Serafina.
She’d only lead him back to sex and brain numbness. He wandered through to the messy kitchen and set about making coffee. While he waited for it, he thought and absently tidied a bit; then, when the coffee was ready, he paced through the flat, still thinking. Outside, the city had come to life. Car engines mingled with people’s voices and thousands of footsteps as humanity began its working day. Such everyday sounds had always been part of his life, and yet he was isolated from them, as all his kind were.

Except the new vampires like Jason, already at work in his office. Unnatural.

He heard people enter Serafina’s office below and supposed Sera herself should be down there with them. However, he preferred her where she was. She needed sleep, and plenty good food and drink to replace the blood he’d taken from her last night. No biting today, he thought regretfully, although another fuck would be nice…

A loud but perfunctory knock sounded at the door between the flat and the office. An instant later, the door opened, and someone ran lightly upstairs. A woman. Blair stopped pacing and glanced over his shoulder at the living room door. A rather pretty blonde head appeared round it, followed by a vaguely familiar girl. She’d been with Sera at the Bells’ party.