Vampire in Paradise (17 page)

The three of them smiled at her, displaying slightly elongated incisors, just like Sigurd’s. The woman gave her a little wave.

Oh my God!

“Convinced?” Sigurd asked, staring straight ahead. Clearly, he was angry with her.

Well, she was angry with him, too. “Did you slip angel dust into my drink this afternoon?”

Someone snickered, but it wasn’t Sigurd.

“What?” He turned slowly to look at her.

“That hallucination or whatever it was this afternoon—you know, the woo-woo, I-am-a-fierce-Viking-warrior-fighting-off-scary-demon-monsters . . . Well, I’m thinking you must have given me some kind of drug, like angel dust. Since you claim to be an angel of some kind, it makes perfect sense—”

“Woo-woo?” he asked her with an incredulous expression. “Do not be a lackwit.”

“Along with being a willful, quarrelsome wench?”

“You said it!”

The elevator pinged and the doors opened on the fifth floor.

Sigurd said something to the other three in some foreign language and they nodded before heading down the hallway to the right while Sigurd pulled her in the other direction.

“What language was that?” An irrelevant question, but she was so tired she wouldn’t know relevant from irrelevant.

“Old Norse.”

“Of course it was.”

“Your sarcasm is going to cause your death if you are not careful.”

“Death by Viking?”

“You said it!” he repeated again. Tugging a key card out of his jeans’ pocket, he inserted it into the door, opening it, one-handed. She had trouble making the darn things work with two hands.

Sigurd dropped his death grip on her hand and urged her ahead of him. The door locked ominously behind her, but, for some reason, she wasn’t afraid. As long as she didn’t accept any drink or food, she should be okay.

Sigurd’s hotel room was nice, but not overly large or luxurious, as some of the rooms or suites probably were. A small sitting room held a desk, love seat, and chair facing a flat-screen TV on the wall. The bedroom, seen through a wide archway, had a king-size bed and two bedside tables, along with another flat-screen TV above a triple dresser. Lamps provided soft lighting in both the sitting room and the bedroom.

Sigurd must be a neat freak because there wasn’t an item of clothing lying about, or a dirty glass, or even loose change on an end table. In fact, through the open closet door to her immediate right in the little hallway inside the door, she could see his clothing hung neatly on hangers, each equally distant apart, including what appeared to be a full-length cloak.

She touched the cloak and remarked, “Planning on going to a masquerade ball as Zorro while you’re here? Or, I know, you really are trying out for a part in that vampire movie series
Sucked!
”

He muttered something.

“Did you actually say that you would like to suck me?”

“No,” he said, a grin twitching at his lips, “I said, ‘I’ll give you
sucked
.’ In other words, I intend to do just that.”

Moving forward into the other room, she sank down onto the luggage bench at the bottom edge of the bed and sighed. “Listen, I’m exhausted. I need to get some sleep. Say what you have to say so I can go home.”

“The time for saying is over. Now is the time for doing.” Turning away from her, he took the cell phone off his belt clip, placed it on the dresser, and pressed a button for the voice mail. Belatedly, he realized it was on the speakerphone and he had an audience. He seemed to consider turning it off, then shrugged, as if it didn’t matter if she overheard.

“Hey, Sig. Vikar here. Harek and Cnut should arrive tomorrow, along with a dozen more vangels to help you out. I understand that Jasper intends to use only fifty of his Lucies on this mission. The bastard is getting wiser in his old age, unfortunately for us. Anyhow, even fifty kills for us would be a good haul.”

“Aren’t you afraid to let me hear your secrets? Then you might have to kill me? Ha, ha, ha,” Marisa said.

“I’m considering it. Ha, ha, ha.”

“They should arrive about dawn,” the man named Vikar continued on the voice mail. “There’s a supply boat anchored offshore that they’ll use as a control center.”

Even as he listened, Sigurd took off his denim shirt and folded it over the back of the chair, thus revealing a back shoulder holster. He unbuckled the straps and placed both the holster and pistol carefully on the dresser.

“Cnut and his men will target Jasper’s yacht,” the voice mail continued. “Harek is concerned about that ship of youthlings that is rumored to be on its way. Let him handle that, and you can focus on the island.”

“Ship of youthlings? Huh? What’s a youthling?” Marisa asked.

Sigurd, still seething with anger at her—
Big deal!
—ignored her question and lifted the hem of his right and left pant legs, withdrawing throwing stars that had been placed somehow inside the athletic shoes. These, too, he put carefully on the dresser. Or maybe they’d been in some kind of ankle sheaths.

“And who is Vikar? And Harek and Cnut?”

“My brothers. Shh.”

“Mike said I’m not to give you any money, if you ask,” the Vikar person said with amusement in his voice.

“Pfff! As if I would ask you. Every cent you earn goes into that bloody castle,” Sigurd muttered to no one in particular, since the person on the other end of the voice mail couldn’t hear him.

“Why do you need seventy thousand dollars anyhow, bro?”

Marisa’s lolling head shot up.
Had he asked someone for money,
for me
?
And been denied?
Well, that put the last nail in the coffin of her upcoming “deal” with Harry.

Yanking his T-shirt from the waistband of jeans, Sigurd crossed his arms and drew it up and over his head. From some hidden pocket or slit on the right leg, he removed a long knife, similar to the one he’d used this afternoon in that “imaginary” fight with a demon vampire. It joined the other weapons.

“Call me when you get a chance,” the Vikar person was concluding. “Alex was talking to Armod a bit ago and now she’s humming the Wedding March. Any idea what that’s about?” The sound of a chuckle could be heard clearly over the speaker. “Bye.”

Sigurd made a snorting sound of disgust.

“Who’s getting married?”

“No one. ’Tis just an example of warped vangel humor.”

She didn’t see what was funny about someone getting married. But then she’d been so disconcerted by the speaker on the phone and the array of weapons that Sigurd was unloading that she belatedly realized Sigurd was down to bare feet and bare chest, and was about to unbutton his jeans.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s with the striptease?”

“No teasing,” he said, leaving the top button undone, which revealed his belly button and a light pelt of hair pointing down, down, down, toward low-riding briefs. Not to mention his wide shoulders and narrow waist and ridged abdomen.

Holy happy trails!

He stared at her then with eyes that were now more silver than blue. The same way they’d gotten when he’d killed that monster in the mirage today, the same way they’d looked when he’d kissed her on Harry’s yacht.

It must be a sign of high emotion.

Or arousal.

Oh boy!

“If not a striptease, then what?”

“Time to get down to work. Vangel work.”

“What kind of work requires you to be nude?”

He arched one eyebrow, looking meaningfully at his jeans.

“Half nude,” she corrected.

“Seduction.”

“M
uch as I like those red, swive-me-silly shoes, and much as I picture them in my dreams, kick them off,” he suggested. “I would hate to imagine you wearing them in Hell, or even worse, in Horror.”

Mayhap later you can model them for me, wearing naught else but the skin God gave you.

If someone doesn’t interfere with my plans.

Not that I have any specific plans, someone.

I am just playing this game by ear . . . or is that by cock?

I did not just say . . . think . . . that!

What was her reaction to his demand . . . uh, request that she remove her shoes, the start of her own striptease?

She yawned. The wench actually yawned whilst he stood before her “half nude.” Well, she wouldn’t be yawning for long.

“You dream of me?” she asked, homing in on the least relevant part of what he’d said.

Instead of chastising her for minimizing the importance of Hell or Horror, he thought,
Only every night since I met you.
But answered with a lie, “No. That was a jest.”

“I thought you never jested . . . uh, joked.”

I didn’t. I don’t.
“It is a defense weapon I am perfecting since making your acquaintance because . . .”

“. . . . because . . . ?”

“Because, you persistent wench, if I do not laugh, I will have to kill you.”

“Ha, ha, ha. I thought you were going to say that if you didn’t laugh, you would cry.”

“That, too.”
But not because of some bloody joke. Because I am so horny, I am no doubt growing antlers.
“Take off the damn shoes,” he snapped, then tamped his temper down and offered with consideration, which was not usually one of his strong points, “You will be more comfortable.”

“For your seduction?”

Screw consideration.
“Yes.”

“Seduction, huh? Because you are so crazy hot to have me?”

“Well, lukewarm, but with a little encouragement, I could no doubt simmer.”
Think boiling blood and steam heat rising off my favorite body parts.

She arched her pretty brows at him, clearly not buying his enchantment with her.

“If you must know, I have to seduce you in order to gain your consent so that I can fang the sin taint from you.”
There! Any plainer and a six-year-old could understand.

“Are you saying that you seduce everyone you fang? I don’t recall you telling me that.”

Are you taking notes now? Dost think I tell you everything? There are things that would curl your . . . Never mind.
“Of course not.” He tried to imagine seducing that pimply-faced, expletive-spewing teenage gang member he’d come across last week in a Miami alley, and shivered with distaste. He had saved the idiot youthling, though, and sent him on his buttocks-exposed, braies-dragging way to sin no more. With a sigh of exaggerated patience, he explained to Marisa, “Victims of a sin taint, or those dreadful sinners on the verge of being taken by the Lucipires, are offered a choice when we vangels find them. They must consent. We cannot fang them otherwise. Do they repent? Do they agree to a vangel’s bite to remove the sin poison? Or not?”

“Why am I not being offered a choice?”

He felt like tearing out his own hair, strand by strand. “Because!”

“That was mature!”

For a woman who claims to be exhausted, she sure can talk. Blather, blather, blather.
“Because there all kinds of fangings. Betimes a vangel must fang a Lucie, during battle.”
Yeech!
“And betimes a vangel fangs his partner during sex.”
Not so yeech!
“It enhances the pleasure a hundredfold, I have been told. Sex fanging happens only with a life mate, not in the casual mating, such as modern-day one-night stands.”

“I still don’t understand.”

I don’t understand, either, truth to tell. I just know that I must save you. I must. Besides, the less you understand, the better, my dearling. Just say yes.
“If I cannot make you agree willingly, then I will seduce you into compliance.”

“And that is acceptable according to the vangel rule book.”

“Vangel rule book?” He almost smiled. “I do not know what the ‘rule book’ says in that regard. Since we are at cross wills on this issue, I can only try to convince you to my way of thinking without actually clubbing you over your stubborn head.”
And enjoy myself in the process.

“I’m so tired. Can’t we do this some other night?”

A ploy to stop me altogether. I am not so thickheaded that I cannot see that.
“No, we cannot forestall the inevitable. I have too many other responsibilities weighing on me without worry over you.”
Plus I have an enthusiasm that is becoming more enthused by the second.
“I’ll do all the work. Just lie back and let me fang you.”

“Men have been telling women that for centuries, but they say ‘bang,’ not ‘fang.’”

“You deliberately missay me. And crudely, too. Just lie back and let it happen. It will be over before you know it.”

“Just lie back and dream of England, huh?”

England? What has England to do with this? The bloody Saxons! Even during sex, they stick their big noses in Viking affairs.
“Or sugarplums, or whatever little girls dream of,” he suggested, instead.

She gave him a pointed, unconsciously sultry look. “I’m not a little girl.”

“I know.”
Lord, but I bloody hell know!

He went down on one knee and removed first one high heel, then the other. He hadn’t expected the gesture to feel so intimate. But, by the heavens, it did. Monumentally so! She felt it, too. However, instead of enjoying the experience, she would have kicked him if he hadn’t surprised her before that thought entered her head by holding on to her ankles. “Wha-what?”

He considered pushing his luck and sliding his palms up her calves and over her thighs, but if there was anything a Viking warrior knew about battles it was: Timing is everything. Marisa wasn’t nearly ready for such a direct assault.

That didn’t mean he could wait for something to happen. What was that modern adage: “You snooze, you lose.” Or as Sorkel the Skald used to say, “He who hesitates has an axe in his head.”

He placed his hands on her waist and rose to his two feet, taking her with him. For just one second, he placed a kiss on her stunned lips as she dangled above the carpet like a limp puppet. Then he tossed her up and onto the middle of the big bed and crawled over her before she regained her senses and attempted to get away. Or walloped him with a pillow.

“Get off me, you big baboon.” She yawned again.

“Not a chance.”

Yet another yawn.

It was insulting, really. Vikings did not bore women. And, no matter what else he was, he was still a Viking.

“I can’t breathe.”

“Liar.” His arms were levered over her, his lower body pressing her to the bed. He was not suffocating her, no matter what she implied. Still, he put his mouth close to hers and blew softly between her lips. He had no idea why he did it. A reflex, mayhap.

She gasped, and, to his surprise, she blew back into his mouth.

He gasped, too.

Soon, they were exchanging breaths in an even, rhythmic fashion. He was breathing for her. She was breathing for him. They were breathing as one.

He had never done such before, and he doubted she had, either, by the stunned expression on her face. At least she was no longer yawning.

“What are you doing to me?” she whispered.

“What are you doing to me?” he countered.

“This is the sorriest seduction I’ve ever experienced,” she said, though he could tell she was intrigued. In fact, she was licking her lips as if to retain the taste of him, even though they hadn’t actually kissed.

He imagined that he felt every lick of her tongue on a certain part of his body. “I have not yet begun,” he rasped out.

“Begun what?”

She’s confused. Good! Every Viking knows a confused woman is halfway to the bed furs.
“Seduction. I have not yet begun my seduction.” He paused. “A sorry seduction, you say? Get seduced a lot, do you?”

“Every other day at least.”

He started to smile and then corrected the action because his fangs were already starting to elongate with arousal, and he didn’t want to scare her. Yet. Forget scaring. Another part of his body was elongating, too. The one that imagined licking. He could tell the exact moment she noticed the hardened rod aligned perfectly betwixt her parted thighs because her squirming stopped, abruptly. And it wasn’t fright at all he saw on her face now. The exhaustion had left her eyes and was replaced with . . . interest?

“Consider me seduced,” she said, and wiggled her bottom so that she rubbed herself against him like a cat against a catnip pole.

He felt like purring. Or swishing his manly tail. “No, no, no. You cannot be seduced so quickly. You must needs be writhing with want, begging for me to . . . take you.” What he really meant was “bite you,” but ’twas best not to remind her of that until the perfect moment.

“I could writhe,” she said, and did in fact do just that, placing her arms overhead and thrashing her body about sinuously like a harlot in heat. She gazed up at him through half-slitted, sultry eyes. Then concluded, “Seduced!”

Is she playing me at my own game? Is the witch trying to seduce me? Does she dare make mock of me?
“You cannot be seduced so quickly. Seduction takes time and talent.”

Sure enough, when she thought he was relaxed with her seeming consent, she gave his chest a mighty shove and attempted to slide out from under him. He let her, but then caught her with an arm about her waist and rolled so that she was on top, straddling him, the hem of the dress having ridden up practically to the bridge of her thighs . . . a bridge he was dying to cross. In the process he slid the back zipper of her dress from her neckline to the belt, which he unbuckled and tossed aside.

Caught by surprise, she fought to crawl off him and, at the same time, keep her dress from falling off in front.

Accommodating fellow that he was, he helped. Lower the dress, that was.

Holy frickin’ clouds!
Her hair, which had been clipped neatly atop her head with tortoiseshell combs, had come undone on one side and hung loose to a bare shoulder. The waitress dress, which he had sewn so expertly for her that afternoon, fell forward, catching at her elbows. She wore a blush-colored lace undergarment that cupped her full breasts and raised them up like ripe peaches, and he did love a good peach.

He rolled so that she was under him again. “Dost yield, wench? Dost repent of the sin you are contemplating? Dost welcome my bite? Dost agree to stay away from Harry Goldman and other men who pay for services?”

“Dost, dost, dost!” she mimicked. “Dost that ‘men who pay for services’ apply to you, too? You mentioned that you might be able to get the money for me.”

His heart sank down to his navel.
Oh, the unfairness of it! To be reminded at this moment that I am here for a higher calling, not to take advantage of a wench’s weakness.
“Now you would couple with me for money?”
The sin taint must be getting stronger.
“You said that you would prostitute yourself with Goldman but not with me.”

“I never used the word
prostitute
.”

“I have no patience with word games.”
Certainly not now when my brain is blurred with the possibilities of other kinds of games.

“This is no game to me.” When he did not respond to that remark, she prodded, “Well? Show me the money.”

He shook his head. “The . . . uh, person from whom I might have obtained the funds, declined.”

“If there ever was such a person to begin with!”

“I do not lie.”
Much.

“So you’re poor as a church mouse. Just like me.”

More like a rat. Leastways, that is how I am feeling in my failure to convince Mike.
“You could say that.”

“Then I don’t agree to anything, you big oaf.”

“So be it,” he said with mock resignation. Mock, because he was beginning to enjoy this verbal sparring and its inevitable outcome. “Seduction it is, then.”

“Do your best,” she snarled, and there was definite challenge in her voice.

His elbows were braced on either side of her head, but his hands were free, and he used his fingers to brush the loose strands of hair behind her one ear. Then he laved a line with his tongue from the center of her upraised chin to the lobe of her ear, which he nipped with his teeth.

She stiffened.

His moist tongue traced the inner whorls of her shell-like ear. Then he blew the wetness dry.

She shivered.

He used the tip of his tongue to stab into the center of her ear in a cadence matched to the beat of his pounding heart. At the same time, his hands had moved under her and lifted her silk-clad buttocks, exposed by the rising hem of her dress, in his palms, and guided her hips in a rhythmic counterpoint to the thrusts of his tongue. Multitasking at its finest!

She moaned.

Or mayhap he was the one who moaned.

His head spun as a strange fog of sensuality seemed to be swirling about their bodies. Not quite a fog, actually. More like wisps of cloudy sensations wrapping around them like a cocoon, teasing, tempting. The tendrils of the mist were caressing his body, like fingers. Or was it Marisa’s fingers? No, her arms were braced tightly against her sides as she attempted to resist his charms.

And the air, ah, it was filled with the scent of honey and ginger. It occurred to him in that moment that the most delicious meal in the world, one he was going to try first chance he got, was peaches drizzled with ginger honey. Was there such a dish? If not, he would invent one.

Mayhap she had eaten something with those flavors, and that was why he smelled them so strongly. He would taste her lips, just to make sure. Leastways, that’s what he told himself as his lips swooped down to take succor from her parted lips. This was no sweet, tentative kiss. More like a hungry, devouring search for . . . something.

He nipped her lips and tongue. He wet her lips. He sucked and thrust and pressed and thrust and thrust and thrust.