A coughing roar answered, lionlike, nearly swallowing her own noise. Another monster was above her, head thrown back, throat bared, and Simone was so far gone she didn’t care. Allthat mattered was the blessed, furious release swirling through her along with that warm forgiving painlessness.
Good God,she thought, pointlessly.Again on the floor.Then a brief spangled darkness swallowed her.
For a short while she drifted, deliberately trying not to think or remember; it was easier, she decided, being high on blood. Except she hadn’t had this reaction to the red stuff before, had she? Confusing, how the rules kept changing.
One thing was for sure: the old vampire had found her again, somehow, and had fucked the life out of her on what felt like carpet. She’d barely managed a glimpse of blue-and-yellow drapes, striped wallpaper, and a spindly pseudo-antique table before he’d caught her and… pushed her against the wall? Yes, that was what had happened.
Where on earthwasshe now? Where the holy hell had he come from? She hadn’t felt him following at all, except for the faintest sense of an invisible gaze two or three times while going about her business last night—easily attributable to her usual paranoia, which was now bound to escalate.
So how? Where? What the absolutefuck?
He exhaled, a long shaky breath, and sagged atop her. Sounded like he’d gotten what he was after, except his cock also seemed strangely swollen, lodged deep and pulsing. Simone tested her fingertips, her toes—her legs aching a bit even through the warm analgesic flood, postcoital haze mixing with whatever in his blood had gotten her so zoned out.
Or maybe she was simply going insane. That was a definite possibility.
He nuzzled at her cheek, more strange almost-intimacy—of course, this was about as intimate as someone could get, no matter that they were complete strangers.
“Why are you doing this?” Dozy alarm spilled through the heavy sedation, because she sounded nearly drunk, the words spaced-out and dreamy. “You just have a thing for floor sex?”
“Hm.” He sounded almost human, a low, amused near-grunt. “You are so delicious, I cannot resist.”
A nice compliment, maybe, but Simone wasn’t sure she liked it. She shifted, attempting to ease the pressure on her hips; he tensed, nipping lightly at her earlobe. At least he wasn’t using fangs—those were really sharp. And she should know, having bitten her own lip to flinders once or twice during a bounty fight.
If anyone had offered a price on this vamp, she wouldn’t have taken it. No way, no day. “Look, can you just… Can I get up? Please?”
“Not for some short while.” His movement was arrested; something wasdefinitelystuck. “You see?”
“Oh, God. Is that… is that normal?”I cannot believe I am having this fucking conversation with a vampire. Literally.
“Yes.” At least he didn’t sound irritated by simple questions. “At least, once a sanguinant reaches Elder status, the physical changes—wait. Are you uncomfortable?”
Sanguinant. The term was vaguely familiar, especially the way he used it. “You mean vampire.”
“If you like.” Indifferent, but still not angry. A faint stilted cadence, the drawl vanished and clipped precision replacing its blurred edges. “How is it possible, that you do not know such things? The one who made you, how did they die?”
Screaming in a patch of sunshine, after I tore a few boards off the windows and dragged him to where I knew the light would hit. The blood-sedation was so intense Simone could think about the whole event almost calmly.
Almost.
A shiver slipped down her back. She’d passed out at sundown, tucked in a safe dark corner, pretty certain she wouldn’t be disturbed—how thefuckhad she ended up here? “Badly,” she heard herself say, in that distant, bitchy tone that warned Barry she didn’t want to talk about it.
You’re due in Denver Friday night. Start working on that.
Great advice. But she couldn’t seem to scrape together enough brainpower to begin. She hadn’t even been this distracted after the divorce, when the depression made it hard to focus on more than getting through one more lawyer’s appointment, one more hearing, one more day, one more endless stupid hour.
“Your Maker had no time to teach you, then?” Soft and persistent, almost cajoling. This vamp certainly didn’tsoundcrazy, which was also sort of comforting. Maybe she could get some information?
That sounded dangerous as all hell, but what choice did she have? “He didn’t say a single word,” Simone kept her eyes firmly shut; the woman using her voice sounded tired, colorless. Distant. “Just growled and b-bit me. It hurt.”
“Then I am glad he’s dead.” Quiet and level, each word weighed carefully. “I will allow nothing to harm you, little leman.”
So, he has a thing for floor-fucking and also for… lemons? Leee-mons, is it some kind of foreign word? Or maybe his crazy just doesn’t show at first blush. “I don’t understand any of this.” Simone’s voice remained a flat monotone; she was just too high on old-vamp blood to care about much of anything at the moment. Whatever he wanted, he’d lose interest before long. She could wait—or so she hoped.
And, as the final indignity, she felt a hot trickle from the corners of her eyes, and realized vampires could cry after all.
CHAPTER 12
She weptas old soldiers sometimes do, as if she resented the very existence of tears. He would have enjoyed closeness forced by the barb knotted deep in her core, but the urge was negated by her steadfast refusal to open her eyes, acknowledge her own pleasure or physical relaxation. Even the fact that another deep feeding had clearly provided some pleasant languor did not seem to matter.