Читать книгу Love Me Forever - Rosemary Laurey - Страница 8

Justin half-wished he still possessed the ability to take slow, relaxing breaths. He hadn’t felt this nervous in centuries. Why did it matter so? All he had to do was deliver a box. Delivering was the easy bit. It was what to say afterward that bothered him. “I long to taste your rich-scented blood,” would not be the thing to say, but he had this awful fear of blurting it out anyway.

Abel, help him! He wasn’t a randy youth or an untried fledgling. He was a master vampire. He had more than enough control to converse with a mortal for ten minutes. Didn’t he?

“You okay?” Dixie asked as she handed him a slip of paper with a roughly drawn map to Stella’s house. “Want me to take it?”

“No!” Hell, he’d all but snapped. “I’ll be fine, Dixie. You need to rest. You’ve been up all night.” Sewing for Sam…and him.

“So have you!”

“I have the advantage of centuries.”

She grinned. “No one would ever guess!”

“No one ever does, Dixie.”

She looked up at him, her green eyes alert as if catching his mood. “I can easily deliver it. The sun’s not bright and it will only take ten minutes.”

“I want to, Dixie.” As if he’d have her run his errands. He tucked the map in his pocket and the black-edged box under his arm.

“Take the car.” She held out the keys.

“I thought it was close. I’ll walk.”

“No.” She pushed the keys into his hand. “You want to appear mortal, right? Drive.” He made to hand them back, but she shook her head. “A few blocks south of Thurman, the neighborhood changes. It’s not the sort of area where people go strolling for pleasure. Drive in and drive out is what anyone else would do.”

In that case, what in Hades were a single woman and schoolboy doing living there? “Okay.” He closed his fist over her car keys and hoisted the black-and-white box closer. “Thanks, Dixie.”

“Just be sure to tell her she can pay me whatever she’d have spent on another costume.”

“Will do.” He curled his hand over the knob and opened the back door. “Bye, and thanks again.”

“And remember to stay on the right side of the road!” she shot at him as he stepped out the door.

Justin unlocked Dixie’s car, and then realized he’d opened the wrong door. Would he ever get used to this? He placed the box on the passenger seat and walked around the bonnet and unlocked the driver’s side. By the time he finished readjusting the seat and fiddling with the rearview mirror, he could have walked there! But Dixie’s caution worried him. She was most definitely not a woman to get overly nervous, and if she thought an area risky…

He’d soon find out.

Her directions were easy to follow and precise, and her warnings about the area were spot on. As he turned left onto Lubeck, he couldn’t miss the boarded up, dilapidated house on one corner. Now that really did look like a place for Hollywood vampires or ghouls to lurk! The house across the way wasn’t much better, but it was inhabited. Two shaven-headed young men lurked on the sagging porch.

Justin checked house numbers. At least Stella’s was a distance down the road. Two blocks down. Heck, he was thinking in the lingo. He pulled the car into the curb and looked around. Her house was shabby but tidy-looking. She had no sagging sofas in the front garden, nor did she have a rusty, disused water heater decorating her front porch like one of her neighbors. Stella’s front steps were flanked with a pair of pumpkins, and a cardboard cutout of a green-faced witch hung on the front door. Obviously a witch didn’t mean the same to her that it did to Kit and Dixie. Stella was fortunate.

He took the steps two at a time and rang the bell. And waited. And waited. He sensed a heartbeat behind the locked door. “Who’s there?” Stella asked.

“Justin Corvus, Ms. Schwartz.” As if she’d remember!

“From the Vampire Emporium.” Only Dixie could come up with that name for a shop the size of a shoebox. “Dixie sent something she thought Sam might use.”

He heard a bolt slide back and a lock turn. The door opened a few inches and Stella peered out before releasing the chain lock. “Come in,” she said, opening the door wide.

At her invitation, he stepped over the threshold into a tidy but shabby sitting room. He held out the box. “Dixie hopes this fits Sam.”

Stella looked doubtful but took the box. “Thanks.”

“Have a look. See what you think.”

She slipped the lid off and reached into tissue, putting the box on a chair, before shaking out the cape. Her lips parted as she stared at the velvet hanging in rich folds. She should be wearing velvet like this. Velvet and the finest satin and lace not blue jeans and a worn sweatshirt. “It’s beautiful,” she said, “but…”

Her skin would surely taste like new cream on honey cake. He smiled. “You don’t think Sam will like it?”

She laughed. “He’d love it but I really think…”

He could feel the tug between her longing and her anxiety. “Look, Stella…” She hadn’t balked at his use of her given name, so he went on. “See if it fits him. If so, why not keep it?”

“Because it’s more than I can afford!” Her face flushed red with mortification at her admission. He could hear the rush of blood to her face. Abel, help him! He had to will his fangs to stay retracted. He hadn’t realized how much he needed to feed.

“We haven’t even mentioned a price.”

She fixed him with an exasperated look. “I know what things cost and this was custom-made.”

Yes, custom made for Sam!

She started re-folding the cape. She really was going to refuse! It would be so easy to will her to agree—she was halfway there, all it would take was a little nudge of her mind and she’d agree to what her heart wanted to accept. He resisted the temptation. Somehow it seemed important that she accept freely. “It was a special order.” By him. “But there’s limited market for children’s outfits.” That much was true. “Yesterday evening it was sitting up there in Dixie’s workroom, no use to anybody.” Because it was still on the bolt. “If it fits Sam, at least someone is getting use out of it and it won’t go to waste.”

That last line was a touch of genius. He bet “thrifty” was her middle name. She nodded. “Thanks.” She paused. “I didn’t mean to sound ungracious.”

“You didn’t. Just careful. No one wants to run up obligations they can’t meet. Dixie said to pay her whatever you’d have spent on another costume.”

He should have stopped when he was winning. Stella looked at him. “That would hardly meet the cost of the fabric.”

“No,” Justin replied, and watched as she frowned. “But it’s more than she’ll get with it sitting in a box in her storeroom, and this way someone gets to use it other than the moths.” Now he was tempted to push her will just a little.

“And if you promise to bring Sam by the shop, it will be a great advertisement for us.”

He sensed her acceptance a second before she spoke. “Thanks.” She had a smile that could fell a strong man. How any mortal man had ever resisted her, he’d never know. It made this vampire want to…

“Would you like a cup of coffee?”

He wanted her blood, rich and warm and flowing over his tongue. He needed her skin against his lips. “Coffee would be brilliant.”

She brought the box with her as she led the way into the kitchen, a bright room with a tall bay window. Justin sat in the chair she offered, glanced out of the window at a sand-box and swing and a dilapidated garage at the end of the garden, and then gave his full attention to the object of his lust. A lust he’d better damn well keep reined in.

Stella filled a kettle and put it to boil. She reached for two mugs from a row on hooks under the cabinets. “Instant okay?” she asked as she measured out spoonfuls from a large jar.

“By all means.” Fluids would slow his metabolism down, and about time too. Of course walking out of here would work even better.

“Cream and sugar?” Stella half-turned his way.

“No, thank you, just black.”

She busied herself, bending down to get milk from the fridge, reaching for sugar from a cabinet and finally taking the boiling kettle from the stove. “Here.” She placed the steaming mug in front of him. The aroma rose strong and fresh but masked by the scent of warm-blooded woman. He took a long swig from the mug.

Miscalculation that. She was staring at him. “You must have a throat made of asbestos.”

“Hot drinks don’t bother me.” Any more than heat or cold or bullets. Fire could be fatal but… “It’s good coffee.”

“Thanks.”

He remembered to drink the rest of it at a more mortal pace. “There’s also a pair of trousers in the box,” he went on when she’d relaxed a little. “Dixie thought they might do.” Stella was giving him her don’t-patronize-me look again.

“They’re an odd size she wasn’t able to sell. They’re bound to be too big, but Dixie can take them in if you like.”

“I’ll fix them,” Stella replied. “Or I’ll end up owing for alterations as well as the costume.”

That was her acceptance as well as her bid for independence, and Justin acknowledged it with a smile. “Think they’ll fit him?” Dixie had assured him they were far too big, but wearable under the cape, and the mismatched sizes would reinforce their fable of stray garments just hanging around the place.

Stella fetched the box. Putting the cape over the back of a spare chair, she pulled out the trousers. “Yes, they are a bit big,” she said holding them up, “but that’s soon taken care of. The waist’s elastic and I can turn them up.” She folded them away and then picked up the cape, her hands stroking the velvet as she folded it carefully. “They really are beautiful,” she said. “Sam will be thrilled. Thanks.” She smiled.

It was the sort of smile to shatter a man’s mind or exalt his soul—or send a vampire’s thoughts down forbidden avenues. She was prospective sustenance not solace. “You’ll come by the shop on Beggars’ Night?”

“You bet!” She glanced at his now-empty mug. “Want another coffee?”

“No, thank you. I…” A great crash from outside stopped him.

“What’s that?” It sounded like a small explosion but surely not…

Stella had jumped up and now frowned out of the window. “It’s those no-good Day boys!”

Children were doing this? “What did they do?”

“They’re throwing bottles and trash at my garage.” She shook her head. “Do it all the time. They…” She was interrupted by a great shout from behind her house and another smash.

“Not anymore, they won’t!” Justin said, racing out the back door and down the garden. Without pausing to think, he vaulted the sagging chain fence.

He landed just feet from one youth and inches from another.

The shorter one scowled at Justin, the taller, presumably older one drew his arm back, a glass jar clutched in his fist. A mass of broken glass and stones decorated the ground.

“Stop that!” Justin said.

The younger one laughed and bent to pick up a bottle from the bag at his feet. “You gonna stop me, white man?”

“Yes.” It was ludicrously easy. Their minds had the substance of sawdust. The older one lowered his arm to let the bottle dangle. The younger stood up and blinked.

They were children. Wreaking havoc. He relaxed his hold on their minds, just a little. “Why aren’t you at school?”

The older one shrugged. “Sid got suspended. I ain’t gonna go if he ain’t there to look out for me.”

Familial solidarity was admirable enough but vandalism didn’t seem quite the way to nurture it. “I see.” It was a lie, he didn’t. Any more than he’d ever understood the innumerable acts of vandalism he’d witnessed over the centuries. He’d never had an answer before and didn’t expect one now. He held both boys in his thrall. “You’ve a free day. Good. You’ll spend it picking up every shard of glass here, and when you’re finished, clear the rest of the rubbish from the alley.”

The both nodded mutely and at his signal, repeated his directions. “When you pick up,” Justin went on, “put everything in that bin over there.” He directed their attention to a wheelie bin leaning crookedly against the fence. “And you will never bother this house again. Is that understood?”

They nodded. “Yes.” The younger one surprised Justin by adding, “sir.”

“Good.” He left them bending and retrieving what looked like several months’ worth of smashed bottles and rusted tin cans and turned back towards the house. Stella was standing halfway down the patch of yellowed grass, staring openmouthed. He was struck simultaneously by her beauty and his own stupidity. What was wrong with his reasoning? He’d raced out of her house and leapt the fence without thinking. He never flaunted his strength before mortals. Well, he had now! “Ms. Schwartz,” he called, “don’t worry! They won’t annoy you anymore.”

She looked as if she wanted to believe, but hesitated. “Those boys are nothing but trouble!”

“Not anymore. Do you have any bin liners? They’ve a lot to pick up.”

That distracted her…a little. “Bin liners?” Her brows creased. “You mean trash bags?” She went back to the house and returned with a couple of heavy, green plastic bags. “Think this will do?”

They did beautifully, and with Justin giving their sullen brains a nudge, the two miscreants accepted them with thanks and offered abject apologies and assurances they’d never offend again. The youngest even added a hesitant “Ma’am.” Perhaps there was hope for him after all.

It was back in the house that Stella turned to Justin. “Who are you? Superman or an Olympic athlete, the way you jumped over that fence.”

Better make her forget. “Stella,” he whispered and pulled her will to his. This was one strong-minded woman! It took power to enter her thoughts. He glimpsed more anxieties and worries than a woman should bear. He needed to do something about them. Later. He skimmed off the memory of his race down the garden and leap over the gate. “Not to worry,” he said as he released her mind and she blinked up at him.

The unexpected vulnerability in her eyes undid him. That and the heady scent of her lifeblood racing thorough her veins. Lust rose like a wild force, and without thinking he threw a full power glamour over her.

She was soft, warm and alive and he pulled her compliant body into his arms. He resisted the urge to caress her breasts and the lush warmth of her woman’s curves. Not now! Not ever! He’d taste her blood and thus slake his need and the raging desire he barely kept in rein. Taste her—no more! He brushed her honey-colored hair off her face and lifted her shoulders so her head hung back, offering her soft white throat. He pulled down the neck of her sweatshirt and gently lapped her skin, savoring her living taste. When she was utterly relaxed and let out a little whimper of pleasure, he nipped.

Never in all his born—or dead—days had he tasted such richness. Her sweet thick blood flowed through his lips, warming his mouth and a heart long hurt. He sucked, knowing he should stop soon, but needing the solace and comfort of her warmth and life. It was her nipples hardening under the loose sweatshirt that brought him back to reason. That, and the scent of her arousal.

He forced his lips off her and slowly licked the wound to seal it. The mark was hidden by her sweatshirt and in a few hours would fade completely. He smoothed her hair forward and sat her in a chair. Only then did he remove the glamour.

“Whee!” Stella shook her head and ran her hands through her hair. She looked around, frowning as it registered she was sitting down. “What…?” she began.

“You got a bit woozy,” Justin lied, despising himself but knowing the truth was impossible. And she probably was woozy after all he’d taken. “The last few minutes were a bit stressful.”

“I’ve never gone giddy over the Day boys before,” she said and looked at Justin as if remembering. “I owe you for that.”

“You don’t owe me anything.” Heck, he now owed her!

“Want me to make you a cup of coffee? It might make you feel better.” And moving might well help him get a hold of himself.

She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

He wasn’t the only one lying. They were even. No! They’d never be. He’d darn well better get out of here while his resolve held. “Hope the costume works for Sam.”

“It will.”

He nearly ran a massive, hexagonal, red stop sign, and that gave him the jolt he needed. He had to get his mind straight. He parked, making sure he wasn’t in one of the complicated parking zones, and strode down to the park. Gathering a handful of pebbles, he sat down by the pond and skimmed them across the water, but stopped when he realized that was no way to stay unobtrusive. The first two skipped several times and embedded themselves deep in the opposite bank.

He dropped the rest of his stones and looked up at the clear October sky. He was burning with need. Feeding should have eased his appetite; instead it woke yearnings. Dangerous yearnings for far more than a taste of her sweet blood. He was a fool! Feeding in daylight! What vampire in his right mind did that? If one of those hobbledehoys in the alley had seen! He’d endangered Kit and Dixie with his mindless lust and taken unpardonable advantage of a defenseless woman.

He had to get himself in hand. Tonight he’d ask Kit to take him hunting. He had to have blood, and plenty of it, before he saw Stella again.

Justin closed his eyes, trying to fathom what had happened. He needed, wanted Stella—had from the minute she walked into that little shop two days ago. Two days! He was going bonkers! No other explanation. Maybe his need for native earth was deeper than he anticipated. Maybe the time change played merry hell with his reason. Maybe he needed a woman!

Why not? He’d enjoyed plenty of liaisons over the centuries, exchanging sexual rapture for their blood. He’d always been discreet, careful. Not one of them had ever guessed his true nature. If they ever got close, he ended the affair. But he didn’t want a brief fling with Stella. He wanted what Kit and Dixie shared. A union of souls and spirits.

He had rocks for brains as well as balls!

Impossible! To join their blood union, she’d have to die. As if he’d wish that on any mortal. As if he could. Stella was as unobtainable as her namesakes in the night sky and he’d better face facts.

He needed to return to Kit and Dixie’s and arrange his meeting with Vlad. Now that would yank him back to reality without any trouble. Giving a dry laugh, Justin shot a last stone across the lake with such force it embedded ten inches into the mud on the other side.

“I think you’re beating your head against a metaphorical wall,” Dixie said, watching Justin with her arms folded on her chest, “and quite unnecessarily, too!”

He glared at her but she just shrugged. “You’re not listening.” Maybe she didn’t understand, she was a woman after all. “I used her!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Justin! You fed off her…Okay, tasted.” She’d caught his frown had she? Good. “How many times have you and Christopher exhorted me to feed regularly?”

“Dixie,” Kit broke in, “I think you’re missing the point.” Justin turned to his old friend in relief. At least he understood. “Justin fed in daylight. We don’t do that.” Kit’s smile at his companion caused a knot in Justin’s heart. “Remember?”

“Yes, dear.”

Justin wanted to shout his frustration to the skies. Kit hadn’t understood either! “Kit, that wasn’t my worst concern,” Justin said. That got their attention. He glanced up at the window moldings as he braced himself for the admission. “I wanted more than blood from her…In fact, I doubt if blood will ever be enough.”

Kit let out a slow whistle—or the closest a vampire managed with no breath to draw on. Dixie reached over and squeezed Justin’s hand. The unexpected and so human gesture shook Justin.

“It’ll work out, Justin,” she said.

“Dixie, it’s not that easy. Stella’s mortal, for God’s sake!” Kit said in an exasperated voice.

Dixie turned on him. “For crying out loud, Christopher! Do you think I don’t know that? I didn’t lose my memory when you transformed me.” She gave Justin’s hand another squeeze. “So you’ve fallen for her in a big way have you?”

“She’s magnificent. I want to take her and build her a palace on a mountaintop and protect her from all harm and dress her in silk and jewels.”

“Yes, well. She might have something to say about that. Stella does have a job to hold down and a kid to support.”

That reminder struck like a cold iron. “And I used that!”

“Justin, will you please stop maundering!”

He looked up. She was nose to nose with him and frowning. “You don’t understand…” he began.

“Believe me, I do. I had firsthand experience of your taboos about relationships with mortals.”

That he wouldn’t deny, or her cavalier attitude towards the same taboos. “They happen to be your taboos, now.”

She ignored that reminder. “Justin, listen to me a minute. I’m not suggesting you flout some immutable vampire law. I just think you should stop beating your breast about it. And to be honest, if the earth moved for you when you fed off Stella, do you imagine she just walked away afterwards and got on with the ironing as if nothing had happened?”

That was supposed to make him feel better? “I put a glamour on her!”

Dixie nodded and gave a wry smile. “Yup, I think Christopher tried that a few times with me.”

“Look here, Dixie,” Kit began.

Dixie neither looked nor paused. “Justin,” she went on, “okay, Stella is mortal and taboo as far as a long-term relationship but heck, why not enjoy her company for the three weeks you’re here? Most women would give their right arm and their favorite mascara for a man like you. I don’t recommend trying to incarcerate her on a mountaintop, but take her out a few times, feed off her when you need, and treat her well. And when you go back to England, we’ll look out for her. Christopher can include her street in his nightly sweeps.”

As if he wanted anyone—even his get—including his woman in the nightly sweeps! Except Stella wasn’t and would never be his. Justin wanted to rear his head back and howl like the wolves that once roamed the dank hills of Britain, but that would bring attention to them all! He settled for gritting his teeth.

Dixie stood up and kissed him on the forehead.

Twice.

Justin stared. First at her and then at Kit. Far from being affronted, Kit was amused.

“It’ll work out,” Dixie said. “My Gran always used to say, if it was meant to be there will be a way.” She gave him a quick hug and walked out.

Kit sat there grinning like an intoxicated hyena. “Do you always smile like that when your woman goes around kissing other men?”

Kit shrugged. “First time she’s done it. If it gets to be a habit, I’ll say something.”

How could Kit be so complacent? Because he is so sure of Dixie. Justin shook his head. Hell, if he didn’t have to meet Vlad in a couple of days he’d do best to hie back to England. No. He wasn’t leaving a day before he had to. “You think I’ve got my brains in a twist, don’t you?”

Kit nodded. “I do know what you’re going through, you know.”

“Things worked out for you and Dixie.”

“Yes, but the events in between were a bit off for Dixie.”

Justin ran his hands through his hair. How could he wish harm, much less death, to Stella?

“Thought you’d see my point.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“I think you should follow Dixie’s suggestion.”

He couldn’t be hearing this! “What? Just feed off her a few times and toss her aside?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve always preached mortals are for?”

“This is different!”

“I know!”

They were silent for several minutes. “What the hell do I do, Kit?” Justin asked at last.

“For want of a better solution, be a friend to her while you’re here and we’ll take care of her when you go.”

“It’s going to be damn hard.”

Kit nodded. “Can’t deny that, but think of the old adage about half a loaf being better than no bread.”

“Then I’d better feed long and deep before I see Stella again,” he paused. “Kit, I’m scared I’ll hurt her, take too much.”

Kit shook his head. “You won’t hurt her. Trust me.” He clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get Dixie and go feed.”

Justin left Dixie and Kit where they’d landed in the middle of Schiller Park and set off towards Stella’s. He pictured Kit and Dixie strolling hand in hand as they walked up City Park Avenue towards their house. It was impossible to envy them and not feel ungracious. Heck, after what they’d both gone through, he didn’t begrudge them one iota of their happiness, but it cut him to the core to realize he hadn’t a hope of that with Stella.

He shrugged. He hadn’t lasted this long by maundering over can’t-haves. Dixie was right. Amazing how a vampire barely past fledging could be so wise. He could make things better for Stella, and then leave her and Sam in Kit and Dixie’s care.

Justin ran at vampire speed though the night streets, keeping to alleys when he could. As before, the sudden switch from affluence to the rim of poverty shook him. Some houses showed stalwart efforts to keep front gardens neat and porches swept, but others were tending to dilapidated and a few were fast on the straight road to slum. Stella and her son needed to be out of here.

Stella! Just thinking about her sent his mind and body into overdrive. At least he had his hunger under control. He’d fed not an hour ago from a street person down by the river. Justin wanted—no, needed to be close to Stella. He set off at a run in the direction of her house and almost plowed into a youth leaning against a corner. After that, Justin slowed but stayed in the shadows. He was just a hundred meters or so from Stella’s but the streets seemed unnaturally busy for this hour of the morning. In the block ahead he noticed several cars parked, one drawing away as he watched. The others waited, engines idling. Justin leaped up to the fence to his left and climbed up the side to the house. From the roof, he’d have a better view.

The dilapidated house he’d thought deserted earlier, wasn’t. Several men stood by the open front door and from time to time, went inside and then walked down to one of the waiting cars before it drove off. Every so often, someone went into the house and stayed. Drugs! It was the most likely possibility, all within hailing distance of where Stella and Sam lived.

Not for much longer!

Could he do this single-handedly?

Unfortunately not and still have strength to face Vlad tomorrow afternoon—although that prospect didn’t depress him the way it had a week earlier, before he’d met Stella.

Maybe he couldn’t obliterate the drug house yet, but he could cause a little judicious mayhem. Justin climbed down to the ground. Amazing really how many times he’d done this and never been noticed. Mortals rarely looked above eye level.

Characters he’d identified as lookouts manned the three corners that approached the house. Two of them openly carried guns. Justin measured the distance between them, watching the third carefully, and noting he kept his hands in his pockets. Keeping his weapon and hands warm, perhaps.

Not for long.

Silently vaulting the fence to land right behind the first, Justin yanked the gun out of his hands and ran at vampire speed. Before the punk’s shocked yell got the others’ attention, Justin had the second weapon and was racing to the third man. That one he had to shove to rip off his jacket, but he had all three disarmed and disoriented. Bundling the weapons inside the jacket as he ran, Justin leaped over the first fence and up into a tree that, praise Abel, just waited to hide him.

An almost bare tree gave little cover but it was off the ground and from there it was an easy leap to the nearest rooftop, which gave a grandstand view of the confusion below. In response to the shouts, a good half-dozen mortals poured out of the house and parked cars sped off with tires squealing. If nothing else, he’d disturbed this night’s trade.

Once he got back from Chicago he’d shut up their shop permanently.

Meanwhile, he was stuck with three weapons that no doubt could be traced to umpteen crimes. Kit’s disposal method seemed in order…but then Justin noticed the brick chimney at his elbow and grinned to himself. Remembering a scene from a film years earlier, he took the first gun, snapped off the trigger and an inch or two of the barrel and dropped it in the opening. He jumped from house to house sending a fragment down each chimney. At a good guess most hadn’t been used in years and his contributions would join the debris of soot and old birds’ nests. The coat he tossed over a telephone line, where it hung like discarded washing. He’d been tempted to donate it to a tramp sleeping in one of the alleys but decided, No. Too risky for the recipient. The jacket would be recognized with its logos and badges, gang colors he guessed.

He dropped the last gun fragment three houses down from Stella’s. The general confusion hadn’t spread this far so he climbed down and crossed the street, opening her gate and walking up her path towards the pumpkins and the cardboard witch. The front door light was still on, so he slipped into the shadows and climbed up the side of the house.

He found a bathroom window ajar.

And he had her invitation to enter.

He was inside in seconds. Listening, all he caught were two heartbeats. Smiling to himself he opened the door and crossed the landing to the faster heartbeat. Sam was fast asleep, the black velvet cape spread across the foot of his bed.

Stella was in the next room. Her head against the pillow, one arm over her head, the other across her chest, her hand resting between her breasts. She wore a blue-and-green-checked flannel nightgown, the sexiest sleepwear he’d seen in his long life. The soft fabric outlined her breasts, which rose and fell with her breathing.

He wouldn’t taste. He’d taken more than enough for one day, but he had to touch. He reached out to the soft flesh under the brushed cotton. She was warm and living and he was desperate for her and was condemned to friendship! He ran his fingers over her cheek and down her neck, gently nudging aside the fabric at her neck. His mark had all but faded. By morning it would be gone. And so would he.

But he was coming back.

He bent closer.

Her eyes snapped open.

“Justin!” she said, frowning up at him.

“Hush,” he said, passing his hand over her forehead and willing her back to sleep. Her eyes closed but her lips parted as she gave little sigh.

It was her parted lips that undid him.

He bent his head. Her lips were warm and sweet and soft, a million times more tempting than in his wildest dreams. He pressed gently and they opened like a welcome. She responded with a light touch but a certain one, moving her mouth under his as if reaching for more. He sensed her hunger, the need for physical loving and longed to give all she needed, to have all he yearned for.

He contented himself with a kiss.

He lifted back just enough to trace her lips open with his tongue. Her breath came faster as she lifted her head. He slid his arm under her shoulders, opening his hand to support the back of her head. His fingers burrowed, ruffling her short hair as he lifted her close.

Their mouths fused, joined in their mutual need. As his tongue smoothed the inside of her lips, she pressed her tongue against his, and a wild spate of longing almost obliterated his reason. Almost. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, let that happen. He had to keep hold of his convictions and satisfy his need to pleasure her.

His hand cupped her breast through the soft cotton. Her response stunned and delighted him. A ripple of desire shot from her hardened nipple to her mouth as her body shuddered with want.

Justin stroked her other breast. At once her nipple sprung hard and her little whimper was swallowed in his kiss. Their tongues met, touching and tasting as if sipping each other’s desire. Now his body responded. Hard. Caught up in wild need that all but engulfed him. A need he had to master. He eased his lips off hers, tracing a path of soft kisses down her neck as she muttered need and longing. He licked the site of his earlier tasting, adding to his ache and her pleasure as she arched and sighed in his arms.

If he didn’t leave now, he never would.

He settled her back on the pillow and pulled the covers over her.

“Mom?” Abel help him! He’d been so wrapped in desire he’d forgotten Sam. Seeing Stella slept deeply, Justin left her room and crossed to Sam’s. He was sitting up in bed, his eyes groggy from sleep but his shoulders shaking. His eyes opened wide at seeing Justin.

Poor child, waking to find a vampire in his room in the middle of the night. “Hush,” Justin said, “your mother’s asleep. What’s the matter?”

“I had a bad dream.”

“Never mind. You’ll be all right now.” He made certain by casting a light glamour so Sam slept, and reaching into his thoughts to skim off the memory of Justin Corvus in his bedroom.

Justin left the house as he’d entered.

The moon had gone by the time he arrived back at Kit and Dixie’s. He’d have a few hours of rest and then he was off to face Vlad Tepes. A week earlier, he’d dreaded dealing with the alien vampire who’d stolen Gwyltha’s affection. Now it scarcely mattered.

Five hours later, rested, and fortified by his feeding and memories of Stella’s embrace, Justin took the plane to Chicago. It wasn’t until he landed and was seated in a taxi bound for the rendezvous that he remembered he hadn’t removed the memory of his visit from Stella, and if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d held and loved her, without casting a glamour.

He was letting hormones fog his reason.