Читать книгу Undying - V.K. Forrest - Страница 12

Arlan stood beneath the prickly low-hanging pine bough as he stared at the woman on the lonely stretch of beach. She was small in stature, slender, almost boylike in shape. She wore jeans and a dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. From beneath the hood, golden strands of hair were visible. Her eyes were luminous in the moonlight.

Arlan swung his long tail one way and then the other, unable to tear his gaze from hers. He had morphed into a large male Urocyon cinereoargenteus so that he could get a better look at Fia’s Maggie. He’d arrived ahead of her and had been watching her since she walked out on the beach. When she spotted him, he should have darted into the brush, as any fox with sense would have done, but there was something about this woman that held him spellbound.

When she saw him, she had gone completely still, but it appeared she had done so to prevent frightening him. She was not afraid. In fact, from the intensity of her gaze, he sensed that she was as momentarily fascinated by him as he was of her.

This petite woman with green eyes and spun gold hair was not what Arlan had expected. He had worked with informants before, male and female. They were often drug abusers or alcoholics. They were humans down on their luck, willing to accept money for information. They were skinny, malnourished, and hollow eyed. They had a look about them that was often pathetic. Maggie had never asked Fia for money, for anything actually, and in no way did she appear pathetic. This woman was healthy and she was on her game. Whatever game that was. He could smell that much on the salty night air. Yet, she also seemed sad. Lonely.

When their gazes locked, he felt some kind of instant connection with her. An understanding. Arlan could not read the minds of humans, but he sensed a vulnerability about her that made him want to reach out. To touch her. To take her in his arms.

And her neck was so lovely, so pale and slender….

Arlan shook his head, trying to dislodge the forbidden thoughts from it.

She didn’t flinch. Instead, she surprised him by taking a tentative step toward him.

He wondered what she would do if he bolted toward her. Nothing, he decided. She wouldn’t be afraid of him, wouldn’t fear he was rabid. She would stand there and let him trot up to her.

Arlan had to force himself to turn away. He loped into the brush, running back toward the rental car he’d parked on the road south of the parking lot. He didn’t morph until he reached the car. Then he hopped in and drove the quarter of a mile to the lot. He parked beside her car and walked up over the dune.

She was waiting for him in the moonlight.

“Maggie?” he called, as he crossed the dunes and walked down the sandy slope toward her.

Now she was the one poised to lope off into the darkness. She still wore the hood up on her sweatshirt. All he could see was her hair and her eyes. Nothing of her face.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

Arlan was suddenly desperate to see her face. “My name is Arlan Kahill. Fia sent me.”

“She didn’t say anything about sending someone else. Fia would have called me and told me if she couldn’t make it.”

“She had a family emergency and she asked me to come in her place. Had she called to tell you, you wouldn’t have shown up, Maggie.”

She watched him with guarded eyes. “You FBI, too?”

“No.” He stood still, trying not to spook her, much the same way she had done when she had approached him farther down the beach a few minutes ago. “I…I’m an old friend. I help her out with tough cases sometimes.”

“That doesn’t sound legal.”

He smiled to himself. She was pointing out that what they were now doing probably wasn’t legal, but she was making no attempt to walk away. “Fia really wanted to be here, but—”

“Right, the family thing.”

“The family thing,” he repeated.

Both regarded each other for a moment.

“You said you were friends, but you have the same last name.”

“We come from the same town. A lot of us have the same surname.”

She nodded. “I don’t really know anything more than she knows,” she said softly after a moment. “I’m not sure what the point of this meeting was.”

“But you came anyway,” he pointed out.

She remained quiet.

Arlan slipped his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. “Fia was…we were wondering what your connection is. To him,” he said carefully. “How do you know him?”

“I don’t know him,” she said, her tone prickly.

He waited.

“Teddy contacts me sometimes. Tells me things. Awful things,” she half whispered.

There it was again, that vulnerability he had sensed earlier, so strong now that he could almost taste it on the tip of his tongue. “Teddy?”

“I’m sure it’s not his real name. It’s what he calls himself.”

“And how does he contact you?” He took a step closer. He had suggested to Fia that she might be the killer, or at least be involved in the murders, but now that he’d actually seen her, had a chance to sense her being, it didn’t feel that way to him.

She watched him, but did not move. “Over the Internet. We’ve never spoken.”

“So…he’s stalking you?”

“I suppose you could call it that.”

“Why you?”

She looked down at the sand, breaking eye contact for the first time since he’d approached her. “I don’t know,” she murmured.

“And how long has he been contacting you?”

She shrugged her slender shoulders. “I don’t know. A year or two, maybe.”

She was lying. Anyone who had a murderer stalking them would know exactly when it started, down to the very date and time. His gaze narrowed. “And you have no idea how or why he chose you?”

She shook her head, not speaking. She was watching him again, almost beseechingly.

Arlan wanted to believe her. Logic told him he shouldn’t, but he wanted to. He tried a different tack. “Does he ask you to participate in the murders?”

She slid her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt. The wind off the ocean had grown cool. “No.”

“Does he threaten you?”

She was slow to answer, as if contemplating the question. “Not really.”

“I don’t mean to be insensitive, Maggie, but I find this all pretty hard to believe. Men like this…this monster are very purposeful in everything they do. Everything they say. Every decision they make. You’re not telling me the whole truth here.”

“You calling me a liar?” Her head cocked at the slightest angle.

“Maybe.”

Moonlight bathed her nose and lower jaw when her chin jutted forward. “Would you blame me if I was lying? At least about certain details?”

She had a fair point. If she was telling the truth, if the Buried Alive Killer was contacting her, she should be cautious. And she should certainly be afraid. He took another step closer, hoping to get a better look at her. She smelled good, like a new rain. “Why didn’t you just go to the police? What are you afraid of, Maggie?”

Her response was incredulous. “He says he’ll kill others. Many. And it will be my fault.”

He looked over her shoulder to the waves crashing in, the foam sweeping the sand clean and smooth. He remembered the night of the shipwreck. Swimming to shore at Clare Point. A new beginning for him and for the sept.

Arlan shifted his gaze to her again. She was watching him intently. He took a chance and slowly reached out and pushed her hood down. An abundance of blond hair tumbled down her back, smooth and straight and long, and he remembered another woman’s hair the very same color. Same texture.

Arlan closed his eyes for a moment and in his head, time shifted and he saw her as clearly as if she were standing in front of him. Lizzy, his sweet, pretty Lizzy. And then he saw the blood.

Maggie cleared her throat. “Arlan?”

He opened his eyes. Blinked. The memories were like this sometimes, washing over him with the force of strong ocean waves. He was helpless against them. He could not stop them.

Maggie was so like Lizzy and yet different. Lizzy had been so confident, so bold and strong and full of life. This young woman before him, she was barely a shadow in comparison. He would not have been surprised if he had reached for her and grasped nothing but air.

“I’m okay,” Arlan said.

“You thinking about someone? Someone gone. Dead?” she asked, her voice as light and innocent as a child’s. Almost ethereal.

He wondered how she knew. Humans were generally so insensitive to feelings. Everything always had to be written, spoken, explained clearly for them to understand. And even then, they didn’t always get it.

“You want to sit down?” Arlan asked, gesturing toward the water’s edge.

“No. I’m not going to talk to you about this. I want to talk to Fia.”

“And she wants to talk to you.”

“So I guess we’ll both have to wait.”

Clouds drifted, settling in over the peninsula, blocking most of the moonlight, and the night suddenly grew darker. They both glanced up at the dark sky.

“Is there a way Fia can contact you?” he asked. “A phone number?”

“I’ll call her.”

It was obvious the meeting was over, yet Maggie continued to stand there.

“You lonely, Arlan?”

The question stunned him. He wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Because I am,” she continued. “And what lonely people are best at spotting”—she took a step forward and boldly took his hand in hers—“is other lonely people.” She raised his hand and drew it across her cheek.

Arlan literally felt his legs go weak. He’d heard a lot of come-ons in his lifetimes. There was no doubt that the ladies liked him, human and otherwise. And he liked them. But he’d sworn off HFs a long time ago. Vampires and humans just didn’t mix well in the sack. It was too risky. He had learned that lesson over a century ago. At least he thought he’d learned….

“A beautiful woman like you,” he said, trying to lighten the tone of the conversation. “No husband? No boyfriend? Don’t you have family?”

“I have no one,” she told him quietly and matter-of-fact. “No one to know if I live or die. It’s just me. So come back to my hotel room with me.” She tipped up her chin to look at him.

A most amazing neck…

Arlan was intoxicated by her nearness, by her touch, by her voice.

He knew he shouldn’t do it and yet he leaned over and brushed his lips against hers. A tentative kiss. Just a taste.

Her lips were soft. Sweet and begging to be kissed again. Harder.

“Come on,” she whispered. She started to walk away, tugging his hand. “You take your car, I’ll take mine. You don’t have to stay the night.”

She released his hand. “Just follow me.”

And bless his mother’s sweet, tortured soul, he did.

“Kiss me,” Maggie whispered, stopping inside the doorway of the hotel room dimly lit by lamps on either side of the bed. She pulled her sweatshirt off and tossed it on a chair. Her pale green T-shirt was tight, showing off her hardened nipples. She wore no bra. “Kiss me. Make it all go away. Just for a few minutes.”

He slid his hand around her neck and fingered her soft nape beneath her hair. She stood in front of him, not touching him with her hands or any part of her body, but she touched him with her gaze. Connecting so deeply with him, so profoundly, that he feared she would see him for what he truly was. As lonely as he really was, as much as he needed to connect with someone, it also scared him. He closed his eyes to hide the truth and found her mouth with his.

Maggie slid both of her palms upward over his chest, pressing against him with the same pressure she used with her mouth. Both her touch and her kiss were hungry.

“Make it go away,” she begged as she parted her lips.

He delved deep with his tongue, the recesses of her mouth cool. He tasted her desire, her fear, and as he drew back, breathless, he tasted the ever-so-subtle taste of weariness. Arlan understood weariness. He had been alive since the fifteenth century. Any man or woman that old understood weariness, but what had happened to this young woman, this human who appeared to be only in her late twenties, to make her such an old soul? Had the killer done this to her?

“Can you do that? Can you make it go away?” she asked, grasping his T-shirt in handfuls.

Arlan pushed her inside the door and kicked it closed. “Do what I can,” he whispered, drawing his mouth from her ear, across her cheekbone to her lips again. He reached behind him and turned the dead bolt. He found her mouth again.

They stumbled to the bed, which looked like every other hotel bed in the United States. They fell on the yellow quilted bedspread. HF or not, it just felt right to him to be here. To make love to her. She felt right.

Still mouth to mouth, she pushed his leather jacket off and threw it on the floor. He rolled her onto her back and flattened his body over hers. She was so petite, seemed so fragile, that he tried to be careful. But her kisses were fierce. Her body’s response to his touch was ferocious. The woman was an amazing enigma. She had been so soft-spoken, so unsure of herself on the beach, but here in bed, in his arms, she knew just what she wanted and how to get it from him.

He kissed her cheek, her chin, her pale throat.

He did not allow himself to think of the sweet blood pulsing there. Could not. This was the reason HFs were so dangerous. Even a man with his willpower had a difficult time not sampling blood when it was offered so willingly.

He moved his mouth over the hollow of her throat, lower. Her small breasts pressed against his face. He pushed up the hem of her T-shirt and kissed his way up from the flat of her belly to a peaked nipple. He massaged her other breast with his hand. She had small breasts, but big, dark areolas that strained against the thin fabric of her T-shirt. She was perfection.

Maggie threaded her fingers through Arlan’s hair and moaned softly. He sucked one nipple, then the other, dampening the cotton. She grabbed the hem of her shirt and wiggled upward, the fabric skimming over her belly, her breasts, her head.

Lamplight fell from the bedside tables, bathing her in a soft glow. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

“You don’t have to say that.” She yanked his shirt over his head and tossed it.

“But you are.”

She did not meet his gaze. Instead, reached down to grab the waistband of his jeans. She tugged on the button, popping it open on the first try.

“Hey, hey, slow down,” he murmured, gently taking her hand away from his throbbing groin. “You have somewhere you need to be?”

“Life’s short,” she reasoned.

He kissed her again, chuckling. “Not for everyone.”

“You talk too much.”

He smiled down at her and kissed her. He’d met plenty of women like Maggie before. Hell, he was just like her. Quick sex. Eyes closed. No talking. Get your rocks off and go.

But Arlan kept his eyes open, gazing down at her incredible face as he stroked her rib cage and the taut muscles running the length of her belly.

Maggie wiggled out of her jeans and lay completely naked beside him, except for the tiny scrap of black lace she wore as panties. Arlan drew his fingertips lightly over her waist, her hips, down her thigh. She shifted her body and rolled onto her side, facing him. As he caressed her slender but muscular body, he gazed down at her, studying the pale fringe of lashes that framed her brown eyes and the tiny freckles on the tip of her nose.

She stroked his biceps, his pecs. Her touch was well-practiced. Exquisite, actually, as she thumbed his nipple, sending a hard tremor of pleasure through him, and he tried to think about something other than her naked body pressed against his. She was so adept with her attention to him that he was concerned that while he was telling her not to rush, his body would rush to the finish line.

He thought about the broken leg of his kitchen table he needed to repair.

And her perfect, hard nipples.

And the milk that had probably soured in his refrigerator while he was in Greece.

And the patch of golden hair he knew was just beneath the black fabric of her panties…

He rolled her onto her back and lowered his body over hers. He kissed her breasts, the flat of her belly, then just above the waistband of her panties. Then he tugged on the stretch fabric with his index finger.

She sucked in a breath, sliding her fingers into his hair.

Arlan took his time with his kisses. Maggie moaned, lifting her hips, writhing beneath him. She seemed so sweet, so lost, that he wanted to draw out her pleasure as long as he possibly could.

The minutes that ticked endlessly by in his life came to a standstill for a short time. Twice she called out, her body arching in ultimate satisfaction before he slipped out of his jeans. She kept her eyes closed, he kept his open as he pushed inside her.

He moved slowly at first, watching her face. Studying the pout of her mouth, the gentle flair of her nostrils, her small hands clenching his shoulders.

She wrapped her legs around him and lifted her hips to meet his. Arlan tried to hold back, but he couldn’t. It seemed as if all his emotion had suddenly built up in his chest to the point where he could no longer breathe. The only way to catch his breath was to push inside her, again and again.

As Arlan had feared, it was over all too quickly. But the way he was feeling right now, even if he had been able to last all night, it would have ended too soon. Every muscle in Maggie’s body tightened and she sank her nails into his back as she arched against him in another orgasm.

He managed only two more strokes before he surrendered.

Afterward, she said nothing, just curled herself against him, her back pressed to his chest, and he drew his hand over her narrow waist. She fell asleep almost immediately, wrapped in his arms, but Arlan lay awake for a long time. And for once, it wasn’t because he couldn’t sleep, but because he didn’t want to.