A Taste of Love and Evil (22 page)

Rose opened her mouth, but not a word came out. She dug her fingers into Jack’s arm. I’ll
kill her. I’ll rip her to bits.

“The longer you take, the deader Miles will be.”

Rose had to go save Miles. She had to go
now.
“All right, I’ll—”

Jack snapped the phone shut. “No.”

“Give me the phone. I have to call her back. I can’t let Miles die!”

Jack tossed the phone onto the futon. “Bargaining with Titania will not work.” He took a deep breath, and when he spoke his voice was rough. “I assume Violet told you I was involved with Titania for a short time.” He paused again, and Rose nodded impatiently. He wanted to talk about this now? What about Miles?

He blew out a long breath. “I was an idiot not to see through her sweeter-than-sweet act right from the start, but it’s been almost a year since then, and although she was bad before, she’s become considerably worse. You thwarted and insulted her, and she’ll never forgive you. Whatever threats she has made, she
will
carry out.”

Rose dove for the phone. Jack landed on top of her and knocked it away from her scrabbling fingers. It skidded across the floor. She dug an elbow in his ribs, panting.

“She doesn’t know I’m a vampire. I’m a match for her any day.” She grunted and heaved him off.

He shoved her down again, wrapped both arms around her, and held tight. “Damn it, Rose, listen to me
before
you screw up instead of afterward, when it’s too late.”

She cringed. She’d already screwed up, right from the start. It was all her fault. Again. Outside, the jazz crumpled into discord and raucous oaths.

Jack eased his hold slightly. “Sorry, but you’re better off hearing the truth. Physically, yes, you’re a match for Titania, but she’s cruel and will stop at nothing, and she has a bunch of goons at her beck and call.”

“I’ll seduce her goons away from her.” Rose twisted in his grip, remembering but setting aside her failure with Biff. So what? She had to at least try.

“Rose.” Jack growled low and soft. “This is getting old. I don’t get off on restraint and bondage when they lead nowhere.”

He wanted her to lighten up, but she couldn’t. “He’s going to die, and it’s all my fault.”

“Enough! You have one more chance to calm down, or—”

“I don’t deserve
any
chances,” Rose said. “Give up on me, please, and let me go!”

“Never.”

Rose stilled.

“When you care about someone, you don’t give up. My mother never gave up on my dad, and I’ll never give up on you.”

He loved her? No, he hadn’t said that. He’d said he cared. Even if he did think he was in love—and that was a big
if
—it was only lust. He was besotted, bewitched, crazed.

“I’m not a good person to care about.” She kicked and fought, to no avail. “It’s all my fault again. It’s always my fault. If I hadn’t taken the gown, she wouldn’t be torturing Miles, and Biff wouldn’t have overheard you and tried to shoot you, and I wouldn’t have screwed up Linda Dell’s rescue, and now Constantine will kill Biff.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “There’s probably more. There’s always more.”

“Be reasonable, Rose. You’re only responsible for your own actions, not theirs.”

She wasn’t listening. She couldn’t. “There is more! If I hadn’t mentioned the problems with dancing in bum rolls and French farthingales, she wouldn’t have known the gown was for the parade, not the ball, and she wouldn’t have wanted to steal it in the first place. Start to finish, it’s all my fault.” She twisted and heaved, but Jack wouldn’t let go. “I am such a fuckup!”

“No,” Jack said, “you’re adorable.” He held her against him, rocking her. “That’s what I was going to say this morning, but I chickened out.”

She stopped struggling. Nobody had ever rocked her before. Not even her mom, she was willing to bet.

He kissed her hair. “Forget the guilt crap and think. Did you try to warn Miles?”

She sniffled. “I told him right from the start that she
wasn’t a nice person, but that only made him mad. I didn’t blame him.”

“Of course not,” Jack said dryly. He stood and helped her up.

She quivered, indignant now. “Because he’d pestered me for years about the thugs I went out with, and I never paid any attention. After I overheard her talking about stealing the gown, it was too late. He would never have believed me.”

“So you did what you had to. You couldn’t have known what Titania would do next.”

“No, but…”

He shut them inside the secret room again. “Think about it this way. If you hadn’t stolen the gown, we might never have met.”

Oh.

“Not only that, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to rescue Juma.”

True.

“Or to find out how well we work together.” He nudged her onto the mattress. “Do you know how much I wished you were there in the club last night?”

The tiniest smile struggled to surface.

“At the best of times, it’s not easy rescuing two people at once. I kept thinking, ‘If only Rose were here to help.’ We do make a good team. It just took me a few hours to realize I was being an ass.”

Rose sighed and nestled against him, then surged up. “What about Miles? We have to help him!”

This time, he didn’t pull her back down. “We can’t do anything for him until they arrive in Bayou Gavotte.”

“If I call her and tell her I’ll get the gown, she’ll stop tormenting him.”

Jack’s harsh eyes filled with something composed of misery, disgust, and despair. “Don’t be naive. She’s more likely to delight in breaking her word.”

Rose lowered herself beside him again, propping herself
on one hand, brushing his hair off his forehead with the other. What had that evil woman done to make Jack look like this?

“Maybe he called to warn you
not
to do what Titania says.”

“But…” She took a deep breath. “It’s possible, but I can’t desert him.”

His voice was ice and ashes. “No, but accept it, Rose: for the moment, we can do nothing for Miles. Don’t look so stricken. He’s an adult, responsible for his actions. He didn’t have to let Titania seduce him.”

“He couldn’t help it. She’s a vamp.” He thought
she
seemed stricken? He looked as if he would gladly lie down and die.

“So why didn’t he fall for you?”

“He did! Not at first, because his wife was alive, and he loved her. Then she died, and he was lonely. He started coming on to me, but I discouraged him big-time, which probably made him even more vulnerable to Titania.” Her lip wobbled.

“For fuck’s sake, Rose.”

She forced her mouth to mimic a smile. “No, I don’t think that’s my fault. I can’t screw the entire male population to protect them from evil vamps.”
But do I need to protect
you?

He didn’t smile back. “If Miles makes it here alive, we’ll do our best to save him.”

“You don’t sound confident. Should we involve the cops?”

“Titania’s gotten away with a lot of shit.” He rolled onto his side, facing away from Rose. “Kidnapping is a crime, but he’s a grown man, not a helpless kid. It would be her word against his, and if he’s lost too much blood, there won’t be any wounds to show what happened.”

Was Jack cold? The apartment was warm; his skin was warm, too. He lay very still. Pale, silent…

“Not only that, she’d wangle her way out of jail in no
time.” He was going into camouflage. Before her very eyes, he faded against the geometric pattern on the sheets.

She knelt beside him. “Should we ask the underworld for help?”

“We have to.” Jack shimmered faintly into view. “Historically, vamps are protected by the underworld, both here and in other countries. If vamps go bad, the underworld has to deal with it, because there’s no one else.” He faded again. “With their help, we’ll do fine.”

“Something’s bothering you, isn’t it? That’s why you’re going into—no,
retreating
into—camouflage. Like last night.”

“Sorry,” he said, visible, invisible, there, and then not. “Imagine how my poor mother felt when I kept disappearing on her as a small child. Fortunately, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. My father can camo, although nowhere near as well as I can.”

“You’re changing the subject,” Rose said. “You don’t want to talk about it, do you?”

A wavering in the air told her he was shaking his head. Tatters of camouflage shivered in and out of view.

“Fine. We won’t.” Maybe nonverbal communication would work better. Cuddling, caresses, silent companionship…solitude? “Do you want privacy? Should I leave?”

His whole being surged into sight. “No! God, no!” He flipped her onto her back, covering her, his lips swift and hard on hers. “I need you here, and not just for your safety.” He rested his forehead on hers.

She shifted, accommodating his lean hips, his hard torso, his exceptionally hard erection. Huh. Well, okay. Guys usually found sex comforting. She took hold of his buttocks and squirmed languidly under him.

He didn’t respond. Didn’t move. Started to fade again.

“I’m in lousy shape, Rose. I need…I need…” Ah, he was layered in camouflage, so torn and unhappy.

She kissed him hard on the lips. “Take whatever you need. I am
here
for you.” She knew how to be there for a guy. She’d done whatever Lou wanted and needed, always putting his desires before her own. She’d even given her best to the succession of mobsters who followed him, although she’d been getting damn sick of it. For Jack, though, she would do whatever it took. She nipped at his lip with her fangs, encircled him with allure to bond them, bind them tight. He shuddered. His erection throbbed against her, but still he didn’t move.

She grasped his shoulders and nuzzled her way along his neck to his throat. “Any way you want me, I’m yours. Standing, sitting, lying down, on the bed, on the table, on the floor.” She pierced his skin with the tip of one fang, and he let out a broken thread of a moan. “You on top, me on top, in front, behind, anywhere in between. Shouting obscenities or complete and total silence. Mirrors and toys and whipped cream if it turns you on, but I don’t need any of that. I don’t even have to bite you every time. Regular sex, a taste of blood now and then, and I’m fine.”

She was babbling. So much for nonverbal communication.

Why wasn’t he moving? He was steel hard, breathing heavily, wound spring tight. His eyes were closed, his lips parted in an agony of lust, his camouflage in rags. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. So why…?

She tried again. “About owing me, I apologize. I was wrong to let your quirks upset me. That’s just another kind of violence.” She couldn’t help it—she kissed his cheek, the spot where his dimple lurked, ever so softly, with all her heart. “You can owe me all you want, and I’m fine with owing you. Keep a tally if it makes you happy. We can cut notches into the bedpost. Of course, we’ll have to get a bed with posts first.”

Finally, the twitch of a smile. Camouflage dissolved in
tatters, faded in wisps, but still he didn’t move. She fought for inspiration. “Do you think I’m being heartless, wanting sex while Miles—”

His ass cheeks bunched under her palms. “Oh, fuck, Rose, no!” With something between a sob and a moan, he pushed into her, hesitated, then rammed her, over and over.

She’d believed herself skilled at adapting to a lover’s moods, to being whatever a man wanted, but this man made no sense at all. She gave up on thinking, gentling him instead, murmuring sweet words, stroking as he battered into her, and gradually his pace lost its frenetic rhythm. He kissed her, his eyes open, dark and sad. She smiled at him, and his dimples resurfaced as he smiled ruefully back. The fuck turned slick and hot, then languid and slow, tender and
together.
She sank her fangs into him, delivering the rush that made him come, and closed her eyes to savor the pumping of his heart and the rich tang of his blood.

When she could speak again, she retracted her fangs and licked her lips. “Just so you know, my first name is Temperance.”

He laughed and laughed. Rose kissed him with a tenderness she could never before have imagined, snuggled next to him, and fell deeply, solidly asleep.

“Ouch!”

Immediately, she was wide awake. “Your arm again?”

Jack pressed the heel of his hand to his temple. “No. Constantine’s here.” He gave a brief shiver and stood. “Get dressed.”

Her heartbeat ramped up. “Where? I don’t hear anything. Surely I would have heard before you.” Outside, darkness had closed in, but the jazz band still played. Was Constantine with them?

“In here.” Jack rubbed his temple. “I heard him in here.” She must have looked at him as if he were nuts, because he
said, “In my head. He’s telepathic. You’ve heard the stories. We have a sort of psychic link.”

“You and Constantine?”

“Yes. Don’t ask me to explain. I don’t understand it; it just
is.”
Jack opened the door to the bedroom, impatient now. He turned on the light by the bed. “He’s been hurting for a long time. He kept sending me pain, and I shut him out because I was hurting too much myself. I was a lousy friend.”

What was he talking about? “What if he’s coming with Biff?” She gathered her clothes. “How do you know he’s not in here already?”

“How could he be?” Jack was already in his jeans. He reached for an exquisite cream linen shirt. Damn, the man had lovely taste in clothes. And she shouldn’t even notice such things right now.

“He does the camouflage thing.” Rose yanked her sweatpants up. “Just like you.”

Jack didn’t react, so she rushed into an explanation. “He was camouflaged against a curtain at that concert, watching everyone, when I bumped into him. I wasn’t going to tell you, because it’s nobody’s business but his, but since you’re in danger from him—”

“I’m not in danger,” Jack said predictably, working on the buttons of his shirt.

Rose fumbled with the fastenings of her bra. “I’d be able to hear him, smell him, if he were here. But you won’t, and—” She gave a little scream of frustration at Jack’s blank face and at the stupid bra. “You don’t believe me, do you? I swear, he can camo.”

“I believe you.” Jack came around behind her and did up the bra. His hands were patient and his voice calm. Wasn’t he the least bit afraid?