Any Given Doomsday (29 page)

I picked door number one.

Chapter 34

I couldn’t make this too easy for him. Jimmy would know something was up. So when he reached for me again, I ran.

He let me. Where in hell was I going to go? The only exit was by elevator, and I didn’t have a key.

Every door in the place closed but had no lock. What good would it do me to barricade myself in? He could knock anything down with one well-placed kick.

To make things look good, I picked up a chair and tossed it at the wall of windows. Since Jimmy had taken a seat on the couch and watched me with some amusement, I knew it wouldn’t work.

Sure enough, the chair bounced back at me so fast I had to scramble out of the way.

“Done yet?” he asked.

I didn’t have to fake my rapid breathing. Even though I knew what would come was inevitable, that I’d chosen it or perhaps it had been chosen for me long ago, I was still nervous. He wasn’t the man I’d loved. He wasn’t really a man at all.

I raced into the bedroom, thinking I’d toss something heavy at the window, just for show, but there wasn’t a window. The draperies covered a wall. Behind me, the door clicked shut.

I whirled just in time to see Jimmy punch in a code on a keypad, which I’d taken to be a security control. I guess it was, since bolts thunked home from somewhere inside the heavy portal.

He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his loose trousers, pulled them outward until they cleared his erection, then dropped them to the floor.

“Your turn,” he said.

I scrambled for the bathroom, but he caught me before I took two steps and tossed me with an absent flick of his wrist toward the bed.

I landed in the center, bouncing once. Before 1 could lift my head from the mattress, he’d torn the button and zipper of my pants apart.

I struggled, which only made him laugh. Struggling seemed to be what he was after.

Considering what he’d been through as a child, Jimmy had never been one for bondage games. In the bedroom he’d always been gentle, almost reverent. Probably one of the reasons the notches on his belt were legion. Women ate that stuff up. I had.

He held me down easily with one arm while he yanked off my boots, then my jeans, and tossed them to the floor. I’d barely lifted my shoulders from the bed when he trapped me beneath him.

His erection throbbed against my belly as he dragged his palm up my thigh, over my hip, the curve of my waist, then cupped one breast and stroked the nipple, which tightened on contact.

His head lowered; his hair sifted across my chest. The scent of cinnamon and soap wafted over me and memories flickered.

I drew in a sharp, loud breath as he took me into his mouth and suckled, tongue pushing the bud against his teeth again and again and again. The sensation was so familiar, so glorious, my fingers were reaching to twine in his hair before I remembered and forced my arm to drop back to the bed.

I kept my gaze focused on the ceiling as he nuzzled my breasts while suckling, teasing. I shuddered as goose-flesh rose across my skin.

I waited for him to sink his fangs into me, then realized he had none, or at least none that I could see. What did that mean?

He lifted his head, ran a hand over my arm, chafing until the pebbled bumps went away. “You were always so sensitive right here.”

He ran the tip of his tongue from the slope of one breast to the other, rolling a lazy lick around each nipple as he passed. My molars ground together as I tried to keep myself from arching into him, from opening my legs and wrapping my ankles around his back as I urged him to plunge deeper, take me harder. Despite my body’s response, I wasn’t ready.

“No more fighting?” he asked.

“I’m not going to give you the satisfaction.”

His lips curved. “Struggling won’t give me satisfaction.”

I lifted a brow. He laughed, flexing his hips until his erection seemed to make a permanent dent in my skin. “Well, maybe a little.”

Annoyed, I raked my nails down his back, and he caught his breath, eyes flaring red. “You want to hurt me?” he asked. “Go ahead. I seem to have developed a taste for it.”

I had a flash of him tied to the chair, moaning in ecstasy when the Strega had cut him. Pain would only send him farther away from me. To get him back, I was going to have to appeal to the gentle side he’d once shown. I had to make him remember the love.

Because, despite everything he’d said and done, a friendship forged in the fires of our childhoods, a love found amid so little love, meant something. It had to.

“What will give me satisfaction, Elizabeth”—he licked the side of my neck, pausing to nibble at my ear, before whispering—”is making you beg, then making you come.”

He seemed to have the whole sex-slave gig backward. If I was the slave, shouldn’t I be making
him
come? I decided not to point that out just in case he had a strategy for changing my entire personality from aggressive to passive in one easy lesson.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the feel of his body against mine, the scent of him. Those things hadn’t changed.

His skin was soft at the hip, his long artist’s fingers still clever, the hair on his thighs tickled mine. His feet were knobby and large. He loved it when I ran my big toe along his arch. The back of his neck, beneath the fall of his hair, was still tense. When I touched him there, he sighed and rested his forehead against mine.

If I wasn’t looking at him, if I couldn’t witness the strange flashes of red at the center of his eyes, if he didn’t speak and call me by the wrong name, if he didn’t talk like a porn star in a bondage flick, I could remember how it had been between us. I could remember how very much I’d loved him.

I lifted my mouth and brushed my lips along his. For an instant he responded, kissing me the way he always had. Then he jumped as if he’d been poked with a stick and pulled away. The movement ground our lower bodies together, and I winced.

“Open your eyes.” I hesitated. “Do it, Elizabeth.”

I bit my tongue to stifle a nearly irresistible urge to knee him in the groin. I doubted that would even hurt him anymore.

“You won’t like what happens when you disobey me.”

“I’m not going to like what happens when I obey you either,” I muttered.

“Oh, no. You will like it. I promise.”

He was probably right.

His face was so close I could see only myself in his eyes. We’d been just like this so many times, all I could do was remember. Couldn’t he?

“Jimmy,” I whispered, and touched his face.

For an instant I thought I’d reached him, wherever he was. He smiled softly and started to kiss me.

Then his damned eyes flared red, and he lifted his body, plunging into me with a single furious stroke.

I arched off the bed, which only made his thrust deeper. I cried out, the sound not one of pain but surprise and breathless wonder. His laugh wasn’t his own— deeper, crueler, not a laugh of joy or amusement, but of dominance. He’d won and he knew it.

Even though what he was doing felt exquisite, I struggled to escape. But there was nowhere to go. I was trapped between him and the bed.

“Hold on.” He slowed his thrusts, making me gasp, making me want. “Not yet.”

My hands, which had clutched his shoulders when he attacked, no doubt leaving half-moon fingernail marks in his skin, now slid lower of their own accord, clasping his buttocks, urging him on. I had no will of my own, and I both hated and loved it.

I fought the tide of eroticism. With us so close physically, now was the time to try and reach him emotionally.

Think
! my mind shouted.
Remember
!

I closed my eyes again and reached for our past.

The first time we’d kissed, the first time we’d touched, the first time I’d known that I loved him. I let those old feelings flow over me.

My hands no longer clutched but caressed. I rubbed the small of his back, holding him still within me. My other hand twined in his hair, stroking, soothing. Turning my head, I kissed his cheek, his eyelids, his forehead.

“We were so good together,” I murmured. “Remember how it felt to be in love?”

He sighed, his breath cool against my burning skin. He kissed me and for a single instant I tasted the memories— grass, heat, sex, love.

I wrapped my arms around him, my legs too. “Jimmy,” I whispered against his lips. “Jimmy.”

Then he was gone.

Not physically. No. We were still twined together, his body deep within mine. But mentally, emotionally, he disappeared between one breath and the next. Everything went cold, including me as he lifted his head.

“Remember,” he growled, in a voice that wasn’t his, “the hate. I went from your bed to hers. You saw her, Elizabeth. How could I resist?”

He was talking about Summer. Not that there hadn’t been more women than her. But she was the one who mattered the most. The one I’d seen him with in my head the last time I’d touched him with love. He had to have known I’d see, so why—?

He took my arms from around his neck and drew them above my head, circling both wrists with one hand, holding me captive though I didn’t try to fight. His bringing back that memory seemed to have drained everything from me—except the lust. That appeared to be getting stronger with every thrust.

Faster and faster. Deeper and harder. My body betrayed me.

Damn body.

I fought the orgasm; the orgasm won. I came screaming, not his name. Not anymore. I screamed in fury and he laughed, scraping his teeth down my straining breasts, suckling me just short of pain, drawing the orgasm out, never coming himself so that he stayed hard.

Then, when I went limp, he reached between us and used his fingers to arouse me again. The slide of his hand, touching me, touching himself, he seemed to get larger, stretching me until my head thrashed even as I opened my legs for more.

“I wish I had time to go down on you, but I don’t think I can wait. I love the taste of this.” He rolled his thumb over me. “I love how it swells against my lips, how it feels when I flick it with my tongue.”

“No,” 1 whispered, but I shouldn’t have bothered. I had no choice, and by now I didn’t mind. An orgasm like that is addictive. My mind might murmur
no
, but my body kept shouting
yes
.

My skin hummed. It only took a few more thrusts for him to at last give in to the inevitable, and as he came, so did I.

With Sawyer I’d seen the universe, felt the power all the way back to the beginning of time. He’d poured heat and magic into me when he’d given me himself.

I felt the same heat, sensed the lightning, but what I saw was darkness, what I felt was madness, a duality that didn’t quite make sense.

Jimmy’s head was bowed, his hair shading his face and mine; the only sound in the room was the syncopated rhythm of our breathing.

“Don’t ever try that again.” Without warning, he shoved his forearm against my neck. I couldn’t breathe.

“I remember everything, Elizabeth, and it doesn’t matter. All I want is to fuck you until I’m tired of you, then drink from you until you die.”

He lifted himself off the bed, using the arm at my neck for leverage. For an instant 1 thought he planned to break my windpipe. I choked, then coughed when the weight disappeared.

He was gone before I could say anything, do anything, though what I’d planned to say or do I had no idea.

I sat up, rubbing my throat, which felt swollen and tender. I was going to be sporting a huge bruise. Luckily I didn’t have any pressing appointments.

Had I absorbed Jimmy’s dhampir powers? I didn’t feel any different. What about his sudden case of the vampires? Would I absorb that too? I had no irresistible craving for blood. No urge to steep in a coffin. No aversion to garlic. I checked my teeth. None of them were pointy, but then neither were Jimmy’s.

I laughed at my thoughts, most of which were based on Bram Stoker, and my throat screamed. I stumbled into the bathroom. A quick glance in the mirror revealed an ugly pressure mark across my windpipe, already deepen-ing from scarlet to eggplant.

I dialed the shower to “burn me, baby,” and climbed in, then stood under the stream until the water turned tepid. When I climbed out and dried off, I caught another glimpse of myself.

The bruise was gone.

Chapter 35

I appeared to have absorbed Jimmy’s dhampir ability to heal. I had to assume I had his strength, speed, and superior sight as well.

The powers I’d gained from Sawyer were restrictive. Speed in animal form, healing only after shape-shifting, and shape-shifting only if I touched a tattoo or wore a magic robe.

I fingered the pristine skin of my throat. “This works much better.”

When I went into the bedroom, my clothes were gone.

“What the—”

Clutching the towel, I hurried into the living area. Empty. So were all the closets, all the drawers. Of clothes, at any rate.

Someone had been in here while I showered. That almost gave me the creeps more than the red flare in Jimmy’s eyes had.

“If he expects me to prance around naked for all the security cameras to see, he can forget it,” I muttered, grabbing a dry towel and fashioning a very short sarong.

My gaze swept the bedroom, the bath; then I moved into the outer rooms and did the same. I didn’t see a camera anywhere, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

In the living area, I went down on my knees in front of the breakfront, but the heavy piece of furniture skimmed the floor too closely for me to reach beneath it and feel around for Ruthie’s crucifix and Sawyer’s turquoise. I could see them easily, even though the area beneath held no light whatsoever.

Supersight? Check.

With another furtive glance at the empty corners of the room, I reached out with both hands and yanked on the side of the wooden structure. It skidded across the floor as easily as if it were on wheels.

Frowning, I tilted my head. No wheels that I could see. I inched my fingers beneath the bottom and lifted. The breakfront levitated several inches as the muscles in my arm flexed.