Bitten in Two (29 page)

“Mine,” I whispered.

“Yes,” he murmured, his lips brushing down my bare stomach and back up the curve of my ribs as he pushed my shirt out of his way.

“Always?” I didn’t mean to make it a question. Pul ing his hips closer as I wrapped my legs around him, I felt him shudder.

His eyes were ful of green fire when they met mine.

“Until the end of time.”

“Then…” I lifted his shirt so I could watch my fingers slide down the length of his broad chest, covered with lovely black curls, to his flat bel y with its arrow of soft hair leading my hands where they’d been aching to go for days. When he drew in a breath and then let it out slowly, hissing through his teeth like a sore athlete lowering himself into a hot bath, I nearly shouted with triumph. That I could make a man like Vayl, who had seen and felt everything, drop his head against mine and moan with desire—yes! This was how I wanted to use my time. Loving this man—no, this vampire—eternal y.

I whispered, “Would it be okay if I got you a ring?” He went stil under my fingers. But I could stil feel his skin, hot with excitement, leaning in to my touch. I said, “I have Cirilai. And I hope you know by now what that means to me.

But you don’t have anything of mine. So, you know, would you—”

“Yes.”

He covered my hands with his, lifted them both to his lips, and kissed my fingers, one by one. “How ever did I find you?”

“I was that skinny redhead kil ing your leftovers.” He chuckled. “Oh. Right.” He cupped my face in his hands. I clutched his shoulders as he began to nibble my lower lip. Then every control I’d had to snap on since Vayl had forgotten my name broke. With a groan that shook me head to toe, I rol ed over on top of my vampire and reminded him of exactly what we’d been missing.

When I came back to my senses I was sprawled across the coffee table with guest mints scattered around my head like confetti. My T-shirt was bunched up around my neck, Vayl was wrapped around my torso, and I won’t even mention what tangled around my ankles.

“Uh, now that I can breathe again?” I said.

Muffled sound from somewhere near my col arbone. I interpreted it as, “Yoof?”

“I kinda need to move. I think I’m getting goosed by your cane.”

“So that is where it went.” Low chuckle. Gawd I’d missed that sound! I felt myself bodily lifted from the scene of my latest indiscretion. But, realizing how deeply my dad would disapprove, I decided the guilt could wait, like, forever. Because Vayl was back. In a bold and reckless sorta way.

I began pul ing myself together. Realized I had an audience and slowed down. “You’re… watching?” He’d dressed faster than me. A gift both of guys and vamps, I guess. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, eyeing my wounds, checking out his own. “It has been…

quite a night.”

“Yuh-huh. And if we’re smart we’l get the hel outta here before the cops catch up to us and cause a delay we
can’t
afford.”

He stood, nodding decisively. “Yes, we should go.” He hesitated, cocking his head like he’d just thought of something. “Of course, you could open your present first. If you like.”

you like.”

Yikes! Birthday present! Gaudy diamonds! Where are
you, Lucille?

Shit!

She didn’t want to come out for him. Because it wasn’t right. He’d only just gotten back from the 1700s. And after the most incredible moments of passion we’d shared yet, how could I fake anything now?

I said, “Of course. A present would be fabulous.”
Oh crap. He can tell I’m not psyched about this. It’ll be
our first fight since he got back and it’s only been, what, an
hour? This is going to be some kind of record!

He reached into his pocket and pul ed out a black velvet box. It wasn’t big enough to hold a massive necklace.

Maybe it was just one gigantic stone. Maybe it was earrings. I could probably deal with that.

I opened the box, trying my best to smile.

It was a key.

An unmarked key.

I took it out. Held it up for him to see. “What does it open?” I asked.

He grinned again. I should probably tel him to stop that.

If he did it in front of kids there would be screaming.

He picked me up and carried me to the top of the stairs, where he set me down. Grasping his cane in one hand and the rail with the other, he looked at me with—holy crap, was that actual mischief in his sky-blue eyes?—and said, “I wil race you to the street.”

I bolted down the steps like the riad was on fire. He tried to pass me, but I snagged his arm and yanked him backward. He laughed out loud. “Cheater!” he cal ed as he grasped me around the middle and carried me down to the first landing.

I managed to wrap my legs around his waist and grab his shoulders, so that I did the next flight riding him piggyback. And then I pul ed out my secret weapon. I blew in his ear. He stopped. Then came the tongue, right around the rim of his earlobe and, just lightly, into the center. He shivered.

I jumped off and sprinted to the door.

“Vixen!” he cal ed, fol owing so close I could feel his fingers flicking my curls.

“Al ’s fair in love and birthday pres—” I skidded to a stop. Clapped both hands to my mouth, which did nothing to keep the tears from leaping into my eyes. “Vayl,” I whispered. “How…”

He leaned around to look into my face. He must’ve liked what he saw, because again with those fearsome fangs. A couple of pedestrians shrieked and bolted. I hardly noticed them. I felt like I’d hurtled into a dream.

He stepped to the curb and ran his hand along the hood of the gleaming black car that had not been parked there when we’d walked into the riad half an hour before. He said, “It is a—”

I interrupted him, “1963 Ford Galaxie 500XL

Convertible 406 CID 385 horsepower with a V8.” Vayl nodded. “It also has a four-speed manual transmission.”

I blinked. I might’ve been crying by now. But I real y didn’t care. “It’s just like the one Granny May used to have.

She drove us to church in it. To the store. Everywhere.” Vayl waited until I’d torn my eyes from the beauty on the street to look at him again before he said, “It
is
the one your grandmother used to drive.”

I lost it. Right then and there, I just, wel , I kind of hate to say this, but I sat down on my ass and bawled on the sidewalk in Marrakech, Morocco. During which time I had to assure Vayl this was a good thing. And also during which he had to explain to me how Gramps Lew had sold the car to a neighbor of theirs, a farmer who’d always meant to restore it but never had. So it had stayed in the old guy’s barn until his son had opened his front door to find Vayl there with a shitload of cash in his hand and a trailer hooked to his rental truck.

When I final y pul ed myself together I said, “But, Vayl, she’s mint. I mean, I don’t see any rust. The interior is the same shiny red I remember. If I pop the hood—”

“It wil sparkle,” he assured me.

I shook my head. “That kind of work takes time. A lot more than we’ve been a couple.”

He had sat down on the sidewalk beside me, laying his arms across his upraised knees in that way he has of making himself comfortable in any position. Now he looked at the classic parked on the street and admitted, “I bought it soon after we met. I… had hoped someday I might have this chance.”

I pointed to the Galaxie. “You can’t possibly have felt like that for me then!”

He turned to gaze into my eyes, laying his chin on my shoulder as he said softly, “I have loved you with everything in me from the moment I saw you.”

I wrapped my arm around his leg, careful y avoiding his wound. “Damn,” I whispered.

He leaned forward, his lips like the breath of life itself, bringing my soul back into the dance every time they touched mine. He took his time, his tongue brushing against mine so gently it was like a second declaration.

When he pul ed back he said, “Every moment with you has been a revelation. I would not trade a second. Come, my
pretera
.” His eyes glittered as my inner girls screamed ecstatical y while they threw paper airplanes at each other to celebrate hearing him cal me Yaz-mee-na and his little wildcat both in the same day.

I managed a breathless, “Yeah?”

He said, “Let us gather the crew. It is time to
ride
.” Morocco’s medina is ful of streets so narrow sometimes you’re lucky to get a couple of donkey carts past each other. But the new city is ful of wide, wel -lit boulevards just made for a bunch of cruising assassins. I drove my Granny’s car with the top down and the radio blasting, my hair flying out behind me like a kid’s kite.

It was fucking awesome.

Vayl sat beside me, never taking his eyes off my face, his lips stuck in that semi-smile that let me know he was perfectly satisfied with the world and everything in it. If we had been living a movie, that’s where it would’ve ended.

Happily ever after, baby. Which, of course, is why it lasted less than fifteen minutes.

We pul ed up just down the street from the Musee de Marrakech and just sat, listening to the engine purr.

“I can’t believe you did this for me,” I said, rubbing the steering wheel like it was the soft fur of my malamute.

Sometime during our drive he’d dropped his arm behind my back. Now he touched my neck with his fingertips, sending shivers up and down my spine as he slid closer to me. Though he couldn’t hypnotize me, I felt captivated by the facets in his glittering emerald eyes as they caught mine and said exactly what my heart needed to hear.

“We wil take it with us everywhere,” he said. “No more shabby rentals.” He smirked. “No more mopeds.”

“I liked those mopeds,” Cole objected from the backseat. He sat next to Raoul, who rubbed elbows with Sterling, who’d slid down so he could let his head fal back and stare up into the star-studded sky.

Sterling rol ed his head to gaze on Cole. “Somehow I saw you more as a Camaro kind of guy. But whatever pops your clutch. I guess you liked your runaway demon too?” Raoul huffed, like he found that impossible to believe.

Cole drummed his fingers on the armrest. At least he remembered not to drop Kyphas’s name—and therefore give her a clue as to our whereabouts—when he said, “She had her good points. Somewhere deep… deep at her core.

Anyway, I’m stil wil ing to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

“Oh. So that’s why she fel for Vayl’s trap like a catfish jonesing for chicken liver?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It was pretty juicily baited.” When we al made sounds of doubt he added, “Come on. What demon isn’t going to try for the Enkyklios map on her own when you dangle the exact location in front of her like that?”

“
We
didn’t, the Luureken did,” I reminded him. “She was just conceited enough to think
we
were dumb enough to believe nobody but us good guys would act on it.”

“She did steal the cat,” Raoul reminded him, like that should be his last straw.

“You’re real y fixated on the robokitty, you know that?” Cole told him.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Raoul straightened even more as he said, “Astral sang to me after Nia left. The perfect song, in fact. I don’t think she’s ful y mechanical. She seems to have… insight.”

Since I knew the guys wanted to know but would never ask, I did. “What tune did she pick out for you?”

“She sang ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,’

from the musical
Spamalot
,” Raoul said.

Cole immediately launched into song, with the rest of us providing the whistling where appropriate. “Always look on the bright side of life. Always look on the right side of life.”

“It’s not funny,” said Raoul.

“I believe it is supposed to be,” Vayl informed him helpful y.

He sat back and crossed his arms.

Cole scooted forward. “Our demon’s taking her sweet time in there. Do you think she’s onto us? Maybe she snuck out the back.”

“Nope.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Astral’s sending me pictures.” I turned in my seat, fluttering the fake lashes that received Astral’s signals. On top of Cole’s slumped form I could see the superimposed image of Kyphas as viewed from the ground up, sneaking through the museum. Just watching her face hover over Cole’s made me want to swear. Instead I said, “I can’t believe you even flirted with her, much less… She’s such a
skank
!”

He never took his eyes off the museum’s entrance.

“Absolutely. A skank with evil intentions and a shiny gold nugget at the center of her pitch-black heart.” I made gagging sounds while Raoul said, “Share with the other children, Jaz. What’s Astral showing you?” I rol ed my eyes at Sterling, who said, “You might as wel give us some narration. Otherwise we’re just going to start punching each other back here. And you know what that wil lead to.”

Gawd. With a warlock, an Eldhayr, and an assassin squished into the backseat, everything I imagined went from bad to nuclear. I started talking.

“It’s just what you’d expect. Boring little trek through the touristy part of the museum. Human-formed Weres in front, demon fol owing. They’re passing priceless paintings and cases ful of old crap.” I glanced at Vayl. “No offense. I know that stuff must be more meaningful to you than it is to me—” He shrugged. “Considering where I have been living the past few days, I find I much prefer the present.”