Blood Rock (30 page)

“Calaphase,” I said. “It’s all right. It really is. I’m not afraid of you—well, I am afraid of you, you’re a vampire. But I’m not afraid of what you might do.”

“I do not want to be accused of …
influencing
you,” he said, still not meeting my eyes, angry at something that must have been in his own memories. “I don’t want another victim, or thrall, or flunky, or groupie. I want you as a … friend. Nothing more.”

“You want me. As a friend,” I said softly. “For nothing more?”

He smiled, still not meeting my eyes. “I think we both know the answer to that.”

“I would like to hear it, though.”

Calaphase looked up at me. In the dim, warm light his hair wasn’t blond, but brass, and his skin did not look pale, it just looked normal. Only his eyes gave him away: gleaming and blue, not filled with hostile power, but sparkling like a movie star’s, clear and direct.

A bird screeched, a parakeet or some other damn thing. We both jumped, then laughed and turned back to walk the steep hill down to my car. “Cute, those bird cages,” he said.

“I always hated them,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong—I love birds. But it’s depressing to see something that’s meant to fly living its life trapped in a cage.”

“That
is
depressing,” Calaphase said. “And something you can’t easily unhear.”

“Huh,” I said, smiling as the Prius powered up on my approach and unlocked itself as my hand touched the handle—that trick just never got old. “I expected you to say—”

“Something like ‘Humans eat birds.’” Calaphase folded his arms over the top of the car and stared at me. “‘So how is being in a cage any worse?’”

“And so?” I said, practically falling into the car: the parking lot behind R Thomas tilted at a perilous angle. “Why didn’t you say it?”

“Too much respect for you,” Calaphase said, climbing in on the other side. “That’s a line I’d feed a vampire groupie, followed by—” and his voice went deep and Barry White “—‘when a
vampire
feeds, its meal goes home to its golden cage
happy
… my pretty little bird.’”

I stared at him, then put the car in gear.

“Not bad,” I said. I preferred my sensitive vamp, but … “Did it work for you?”

Calaphase was staring off into the distance. “More often than I care to admit.”

I took him home—not to the forests and factories of Oakdale, but to the streets and suburbs of DeKalb northwest of downtown. We wove through the forested valleys of Briarcliff Road, passing churches, condos and even a library, all signs of civilization I did not expect near the home of a vampire. Finally we turned off onto Bruce, and climbed a flat-topped hill to stop before a long, low, grey ranch house overlooking the canyon of I-85.

“Surprisingly … sedate,” I said, as we pulled into a carport identical to the one in my parents’ house, which Dad had bricked off and turned into a rec-room when I was twelve. “I expected a mansion, or a fortress.”

“There is a full-sized lower level,” he admitted. “I had it bricked off.”

“To make a rec-room?” I asked.

“No, to keep out the sun,” he said.

“Can I see?”

Calaphase shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Dakota,” he said, unbuckling his seat belt. My throat constricted as his hand brushed his waist; even his smallest, most innocent gestures were turning me on, and I wanted to see him undo the next buckle, the one on his pants belt. “This is dangerous. I’m a vampire. I prey on mortal women … ”

I reached out and touched his hair. It was soft and smooth beneath my hands, and as my hand dropped I could feel the coolness of his skin, immense strength in his neck, the swiftness with which his head turned, the sudden stiffness as my lips met his. He resisted, only a moment, then relaxed as my hand massaged his shoulders, my tongue brushed his teeth.

“And sometimes they prey on you,” I said softly, leaning back, still caressing that pretty hair, that strong neck. My other hand fell on his crotch, feeling the hardness within, confirming he wanted me as much as I him. Then we were together, a soft explosion of kissing.

We exited on his side of the car, practically on top of each other, smooching, groping, as he fumbled at the lock and got it open. His hands caressed my face, my shoulders, my back. I felt his hands curve over me with his immense strength, sweeping me off my feet.

I laughed. Very few men were large enough to make me feel small, but what Calaphase lacked in height he possessed in strength. Being weightless in his arms surprised me, delighted me, irresistibly turned me on, and I kissed him passionately. He carried me down a wide staircase descending straight from the living room to the lower level, kicking open the heavy wooden door and carrying me into darkness.

My clothes fell away as he walked, and I pushed at his coat, opened his shirt, caressed his chest. At the end of the hall we turned, I swayed in his arms, and he set me down on a soft bed of fur. Normally
I’m
the active one in my sex life, but this time I just lay there, stretching out luxuriously, predatorily, my tattoos glowing to a rainbow of life—and then with a sharp flare of light Calaphase struck a match and lit a candle.

He stared at me, eyes blue points of light in a face made warm and proud by the flame. He lit a second candle. His coat came off. A third candle came alight. He peeled off his shirt. The fourth candle lit, and he stood at the end of the bed, whipped off his belt, his pants, and stood there, bronzed in the flickering light.

I closed my eyes, and he fell upon me.

He was
so
tender, and
so
strong. His hands swept over my skin as smooth as silk, tracing the lines of my tattoos, my skin, my hips—then they seized my hands and pinned them like bands of steel. His tongue touched my lips, my breasts, my sex, until I cried out. Then he moved forward and
took
me, with the strength of a linebacker, a horse, a mountain.

It had been
years
since I had a man, almost a decade. Don’t think for a moment that I could be ‘turned straight’ by a man: men and women are just different, and I like them both for what they are. But after so many years the differences were exciting, the tender softness and intimate knowledge replaced by an almost unstoppable force, a freight train of passion.

“Oh, Dakota,” he said, breath hot against my ear. “I love you.”

—

Then his teeth sank into my neck.

Light exploded behind my eyes, a sharp pain followed by immense pleasure. Hot warmth flooded out of me and back into me, tingling out to every inch of my body. With his every thrust a new surge of blood came out of my neck and down his throat. He began to lick the wound, and I melted. Moments ago my arms were wrapped tight around him, legs folded up around his back; but now I just dissolved away, eyes closed in bliss.

Calaphase ground against me, tongue pressed to my neck like a remora, a live wire electric circuit conducting through my body. Then he rolled off abruptly, leaving me gasping and sore, legs falling back to the bed, one hand caressing my breasts, the other my throat.

“Wow,” I whispered, eyes closed, in a daze. “That was
wooonderful.
”

Calaphase muttered something, breathed in my ear, caressed me, shook me. Interesting. A normal man would be asleep right now, and I’d be rolled over, watching his naked body, brain buzzing with ideas as I imagined all the tattoos I could ink on his canvas. But now I was just in bliss, as his hands brushed over me, his breath wafted against my neck, as his distant, urgent voice echoed through my brain. After
that
, I would have done
anything
he wanted.

Freezing water blasted against my face and breasts.

I screamed, flinching back, jerking away from the water. My feet slid out from underneath me—I was
standing?
—and Calaphase’s immensely strong arms caught me and lifted me back up into the icy blast. “Dakota? Dakota! Can you hear me? Snap out of it!”

He slapped my face, and my eyes briefly opened to an opulent bathroom in glass and grey marble, with the bright lights of heating lamps searing my vision. I squeezed my eyes tight, arms wrapping around him for support, reaching out blindly to find the spigot.

“What—” I gasped, hand twisting the knob as far as it would go. “What the—”

“Fight it, Dakota!” Calaphase said, shaking me. “Snap out of it!”

I gasped under the still-icy stream and glared down at him—and saw that Calaphase was absolutely terrified. “What the
fuck
, Cally?” I said. “I mean, what were you thinking—”

The water abruptly started to get super hot, and I dialed the big knob back, flinching again as the now-steaming water nearly burnt me. Calaphase didn’t seem to notice, he just held me up, held me in the stream, as I cussed and twisted the water from hot to cold to hot to cold until finally I hit on a lukewarm setting mild enough I could focus on what was happening.

Calaphase stepped back. “Are you all right?” I didn’t answer, and he grabbed me and shook me. “Dakota, answer me. Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

All right? Buzzkill!
My bliss, my fireworks, my dizzy soreness were all gone … and as they faded to memory … I noticed my neck was tingling. I clapped my hand to my neck, and a wave of pins and needles flooded down my shoulder. “What the hell happened?”

“My aura overwhelmed you,” Calaphase said. “You were completely under—”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I was out of it because you fucked my brains out.”

“An hour ago,” Calaphase said. “You don’t remember anything after that, do you?”

My mouth fell open. The pins and needles were growing worse. “No,” I said.

“Damnit,” Calaphase said. He didn’t look like a vampire anymore. He was just a man, a man conflicted with fear and shame. “I’ve been trying to rouse you and—I’m sorry. I never meant to—I’m sorry. Can you stand on your own?”

“Always,” I said, reaching out and grabbing the soap dish just in case.

“Good,” he said, stepping out of the shower. “Sober up, I’ll be back.”

He stormed back towards the bedroom. I started to follow, then jerked back from the coldness outside. I closed the shower and turned up the heat as much as I could stand, letting the water drum against my head.
What had just happened?

I remembered taking him home, coming on to him, having sex … and after that, a blur. A pleasant, blissy blur. Almost a buzz, like I’d been drunk. But I hadn’t been drinking; I never drink and drive. And my hand came back to my shoulder, feeling the tingle around the bite.

What had come over me? I’d never expected to take Calaphase home, much less for things to move this far this quickly. Not that I regretted … well, perhaps I regretted the bite but … the way it made me feel … oh, hell, I had no
idea
what I was feeling.

The water grew too hot, so I killed it and grabbed both towels from the rack with one long arm. In the sudden dripping chill I began to worry. We hadn’t used protection. What if I’d been ovulating? What were the signs? I pressed my breasts to see if they were sensitive, but I was too buzzed and tingly and shivery to tell any real difference.

Hell, the way I’d been acting, maybe I
was
ovulating. Could a vampire get me pregnant? Despite having dated one briefly after Savannah turned, I couldn’t remember what was real and what was myth—pregnancy had never come up, dating a woman. Quickly I finished drying off. When I was wrapped, body and head, I followed Calaphase back to the bedroom.

Calaphase sat on the edge of the huge four poster bed, naked to the waist, in suit pants but barefoot, talking heatedly into a cell phone. His eyes shifted over to me, then looked away as he said. “Yes, she’s coming out of it now. Thank you. I’ve never tried to
break
a link … ”

I stood there and watched, feeling my neck. The tingling was subsiding, but I could feel two small puncture wounds, swollen and irritated, like deep zits. He bit me. Oh my God, he
bit
me—exactly what I feared would come of hanging out with vampires. I was dizzy, almost drunk—no, that wasn’t it; I felt
hung over
. I looked at the clock: it was eleven forty-five.

“No, no, I don’t feel a connection,” he said. He furrowed his brow at me, making his eyes glow, but it didn’t feel hypnotic, and I quickly got a headache and had to look away. But beneath it all, I felt the pull: a subtle, seductive draw, murmuring out from him on the waves of his aura. “Some residual, but I don’t think the link had time to set. She’s safe.”

I swallowed. Now I knew why Calaphase was so resistant, what he meant when he said he didn’t need another thrall or groupie. It would be hard to resist his influence without his help. Fear gripped me: how could I
date
this man if he could sway me any time he wanted to?

But Calaphase wasn’t done rocking my world. “Well, that’s a fair question, my Lady Saffron,” he said—and I would have given good money to see the look on my own face when he spoke
her
name. I reached for him, but he held up his hand—and I felt the odd tingle come back. “The lady in question is Dakota Frost.”

“Calaphase!” I said, reaching for the phone. “What in God’s name are you doing—”

But there was an exclamation on the line, and he got up swiftly and turned away. “Yes, that’s her. Yes,
yes,
she’s all right, the cold shower worked.” He paused for a moment, and then nodded. “Of course—that
is
the real reason I’m calling. I didn’t just bite her. We had sex.”