Crimson Debt: Book 1 in the Born to Darkness series (14 page)

He frowned. “Perfectly.”

“Good. So let me go.”

“Not yet.” He tilted my chin to the side,
baring my neck.

“What are you doing?” I tried to pull back
but his grip was like iron.

“You’re still bleeding a little from where I
nicked you. I can’t send you back up to a building full of vampires
like this.”

Before I could protest that I was fine, he
was licking me. His tongue felt hot and wet as it glided over my
skin and I couldn’t help catching my breath as his healing touch
stirred up all the lust I’d been trying to push down. It rose in me
again, threatening to swamp me like a tidal wave.

“Corbin,” I protested breathlessly, but he
didn’t stop—not yet. He seemed to be taking an awfully long time to
heal such a little scratch but I was losing my ability to care. The
warm, wet sensation of his tongue lapping over my sensitive flesh
was making me weak in the knees. My nipples were hard and my pussy
was wet all over again.

Stop it,
I told myself sternly.
Stop reacting—that’s what he wants.

But I couldn’t help myself. By the time
Corbin finally released me, I was so weak in the knees I was afraid
I might fall over.

He smirked as he walked around me and opened
the thick bank vault door.

“I trust you’ll have a pleasant night’s sleep
after you check on your friend.”

“I’m sure I will,” I said with as much
dignity as I could muster. I left the door and climbed the steps
without looking at him again but I could still feel those cool,
silver-blue eyes on me every step of the way.

“Good night, Addison,” I heard him murmur,
far behind me when I finally reached the top. “I’ll see you
tomorrow night.”

That’s what I’m afraid of!
Without
answering, I left and went looking for Taylor. I didn’t want
anything else to do with Corbin tonight—not if I could help it.

I found Taylor in a small dark room not much
bigger than a janitor’s closet. Someone had jammed a tiny folding
cot in there with one small, flat pillow and a scratchy puke-green
blanket. All in all, it didn’t look very comfortable. Although it
was miles better than the opulent bedroom in Celeste’s mansion
where my friend had so lately been tied up and tortured.

Taylor must have thought the same way because
the minute I came into her tiny room, she threw herself in my arms
and hugged me.

“Oh, Addison, you shouldn’t have! Thank you
so much but I wish you hadn’t done it.”

“I only did what any good friend would do,” I
protested.

“No, you didn’t. You went above and beyond.
Way
beyond.” Her dark eyes widened. “I can’t believe you put
yourself in Corbin’s power just to help me.”

I made a shooing motion with one hand.
“Please, it’s no big deal. I’m just pretending to be his girlfriend
until that Inquisitor bastard leaves town.”

“Shhh!” Taylor looked around warily as though
someone might be listening in under the door of her crappy little
room.

“What?” I frowned at her. “I’ll call him that
to his face and a lot worse after what he…” But I couldn’t finish.
The pain in her eyes was still too new, too fresh. “Oh, Taylor,” I
murmured, patting her arm.

She sniffed and shook her head decisively.
“No, don’t, Addison. I don’t…don’t want to cry anymore. Not now.
Besides, I don’t have a right to complain to you, not after what
you did for me.”

“Oh come on.” I shifted uncomfortably. “Don’t
start that again.”

“What did he do to you?” she demanded in a
low voice. “I heard him talking about punishing you. I know you
thought I was too wrapped up in myself to notice but I heard
that—did he hurt you?”

I thought of Corbin’s method of “punishment”
and hoped very much that my face wasn’t as red as my hair.

“Um…” I shifted again. “You mind if I sit on
the bed? It’s been a long day…er, night.”

“Sure.” Taylor sat beside me and the little
cot creaked with our combined weight. “You still didn’t answer my
question,” she said.

“And I’m not going to,” I said firmly. “Let’s
just say I’m not hurt and leave it at that.”

“But Addison—”

“Taylor,
I don’t want to talk about
it.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.” She looked down at her
hands, clasped loosely in her lap. “I didn’t mean to pry. I just
feel so bad about what happened to you—whatever it was.”

“Oh, honey…” I grabbed her hand and squeezed
it tight. “I feel the same way for you. But the point is we both
made it through. And now that Corbin’s got you under his
protection, you’ll never have to go through anything like that
again. So…” I cleared my throat and looked around. “How are they
treating you so far? Besides the palatial digs, that is?”

Taylor gave a little half-laugh—a far cry
from the joyful little giggle I remembered from our roommate days,
but still better than sobbing.

“Oh, you know…it’s not so bad. They even gave
me refreshments.” She nodded at a half-empty bag of blood lying to
one side of the sad, flat pillow.

“About that,” I said. “Corbin says he’ll find
you a willing donor—someone willing to, uh, pay the Crimson
Debt?”

Taylor went pale. “A willing donor would be
nice but I don’t want anyone paying the Debt for me,” she said
quickly.

“It wouldn’t be a human, I’m sure,” I said,
trying to reassure her.

“I don’t care who it is.” She looked down. “I
don’t want that—sex and blood at the same time, I mean. I don’t
think…” She sighed. “Addison, I don’t honestly think I’ll ever want
to have sex again. Not after…” She shook her head. “You know.”

“I know.” I squeezed her hand
sympathetically. The broken look in her beautiful eyes made me so
angry I wanted to scream. “God damn it,” I said in a low voice.
“Roderick, that evil
fuck
. Vamps are so screwed up—they’re
all bowing and scraping to him when what he really needs is a
bullet right in the chest. I’d be glad to put it there, too.”

“Don’t talk like that, Addison,” Taylor
implored. “It’s not
safe
. Besides, I’ve heard it takes more
than just bullets to kill the really old ones.”

“I guarantee if I put enough hollow points in
that empty, rotten cavity he calls a heart he’ll die,” I said
furiously.

“No, he
won’t,”
she said. “Seriously,
once a vamp reaches six stars, they’re practically indestructible.
So please, Addison, don’t try going Dirty Harry on him. You’ll just
get yourself killed.”

“Well, as long as I take him down with me,
maybe I don’t care,” I grumbled, but decided to let the matter
drop. I squeezed her hand again. “I’d invite you back to my place
but I don’t have any bagged blood on hand if you feel peckish. And
I don’t think…” I sighed. “I don’t think I can feed you anymore
until after this whole thing with evil fuck Roderick is over and
Corbin and I part ways.”

“I understand,” Taylor said quickly. “Most
vamps are picky like that. Me taking blood from you while you’re
with Corbin would be like…well, it would be like you were cheating
on him, like he said in the car.”

“Yes, so I understand.” I sighed. “He’s going
to have to get over the idea of owning me really quick, though. As
soon as this is all over, we’re going back to the usual status
quo.”

Taylor gave me a wan smile. “What, you mean
him harassing you and you writing him as many citations as
possible?”

“Exactly,” I said grumpily, although
honestly, the idea of going back to our old relationship seemed a
little strange now that Corbin had seen me naked. Ugh, now
that
was going to be a fun fact to consider the next time I
came to inspect
Under the Fang.

“Addison,” Taylor said quietly. “Has it ever
occurred to you that maybe Corbin really cares for you?”

“What? Don’t be silly.” I frowned. “I’m just
a conquest to him—it’s a feather in his cap to be able to say that
a non-glam Auditor is his consort. It’s like…like a mobster showing
off his girlfriend who also just happens to be a cop or a
judge.”

“Maybe not.” Taylor looked thoughtful. “I’ve
heard rumors about Corbin.”

“Such as?” I raised an eyebrow and made a go
on signal with one hand.

“Well, he’s not nearly the playboy he makes
himself out to be for one thing,” Taylor said. “He’s almost never
with anyone—he mostly keeps to himself except to feed occasionally.
And he never pays the Crimson Debt or lets anyone else pay it for
him.”

“Meaning he doesn’t feed on anyone during sex
or let them feed on him?” I said.

She nodded. “Honestly, I don’t think he has
that much sex at all. Not even glam-sex.”

“Oh come on, Taylor—he’s a vampire,” I
objected. “Sex and blood, that’s what they’re all about—that’s what
they
do
.”

“Most of them maybe. But if what I’ve heard
is right, Corbin mostly keeps to himself.”

“But why?” I asked, frowning. “I mean, it’s
not for lack of willing partners, I’m sure.” He got under my skin
like a bad rash but there was no denying Corbin was gorgeous.

“I don’t know why, exactly.” Taylor shrugged.
“They say he had someone once—a human—but he lost her. Now he
mostly keeps to himself out of respect for her memory.”

I thought of what he’d told me, about having
a human female he loved enough to be gentle with once and how she’d
“died anyway.”

“Why didn’t he just bond her to him?” I
asked. Vamps can bond any human they want, which greatly increases
the human’s lifespan, sometimes even enough to match the vamp’s. It
makes them a little more durable too, though under the law they’re
still not supposed to have sex with the vamp that bonds them.

“I don’t know.” Taylor shook her head. “But I
do
know you’re pretty much the only girl he’s shown an
interest in. I mean, he does a lot of casual flirting, you
know?”

“Yeah, I know.” I nodded. Nobody was better
at eye-fucking than Corbin.

“But none of it amounts to anything. I mean,
I’ve never heard of him taking
anyone
into one of his
daylight resting places the way he took you. Not vampire, not
human—no one,” Taylor emphasized.

I shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, well… Look,
Taylor, I should really get going. I have to be back here tomorrow
night to play the dutiful little consort during Celeste’s
trial.”

“Okay.” She sighed and smiled at me. “Thanks
for rescuing me, roomie.”

“You’re welcome, roomie.” My throat was
suddenly tight. “I just wish…I wish I could have done it
sooner.”

Taylor shook her head. “Don’t beat yourself
up over that. If you hadn’t come…Never mind.” She gave me a
trembling smile and swiped at the bloody tears that were gathered
in her eyes. “You’re the best friend a girl could have, Addison. I
love you.”

“I love you too, hon.” I gathered her in my
arms and didn’t protest a bit over her bone-crushing hug. I felt
her shoulders shaking with sobs and I stroked her hair helplessly,
wishing there was something—anything—I could do to heal her.

But there was nothing I could do or say to
take away the pain of what had been done to her, nothing to erase
the awful violation from her mind. All I could do was hold her and
let her cry and swear to myself if I ever got a chance, I would put
a magazine full of hollow points into Roderick myself.

“Okay, I’m here. What’s the plan?” I tried to
sound casual and unworried as I strolled into Corbin’s office but
the forbidding look in his silver-blue eyes took the wind out of my
sails.

“You are late.” He glanced at the antique
clock on the wall of his office. “Fifteen minutes late to be
exact.” Today he was wearing a tailored charcoal suit with a crisp
white shirt that made him look like a high-powered executive. He
looked so good, sitting there behind his desk, that I felt grubby
in my rumpled navy blue jacket and slacks.

I shrugged. “Sorry. I had an execution that
ran over.”

Corbin frowned. “You come from executing one
of my kind and act like it means nothing? Tell me, Addison, how
would you feel if I said something like that to you? ‘Sorry I
couldn’t be on time, I was draining some human dry and it took
longer than I thought.’”

I shifted uncomfortably. “This is different.
The vamp who died—he was a serial murderer/rapist. He S and F-ed
twenty women to death before they caught him—not all of them human,
I might add.”

Corbin raised an eyebrow at me. “S and
F-ed?”

“It stands for sucked and fucked.” I coughed.
“I know it doesn’t sound nice but it’s a whole hell of a lot nicer
than describing what his victims looked like when he was finished
with them.”

“Ah, yes…” Corbin sighed wearily. “The lovely
sights you get to see at your job.”

I shrugged again. “It’s part of my work.”

He crossed his arms over his broad chest and
frowned. “A part which keeps you under the impression that all
vampires are like the one you executed today.”

“Well, aren’t they?” I challenged him. “At
least, inside, where it counts?”

Corbin looked at me steadily for a long
moment, his silver-blue eyes unreadable. I stared back, unwilling
to back down. At last, long after the silence had gone past
uncomfortable and entered the realm of downright painful, he
spoke.

“Please tell me you do not really believe
that, Addison,” he said quietly. “If that is truly how you view my
kind then I have no chance of winning your heart.”

His words stirred something inside me, a
flutter in my stomach, a flush in my cheeks… I didn’t know what it
was exactly but for some reason I couldn’t look at him.

“Addison?” he said softly.

“Stop screwing around, Corbin,” I said
roughly. “This…this
thing
between us is a business deal and
that’s all. You know it and I know it. I’m just here to be your arm
candy until that sick bastard Roderick is gone. After that, our
deal is done.”