Hard Days Night (The Firsts Book 8) (11 page)

Her eyes went to his forehead where the gunshot wound was nearly closed. 
“You really
are
healing.  How is that possible?  What
are
you?  Am
I
crazy?”

“Please sit back down.  Yo
u already know, you just cannot accept it.  I am something you have never seen before.  I am healing because your blood has made me stronger.  Blood is life for vampires, and I thank you for your contribution.  Once I had the infusion of blood, healing became exponentially quicker.  By nightfall, there will be no evidence I was ever shot at all.”

Mal lowered herself back to the bed.  “I truly have no idea what to think.  I know what it felt like when I did things that I did not want to do.  When you
forced
me to give you my phone or follow you up to this room.”

Her eyes went straight to his again
. “The sex was my own choice.  I
wanted
you to fuck me.”

Ahmose moved forward and pulled her between his legs, his hands sliding around her waist.  “Do not use that word for what we did. It was beautiful and that crude word implies that we were nothing more than rutting beasts.”

Mal smiled at him, because it felt good to feel normal again, as she reminded herself that this man was just mentally and emotionally confused.  She slid closer and took his face in her hands.

“
Ahmose, that’s exactly what it was.  I mean, it
was
beautiful.  I can honestly say that was the best sex of my life.  But it wasn’t love or anything deep.  We’re complete strangers, so yeah, it was an amazing fuck.”

“You have difficulty connecting with people, don’t you?”

She pushed back and crawled off the bed.

“Don’t try to psychoanalyze me.  You’re just a quick lay.  An awesome one, I’ll give you that, but that’s all.
  Look, I need to get back to my partner.  Luka has to be losing it looking for me.  Let me go, Ahmose.”

Who was this partner?
  Who was this man
Luka
that the woman he had just made love with was thinking about?  He let the flash of jealously fade.  Ahmose was a reasonable man, and this woman was not his.

“Soon.
  When the sun drops tonight, I will wipe your memory of me and release you from my control.”

“Now
,” Mal insisted.

He was in front of her before she saw him move.  He took her head in his hands, captured her eyes and said, “Sleep.”

As she lost consciousness and her body fell, he lifted her in his arms and laid her gently on the bed.  She really was one of the loveliest of women.  Not just her looks, they were excellent, but her spirit, her fire, her personality, her courage and strength, her refusal to compromise. 
Her passion
.  He ran his fingers lightly from her neck to her throat to her perfect breasts.  He would love to take her home and spend months, maybe years, getting to know everything about this furious, fascinating woman.

But she was apparently taken.  Had he known, he might not have made love to her.

No, that was not true.  The moment he had her in his arms, he knew they would be magic together.  He had known they would connect in every way. 

Still, she would return to this man who probably didn’t appreciate how magnificent she was, and Ahmose would return to his village to prepare for his daughter’s birth.

Pulling a sheet over her, Ahmose looked down at her.  If destiny had given her to him, he would have been overjoyed to make her his queen.

It seemed destiny liked to mess with him.  In this, in love,
karma seemed to have fucked with him, too.

He needed
rest now, more than anything, so he slipped in beside his sleeping beauty, kissed her gently on the lips, and fell into a deep, healing sleep.

Chapter 6

He wa
nted to rip his hair out.  Where the hell was she?  The pizza lay on the table cold and untouched, the beer too warm by far, and he was losing his mind.

Luka had found the note, contacted the local P.D. and followed her to the address they’d sent her to for a homicide an hour earlier.  Not only was there no sign of Mal,
there was no homicide vic, either.

Luka and t
he local officers had combed the area and found nothing on the empty stretch of beach.

“I thought there was a house right near here, but I guess I was wrong,” Captain Smith had told Luka after they’d covered the ent
ire area.  “I would have sworn… Anyway, we’ll stay on this.  Do you want to bring in your own team from L.A. to help with the search?”

“Yeah,” Luka had said, his attention fractured.  How had this all gone so wrong?  Canzone
couldn’t
have known she was here, right?  Who else could it have been?

When he finished a call with Captain Kordalis thirty minutes earlier,
the Captain had rung off quickly.  Four of his best detectives were en route, while he investigated Canzone and the unlikely possibility that he’d known where she and Luka had gone.  He felt responsible.

Luka, being unreasonable, and he knew he was, agreed.  Somehow, that asshole Canzone must have known how to get to Mal.  And even though the Captain couldn’t have known how resourceful Canzone might be, Luka needed someone to blame.  And Kordalis was it.  He’d apologize later if it was necessary.

For now, only one thing mattered; they had to get Mal back safely.

The local deputies already had people combing through the town’s security cameras which, except for at private residences, were too few.  Apparently crime was very low in this small town where most of the residents were wealthy people and rarely there.

“We need to bring in the men who found the body.  It was probably a plant to lure Mal
,” Luka insisted.

“Doesn’t make sense, detective.”
  Captain Smith had been a police officer for thirty-two years and had a good handle on criminal behavior.  “This couldn’t have been a set-up.  It wasn’t predictable that your detective would listen to our calls, that my team would be too busy to take the call, that she would respond to it herself.  Alone.  Nothing makes any sense here.”  He looked out at the waves, loud tonight because the wind had picked up and the moon was still fairly full.  “It does seem as if I’m missing something though.”

“We can’t
afford
to miss something, sir,” Luka insisted.

“I agree.  Let’s c
heck the area once more, taking more care to watch for anything that seems out of the ordinary.”

“We have to find her,” Luka said, mostly to himself, but Captain Smith answered anyway.

“We’ll find her, detective.”

Luka nodded and headed out to the beach.  He looked at the long span of sand that stretched hundreds of feet in either direction.  There was a house within a hundred yards of the next one all along this stretch of the road, but not here.  Why wasn’t there a house here?  He shrugged and began a meticulous search.  If Mal had been abducted from here, she would have done everything she could to leave a clue for him.
  But it was like she just evaporated.

Nothing would stop him until he found her.

He slid his cell phone out and double-checked it for the third time.  Whatever had happened, she hadn’t even had a chance to try to contact him.

It was Canzone, it had to be.  No matter what the Captain did, he probably wouldn’t make any progress, because Canzone was smart
and had incredible resources, so nothing he did would create any trail or evidence that led to Mal’s whereabouts.  The Captain would have to work within the law.

Luka wouldn’t.  There was no boundary he wouldn’t cross to get Mal back safely where she belonged.

Captain Smith joined him and clicked his tongue.

“There just isn’t any lead.  I’m sorry, detective.  We’re finished here.  You’re welcome to stay.  The sun will be up in about an hour and that might help.  I’ve got to get home, though.   My girls will be waking up and I’m the breakfast chef.  Let me know if there is anything else we can do for you.  My officers will bring in the
ATV’ers tomorrow morning and we’ll see what they have to say.  Goodnight.”

Luka couldn’t speak, so he just nodded. 

Yeah, he’d be out here at first light.

Mal was dreaming, and it was a really,
really
nice dream.  It was night, the kind that had a billion brilliant stars sparkling in a black velour sky with a romantic crescent moon hanging low, glowing like a night-light.

She was dressed in a sheer ankle-length dress, her hair fuller than it had ever been cascaded down her back, and a perfect Adon
is walked towards her on a beach, naked and heart-stopping.  Her hand moved to her lower belly, the fingers caressing the sensitive skin, as she waited for the man who could not exist to arrive.  That was okay, because in this dream, she was a woman who couldn’t exist either.

This soft, sweet, sensual darling wasn’t her. 
And a
dress?
  How many years had it been since she wore one of those?  She knew instantly, because it was etched in her mind; her mother’s funeral, and that was fifteen years ago.

The real Mal was more of a sexual animal, a predator, that stalked her prey when the mood struck, then leaped, caught the creature, sexed
herself on him, and then let him go.  Yeah, catch and release, she liked the sound of that.

But this
Mary Tyler Moore
sweet woman with the flowing dress, it was nothing more than an illusion.  As the dream man arrived and picked her up in strong, incredibly well cut arms, she moaned.  Illusion worked for her, very well, for this moment.

Dream man had long dark hair and eyes as dark as the night sky, and everything about him made her body thrum.  She wrapped her legs around him and kissed him, his tongue moving in ways she never expected, exciting her as she’d never been before. He lowered her to the ground and when she reached for him, he pushed her back down and wrapped his hands around her ankles to hold her in place while he lowered his mouth to her. 
Mal’s dream-head lifted to look down at him, his dark eyes the last thing she saw before his tongue dipped into her and she dropped her head back with a moan.  She was accustomed to controlling everything around her, but this was one of times when you just give in and experience the moment.

Mal startled awake, and rolled
onto her side.  Ahhh, what a disappointment!  The dream was just getting
so
good.

Stretching her arms over her head, she opened her eyes to meet nearly pitch blackness, no light at all coming from the French doors near the balcony.  That wasn’t right.

She sat up, her hands dropping to the surface below her to verify that she was in bed.  Yeah, she was in bed, although she didn’t remember satin sheets, but the darkness creeped her out. 

“Don’t remember falling asleep in a cave,” she whispered, and started to push off the bed, when her hand struck a warm body.

What?  Who the hell was in bed with her?

Then memory crashed back.  Oh, fuck, yeah, she’d been forcibly detained in a beach house with a man who was jack-shit crazy. 

She released a low groan. 
Oh, fuck, yeah, and she’d had sex with him!

Listening carefully, she decided he was asleep, so she slipped
slowly from the other side of the bed, and felt around until she found something to put on. It wasn’t hers, but that didn’t matter, just anything to get her out of this house.

After she scooped up what felt like a shirt, she eased out of the dark room into a dark corridor, and since she was barefoot, it wasn’t hard to make her way soundlessly up some stairs and finally out into a sunlit living room.  All-white furniture curved around one of the biggest widescreen televisions she’d ever seen outside of a theatre. 

But she didn’t have time to linger.  The shirt was a pale gray men’s shirt, although on her it made a dress, so she slid it on and hurried to the sliding doors that led out of the back of the house.  She unlatched the door to open it.

And just stood there.
  Her hand rested on the handle, and all she needed to do was push it back and leave.  But she couldn’t.  Her hand and body locked in place, all she could do was look at the freedom beyond the glass doors. 

He’d told her he could command her to do anything and she would comply without question and with no ability to resist the command.  She’d already experienced it with the cell phone and following him to the bedroom, but this just blew her mind.

Mal stepped back away from the door.
That
she could do.  She turned and walked back into the center of the room.  Fine, not a problem.  So she walked quickly back to the door and put her hand on it to slide it open.  Once again, her body would not obey.