Hotter Than Hell (51 page)

Her anxiety vanished, and she was glad that she’d called. “I’m okay. I just wanted to say I’m so sorry about last night. I got scared. I freaked. I know you’ll probably laugh in my face, but I want to see you again.”

I’d like to try again,
an unspoken desire she couldn’t quite give voice to.

“I wouldn’t laugh. I was just worried about you. I thought maybe I’d done something wrong.”

“No, no, of course you didn’t. It’s just…I guess since this was my first time out since I was sick, my first time being with anyone since then…I got scared, like I said.”

“I don’t know. It seemed like you were really into it.” He chuckled nervously. “You were really hot.”

“I was into it.” She wasn’t sure this was going to sound awkward-endearing or just awkward. She tried to put that lust, that power that she’d felt last night, into her voice. Like maybe she could touch him over the phone. She held that image in her mind. “I’d like to see you again.”

The meaning behind the words said,
I need you.

Somehow, he heard that. She could tell by the catch in his breath, an added huskiness in his voice. “Okay. Why don’t you come over.”

“I’ll be right there.” She shut the phone off, not giving him a chance to change his mind, not letting herself doubt.

Emma could screw this up again. There was a gnawing in her belly, an anxious thought that kept saying,
this isn’t right.
I’m using him, and he doesn’t deserve that. She was starting to think of that voice as the old Emma. The Emma who could walk in daylight and never would again.

The new Emma, the voice she had to listen to now, felt like she was about to win a race. She had the power here, and she was buzzed on it. Almost drunk. The new Emma didn’t miss alcohol because she didn’t need it.

It felt good. Everything she moved toward felt so physically, fundamentally good. All she had to do was let go of doubt and revel in it.

That near-ecstasy shone in her eyes when Chris opened the door. For a moment, they only looked at each other. He was tentative—expecting her to flee again. She caught his gaze, and he saw nothing but her. She could see him, see through him, everything about him. He wanted her—had watched her for a long time, dreaming of a moment like this, not thinking it would happen. Not brave enough to make it happen. Assuming she wasn’t the kind of girl who would let him in.

Yet here she was. She saw all of this play behind his eyes.

She touched his cheek and gave him a shy smile. “Thanks for letting me come over.”

Gazing at him through lowered lids, she pushed him over the edge.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her against him, bringing her lips to his, hungry, and she was ready for him, opening her mouth to him, letting him devour her with kisses and sending his passion back to him. He clutched at her, wrinkling the back of her shirt as if he were trying to rip through it to get to her skin, kneading, moving his hand low to pin her against him. These weren’t the tender, careful, assured movements he might have used if he were attempting to seduce her—if he’d had to persuade her, if she had shown some hesitation. These were the clumsy, desperate gropings of a man who couldn’t control himself. She made him lose control. If she could now pick up those reins that he had dropped—

She pulled back her head to look at him; kissed him lightly, then slowly—staying slow, forcing him to match her pace. She controlled his movements now. She unbuttoned his shirt, drawing out every motion, brushing the bare skin underneath with fleeting touches. Lingering. Teasing. Heightening his need, feeding his desire. Driving him mad. He was melting in her arms. She could feel his muscles tremble.

Taking hold of his hands—she practically had to peel them off her backside—she guided them to her breasts and pressed them there. His eyes widened, like he’d just won a prize, and she smiled, letting her head fall back, feeling the weight of her hair pull her back, rolling her shoulders and putting her chest even more firmly into his grasp. Quickly, he undid the buttons of her shirt, tugged aside her bra, and bent to kiss her, tracing her right breast with his tongue, taking her nipple between his teeth. For all that had happened, for all that she’d become, her nerves, her senses, still worked, still shuddered at a lover’s touch. Her hands clenched on his shoulders, then tightened in his hair. She gasped with pleasure. She wanted this. She wanted this badly.

She pulled him toward the bedroom. Didn’t stop looking at him; held his gaze, would not let him break it. Her own veins were fire—controlled fire, in a very strong furnace, directed to some great purpose, a driving machine. She needed him, the blood that flushed along his skin. His very capillaries opened for her. She did not have a heartbeat, but something in her breast cried out in triumph. He was hers, to do with as she pleased.

She ran her tongue along her top row of teeth, scraping it on needle-sharp fangs.

He tugged at her shirt, searching for more bare skin. She shivered at his touch on the small of her back. His hands were hot, burning up, and for all her desire, her skin felt cold, bloodless.

She would revel in his heat instead.

She pushed his shirt off his shoulders and let it drop to the floor, then wrapped herself around him, pulling as much of that skin and heat to her as she could.

“You’re so warm,” she murmured, not meaning to speak at all. But she was amazed at the heat of him. She hadn’t felt so much heat since before…before she became this thing.

He kept his mouth against her, lips working around her neck, pressing up to her ear, tasting every inch. Her nerves flared at the touch.

And suddenly, finally, she understood. It wasn’t just the blood that drew her kind to living humans. It was the heat, the life itself. They were bright sunlight to creatures who lived in darkness. They held the energy that kept her kind alive and immortal—for there would always be people, an endless supply of people, to draw that energy from. She was a parasite and the host would never die.

Neither, then, would she.

With new reverence, she eased him to the bed, made him lay back, and finished stripping him, tugging down his jeans and boxers, touching him at every opportunity, fingertips around his hips, along his thighs. She paused to regard him, stretched out on his back, naked before her, member erect, whole body flush and almost trembling with need. She had brought him to this moment, with desire burning in his eyes. He would do anything she asked, now. She found herself wanting to be kind—to reward him for the role he’d played in her education, in bringing about the epiphany that so clarified her place in the world.

This exchange would be fair. She would not simply take from him. He would have pleasure as well.

She rubbed her hands down his chest, down his belly. He moaned, shivered under her touch but did not interfere. She traced every curve of his body: down his ribs, his hips. Stretched out on the bed beside him, she took his penis in her hand. Again, their mouths met. His kissing was urgent, fevered, and she kept pace with him. He was growing slick with sweat and smelled of musk.

She laughed. The sound just bubbled out of her. Lips apart, eyes gleaming, she found joy in this. She would live, she would not open the curtains on the dawn. She had power in this existence and she would learn to use it.

“Oh my God,” Chris murmured. He froze, his eyes wide, his blood suddenly cooled. In only a second, she felt the sweat on his body start to chill as fear struck him. He wouldn’t even notice it yet.

He was staring at her, her open, laughing mouth, the pointed canine teeth she’d been so careful to disguise until this moment, when euphoria overcame her.

In a moment of panic like this, it might all fall apart. An impulse to run struck her, but she’d come too far, she was too close to success. If she fled now she might never regain the nerve to try again.

“Shh, shh, it’s all right,” she whispered, stroking his hair, nuzzling his cheek, breathing comfort against him. “It’s fine, it’ll be fine.”

She brought all her nascent power to bear: seduction, persuasion. The creature’s allure. The ability to fog his mind, to erase all else from his thoughts but his desire for her, to fill his sight only with her.

“It’s all right, Chris. I’ll take care of you. I’ll take good care of you.”

The fear in his eyes ebbed, replaced by puzzlement—some part of his mind asking what was happening, who was she, what was she, and why was she doing this to him. She willed him to forget those questions. All that mattered were her, him, their joint passion that would feed them both: his desire, and her life.

He was still hard against her hand, and she used that. Gently, carefully, she urged him back to his heat, brought him again to that point of need. She stroked him, first with fingertips, then with her whole hand, and his groan of pleasure gratified her. When he tipped back his head, his eyes rolling back a little, she knew he had returned to her.

The next time she kissed him, his whole body surged against her.

She twined her leg around his; he moved against her, insistent. But she held him, pinned him, and closed her mouth over his neck. There she kissed, sucked—felt the hot river of his blood so close to his skin, just under her tongue. She almost lost control, in her need to take that river into herself.

Oh so carefully, slowly, to make sure she did this right and made no mistakes, she bit. Let her needle teeth tear just a little of his skin.

The flow of blood hit her tongue with a shock and instantly translated to a delicious rush that shuddered through her body. Blood slipped down her throat like honey, burning with richness. Clenching all her muscles, groaning at the flood of it, she drank. Her hand closed tight around his erection, moved with him, and his body responded, his own wave of pleasure bringing him to climax a moment later.

She held him while he rocked against her, and she drank a dozen swallows of his blood. No more than that. Do not kill, Alette’s first lesson. But a dozen mouthfuls would barely weaken him. He wouldn’t even notice.

She licked the wound she’d made to hasten its healing. He might notice the marks and believe them to be insect bites. He would never know she’d been here.

His body radiated the heat of spent desire. She lay close to him, gathering as much of it as she could into herself. She now felt hot—vivid and alive. She could feel his blood traveling through her, keeping her alive.

Stroking his hair, admiring the lazy smile he wore, she whispered to him. “You won’t remember me. You won’t remember what happened tonight. You had a nice dream, that’s all. A vivid dream.”

“Emma,” he murmured, flexing toward her for more. Almost, her resolve broke. Almost, she saw that pulsing artery in his neck and went to drink again.

But she continued, “If you see me again, you won’t know me. Your life will go on as if you never knew me. Go to sleep. You’ll sleep very well tonight.”

She brushed his hair with her fingers, and a moment later he was snoring gently. She pulled a blanket over him. Kissed his forehead.

Straightening her bra, buttoning her blouse, she left the room. Made sure all the lights were off. Locked the door on her way out.

She walked home. It was the deepest, stillest hour of night, or early morning. Streetlights turned colors but no cars waited at intersections. No voices drifted from bars and all the storefronts were dark. A cold mist hung in the air, ghostlike. Emma felt that she swam through it.

The stillest part of night, and she had never felt more awake, more alive. Every pore felt the touch of air around her. Warm blood flowed in her veins, firing her heart. She walked without fear along dark streets, secure in the feeling that the world had paused to notice her passage through it.

She entered Alette’s town home through the kitchen door in back rather than through the front door, because she’d always come in through the back in her student days when she studied in Alette’s library and paid for school by being Alette’s part-time housekeeper. That had all changed. Those days—nights—were finished. But she’d never stop using the back door.

“Emma?” Alette called from the parlor.

Self-conscious, Emma followed the voice and found Alette in her favorite chair in the corner, reading a book. Emma tried not to feel like a kid sneaking home after a night of mischief.

Alette replaced a bookmark and set the book aside. “Well?”

Her unnecessary coat wrapped around her, hands folded before her, Emma stood before the mistress of the house. Almost, she reverted to the teenager’s response: “Fine, okay, whatever.” Monosyllables and a fast exit.

But she felt herself smile broadly, happily. “It was good.”

“And the gentleman?”

“He won’t remember me.”

“Good,” Alette said, and smiled. “Welcome to the Family, my dear.”

She went back to the bar once more, a week later. Sitting at the bar, she traced condensation on the outside of a glass of gin and tonic on the rocks. She hadn’t sipped, only tasted, drawing a lone breath so she could take in the scent of it.

The door opened, bringing with it a cold draft and a crowd of college students. Chris was among them, laughing at someone’s joke, blond hair tousled. He walked right by her on his way to the pool tables. Flashed her a hurried smile when he caught her watching him. Didn’t spare her another glance, in the way of two strangers passing in a crowded bar.

Smiling wryly to herself, Emma left her drink at the bar and went out to walk in the night.

CLAIRE PRESSED HER BACK TO THE WALL AND
listened to the footsteps. When she was certain her prey was moving away from her, not toward her, she leaned forward to peek around the corner and watch him walk down the dimly lit hallway. Watching her neighbor walk away was not exactly a chore. Not in those jeans.