Life Blood: Cora's Choice #1 (7 page)

The microwave clock read two o’clock.  I had four hours—only four hours until the appointment that would determine whether that “see you” was a prediction or an empty promise.

Four hours before I saw Mr. Thorne again.

Well, then, I thought, I’d better get my sleep.

A
t precisely 6:32 PM, the Bentley stopped, and the chauffeur walked around and opened my door.  I knew because I checked my phone one last time before turning it off and shoving into my coat pocket.

“Thank you,” I murmured.  I realized that this might be my last time in the car—in any car.  I still didn’t know the chauffeur’s name, and now I might never learn it.

I shut down that line of thought as I got out.  I was not going to die.  Not tonight.  It was a knowledge that was deeper than reason.  One that I had to cling to.

I hadn’t paid attention to the city passing in front of the car window, too distracted by my own whirling thoughts.  Now I found myself in front of dense hedge of hollies, easily fifteen feet tall, with only a passage wide enough for a flagstone walk between them.

I turned back to look at the chauffeur.

“It is Mr. Thorne’s Georgetown home, Ms. Shaw,” the man said with a small bow before I had a chance to ask the question aloud.

“I see,” I said, even though I didn’t.  Mr. Thorne directed medical procedures from his home?  It was absurd, but I couldn’t manage to be surprised about anything he might do.  I walked up the path even as I heard the Bentley door shut behind me. 

No going back.

The house, half glimpsed between the hedges, revealed itself to me as I passed through.  I stopped, needing a moment to take it in.  Rich—I’d known that Mr. Thorne must be a very rich man.   But this went beyond all my expectations.

I stood at the edge of a formal walled garden, the immaculate lawn clipped perfectly between the boxwood-edged paths that crossed precisely in the middle of the space where there was a wide fountain, empty and silent now for winter.  Beyond that was the house, its façade made of marble so pale that it glowed in the city lights that reflected against the night sky. 

It was a massive baroque reimagining of Palladian style, complete with a half flight of stairs leading up to the main floor and a wide porch, like a Roman temple, behind the row of great columns.  Here and there, a window glowed.  I wondered just how big the house was—ten thousand square feet?  Fifty thousand?  It must date from the age of the Robber Barons, if not before.  I could hardly believe that such a home still lay in private hands, even in Georgetown.

I blew out a long breath.  I was glad that I’d spent even longer deciding what to wear this time than I had for the last meeting.  I was going in for a medical procedure, I knew, and an unpleasant and likely fatal one at that.  That the last thing that mattered was what I wore.  But I couldn’t make myself go in my college girl jeans, so I chose my nice gray pants and a silky black turtleneck.  Now my only regret was that I hadn’t asked Lisette if I could borrow her swing jacket, too, again before she left.

There was no helping it now.  I squared my shoulders and mounted the steps to the great double doors.

One swung open before I could knock.  A distinguished-looking gentleman with silver hair and a dark suit greeted me with a cordial nod.

“Ms. Shaw,” he said.

“Let me guess,” I interrupted, unable to help myself.  “Mr. Thorne is waiting.”

The man—an honest-to-goodness butler? I wondered—treated me to an indulgent smile.  “Indeed, Ms. Shaw.  And he will see you now.  Come this way.”

I stepped inside the foyer, a vast landing before a set of marble stairs that rose up in front of me, wide enough for a dozen people to mount shoulder-to-shoulder.  On either side were two more staircases, each half as wide, leading down.  Under my feet was
an elaborate geometry of inlaid marble, and a chandelier glittered dimly far above my head.

I surrendered my coat to the butler, who made it disappear behind a cast bronze door set into the wall on one side.

“This way, if you please, Ms. Shaw,” the man said. 

He led the way up the stairs, and I followed.  I found myself in a kind of antechamber, separated from the main space by a row of broad columns.

“This floor is the piano nobile, Ms. Shaw,” the butler said, stopping at the edge of the room.

I gaped.

It looked for all the world like the lobby of some extravagant hotel from a classic Hollywood film, all scarlet upholstery, rich woods, and precious oriental rugs.  The space was so vast that the room was divided into a dozen different conversational areas with screens and plants, sculptures and furniture groupings.  A two-story colonnade surrounded it, each floor at least fifteen feet high, with a wide corridor behind the columns below and a matching mezzanine above.  Above the colonnade was a fresco of classical figures in elegant postures.

“A follower of Botticelli, Ms. Shaw,” the butler said comfortably, following my gaze.  “Brought from Italy by Mr. Thorne many years ago.”

Above that was a ring of clerestory windows, and only then the ceiling, divided into coffers which were painted in a variety of mythological and biblical themes, hung with sixteen vast and branching chandeliers.

“Ms. Shaw,” the butler said politely, rousing me from my frozen state.

“Coming,” I said, still feeling somewhat stunned.

The man led behind the colonnade, passing several tall paneled doors before turning down a side corridor that was wider than my room.

“The main east gallery,” he said.  It was hung with paintings from floor to ceiling—portraits, landscapes, allegorical scenes all in a great jumble, with the only breaks to make spaces for the doors that occasionally interrupted the long walls.  I couldn’t imagine what it was all worth.

“The surgery,” the man finally said, coming to a stop at the last door at the very end of the corridor.  I balked for a moment before I remembered that
surgery
was an outdated term for a doctor’s office.

The butler opened the door and took one step inside, stepping clear of the doorway.

“Ms. Shaw to see you, Mr. Thorne,” he said to someone unseen inside, giving a crisp half-bow.

I stepped through the doorway.  The butler left, closing the door behind him.

Far across the checkered marble floor, Mr. Thorne lounged in a high-backed armchair with one ankle hooked over his knee, balancing a thin laptop on his leg.  He was magnificent and immaculate, as always, dressed in a dark gray suit that molded perfectly to his wide shoulders and tapered down to his hips, his aristocratic features inhumanly perfect under his dark wave of hair.  Only dimly did I take in the rest of the room—the clusters of potted plants in the corners, the sparse pieces of elegant furniture, the chaise longue that had a sudden, ominous significance.

He shut the laptop and set it on a side table, surveying me as I entered.  My breath caught, my heart already beginning to speed up.  His look had a half-hidden hunger that defied his impersonal smile.

“Very good, Ms. Shaw.  I see that you made it,” he said, standing and crossing over to where I stood, frozen.  He seemed different now, in his own home.  Older, though older than what I couldn’t say.  Stronger.  Darker.

“I said I would come.” 

He was very close now, and he seemed to be expecting something.  Yes.  A meeting.  That’s what this was, I thought.  I should shake his hand.

I thrust a hand at him.  He took it in his cool grasp, holding it for a lingering moment before completing the shake of greeting and dropping it again.

It was enough to send a rich, shivering reaction through my body and down into my center.  Unaccountably, I thought of the kiss Geoff had given me, and the terrible dream I had a week ago, and I wondered what it would be like to be kissed by this man. 

Would I even survive it?

“Is there something that I need to sign?” I asked.  “Paperwork to fill out?”

“Not at all,” he said.  “I am so glad you came.”

I wouldn’t—couldn’t—have missed it for anything.

He took my elbow, and I found myself subtly leaning into him without meaning to.

“There is a dressing room through here,” he said, guiding me to an inconspicuous side door.  “You may leave your things on the bench.  Then we will be ready to proceed.”

“Where is the doctor?” I asked.  “And the...procedure room?”

“Do not worry about that, Ms. Shaw.”  He smiled down at me.  “Our treatment does not require the sterility of an operating room, and we have found that our patients are much more comfortable in a less stressful environment.”

He opened the door and gently guided me through, his fingers light on the small of my back, sending a hot wave of confusion over me.  I couldn’t resist. 

“Come out when you are ready,” he said, and he shut it, leaving me alone.

F
acing the blank white door, I realized that Mr. Thorne had only answered half my question.  I rocked tensely onto the balls of my feet.  I should leave now, before it was too late.
 
I should stop chasing a dream before it led me to hell.

This was all wrong.  Somewhere in the base of my brain, an alarm was jangling, getting louder, screaming out against this place, this man.  Who would perform medical procedures in his own home, alone, other than a quack or a butcher?  Where were the doctors?  The nurses?  Their lab coats
and stethoscopes and clipboards, their machines that beeped and hissed? 

But I knew there were none.  Somehow, I had always known it.

Those thoughts were distant and small next to my awareness of the man in the next room.  I could hardly hear them over the pounding of my heart.  My head was still spinning with seeing him, being near him, my body burning from the ghost of his fingers on my back.

I should get out of there, but I didn’t move.

I couldn’t.

If I left, I was dead, anyway.  Not
tonight.  Not this week, even.  But I wouldn’t make it past spring.  My life was a road that had been washed out by cancer—a broken dead end with nothing beyond.  No way to reach the tidy little future I’d always wanted.

No matter what
happened, this was my only chance.  It was my straw to grasp, my one-in-one hundred shot at life.

If
Mr. Thorne had lied to me, I would have believed it.  When he spoke, I would believe anything.  But I knew he wasn’t lying, just as I knew he was there, on the other side of the door.  Waiting for me.

And I knew that once I stepped into that room, I would do anything for him.  Even give him the life I so desperately wanted to save.

Tearing my gaze from the blank door, I looked around the small, bare room.  A narrow padded bench sat against the wall cross from a row of pegs, from which a white garment hung limply with a pair of soft white slippers underneath. 

I knew what I would do—what I had to do.  Mechanically, I stripped down to my skin, folding my clothes and placing them in a neat stack upon the bench, goosebumps springing up over my body. 

I pulled the white garment off the hook, expecting the usual ties and buttons of a hospital gown.  Instead, it was sewn like a loose, sleeveless dress with a wide boat neck.  I slipped it over my head.  It hung halfway down my calves, fabric was soft and thick, nothing like the flimsy, stiff hospital gowns I was used to.

My feet were aching from the chill of the marble, and I stuffed them into the slippers.  They were, as I knew they would be, a perfect fit.

Then I turned and faced the door. 
Run
, a corner of my brain begged, faint and far away.  I thought of Geoff and Lisette, of graduation and the job and the house and the wedding and the children I didn’t yet have. 

A
nd then I thought of Mr. Thorne, and the conviction came over me that, one way or another, I was never really going to leave this place.

I felt
hollow, like I had been cored out.  My stomach and head were light with fear.  But I had only one choice.  I grasped the door handle, twisted it, and stepped through, back into the surgery.

“Ms. Shaw,” Mr. Thorne said, turning toward me in the center of the room. 

All it took was the sight of him, with his hungry eyes and beautiful mouth, and my last primal urge to flee abandoned me. 
Anything.
  I would do anything he wanted of me.

Beside him was the chaise longue, a heavy throw blanket laid across the foot.  That was where I was going to lie for the procedure.  I knew it, as certainly as I knew anything.  Behind the chaise was a forest of potted plants.  The equipment must be back there, somewhere, discreetly hidden away.

A change had come over Mr. Thorne.  He seemed taller, even more powerful, as if he had stepped out of some unseen shackles and stretched to his full size, gathering the shadows of the room around him.  His gaze was as dark as sin and as inescapable.  This was, somehow, the Mr. Thorne of my dream, and my heart, already humming, began to beat harder against my chest. 

“Come forward, Ms. Shaw.”

The words shook me, blew through me, stripping every hesitation, every extraneous thought, until all that was left was him.  I crossed over to him.  I would have walked over broken glass, if he’d asked.  I couldn’t disobey, and I could see in his eyes that he knew it and was allowing himself the pleasure of it, no longer trying to restrain the hold he had over me.

I stopped with only inches between us.  My eyes were held by his gaze.  He lifted a hand to my cheek, and I turned into his palm, unbidden, breathing him, my lips tingling against the thick pad of his thumb.  My nerves were singing again, singing with awareness of him, with the anticipation of something more.

“You poor child,” he murmured, looking down at me, pity and hunger warring in his eyes.

“Please,” I said, finding my voice for a moment.  “I want to live.”

He bent his head toward mine, his hand sliding under my hair to cradle my neck.  I tipped my head back, my lips parting, as his other hand found the small of my back.

“I want you to live, too,” he said, so quietly that I could scarcely hear.  “May God have mercy on
me.”

And then he kissed me.

My vision darkened as him mouth met mine, my legs giving way.  His arms tightened around me, holding me easily against the length of his body.  Mine was on fire, my nerves sizzling with the touch of him.  His mouth—I gave him everything he demanded, opening to him, welcoming his invasion, tasting him, wanting him, needing him. 

His tongue took my mouth.  This was no urging, no coaxing.  It was an assertion of ownership, and I surrendered to it.

My nipples went hard, chafing against the fabric of my gown.  I knew he could feel them through my dress and his shirt, pressed against his chest, and I wanted him to.  I wanted him to know how badly I wanted him, how much I craved his touch. 

He held me so hard that I could hardly breathe, but I wanted him closer still.  His thigh was between my legs, and I knew he could feel the heat that pooled there.  I ground my hips into him, gasping against his mouth, and the heat flickered upward and outward, into my center and through my body.  He pushed back, hard, and I whimpered with need.  His erection was against my hip.  I had lost my mind.  I didn’t care.  I just wanted him.

He bent over then, lifting me from my feet, effortlessly laying me on the chaise.

“No,” I said as he released me, pulling weakly at his jacket.  My skin was burning, the gown an unbearable torture against it.  My thighs were wet with my desire.

“Enough,” he said, and I had to subside.  He reached down to the foot of the chaise and drew the thick blanket over my body.  It settled over me, thick and muffling, a wall between our bodies.

No, I want you,
I thought, but I could not speak the words.  I could see the strain in his body, betraying that he wanted me just as much as I burned for him.

“I will not do it that way,” he said.  “Not anymore.”

He looked down at me, and I could have drowned in his eyes.

“Please.”  The word escaped my lips.

“I am sorry, Ms. Shaw,” he said.  He was kneeling next to the chaise, over me, and his head descended toward mine.  I turned my face toward his, expecting another kiss, but he ducked his head lower, and his mouth found my neck instead.

I hissed as his lips touched me, the dampness of his mouth a shock against my neck that sent a wave of reaction straight down into my groin.  I arched my neck, baring it to him as my hips pushed up, seeking him.  His hands gripped the edges of the chaise, one on either side, barring me in.  But I did not want to escape.  I wanted him to touch me.  My whole body ached to give myself to him.

I reached for him, to pull him down, but a muttered order against my skin forced me to drop my hands, and I lay helplessly burning for him as his mouth on my neck hardened, deepened.

I cried out when the pain came.  Cried out—not in horror, but wanting more, needing more, an inarticulate plea as his teeth pierced my skin, slicing through it into my neck.  The pain rippled out, tangled with desire, and roared over my senses, taking them to an exquisite, torturous height that demanded a release. 

I could see the scarlet of the blood against the snowy white of my dress; I could feel it trickling around his lips to pool hotly beneath my shoulder.  I knew what he was then, the word burning in my brain. 

Vampire.

The truth of it cut through me like a knife, like his teeth at my neck.  I knew what he was, and I didn’t care.  I couldn’t care.  Because all I wanted was him.

His mouth moved over my broken skin, and I could feel him suck, swallowing, taking my
lifeblood into him as I wanted to take him into me.  His was moving rhythmically now, each kiss a drink, and I rocked with him, panting, pleading for him to give me satisfaction.

He made a sound deep in his throat.  It sent a shudder through me as I felt it against my skin.  His weight came onto the edge of the chaise as he freed one arm, and he ripped away the blanket, his mouth still kissing, still torturing, still drinking.  Blindly, his hand hooked around
one knee and slid up my thigh.  I whimpered, my hips seeking him, thighs loosening, opening myself to him.

“Oh, please,” I begged, just like he said I would.  “Please."

And then he was inside me, two fingers thrust to their limit as his thumb found my clitoris.

I came apart.  The rhythm broke into a wave of heat, surging up from the root of my clitoris, tearing through my innermost core, and exploding in my brain.  White lights went off behind my eyes, the rushing of blood in my ears drowning my cries, until all I could feel was him, his mouth on my neck and his fingers inside me, and the raging force that was tearing my mind to pieces. 
Kill me or save me, I knew I was his—completely and irrevocably his.

The
n there was blood, oh God, so much blood, and my vision dimmed from blinding light as the blackness rushed up around me, stealing everything.

I fell into
the darkness.  His darkness. 

And I was alone.