Love Bites (21 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Driving away from the woman’s house, following Peter, my body shivered with excitement. I wanted to tear off my clothes, free myself of anything touching my skin. Feeding on that werebitch had left me desperate for release. I rubbed my free hand across my breasts as I drove, barely able to concentrate on the road. My nipples were hard and warm, and each time I touched them, I got closer to the edge. I still had the were’s blood on my arms. I licked it off, reveling in the rich resin taste. It wasn’t until I parked next to Peter’s Jag that I forced myself to calm down and pull back from the passion that was threatening to bring on a change. He didn’t need a full-blown vampyre awakening the neighborhood. I sat in the car for a minute, breathing slowly, letting the energy flow away from me. Letting my nerves relax.

It was the first time I’d seen his house. I concentrated on that. It was charming—a three-bedroom Spanish bungalow in a canyon off Beverly Glen, with a hot tub and a lap pool and a guesthouse in the back. While he was looking for something for me to wear, I walked through the rooms. He’d turned one of them into a combination office and workout space; free weights and a treadmill had been set up in front of a flat-screen TV, with a computer desk and bookshelves across from it. The other bedroom looked as if it was reserved for guests. And ironing. A full-size ironing board with an iron on it stood in the middle of the room. Made me smile; no wonder he always looked neat.

We met up in the master bathroom. He’d removed his leather jacket and bloodied shirt. His blood had soaked through and was drying on his face and chest. The smell roused my need all over again. Forget oysters. Blood does it for me every time. He had a black terrycloth robe in his hands and he was turning on the shower.

“Here,” he said, handing me the robe, “I’ll go over to SuzieQ’s and see if she’s got something you can wear to go home in. Her car’s here but her shades are up, so she’s probably out on a date. She won’t mind if I borrow something for you.”

“I can wait, Peter,” I said. “Let’s get that glass out of your hair before we do anything else. You’ve got a bunch of cuts we need to clean.”

He shook his head over the sink and slowly ran his fingers through his hair to flick out any remaining slivers. Then he opened the medicine cabinet and handed me a bottle of Bactine and some Q-tips. He leaned against the counter, watching my face while I dabbed each of his cuts with the medicine. His blood was still flooded with adrenaline from the attack. I wanted to lick off every drop. I said, “You know, the last time you cut yourself, it was all I could do to keep from jumping you.” It was the first day we’d met: I’d scratched him with my claws and convinced him it was a
shurikan
he’d cut himself on. I could probably tell him the truth now that he knew I was a vampyre.

“Really? Well . . . if I’d known that,” he said, “I’d have been using a dull straight razor to shave with. Ouch!” I pulled a tiny sliver of glass out of his forehead. “Are you doing that to
make
me bleed?” he teased. “ ’Cause I’ll be happy to oblige the jumping me part without any more cuts or slicing.”

I looked in his eyes. He was smiling, but he wasn’t teasing any longer. “All right,” I said. I put down the Bactine and the Q-tips, pulled my sweater over my head, and stepped into the shower in my boots and bra and black leather pants. He could do the rest. I turned around and stared at him. His chest was broad and muscled, with a layer of flesh that made him look solid and strong, not cut like a gym rat. His skin was smooth, just a trace of dark chest hair. I wanted to lick the strands that curled around his nipples.

His eyes never left mine. He unbuckled his belt, pulled off his shoes and socks, worked his pants and briefs down over his body, and joined me.

There was a tile bench along the back of the shower. I sat on the edge, arching my back against the wall, stretching my legs out straight under the stream of water. He straddled my hips, his cock hard and huge, inches from my mouth, and then he bent forward and reached around to unhook my bra. I scraped his chest lightly with my nails, circling his nipples. We kissed, our mouths only, while his hands moved down to unzip my pants. It took a while to peel the wet leather down my legs, especially since he’d buried his face in my body, but neither of us minded. The heat from the shower coupled with the heat from his flesh made it hard for me to breathe. I kicked the shower door open to let the cool bathroom air temper the steam. He put my pants and my boots on the rug outside the door. Then he knelt in front of me, and I stopped paying attention to anything else.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

I hadn’t fully trusted Ovsanna until I’d pulled her off Madelaine Sauvage. She’d seemed at the height of her full-blown vampyre self right then—completely instinctual and bloodthirsty—yet when I’d called her name and she looked at me, she came back from whatever she was, and she knew me. And I wasn’t fodder. That’s when I knew I was safe with her. I didn’t realize it at that moment, but that was the last piece that needed to fall into place for us to come together.

Standing outside the shower, knowing we were finally going to make love, made me so hard—and huge, even if I have to say so myself—that I had trouble getting my shorts over my cock and off my body. I stood staring at Ovsanna in her black bra and boots and skintight leather pants. I felt like I’d walked through the screen into one of her movies. Nothing about it seemed real. Her skin, when I reached my arms around her to unleash her breasts, was as smooth as travertine and just as cool, in spite of the hot water pouring down on us. I wanted to get inside her to find out if she was cool there, too. I wanted to get inside her as deep as I possibly could. Not just to feel her body around me, her muscles sucking me in. No, I wanted to get all the way inside her, into her core. Connect with her, so I wouldn’t be able to tell where I stopped and she began. So it was all one. I didn’t even know what that meant; I just knew I had to get to her. It was an urge unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I mean it. And believe me, as a single man in urban L.A., I’ve had my share of experiences. Especially when the
Times
profiled me as a “hero” for saving that kid from drowning in the L.A. River—I had women throwing themselves at me for months. I didn’t throw too many of them back.

But none of them was like Ovsanna.

Of course, they were all human. That could be the difference.

This vampyre scraped her nails over my chest, around my nipples, and I thought I was going to explode right then and there. Any ideas I’d had about going slowly or being tenderly romantic went out the shower door along with the steam. I concentrated on getting her pants peeled off and then lost myself in her, my mouth on her body. She thrust forward and met me, guiding my tongue. She set the rhythm and I followed, tracing the outline of her as she swelled, dipping inside her as I licked. And yes, she was cool inside. Cool like the water off a Caribbean island. Cool like the Santa Anas blowing in December. Cool like I didn’t mind a bit.

She was on her knees with my cock in her mouth when the hot water ran out. I was trembling so hard I could barely stand up. I turned off the faucets. We dripped water all the way to the bed, and then I was inside her. We pounded against each other, driving to the brink, our mouths locked together. Then she wrapped her fingers in my hair and pulled my face away from her. She held me there, staring in my eyes, watching my reaction as her fangs unsheathed. “Please, Peter,” she whispered. I lifted my head in acquiescence and she slid her teeth into my neck.

It was three
A.M
. when I looked at the clock. Ovsanna was lying on her side, tracing her nails lightly down my chest. Her nails, not her claws. Her fangs were nowhere in sight. And thank God, because I was spent. I couldn’t have come around again if my life depended on it. Not for another hour or so, at least. She brought her lips to my neck and licked the spot where she’d fed.

“You realize,” I said, “you give a whole new meaning to the term
suck me off.
”

She laughed and kept on licking. It had been less than an hour since she’d bitten me, but the cuts were barely visible. She’d licked my forehead, too, and the wounds there were almost gone.

“How does that heal so quickly?” I asked.

“It’s my saliva. It closes the wound and fills in your cells to speed their regeneration. But I have to work at it. Some of my kind take great pride in leaving their mark, as though they are branding a pet. ‘You see what I can do?’ they seem to be saying, like humans geld their horses or chop off their dogs’ tails, ‘because you belong to me . . . and there’s the proof.’ I hate that.”

“So they’re not all like you, even though you are their . . . what do you call it . . . chatelaine? Their boss?” I ran my hand down the curve of her body.

“No. They’re members of my clan, the Vampyres of Hollywood, because they came here after I did, and they owe fealty to me as the one who was the first to establish myself here; but we don’t all share the same traits. Those of us who were born vampyre are from different parts of the world; hence Orson is Strigoi Vui, Douglas is Blautsauger, Theda Bara is Azeman, I am Dakhanavar. It’s sort of like you being Italian and Welsh, but you’re also an Angeleno because you live here. And then if I turn someone, he or she becomes like me, with my Dakhanavar instincts and capabilities.”

“So you mean Rudolph Valentino and Jason Eddings and Mai Goulart and Tommy Gordon—all people you turned—they all could do what you do? Touch people and get images, see things so clearly, hear better, do that heat thing you did to me? And my aunt Adelaide, you did something to her, too, didn’t you? Some kind of mind-control thing? Could the others you turned do that, too?”

“Well, Rudy, maybe. He was older. We get more powerful as we get older. My attorney, Ernst Solgar, is Clan Obour born, more than nine hundred years ago. You should see the things he can do. Just with his tongue. And you definitely don’t want to go up against him in a contract dispute. He gives new meaning to the term
bloodsucker
.”

“But you’re not like that. I mean, I don’t see you laying waste to people just because you’re thirsty.”

“I try not to. That’s the reason I’m not going to sleep here tonight. I’ve learned to control my urges, but if a change comes on me while I’m sleeping—and sleeping next to you, that could very well happen—I can’t be certain I won’t latch on to you and not let go until it’s too late.”

“You knew me when I pulled you off Madelaine Sauvage. I watched you come back to me. You killed her, you were just as much a beast as she was, but when I called your name, you changed and you didn’t attack. Which, I have to tell you, I’m very glad about, because I didn’t have my gun and I don’t know what would have happened.”

She sat up quickly on the bed. “I saw something when I touched her, Peter. I just remembered. I know why Maral and I are being attacked. And you, too.” She had one leg tucked under her and the other crossed over it in a yoga pose.

Just for the record, vampyres don’t get bikini waxed.

“Did you hear me?” she asked.

Just barely. I was staring at the wetness we’d left glistening in her curly black hair. “Yes. Why? What did you see?” I didn’t miss the bikini wax at all.

“She was an alpha female, Peter, and she was using Cyril Sinclair and his boxenwolf friends to attack us.”

“Us? Why?”

“Because she’s Lilith’s progeny. Her mate, the alpha male, a true were—the were that attacked me last Saturday night—came directly from Lilith. They both did. I saw Lilith birthing her, and him. I also saw Lilith fucking him. She always was a twisted old bitch. I think he wants revenge for her death. I think that’s why he’s after us.”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

I didn’t tell Peter I’d seen the alpha were shift and I’d recognized him. I didn’t tell him Lilith’s avenger was Mick Erzatz, former head of what used to be one of the largest talent agencies in town. Telling him would have meant admitting I had been chatelaine of the Vampyres of Hollywood for nearly a century and Mick Erzatz had managed to avoid exposing his true nature to me in thirty years of that time. I was reeling from the implications.

It all made sense when I thought about it. None of my clan had ever signed with him as an agent. There are fewer than two hundred vampyres here. Those who were stars in the early days of cinema live in anonymity; others, never in the public eye to begin with, change their names and their histories as the decades pass. Erzatz had come on the scene as an agent long after Douglas and Mary and Theda and the rest of my original clan had stopped working. They wouldn’t know him. And the actors that we’d turned, most of them major A-list players now or on their way to becoming such, are repped by CAA and William Morris Endeavor. I didn’t take over Anticipation until the late 90s, several years after a scandal involving two of Erzatz’s underage clients had forced him into early retirement. Seems he pimped a set of fourteen-year-old twins to a network producer to get them cast in the “tween” series
I’m
So
Thirteen
. The producer had his fun—well, as much as he could have with his limp-dick reputation—and then cast two eighteen-year-olds instead. He didn’t want to deal with SAG working conditions for minors. The girls’ mother went ballistic. Not because the producer tried to screw her daughters, but because they didn’t get hired. She sold the story to the trades.

Mick Erzatz was one of the most hated men in town, but in the eighties and nineties he’d been one of the most powerful. Every studio head had had to suck him off in one way or another to get their deals made. My favorite story about him was when he was flying home from the Telluride Film Festival on a private jet, paid for by his company. There wasn’t enough room in a G5 for all his luggage and the pet ocelot he’d bought there, so he hired a G2 just to bring the bags. Then when he found out the tail number on the G5, which was on its way from L.A. to pick up him and the cat, he had it sent back to Van Nuys and another one flown in. Because the first one had leopard-skin sofas and he didn’t want to upset the ocelot.

Erzatz and I had attended some of the same fund-raisers and industry events, but we’d never had reason to be alone together. I’d never been near enough to him without other people around to mask his scent—and I hadn’t ever had reason to pay attention.

Well, now I did. And I needed some time to think about what I should do before I got Peter involved.