Queen of Shadows (26 page)

“Please be careful,” she admonished.

“Don’t worry, Miranda. Not every woman I meet completely blinds me.”

“Oh?”

“No,” he replied, looking up at the night sky. “Only the green-eyed ones with voices like honey and rain.”

She let the words run through her, leaving an almost silly delight in their wake, but then frowned, trying to understand what she was feeling. Were they really flirting? His sudden openness unnerved her, although he had been the one to kiss her, and he had just taken her hand. She didn’t know how to react. For months she had wanted to see him, and now he was here, touching her, and she knew that if she invited him in, she could have much more than that. Suddenly what had been so obvious no longer made sense to her heart.

They had reached her apartment by now, and she was digging with trembling fingers for her keys, feeling the beginnings of helpless confused tears in her eyes. She thought of how she had turned to stone when Drew kissed her, and how for months the thought of a man’s hands on her skin sent her running for the Xanax. How on earth could David be the exception to that fear? Just because he wasn’t human?

“Miranda,” he said, gently taking the keys from her, “Talk to me.”

She shook her head and pushed past him into the apartment, stripping off her coat and aiming it blindly at the hook. It missed and puddled on the floor.

David picked it up and hung it, along with his own, and watched her sit down on the couch, his worry palpable in the room. He clearly thought he had done something wrong.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she blurted.

“All right,” he acknowledged, and came to sit beside her, leaving enough distance between them that she didn’t feel cornered. “Go on.”

That was one thing she loved about him—he listened to her. He didn’t try to push his own feelings and experiences on her the way so many people did. He wasn’t simply waiting for his turn to talk.

“You found my note,” she said. “You must have.”

“I did.” He smiled. “That’s why I’m here. I promised you I would come.”

“But it isn’t safe. It will never be safe. Weren’t you the one who didn’t want to put me in jeopardy? What is this, then? What are you trying to do to me?” She hated the entreaty in her voice, but she couldn’t help it. “Don’t you understand how this feels? Seeing you like this, hearing your voice, eating ice cream with you like we’re a normal couple—it feels like the one thing that’s been missing all these months. I could live my life without you, yes. But I don’t want to. Are you here just to show me what I can’t have?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he insisted. “I would never hurt you. I just . . . I had to see you. It had been so long . . . and you . . . Miranda, you have haunted my thoughts every night since you left. I can’t even open the door to your room without my heart breaking all over again. I told myself over and over that it was better just to make a clean break, but I don’t think that’s possible with us.” He took both of her hands and held her eyes, and she felt his words all the way through her, body and soul, the emotion shaking her inside. “I’m here because I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know what’s going to happen or where to go from here. I just know . . .”

She held her breath, waiting, her eyes so deeply locked in his that she could hear every thought through his shields and her own. She waited . . . she wanted . . .

He took a deep breath. “I am in love with you, Miranda Grey. I’ve fallen so far into you that I can’t even see the stars anymore, but it doesn’t matter—you’re all the light I need.”

She was crying, she could feel it, but she didn’t try to stop it. “Cheesy,” she said with a weak laugh.

He smiled back, lifting one hand and tracing her lower lip with his fingers. “You didn’t give me time to practice,” he said. “Let me try again: ‘I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.’ ”

Miranda felt a strange rising of something in her heart, something she almost didn’t recognize at first, until she realized it was joy. Her voice unsteady but the emotion clear, she quoted back, “ ‘Peace! I will stop your mouth.’ ”

Her hands slid up his forearms, and she leaned in and put her lips to his. As he returned the kiss she felt his hands against her face, thumbs brushing her tears away. She moved into his arms, her lips parting, mouth seeking mouth with half-fearful desire. His hands spanned her waist and lifted her into his lap.

Miranda fell into the kiss, drowning herself in it and grateful to drown, the taste of him almost too much to bear. His skin was cool at first but heated the more she touched, and before long her fingers were seeking his buttons, trying to find their way in and remove another barrier that stood between them.

He lifted his mouth from hers and began to trail kisses along her jaw, up to her ear, the softness of his breath sending tremors all the way down to her toes. His hands moved up beneath the hem of her sweater, skimming the inside edge of her jeans until they found bare skin.

“Wait,” she whispered.

He drew back immediately, his pupils dilated hugely in the lamplight.

“I’m sorry,” he said a little breathlessly. “You’re not ready.”

“It’s not that.” She pulled away and stood, grateful that her knees didn’t give out. “It will be morning in a few hours. The bedroom windows are blocked out. It will be safe for you in there.”

He looked at her, the vulnerability in his eyes making her ache. “Are you asking me to stay?”

“Yes.”

He rose gracefully and turned away from her, and for a moment she thought she’d stepped over a line, but he merely spoke into his com. “Harlan . . . I won’t be returning to the Haven tonight. I’ll call for you at dusk.”

“Yes, Sire.”

Then David lifted his eyes to hers again, and, smiling, he reached for her hand.

She took it and, switching off the lights as she walked, led him into the bedroom.

He had her in his arms again before they even crossed the doorway, and she turned in his embrace, kissing him again, this time hard. His tongue snaked into her mouth, and he wove one hand into her hair to hold her against him while she worked impatiently at his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders with hands gone clumsy with urgency.

Something wild had seized them both, and neither had any intention of fighting it. Her nails dug into his upper arms so hard that she heard him growl low in his throat, and he maneuvered her back toward the bed, stripping off her sweater and the T-shirt and bra under it, barely breaking the kiss.

It wasn’t until she felt the warm air of the bedroom on her bare legs that she caught her breath and made herself slow down. She looked up and held his eyes as she lowered herself onto the bed, then offered her hand again and drew him along with her, stretching out face to face, their hands moving once more but slower, with more care. She tested the hard muscles of his torso, first with her palms and then her lips, and he let her set the pace, watching her, silent.

Finally, she unzipped and tugged off his jeans, and her heart began to thunder in her chest and throat as she let her eyes roam over the length and breadth of the vampire in her bed.

His hand touched her face. “Are you afraid?”

She swallowed, and at first shook her head, but then nodded. “I don’t want to be.”

He rose up and pulled her close, the smell and heat of his skin making her feel slightly dizzy; she remembered him talking about the aura his kind gave off, and wondered if this was it. His mouth moved along her collar-bone and down her shoulder, and he murmured into her ear, “All you have to say is ‘Stop.’ ”

“I don’t want to stop.”

He smiled. “Then close your eyes, my love, and lie back.”

He began a slow, soft exploration of her body, kissing her throat and her lips again while his fingers hooked in her panties and slid them down over her hips; he moved down and kissed the exposed skin, breath hot on her belly. She tried to close her eyes as he’d said, but she was too mesmerized watching the way he moved—almost serpentine, almost like a cat, nothing like a human man. Yet she wasn’t afraid of him; no, she never really had been.

There was reverence in his touch, but also a deep need that she could feel rising from him like a shimmer of sunlight. The stark black lines of his tattoo seemed alive as he curled around her, one hand cupping her neck to bring her mouth up to his, the other sliding between them, over the curve of her stomach, and down.

She moaned into his mouth and arched up against his palm. God, it had been so long . . .

She wrapped one leg around his waist and pressed full against his body, loving how they seemed to fit each other, as if her hip had been made to lock into his just so, and her arms were the perfect length to wind around his back. His fingers dipped gently inside her, and she whimpered, the feeling not nearly deep enough, not nearly close enough.

Twisting, she moved out from under him and nudged him to his back. She leaned down to kiss him deeply, shifting her hips back, and lowered herself onto him with aching slowness, joining them inch by slippery inch.

Now he groaned, and sat up, letting her rise and fall against him with his arms around her waist. She clawed into his back and rocked up and down, eyes shut tight in concentration . . . then in near-screaming frustration. Alone, the deep driving pleasure of him wasn’t enough for her. She needed more.

“I want all of you,” she whispered hoarsely. “Please.”

Before he could even come up with the words for a question, she lowered her head and bit him hard where his neck joined his shoulder.

He moved so fast she couldn’t react—a ragged animal snarl tore from his throat, and he flipped her onto her back, driving into her so hard she cried out and let her head fall back, exposing her throat.

Needles of hot pain thrust into her skin and she felt his mouth clamp on her neck.

“Yes,” she moaned, pulling him back into rhythm with her body, holding his head against her with one hand. He entered and withdrew in one slow undulation, and she gave herself over completely, tumbling over one cliff and then another, her body quaking around him, a nova kindling in her heart and tearing the universe into pieces.

The aftershocks rolled through her forever, but distantly she was aware of movement, of him reaching down over the side of the bed for something. She heard a click and saw the flash of a blade in the darkness.

Her eyes focused on the berry-bright droplets that gathered along a shallow cut, hovering over her mouth. Tentatively, she reached up and licked one away, earning a tremor as violent as her own. She tasted again, letting the salt-sweetness burn on her tongue, then raised her lips to his skin, and sucked.

She felt him move into her again, this time so slowly that every tiny motion echoed through her body. His heart was beating hard against her breasts, and she could smell her blood on his breath. It only made her want more.

Over and over again, they found each other, sometimes clawing and biting, sometimes with delicious teasing anticipation. Time lost its purpose, as did everything else beyond each other. She found the knife beneath the pillow and opened his skin again, and his teeth found purchase in hers as well, and they drank each other in nibbles and sips, savoring, over and over.

When at last he collapsed on top of her, sweat soaking them both and the mingled smells and tastes of their bodies heavy in the air, he laid his head on her shoulder, shaking, and they held on to each other tightly as the hours of afternoon passed outside and the world went on with no idea that two wayward stars had collided and nothing would ever, ever be the same.

Cold, black water engulfed her, and she tried to scream . . . hands in the dark, laughter . . .

Miranda woke with a start, struggling against an invisible assailant that turned out to be the comforter, her breath and heart both racing. She sat up into the darkness and tried to calm herself, torn between the urge to run and the urge to strike out.

She groped mindlessly to one side and shocked herself when her palm met something solid.

Memory returned. She gasped.

David was sound asleep beside her, the sheets low over his hip, the faint watery daylight coming in beneath the bedroom door just barely silhouetting the line of his body and the light from the Signet a dim red bathing the places where there should have been dark cuts in his skin. They had already healed.

Vampires were sound sleepers during the day; he didn’t even stir in response to her movements. She sat there watching him for a moment while she grounded herself—it was far easier than she expected thanks to the gravitational pull of his oblivion. Still, she was wide-awake and anxious . . . not to mention she had to pee. She climbed out of the bed and, wincing at how sore and strained her muscles were, went to the bathroom, washed her face, and tried to get some sense back in her thoughts.

She looked at herself in the mirror. There were three bite marks in her throat, one on the left and two on the right, and though the holes themselves were closing, there was blood dried on her neck, and the pale purple shadows of bruises forming on her breasts. She smiled a little and touched each one, feeling fluttery inside at the memory.