The Merzetti Effect (A Vampire Romance) (13 page)

Tonight, Delano was still not back, so she had to wait for Fred to do his check.

“All clear, Ms. Crawford.”

“Thank you, Fred,” she said, meaning it. Every time she was tempted to think these elaborate precautions were overkill, she remembered the mortar attack in St. Cloud. “I know I bust your chops sometimes, but I really do appreciate everything you do for me.”

“Just doing my job, ma’am.”

His words were delivered in the same flat monotone he always used, but she swore he blushed. She was still smiling when she closed the door behind him and re-armed the alarm. She turned and leaned against the door. Alone at last.

Except she didn’t really want to be alone. She’d had too much of that since Eli left.

Okay, strictly speaking, she hadn’t been alone more than a few waking hours, but the company of bodyguards who were paid to be there just wasn’t the same. Nor did the strangers who presented their arms to her, trading their blood for a liquid supper, fill the void.

She was lonely, dammit.

She sighed and headed for the kitchen, which Eli had stocked magnificently with chocolate. Specifically, a stash of Hershey’s milk chocolate bars. Clearly he’d had his people size up the contents of her pantry when they’d sized up her wardrobe. The chocolate might have been a lucky guess, but the Australian Shiraz that appeared in the wine rack and the smoked Gouda in the refrigerator tipped his hand. She could get used to that kind of consideration, if it weren’t a little scary vis-à-vis the invasion of privacy. For heaven’s sake, the man knew her bra size and her food addictions. At least he hadn’t furnished a replacement for her vibrator. That would have been too humiliating.

Of course, if he had furnished it, then at least she’d have it. The dreams she had almost nightly left her frustrated and aching. She slipped one of the chocolate bars out of its sleeve, peeled the foil back and bit into it. Mmmmmm.

Maybe she’d coerce Fred into stopping at one of the sex shops that abounded on what seemed like every street corner. She grinned, imagining Fred’s reaction.

It had been hard enough persuading him to stop three nights ago so she could use a payphone. He’d refused initially, citing security concerns and pointing out there were plenty of phones back at the penthouse. He’d only relented when she told him she’d just hire a taxi and go out and find a public phone booth after he dropped her off. Fuming, he’d offered her five minutes. She’d argued for twenty. They split the difference.

The twelve minutes hadn’t been nearly long enough, and it had been tricky as hell explaining to Lucy that her time was limited without alarming the other woman. Breezily, she told her friend she’d been lured away from the hospital to take a very cushy private job for a researcher doing top-secret clinical trials. A great job, but she was on the road with her boss right now and her schedule was crazy.

What’s that? Was her boss cute? Yes, actually, he was very handsome, but he was also old. Very old.

Then she switched the topic to the one thing guaranteed to divert her friend’s attention‌—‌Lucy’s daughter Devon. Too soon, Fred had walked up to the booth and tapped his wristwatch meaningfully. She’d said a rushed goodbye and hung up, missing Lucy but lighter of heart knowing that both she and Devon were still safe.

No, Fred would definitely not be receptive to stopping at a sex shop, but it might be worth it to ask him, just to see his reaction. Poor guy. He’d probably offer to send someone to make the purchase for her, if she would describe what she wanted. Her smile broadened.

But apart from the distraction that tormenting her straight-laced bodyguard would afford, a stop at the sex toy shop wasn’t going to help her. Her smile faded. They weren’t that kind of dreams.

Oh, they were hot, all right, and Delano featured in every one of them. As did gleaming, massively elongated cuspids, arched throats, thudding hearts and slick, mating bodies. But the dreams were also incredibly tender and … well, sacred, for lack of a better word. As raggedly aroused as the dreams left her, she felt strangely averse to seeking release. Somehow, it seemed tantamount to blasphemy.

Or maybe she was just turning into a masochist, preferring to walk around all day‌—‌or rather, all night‌—‌carrying that sweet ache low in her belly and in her tender, swollen breasts.

And as for the man who put it there, he’d all but disappeared. She saw him briefly each night before she left for the clinic. He dutifully drew her blood to test for the vampirism virus and/or antibodies to the virus. Typically, he inquired after her level of comfort with the security he was providing, then quickly excused himself to start his night’s work at the lab. Occasionally, he returned shortly before or after she did, giving them a few moments together, but on those occasions he’d looked so exhausted, she hadn’t the heart to delay him from seeking his bed.

Shoot, she didn’t even know what would happen if he didn’t get to bed. Did sleep claim him wherever he happened to be, if he didn’t make it to his rooms? Or could he postpone it, like regular people did? And what happened if he did? Would he age? She distinctly remembered him saying that sleep erased the previous day’s‌—‌or rather, night’s‌—‌aging. And what did he look like in his sleep?

Chocolate. Now.

She glanced down to see the empty wrapper she clutched in her hand. Ack! She’d eaten the whole thing.

Dammit, that did it. She wasn’t going to grow fat eating comfort food to ease her loneliness. Delano was responsible for her being here; he’d admitted as much. So he could damn well take some responsibility for her current social vacuum.

Tossing the candy bar wrapper in the garbage, she headed for the stairs, the ones inside the suite that traveled just one short floor to the 28th level.

Delano had been looking into the amber depths of a forty-year-old whiskey in an even older Waterford glass when he heard the trill that signaled someone was on their way down to the lab. An intruder? Eli was still away.

He put the glass down and picked up the 9mm he always kept handy. Cocking the pistol, he took up position beside the door.

The door opened and Ainsley stepped into the lab. Moving with maximum speed, Delano grabbed her by the wrist and whirled her out of the way. Partially shielded by the door, he trained his pistol into the stairwell.

The empty stairwell.

Thank God. He dropped the nose of the gun until it pointed at the floor.

“God, Delano! Didn’t you see it was me?”

“Of course I did.” He decocked the Walther, conscious of her horrified gaze following his every movement. “But if I were an intruder, I’d have held you at gunpoint and forced you out the stairwell first, as a distraction and a shield.”

She looked at the closed doors shielding the stairwell. “Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you.” Her gaze drifted back to the gun, regarding it as though it were a snake coiled to spring.

“No harm done.” Wanting to get rid of the gun but not wanting to just lay it down on the workbench again, he deposited it in the right-hand pocket of his lab coat. Of course, he then had to jam his left hand in the other pocket to counterbalance the weight of the weapon. “I was just about ready to finish here for the night. Let me shut a few things down and I’ll ride up with you.”

“Oh, but I’d love to have a look around. Can I?”

Dammit. Had he left anything incriminating lying around?

“Please? I won’t contaminate anything. I just want a quick tour.”

No, he’d secured everything. He’d only been delaying going upstairs in the hope that she’d retire before he returned. He pasted on a smile. “Then a tour you shall have, but I warn you, there’s not much to see.”

It turned out to be anything but quick. She was full of questions. Some things she recognized‌—‌microscopes, centrifuge, incubators, autoclave for sterilizing instruments, biological hoods to provide a sterile environment for working with specimens. But other equipment needed explanation.

“Holy cow, you’re as well equipped as any hospital lab. Better, probably.”

“Most definitely better, unless they’re doing primary research and have need for a DNA sequencer or gene mapping software.”

She glanced around the lab. “Where’s that?”

He indicated a room to their left with a nod of his head. “But it’s nothing special to look at. A big box and a computer.”

“So is this a genetically engineered vaccine you’re working on? I mean, as opposed to a traditional vaccine like polio or flu?”

The conversation was veering into dangerous territory. He’d have to choose his words carefully, and shield his thoughts even more carefully.

“Exactly. My aim is to engineer such a vaccine. Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned, vampires are immune to practically all blood-borne diseases. However, there are recorded cases of vampires dying from the blood of certain victims who gave every evidence of being completely healthy. Such reports date back to the earliest days of vampire history. Thus, the focus of my work has been to search out such individuals whose blood has proven lethal. Armed with their blood, I’m confident I can eventually isolate the anti-vampire gene from the genome.”

Her brows came together. “There are people walking around with an anti-vampire agent in their blood?”

“Precisely.”

“And have you found such a person?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “They grow harder and harder to find.”

“Wait a minute‌—‌can’t you create your own vaccine without such a person?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

“But I thought every vaccine started with the infectious agent itself.” The skin between her eyebrows pleated in a frown. “Shouldn’t you be working with a weakened version of the vampire virus, if you want to immunize people against infection by that same agent?”

Ah, but she was a smart one. “I’ve already done that. I took the vampire virion, crippled it and produced a vaccine. I even used the vampire virus as a gene delivery vector. And yes, it works flawlessly. Specifically, it changes the genotype that makes the cells susceptible to infection in the first place.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is, even if I render you immune to the vampire virus, it won’t stop a vampire from killing you. No matter how invulnerable you may be to infection, no matter how many antibodies you express, your blood won’t harm a hair on the head of the rogue who drains it from you.”

“Doh.” She rolled her eyes. “Guess it’s late. I didn’t think of that.”

He laughed. “It was a fair question. Until I tested it, there was every reason to hope it
would
deal serious harm to the attacker, or at least put them off the victim before they’d taken life-threatening amounts of blood. If I hadn’t had high hopes, I wouldn’t have labored so long to create it.”

“You must have been very disappointed.”

Disappointed?
Try devastated. His hopes had been so high. True, earlier, cruder vaccines had failed, but he’d thought altering the genotype‌—‌

Enough. It hadn’t worked.

He smiled, consciously smoothing his expression. “Very much so,” he agreed. “But the work must continue.”

Her eyes rounded. “You have one, don’t you?”

Delano blinked. “Have one what?”

“You’ve found someone with the anti-vampire blood!”

His heart stopped, then leapt into a hard thudding. “What makes you say that?”

She gestured to a workbench where incubators hummed. “You must think you have at least a possibility or you wouldn’t be doing all this.”

Ah, of course. A logical deduction on her part, not a lapse on his. For a moment there, he feared he’d let the barrier around his thoughts slip. He smiled. “Perhaps,” he conceded.

She angled her head and studied him through narrowed eyes. “More than a perhaps, I think.”

His smile broadened. “Perhaps.”

She smiled back at him, her eyes sparkling with shared mirth. But then, in an instant, everything changed. Their smiles faded and the air between them grew thick.

And his heart suddenly felt as though it housed a hundred birds, all of them frantically beating their wings and clawing.

“Delano.”

She said his name on a sweet exhalation of breath, and stepped closer. Desire rolled off her in palpable waves. And God help him, he heard the leap of her heart, the sudden urgency of the blood surging in her veins.

He leaned closer. Sweet Christ, the heat and smell of her! He smelled her arousal, could all but taste the chocolate that lingered in her mouth, the metallic, copperish flavor of her blood…

Her blood. Her potentially
deadly
blood.

Backpedal.
Godammit, Bowen, backpedal for all you’re worth. “Ainsley, I don’t think‌—”

Whatever he thought, she clearly didn’t want to hear it, because she closed the small remaining distance between them, grabbed the lapels of his lab coat, stretched up and kissed him.

In a reflex he could not have stopped for the world, his arms closed around her, drawing her closer.

Ah! Such warmth, so much softness. He could weep with joy just from the sensation of her arms around him. And she tasted just as he imagined she would, like chocolate and heat and dark, dark temptation. Then she tasted him right back, swirling her tongue over his lower lip and into his mouth. The thunder of his own heartbeat almost drowning out the sound of hers, he pulled her closer still.