When Passion Lies: A Shadow Keepers Novel (29 page)

He’d been starving for almost two decades, and now he wanted to lose himself in the feast of her.

She’d been his life, his heart. And then she’d been ripped away. Worse, he’d been the one doing the ripping.

And yet here she was, soft against him, her lips brushing his, her hands in his hair, and he couldn’t quite believe that he’d gotten so lucky.

Maybe there would be hell to pay in the end, but right now he didn’t care. He hadn’t been with the woman he loved in almost twenty years.

Love
.

He’d told himself he didn’t still love her—not that way. How could he after everything?

But he did. And nothing mattered but the woman who was touching him. And if he couldn’t have love now, then the living memory in his arms was the next best thing.

“Caris,” he whispered, relieved when she pressed her hands to his face and kissed him with gusto.

“There you are,” she said. “I thought—”

“Second thoughts?”

“Never.” A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

“Good.”

They dried off and moved to the bed, still wrapped in Duggin’s thick towels. He was sitting with his back against the upholstered headboard, and she slid onto his lap, straddling him. He had to fight back a groan. “Cheater,” she said with a laugh, her eyes as knowing as they’d always been. “Go ahead and let it out. I promise I won’t tell.” He’d always teased that she could read his mind, especially when they were in bed. Nice to know it looked as if she still could.

“Let it out?” he said in an equally teasing tone. “So soon?” He took her hand, sliding it down between their bodies until her palm cupped his crotch. That time he did groan, as much from the way his body hardened as from the way her lips parted erotically, as if she was imagining tasting him.

He hoped it wouldn’t be only his imagination for long.

She leaned back, her eyes searching his face. He wanted to hold her gaze, to get lost in it. To somehow tell her with his eyes what this meant to him—more than Really Hot Sex. It was what he’d wanted for years but couldn’t have. Not then. Not even now.

As far as his people were concerned, after all, she was a traitor. And they wouldn’t respect a leader who cozied up to the woman who’d betrayed him.

But for the moment? For the moment, she was his. And he was hers, as well.

He pulled her close, kissing her hard, mouth open, demanding. He wanted to lose himself in the taste of her. Wanted nothing but her mouth against his, her skin against his.

He slid his hands under her towel, relishing the silkiness
of her skin against his palms, delighting in her soft moans when the towel fell off her, leaving her before him with only hot, damp skin.

He closed his mouth over her nipple, one hand splayed across her back as she arched against him, giving herself fully to his mouth. He remembered the taste of her—like sweet wine, like ambrosia, like
Caris
. He teased her nipple with his tongue, feeling it harden, feeling her stiffen, catching the scent of desire rise up around both of them as she shifted and squirmed in his lap, as if his ministrations at her breast were a direct line to her clit.

He kept the one hand on her back, but let the other slip down, feeling her soft and wet and slippery and beckoning for him to slide inside, to explore every inch of her.

He did, teasing her clit as she sighed and moaned and made all the soft noises he’d remembered so well, not stopping even when she told him it was too much, begging him to wait. He didn’t—he couldn’t. Not when he could feel her tightening around him, not when her body was going tense with pleasure, and certainly not when she lost it, going over the edge and trembling in his arms.

“There you go,” he whispered.

“Been there already,” she murmured. “Or had you forgotten?”

His body tightened. “I assure you I haven’t.”

“This time, I wanted to go there with you.”

“You will,” he promised.

She pulled him close, kissing him again, taking the lead now as she laid him out and straddled him. She brushed her lips against his, feather soft. Then harder, more demanding. She explored him with lips and fingers,
sliding down his body, tasting him, making him groan, making him even harder.

She cupped him and stroked him, making him desperate. And when she closed her mouth over him, he thought he would explode right then.

He didn’t. She was expert at teasing and taunting. At building and anticipating. And when she finally worked her way back up his body to kiss him again, he was beyond ready for her. He flipped her over, his own hands exploring her now. Finding all her soft places. Her waist, her thighs.

He kissed her chin, stroked her shoulder. “I’m going to make love to you. I’m going to make you tremble under my hand. I’m going to make you come.”

“Yes,” she whispered, and he could feel the desire rolling off her in waves, the scent of her arousal driving him wild.

“I want to forget, Caris. I want to forget that we can’t have more than this. That what we once had can never be again. I want to wash it from my mind, at least for a little bit. And I want to do that by losing myself in you. Would you do me that one little favor?”

She swallowed, then managed a small, flirty smile. “Sure, I guess,” she teased. “If it’s important to you.”

“It is,” he said. And then he lay down beside her, gathered her close, and lost himself inside the only woman he’d ever loved.

Caris stretched, practically purring as Tiberius’s arms wrapped tightly around her. For at least a little while, the world had slipped away.

Hard to believe that not so very long ago she couldn’t even have imagined this moment. A huge wall had dropped between them almost twenty years ago, and she’d known that it would stay there forever. It was still there, in fact. But sometimes people found a way over the wall. Hurt faded, anger dimmed. And understanding dawned.

She’d wanted so badly for him to come after her, but never once had she returned to him. She’d left that burden on him, despite telling him for centuries that she was capable of carrying the heavy weight and fighting the hard fights. She’d bowed out of that one, content to stay with Gunnolf, warm and protected, and lick her wounds and beat out her frustrations in the field.

And though he hadn’t come to her and wrapped his arms around her and whisked her away to paradise, neither had he turned his back on her as she’d believed. Just the opposite. He was still protecting her, still honoring that promise he’d made to Horatius. Looking for a cure. Watching her back.

Except he hadn’t done those things because he was under an obligation to her. He’d done them because he loved her.

He loved her. He always had. And, she realized now, he always would.

But love didn’t always win, and as long as he was an Alliance rep or got elected to chairman, she couldn’t be at his side. Politics was sacrifice, and if there was one regret she had from loving him, it was that where Tiberius was concerned, the people would always come first.

Beside her, he shifted, his hand stroking lazily down her arm. “You’re thinking deep thoughts,” he said.

“I am,” she confessed.

“Tell me.”

“I’m jealous,” she said.

He shifted to sit up. “Are you? Of whom?”

“Everybody,” she said. “Because they have you, and I cannot.”

He cupped her cheek, his eyes deadly serious. “You have me,” he said. “You always have.”

He leaned close to brush his lips over hers, but before things could get interesting again, his phone rang. She flashed a half grin. “The burden of being so damn important.”

“It’s a dirty job,” he agreed, then answered the call. “It’s Luke,” he said, then switched the phone to speaker.

“The cellular surveillance paid off. Lindy in the Egyptian office intercepted an encrypted conversation between Lihter and one of his lieutenants. A fellow named Rico. Apparently, they’re moving the girl.”

Caris sat up. “When?”

“Seven in the morning,” Luke said. “In Zurich. But that’s not all. Lihter’s not handling the actual transfer. Apparently he’s heading off to Sri Lanka to meet with a biologist about a delivery system for airborne toxins. He’s chartered a plane out of Vienna. We know where he’s going to be and when.”

“This is incredible,” Caris said after they’d hung up. “I’ll go to Zurich and get Naomi. You take a team and head off to Vienna.”

“Luke can take point. I’m going with you.”

“Are you crazy?” she asked.

“I won’t risk losing you.”

“What’s the risk? I’m a hybrid, remember? She can’t
hurt me. You, however, she can kill. So forgive me if I’d rather have you shuffle off to Austria.”

She watched his face. He wasn’t happy, but it was clear that he knew she was right.

“It’s Lihter,” she said, just to push him that last bit over the edge. “Think of what he’s done. Think of what he’s planning. You have to be the one to take him down.” She cupped his cheek. “Do that, and you know you’ll be elected chairman. It’ll be a landslide.”

“I’ll pull a weren team from the PEC and Alliance security,” he said.

“One, that would take too long. You specifically requested no weren working this case, and there’s no time to get them up to speed. Two, I can help the girl. I get what she’s going through. And three, if after everything we’ve been through together you think I’m going to walk away from a fight just because you’re a little bit nervous …” She poked him in the chest with her fingertip. “Think again, buster.”

To her relief, he smiled. “You’re right. A warrior needs a battle.”

“She does,” Caris said. “She really does.”

And that wasn’t even an exaggeration. Fear for the girl and fury at Lihter had welled up inside her so much that Caris was afraid she’d explode if she couldn’t release some of it. Since Tiberius was heading off to capture the bad guy, more sex wasn’t an option. And that left fighting.

A perfectly serviceable option, in Caris’s opinion, though significantly less fun than getting naked.

“I’m still sending a team. Two snipers. Vamps, but in hazmat suits.”

She rolled her eyes. “I think you’re overprotective.”

“I probably am.”

She pressed a kiss to his lips. “That’s okay. I love you anyway.”

“You’ll be careful?” he asked.

“Always. You?”

“I’ll do what I must to come back to you,” he said, and since she couldn’t argue with that, she melted into his arms and gave him the kind of kiss that proved just how much she wanted him to come back to her safe and sound.

Richard Erasmus Orion III fiddled with the button on his pristine white lab coat. “So, uh, you guys are from Division 12? Isn’t that a pretty long way from here?”

“We don’t mind,” Gabriel said, his eyes on Orion’s nervous fingers. “I figure the more frequent-flier miles the better.”

“Right. Right.” Orion managed a false laugh, then went back to playing with the button. He was either guilty of something, knew someone who was guilty of something, or he was the most nervous civilian that Gabriel had ever met. “So, uh, what can I do for you?”

On the way to Los Angeles, Gabriel had considered how to handle Orion. He’d planned to be subtle. To pull information out in a slow, delicate process.

Now that he saw how squirmy and nervous Orion was, Gabriel was thinking that a good cop/bad cop routine would work well. Actually, plain old bad cop should do just fine.

“You’re related to the vampire known as Caris?”

Plink!
A button on Orion’s lab coat popped off and went flying across the room. “Uh, yeah. She’s my … something. It gets complicated after so many generations. But, yeah. We’re related.”

“You two pretty close?” He’d already pulled Orion’s cellphone records and seen dozens of calls to Caris.

“Oh. Well. You know.”

“Actually, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“Right.” Another nervous laugh. “Sorry. I’m pretty much a lab rat. Talking to cops makes me nervous.”

“Really? Why? Have you done something wrong?”

“What? No!”

“Has Caris?” Everil asked, apparently deciding that he wanted to play bad cop, too.

“Wrong? What could she have done that’s wrong?”