"All this drama over one kiss. Surely even you have done that before."
"Yeah, you're Mr. Eternal Experience. Have you ever considered you might really just be… shopworn?"
"You're taunting me because you're afraid."
"You bet." What the hell! Well, his hell. He was the only option I had. "All right. Sentimental fleas do it. Let's do it."
He seemed truly taken aback. "You have to actually say 'yes'."
Was this like having to invite in a vampire for your own destruction?
"Yes!" I sounded exasperated even to myself. It wasn't the dazzled wimpy 'yes' he'd expected maybe.
"A kiss can't be rushed," he warned.
"Not a Judas kiss, no. It has to sink in slowly, like slime."
"It will take what time it takes. Do you agree?"
"Anything. Just… get started."
"How is that to happen?"
I shrugged in helpless fury, picturing Ric in the hands of the ancient undead, the unhuman, those determined to extract the secret of his cursed gift of giving animation to the lifeless. To force him to raise the dead he'd sworn never to violate again with his power.
Then Grizelle was suddenly at Snow's back, wearing a heavy metal leather wetsuit from hooded head to booted feet.
He handed her a device like an iPod on which he'd hit several buttons in succession. "Contact the first tier to bring their best fighters. Roust the second tier of our own forces and contact the enemies I highlighted."
"How will you move such a force openly through Las Vegas?" she asked.
"I won't. Miss Street and I will need vampire-fighting gear. I think you can guess her size."
Grizelle's gaze nearly fried me on my bones. "She's coming with us?"
"She's our Joan of Arc," Snow said with a tight smile. "Now leave us. We have some business to finish while you're mustering the forces."
Grizelle hesitated. For only a second, but she did hesitate.
Snow's frown lines above the glass frames set her in rapid retreat, already beating out a tom-tom rhythm on the device.
Snow turned back to me.
The sunglasses studied me from head to foot.
"You must forget everything else but this, for the duration," he said. "You must accept it totally. Any worry or withholding will have dire consequences. Furthermore, I won't accept the deal as done if you falter. It will all be for nothing."
"Fine. I have one condition," I said.
"You're in no position to bargain, but what is it?"
"You ditch the sunglasses. I won't sell my soul to anyone who can't look me in the eyes."
His silence seemed endless, but he finally peeled off and tossed the sunglasses aside.
I didn't even glance to see where the hateful "shades" fell.
His eyes-!
The pupils weren't just albino pink, like I'd imagined, but deep magenta, faceted like jewels, blinding to look into. The sunglasses weren't worn to protect an albino's weak unpigmented eyes and eyesight, as I'd assumed, but to protect others from his searing glance.
I stood there blinking, my eyes watering.
"It begins then," Snow said. "You can't go back."
Shit! Who ever could?
I stopped trying to talk him into anything, just let out a long deep breath, buttressed by the taste of the Albino Vampire still on my tongue, and awaited my fate.
Not that I wasn't worried. I hoped that even a trio of orgasms in triplicate couldn't enslave me body, mind and soul forever, or even half an hour. Yet, what if there was some other addictive element to the Brimstone Kiss?
And, worst of all, by submitting to another man's intimacy, I was compromising my love for Ric. To save him, I'd have to betray him.
I just wanted us to be together again, the same as we were. Ric the same. Me the same. Surely a mere day couldn't destroy that? Who was I kidding? An hour, the wrong hour, had destroyed love time and time again in lives immemorial.
So my knees and soul were shaking just as hard as I stood there, waiting to be sold down river.
Snow tilted his head the other way. Damn, he had good hair! A girl would kill for that hair. Then his hands reached up… crimped into my blue velvet gown at the gathered vintage shoulders and pulled it open to my waist.
I was naked beneath. The brutal stripping action made the ebbing velvet feel as raw as duct tape searing my skin as it was torn away. Already it was more than a kiss. It was complete surrender.
His hands cupped to capture my naked breasts.
Something icy flowed over my heart.
Not fear, nothing inner. I looked down where Snow's half-lidded magenta eyes were focused.
Whoa. Major exposure, sans bra. I felt a chill silver flood rising. Instant silver bustier, courtesy of his own initial manufacture.
The pale lips smiled. "You have a way of winning allies," he murmured.
His flesh-seeking hands had captured the cool silver expanse of a metal mesh bustier that had sped to cover my bared breasts.
"You've formally surrendered, Delilah. Release your familiar."
"But it's yours! It's your unwanted, leeching familiar made of hair-turned-metal. I've never been able to take it off or make it release me. It simply wanders my body, as your hands do now, taking on whatever whimsical form suits it, tormenting me with bad memories and ugly questions."
His head with its long white strands shook slowly. "Mine the lock of hair, yes. Yours what it became, what it made of you and you of it. I've never commanded this snake of white hair turned goad and guardian. And you must know that."
"No!" I didn't. "Not for an instant."
"I can't give you the Brimstone Kiss while you wear it in any form."
"I can't get it off!"
"But you can let it leave."
Let it leave? That simple? Not fight it? Just let water flow downhill, silver melt into hot metal, worry wilt into wishes. Just… let it go. Just click my heels and go home? Then what was all this for! I stopped questioning, rebelling, and sighed.
My metal bustier turned warm and pliant, flowing up Snow's wrists and arms, where it formed matching metal gauntlets that warded his forearms.
My talisman was cozying up to my bitter enemy. He was armed while I stood half-naked before him. I felt an absence so intense that it took my breath away. I'd loathed the daily reminder of his meddling, yet felt as if another defensive curtain had been ripped away.
Then… I felt free.
Again.
It was like getting a rotten tooth pulled. I'd gotten used to the daily ache and now glimpsed utter liberty. Yes! I had only to pull away from his fingertips and I'd be free of Snow and his possessive toys. I was moving…shaking him off like a bad dream, of which I'd had plenty.