“You saved me because, instead of being hypnotized by the power of Kalona, I was thinking about you.”
“You were?”
“Do you know how amazing you were when you cast that circle?”
I shook my head, caught by the brightness in his blue eyes. I didn’t want to breathe. I didn’t want to do anything that might spoil what was happening between us.
“You were incredible—beautiful and powerful and confident. You were all I could think of.”
“I cut your hand” was all I could make my mouth say.
“You had to. It was part of the ritual.” He lifted his hand and turned it palm up so that I could see the thin ribbon that sliced down the meaty pad up under his thumb.
I trailed a finger lightly along the pink line. “I hated to hurt you.”
He took my hand in his and turned it over so that the sapphire-colored tattoos that covered my palms were visible. Then, much as I had just done, he lightly traced his finger across my skin. I shivered, but didn’t pull away.
“I didn’t feel any pain when you cut me. All I felt was you. The heat of your body. The way you smell. The way you feel in my arms. That’s why that creature didn’t affect me. That’s why I didn’t believe Neferet. You saved me, Zoey.”
“Even after all that’s happened between us, you can say that?” My eyes were filling with tears, and I had to blink fast to keep them from spilling over.
I watched as Erik took a deep breath. He looked like he was a diver getting ready to jump off a high, dangerous cliff. Then, in one rush, he said, “I love you, Z. All that’s happened between us hasn’t changed that, even when I wanted it to.” He cupped my face in his hands. “I couldn’t be fooled by Neferet or hypnotized by Kalona because I’m already a fool for you, hypnotized by what I feel for you. I still want to be with you, Zoey, if you’ll just say yes.”
“Yes,” I whispered without one instant of hesitation.
He bent and his lips met mine. I opened my mouth and accepted his familiar kiss. His taste was the same; his touch was the same. I slid my arms up and around his broad shoulders and pressed myself against him, hardly able to believe that he’d forgiven me—that he still wanted me—still loved me.
“Zoey,” he murmured against my lips. “I’ve missed you, too.”
Then he kissed me again, and I swear he made me dizzy. It was different than kissing him before—before he’d become a full vampyre—before I’d lost my virginity to another man. Now it was like he knew a secret, but I was in on it. I felt his moan more than I heard it, and then I also felt the hard coolness of the wall of the tunnel against my back as he turned me in his arms and trapped me there. One of his hands, low on my back, was firmly pressing me into him. The other I felt sliding down the side of my body, skimming my ceremonial dress and traveling the back of my thigh until he found the hem, then his fingers were finding their way up and under it, warm against the coolness of my naked flesh.
Naked flesh?
Backed against the wall of a tunnel?
Being groped in the dark?
And the worst thought of all hit me: Did Erik think because I’d had sex (once!) that now it was open season on nailing Zoey? Ah, crap!
I wasn’t going to do this. Not here. Not like this. Hell, I didn’t even know if I was ready to do it again at all. The one and only time I’d had sex had ended disastrously and had been the biggest mistake of my life. It had definitely not turned me into some kind of nympho ho!
I pushed against Erik’s chest and pulled my mouth from his. He didn’t seem to mind. Actually, he hardly seemed to notice. He just kept grinding against me and moved his lips to my neck.
“Erik, please stop,” I said breathlessly.
“Umm, you taste so good.”
He sounded so sexy and turned-on that for a moment I was confused about what I really wanted. I mean, I did want to be with him again, and he was totally hot and familiar and…
I had just begun to relax into him when I glimpsed something over his shoulder. Fear stabbed me as I realized the something had eyes glowing red from a deep, wavering sea of blackness that seemed to pool and writhe in the air like a ghost made of nothing but darkness.
“Erik! Stop. Now.” I shoved hard against his chest and he stumbled back half a step. My heart beating wildly, I moved quickly so that I could face whatever was there behind him. There were no red eyes glowing at me, but I swear I saw an inky darkness within the black of shadow. As I blinked and focused my eyes, the weirdness disappeared, leaving nothing but Erik and me and a dark, silent tunnel.
Suddenly, from the opposite direction, I heard the click of shoes against concrete and I drew in a deep breath, readying myself to call whatever element I’d need to combat this new faceless threat, when Kramisha stepped calmly out of the shadows. She gave Erik a long, considering look and said, “Boyyyy, you is workin’ it here in the tunnel? Damn! You got some game.”
Erik turned to her as he tucked me under his arm. I didn’t need to look up at him to know that he had an easy smile on his face. Erik was a seriously good actor. The face he was showing Kramisha was under control, with just the right amount of sexy, got-caught-in-the-act to it.
“Hey there, Kramisha,” he said smoothly.
On the other hand you have me. I could barely stand, let alone speak. I knew my face was beet red and my lips looked bruised and damp. Hell, I probably looked bruised and damp. “Kramisha, did you see anything over there in the tunnel?” I jerked my chin in the direction of the shadows behind us and managed to sound only semi-porn star and breathless.
“No, girl, I only seen you and your boy here sucking face,” Kramisha said quickly.
I wondered if maybe she hadn’t answered a little too quickly.
“Aww! Are Erik and Z making out? That’s so sweet!” Seemingly from nowhere, Jack suddenly materialized behind Kramisha, Duchess woofing and wagging by his side.
“Z, don’t freak. You probably just saw more of those bats,” Erik said, squeezing my shoulder reassuringly before he nodded at Jack. “Hey there, Jack. I thought you’d be basking in a hot shower by now.”
“He’s gonna, but he came to help me get some towels and stuff,” Kramisha said. “And, yeah, there is definitely bats down here. They don’t mess with us if we don’t mess with them.” Then she yawned and did a seriously impressive stretch that made her look like a long, lean black cat. “Since you here, how ’bout you two helping Jack carry the stuff back to the showers and I’ll just take me a little beauty sleep?”
“No problem. We’d be glad to help,” I said, regaining my voice and feeling like a moron for letting bats in a dark tunnel almost scare the poopie out of me. Jeesh, I must really need some sleep. “Erik and I·ƒI were just heading to the bathrooms.”
Kramisha gave us a long, slow look that wasn’t any less knowing because she was sleepy. “Uh-huh. You looked like you was headin’ to the bathrooms.”
I felt myself blush again.
She turned, and I thought she was going to (bizarrely) walk right into the tunnel wall behind her, but instead she disappeared into it. Then I heard a match strike and a flickering lantern illuminated a hollowed-out section of the tunnel, just a little bit smaller than Dallas’s room. Kramisha hung the lantern on a spike and then looked over her shoulder at us.
“Well? What you waitin’ for?”
“Oh, yeah, okay,” I said.
Jack, Duchess, Erik, and I moved up beside Kramisha to look into the new room. It actually had shelves built into the squared cement walls and looked just like a tidy closet. I gazed at neat piles of folded towels and, weirdly enough, big puffy bathrobes that Duchess was nosing around.
“Is that dog sanitary?” Kramisha asked.
“Damien says that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s,” Jack said, patting the big yellow Lab on her head.
“We ain’t humans,” Kramisha said. “So could you please keep her big wet nose off the merchandise?”