“Not yet.” His rumbling purr buzzed against my wet, licked-open flesh.
I writhed violently but his great strength reduced it to mere ripples. “Then when?”
“Soon.” He thrust one finger inside and licked delicately at the hood of my clit.
I shrieked. As he plunged that thick finger rhythmically into me, I began to pant. I’d wanted shocking, sure, but he could have given me shocking simply by biting me. Instead a male of vast experience was doing his damnedest to make sex thrilling for me. That went beyond shocking to electrifying.
He thrust a second finger deep. I curled into the seat at the intensity of it. He beat into me with two fingers, licked ardently at my nub.
I gasped. “Nikos, it’s too much.” My hips beat back, at least as much as he let them. His fingers sank deeper with every thrust, until I wanted to cry, until I wanted to scream. “Bite me. Please, I’m begging you.”
“Mmm. Nice. But not yet.” He began to suck at me and I moaned and pleaded and railed against him until I wept. He ignored it all, sucking and licking and thrusting with the same forceful, demanding rhythm.
Until I groaned to my very soul. “I…I’m coming…”
“Ah.” His deep voice was filled with satisfaction. “Now I bite.”
He grabbed my knees and head and held me firmly. Sharp needles of sheer pleasure drove hard into my swollen labia. My body wrenched in his strong grip, driving the pleasure to the bone. Tight spirals released, radiated out like rain washing from my heart to my outermost skin.
The orgasm was shockingly sweet. Thrilling, but more. Maybe because this was Nikos, the guy I’d been just a little nuts about since the first moment I’d seen him. With Nikos I got shocking and I got thrilling. But I also got a deep sense of rightness.
Not just “yeah baby” or “hat-sah”, but finally.
“Oh my.” Little fireworks were still going off behind my closed eyes. It must have been some time later because my jeans were back up and the limo was stopped.
Nikos helped me up. His fangs had retracted and his eyes cooled. But now I knew, rather than guessed. And it did make a difference.
Now I wanted him more.
Nikos pointed at the door. “Your cousin’s.”
I frowned. “I didn’t tell you where he lived. I didn’t even say his name.”
He almost smiled. The slight softening made his face so lickable it was probably illegal in Alaska. But he hardened almost immediately to Mr. Deadly Serious. “Don’t tell Aylmer about us.”
Us. It hit me low in the belly, started the motor all over again. “You and me?”
“Vampires.”
Oh. The motor coughed and died. “Yeah, I know. The whole my-best-friend-not-telling-me clued me in that you guys are underground. Care to say why?”
A muscle in his hewn jaw jumped. “Humans outnumber us.”
“So? You’re superstrong. Doesn’t that kinda level the playing field?”
“Not when the odds are four thousand to one.”
“Um, yeah. Okay, I’ll keep your secret. Aylmer won’t know a thing.”
“Good.” Nikos hit the intercom. “Ready.”
“Wait! I have questions. How did you know about Aylmer? What-”
“Business,” he said, reaching past me to open the door. A rush of cold air revealed a black-uniformed Kato. Behind him was a six-story brownstone. Nikos nudged me out, not giving me time to fully understand the implications of any of it, sex or fangs or this unseemly knowledge. One thing filtered through, the most inane. “My luggage?”
“My man will deliver it.” Nikos pushed me into the opening. “Go.”
Wisps of smoke rose from his exposed hands. I sucked in a breath. “Is that because of the sun?”
“Go.” Nikos’s voice rang in my head, weird and hollow. It shoved harder than his hands. Not enough to make me, but enough that when his chauffeur grabbed me under the arms and pulled, I popped out.
Before I could clamber back in, the door shut and the lock clicked. Smoke trailed around the edges. I stared, slightly horrified.
Having a vampire for a boyfriend might be a little more difficult than I thought. I turned and made my way up the brownstone’s stairs.
My mother was an African diplomat, my father a famous surgeon. When they settled down to have children they chose my father’s hometown of Meiers Corners, a small city west of Chicago where the beer flowed freely and the school uniform was lederhosen and clogs. Not really, but only because we all kept voting Principal Gustav down.
Anyway, my parents were internationally recognized people. My brother’s a lieutenant colonel in the Marines, my sister’s a neurosurgeon. I studied art and photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago but when I graduated there weren’t that many jobs for a newbie freelancer. My parents were dead by then and I had to earn a living.
So I drifted back to Meiers Corners where I ended up a glorified secretary for a small-town mayor, the underachiever of the family.
My cousin Aylmer made up for that.
Aylmer Tafel lived in an attic and thrived on conspiracy theories. Attic lofts are all the rage now but Aylmer ’s garret was more like a rat’s nest. And nuts? He made Bruno Braun, who runs the survivalist shop Armageddon Three in Meiers Corners, look like a savvy entrepreneur.
Sherlock Holmes said art in the blood takes strange forms. I think it’s more a matter of degree, like homeopathy. Art is the insanity gene, the only moderator being how much. I had maybe fifty percent. Aylmer was hovering at eighty-nine. But he was mostly self-sufficient and he wasn’t dangerous.
I pressed the lobby doorbell labeled 7B-Tafel. After a few minutes I pressed it again. I hadn’t called Aylmer with my arrival time but he never left his rooms. He was antisocial to the point that he didn’t even leave to earn a living-he had his work delivered and picked up by express. In fact, the only way I got an invitation was because he owed me big time for getting him an in at a company called Bujný a Zvuk Magie. Don’t ask me to pronounce it.
Actually, I more invited myself. Aylmer refused at first. But it took a lot for me to get him the job as the American rep for the high-powered Czech company, not your usual dream-job but look who it was for. I had to collect tons of personal favors, tug strings until my fingers were bloody. I thought the least Aylmer could do was put me up for a few nights.
Still getting no answer, I double-flathanded half a dozen doorbells. Thankfully someone buzzed me in.
There were two doors on the attic level. One side smelled musty, like stale cigarettes. A pockmarked metal 7A hung on scratched wood. The other door had no number but it reeked of rotting pizza layered with the stench of seriously stinky guy. I pinched my nose and knocked. “Cousin Aylmer? It’s Twyla.”
A flicker at the peephole presaged the shht of a bolt, three clicking locks and a brrrt of chain. Aylmer popped out, stick in one hand, clunky meter in the other. He was nineteen-fifties très chic in coveralls and tinfoil hat. He shot me furtive glances through blue-tinted lab goggles. “Don’t come any closer. Hands up.”
I dutifully raised my hands while he waved the stick in front of me. He checked the meter and broke out-well, not smiling. Aylmer never really smiled, not since the night at Grandma Tafel’s cabin in northern Wisconsin when he sleepwalked, came back smelling of skunk and said it was an alien abduction. “Twyla. It is you.”
“Good to see you too, Aylmer.” I followed him into his apartment.
He set his ancient equipment on a document box, one of several littering the room. “It’s Van Helsing now.”
“Abraham? Or do you just go by Van?” I hugged him, awkward with his body odor kicking me in the septum but I made the effort because he was family. He felt light under my fingers, unwell. I held him away from me. He wasn’t looking so good, either. Peaked and scrawny, like he hadn’t been eating. “Why don’t we go to the kitchen? I’ll make some tea, see if there’s any food for an early dinner.” Last I looked at a clock, it was near four.