Her parted lips and heavy eyes proved her need. As fast as he could, Luther rolled on a condom, lifted her hips, and drove into her hard and fast.
With that first deep stroke she started coming, her legs tight around his waist, her fingers digging into his shoulders.
She was wild, hot, and so damn perfect for him.
Arms straight, Luther stayed over her, watching her face, loving the way pleasure contorted her features. It pushed him past his own restraint and he felt his own burning release.
Afterward, he collapsed atop her. She hugged him, her legs still around him, her soft mouth touching his neck. When he started to move, she squeezed him, so he settled back to her and just held her.
“I’m not squashing you?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Damn it, even an insult from Gaby, at such a special time, could make him smile. He rolled to his side but brought her with him.
“I need to get rid of the condom.”
She smoothed a hand over his sweaty chest. “It’s crazy how much I enjoy your body.”
“Ditto.” He kissed her, and then eased from the bed. When he returned only moments later, Gaby was just as he’d left her. She looked to be asleep. All in all, this was turning out to be easier than he’d first expected.
He settled back into bed with her, pulled her in close, and closed his eyes.
Then out of the blue, she turned her face up to his. “I meant to ask—what’s Viagra?”
Chapter 8
Humming to himself, content to transport his cargo, Fabian drove along the serene streets until he found a neighborhood offering what he required. Beneath scant moonlight and the occasional streetlamp, garbage cans and lawn bags waited at the end of each driveway.
The houses were spaced far apart, and the denizens had turned in already, leaving the area dark and quiet. Not even a dog barked.
Perfect.
Ensuring that no one loitered near a window, he dimmed his car lights and coasted up to the curb of a tidy upper-middle-class home. Snickering to himself, thinking of how easy it was to dispose of the unused body parts, he released the latch to his trunk and put his car in park, but left it running.
Donning surgical gloves, he dragged a weighty bag from his trunk and dropped it next to those already near the street, waiting for garbage pickup early the next morning. It blended right in.
Snickering to himself, he gave a furtive check up and down the street, got back in his car, and maneuvered without headlights to the next block. As soon as he turned the corner, he turned his lights on, and, whistling, drove toward another house.
In a fit of whimsy, he’d decided to scatter the body parts. Imagining the police trying to piece them together like a grisly jigsaw puzzle filled him with macabre amusement.
Every time he drank, each time he feasted off another, his intellectual superiority expanded and his physical attributes grew more youthful, more dynamic. He possessed a sagacity and elite taste that exceeded those of everyday man.
The police couldn’t stop him; they couldn’t even name him as the culprit.
Through careful design, he’d re-created himself as an omnipotent leader. No one would uncover his select lifestyle unless he deemed it so.
Soon, his agile calculation would manifest the ultimate sacrifice due him, a succulent meal that he’d bestow on the others. As a unit, they would commit the ultimate depravity.
All he needed now was to find the perfect target.
But first, he needed to finish ridding himself of the waste.
Dry-eyed, skin rippling with chills, Gaby stood naked, staring out the window. Fear was so new to her that she couldn’t fathom how to cope.
She didn’t want to awaken Luther . . . but then again, she did. Fuck. In a very short time she’d become a needy, whiny fool.
“Gaby?”
Closing her eyes, she swallowed and attempted to regulate her voice, to hide the repulsive despair. Too much depended on her being a paladin.
Without looking at Luther, she said, “There’s more that I should tell you.”
A heavy pause preceded Luther’s calm concern. “Why don’t you come back to bed and we’ll talk?”
No, if she got back in bed with him, she’d want things she shouldn’t. Like respite from duty. Like . . . normalcy. “No, Luther. I can’t.” An odd constriction in her throat made it difficult to squeeze the words out. But the import of her words demanded voice. “It . . . it’s eating me up inside until I feel like I’m going to . . . I don’t know. Explode. Destroy something.”
She heard the creaking of the bed, then felt Luther’s arms come around her. And oh God, it felt good.
Too good.
“You can tell me anything,” he whispered, “and somehow, we’ll figure it out.”
That he believed such nonsense only added to her agitation. Some things, like her purpose on earth, would never be so easily divined.
Breathing hurt, but then, she’d hurt for so much of her life, what did that matter? Pain kept her sharp, in senses and in body. She needed the pain now.
Pain she could handle.
It was the invasive weakness that would be her undoing—and still she turned into Luther’s comforting embrace, holding him so tight that her arms ached.
She shouldn’t share her appointed onus with anyone, much less someone as pure as Luther. It wasn’t fair to burden him.
But he’d changed her, and she no longer had the internal fortitude to bear it all alone.
Unable to face him as she detailed the awful, ugliest of possible crimes, Gaby told him about Bliss’s vision—and her own.
“Your bloodsucker is still on the loose, Luther.”
As if to soothe her from her worries, his hands rubbed up and down her back. “I know that. We’ll get him, Gaby. I swear. It might take some time—”
“Yeah, well, unfortunately time is something you don’t have. Hate to break it to you, cop, but your guy isn’t just a bogus bloodsucker.” She had to take several quick, shallow breaths before giving him the truth. “The sick fuck also likes the taste of human flesh.”
Luther stiffened. The ugly word barely squeezed past his abhorrence. “Cannibalism?”
Gaby nodded. “Not just a cannibal, fucked up as that is.” Sick to her soul, she whispered, “He wants something special now. He wants . . . fresher meat.”
With each word, Luther grew more rigid, until now, it was his hold that crushed.
Gaby didn’t mind, though. Somehow, for whatever inane reason, being held by him made the possibility for resolution more plausible.
Careful not to hurt her arm, Luther levered her away from him. At her disclosure of what she believed, what she had considered keeping from him, what she had thought to fight alone . . . Oh God.
Fury and fear rolled together to obliterate his control.
He struggled to keep his temper concealed from her. He knew Gaby, and if she suspected he wanted to lock her away for her own safekeeping, she’d leave him and never come back and everything they’d shared wouldn’t sway her one bit.
His fingers bit into her shoulders, but he couldn’t help it, and she didn’t seem to notice. “I understand about Bliss. This isn’t the first time she’s claimed to have a strange foreboding about things, most often with morbid circumstances.”
“And she’s been right every time.”
Did that mean Gaby considered Bliss right in proclaiming them an item? According to Bliss, they were meant to be—and Gaby knew it.
He let that go to tackle a bigger, more monumental question. “What I don’t understand is your vision.” He managed one leveling breath, and then another. “Care to explain?”
She shivered, and then in a burst of energy she shoved him away. “I fucking hate this.”
“This?”
“Feeling this way.” She pressed a fist to her belly. “I’m cold, Luther. I’ve never been cold a day in my life. Other than thunderstorms, I don’t even notice the stupid weather.”