He’d erased her wounds. Mission accomplished. Guilt alleviated. Now he could get on with his life. If he decided later that he really wanted to settle down with a mouthy librarian…a mouthy librarian who tasted like heaven on earth and purred while he sucked on her. No. A mouthy librarian who slept in Hello Kitty sheets and dressed like she lived in a nursing home. In other words, if he ever lost his mind, he’d know exactly where to find her.
Maddy knelt on the bed, hyperventilating.
That was a dream.
That was not a dream.
His touch lingered all over her, a sticky honey stain on her skin. Her nipples tented her nightgown. Her panties were wet. If that had been a dream, it was one hell of a dream.
But what else could it be?
She took off her glasses and rubbed her face.
Here was the scenario: Gregor Faustin, owner of the most decadent club in New York, had become bored with the scores of beautiful, coked-up women gyrating around him all night every night. So he decided he’d get off instead by licking the feet of the poor schlep he’d run down earlier that day. Therefore he broke into her apartment, made her orgasm by sucking on her ankle, and vanished into thin air.
That, or it was dream.
Ockham’s Razor said all things being equal, the simplest solution is the best one.
She let out a big breath.
Some dreams made no sense at all in the light of day. This would be one of those.
Feeling much better, Maddy climbed out of bed and padded to the bathroom. Halfway there she realized she was walking, not hobbling. Her ankle was a little tender, but she was walking on it. In the bathroom she put her foot up on the edge of the tub. It looked normal.
Her heart started to beat fast again. She closed her eyes and tried to slow the racing with slow breaths. When it calmed, she propped her left leg up. The long cut was gone, along with the road rash.
She wheeled around to look in the mirror over the sink. The sight of her own wild eyes scared her. She lifted her hair. The temple scrape was gone. The skin was pink, nothing more.
For a crazy moment she wondered if she’d even been in an accident at all. Maybe it was all part of the same dream.
But no. There were her ruined pants, crumpled on the bathroom floor. She ran out into her sitting room and found the red parka, still wet and torn all along the left side.
Maddy ran back to the bathroom and turned her left shoulder to the mirror. It was blooming with bruises.
“You missed them, you bastard,” she said aloud. “Dream, my ass.”
Tangiers had never looked so welcoming to Gregor, and that was saying something, because for five years it had been the love of his life. He handed the car over the valets, instructing them to do something about the swamp in the passenger seat. The bouncers at the door stepped aside, and he passed into his sanctum.
Honey fell into step with him as he made a quick tour of the floor—a habit of his whenever he was nervous. The club was just stirring and stretching itself awake. The DJ was laying down a sultry, steady groove. He walked among the tables in the back, acknowledging his guests, scanning for details, sending servers flying with brief hand gestures and significant glances.
“Doesn’t some of your skin have to breathe?” he asked Honey as they wove their way past the bar. “Or is that a myth?”
Tonight she graced Tangiers in white latex—from her hood to her white gauntlets down to her wicked white boots with Lucite heels. She looked like a dominatrix from the planet Xenon. Whatever Honey wore, a fire crew had to trail behind her, beating out the flames that erupted in her wake. What most people didn’t understand was that she hid a sharp business acumen under all that flash. One day she’d leave him, start her own club, and then he’d have to kill her.
Not really.
Honey ignored his question. “Sol says you can call him until midnight, but he won’t stay up later, even for you.”
“We don’t need Sol. She won’t sue.”
“What, is she insane?”
“Pretty much.” Gregor shrugged. “She says she doesn’t want anything from me.”
The thought irked him still—that she wouldn’t accept anything from him. That frustration drove him into her room, drove him to close her wounds. Now she could bullshit all she liked, but he knew she did want something. Him. Not that he’d ever see her again, he reminded himself.
But even that little triumph over her damned self-sufficiency was satisfying.
“At least I can pay for her ruined clothes.” Gregor took a little notebook from his breast pocket and jotted down her name and address. “Send her a gift certificate that will cover a coat and a pair of pants.”
Honey nodded. “A grand, say?” Honey did not shop at the Bargain Barn. “What store do you want it from?”
Distracted, Gregor scented the air and frowned, raising his fingers to test the currents. The circulation system was supposed to have been fixed that afternoon, but it was still fucked up. “What? Oh. Wherever old men and lunatics shop.”
“Gotcha. Bloomies.”
Once all immediate business was covered Honey left him, and Gregor retired to his private back room for a little quiet before the night began to roll. As absorbed as he was in his own thoughts, he was well into the room before he realized it was not empty.
In the moment he had only a fleeting impression of a pair of pale, naked breasts and his brother silhouetted against them. Alex was feeding. Gregor turned on his heel and headed for the door.
“Gregor, don’t go.”
He recognized the languid voice rising from deep in his sofa. It belonged to Sara, a feeder. Alex and Gregor shared a fondness for willing blood donors (unlike their brother, Mikhail, who only hunted), and Tangiers provided them in quantity. Equally languid, Alex lay alongside her, lapping at her small, pointed breasts. He had opened a small vein on each of them, and the blood was pooling in the valley between.
Gregor returned to take her extended hand, crouching down at her side. “Yes, darling?” He dipped his finger in the little pool and brought it to his tongue, hoping it would block out the taste of Madelena. It didn’t.
“You don’t have to go,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
What a question after his night. His stomach churned with bruise blood. No way could he eat right now, but he was on fire. And as horny as he was, he was just as confused, because he could not place exactly what had turned him on so much about that lunatic, or why she was supposed to be his mate. All in all it was frightening.
So it was good to be on his home turf, to see familiar sights. This was his life.
Alex glanced up, giving his tacit consent for whatever Gregor wanted to do.
“I’ve just fed, Sara,” Gregor said. “But I’ll watch, because you’re beautiful.”
Sara’s lips curled into a smile. Her grip on his hand tightened, then gave way as Alex increased his attentions, so Gregor sat down in his armchair.
Gregor might be the boss of Tangiers, but Alex was its darling. His big brown eyes and puppy smile got him whatever he wanted. That, and his reputation as a lover, which was entirely deserved.
Sara’s eyes were open, but they glazed over as Alex congealed the wounds on her breasts, stopping the blood flow for the moment. Sara already had tiny wounds running down the inside of her wrist and just behind her earlobe. Alex could drag this on forever, keeping the woman in a slow crawl of ecstasy until she begged him for mercy. And that was before he fucked her.
Unlike Alex, Gregor did not have the time or inclination to make every meal a three hour orgy. There was pleasure for the donor in even the most straightforward transaction, but Alex always reveled in the process. Alex loved humans, loved pleasing them, and passed as one easily—so different from their brother, Mikhail, keeper of the old ways. Gregor went to neither extreme. He was the practical one, the middle child.