I was between a demon and the deep blue sea. I was screwed no matter what I did. I’d have to depend on Evan to handle it. I curled up and closed my eyes. Despite my worry, I fell asleep.
The door opened and Rick walked in, shutting the door behind him. I was dreaming, that kind where you know it’s a dream but you’re paralyzed, unable to move, unable to participate. He stood in the firelight for a moment, his eyes adjusting, before he dropped his jacket to the floor and toed off his boots. Pulled his T-shirt off. His pants slid to the floor.
Naked, he crawled onto the bed. Toward me. “Want to play?” Shadows danced over his body as he crawled, catlike, up the mattress, looking long and lean and somehow deadly. I had never seen Rick by firelight. It warmed his olive skin to golden, shadowing and highlighting. The planes of his face were sharper, his cheekbones leaner. The muscles of his chest and abdomen were ridged muscle. He was bruised purple and green across his ribs, but in my dream, he wasn’t sore, his movements smooth and effortless. Big-cat claw-scars crisscrossed his chest, looking too white, smooth as old marble. I could feel the heat of his body as he crawled up over me, hands and knees to either side, straddling me, trapping me beneath the covers. His dark eyes seized mine, a reflection of fire in his irises. His hair fell forward over his face, black and wavy, curling on the ends. He looked oddly like Leo in a long ago dream.
Slowly, he lowered his face and touched his cheek to mine, sliding along my jaw to the other side and back. Scent marking motions. I pulled in a breath that tasted and smelled of man and cat. I struggled to move, snared by the dream, my hands sleep-paralyzed beneath the covers. His lips brushed my chin and up to my mouth, featherlight, soft as a kitten’s fur. I chuckled. And the sound woke me. And he was still here.
Heat flooded through me. It wasn’t a dream. I raised my head to meet his mouth, but he pulled away, teasing. Heat became irritation in a flash. I dropped my head and pulled my arms free, my limbs now obeying me. I set my palms to his chest, pushing him way. Rick’s hands captured mine, pulling my arms to the side, pinning me to the mattress with his weight, the comforter separating us. He was much stronger than before, and although I jerked, I was held in place. “No, no.” His mouth touched me again. His breath warm, soft puffs. “Not until we talk.”
“Talk?” He wanted to talk now?
“We can only play,” he whispered, his words brushing my face. “I can infect with sex, maybe even with protection, so nothing more. Just play.” His voice dropped to a low growl. “I’ve missed playing with you, Jane.”
The growl melted my annoyance away like water on hot stones. Beast raised up and looked through my eyes, hungry for the mate she had claimed. She showed me an image of two cats hissing at each other, a large male and a young female. He smelled musky and strong. She wanted him to chase her. She swiped out at his muzzle, drawing blood. Spun away. He lunged. She let him catch her.
I chuckled. Rick traced my jaw with his lips, teeth nipping gently. “Sounds nice for me,” I said. I tilted my head back so he could nuzzle my neck. His blunt human incisors bit down gently over my carotid and jugular, my pulse caught in his teeth. He bit down harder. Just to the edge of pain. I gasped. “What do you get out of it?” I managed.
He slid lower, taking the comforter with him. And sucked my nipple into his mouth. My gasp became a moan, the texture of my tank top abrading my skin, heated and wet. Sucking hard, he pulled more of my breast into his mouth. Arched his back, pulling his head away, maintaining the suction, elongating breast and nipple, his teeth grazing as he released. His mouth descended again, this time taking mine. His mouth punishing hard. My lips opened. His tongue plundered before sucking mine into his mouth. I wanted my arms around him. When I tugged them away he pressed them harder, into the mattress. His chest brushed mine, my nipples tightening painfully. I moaned into his mouth, and he laughed. Pulled away.
“I get a lot out of it. I get to follow Kem’s orders,” he whispered, releasing my hands, sliding his fingers up my arms, “and spend part of the day in your bed.” He brushed his hands down my sides, along my breasts, close, not touching the sensitive peeks, one cooling and wet.
“Oh.” I licked my lips; they were bruised and tender. “What orders did Kem give?”
He shoved the comforter away and gathered the hem of the tank. Pulled it from me. The air, though warm, was still cooler than Rick, and I tightened as it swept over me. His hands skimmed lower, warm, calloused fingers sliding into the top of the boy-shorts. “Later,” he whispered. And I forgot everything else.
Much later, Rick was lying beside me, his head braced on one arm, the comforter pulled half over us. The firelight still dancing with the shadows, I stroked my fingertips up and across his chest, across the bruises old and new that discolored the flesh over his ribs. “Explain,” I said, pressing gently in the center of one blacker than the others.
Rick flinched slightly. “Kem in a temper.” I frowned. Rick shrugged. “I heal fast now.”
I didn’t dispute that, but Kem was full were. Even in human form, he’d be hard for Rick to defend against. Slowly, I traced across his ribs, up his chest to his shoulder with the mountain lion and bobcat tattoos and the scars that marred them. He tensed when my fingertip traced the mountains in the background, almost pulled away, but reined in his reaction. My fingernail scraped lightly across his bicep and up to his collarbone, back down to circle the eyes of the mountain lion. Rick stilled, watching me with the intensity of a hunting leopard. Curious, rapt.
The eyes of the lion and the bobcat, and globes of blood on their claws, were the only unmistakable things left of the exquisite tattoo. In the mass of scar, warped design, and distorted colors, I could make out the shape of the teeth that had bitten him, the werewolf bitch trying to tear the tattoo from his flesh. Firelight lit on the irises. I touched one. My fingertip stilled as the texture of witch magic tingled up from his skin. The eyes glowed hotly, as if throwing back the flames, a molten gold, and seemed to look at me. The taste of magic sparked, tart, citrusy.
I lifted my fingertip and the irises returned to the gold of expensive ink. I tapped it again and the glow returned. The tattoo had been put into his flesh by a witch, a spell that had been interrupted, but I didn’t know the whole story. “The witch who made this, who put a spell into your skin using a tattoo.” Rick made a hmmm of encouragement, the sound half purr. My heart hammered unsteadily. How could I ask this without sounding needy or whiny or stalker-nuts? “Was she a seer?” Which was marginally better than asking him if she saw me in his future. How else would he have my two cats on his body? I wondered if—
“I don’t think so.”
My heart plummeted. Of course not. That was stupid.
“Her name was Loriann. She was doing the dirty work of a half-crazy vampire named Isleen, one of Katie’s get.”
I settled deeper in the pillows and pulled the comforter higher, thinking, Okay, I don’t get some kind of proof that we belong together. But then no one ever does.
“Isleen wanted scions, but there was something wrong with her blood. Hers either never rose or died while chained. So she found herself an old witch, a crone, living out on the bayou with her two grandchildren, and tried to force her to create a spell of binding. When Gramma refused, she killed the old woman in front of the kids and told the eldest, Loriann, she’d kill her brother, Jason, if she didn’t do the job.”
I flinched slightly. One side of Rick’s mouth quirked up with an expression that said, Yeah, life’s a bitch. “Then she fed from Jason and took him away. He was seven.”
I watched his face. “She fed from a child?” A first feeding was almost always sexual in nature, vamp saliva tightening all the pleasure centers in the body and working on the brain like a drug. Feeding from a child under twelve was against the Vampira Carta.