Hunger Embraced (The Hunger Series) Page 5

  “You have three days. If you do not attend me in that time, I will come for you. It will be better for you to come willingly. It is time for you to fulfill the contract your father signed when you were a child.” A feather light finger traced my jaw, full of a dreadful promise of violence and sex. A part of me wanted to curl around him and purr. The rest of me alternated between terrified and pissed.

  “Contract?”

  The door opened and Daniel strode in, his lips set in a thin line and his shoulders hunched up tight. Adrian raked the larger man with his gaze, disdain evident in his expression, but inclined his head a fraction before disappearing through the door. Daniel wasn’t as polite. A growl rumbled from between his lips, the points of his fangs gleaming bright white. His eyes flashed neon blue and then turned the deep gray-blue of an ocean during a winter storm.

  I smoothed my ponytail with shaking hands and put a damp paper towel against the nape of my neck. Hot prickles erupted everywhere. My skin wasn’t glowing, but the shadows under my eyes looked better. The soreness between my thighs was already receding. I guess Incubi kings made a good meal for sex magic. A wave of nausea rose, but I shoved it down with ruthless force.

  “I’m sorry I was too late.”

  I glanced over at him then slid my gaze away in shame. “For what?”

  He waved his hands around the air in some sort of all-around gesture. “For this.”

  “Ah, well, this is nothing new.” I shook my hand to try to stop its trembling and tossed the paper towel in the trash can. “Well, maybe for a day at work it is. But otherwise…”

  He took my elbow in his right hand. “We should leave.”

  I shrugged away. “Reading my thoughts again, T.T.B.? What am I going to tell my boss?”

  “I already saw her.” The critical once-over he gave me made the threatening moisture in my eyes well up. I blinked and turned my back on him. “You don’t have to report back until Monday.”

  I swiped one hand under my eyes and dried my fingers on my skirt. “How exactly do you do that? And I know you somehow persuaded her to go to a salon.” A surreptitious glance revealed he’d moved closer to me. My heel clicked loud on the floor when I stepped away. “Don’t deny it.”

  He shrugged noncommittally, and I resisted the urge to kick him in the shin.

  A million questions bubbled up, but I popped them all. I had to focus on getting out of the building before anyone stopped me. I didn’t think I’d be capable of any kind of regular conversation right now.

  My panties were in a sad little ruined pile on the floor. I picked them up and gave them to Daniel along with the business card. My purse was locked in my desk drawer. “Do you mind?”

  He shook his head and tucked both away in his pant pocket.

  We emerged from the restroom like fugitives. I patted at my hair and smoothed my shirt down, wondering if anyone had noticed or heard anything. Daniel had returned to being self-confident and possessed by a seemingly unflappable calm. I shouldn’t have worried so much. Everyone we passed sat at their desks or on the floor with dazed expressions. Some of them were even asleep.

  The warmth of his palm on my elbow was the only warning I had before he used soft pressure to guide me toward my desk. “Let’s go to my place and have a chat, hmm?”

  The endorphins wore off, and the rub of raw, sore skin jolted through me with every step. I could only imagine how it would be if my Hunger hadn’t fed.

  Heading to his house sounded fine to me. I had to get some answers to what was going on. I stopped to grab my purse, and Shelly waved at me when I told her I was going.

  “T.T.B.”

  He leaned down closer to me, tilting his head toward mine. I took a surreptitious sniff of the scent wafting from his collar and warmth curled in my belly. “Hmm?”

  “Why is everyone looking like they just got laid?”

  “It’s what happens when humans are close to Incubi having sex. Although, I’ve never seen it affect so many at once.”

  I resisted the urge to grab his neck as he straightened back up to his full height. “Oh. Daniel?”

  He looked down at me.

  “Were you following me this morning?” When I’d gone out for lunch I could have sworn I saw him behind me on the street.

  “Yes.” He frowned. “You shouldn’t have known I was there.”

  “Why were you following me?” I sneaked a peek at him from under my lashes.

  “To keep you safe.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t think I did a very good job.”

  A black smudge on his knee caught my attention. “Did something happen to you?”

  “I was delayed by some of Adrian’s court.” The pressure on my elbow propelled me forward. “Do not worry about it. I took care of it.”

  Oh, I’d worry all right. He’d been attacked by an unknown number of assailants and all the damage I could see was a smudge on his pant leg. Who was this guy?

  Chapter Five

  I controlled the shaking until we reached the sidewalk. It started in my hands and spread up my arms to encompass my teeth. My incisors clacked uncontrollably until I clenched my molars together. Daniel took in my expression with a quick sweep of his dazzling blue eyes and held an arm out. A cab squealed to a stop, and he scooped my feet off the ground in a fluid movement. He cradled me to his chest and slid into the back of the car, giving the driver an address I had never heard before. I tried to shake my head no. I wanted to go home where I could throw up in private.

  He pressed his lips to my head, muttering nonsense into my hair. It sounded like gibberish in a foreign language. The words soothed and calmed me enough that the shudders became more intermittent instead of a continuous pulse through my body.

  Thoughts chased through my head on an infinite loop. My king, not my king, couldn’t be my king. I had no king, belonged to no one.

  I raised my butt off Daniel’s thigh and tried to resettle in a more comfortable position, but no matter how I sat, my swollen, sore labia suffered. Somehow he knew what the problem was and eased one forearm under my ass, the other under my thighs behind my knees. He spread his legs and then let my weight settle into the cradle of his body. It didn’t fix everything, but it sure helped a lot.

  “Don’t be such a crybaby. You liked it.”

  I turned my face into Daniel’s chest—away from the voice in my head—and burrowed in as close as I could get. A part of me had reveled in allowing Adrian to dominate my body and bend my will. But it was wrong.

  “Why is it wrong? You going all vanilla now? You? The biggest slut in Cleveland?”

  I shoved my fingers in my ears and squeezed my eyes shut.

  “You’d ride Daniel right now if he wanted it. Whore.”

  “Shhh…” Daniel rubbed his cheek on the crown of my head and hummed under his breath. I concentrated on it for a few minutes, and the voice quieted before coming back.

  “Quit denying what you are. Adrian was right; you’re starving. You stupid, pathetic bitch.”

  I clapped my hands hard over my ears, but he caught me by the wrists and held both of my hands in my lap. The humming began again, louder this time, and I was able to fall into the sweet notes of the melody until the voice stopped.

  * * *

  The cab dropped us off outside a converted warehouse apartment building. The units were closer to the size of a condo, and he carried me straight to the elevator. I kept my face averted and firmly entrenched in the hollow of his neck, too ashamed to look at anyone and still shivering.

  The elevator dinged six times before stopping. His keys jiggled against a lock, and then he stepped across a threshold, kicking the door shut. He set me down on a cream-colored sofa and laid a soft knitted afghan over me. I stayed curled up in the fetal position, staring blankly at a built-in shelf on the far wall loaded with hundreds of books and CDs. A large stereo system dominated the center, surrounded by an impressive record collection interspersed with other paraphernalia.

  I closed my eyes as my tee
th began to clatter again and failed to keep my jaw closed. My facial muscles were too fatigued to be effective. The sound of water running somewhere down the hall reached me. Daniel returned to pick me up from the couch. He held me against his warm, muscular chest and carried me down a hallway of polished, honey-colored hardwood. We entered a bathroom permeated with the smell of flowers and mint. He perched on the edge of a large bathtub, holding me securely in his lap. The surround looked like marble or some other kind of natural stone. The tub was big enough to be outside on a deck.

  The heat of his thighs radiated through the afghan and thin material of my skirt. He had stripped to a pair of boxer briefs, but I was too freaked out to care. He peeled the blanket from my fingers, cupped the back of my calf with one hand, and slipped my shoe off with the other. After lining both shoes up with careful precision next to the surround, he moved to the buttons on my shirt and slid them free. When he reached for the zipper on my skirt, I grabbed his hands and shook my head.

  “Miranda, I will not harm you. I just want to get you undressed and into the bath.” His hands smoothed endless circles on my back.

  “I…I…what if…”

  I couldn’t say the words. I was too terrified to say them aloud. I didn’t want to hurt him. It was strange enough to be here in his apartment letting him remove my clothes when I barely knew him. What if that terrible power came back and sucked him dry? Now that it was awake again, I didn’t think I could stuff it back into the box I’d kept it in for the last seven years.

  He shook his head and sighed. “You cannot harm me. Not in the way you are worried about.”

  He tugged at the waistband of my skirt until I lifted my hips and helped him shimmy it off. My thigh highs gave him no trouble as he rolled them down, placing each one in the corresponding shoe. God forbid I put a nylon on the wrong leg. He unbuckled my bra one-handed. A part of my brain that had detached itself from the rest of the gibbering mess wondered how he had gotten so good at undressing women. He stood, holding me as though I weighed nothing, and stepped into the tub. Feeding vampires—and not feeding my own Hunger—tended to keep my weight down, even with the massive candy eating habit.

  When we sank beneath the water, I sighed. Warm, scented liquid flowed around us in a soothing cocoon. I took another deep breath and relaxed further. The shudders began to slow, and I closed my eyes as I leaned my head against his chest. It was a good chest, tanned just like the body parts I’d been lucky enough to see before and smooth except for a patch of blond curls right in the middle.

  Daniel hummed under his breath, the sound reverberating through his chest and into my ear. He repeated the same song until the shivering stopped. His chest flexed against my cheek, and I curled my right hand around his arm, not wanting him to get out of the water. Water cascaded over my hair, and then I heard a popping sound followed by a cool trickle on my head.

  Long, strong fingers began to massage my scalp with slow, thorough strokes. The shampoo smelled wonderful, and I didn’t protest when he lifted me up to get to the rest of my hair. He caressed my scalp until every last shudder had left me and I was practically purring. I let him push me back against his arm and rinse me off before starting over again with conditioner. I almost wished I hadn’t shoved him out the door of my apartment so quickly the other day. He cooked, he washed hair, grocery shopped, gave amazing, toe-curling orgasms. Yes, he did sneak jelly beans and needed schooling on the rules about personal boundaries, but wow.

  “What do I have to do to get you to rub my whole body down this way?” It was safe to ask him since my eyes were closed and I wouldn’t see him if he rejected me.

  “Hmm…let me think about it. I’m very expensive.”

  I looked up at his face, and he winked. I giggled and blushed, butterflies settling in my stomach. I cleared my throat and snuggled my head back against his palm. “Well, let me know when you figure it out.”

  “As my lady commands.” He rinsed the conditioner away and rooted around for something out of view.

  He turned me to face forward and began to lather my shoulders and back with a sea sponge, stilling as he came around to the front of my body. I took his hand and guided it across my collarbone. The sponge dipped down over each breast and then below the water to my belly and thighs. Daniel wrapped himself around my body to reach my feet, but he managed to scrub every inch of me. The sponge disappeared over the ledge of the bath, and he leaned me back against his chest.

  I perused what I could see of the bathroom. Everything about it spoke of a long-term residence, not a rented or borrowed property. In my missing father’s territory? He wouldn’t harm me, I was certain of that. But the permanence of this residence meant he and my father knew each other enough to have an arrangement of sorts. They might even be friends.

  “Daniel, what—”

  “Shhh. Tomorrow.” He kissed the top of my head again, wrapped his arms around me, and squeezed. “You’ve had a rough day. Talk later. Rest now.”

  I looked over my shoulder at him and smiled. His eyes were closed, and when I looked hard I could see faint smudges beneath them and the slightest glow surrounding his body. A hand came up and pressed me back against his chest. “Rest. Let me hold you and rest. This, at least, I can do for you.”

  I inhaled the delicious smell clinging to his skin, smiled, and closed my eyes. He was right; it had been a long day. A long, crazy day that had left me scared and confused and had ended with me sort of molesting everyone in my office. At least Shelly had been grinning when I’d left.

  * * *

  My body was on fire. It ached, it craved, it needed. I found myself with my hand on the doorknob and snatched it back, staring at the offending appendage as though I had never seen it before. There were male vampires out there. In the hall, the living room, kitchen, den. All of them waiting for me to choose.

  But I couldn’t, I wouldn’t choose. I didn’t know anything about what they wanted, and the feelings they awakened were scary. Embarrassing. Arousing.

  I turned my back to the door in an effort to ignore their presence, but it continued to pull at me. The window wasn’t that far away and the tree enticingly close. I ran across the room, threw up the window, and leaped from the sill for the nearest branch before I had time to think the decision through.

  A scrape of bark on my fingers and a plunge to the ground resulted in a sharp snap and line of pain from my leg to my gut.

  A face appeared above mine, saying something I couldn’t hear over the roaring in my ears. I crushed my lips to his before he could pull away and let some of the terrible gnawing in my body, the endless ache and burn, flow through him. Couldn’t he feel what I felt? Didn’t he know the horrible hunger that scorched my veins?

  The dream skipped forward as it often did to the end where the boy I’d had a crush on since the third grade lay next to me, nothing left of him but the snippets of memory I stole and a mummified husk of his young healthy body. My father and the vampires who had come to my house stood in a loose semi-circle staring at me as I lay half naked in the grass and sobbing. That was the important part anyway. The part I couldn’t forget. To lose control of my Hunger meant I would kill again.

  * * *

  When I woke up, I was on the right side of a bed. Not my bed. The thought rang clear through my mind. Not my bed. Daniel’s bed? The spectacularly soft, cotton sheets matched the buttery cream paint on the walls. A lush, light blue comforter tangled around my legs. I stretched my arms up to the head of the bed, clutched the top edge of the headboard, pointed my toes toward the far side of the room, and groaned when my spine popped from top to bottom.

  I laid there and tried to make sense of the jumble my thoughts were in. Having sex two times in as many days with vampires should have left me feeling pretty rotten, but instead my muscles were supple, not that I was ready to get up. Like I’d had the best rest of my life and been given a massage while I slept. Thankfully the dream of running barefoot in the dark had stayed away.

 
The Hunger had fed on Adrian. My king.

  “No…not king…”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger, trying to ignore the voice in my head. I’d heard it off and on over the years, but recently it’d been growing stronger.

  Since the morning Daniel showed up outside my apartment.

  I was still naked, and the last thing I remembered was falling asleep in the bathtub. With a very tall, tanned, and muscular Daniel, who was blond everywhere. A strange tattoo decorated his left pectoral, and it hummed against my cheek when I rested against it. I remembered now the first time I had seen him and the flash I’d gotten from his mind of running my tongue over it. I wanted to stroke it with my fingers, see if it had really vibrated, and explore the curving lines in every way I could imagine.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood. My feet sank into the thick pile of the rug, and I scrunched my toes. A dark wooden armoire stood on the far wall, the clean simple lines reminding me of Shaker furniture. I opened the drawers, being nosy, but they were empty. A closet dominated the opposite wall, and I opened both doors, not figuring on finding anything, but hoping for a stash of extra clothing Daniel might have stored. The cool hardwood floors matched the hallway, and my feet were getting cold. Nothing again. Damn.

  I turned around and wandered to one of the two windows. A nighttime sky dotted with stars and an unimpeded view of Lake Erie stretching to the horizon met my gaze. There was nothing of a personal nature anywhere in the room. No photos, none of the clutter that spills out of pockets and onto dresser tops. This must be a guest room. I didn’t know if I was depressed or relieved to find myself in the guest category.