The Darkest Kiss

The desire to run forward, to caress her pale skin as the others caressed it—lightly, reverently—hit like a wrecking ball. Sweat began to dot my skin, and the thirst to touch her, kiss her, make love to her, was so strong that I took a step forward.

But it wasn’t my desire, wasn’t real, and I wasn’t about to become some young vamp’s plaything. Especially not a young female vamp’s plaything. So I clenched my fists, digging my fingernails into my skin, using pain to overwhelm desire. In any other situation, I would have thrown up my own aura to battle hers—but I was standing in the middle of a den of vampires, and that might cause a whole lot more problems.

“Stop it,” I said, voice sharp, “or I’ll get the Directorate to do a sweep and clean out this whole damn place.”

She laughed, a sound as rich and as warm as the room, and the swirling heat of desire abated. Not completely, but enough that it was ignorable. “I have no wish to antagonize the Directorate. Please, step forward, so that I can see you better.”

I felt like saying that, as a vamp, she should be able to see me perfectly fine just where I was, but that could have been seen as churlish. Which I certainly could be on more than a few occasions, but I had a feeling that this was one of those times when it was better to play along.

At least until I got the feel of things.

I walked forward. The scent of blossom and springtime got stronger, mixing warmly with the heavy scent of desire still stirring the air. The toga-clad teenagers watched me with almost languorous expressions, but their pupils were extremely dilated. I would have guessed they were high on something, except for the fact that they were extremely still.

My gaze went to the woman. Maybe the only drug they needed was closeness to their maker. Maybe touching her was akin to a sexual or drug high. Just because I’d never heard of a vampire capable of getting someone off on the merest contact didn’t mean they weren’t out there. And hell, this woman had made me want her. If skin-to-skin contact with her was as powerful as her aura, then their expressions were understandable.

I stopped when there was still a good ten feet between us. This close, her skin looked almost luminous, as if the richness of the moon itself glowed from deep within her…I blinked. Reapplied my nails to the palm of my hand. Saw that her pale skin was just that. Pale skin. Nothing luminous and beautiful about it at all.

Anger swirled through me. As a werewolf, I’d been taught restraint almost from the begi

Of course, I had done it, as a guardian, just to gain some advantage over a foe. But I’d never done it to force sex on someone otherwise.

This woman had been taught no such restraint.

“I did warn you to stop it.” I turned on my heel and walked toward the door.

She laughed again, a sound that shivered warmly up my spine. “Please, I’ll behave. You have questions about Ivan Lang, no?”

I turned around again. “Yes.”

“Then I will answer them. But please, come closer. I had a degenerative eye disease before I was turned and, as a result, my eyesight is not good.”

I studied her for a moment, seeing no lie in her brown eyes, and not sure if I would even if she were. “What is your real name?”

“Vincenta Castillo. Please, I assure you I will not play games with you again. Come closer.”

I hesitated, then did. Odd to think that this woman had me wanting to run, and yet I’d faced things a thousand times stronger, and far more dangerous. Hell, I had a permanent reminder of one such encounter on my left hand, which was now missing a pinky finger thanks to the hunger of a death god.

She smiled. It was just an ordinary smile, which meant she was keeping her word. For the moment, at least.

“If Ivan has taken the ceremony to become a vampire, why didn’t you protect him?”

“Because I was paid not to interfere in any way.”

Surprise ran through me. “You took money over protecting your get?”

“Why wouldn’t I? Look around you, guardian. These premises are more suitable for street scum than an upwardly mobile vampire. But I am young in vampire terms, and therefore have not yet accumulated the sort of money I require.”

Meaning she was earning her cash legally? Somehow, I doubted it. A vamp with the sort of seduction skills she had could entice all ma

“So you were just going to sit back and let a rogue vamp kill Ivan?”

She gave an unladylike snort. The toga-clad kid nearest her shoulder trailed his fingers up her neck and across her cheek, in what I supposed was a soothing gesture. “He’s not dead, is he?”

“Which comes down to luck as much as timely intervention on my part.”

She smiled. It was both amused and calculated, and warned that there was a sharp mind behind all the sexual playfulness. “Ah, but your timely intervention wouldn’t have happened had we not made a phone call.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I thought you’d been paid not to intervene?”

“The operative word being ‘me.’ While he asked that I keep my fledglings back and control their hunger, he made no mention of them interfering with proceedings in other ways. So one made the call.”

“One who sounded like Ivan himself?”

She nodded. “We knew about the stripper. He has been here several times to visit Ivan. He is a big man, a strong man. His presence might have been enough to scare off the rogue.”

It might not have been, too. While Ben was a big werewolf, the rogue was a vamp, and vamps would win over regular weres each and every time. It wasn’t just strength, it was speed.

“So did the rogue say why he wanted to slice and dice Ivan?”

She shrugged. “I tasted the need for revenge on him. More than that, I don’t know.”

“So you didn’t ask?”

“It was a large amount of money. Not asking questions was part of the deal.”

So was not offering Ivan help in any way, but she’d gotten around that little clause just fine.

“Why did you perform the ceremony with Ivan?” My gaze went briefly to the toga-clad teenagers behind her. “He’s nothing like the rest of your get.”

“As much as I love my toys, a vampire ca

“If he’s such a good investment advisor, why is he living here?”

She smiled again. Deep in her brown eyes, hunger flickered. Not blood hunger, but rather a hunger for money. Or power, which often came hand in hand with money in this wealth-oriented world of ours. She might not be a force in the vampire world just yet, but she certainly intended to be. And I had a feeling she wouldn’t particularly care how she went about it.

But couldn’t that be said of all vampires? Most of them couldn’t ever be classed as the caring, sharing types.

“Simple,” she answered. “He tithed me his apartment in Brighton as payment for the ceremony. He has enough money to live elsewhere, of course, but he remains close because his death is imminent. His choice, not mine.”

“So if you hate this place so much, why not move in to his apartment?”

She raised dark eyebrows. “It’s a simple matter of logistics. We are forty strong here, and that number simply will not fit into a two-bedroom apartment, no matter how luxurious.”

“Isn’t that a large number of vampires to have living together? And whatever happened to that whole ‘vampires are territorial creatures and don’t share’ line I keep hearing?”