The Secret Night Page 20

  Three evenings after he’d woken up from the assault on Caldwell and his minions, he went out to visit the deer herd. When he returned to the mansion, he heard voices in the dining room.

  Most of the people he’d already met were grouped around one of the long tables, which was laden with a feast—everything from pastries and muffins to deli meats and salads.

  “Sit down and join us,” the man named Thorn suggested.

  “I’m…not really hungry,” he said.

  Jed Prentiss spoke with his mouth half-full of potato salad. “I don’t know what you’ve found in Caldwell’s diaries, but one thing I discovered were notes on how the bastard was training himself to eat regular food.”

  Nick stared at him. They hadn’t discussed the Master at all. Cautiously, he said, “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean,” Jed replied. “We know what Caldwell was. And before you decide it’s high time you got the hell out of here, you might be interested to know that I’m a zombie.”

  Nick felt his jaw sag but couldn’t help it.

  “Thorn, here—” Jed nodded toward his colleague “—is a space alien. And Hunter is a clone. But, hell, nobody’s perfect. We all seem to get along all right. And, you know, some quirks and idiosyncrasies can come in handy, as I’m sure you’ve discovered yourself from time to time.”

  Nick stared at him, and Hunter and Thorn, utterly speechless.

  “We’re, uh, an unusual group. There’s room for a lot of diversity in the Light Street Detective Agency. And we’re hoping you’ll consider joining us.”

  Nick’s gaze narrowed. “Did Emma tell you what I am?”

  Alex shook his head. “Naw, we had it figured out before we got here the other night. After I put you and Emma into that rowboat, I was feeling bad about letting you mount an invasion on your own. So I called Hunter. I already had my suspicions about you, but I didn’t know what to make of them.”

  “The only logical conclusion based on the evidence,” Hunter said, “was that you were a vampire.”

  “Nick, you look like you need to sit down,” Jo O’Malley commented.

  “Yes, I believe I do.” He pulled out a chair and sat, then surveyed the table of friendly faces.

  He had been alone for so long, believing he’d never again enjoy the company of others who shared his interests and concerns. Believing that he’d never again be given the opportunity to form true friendships. It never would have occurred to him to go looking for what he had learned not to want or need. But here these people were offering it to him—even knowing what he was. He was overwhelmed.

  “You don’t have to give us an answer now,” Alex said.

  “But think about it,” Jed added.

  “You’re sure you understand everything about me?” he asked.

  Alex gave him a direct look. “We have a very resourceful research department. We did a thorough background investigation on you—and when I say thorough, I mean the report goes back about a hundred and fifty years. Starting around 1858, we know you were capturing slave ships bound for Charleston, South Carolina, and returning the Africans to their homelands. We also know you assisted the Underground Railroad while you were running blockades to bring food and medical supplies to the South during the Civil War.”

  Jo picked up where Alex stopped. “You saved the lives of a lot of miners during the Klondike gold rush. You were a spy for our side in World War I, and you smuggled Jews out of Nazi Germany during World War II.”

  “And—” Jed gave him a grin “—we know why you feed the deer who live around your house in Howard County. All the evidence says that you’re the kind of guy we’d like to have on our team.”

  Nick stared at him. “I thought I’d covered my tracks. It’s unbelievable that you could have found so much.”

  “You covered your tracks just fine,” Alex said. “But, like I said, we’ve got superior research skills.”

  Nick’s gaze swung around the room. “Well, now that you mention it, I’ve done a bit of research, too. I know the kind of assignments your agency takes. I know you’ve pulled off raids under the noses of a number of police departments. I also know that you specialize in saving the good guys from the bad guys.” Looking around the room again, focusing briefly on each expectant face, he took the plunge. “And I know one more thing—that I’d like very much to join you.”

  “Good!” Jed and Alex both exclaimed.

  There were smiles and words of appreciation around the table.

  “We can talk about details later,” Alex said. “We just wanted you to know that we saw you as an asset.”

  When the meeting broke up soon after, Nick felt better than he had in a very long time. But there was one important matter that remained unresolved.

  He had to talk to Emma.

  He’d been through the entire first floor, searching for her, when he ran into Jo O’Malley in the entrance hall.

  “Are you looking for Emma?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Come out onto the patio,” she said, and they went outside.

  Standing square in front of him, Jo looked at him directly. “I’m going to be blunt. You think your problems with Emma are unique, but every relationship has rough patches. A few years ago, I was shot in an ambush and had a near-death experience. I guess God wasn’t ready for me to cross over, because I came back to earth. But my deceased husband, Skip O’Malley, followed me back. His ghost hung around, fighting with Cam, who, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is my present husband. Well, Skip and Cam never liked each other when Skip was alive, and death didn’t improve the situation.”

  Nick knew he was gawking at her. “You’re telling the truth?”

  “I don’t have enough imagination to make up something as weird as this,” she assured him. “And it gets even weirder. A very bad man kidnapped me. He was going to kill me, and the only way Cam could rescue me was to let Skip invade his mind and take over his body.”

  She was right. It was too weird to be fiction.

  “What I’m trying to say is, keep your mind open, and you may be surprised by what happens.”

  “I will, if I can find Emma.”

  “She’s been keeping to herself, sleeping on the cabin cruiser we brought down from Travis Stone’s estate.” Jo gestured toward the luxury cruiser moored at the end of the estate’s main dock. Then, giving his arm a squeeze, she added, “Good luck.”

  EMMA SET DOWN the book she’d been reading by the light of a battery-powered lamp.

  The tome had the ominous title Night Terrors, and it was one of the vampire treatises she’d taken from Nick’s library.

  As he’d said, some were written by men—and one by a woman—who claimed to be vampires. Now having finished three and skimmed several others, she had come to believe the claims.

  She had wanted to understand Nick, but there was so much variation in the accounts of vampiric life that she’d quickly realized each vampire made his or her own choices, as any human would. Some took pleasure in killing people, while others, like Nick, went to great lengths to avoid harming mortals. A few lived in covens with other vampires, but the majority kept to themselves.

  From what she’d read, Caldwell had developed more talents than most. There were others who had learned to overcome the rays of the sun, at least for brief periods of time, but even they could stay awake only a few hours during the day.

  As she read, Emma had wondered if she could adjust to life with a vampire. Would it be possible to maintain a committed relationship—a marriage—to someone for hundreds and hundreds of years? Lord, her own mother hadn’t been able to stick with the same man for more than a few years. What was there to make her think that she could do better?

  The answer to that question was Nick. She had known since he’d first walked into her dreams that they were meant to be together. Whether it was fate or lucky chance or a combination of her desperation and his vampiric mental abilities that had first brought them together, surely a
bond as strong as the one they had forged would weather a lot of storms, growing, changing, adjusting as needed, but never disappearing.

  At that moment, she heard footsteps on the boards of the long dock. Her head snapped up, and she saw a figure coming toward her. She could barely see through the dark, but she knew it was Nick.

  Her heart skipped a beat, then leaped to her throat, all her hopes and fears bubbling to the surface.

  NICK STOPPED BESIDE the cruiser’s aft deck, his hands shoved into his pockets, staring at Emma and thinking how lovely she looked in the moonlight.

  “Do you want some company?” he said.

  She remained seated in her deck chair, feigning calm. “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether we’re going to have an honest conversation.”

  “That’s a pretty confrontational way to start.”

  “I’m too tired to fence with you.”

  “I never did like fencing.” Placing a hand on the gunwale, he vaulted onto the cruiser’s deck, then stood looking down at her.

  She raised her face toward him. “There’s something I’ve been wondering about. You’ve told me that if we make love, you won’t be satisfied unless you take blood from me. But what about Jeanette? Why wasn’t that true with her?”

  He gave a short laugh. “That’s certainly getting right to the point, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I never had intercourse with Jeanette.”

  Her brow furrowed. “But I thought—”

  “In the first place,” he explained, “society’s rules were different then. A man didn’t sleep with a woman whom he didn’t intend to marry unless she was a widow, someone else’s wife or a whore. In the second place, Jeanette was eighteen and a virgin. We were together for months before I dared even to kiss her. Then, before there was a chance of things going any further, Caldwell put her under his control, seduced her and killed her.”

  “I see,” Emma murmured. “But what about other women?”

  “As much as possible, I’ve avoided ones I thought I might come to love, for the reasons I already gave you.”

  She set down the book she’d been reading, and he realized it was one from his library. Standing, she took a step toward him.

  “You must have been lonely,” she said in a small voice.

  Bloody hell, she could be ruthless. “Yes,” he grated.

  She crossed the space between them, and there was no way he could stop himself from taking her in his arms. And once he had her, he was lost.

  He lifted her up and sat down in one of the deck chairs, cradling her on his lap. When her arms tightened around him, he breathed in the delicate flowery scent of her shampoo and the fresh, womanly smell of her skin, and he sighed.

  She pressed her forehead against his temple, clinging to him.

  “What if we could solve the problem?”

  He couldn’t help the tension that immediately crept into his body. “How?”

  He heard her drag in a breath. Then she let it out in a rush of words. “Are you going to be angry if I tell you I talked to Thorn—in a kind of roundabout way?”

  “No,” he said, although that wasn’t entirely true.

  “Thorn was trained as a biologist. He suggested that maybe you only need to take a little of my blood. A very little.”

  He took her by the shoulders and set her far enough away from himself so that he could look into her eyes. “You’d take the risk of my being able to do that?”

  “Yes. I’d do a lot to stay with you. The question is—what are you willing to do for me?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked cautiously.

  “You took my blood twice. Each time, you clouded my mind. I can’t live that way. If we make love, I have to know what’s happening.”

  He swallowed. “I…”

  “Are you afraid to do that?” she challenged.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  He didn’t want to answer but knew he had to. “I’m afraid you’ll be repulsed and…frightened of me.”

  “Perhaps we should put that to the test.”

  He drew back, studying her face. “You really think you can deal with my drinking from you, knowing it’s happening?”

  A cold chill skittered over his skin as he tried to imagine what it would be like taking blood from her while she was aware of him doing it. He truly didn’t know if he had the nerve to risk it—to risk seeing the look of horror and revulsion on her face. But if he didn’t try…

  His mouth was so dry he could barely speak. “When would you want to try that?”

  “Well, how about now?”

  Raising her head, she stroked her lips against his. Just that small contact sent the blood pounding through his veins. She started with that light touch, then deepened the contact, nibbling at his lower lip, then soothing him with her tongue.

  He gave the pleasure back to her. Yet some part of him couldn’t quite believe in the magic of being with her again.

  “Relax,” she murmured against his mouth.

  “How do you know I’m not?”

  “You’re as nervous as I am. I can feel it.”

  Her admission helped.

  “But I’m enjoying being with you again. So much,” she whispered as she slid her lips to his cheek, then nibbled on his ear.

  He raised his hands, stroking his fingers through the silky, moonlit strands of her blond hair. Catching one of his hands, she lowered it to her breast, and he felt her hardened nipple pressing into his palm. His breathing had already grown ragged, and he was as hard as a rock. Yet it was difficult to caress her so intimately, thinking about how she wanted this to end.

  “Nick, I want this. Don’t hold back on me. Please.” Smiling at him, she stood and took his hand, then led him into the main cabin. Standing in the middle of the thick carpet, she began to open the buttons down the front of her blouse.

  But he saw that her hands weren’t entirely steady. She wasn’t quite as sure of herself as she was pretending to be.

  “My sweet Emma,” he whispered, reaching to help her, their fingers tangled together as they opened the placket.

  She was the one who pulled the blouse off and reached to open the catch at the back of her bra. “Take off your shirt,” she murmured. “I want to feel your chest against my breasts.”

  He did as she asked, then gathered her to him, and they both gasped at the sensation of his naked flesh against hers. He was so aroused that he could barely think, but one thing he knew: He must use every skill he possessed to make this good for her.

  Easing away, he traced the sweet shape of her breasts with his hands, then bent to swirl his tongue around one pebbled nipple before sucking it into his mouth.

  “Oh, Nick,” she gasped, reaching to stroke her fingers through his hair, holding him to her.

  When she swayed on her feet, he raised his head. “Maybe we should…get horizontal.”

  “A good idea. Give me a few seconds first.” She steadied her hand against his shoulder while she skimmed her slacks and panties down her legs.

  He stared at her, thinking she had made herself totally vulnerable to him. To a man she knew was a vampire.

  If they had a chance of staying together, he must give her that same trust. So he unfastened the snap at the top of his jeans. She helped him, lowering his zipper and reaching inside to clasp his erection in her hand.

  “That feels wonderful,” she whispered.

  He laughed. “At this end, too.”

  They were both unsteady on their feet now. And he helped her down to the carpet where she stretched the length of her body against his.

  “Nick, make love with me,” she whispered.

  He was helpless to deny her. To deny himself what he had been craving since the last time, when he hadn’t allowed himself fulfillment.

  He wanted her hot and ready for him—and she was. He knew why he was postponing their joining. He didn’t know how it would end.
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br />   He stroked her breasts, then slid his hand downward to her most intimate flesh to find her wet and swollen. And when he touched her, her hips moved in response to the stroking of his fingers. Every ounce of his attention was tuned to her, to the tiny sounds she made and the ripples of sensation that flowed across her body as he gave her pleasure.

  Her voice turned urgent. “Nick, I want you inside me.”

  He would have held back, but she clasped him in her hand, squeezing and stroking him, making it impossible for him to wait any longer.

  He covered her body with his, plunging into her with a steady stroke. Her eyes were open, her gaze locked with his as he began to move.

  She called his name again, moving with him, driving toward completion. He felt her inner muscles contract, felt her take him to the very edge of climax. He might still have lost his nerve and done what he did the last time, denied himself complete fulfillment, even though his fang sheaths were throbbing with need. But she cupped her hands around the back of his head and pressed his mouth to her shoulder.

  “Do it,” she murmured.

  He groaned, not knowing if he were about to have his worst fears or his fondest dreams realized. He gave her soft skin a tender kiss. Then, surrendering himself to her and to his nature, he sank his fangs into her neck.

  Emma made a small sound, and an agony of uncertainty tore at him. She was in pain, and instinctively he reached out with his mind to ease it.

  “Don’t,” she gasped out. “Don’t take this part of it away from me.”

  With a terrible effort, he drew back the curtain, allowing her to remain aware as he drank the sweet blood that poured into his mouth while a powerful orgasm ripped through his body. When the orgasm was over, it was hard to stop drinking. But he knew he must, if he wanted to keep her safe. So he took only a little. Just enough to complete the act for him. And then, tenderly, he used his tongue to seal the small punctures he had made.