TEN

S OMETHING WAS PRESSED AGAINST MY MOUTH. Liquid spilled into it and rushed down my throat so fast I choked, coughing. From far off I heard someone speaking to me, shaking me, and the fluid pitilessly continued to pour. I swallowed to prevent drowning in it, then the voice became clearer and I could see again.

Bones was behind me, clutching me to his chest. We were sprawled on the ground. One arm held me to him and his other wrist was shoved against my mouth. It was his blood overflowing into me.

“Stop that, you know I hate that.” Spitting out the remaining mouthful, I tried to push away, but he tightened his grip, twisting around so he could see me.

“Bloody hell, you’re all right. Your heart slowed for a minute. Scared the wits out of me.”

As my vision slowly cleared, I could see a dead vampire in front of me. His head was twisted mostly off, and one eye hung out of its socket. The flesh shriveled back against the bones in the traditional way after true death, but the face wasn’t Hennessey’s. It was someone I’d never seen before.

“Where’s Hennessey?” My voice was only a murmur. Although my eyes and ears worked, my mind still rotated.

Bones gave a snort of disgust behind me.

“Blasted sod ran off. I was already on my way to you when I got your page. I pulled Hennessey off you, and we started to go at it when the bloody boot opens and this fellow pops out. He’d been hiding there as Hennessey’s bleedin’ bodyguard. Bloke jumped me and Hennessey took off. The bugger put up a hell of a fight, too. When I finished with him, I checked on you. That’s when I saw that you were barely breathing and opened a vein. You really should have more, you’re still pale as death.”

“No.” My response was soft but firm. Already I was afraid I’d had too much, remembering all the swallowing. Ugh.

“What happened back there? I thought you were just pretending and taking it far to goad me. Worked as well, that’s why I was almost on him when your page went off. Did he catch you off guard?”

Although he no longer fed me, he still had his arms around me. A part of me protested, especially since I was naked from the waist up, but I was too exhausted to mention it. Forcing my mind to work, I thought back over the events. It was like cotton had replaced my brain.

“Um, I don’t know. We got in his car and I started feeling sick… No, that’s wrong. I felt sick before, at the club. It started when we were dancing. Somehow I felt drunk. Everything was blurry and the lights seemed far off… After a while it got under control, but when I left, it came back three times as bad. I couldn’t move. My legs wouldn’t work and my mind…I couldn’t think. I even forgot about the watch until it got caught in his hair. Do you think he drugged me? Could he have known what we were up to?”

Bones pulled me back enough to look into my eyes. What he saw made him curse.

“Your pupils are dilated enough to belong on a corpse. You’ve been drugged, all right. You say you felt it before he showed up, when we were dancing? That doesn’t make sense…”

His voice trailed off and like a brick, the truth hit me. Once again I saw the guileless smiles of Ralphie and Martin while holding out a glass.

“It wasn’t him.” Come see my Porsche, come on outside… “It was those kids. Ralphie and Martin, the ones you told to scram when we first arrived. They handed me a drink then and later when Hennessey went to find you. Those little pricks, they tried to pull me out to their car, they looked surprised when I wouldn’t come…” Suddenly I was dizzy again, and my vision swam for a moment.

“You need more blood.” It was a statement, and through the fog I waved him off.

“No. No. I’ll be fine. I just need to sleep.”

The landscape tipped, and when I opened my eyes I was lying on the ground with a familiar jean jacket under my head. Bones was about a dozen yards away, digging a hole.

The moonlight illuminated his skin, and there was a lot to illuminate. He’d taken his shirt off, and it reflected on the diamonds-and-cream flesh it seemed to caress. Without his shirt he looked even more chiseled. Long lines connected his collarbone, his shoulders appeared broader without clothing, and the hard line of his stomach was interrupted only by pants. Hollows and muscles rippled with his effort, and it was the loveliest sight I’d ever seen.

“Where is your shirt?” Apparently I’d spoken aloud instead of just wondered it in my mind, because he turned and answered me.

“You’re wearing it, luv.”

Leaning over, he picked up the dead vampire with one hand and plunked him in the hole, piling dirt on top of him.

“You’re absolutely stunning without it, you know that…?” My internal monologue was all off, since evidently I’d been audible again.

He paused to grin at me, teeth flashing in the night.

“It hasn’t escaped my notice that you only compliment me when you’re intoxicated. Makes you right more agreeable, it does.”

He finished with a last slap of the shovel against the dirt and walked over to me. My vision still fluttered in and out.

“You’re always gorgeous,” I whispered, reaching out a finger and trailing it down his cheek as he knelt over me. “Kiss me again…”

Nothing felt real. Not the ground underneath me, or his mouth once again moving over mine. A noise of disappointment escaped me when he lifted his head, disentangling himself from my arms.

“Why did you stop? Is it because I taste bad?” Some part of me remembered I’d thrown up recently.

He smiled, brushing his lips across mine once more. “No. You taste like my blood, and I want you unbearably. But not like this. Let’s get you safely tucked in. Up you go.”

He lifted me in his arms. “Bones,” I sighed. “Know something? I’m not afraid of you, but you scare me…” His outline blurred again.

“You scare me, too, Kitten,” he might have replied, but I couldn’t be sure. It was all black again.

My mother lay behind me with her arms wrapped around me, and I snuggled into her embrace. She never held me, and it felt good. She mumbled something and her voice was low and deep. Her arms were firmly muscled, and her chest pressed alongside my back…was rock-hard.

My eyes flew open, and for the second time in my life I woke up in bed with a vampire. This time was infinitely worse, because all I wore was a shirt and panties and he…

A scream tore out of my throat. Bones leapt up, head swiveling around to spot the danger. Immediately I looked away, because I’d spotted the danger, all right. Color rose in my face and I squeezed my eyes shut.

“What’s wrong? Someone here?” His voice was insistent and deadly.

Mutely I shook my head, wracking my brain as to how I’d ended up here. The last thing I remembered was lying on the ground and kissing him…

“Bones.” My teeth ground, but I had to know. “Did you and I…did anything happen between us? I don’t remember. You have to tell me the truth.”

He made an exasperated noise and I felt the bed give under his weight as he climbed back in. I scooted off at once and peeked at him through my lashes until I was sure the sheet covered him below the waist.

He gave me a look of thinly veiled annoyance. “You think I’d shag you while you were passed out cold? Think I’m no better than those two buggers who doctored your drink? Your dress was half ripped off and covered in vomit, no less, so I put a shirt on you and brought you here. Then I went back to the club.”

“Oh.” Now I felt foolish and wanted to defend my misassumption. “But then why are you naked?”

“Because after I was finished with your little boys and looked around futilely for Hennessey, it was dawn. I was knackered and had blood on my clothes, so I stripped them off and fell into bed. You certainly weren’t doing anything but snoring and taking all the bloomin’ covers again. Didn’t really pause to think about it, sorry.” The sarcasm dripped off every word, but his earlier sentence chilled me.