He closed the door behind her, then took her icy hand in his and led her through the coat check room and across the main dungeon area to the heater. He pulled over one of the chairs from the ones lined against the wall for her to sit on. She sat down, keeping her head bowed.
“Strip out of those clothes. I’ll get you a blanket. I could promise not to look but...” he said.
But I’d be lying.
“Getting those things won’t do any good.” Her voice was sweet and clear, even if she seemed to be talking to her knees.
He thought otherwise. There were some blankets in the medical room where men and women played some very kinky adult games of doctor on the club nights. But there wasn’t a phone there. The phones were in the coat check room and in Kent’s office. Kent probably had a blanket in there—they were pretty standard after
-
scene care, and he knew Kent had done a few scenes with his submissive Angela in the private confines of his office. He walked quickly, not wanting to startle her, but not wanting to waste any time, either.
“Don’t even try to call on the phone,” she said. “I’ll hear you. I have very good hearing.”
What is she, a mind reader? Or smart enough to figure out how my mind works
? He could almost certainly push three buttons for 911, whether she heard him or not. And Kent’s room didn’t leak much sound
,
unless he and Angela were incredibly quiet. Charles chuckled. He’d heard Angela when Kent had played with her on the main floor, and she was
not
quiet. He kept right on going, through the door, under the great curved Japanese sword Kent had hung on the wall above.
He was almost to the desk where the phone sat when he heard a rat-a-tat-tat. He turned and saw her standing right next to him. “No phones,” she said. “Please. Please help me.”
“How the hell can I help you?” He was losing patience, and not being able to reconcile the fast little sound he’d heard instead of the sound of squishing wet Converses didn’t help. “You need to get warm. You’re so damn cold I don’t know why you’re still alive. You need to have blankets on you and you need to see a doctor who can do something about it, or you’re going to die.”
She giggled, and for a moment
,
he thought she was going to lapse into hysteria. “It’s a little late for that. All they are going to find out is that I’m already dead. Don’t you remember, Charles?”
She knew his name, but he didn’t know hers. What was she going on about, anyway? “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really don’t remember who you are, or have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Wow. Pemberton did a really good job. He’s so powerful. So strong. I can’t go against him, Charles, and he’s going to kill me. I need help. And if you help, I’ll do anything, anything at all, you name it.”
He wouldn’t be male if he didn’t have a reaction to such an offer from such a beautiful woman. But he wouldn’t be the man he wanted to be if he took her up on it.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked, hoping she’d say something sensible.
“Let me drink your blood.”
So much for that hope.
“Sorry, I have this thing about safe sex.” He found a green army blanket neatly stowed on the top shelf of a bookcase, and he turned his back on her to get it.
“I could just take it.”
“Do you think you could?”
“I’m stronger than you. Faster than you.”
Crazier than me, he thought. But her coldness was still real. He wrapped the blanket around her. “I don’t think you’re that kind of person,” he said.
“You’re wrong. I’ve done things to survive you wouldn’t believe.”
He put his arm around her waist and tried to walk her over to the space heater. “Right now I’m going to work on getting you warm. You can tell me all about it.”
“Look at me,” she said.
He did, and this time, she met his gaze.
“I’m a vampire.”
He didn’t know what she’d done to him, but somehow he believed her, even though what she told him was beyond belief. He felt as if he’d known it all along. Where did he know her from? He knew instinctively that he’d be lost completely if he stared into those eyes any longer. That was a strangely seductive fate—but his mind rebelled at the thought. Still, he couldn’t turn away. She was stronger and faster
,
and she could hold him captive with her eyes if she wanted to. So why hadn’t she done so before now?
A sad little smile passed over her face. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she said, her voice shrinking to a whisper. “Didn’t really have the strength, anymore. Don’t hate—“ But she didn’t get the rest out, because she fell to the floor, cold, pale, and dead. He knelt down next to her. She wasn’t breathing. Had she been breathing earlier? He didn’t remember it, if she had. It was the sort of thing he took for granted.
He quickly put his mouth over hers and tried to resuscitate her. His fingers couldn’t feel a pulse on her wrist. He put his hand on her heart, and it was beating, but weak. How long could her heart beat without her breathing? And she was still ice cold.
Vampire. He didn’t like vampires, he knew, even though he had no rational reason to feel one way or the other about a creature of myth he hadn’t believed existed until moments ago. He should do
something
. Take the sword hanging over the door to Kent’s office and chop her head off, maybe. Vampires were predators, unnatural creatures.
He frowned.
Why am I thinking of chopping off her head, rather than driving a stake into her heart?
In any case, he wasn’t about to do either. And conventional attempts to start her breathing weren’t working. At least with her unconscious
,
he could get her wet clothes off and get the blanket wrapped tightly around her. And call 911.
Her body was beautiful in a strange, almost alien way. Her nipples were nearly as pale as the rest of her skin. He didn’t turn a blind eye but didn’t waste any time gawking either. He wrapped her up in the woolen blanket. If she ever regained consciousness
,
it would be itchy against bare skin, but it was warm.
He touched her cold dead hand. Maybe she was supposed to be cold. She was lying so still. She was dead.
Vampire.
Maybe she should stay dead.
He opened her mouth again and looked inside. Her canines were sharper than a normal human’s, perhaps, but they didn’t extend any farther. Someone with an obsession might sharpen them, he supposed. Even the inside of her mouth was pale. The only reason her lips weren’t was because of the lipstick she wore, some of which had rubbed off onto his finger.
He remembered her saying the blanket wouldn’t do any good, and that the wet clothes didn’t matter. Yet she wanted his help. She needed his help. What could he do?
Let me drink your blood, she had said. He’d thought she was talking crazy, but now he was inclined to take her literally. There was no way any paramedics could get there in time, anyway, as cold as she was. But he’d have a heck of a time explaining what he was about to do to them when they finally did get there.
He reached into her mouth and ran his index finger hard across one of her sharp teeth. Blood flooded the line across his finger, and he squeezed the base of it until the first drop fell into her throat. A second followed, and a third, as he searched her face vainly for some sign she was going to wake up. Yet the more he watched her, the more he believed her. It was a crazy thing to believe, but for some reason, he didn’t just think she might be a vampire, he
knew
. He remembered how she had known who he was, even though he’d never met her before.
At last, after the first wound on his finger had started to seal up and he’d had to slice himself once more, her eyelids fluttered, and then opened.
I’m probably best off if she wakes up too weak to do anything.
He didn’t like thinking that way, not about a helpless woman lying on the floor, but she was a vampire in need of blood. What she would do to him, if she could, he didn’t like to think about. She’d already told him she could be violent and could overpower him. And yet
,
when she had the chance, she hadn’t
.
He lifted her head and let it rest in his lap, cushioning it from the hard warehouse floor. Her lips closed around his finger, and she sucked at it. His debate about pulling it away from her reached no resolution. He couldn’t leave her to die. He couldn’t let her suck on him until she was strong and he was weak, either.
Her lips parted. “Thank you,” she said. Her eyes stayed open this time, although her unnatural stillness made him wonder how awake she was. No, not how awake. How alive. It was the lack of breathing that made her so still.
He drew his hand back. She made no protest. She felt warmer than she had when he’d first touched her, but there was still no mistaking her for human. But human or not, she was lovely, curved where a woman ought to be curved, not half-starved in the pursuit of some odd notion of beauty.
Chapter Two
Doreen hadn’t gotten nearly enough to drink from his finger, but she’d vowed she wasn’t going to force him—or anyone else—to give her anything. Not that she hadn’t been tempted, both with Charles and before. She’d been with a few men she’d meant to drink from, and yet she never quite got around to popping the question.
You don’t mind if I have a pint or two, do you?
A couple of things stopped her. The law of the vampires was very clear—victims were not allowed to remember being bitten. It was easier to wipe their minds of the event when you’d already rolled them into submission beforehand, and Doreen hadn’t been a vampire long enough to build up the skill to wipe their memories without softening them up first. She’d set up the dates half-hoping she would give into her darker side to satisfy the hunger within her, but she just couldn’t take a person’s will away in order to take their blood, except for when she had been so out of her mind with hunger she could barely remember what happened herself.
Bully for me.
The other problem was that she kept thinking of Charles. Mario had told her to dominate him because tasting his blood would fill the coldness inside her. And she’d succeeded for a few moments at the domination part, the first time she’d come to Dark Xanadu. She’d been inside his neat, well-ordered mind. Then Mario and the green-haired vampire who’d given her the creeps had died, and Pemberton, Lord of the Washington vampires, had come and dragged her away. She wanted Charles’s blood so bad she could taste it, but she wanted atonement more. She knew her existence was close to an end—if it was going to continue, she wanted it to be at his hand. If it wasn’t, well
,
it wasn’t much of an existence anyway, and it seemed appropriate her death, too, could be his choice.
“Thank you,” she said again.
“Nothing anyone wouldn’t do.”
She smiled. “Nothing anyone sane
would
do.”
“Maybe.”
It was a comfortable place, his lap. She felt relaxed resting her head in it. His arms looked strong—he was wearing a tight black t-shirt and the sleeves were well-filled—and it was too ironic that her own arms were stronger. Being strong was good, wasn’t it? Yet something deep in her didn’t want to be. The illusion that this man could protect her was incredibly comforting.
“Don’t look into my eyes,” she warned him.
He nodded and looked away. She suppressed a smile as his gaze roved up and down her body. That old saying “die young and leave a good looking corpse” popped into her mind. He seemed to like the way she looked, although she’d often been told she was a few pounds overweight in life. In death
,
the size of her body was fixed, unchangeable. No more diets for her, for better or worse.
For the better except for the blood thing, yuck.
“You don’t have to play those mind tricks just because I’m looking at you, do you?” he asked.
“No, but it’s hard to resist. I’m still hungry.”
“Giving you more wouldn’t be wise.”
“No, it wouldn’t be. You probably should have let me die on the floor.”
“You know I couldn’t do that. What’s your name?”
“Doreen.”
He looked up at her. “Resist, Doreen.”
She blinked. Brave man, to meet her gaze. Maybe he knew some trick to block her. She was pretty sure he didn’t
want
her to dominate him. Nothing about him seemed weak. She was the weak one, she knew, falling under Mario’s sway. If Charles could enchant her, rather than the other way around, she’d have sought out his gaze in a heartbeat. “Yes. Doreen. Some people call me Dori.”
“Which do you like better?”
“Doreen.” Her mother called her Dori. Mario called her Dori. That was two strikes against it. Mother had meant well, always, but she never wanted to let
he
r Dori live her own life. Mario hadn’t meant well at all.