Kiss Me Deadly (4 page)

He settled onto the bed, a big loafing greyhound who would not be put back no matter how many times he was kicked. A few of the metal grommets on his leather jacket glinted with blood.
Her blood
. “I survived your attack.”

“Apparently.”

“Barely.” He tugged at the collar of his black shirt. Ravin saw scars on the side of his neck, nasty scars that looked pink and brand new.

“I know I came here wanting to kill you,” he said.

Running his hands through his hair, he searched the walls, as if to avoid her gaze. Though his shoulders were wide enough to bear a small vehicle on them, his expression was confused, as if he was unsure what he’d gotten himself into.

“I’m not sure what happened between “I hate you, witch” and “I’m sorry, Ravin,” but I can’t imagine harming you, and it kills me to see what I’ve done to you already. Can you forgive me?”

Ravin lunged across the bed and smacked the idiot across the forehead.

Expecting to again be pinned by the vampire, she knelt there defiantly, fist raised.

He bowed his head.

Ravin was simply floored. Stunned. Not in her history had she ever been so close to a vampire and not had him either attack or flee.

“What the hell did you say your name was?”

“Nikolaus Drake.” He lashed out his tongue to wipe away a trickle of blood that stained his lip.

“Tooth loose?”

“Not the important ones.”

“Then let me have another go.”

“Chill, sweetness. You’re all about showing your affection with little love taps, aren’t you?”

Love taps? Of all the…!

Disgusted, Ravin slid off the bed, staggered, but when she sensed the vampire jump up to grasp for her, she swayed forward and caught her balance. “Hands off!”

He retreated with hands raised to show compliance.

Why did the idiot think he was in love with her?

Oh, damn, of all that can go wrong. The odor of rosemary and ash that she had used in the love spell clung to her hair. Ravin remembered clearly now. The entire contents of the vial had spilled over her, and thanks to her magic, had absorbed instantly through her pores to course through her bloodstream.

“You don’t love me,” she muttered. “You’re under a love spell.”

S
he stalked away from him, into the bathroom. Fluorescent lights blinked on, highlighting the bloodstains splattered down the left shoulder of her T-shirt.

Nikolaus sat silently on the bed and observed.

Tilting her head to the side, the witch noted the havoc in the bathroom mirror, then let loose a string of curse words. Nikolaus bowed his head and shook it, yet he smiled. The woman could paint a blue streak.

“Look what you did!”

Stepping into the doorway between the bathroom and bedroom, she pointed out his handiwork with an angry thrust of her thumb.

Sore, swollen flesh surrounded two prominent bite marks just below the sharp line of her jaw.

“It’ll heal,” he said calmly. “I should lick it again, to make sure of it?”

“Back off! Stupid love spell. I sure hope it’s—”

Focused on more than the witch’s temper tantrum, Nikolaus pricked his ears toward the living room. “There’s someone at your door,” he said.

“Tell them to go away. Wait. What time is it?” Ravin rushed back into the bedroom and grabbed the gray sweatshirt jacket mounded in a heap near the foot of the bed.

“It’s almost morning.” He glanced toward the windows, shades pulled, each and every one of them. No sunlight yet, but soon. “You slept all night. I didn’t want to wake you. You looked so serene.”

“Why don’t you leave? Get out of here!”

He fitted his thumbs into his front pockets and drew up to stand tall. He didn’t take kindly to such treatment, especially from someone he loved. It stirred up too many memories of broken hearts and shouted curses.

On the other hand, she seemed genuinely peeved he was here.

I know I’ve only just come to her home. There can’t be things between us already. Can there?

But of course, there was one very obvious
thing
. The way he felt about her.

“I’m not leaving until I’m sure you’re going to be okay,” he said. “Even then…I don’t want to leave, Ravin. It can’t be this way between the two of us.”

“This way? There is no
way
between us.”

Now Ravin heard the rap at the door. Couldn’t be the door, because that lay on the floor of her living room.

“You are going to hate yourself when the spell is broken,” she snapped.

She zipped up the sweatshirt jacket, but it didn’t cover the wound, so she tugged up the hood and tied it tight, which gave her a South Park-esque look. “You don’t love me. Get that idiot nonsense out of your tiny little brain.”

“The human brain is the largest in all the animal kingdom, save the whale. Three pounds. Though I’ve put my hands to a four-pounder once. It wasn’t healthy; had swelling in the cerebral cortex due to infection.”

Ravin lifted a brow. That comment had thrown her. It was good to surprise them; kept them on their toes.

“I’ve a delivery pickup,” she said on a snarl that Nikolaus was starting to assume was her standard expression. “I’ll be right back to explain.”

“Explain what?”

“That you’re under a spell,” she hissed, and trotted out to the living room.

A spell was making him love the witch?

It’s the only way something so heinous could ever happen.

Nothing, but nothing, could make him consider kindness toward a witch.

A skeleton of a man waited in the space of Ravin’s front entryway. Flesh clutched his bones, cheeks sucked to his tonsils, and a manic look in his gray eyes glittered. He tilted his fist to rap the door frame again.

“Pickup?” Ravin asked. “Hang on. Give me two minutes. Do not move from that spot, got it?”

He nodded, meek enough to lower his head and look up shyly. Not a mortal, she knew that from his sallow coloring and red eyes; possibly an imp. Himself employed them copiously. Probably didn’t own his soul.

Ravin knew the feeling of not owning your soul—and wanted it to go away. But more so? She wanted the vampire to go away.

She detoured into the kitchen, where the evidence of last night’s fiasco made her want to retch. Brute smell of vampire aggression clung to the air, mixing with the spilled herbs and smoke of the spell.

“He thinks he loves me,” she muttered. “I guess the spell was successful. Now how to reverse it?”

It was not reversible, she knew. At least not by her. The only one who could reverse a spell was that person who had ordered it. She always designed her spells that way. Otherwise, she risked being called in to render null so many nasty spells.

And the one who’d ordered the spell?

“Crap. My soul isn’t getting any closer to being returned.”

The glass vial lay on its side on top of the fridge, held in place by the suctiony white plastic buffers between the two doors.

Ravin retrieved it carefully. About an ounce remained inside.

“Not enough to do any damage. But I’m not about to tell Himself I didn’t finish the job. I did finish it. And I tested it, like it or not.”

Plucking out a small, finger-size vial from the junk drawer, she filled it with the remaining potion and stuffed in a small red plastic stopper. Sealing that in a Ziploc bag made it look more official.

Dangling the pitiful thing before her, she blew out a heavy breath. “This’ll never work.”

But at the moment she had worse things to worry about. Worse than the devil’s disappointment?

“Oh, yeah.”

She had…tamed the untamable, it seemed. The man was a phoenix, a leader among his kind. Phoenixes were rare, and possessed amazing strength and—she hadn’t heard of one in existence for centuries. Was he really what he said he was?

Phoenix or not, the vampire was here in her home, making moon eyes at her and whispering sweet nothings. Not good, not good at all.

Clutching the sweatshirt hood around her neck, Ravin hoped the courier wouldn’t notice the bite marks.

“Here it is,” she said with forced cheer as she rounded the corner and stepped onto the fallen door. “Be careful with it.”

“This is it?”

She narrowed a glare at him. “Is that what you do? Ask questions? Because I don’t think you have the authority to ask questions, am I right?” She crossed her arms and cocked her hip out.

Yeah, I’m tough. Just try me.

So long as it wasn’t a six-foot-plus love-struck vampire standing her down.

“Right. Er…” The imp let his gaze roam over the door, then opened his mouth but didn’t say a thing. No questions. Good boy. “Thanks.”

The little man skittered away.

Ravin bent to lift the large, solid-oak door, and it moved much easier than she expected.

“Let me help.”

Stunned she hadn’t heard, felt or smelled the vampire come up behind her, Ravin slid away from him and paced across the floor. She shoved back the sweatshirt hood and increased her pace to a fitful stomp. Maintaining distance was all she wanted right now.

The vampire fitted the door into the frame and inspected the hinges. Biceps as large as coffee tins flexed beneath his soft black shirt. Long hair dusted across a wide back. She’d always been a back woman. Strong, wide and muscled is how she preferred—

Whoa! What was she thinking? Ravin unzipped the sweatshirt jacket and deposited it on the couch with a fling.

“That’s the wrong way, vampire!” she called as he fitted the door into the hinges.

“This is right,” he said.

“No,
you’re
supposed to be on the other side.”

“Ah. You have a sense of humor.” He rolled that one around in his thoughts. “That must be why I love you so much.” He fitted the door into the splintered wood frame, and left it there. “It’ll need new hinges, but for now it will serve. Who was that?”

“No questions.” Arms akimbo—and thoughts scattered—Ravin paced between the kitchen and living room. “You’re going to hate yourself with a bloody vengeance when you finally wake up from this spell, you know that, vampire?”

“My name is Nikolaus. It’s considered rude to use the other term, unless by my own kind.”

“Yeah, I know,
vampire
. I’m a witch, what do you want from me? And why is it you were able to drink my blood without exploding into a million bits?”

“I’m immune to it now I’ve survived your initial attack.”

“Right. A phoenix,” she muttered.

The one who got away. How impossible was it to survive a death cocktail? The vampire couldn’t have taken more than a minimal hit, and even with that, he had to have wiped most of the blood away immediately.

“Took me two months to recover,” he offered. “I’m still not completely whole.”

That long to get over a few splatters of her blood? Well, she hoped he had suffered. Small recompense for not dying, in her opinion.

He approached her slowly, his arms arced out at his sides like a weight lifter’s. Yeah, he had muscles, lots of them. And black leather everywhere, wrapping his legs and his thick thighs. The leather jacket strained over his shoulders.

But despite the costume and the imposing build, his expression was eerily compassionate. Darkest eyes sat on a long face with defined cheekbones and a square jaw. A broad forehead was swept clean of the long straight hair that spilled past his shoulders and to his elbows.

He was huge and powerful—and love struck.

That was some hell of a spell if he knew she’d tried to kill him, and yet continued to proclaim love toward her.

Nice work, Ravin. You could go into business. Too bad Himself will make you pay with flesh for this screwup.

That is, if the vampire didn’t pock up her flesh with tooth marks before then.

“I’ve still scars all up the left side of my body,” he explained. “You really did a number on me.”

“Show me,” Ravin demanded. If he were going to claim damage, then he should have proof, yes?

“Right now?”

“You say you love me? Don’t you want to share your most intimate secrets with me? Oh, stop.” She put out a hand as he slid off the leather jacket and tugged up his shirt to reveal rock-solid abs. “What am I saying? Put your jacket back on. This is all very wrong.”

It was difficult to remain angry and look at him at the same time. Every part of the man was hard and taut and oozed a come-and-touch allure. Even the crimson-and-ash aura he wore looked sparkly and inviting.

Deadly? Oh, yeah. But also…evocative.

Ravin shook her head and steered her gaze anywhere but toward Nikolaus Drake.

“Now, listen and try to understand,” she said. “You are a victim of a misdirected spell. You don’t love me because you
want
to love me, you love me because of the spell shooting through my bloodstream at the time you bit me. This spell.” She swiped a finger over her forehead and showed him the dark residue. “Got it?”

He quirked a brow, a dark check mark that highlighted the vivid blue eyes beneath.

“I remember that I came here to—”

“To kill me!” And don’t look at his eyes, she coached silently. They do not resemble jewels.

“You’ve been smoking some witchy weed, sweetness. I would never stand still long enough to allow a witch to bespell me.”

“The spell was already in my bloodstream, Einstein. It spilled over me when you made your crashing entrance into my home, death in your…eyes.” She tore her gaze from what were sapphires fixed into a dark, deadly setting. “You drank the spell when you drank my blood.”

He shrugged. “I’d never allow a witch to put a spell on me.”

“Oh, yeah? Tell me how a man…make that vampire, falls in love with a woman…make that a witch…in less than the snap of a finger? Oh!”

Gripped by a sudden burning bite to her chest, Ravin clutched her ribs.

“Ravin? What’s wrong with you?”

The pain was brief, but it did not fail to level her to her knees. Landing on the floor but inches from Nikolaus’s scuffed leather biker boots, Ravin wobbled and tried to keep from collapsing into his waiting arms.