My Familiar Stranger (35 page)

During the first hour at the club on Monday, Elora got a text from Baka. “Meet me in our alley in fifteen minutes.”

Our alley?
She reasoned that he must mean the one where she had killed the vamp. She glanced at her watch and texted back.

“OK. Must bring partner. Rules. Behave yourself.”

She had to talk into Ram’s ear to be heard above the noise in the club. He looked at his watch and nodded.

It was chilly, but not as cold as it had been the night before when they had been carefree sightseers. They jogged the three blocks to the alley because they couldn’t be gone long. They might be undercover, but jobs still come with demands.

Baka was waiting.

“Hey,” Elora panted. “What’s up? We’ve got five minutes before we have to start back.”

“I finished remapping the underground. It’s pretty much the same as it was in the twenties except that somebody has updated the lighting with low energy, storm shelter fixtures. When I reported to your Sovereign yesterday, he ordered me to take E Team on a reconnaissance tour since you had the day off. I told him I thought that was a bad idea. If we were spotted by vampire we’d lose the element of surprise when we need it.

He said do it anyway. So I took them down for an hour yesterday afternoon. We didn’t encounter vampire, but there are indications that the tunnel system is... in use.”

“You mean you saw signs of remains?”

Ram ran a hand through his hair and turned away. “And why are you tellin’ us this then?”

Baka’s brows knit together. “Because something about E Team doesn’t feel right." He shook his head a little. "Hunches are the hardest sort of thing to explain.”

Ram glanced at Elora. “Gotta go.”

Baka looked between them. “Watch out for the entrance. It’s hidden in the wall at the end of the hallway where the restrooms are.”

“Show me,” Elora said.

Ram went back to the bar while Baka led Elora toward the tunnel entrance. Halfway down the hall Baka saw movement and knew vampire were emerging from the tunnel, coming their way. He grabbed Elora and shoved her against the wall, covering her body with his. He whispered in her ear giving her unwelcome and untimely shivers.

“Vampire incoming. If they look close they’ll think I’m an adversary. So make this look good.”

Taking hold of her waist with both hands, he jerked her up the wall to where they were at eye level and pushed her back again holding her in place with the press of his body. Her legs wound around him in an involuntary reflex. Before she could contemplate the fact that his body heat was surprising, he brushed his lips against hers. She jerked back bumping her head on the wall behind her, but not hard enough to do damage.

Staring at his mouth an inch away, she swallowed and said in a voice that sounded too raspy to be her own, “If you bite me, I
will
stake you.”

He drew back just far enough so there would be no mistaking his meaning. “If I bite you, I'll stake myself.”

This time his mouth covered hers with demand. For a minute she forgot about everything except the way he was crushing her mouth, ferociously, with an urgency that could only be fueled by desperation. She couldn’t breathe, but didn’t care. He pressed closer so that she could feel the erection he was subtly rocking into her core. While she went mindless, lost in the intensity of the desire coming off of him in waves, two vampire walked behind them.

After they passed, she tore her mouth away and gasped for air.

Just before he eased back, he whispered, "So warm," still holding her up until she could regain her footing. “I don’t expect you to love me, Elora.”

He was still clutching her around the waist, not wanting to let her go, like he was afraid he would never be this close again.

Her voice sounded hoarse when she spoke. “We need to let the rest of my team know that we've got biters in the building.”

Baka stepped back with obvious reluctance and dropped his hands without another word.

Elora went straight to the bar. Ram’s eyes swept over the flush on her face and zeroed in on telltale swollen lips. His eyes flashed with anger as clear and sudden as a lightning strike. She'd never seen him really mad before.

“What the bloody hell, Elora!”

“Two vampire came in while we were in the hallway. A couple of minutes ago. We’ve got to find them.”

B Team searched all three floors of the Club, the restrooms, the kitchen, and the perimeter for three blocks, but did not find vampire. Elora waited with dread, expecting Ram to bring up the subject of what happened in the hallway, but he had apparently decided to let it pass.

They finished their shifts, caught a whister back to the Unit and, as was their custom, stopped in the lounge to share a drink before calling it a night. E Team was sitting around the fire pit just outside on the lounge veranda. Storm suggested they join them and find out what they learned from their tour of the tunnels.

After a few minutes Ghost rose and started inside. “Anybody need anything while I’m up?”

Elora said, “Yeah. My Hot Butter Bacardi should be up if you don’t mind grabbing it.”

“Done,” he said.

Half an hour later, Elora was having trouble paying attention and starting to feel a discomfiting tingle paired with a twinge of anxiety. She tried to shake it off, but the feelings were intensifying by the minute. Finally she leaned over.

“Ram?”

“Hmmm?” Ram was distracted, noting that E Team was being a little tight lipped about their experience in the tunnels, which was odd.

Elora leaned over, turned her face away from the group and whispered next to Ram’s ear with a hint of urgency.

“I need help. You’ve got to get me home. Please.”

She raised her voice and said to the group in general, “That’s it for me. Some of us actually work for a living delivering booze to letches and drunks. Have a good night then.”

“Hold on. I’m goin’, too,” Ram said and the others said a collective good night.

When the elevator doors closed, he looked at Elora.

“What’s wrong?”

“Not sure, but I’m scared that, I think maybe… aphrodisiac.”

He took her by the shoulders and turned her toward him so he could get a good look at her face and know if she was joking. He must have seen something disturbing in her eyes. “Fuck.”

“Exactly.”

She was becoming more unsettled, even a little afraid, like she was on the verge of losing an internal struggle.

Ram’s mind was racing.

Out loud he said, “Okay. We’ll figure somethin’ out.”
What in Paddy’s name will we figure out? Shit.

By the time they reached her door, she was breathing hard. Ram punched in her code, which he knew as well as his own, and opened the door. He looked up and down the hallway to make sure that no one saw him going into Elora’s quarters this late at night or else there would be never-ending gossip, smirking, and cat calls. Humans.

Once inside, she tore off her coat and let it fall to the floor. Ram was still trying to figure out what to do next when she grabbed the lapels of his leather jacket.

“You’ve got to help me.”

She was searching his face with a wild-eyed look bordering hysteria.

“What do you mean?”

Having never seen her exhibit any of these emotions before, Ram was looking alarmed himself.

She made a noise of exasperation. “Don’t you dare pretend naïveté with me, Rammel Hawking. You bloody well know what I mean!”

She couldn’t stop herself from touching any longer. She ran her hands over aching breasts, down her abdomen, and let a middle finger linger to massage the aching apex between her thighs.

Ram gawked trying to ignore an unwanted, but suddenly very demanding erection.

“No.” He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “I do no’ want the first time to be like this.”

Elora was unraveling, quickly moving from desperation to full blown panic. She was a bundle of need and nerve endings on fire without enough sexual experience to know what to ask for.

“Ram! Either help me or get out of the way so I can find somebody else.”

She started toward the door. He was in front of her in a flash, blocking the way and exploding.

“That’s no’ gonna happen!”

Blackie whined, but decided to stay out of it. He withdrew to his pallet behind the dining desk and curled up. He was a very smart dog.

Poised and preparing for a fight, Elora gave him a look that said, “Well then?”

He took her face between his hands. The conflict had to be resolved and fast. On the one hand he had spent months suffering an obdurate lust for this woman, a craving with no respite, a relentless yearning nagging to be satisfied. On the other hand, taking advantage of his mate and dishonoring his partner were equally repelling.

Growing impatient with his indecision, Elora started to jerk out of his hands, but he held firm. Her own frustration was clawing at him.

“Shhhh. Hush now. I’m here.”

Then, for the first time in his life, Rammel Hawking kissed a woman with his heart as well as his lips. The purity and sweetness of it hit such a profound note that it stunned even the drug into submission.

For a moment, she was quiet and still, absorbing the age old message that kiss was sending, that Ram loves Elora. But, the second he drew back, the demand of the chemicals throbbing in her blood came bounding back with a vengeance.

She seized him like a drowning man grabs onto a floatation device, feverishly coaxing his lips into an open mouthed kiss while pushing his jacket off his shoulders. That accomplished, she proceeded to rip the club logo tee open from neck to navel, exposing bare skin to the hands she was running down his chest and over the ridges in his abs, tracing the beckoning path of golden brown hair that disappeared below his waistband.

The violence of having Ram’s clothes ripped from him was disconcerting, but compelling and powerfully erotic at the same time, combining to detonate a sexual charge that could no longer be denied. Conflict resolved. He unlocked the cage and freed his own beastly passion that had been crouching just below the surface, painfully, for far too long.

Wave after wave of desire possessed him, demanding that he yield to his body’s hunger for kisses, for caresses, for the raw sensuality of skin on skin and the ultimate fantasy of plunging inside her.

He pulled her tank top and bra strap down from her shoulder to reveal a creamy, plump breast and a rosy pink nipple that reminded him of the color of her cheeks when she came in from the cold. When he bent to lave the taut bud with a tongue that was both sweet and pink, just as he had promised that day that seemed so long ago in the hallway outside their apartments, she clutched his shoulders, threw her head back and moaned.

Hearing that, his cock swelled against the confines of his jeans. When he straightened his back to undo the fly buttons, she reached to fondle the outline of his bulge which responded by throbbing harder as if it was trying to leap through the denim and into her hand. Hissing in a breath, he angled himself away saying, “We can no’ be doin’ that if there’s to be anythin’ left for you.”

He backed her toward the bedroom, both of them tearing away clothes as they went. By the time they reached the bed, she was wearing only silk little boy undies and knee socks. In one fluid motion, he stripped back the bed covers leaving nothing but a crisp, white bottom sheet.

He pressed her back to the bed and ran his hand up her inner thigh while resuming the tangle of his tongue with hers. There was plenty of room for fingers to slip between the loose, silk crotch of the lingerie and her own silky folds. The heat and moisture he found there fueled an exigency of his own that caused his breath to hitch.

When Elora felt his fingers brush her sex for the first time, she gasped and arched up with such force that he was almost thrown back. He jerked the silky drawers down her legs and away from her body just as she began shedding tears and begging in earnest. He quickly cradled himself between her legs. Just as she sobbed the word, “Please,” he thrust into her and she cried out.

Ram’s body responded like it had a mind of its own, propelling him into an upward spiral, his drive matching Elora’s. He was caught up in a whirlwind of frantic desire to ease his mate's need and it gave him the strength to concentrate on that instead of his own. His hips pistonned relentlessly until she came. Her muscles clenched, giving him permission to release, making him thunder her name as she milked him into oblivion.

In the brief respite of afterglow, he lay on top of her knowing her extraordinary constitution could easily support his weight. He was so grateful he had lived long enough to understand what motivates men to write love songs and sonnets, long enough to grasp the difference between fucking and making love.

“Ah, Ram. You feel so good.”

He thought that, of all the ways that words could be put together, that had to be the most perfect sentence ever conceived. For a few minutes she was satisfied and passive. He kissed the tears away from her cheeks, stroked her hair, and assured her she was, without question, the most magnificent woman to ever have lived.