My Familiar Stranger (36 page)

Then the next surge began, signaled by low moans in the back of her throat and building in intensity. She grabbed for him. He rolled to the side and used his fingers to massage in tiny circles and thrusts, giving succor and easing her toward a release.

Over the next two hours he made love to her twice more, once with Elora on hands and knees pushing back so hard he had to struggle to stay on the bed. That was supplemented with his deft fingers, trained to manipulate guitar strings with subtlety or strength, helping her to ride out three more electrifying orgasms, each increasingly taxing her already overwrought body.

At one point he heard her phone ring in the other room, but let it go to message.
Has to be a wrong number. Who would be calling at this hour?

He lay on his back thinking he was so glad she had drifted off to sleep because no power on heaven or earth could stimulate another arousal. Then she started moaning in her sleep, so tired she was resisting waking, but eventually the drug won and her eyes flew open.

She rolled toward Ram and grasped his flaccid penis, inanimate velvet, but was not deterred by the lack of response.

“You truly will be the death of me.”

She gave him a wicked smile he didn’t know she had in her arsenal of expressions. Then, without warning, fanfare, or foreplay, bent and sucked him into the heat of her mouth where her tongue began teasing a turgid response with lazy circular motions while she cupped and fondled his testicles.

His eyes widened at the same time he gasped. His shaft bloomed to life like stop motion photography when she took him into her mouth and he laughed out loud in utter surprise.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

Her gaze locked on his she pulled her mouth away, keeping the suction strong so that her mouth made a pop on release. She smiled broadly.

“Romance novels,” she said, looking very self-satisfied as she straddled him and fed the very erect reward for her effort into her very willing self. She began a leisurely glide with an air of conquest he would swear had nothing to do with aphrodisia. The frenzy had subsided. The look of panic was gone.

He watched her undulating body with hooded eyes thinking there never had been a male so fortunate or a woman so perfect.

“Beautiful,” he whispered.

He had spent the wee hours worshiping his female, ministering to every part of body, weaving proclamations of love with murmurs of adoration and devotion. During the minutes when light was first breaking, a hint of pink and gold rising to overtake the gray, they lay on their sides facing each other. Her eyelids were heavy, trying to close, and he knew it was finally over.

Her eyes opened suddenly like she’d forgotten something. She smiled ever so slightly, and whispered, “Thank you.”

“Darlin’ girl,” he reached over and cupped the side of her face rubbing his thumb over the softness of her cheek one last time, “these have been the sweetest hours of my life.”

When Ram woke he was spooning with Elora, his arm thrown around her protectively, covers pushed aside because of her higher body heat. Blackie was standing on his side of the bed behind him and whining to go out. He would have liked to spend time savoring waking to a naked Elora tucked into his lap, but Blackie was growing more insistent by the second. Thinking all else had failed, Blackie gave Ram a tentative lick on a butt cheek. Dogs have no sense of propriety.

Ram jerked in surprise and turned to glower at the dog who, delighted to have gotten his message across, wagged his tail and turned in circles.

Rising carefully so as not to disturb Elora, he pulled the covers back over her, then smiled at her soft snoring and at the way his clothes had been left in a haphazard trail. He suspected that everything, good, bad, or indifferent, was going to make him smile that day.

He gathered up her clothes and arranged them neatly on a chair, turned down the flame in the gas fireplace, zipped up his leather jacket to cover what was left of his torn shirt, got Blackie’s leash and headed outside.

When they returned, she was still sleeping peacefully. So he gave Blackie some kibble and kidney, refreshed his water and left a note on the bar. “Do not be embarrassed. - R.” As an afterthought, under that he wrote. “Or mad either.” Then he left quietly to go next door for a shower.

When Elora woke the first thing she noticed was that the fire was going, which was odd because she didn’t sleep with it on. She then realized she was naked which was even more disturbing because she’d never slept that way in her life. It was also weird that the clothes she’d worn the night before were folded - sort of - on the chair by the closet. Again, something she wouldn’t do.

Looking at the time she wondered why Blackie hadn’t awakened her for his regular morning outing. She pulled on her robe for modesty’s sake because Ram sometimes let himself in. On the way to check on Blackie she saw the note and groaned out loud. She reasoned that she must have gotten so drunk that she didn’t remember anything after stopping at the lounge. Hot Butter Bacardi indeed.

She saw that Blackie had fresh water and food and guessed Ram had taken care of him. Then, she remembered her state of undress and the clothes left on the chair and thought, "Don’t be mad, huh."

A shower did nothing to take the edge off her indignation. As the bathroom grew steamier from the hot water, her anger escalated from irate to seething, first conjuring images of how the lascivious incident must have played out and then imagining what she would do to Rammel Hawking for taking advantage of her when she was inebriated.

She might have suspected Ram of perpetrating a bit of duplicitous voyeurism, but she knew he wasn’t a rapist. When she noticed some vaginal soreness, she attributed it to being stuck with the spin bike on the end; the one that no one wants because it’s absolute torture to the crotch. She promised herself to forego spinning the next time no other bike was available.

After pulling on a turtleneck and lululemon go-anywhere pants, she went back in the bathroom to blow dry her hair. She sensed, more than heard, someone come in.

Poking her head out and around the corner she saw that Ram had let himself in and that he was looking freshly showered, relaxed and happy, wearing that little boy smile that would be so disarming if she wasn’t utterly infuriated with him.

She put down the brush and blow dryer and stalked toward the living room.

He held out a cup toward her. “Brought you a hot chocolate.”

Looking at Elora, his expression was starting to falter.

She grabbed the note and waved it in the air.

“Don’t be embarrassed? Don’t be mad?” He set the cup down and blinked. “How could you?”

“I, em…”

“How did I end up drunk, Ram?”

“Drunk?” He said it like he wasn’t familiar with the term.

“I don’t even remember having more than one drink.” He blinked again. “You brought me back here, undressed me, and left me in bed naked.”

“Now, wait a minute.”

Ram was beginning to recover from the shock of learning that, not only did she not remember their night together, but she was accusing him of behaving like a deviant - a painful affront coming from her.

“I did no’ undress you.”

“No? And you didn’t leave my clothes on the chair either.”

“I did bring you back here last night. I did take Blackie out for his walk this mornin’ because you were no’ up to it. And you’re welcome by the way. I did pick your clothes up where you left them on the floor and I did put them on the chair. You’re welcome for that as well.”

She thought she knew all of Ram’s facial expressions. She didn’t know how to read this one, but she was sure it wasn’t shame. That could only mean she had jumped to a faulty conclusion. Her shoulders slumped as she started to feel guilty about the unjustified ambush.

“I’m sorry. I know there’s nothing worse than being accused of something you didn’t do. I just… I’ve never been drunk before. Waking up and not remembering what happened is a new thing.” She glanced toward the bedroom door. “And I don’t like it.”

Ram thought it best not to point out that she had none of the symptoms associated with hangovers.

“Happens to the best of us.”

“Well, now I am embarrassed.”

He smiled. “I’ll do my best to make sure it does no’ happen again.”

Then the reality hit him like a drive-by. He’d been so caught up in the drama. And the sex. He hadn’t stopped to wonder how she ingested the drug, who gave it to her, or why she was a target. He couldn’t confide in Storm or Kay without revealing what happened and that would compromise Elora. So he had to figure it out by himself. And quickly.

***

The second week was so uneventful that B Team started to feel like serving drinks and club security were their real jobs. Friday, near midnight, Elora approached a table for drink orders and found herself looking down at three pale eyed men with blank expressions buying drinks for a young woman who appeared agitated. The look on the girl’s face was alarming to Elora for some reason that was just out of reach. In any case, she knew she needed to alert Ram without taking her attention away from them long enough to lose them.

There were too many people between her and the bar for him to see there was a problem. Likewise, the crowd prevented visually locating Storm or Kay. She waited until the three were absorbed in what they were doing, then, putting a booted foot on one of the bench seats lining the back wall, she stepped up onto a table top hoping to catch Ram’s eye.

Even though she was only there for a second, he saw her head pop up and locked on to her location in the room. He swung himself over the bar not caring if he mowed down a few casual drinkers.

He was thanking the heavens that she was tall because, after he got past the throng standing by the bar, he could see her heading for the restrooms. He ran to get there ahead of her, but she had already placed herself between the disguised tunnel entrance and the three vampire attempting to abscond with a victim.

Ram was charging toward them.
Great Paddy’s balls afire. She'lll be the death of us both.

She had staked one vamp and engaged another. The third had pulled a knife, but, instead of the annoying girl, he suddenly found himself facing an experienced and quite lethal Black Swan knight who had more cause than usual to be angry.

Ram would have put down the third vamp in little time with little difficulty had it not been for the two women who chose that exact moment to emerge from the Ladies’ room giggling, oblivious to danger, and with the worst timing possible.

Taking full advantage of the situation, the vamp with the knife slashed one of the women across the side of her neck with gruesome results as jugular blood began to spurt in time with her accelerated heart rate like a macabre fountain synchronized to “dance” with music.

Since keeping innocents safe from harm is the overriding mission of Black Swan, the top priority and first commandment of a knight’s directive, Ram had no choice but to put himself in front of the second woman and protect her with not just his skill, but his body as well. Even though he was distracted for less than the one second it took to move into place, it gave the vampire the opening necessary. Ram deflected the descending knife so that it missed his own jugular, but it caught the side of his face and sliced open a deep gash that descended down his chest. As Ram went into shock, the vamp grabbed him and threw him back into the wall.

Elora looked around in time to see Ram’s head hit the wall and his eyes roll back. She shoved the vamp she was fighting and lunged toward Ram catching him before he fell. The two vampire disappeared, with their victim, behind the secret door as Elora lowered Ram to the ground. There was so much blood she had no way of telling how badly he was hurt.

The interest that the second woman had generated with her screaming caught the attention of the other half of B Team along with Istvan Baka.

When they arrived, Kay took off his shirt and held it against as much of the wound as he could while Storm ran to street level to call in an emergency. He had to get out on the sidewalk because there was too much noise inside the club to be heard on the phone.

Elora looked at Kay. “Stay with him. Promise me.”

“What are you doing?”

“You know what I’m doing, Kay. Baka is going with me.”

She looked at Baka for confirmation of that and he nodded.

Kay pressed his lips together. “Storm is going to seizure when he finds out.”

She glanced down at Ram. “Keep him alive.”

Kay’s jaw clenched as they had a wordless conversation. With his eyes he said he would go to hell himself to bring Ram back if he had to, that he wasn’t planning on losing another teammate, and that he didn’t need her to tell him that.

It took a minute or two for Elora’s eyes to adjust to the low light in the tunnel system. She and Baka had been running for about ten minutes, following faint sounds ahead. Suddenly she realized she was running alone. She turned to see why Baka had stopped. He had a very strange look on his face and seemed to be trying to say something. She started back toward him just before he crumpled to the dirt floor. When he went down, she saw that Ghost was standing behind him and, even in the dim light, she could see that he was wearing a hideous, vindictive gloat on his doughy face.