“Ryan—” she began.
“I know, love,” he said, then his mouth was on her, moving down to her breast, and she forgot what she was going to say. He was so careful, keeping the sharp points of his teeth away from her tender skin. Yet, she could feel their presence, a hardness behind soft, tender lips and skillful tongue, a danger just beyond the passion. He swirled his tongue around the hard nipple and she moaned just a little.
He turned his head, sliding his tongue between the taut silk of her bra and the other nipple. It hardened in his mouth, sensitive beyond belief, and she cried out again, her hands moving over his neck and shoulders, wanting to draw him nearer to her.
Ryan moved back up, his hands quickly unclasping her bra and pulling it free. His warm chest pressed against her bare breasts, thrumming that strange, otherworldly electricity directly through her skin into her body. She felt it fire through her chest, down her back and through her arms and legs, until it seemed it must shoot out her fingers and toes and eyes and mouth. But instead it was contained, a heat and power that seemed partly him and partly her, something shared and built together.
His eyes were still blue.
“Love,” she murmured, reaching up to touch his face.
He ran his hand through her hair. “Such beauty,” he said, and in that moment, she felt beautiful. Not because he had said so, because words were cheap. Because she saw through his eyes in that moment, saw that he found her beautiful, and that beauty had nothing to do with her face, hair and skin, but what he found within her heart.
He slid downward, caressing her skin with hands, lips and tongue. She felt his fingers grasping at her jeans, and lifted her hips as he pulled them free. His hand wandered down the outside of her thigh, moved over her knee and slid, very slowly, up between her thighs.
Then he stopped, just a bare space away from the edge of her panties, and moved to the other thigh. He stroked downward, away from her, and she moaned in frustration.
His hand swept back up again, stopping just short, then he brushed his fingers against her, still covered by the fabric. The sensation sank in for just that brief second, like a thunderbolt of pleasure shooting up from between her legs all the way up her spine to be let out in a cry from her mouth. Then he did it again, and it was nearly as sharp, nearly as powerful.
“Oh love,” she cried out, reaching down to make him stay there, make him touch her. Instead, he teased her, touching her one moment, and leaving her tense and unfilled the next. Gently he tugged at her panties, and she helped him remove them. The touch of his fingers parting the soft folds, finding the hard bud of her arousal and stroking it gently, sent a raging storm of excitement and thunderclaps of pleasure through her body. His finger penetrated her, and its thrumming heat filled her from within, tightening the tension coiled throughout her body.
“Ryan,” she murmured, and pulled at his jeans. Her hands were shaking and she could not get the buttons undone. He helped her, sliding them off. He was glorious in the firelight, full and hard, and she took him in her hand, feeling the shudders cascade throughout his body. She stroked him gently, as he had touched her, teasing him one moment, leaving him the next. With one hand she explored him, seeking out the textures of his skin, while she let the other hand wander over his body, seeking out and finding pressure points that made him jerk and gasp above her.
Ryan moved over her, his eyes intense. She slid her legs up on either side of him, urging him closer. Her hands wound behind his neck, and she reached up for his kiss. He complied, lowering down to her while keeping balanced above her, between her thighs. First his tongue penetrated her mouth, gliding through her lips in the mating dance of the kiss. Then his hand swept her body in one long caress, from her knee up the side of her thigh, over her hip and up to her breast, where a hardened nipple pressed against the light mat of hair on his muscled chest.
Isabel felt him press against her, sliding just a bit into her, and then withdraw. Just that one touch was electric, a bolt of pure pleasure rocketing through her body.
Then he slid a bit more into her, just past her entrance, and slid back out, waiting.
“Oh, Ryan,” she moaned.
He slid in a bit more and only the trembling in his arms showed the strength with which he was controlling himself. Isabel cried out beneath him, urging him onward, but he slid back out again.
He hovered above her and she cried wordlessly to him, reaching down to grasp his buttocks and urge him into her.
He slid in again, this time burying himself deeply within her. The thrumming heat of him sank in and she cried out, grasping at his shoulders and drawing him close. He did not move for a moment, letting the sensation fade. Then he moved and she instinctively moved with him.
She met each gentle thrust with a thrust of her own, in perfect harmony. It built between them, that huge feeling she had sensed, that great mountain of glorious pleasure that seemed too big to take within herself. It was, she realized. It was too big for one person alone. It was something they shared, something they could feel only together.
He moved faster, and she moved with him. Not only where he filled her, hard and full of heat within her, but in his skin, his eyes, the sounds of pleasure coming from his hoarse, broken voice. It grew between them, not as something being taken from her or drawn from him, but something they created in a tapestry of sounds and sensations that seemed to fill the room, the world beyond completely forgotten.
“Isabel,” he cried, and she felt him begin, his hands tightening on her body, and she felt it too. For an instant she was afraid again, afraid of that feeling that was too big for her, afraid it would overwhelm her.
Too much, it’s too much
, she thought, but Ryan was there with her, feeling it with her, and she joined him completely. It washed over them, wave after wave, a shattering, crystal feeling that filled every empty place within her and had to be let out in hoarse cries and shuddering thrusts.
The heat exploded between them, not within one or the other, but shared and multiplied with each other, a mutual joy that did not fade, but slowed to a rapid heartbeat as he shuddered to a stop. He did not withdraw, but remained within her, and she relished the feel of him, spent inside her, as her contractions slowed to a stop.
Gently he withdrew from her, shifting his weight to his side. Then he drew her close again, as though he could not get enough of his body close to her. She pressed against him, her body warm and satiated. She wanted every inch of her skin pressed against his.
His arms encircled her, and he drew down a blanket from the couch over them, enveloping their bodies in its cocoon.
“Love,” he breathed, pressing gentle kisses against her face. Isabel lay within his arms, and the last of the emptiness, the lonely void waiting to be filled, dissipated away, floating up through the chimney and out into the cool dark night.
* * * * *
He stumbled in the darkness. The world seemed to spin a little, faint and whirling just beyond his sight.
Man, I’m wasted
, he thought, and tried to remember how many drinks he had had that night. At some point, there had been a dark-skinned beauty with flashing white teeth, but then hard pavement beneath his hands and the laughter of drunk college students jeering at him.
He tried to remember where he was, blinking in the darkness. Some alley, somewhere in the back streets, but nothing seemed familiar.
He stumbled toward the street, but the opening was blocked by a cloaked figure. With the streetlights, it seemed as though rays of light flowed from it, some magical creature to guide him.
“Hey,” he said, aware on some level that his words were slurring. “Can you help me? I’m lost.” But it seemed to come out
canoo hep ee, im losht
.
“Shhh,” said the voice, and he shushed. It drew close, faceless and shadowed.
He looked up at it, and screamed.
Teeth.
Chapter Five
Isabel gazed out her bedroom window, wrapped in her favorite robe. She should have been bone-tired, even exhausted from almost no sleep. But instead, the light seemed to have a different cast to it, as though it had been specially filtered just for her, and she felt only calmed and at peace as she combed out her wet, tangled hair.
A memory tried to invade her mind, of Ryan’s smiling face pressed against her chest, of murmurs between kisses buried beneath the wedding-ring quilt, of a shared cup of water dribbled onto her breasts and carefully removed by his eager tongue. Shivers still tickled her spine, and she couldn’t seem to stop smiling.
It had never been like this, not with Duane or the lovers she had had before him. Sometimes it was love, sometimes, just sex. In the cool morning light, she was forced to admit with Duane it had mostly been sex, though he had made her laugh.
Ryan had not wanted her to go. He wanted her to stay and spend the day with him. But Isabel had to go to work, and as much as she wanted to play hooky, she knew she had to see Duane. He obviously knew it was over—his hurt and anger at Nocturnal Urges had not exactly been a sign toward reconciliation. But she owed him a real explanation.
Isabel shivered, her hair still wet and cooling from the shower. She felt as though Ryan’s kisses were imprinted on her skin and longed to feel them again. She laid down her comb and went into the kitchen to make some coffee.
The doorbell rang.
Frowning, Isabel went to the door as the coffee perked and gurgled in the pot. Duane stood in the doorway, haggard, and smelling like beer.
“Oh Lord,” Isabel said, pulling him inside. “You look like hell, Duane. Go, sit down.”
Duane stumbled over to the table, sprawling into a chair. Isabel poured a quick cup of coffee for him, which he sipped unmindful of the heat. It must have burned his tongue.
“Duane, are you all right?” Isabel asked, and then mentally kicked herself for such a stupid question.
“Think it’ll snow?” Duane asked, staring at the television.
Isabel sat opposite him. “What happened to you?”
“Drunk,” Duane said.
“I can see that,” Isabel said. “This isn’t like you.”
“Wasn’t feeling myself. Someone broke my heart.”
Isabel cast her eyes down. “Oh, Duane,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to lie to you before, truly I wasn’t. I was lying to myself about how I felt. I-I’m in love with someone else, Duane. It’s over with us. I hope…I hope we can still be friends.”
The words hung in the air between them, and Isabel wished she could mitigate them with some kindness, some softening that would ease the blow. She glanced up at Duane, and he was staring at her.
“The leech? You’d really leave me for…”
“Don’t call him that,” Isabel snapped. “I’ll be as gracious as I can, Duane, but there I draw the line.”
Duane shook his head. “I’m sorry, Isabel.” He walked over to the television and turned it on.
“Duane, I—” Isabel’s voice trailed off as Duane switched the TV to the early morning news.
“Finally, a break in the case of the vampire murders in downtown Memphis,”
said a chirpy female anchor voice faking sincerity.
“Police sources report they have a suspect in the killings, a rogue vampire with a history of violence who works at the club Nocturnal Urges, near which most of the victims were killed.”
The image switched to a live shot of Freitas leading a suspect through a gaggle of television cameras up the steps of the main police station. The crowds parted for a moment, and Isabel saw Ryan’s angled face just before he disappeared from view.
“Oh no,” Isabel cried. “No, it’s not possible.”
“He did another one last night,” Duane said. “I really am sorry, Isabel. I know you don’t like to be fooled.”
Isabel felt as though the world were spinning beneath her. “But he didn’t,” she said. “He couldn’t.”
Duane slid an arm around her shoulder, and to his credit, it felt like an attempt to comfort, not to cajole.
“Last night?” Isabel asked.
“I’m sorry, baby,” Duane said, and the nickname grated on her as it never really had before.
“Last night? But he was with me last night!” she exclaimed, and almost didn’t notice the way Duane flinched. “He was with me; he couldn’t have hurt anyone last night!”
“With you?” Duane said.
“I have to tell Annie,” Isabel said, walking quickly back toward her bedroom. “I have to hurry!”
She reached for her clothes, and realized that Duane had followed her into her bedroom. “Duane, I’m sorry, I have to go.”
“You can’t,” Duane said hoarsely. “You’re going to tell the world you shacked up with a vampire?”
Isabel was suddenly furious. “What’s bothering you more, Duane? That I’m leaving you, or that our friends will find out I’m leaving you, or that they’ll find out I’m leaving you for a vampire?”
“You can’t do this to me,” Duane pleaded.
Isabel pulled on her clothes quickly—heaven knows he’d seen her bare skin before. “I’m sorry, Duane. I’m going.”
Duane stepped in front of her. “I won’t let you. You can’t humiliate me like this.”
Isabel suddenly was not afraid. “You can’t stop me, Duane. I have to help him. I love him. I’m sorry it will hurt you; I wish I could do something about that, but I can’t. The only way you can stop me is by hurting me, and we both know you’re not going to do that.”
She stood face-to-face with him, and he stared down at her. Then he seemed to shrink a little, saddened with an enormous weight that broke her heart a little to see. He stepped back into the hallway, letting her pass.
She stopped beside him, and put her hand on his for a moment. “You know what? You’re going to be fine without me, Duane,” she said, not looking at him, just squeezing his hand. “You always were. It’s your pride that’s been hurt, not your heart. I was never the center of your world, Duane, and you were never the center of mine. I hope…I hope only good things for you.”
Isabel let go of his hand and walked away, down the hallway and out the door. Somehow, she knew the key would be on the kitchen table when she came back.
* * * * *
Isabel went through the metal detectors, trying to hide her nervousness. But it must have showed anyway, because an officer came over to her in the main hall as she stared at the directory.
“Can I help you?” said the officer, whose nametag identified him as Patrolman Wyben.
“I’m looking for Detective Freitas,” Isabel said.
“Homicide,” Wyben said, pointing to the stairs on the far side of the lobby. “Up two flights, ask the desk sergeant.”
“Thank you,” Isabel said, heading across the lobby with more bravery than she felt. Just being in this building made her feel guilty of something.
Climbing the steps, she approached a man at a desk helpfully labeled DESK SERGEANT. “Excuse me, could you tell me where I can find Detective Freitas?” Isabel asked.
“Sit down,” Desk Sergeant said without looking up. “I’ll tell her you’re here.”
Unnerved by his brusque tone, Isabel sat down. Desk Sergeant kept writing on his forms. He didn’t pick up the phone or get up to go speak to anyone. Unless he was communicating psychically, Isabel thought, he wasn’t letting anyone know she was here.
Isabel waited, feeling more foolish by the moment. She watched the clock tick by, and when ten minutes had passed, she got up and stood before Desk Sergeant again.
“Excuse me,” she said. “If you could just direct me to—”
“The detectives are very busy,” Desk Sergeant snapped. “Just leave a message.”
Isabel’s face flushed. “I can’t, I need to see Detective Freitas.”
“Leave a message,” he insisted.
Isabel’s face grew hot, and she was suddenly angry. “Fine,” she snapped. “The message is, ‘Dear Detective, you’ve got the wrong man, Ryan was with me all night and could not possibly have murdered anyone. Love, Isabel Nelson.’”
The desk sergeant’s head shot up. “This isn’t funny, miss.”
“Absolutely right!” Isabel said. “So, can I please see…”
“Just a minute,” the desk sergeant said, and got up to disappear back through a door locked with a keypad. Isabel waited, growing more irritated by the moment.
A taller, younger man stepped out of the door with Desk Sergeant. “Hi, Miss Nelson, I’m Sergeant Ken Henry,” he said, holding out his hand. Isabel shook it perfunctorily. “Would you come with me?”
Isabel followed Henry though the hallways, past rows of desks with men talking on phones. Somehow, she’d expected a police station to be dingy and scary, but this looked like an insurance office, she thought.
Henry led her into a smaller room with a table and two chairs. She sat down, suddenly nervous again. Henry sat opposite her. “So you told the desk sergeant you know something about the vampire cases?”
“Yes,” Isabel said. “I saw you arrested Ryan. He could not have killed anyone last night. He was with me.”
“This is Ryan…” Henry popped open a pen and held it above a pad of paper.
Isabel’s face suddenly grew warm. She realized she didn’t know Ryan’s last name. She had never asked him.
“This is really embarrassing,” she said. “I guess his last name… It never came up.”
“But you spent the night with him,” Henry said.
Isabel blushed even harder. She made a mental note of questions she was going to ask Ryan as soon as they got out of here, beginning with his last name.
“What time did you see him, and where?” Henry asked.
“It was about ten o’clock,” Isabel said. “First I went to Nocturnal Urges…”
“But Ryan Callahan didn’t work last night,” Henry said.
Callahan.
Isabel nodded. “He wasn’t there. So I went to his apartment.”
“Where is that?” Henry asked.
Isabel gave him the address. “It’s a fairly nasty place, but his apartment is very nice, kind of a warm cabin-style with pictures of Ireland and maybe the last functioning fireplace on that city block. That ought to convince you I’m not making this up.”
“Sorry,” Henry said, not sounding the least bit apologetic. “How did you know where he lived?”
“Elyse told me,” Isabel said. “She works at Nocturnal Urges.”
“Elyse is a vampire?” Henry said, and Isabel nodded. “Callahan, too. Did you know that?”
“Of course I knew that,” Isabel said.
“Nasty bite you’ve got there,” Henry said, pointing at her half-healed wound. “Callahan?”
“Yes, but—”
“Did you report it?” he pressed.
“It wasn’t like that!” Isabel protested. “He didn’t mean it…”
“But you knew he was a vampire,” Henry pressed.
“So what?” Isabel said. “That doesn’t make him…”
“The sort who might bite?” Henry said.
Isabel stared at him. “He was with me all night, that’s all you really need to know, isn’t it?”
Henry glanced down at his pad of paper. “What time did you leave Callahan’s apartment?”
Isabel thought fast. “About three a.m., I think. I got home about three-thirty, so that would seem about right.”
“So how did you know he’d been arrested?” Henry asked.
“TV,” Isabel said. “Now you’ll have to let him go, right? He hasn’t hurt anyone.”
Henry stood up. “Thanks for giving us your statement, Miss Nelson. I’ll see it gets to Detective Freitas.”
“Wait,” Isabel said. “You have to let him go, he didn’t hurt anyone!”
“Sorry, that’s not up to me,” Henry said, opening the door.
Isabel stood up. “Can I please see Detective Freitas?”
“Detective Freitas is…”
“Very busy, I heard,” Isabel said. “Does she even know I’m here?”
“That’s really—”
“Annie!” Isabel shouted out into the hallway. “Anne Freitas! Can you hear me?”
Henry reacted instantly, placing a restraining hand on her arm. “Ma’am, I have to ask you to lower your voice or—”
“ANNE FREITAS! ANNE FREITAS!” Isabel shouted, and other detectives started to get out of their chairs. Isabel kept shouting, and soon there were more hands on her, roughly pushing her down the hallway, more voices telling her to be quiet or she’d be put under arrest, and she kept shouting louder and louder until a voice cut through like a hot knife through butter: “All of you shut up and let her go!”
The crowd parted, and Isabel shook off Henry’s hand as Freitas came through the group. “What the bloody hell is going on here?” Freitas snapped. “Isabel, have you gone nuts?”
“Not yet, give me another half-hour of this,” Isabel replied.
Henry glared at Isabel. “Sorry, Detective, I was trying to—”
“Can it, Ken,” Freitas snapped. “I think I’ll re-interview this witness, if you don’t mind.”
Henry shrugged, and handed over his pad of paper with obvious contempt. Freitas took it, and led Isabel back into an interrogation room.
“Well, you sure know how to get attention,” Freitas said.