Sex and the Single Vamp (11 page)

“I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for Cici,” he said quietly, unable to utter more, to explain further. He needed time to figure out what he was going to do if he couldn’t find a cure.

“So…is that a yes?” Andy asked.

Deacon rose to his feet, ending the conversation with his change in location. Andy followed his lead, standing up and circling the abused and seriously damaged truck to slide into the passenger seat.

Deacon started the engine, leaving the parking lot in silence as he made his way back to his office and apartment. He needed to get on his computer, reach out to some contacts, and find a cure for Cici. He’d tap into the old country people, the ancients who knew the most about this kind of stuff. And he still needed to find the asshole who’d ordered this hit on Cici. He was roadkill, a walking dead man, and Deacon was going to deliver the final blow. Work would help him center, focus his energies into a solution and give him clarity.

“I should call and see how Cici is doing,” he said as he started to press the telephone icon on his touch screen.

“I already did. That was Mya on the phone as we left.” Andy had his phone out again, scanning information and messages as they scrolled across his screen. “The doc says she’s healthy with the body of a normal twenty-year-old woman. All the curse did was un-vamp her. Crazy.”

“Twenty? That’s how old she was when I turned her.”

“Well, Mya said it’s like she’s gone back to that time, no evidence of ever being a vampire. She even had Marguerite go out and buy Cici human food since all you have in the fridge are bags of blood.”

“I want a second opinion. Get the best human and Others doctors from Johns Hopkins to examine her. She probably needs vaccinations or something.” His mind reeled with just how vulnerable she was in this state. The thought of all the stuff that could kill her—disease, famine, zombies—was terrifying. “And I want two of the crew outside the apartment and down in the lobby at all times. Nobody gets in to see her without my okay, and she doesn’t go out. Got me?”

“Cici is not going to like this.”

Deacon hit the button for his underground garage entrance and submerged the truck in the gloom of the semi-dark basement. He drove too fast in the confined space and shoved his truck into a spot close to the elevator, bringing it all to a shuddering halt.

Nope, she wasn’t going to like this but he wasn’t caving.

“You find the cure and I’ll handle Cici.”

Chapter Fourteen

Deacon was avoiding her.

Cici stepped out of the ginormous shower in his bathroom and grabbed a fluffy towel from the rack. The fabric was so soft, but she still winced with pain as she wiped the water droplets off her skin. Bruised, sore, and tender, she had forgotten what lingering pain felt like. The ache of bones rattled and flesh abused was something she’d cured with a pint of blood and a brief rest for over two centuries. Waiting for her body to heal itself sucked. Being human sucked.

She was weak, slow, clumsy in this body that was the same and yet so different. She needed sleep and food three times a day. Keeping herself alive and well was one big pain in the ass.

Cici ran a finger along the line of reddened puncture marks on her biceps—vaccinations. They’d hurt like a bitch and given her a slight fever the first night. But the doctors from Johns Hopkins insisted she needed to be protected from anything that could make her sick, modern-day diseases that her body had not been subjected to by being a vampire. They also delivered the news that she could not be remade the old-fashioned way. They rattled on with big medicinal words that would have racked a gazillion points at Scrabble, but all she cared about was the end result—she was human unless they could reverse the black magic. No biting would work.

The doctors had no solution for that problem, and when they left with looks of pity on their faces she’d thanked them and ushered them out the door. Fast. She didn’t need pity. She needed a cure. She needed to talk to Deacon.

Deacon had sent them. He had ordered the second set of tests, reports, and shots. Deacon had cared enough to bring by the best of the best. But she hadn’t seen him in four days. He was here in his apartment. Dirty clothes materialized in the hamper in the bathroom. Damp towels were draped over the rods adjacent to her own. The bed was warm next to her body when she dragged herself out of the depth of coma-like sleep, the imprint of his arm draped across her body like a brand. Deacon was a ghost in his own home while she ached to have him hold her when the nightmares came.

“Knock knock.” Mya’s face popped around the doorjamb, her smile faltering when she looked at Cici’s body. “Ouch. I know this is better than yesterday, but those bruises are brutally ugly.”

“They look worse than they feel.” Cici grabbed the fluffy white spa-quality robe that Deacon had told Marguerite to get for her and slipped it on. She turned to the mirror, grabbing a hairbrush to comb the tangles out of her hair. One task at a time. One hour at a time. Breathe in. Breathe out. That’s all she could handle.

“Here, let me,” Mya said as she came up behind her and took the brush from her hand. Cici didn’t resist, allowing herself the comfort of her friend with this simple gesture. It brought tears to her eyes that she didn’t hold back, letting them streak down her cheeks and wash away some of the stress she’d carried around since the party at the embassy.

“You’ve been my rock, Mya. I don’t know…don’t…”

Mya leaned forward and kissed her wet cheek before she resumed her task. “Hey, it’s okay. Just cry it out. If anyone deserves a good bout of weeping and wailing, it’s you.”

“I don’t want to cry. I want to see Deacon.”

“He still hasn’t come by?”

“No. Not really.” Cici wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of the robe, sniffling loudly before reaching for a tissue. “Andy comes by and gives me progress reports on the search for a cure and finding my attacker. But Deacon? Nothing. He sneaks in and out of here when I’m asleep and always puts me off when I ask for him from one of his crew.”

“Stupid man,” Mya muttered as she tossed the brush on the counter. She grabbed Cici’s shoulders and turned her around to face her. She was back in the form of the blond-haired pretty woman David liked so much, and Cici was beginning to get used to it. It was a little sedate for Mya, but Cici really needed the comfort of someone who looked the part of a big sister right now. “He’s scared.”

Cici scoffed. She’d never seen Deacon scared in all the decades she’d known him.

“Whatever. That man is too arrogant and pigheaded to be scared.”

“No. He’s scared shitless and he’s avoiding you so he doesn’t have to deal with it.” Mya shook her head. “Vampire. Human. Fey. A man distracts himself with work and he’s thrown everything into finding the answers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for getting you back into your vampire state before we have to discuss wrinkle creams, but he needs to focus on the whole picture.”

“And what is the whole picture?”

“I don’t know, but it’s incomplete if you’re not part of it.” Mya gave her a shake and smiled. “You’re going to have to be the one to break the stalemate because I don’t think he’s got the strength to do it right now.”

Cici considered her words. She didn’t want to be the one to go to him. She was the victim here and she deserved to be fussed over, comforted by the man she’d been sleeping with. Deacon should have rushed to her the night of the incident and spent those first terrifying hours holding her, making the nightmares go away. But he hadn’t been there or since then, and that wasn’t like Deacon at all. He didn’t run from trouble.

Mya was right. He wasn’t himself. She needed to go to him so they could get past this and work through it together. She needed him, and if the way they’d felt about each other a few nights ago was any indication, he needed her, too. They’d wasted over two hundred years already. Now they were wasting more precious time. Unless she’d read too much into it. Deacon ruled out any kind of long-term commitment between members of their kind, but he was adamant about no relationship at all with a human. And now she was fully human.

“I’m going now before I lose my nerve.” Cici tightened the belt on the robe and left Mya standing in the bathroom. Her legs were already shaking, but she forced her feet to propel her forward, one in front of the other, over the cool hardwood floors and the plush area rugs until she stood in front of the door that she knew led to Deacon’s private office. The crew from his company was out in the main hallway, the public entrance, and she was glad she didn’t have to pass by them in a reverse walk of shame.

Cici raised her hand to knock, but her motion stalled out in midair. If she gave him a heads-up, he’d bolt and she’d lose this opportunity. Chances are he’d heard her approach with his vampire hearing and her element of surprise was just an illusion, but she wouldn’t deliberately give it away.

The heavy, nickel-plated handle was solid and cool against her palm as she pushed it down and leaned against the heavy door. It opened without a sound and she walked inside. The room was gloomy, only a desk lamp and another by the sofa providing illumination in the early twilight. Deacon was in his chair on the phone, scribbling notes on a legal-size pad of paper.

“I understand, Stefan, but this is important.” He paused while the other guy said something in response to his comment, his dark brows furrowing together as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Everything about him screamed stress and frustration, and she wanted to go to him and smooth away all of it. “I know I’m asking for a lot from the Conclave, and you know I wouldn’t if it wasn’t important. Maude owes me a favor from that issue with the Greeks in the sixties and I’m calling it in. I need the cure and you guys told me I’d have it yesterday. I know it’s buried in one of the ancient books stowed in your dusty library, so get off your asses and find it.”

Deacon threw the pen down on the table when the speaker answered him again. He leaned forward on his elbows, his entire body poised to leap through the phone and wring this guy’s neck.

“Fuck you, Stefan. You’re going to help me or I’m getting on the next flight and kicking your ass. I can get the word out pretty damn quick that the Conclave doesn’t pay its debts, and see how many of us disgusting soldier-types come to your rescue the next time you need help. Stop jerking me around.” He nodded as the guy squawked on the line, his voice loud enough for her to hear it. “That’s more like it. Call me or Andy the minute you know something.”

He slammed his phone down on the desktop, swearing as he ran his fingers through his long hair, which fell tousled and wild around his shoulders. Paired with the outline of his muscles defined under his black T-shirt and the way his jeans gripped his thighs, Cici was swaying toward him with desire. Moisture dampened her sex and the soft material of the robe rubbed sensually against her nipples. She missed him. Craved him. She moaned low in her throat and Deacon went perfectly still at his desk, shoulders tense with awareness.

He lifted his eyes to her own and the flare of bronze heat almost knocked her knees out from under her. Cici walked forward the two steps necessary to grab the desk for support and Deacon snapped backward in his chair, his hands shooting out in front of him as if to ward her off. They trembled. His large calloused hands visibly shook and it broke her heart. Terror, longing, panic, desire, morphed his expression so quickly that it was hard to keep up. It wouldn’t have been noticeable to someone who didn’t know him.

But she knew him

“Cici, what are you doing here?” he asked, his voice low and velvety rough.

“I need you, Deacon.” She released her hold on the desk to move closer to him. She stopped just in front of him, close enough to feel the whisper of the denim fabric of his jeans brush against her legs as he shifted in the chair. “I need you.”

She reached for the belt at her waist, slowly undoing the loose knot that held the front of the robe together. She fumbled with her task, unwilling to look down and give up the breathtaking view of his gorgeous face.

The knot gave way and she let the ends slip from her fingers. She loosely grasped the lapels of the garment and pulled them back, letting the weight of it drag down her arms and body before pooling at her feet. The cooler office air whispered across her sensitive skin, puckering her nipples into tight buds and cooling the heated warmth gathering between her legs.

“Don’t.” Deacon half groaned, half whispered, his hands dropping to his lap. His eyes ate her up, devouring her as he tracked her from the top of her head where her red curls were still damp from the shower and clinging to her skin, down to the place where her toes peeked out from the edges of the discarded robe.

His eyes snapped back to her own when she advanced even closer and straddled his lap. The denim of his jeans was heavy but soft against the inside of her thighs, the exposed folds of her sex, as she settled on top of him. Cici ran her hands up his chest, drinking in the hard muscles, the well-worn cotton, surprised at the coolness of his skin as she cupped his face with her hands. When she’d also been a vampire he’d felt warm, but now the difference in their body temperatures was noticeable.

“I need you, Deacon. I need you to hold me, touch me.” Cici leaned in farther, brushing her lips lightly against his own, teasing him open with her tongue. “I need you to fuck me.”

She took his mouth then, aided by his deep groan of need in answer to her words. He was the same and yet different as she explored him with her tongue. His taste was still spicy, but his mouth was cold and she shivered in anticipation of what it would feel like against her breast. His fangs, fully distended, were tantalizing as they slid against the sensitive inside of her lip.

Her thighs clenched together as she ground down on the thick erection encased in the denim. Deacon was gently pushing upward with his hips, the roughness of the fabric heightening her excitement, his length brushing against her sweet spots.

The tension was building in her body, the coil of arousal and emotion tightening until it would have to either give way or break her. She dove in for another kiss, determined to make herself irresistible.

“No.” Abruptly Deacon pulled back, his hands grasping her shoulders and holding her still on his lap and her mouth away from his own. Cici groaned in frustration as she struggled against his restraint. She would have been able to fight him in her vampire state, but as a human she had no choice but to obey. “I can’t do this. I will hurt you.”

“No, you won’t. You never hurt me.”

The bronze fire in his eyes dimmed as he looked at her, his mouth twisted in a grim line of stubbornness. “You were stronger then. Now I’m too strong and with the way I feel…I don’t know if I could control it.”

“Don’t treat me like glass.”

“But you
are
glass!” he said, his fingers digging into her shoulders as he gave her a little shake. She bit back a wince of pain, knowing that if he saw her discomfort he would end all this right now. “I could break you with one hand, like a stem of the finest crystal. You’re so vulnerable and fragile.”

“What I am is lonely and scared. I’m stronger than I look, and I can take you. I trust you.” Cici reached out and fisted two hanks of his hair, yanking him forward so that she could deliver a swift, brutal kiss to his mouth. “I love you.”

“Oh God.” Deacon shut his eyes, leaning his forehead against hers as Cici let the nuclear word bomb detonate and settle around her in a haze of
what the hell did I just do
?

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?” She kept her voice steady, holding back the tears that threatened to fall. She would not shy away from this. She would not be a coward. “I meant it. I love you.”

“I can’t handle that right now. I’m barely hanging on here.”

“I’m scared, too. So let’s comfort each other. Work this out together. I’m the same. This shell is nothing.” She pressed a soft kiss to his lips, her heart stuttering when his tongue reached out to meet her own. She grabbed one of his hands and guided it down to her core, letting him feel her heat, her need of him, as she murmured against his mouth. “Please, Deacon. It took so much for me to come to you. Please don’t send me away.”

The few seconds he hesitated felt like years as Cici’s heart grew colder and colder and her chest tightened with embarrassment. She was ready to pull away, grab the robe and escape, when his other hand moved from her face, slowly trailing along the skin of her bare shoulder to weave in her hair and tug her even closer.