Soul Sucker (17 page)

“Now try the latch.”

She reached for it and it sprang free, allowing her to push on the panel and reveal the still, fetid blackness above the elevator. Even though she hadn’t been short of air, the sight of the open escape hatch made her breathe more easily.

“What now?” she asked.

“Get down, and we’ll make sure the elevator is set in the off position. We don’t want it starting up as we’re climbing out.”

“That would be bad.” She climbed down and waited while Vadim searched the control panel once more.

“Got it. I think.”

She found herself touching his sleeve. “So how are we both going to get out of there?”

“Do you remember all your jokes about me being a chicken?”

“How could I forget them?”

“Well, we’re going to use that flying ability to help us get out of this elevator shaft quickly.”

“I can fly now?”

She sensed him smile. “Not quite. We’ll start by you climbing out onto the top of the elevator and then wait for me to join you. You’ll have a better sense of balance and the ability to jump higher and faster.”

“Like a helicopter?”

“Sort of. You’ll notice the difference when you have to jump or reach for something.”

Ella glanced dubiously up at the hatch and then back at Vadim’s broad shoulders. “Will you fit through there?”

“I have no choice.” He cupped her cheek, his fingers warm. “I can’t let you go by yourself, now, can I?”

“It’s okay. If you got stuck, I could probably manage it from here and get help.”

He kissed her softly on the lips. “Thank you. Now up you go. I’ll bring your backpack and jacket up with me.”

She did as he asked and managed to pull herself out of the service hatch without any issues. It really did feel as if she had an extra spring in her step. Whether Vadim’s magic was still helping her or not, she didn’t care. It took all her resolve to neither look up or down, but to concentrate on the small square of the hatch where she hoped to see Vadim emerge. Magic swirled around in the heated darkness and Ella raised her shields. One minute she was alone and the next Vadim crouched beside her.

“There should be a ladder against one of the walls.” Vadim’s shoulder brushed hers as he leaned forward. “Ah, here it is. Do you want to go first?”

Before he even finished speaking, she was reaching for the ladder and grabbing the metal rungs. She started climbing and again, found it easier than she had anticipated. Had she gained Vadim’s legendary fitness along with his magic? That was something she was more than willing to appropriate.

It seemed to take forever to reach the first set of metal doors that led back into the SBLE offices and the obstructed stairs.

“Should we keep going?”

“It’s up to you. We can try and get in here or head up to the lobby level.” Vadim’s voice echoed from below her. “How do you feel?”

“Not too bad. I think I’d like to keep going.”

She suited her actions to her words and kept climbing, her gaze fixed on each rung of the ladder as she took hold of it.

“There’s a light up ahead,” he called. “I wonder if the lobby elevator doors are open?”

“That would be really cool.” She was tiring now, her breath coming out in great big puffs. She kept climbing, though, and saw the light spill over onto the ladder making the metal glint gunmetal gray.

“It’s about five meters above you, Ella. Keep going.”

“What the hell is a meter?” She kept going, her hands aching from gripping the bars so tightly. Light flooded into the elevator shaft now and she was finally able to place a hand on the cold white marble floor of the lobby and crawl out. There was no one there to see her dramatic entry so she stayed on the floor facedown like a landed fish and just appreciated the space around her.

“Are you all right?”

She rolled over onto her back and stared at Vadim. He looked the same, but different, as if she no longer saw just the outer, beautiful shell. There was something in his eyes that made her feel a soul deep connection to him...

What the crap was she thinking? Survival had obviously turned her brain to mush.

“Thanks.” She struggled to stand up, avoiding his proffered hand. “I really should be getting home now.” Without another word, she headed for the outer doors. He caught up with her on the sidewalk. It was surprisingly dark outside, the long shadows of the high buildings turning everything a murky brown.

“Ella. Ms. Walsh, I don’t think you are in any fit state to go home on the ferry alone.” He glanced at his watch. “In fact, you might have missed the last one.”

With distant surprise, she realized she was trembling and that the last thing she wanted to do was be alone.

“I have to get home and lie down. I’m a wreck.”

He took her hand and she swayed toward him.

“Come back to the hotel with me.”

“I can’t do that.”

His grip tightened. “And I can’t leave you alone. You are too vulnerable to meet anything from Otherworld tonight.”

“Says who?”

He met her gaze. “Me. And before you get mad, I feel the same. We’re both vulnerable at the moment.” His thumb caressed hers. “Come back to the hotel. You can stay in my room and I’ll bunk up with Alexei.”

“You can’t tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“About us having sex.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want anyone to know.”

“But...”

“Morosov, you should be agreeing with me. If Alexei finds out you’re fucking another empath on your team, you’ll be hauled back to Russia so fast your ears will bleed.”

He studied her for a long moment. “Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“I won’t say anything for the moment, but someone is going to notice if you don’t go crazy on schedule.”

“We’ll deal with that when it happens.” She pulled out of his grasp. “You never know, maybe we’ll have solved the case before that and you’ll be gone.”

He didn’t look convinced. “But you’ll come back to the hotel?”

Ella’s whole body shook with exhaustion. “Okay.” She let him reclaim her hand and walk her through the streets. It wasn’t her style, but for once she needed the physical support,
his
support if she was honest. At some point during their fiery sexual encounter she’d felt more connected to him, more
sure
of him than of any other person in her life before. And that incredible sensation of trust still lingered. Dammit, she had no intention of delving into that emotional minefield until she’d slept on the matter—preferably alone.

Vadim ushered her into his hotel room and gave her a passkey.

“I’ll be right next door if you need anything.”

“Thanks, I’ll definitely holler.”

“You don’t even need to do that.” He tapped her forehead. “Just call me.”

“How?”

“Think it.”

She scowled at him. “Damn it, Morosov, don’t get all odd on me. I’m too tired.”

He kissed her forehead where he’d tapped it. “Get some sleep.”

She closed the door in his face and wandered in to inspect his room. It was incredibly neat and not just because housekeeping had been in. There wasn’t a single garment thrown on the floor, an open suitcase or a discarded book. When she got the chance to stay in a hotel she positively enjoyed throwing her stuff everywhere. Ella went into the bathroom and surveyed the ranks of Vadim’s cleaning products, his electric razor and his two types of aftershave.

A shower would be good. Her whole body ached. She put on the water and amused herself messing up the order of Vadim’s stuff. When she stepped under the water, she sighed and tried to relax. The scent of Vadim’s lovemaking curled around her and she thought back on those few frantic, possibly life changing minutes. She’d never think about elevators in the same way again...

* * *

Vadim shut the door into Alexei’s upgraded suite and listened carefully. He suspected his friend was out, but you never knew with Fae and he didn’t want to deal with Alexei right now. Fae were far too good at detecting sex. Vadim picked his way through Alexei’s discarded belongings and went into the bathroom. A shower would revive him and then he could go and check on Ella.

Ella.

With a sigh, Vadim sat on the edge of the toilet seat and contemplated what he’d done. There had seemed no other option. He had a terrible sense that from the moment he’d walked back into Otherworld he’d been compromised. But why this? Why a human mate? Was it some kind of punishment? He raked his fingers through his hair. There wasn’t any point in trying to understand. He of all males knew that the ways of Otherworld were beyond comprehension. If they wanted him to know why, someone would make sure to come and spell it out for him.

With a groan, he stood up. He didn’t want to stay with Alexei. He wanted to be in the shower with Ella and then in bed with her. Maybe he’d let her out after a week or two, but it would be close...

“
Shit
,” Vadim muttered. “This is bad.”

Mating with her had set off all sorts of instincts that he’d very carefully quashed. If he disappeared, left his job and his painstakingly built identity, what would happen to Ella? Did a mated empath still go mad if they were abandoned or was it now a done deal? He groaned, the sound echoing in the tiled space. But he couldn’t disappear completely, could he? Current events had proved that. The Fae-Web had indicated Ella was important to his own survival. He had to stick with her at least until the case was solved. Nobody came to talk to him about the craziness, so he took off his clothes, got into the shower and rather unwillingly washed all traces of Ella Walsh from his body.

Chapter Thirteen

“Ella!”

Ella woke up to find someone leaning over her and fought a scream. A familiar hand cupped the side of her face.

“It’s me. What’s wrong?”

She managed to open one eye and glare at Vadim, who was hovering an inch in front of her. Either she’d left the bedside lamp on, or he’d put it on when he’d come in.

“Get off me.” She turned her head and bit his thumb and the hand disappeared.

“Ouch.” He sucked his thumb into his mouth. “You were shouting in your sleep.”

“Loud enough to wake you next door? This must be a shit hotel.” She sat up. “How did you get in?”

“I had another key.” He sat beside her on the bed and she realized he only wore his boxers. “I heard you in my head. You woke me up.”

She winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I must’ve been having a nightmare.”

Without asking he walked around to the other side of the bed and settled himself beside her as if he belonged there. “It felt like Otherworld to me, so I thought I’d better check up on you.”

She stared up at the ceiling. Somehow his belief that she’d be okay with him lying on her bed irritated her. “It’s an old favorite dream of mine. I get trapped in an elevator and some handsome dude insists I mate with him.”

He sat up. “You had a nightmare about that?”

“Just kidding. The nightmare is the reason why I got scared of elevators and small places in the first place.”

“So that phobia was caused by a dream?”

No,” she sighed. “Keep up, can’t you? The experience triggered the nightmare, and the nightmare is triggered by new experiences, get it?”

“I think so.” He rearranged the pillows behind his head as if he was settling in for the night. “So what happened originally?”

She looked sideways at him. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because if you’re going to wake me up, I’d like to understand when I need to worry, and when you’re just processing an old fear.”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” she said more sharply than she had intended. “I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”

He didn’t say anything, just looked at her until she leaned back against the pillows. She suddenly realized she was naked under the covers and that all her clothing lay in an untidy heap on the bathroom floor. In movies, the women always managed to gracefully drape a sheet around them before they made their dramatic exit. She’d have to get the sheet out from under Vadim and then untuck it from the sides of the bed and she didn’t see that working at all.

“Okay, when I was about five, just before I got sent off to school, I was at home with my siblings playing hide and seek. One of our favorite places to hide was in a big Chinese chest on the upper hall landing. We were told not to get in there because there was no safety catch, but none of us took any notice. So, I was looking for a place to hide and decided to go in there for the first time. The thing was, when I put the lid down, I thought one of my other cousins had already got in there, so I turned toward them and—there was no one there.”

Vadim edged closer and put his arm around her shoulders. “What happened then?”

“I looked down and there was something on my leg. At first I thought it was a spider but it was too big.” She swallowed. “It was also creeping up from my ankle to my knee and whatever it was had long black nails and hairy skin.”

“Troll?” Vadim stroked her skin with his thumb.

Ella nodded. “At that point, I had no idea what it was, just that I had to get away from it. I tried to stand up and push the lid off the chest but it was too heavy for me, and I started to scream.”

“Did it bite you?”

“Just as I felt its teeth graze my skin, my oldest brother appeared, opened the box and picked me out of it. I was screeching like a lunatic. He threatened to put me back in there if I didn’t shut up, so I stopped. No one believed what I said. They just put it down to an overactive imagination.” She managed a shaky laugh. “I didn’t know until years later that Otherworld creatures consider young empaths a special delicacy.”

“And you’ve hated small spaces ever since.”

“Yeah. Lame, eh?”

“Not at all.” He hesitated. “One of the reasons I like things to be in order is because my early years were lived in such chaos.”

“Makes sense,” she murmured, guiltily aware of the mess she’d made in his bathroom. “Did Alexei come back?”

“Not yet. I think he’s out with some Fae kin. He could be hours. They have an amazing tolerance for alcohol and sex.”

“Lucky them.” She allowed her head to remain on Vadim’s shoulder. “Did you get any sleep at all?”

“A little.” He glanced at the clock on the bedside table. “It’s about two in the morning now.”

She considered how safe she felt with him next to her.

It freaked her out.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked softly.

“It’s your bed.”

“Then I’ll stay.” He rolled onto his side and got up. “I’ll just go to the bathroom, okay?”

While he was gone, she pulled down the covers so that he could get in beside her. For the first time in her life she felt like one of those women who needed a man sleeping next to her. Was that what mating had done to her? Made her dependent?

“What the hell did you do to my bathroom?”

She sat up and blinked at Vadim. “What’s wrong?”

He pointed behind him. “You trashed it in less than three hours.”

“Oh for God’s sake, it will clean up fine. I just moved a few things around.”

“
Deliberately
.”

“Maybe.” She flung herself down on the sheets. “Make up your mind, Morosov. Continue having your hissy fit, or shut up, turn off the light and come to bed.”

The light snapped off and she waited in the darkness, not sure if she wanted him to storm off in a huff, or join her. Her breath hissed out as he came down on top of her, his skin warm from the shower, his cock already hard and pressing against her stomach.

“Hissy fit?” He kissed her. “You are...”

She kissed him back and he shut up, his mouth gentling, his body aligning against hers, his already wet shaft pushing between her legs. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, trapping him, but he didn’t seem to object, only surged deeper and set up a steady thrusting rhythm that ignited all her senses, both physical and psychic. At some point, she grabbed his hair and pushed him over onto his back and rode him that way. He didn’t seem to mind, his mouth busy with her breasts, his clever fingers on her clit, her ass...

This time, when she came, the pleasure was even more powerful and she felt it reciprocated in him. She sank down over him and just lay there until her heartbeat returned to almost normal. His hand threaded into her hair and he lay quietly beneath her.

“Go to sleep, Ella,” he murmured, “and no more nightmares.”

So, she did.

* * *

“I don’t think you should go home.”

Vadim’s unshaven jaw was set in an obstinate line that made Ella want to punch him. It was late morning and for once the sun was streaming in through the window of the hotel. They’d shared an amicable breakfast, which had swiftly deteriorated when Ella had stated her intention of leaving.

“It’s not up to you, is it?”

“As I’ve already said, we need to stick together.” He sat on the side of the bed looking disgustingly attractive despite the fact that he’d just come back from an early-morning run.

“Why? Didn’t you have enough sex last night?”

His eyes narrowed. “No. Did you?”

Despite everything her girly bits perked up at the very thought of even more sex. She clamped her lips together before she started whimpering and instead spent a moment retying the sash of Vadim’s silk robe around her waist.

“I’ll be quite safe at home.”

“Like the other empaths?”

Ella scowled at him. “I’m seeing Rich and Andrew on Sunday and I’ll hang with my neighbors for the rest of today. Satisfied?”

“Not really.”

“I’m going to shower and then I’m going home.”

He didn’t say anything but she was aware of him staring at her as she shut the bathroom door. If it were up to her lady parts, she’d be straight back in that bed and she’d never get out again. She turned on the shower. What was even more frightening was the thought that Vadim seemed to feel the same. He made love like a god and had the stamina of a full-blooded Fae.

Below the noise of the shower, Ella allowed herself a quiet moan as she thought of Vadim moving over her. She had to go home and think this through. Antagonizing him wasn’t going to work, so she’d have to try something else.

When she emerged from the bathroom, Vadim was finishing his breakfast. He looked up as she retrieved her coffee cup.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Walsh. Of course you should go home. I’ll walk you to the ferry.”

“Seriously?” She eyed him over the rim of her cup. “What brought about this change of heart?”

He sighed. “I was being overbearing.”

“What’s new?”

“It’s the most obvious way of sending you running, though, isn’t it?” He met her gaze, his blue eyes serious. “And I don’t think we can run away from this one.”

“Don’t say that.” Ella looked distractedly around the room. “I can’t find my clothes.”

“I hung them up for you in the closet last night.”

“You did?”

“Of course I did.” He pointed at something on the bed. “I also bought you some panties in the shop downstairs on the way back from my run.”

“That was...really nice of you.”

“You know me. A neat freak through and through.” His smile was devastating.

Why
did
she
want
to
leave
again
?

Ella went across to the closet and found her disreputable garments hanging neatly between his snowy white shirts, khakis and dark suits. As she turned with the hangers in her hand, Vadim nodded and went toward the bathroom.

“I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll just have a quick shower and we can go.”

While she waited she got dressed and finished off the last donut without getting any of it on herself. Part of her wanted to leave while he was in the shower, but she didn’t want him to think she was afraid or anything. And she wasn’t afraid. She was just...
conflicted
.

Conflicted was a good word.

She had no idea how to process what had happened to her, especially when Vadim was close. All she could think about when she saw him was sex. Just keeping her shields in place was extremely stressful when she sensed that if he chose to, he could blow them away like rice paper. She supposed she could do the same to him, but she didn’t want to. All she’d wanted was to get out of the elevator alive. She had no desire to
bond
with him. He was still way out of her league.

“Are you ready?”

His calm voice made her jump and turn away from the window. He was dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt that stretched over his chest and cuddled his biceps. She just about stopped herself from drooling and throwing herself at him.

Ella grabbed her backpack and jacket. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Two hours later, she was huddled on her own couch, biting her nails, her mind racing as she pretended to watch some baseball. She wished Vadim was sitting beside her with all the intensity of a fifteen-year-old girl on her first crush. It was ridiculous. Once again, she longed for Laney. If her best friend had gone ahead and mated, Ella might have had a better idea about what to expect. This
longing
was unexpected and terrifying. They hadn’t even kissed when Vadim had left her at the ferry; she’d been too terrified to make any physical contact in case she dragged him back to bed. She didn’t think he would’ve stopped her either.

Ella found her phone and checked through her contact list. Mari Jones had worked at SBLE for a year as Ella’s superior before being transferred to Seattle. She was a mated empath and the closest Ella had to someone to talk to about such a very peculiar subject. As she tapped the number, Ella found herself wondering why OCOS harped on about the death angle of not taking a mate, and not on the unforeseen issues that arose when you
did
take a mate.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mari? It’s me, Ella Walsh. Do you have a moment to talk?”

“Sure!” There was the sound of yelling in the background and a door closing, shutting out the noise. “That’s better. I’ve shut the kids in with their dad. That’ll give me at least ten minutes before they notice and try and break down the door.”

“How are the kids?”

“Dave’s driving me mad and I think Nick is psychic but it’s early days yet.”

Ella frowned. “How old is Nick?”

“Three, but there’s definitely something funky going on with him.” Mari sighed. “You know how it is.”

“Are you okay about that?”

“Not much I can do about it, is there? His dad is one-eighth Otherworld, so it was more likely. And things have changed since we were kids. They don’t take them away to special schools at such a young age anymore.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Anyway, what can I do for you? I’m sure you didn’t call to talk about my kids.” Mari paused. “By the way, I heard about Laney. What a terrible thing to have happened. Is that why you called?”

Ella swallowed hard. “No, I’m just about dealing with that. I miss her terribly though.”

“I’m so sorry, hon, and you have no one to talk to about empath stuff. No wonder you called me. I’m so glad you did.”

“You’re way too nice. I don’t deserve it. I’m a terrible friend.”

“We empaths have to stick together. You’re at the potential end of your career. I
totally
understand how draining it becomes when you’re close to twenty-seven. It’s not quite so busy out here. I don’t think the Otherworld creatures like all this rain. So, what’s up?”

“I’m less than two weeks away from my birthday.”

“Have you changed your mind and decided to take an OCOS mate?”

“Well, put it this way, due to unforeseen circumstances my OCOS mate and I happened to already know each other. We accidentally pre-empted the prescribed date for us to contact each other through OCOS, and we hooked up.”