Part 14 (1/2)
”My knees are shaking,” she whispered. ”Just hold me. Hold me, Willem.”
He pulled her close, and she nestled her head on his shoulder, in the crook of his neck. He threaded his fingers in her hair and ma.s.saged her there. ”I can't do this tonight, Sarafina. G.o.d, you don't know how bad I want to, but, I-”
”Shhhhhh.” She pressed a finger to his lips. ”Don't worry. Let Sarafina take care of everything.” When she spoke, her moist lips moved against the skin of his neck, and it made him so hot he thought he was going to go into meltdown.
And then he felt her teeth. There was no warning. She just opened her mouth and bit down, hard, stabbing deep into his throat. He jerked and tried to pull away, and he was strong, despite his leg, but she held on. Biting down harder, and sucking, and the pain jolted through him, and then it sizzled and changed into pleasure. Her mouth. Her tongue. Her teeth embedded deep in his flesh. G.o.d, it was good. She was drinking him, and he was loving it, whispering to her to take him, take all of him, to drink her fill.
And then he was fading, falling. He didn't feel the sidewalk when he landed. He didn't feel any pain, or heat or cold, or much of anything at all except this haze of pleasure.
A car pulled up beside the curb. A man got out, and dragged him into the back seat. Sarafina got in beside him, and the other man climbed behind the wheel, and then the car was moving.
Sarafina stroked his face, his hair. ”I couldn't drain you. No, not you-even though...” She sighed, started over. ”I need to know everything you've been up to, Willem. And you'll tell me, won't you, precious?” She drew her hand to her lips, pierced her palm with an incisor, and then pressed it flat against his mouth.
Blood, her blood, welled and touched his lips, his tongue. A jolt of heat and an o.r.g.a.s.mic shudder ripped through his entire body, and he grabbed for that hand, held it to him, lapped at the tiny amount of fluid, s.h.i.+vering in pleasure with every taste.
Then she drew her hand away. ”Yes,” she whispered. ”You'll tell me all about it. This connection between us. How you found me. And why you were following those two girls. Won't you, my precious one?”
He thought, at that moment, he would probably do anything she wanted. And he wondered why she had twin rivers of tears flowing down her cheeks. Then he closed his eyes and knew nothing for a while.
”OhmyG.o.dohmyG.o.dohmyG.o.d, did you see that?”
Amber tried to tug Alicia away from the tall windows in the hotel lobby, but the second she let go, Alicia was back again, peering across the street. Amber grabbed her again, jerked her away and held on this time.
”I think she killed him. My G.o.d, I think she killed him,” Alicia said. There were tears standing in her eyes.
Amber's throat went dry. She moved nearer the window, peered outside. ”No, she didn't kill him. She took him with her. If she'd killed him, she'd have just left him there, right?”
”I don't know.”
”She would. She would have just left him.” She didn't really believe it herself. She'd never seen a vampire kill someone before. It shook her. ”Sarafina,” she said softly.
”What?”
”The woman's name was Sarafina. She never said, but I picked it up clearly. We should probably remember it. She might be...trouble.” ”She saved us,” Alicia said. ”But, Amber, why would she take him alive? What could she want with him?”
”I don't know.” Amber tried to shrug off the heavy sense of guilt that was weighing on her.
”I don't care. Why should I? He was following us, Alicia. He couldn't possibly have been up to anything good.”
”How can you be so sure?”
Amber pursed her lips. ”Fine, you want to be sure, we'll make sure.” Again she took Alicia's hand, tugging her firmly toward the elevators. ”Come on.”
Alicia came. She kept craning her neck to look back, but the limo was long gone, Amber knew. She wouldn't see a thing. They took the elevator up to their floor, got out and went not to their own room, but to the one next door. Amber didn't even hesitate, just twisted the k.n.o.b and pushed with her shoulder until the lock gave.
”Jesus, you're going to get us thrown out,” Alicia whispered.
Amber dragged her inside, closing the door behind them. Then she let go and began going through the man's things. There wasn't much. A handful of clothes in the dresser. A little calculator. Some shaving stuff and a hairbrush. Some pills in a brown plastic prescription bottle.
She noticed the two boxes on the bedside stand- one of which had headphones attached.
”See?” she asked, pointing.
Alicia looked at it, shook her head.
”It's some kind of spy c.r.a.p. He probably has our room bugged.” Amber yanked up the headphones and snapped them over her ears, then turned on a switch.
Then she froze as a tinny male voice came through the device.
”So where the h.e.l.l are the girls? Shouldn't they have been up here by now?”
”Amber, I don't know-” Alicia began, but Amber held up a hand to silence her. Alicia's eyes widened, and she came closer. ' 'What? What is it?'' she whispered.
Amber held one of the earpieces away from her head, and Alicia leaned in and listened.
”The boss said he saw them come through the lobby. They'll be here any second. Will you just be patient?”
”I'm gettin' sick and tired of waiting.”
”What the h.e.l.l is our option? Go back to headquarters without them?”
”I was thinking more of popping 'em in the head on sight, tossin' their carca.s.ses into the trunk and taking 'em somewhere to wait and see which one wakes up.”
”s.h.i.+t, we don't know for sure that either one of them would.”
”Not even the half-breed?”
”No way to tell. That's why Stiles wants her. We let her get past us again, he'll have our heads.”
”You're not s.h.i.+tting. I was with Stiles the first time he got his hands on the 'breed. I was a rookie. It was only a couple of weeks old.”
”Yeah? What did it look like then? I mean, you know, was it...gross?”
Amber and Alicia locked eyes.
”Nah. Looked like a regular baby. You'd never know it wasn't human.”
”Half-human, I thought.”
”Not the way Stiles sees it.”
Amber tugged the earphones off her head, set them quietly on the bedside stand. ”That guy Sarafina took-he must be one of them,'' she said to Alicia.
”We have to get out of here, Amber.”
Amber set her jaw. ”Do you know what those a.s.sholes did to my mother?” she whispered.
Some of the things on the man's bedside stand started vibrating, and the pictures on the walls shook slightly. ”I'm gonna kill 'em, Leesh. I'm gonna kill those two, and then I'm gonna go find the other one and finish him off, if that vampiress hasn't already done it.”
Alicia grabbed her arm and said just one word. But she said it with so much fear in her voice that it got Amber's attention, made her stop up the rage that was building inside her.