Serafina and the Silent Vampire

CHAPTER Eleven


Blair swaggered into the bedroom still mouth wateringly naked, his semi-erection swinging as jauntily as the nearly full bottle he carried in his hand.

“Why does she keep vodka in her desk?” he asked, climbing onto the bed. “To revive your overcome clients?”

“No,” Sera sighed. “For herself. I suppose she’s an alcoholic.”

“Does that make for a good employee?”

“Well, it doesn’t make her a bad one,” Sera said defensively. “She did turn up late for work a couple of times in the early days, and just occasionally, she does slur on the phone after lunch.”

“Can’t you sack her?” Blair asked, pouring a generous measure of vodka into each glass on the bedside table.

Sera passed him the tonic. “No. I knew what she was like when I took her on. If anything, she’s got better. Look, there’s hardly anything out of that bottle.”

“Couldn’t you find anyone else?”

“I wanted Elspeth,” she said uncomfortably. “I owed her.”

“For what?” Blair passed her one of the glasses, and they clinked cordially.

“She stood up for me in court when I assaulted my last foster father.”

“Good for her. In fact, give her a raise. Er—why did you assault your foster father?”

“He hit me first. I may have riled him,” she admitted. “I was a pretty obnoxious teenager. Whatever, by that stage, I didn’t allow anyone to hit me, so I floored him, and he charged me with assault. This was in the garden, and Elspeth, being our neighbor, saw it all over the wall.”

Sera took a drink. “Funny, really, because she’d never spoken to me before. I didn’t think she liked me. Anyway, that was before her husband died. I had a load of applicants for that job, but hers was the name I recognized. She turned up pissed for her interview and was completely stunned that she got it.” Sera smiled reminiscently and took another sip. “I don’t think she even knows I’m the teenager she got out of trouble.”

She became aware that he was gazing at her without blinking. “What?” she demanded. “You’d better not tell her, Blair. If she thinks she got the job by favor, God knows what it’ll do her self-esteem. And her drinking.”

Blair’s lips quirked. “You’re amazing.”

“Not that amazing,” Sera said, raising her glass over her blush. “I nick her vodka. Cheers.”

“Cheers,” Blair said, knocking back the remainder of his drink. Over the rim of his glass, his gaze locked with hers. She could have sworn sparks flew from his eyes as he lowered the glass and set it deliberately on the bedside table. Her heart thundered. “A little more sex, Miss MacBride, would be acceptable at this stage.”

“Would it?” She set down her own glass and spanned her right hand across his broad, smooth chest. “I was thinking a lot more teasing might be in order.”

“First?” he asked, with just enough anxiety to make her smile.

She lowered her head to his nipple and licked it. “Probably.”

****

“How did you become a vampire?”

He’d thought she was finally asleep. He’d watched in fascination as her long, tangled eyelashes had flickered and fallen over her flushed cheek and she’d drifted into unconsciousness. He’d meant to watch her until she awoke, because this night of drinking and f*cking that he’d finally achieved with her had done nothing to end his obsession. On the contrary, she fascinated him all the more: the brash, look-after-number-one and make-a-fast-buck attitude, which, of course, he thoroughly approved of, hid a far deeper, compassionate and touchingly vulnerable soul. She’d been hurt in her young life, physically and emotionally, but from sheer strength of character had dragged herself through it without losing who she was. And the fun and tragedy inextricably bound in her personality drew him like a moth to a flame.

Aside from which, she was a rather wonderful f*ck. All that beauty and all that passion, excitingly eager and inventive—after they’d passed the first delectably straight bout on the living room floor—inflamed him with an intensity he couldn’t recall ever before. Or at least not for a very long time. She wasn’t the most experienced lover he’d ever had, but she’d been happy to try whatever he threw at her, and he’d made sure she knew exactly how much pleasure she gave him.

She’d even let him drink from her again, not once but twice. The first time, she’d been half hesitant, half eager as he’d asked silent permission, but the second time, there’d been no inhibitions at all. In the throes of orgasm, she’d simply turned her head to expose her throat to him, gasping out incoherently something that sounded very like “Please.”

He was a vampire. Of course, he’d taken what was offered, even though he knew it was too much, that she’d feel a trifle weak the following day. He’d taught her to love it, to associate it with the ecstasy of sexual climax. And that, he thought, was a damned good night’s work.

After so much enthusiastic sex and bloodletting, it wasn’t really surprising that she’d fallen asleep. And despite his vow to watch her and learn from her dreams, he’d begun to drift off into the semiconscious state that passed for sleep in a vampire of his age. Until she asked her question: “How did you become a vampire?”

She was looking straight into his eyes, her own exhausted, happy, but insatiably curious.

He said, “A beautiful vampiress bit me and made me.”

She touched his cheek, ran her hand slowly down his face to his shoulder and arm, as if trying to learn who he was from touch. Under her sensitive fingers, his body stirred yet again. “Ailis,” she remembered. “Who were you?”

“When I was alive? Nobody important. My father was a poor Highland farmer, fought and died with the Jacobite army in 1745. Afterward, in the oppression, my mother and I came south to Glasgow to get work. It was a rich city in those days—the height of the tobacco trade with America.”

Her eyes laughed, half admiring, half teasing. “You were a ‘tobacco lord’?”

He hesitated. He’d played the part so often over the centuries that sometimes he almost believed he’d been a rich merchant or a wronged aristocrat. He certainly never went out of his way to prove that he hadn’t been either of those things. He could look haughty and superior with the best, and she was already inclined to be impressed.

He said, “No, I was a low-paid factory hand until I discovered I could supplement my income by stealing from the tobacco lords. I was a pickpocket when I died.”

Her eyes widened at his stark words, but she looked more intrigued than disappointed. “What happened?”

He shifted restlessly, and she followed, fitting her body into his, and somehow his hand was full of her breast. “I was ill and too slow for the job that day, but I wanted the money, and some bastard stabbed me for my pains. I lay there dying in the darkness for what seemed like hours. Then Ailis came.” He smiled. “I thought she was an angel, wondered how come I was going to get to heaven rather than hell. And then she bit me and gave me back—not life, but existence.”

“Were you happy with that? Did you like being a vampire?”

“Sure. My mother was dead by that time, but I used to go and keep company—hang out, you would say—with my disreputable old friends.”

“Is that how you met Phil?”

“Oh no. I met Phil in Edinburgh later. Because, of course, my old acquaintances grew old and died and naturally wondered why I didn’t. I began to understand the difficulties of this existence and traveled for a long time. Europe, America, Africa, Asia, even Australia. I did them all over the centuries, but I always ended up coming back to Scotland. Never where I used to live. I avoid Lochiel and Glasgow, but Edinburgh suits me very well.”

Her eyes were steady on his, uncomfortably perceptive. For the first time, he began to wonder if she’d managed to learn anything about him by touching something in his home last night. She was appallingly sensitive. He’d spoken quite naturally, and of course, she’d sense any untruth, but there were certain things he was not willing to think about, let alone discuss.

Distracting her, he said, “Phil was a philosophy student at Edinburgh University when he died of tuberculosis. Can’t even remember what his real name is.”

A soft light of amusement crept into her eyes. “‘Phil’ is short for ‘philosopher’?”

“Afraid so.”

“Weird that you’ve lived so long… Do you still like being a vampire? Do you never get bored?”

This was the conversation he didn’t want to have. Not yet.

“Boredom is the curse of the vampire,” he said lightly, and to distract her, he rolled her under him and pushed inside her once more. She gasped, and rather to his surprise gave a weary but instinctive wriggle to welcome him. “And you are the best cure I’ve found in decades. So much so that I find it hard to leave you alone. Tell me to stop, tell me to leave you now, or I’ll make love to you again and be trapped here with the dawn.”

A frown twitched at her brow—impossible to tell if it was desire or irritation, but her deep blue eyes were serious, almost luminous as they gazed up into his. He held her helpless, captive, and gloried in it. He wanted to take her, absorb her whole body, sex and blood, and he could do it so very easily with so much pleasure. She’d die happy in the throes of the best orgasm of her short life.

But she would die.

He couldn’t remember the ambiguity of vampire sex ever being this strong before. He stroked her hair, smiling ruefully as he began to ease out of her.

Unexpectedly, she clung to him, holding on to him with her arms around his back and her legs around his hips. “You wouldn’t go now, would you?” she whispered. She sounded almost frightened. “Stay with me. Make love to me again; sleep with me.”

With her words, her body began to move, undulating on his shaft, and of course, he moved with her. She smiled, spurring him on with her blatant triumph. “I think I’ve had more sex with you tonight than I’ve had in the rest of my life put together.”

“It’s about the quality as well as the quantity, you know.”

She bit his shoulder, caressing his skin with her lips, as her hands slid down to his buttocks, drawing him closer into her. “The quality seems just fine to me. I suppose you would get pretty good at sex after three hundred years.”

“You learn a lot,” he admitted, holding the pace, keeping it slow and gentle. “You learn that there’s more to good sex than technique. Although,” he added, giving her the slower version of the little twist she loved, “that’s bound to help. Have you ever been f*cked to sleep before, Serafina?”

Something like a strangled laugh escaped her. She was exhausted and yet craving more of him. He was almost scared by how much he liked that knowledge.

“No,” she managed. “And I can’t imagine I ever will be. Unless it’s really boring sex.”

“Am I boring you?”

“Oh no,” she said fervently. “I can’t believe how often we’ve done this. I should be dead of sex.”

“No, you should just be asleep. Close your eyes; let me do the work. I’m told the happiest sleeps come when you drift off in orgasm.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“Believe,” he said, watching her eyes close. He kissed her eyelids and her lips, softly, gently rocking her toward orgasm. It must have been like a dream to her by the time she came. He felt her convulse around him, was smugly pleased by the smile on her lips as the last fringes of sleep fell over her.

A good man, he supposed, a gentleman, would civilly leave her body at this point to enjoy its sleep in peace. But Blair was a vampire, and, worse, a vampire damnably aroused by what he’d just done to her. Close as he was, he took all his weight on his elbows and helped himself to few more gentle thrusts, until he too fell into delicious climax. Since she was already used to the motion, it didn’t wake her, and afterward, it felt good to lie between her legs, still inside her body, and watch her sleep.

****

There was a new sort of pleasure too in observing the muted sun rise through the filter of her bedroom curtains, while she slept on, curled against his shoulder. But Blair was not a being who wallowed in either happiness or pain. Since her closeness seemed to numb his brain, he got up from the bed to think.

Pacing through the flat, he encountered his clothes in the living room and put them on while he bent his mind to the problem of Nicholas Smith and the banking vampires. He rather admired their bold plan, and the results would certainly make for a different world—no mean outcome for a bored, three-hundred-year-old vampire.

On the other hand, he didn’t care to share or to bow to the wishes of weaker vampires. And there was the promise he’d once made to Ailis. What was best for the community? The question made him uneasy, even though it was all that had kept him alive in recent years.

Hell, exactly how bored had he been since the banking vampires had come on the scene? They’d intrigued and annoyed him and led him to a strange, sweet psychic lover, a woman with whom he could communicate just as if she were a vampire.

Oh no, mind off Serafina. She’d only lead him back to sex and brain numbness. He wandered through to the messy kitchen and set about making coffee. While he waited for it, he thought and absently tidied a bit; then, when the coffee was ready, he paced through the flat, still thinking. Outside, the city had come to life. Car engines mingled with people’s voices and thousands of footsteps as humanity began its working day. Such everyday sounds had always been part of his life, and yet he was isolated from them, as all his kind were.

Except the new vampires like Jason, already at work in his office. Unnatural.

He heard people enter Serafina’s office below and supposed Sera herself should be down there with them. However, he preferred her where she was. She needed sleep, and plenty good food and drink to replace the blood he’d taken from her last night. No biting today, he thought regretfully, although another f*ck would be nice…

A loud but perfunctory knock sounded at the door between the flat and the office. An instant later, the door opened, and someone ran lightly upstairs. A woman. Blair stopped pacing and glanced over his shoulder at the living room door. A rather pretty blonde head appeared round it, followed by a vaguely familiar girl. She’d been with Sera at the Bells’ party.

“Sera? Are you…?” She caught sight of Blair and stopped dead. “Who the f*ck are you?”

“I’m Blair. Who the f*ck are you?” he returned pointlessly, because obviously she couldn’t hear him.

“Where’s Sera?” she asked in panic, perhaps because he hadn’t answered her and she was wondering whether he was a robber or an axe murderer.

Blair took pity on her and jerked his head toward the bedroom. Watching him all the time, the blond girl circled warily around him, then bolted past him into the bedroom.

“Sera? Sera, wake up! Are you okay?”

Some sort of sleepy, leave-me-alone noises came from Sera, followed by more urgent commands from the other girl. Blair strolled toward the bedroom and leaned in the doorframe to watch.

Sera’s friend sat on the bed, tugging and shoving at Sera’s shoulder. Sera herself had managed to lift her head from the pillow to say comfortably, “More sleep.”

“No more sleep, Sera,” the girl said sternly. “It’s after nine. Who’s the dude?”

“What dude?” Sera yawned, struggling into a sitting position. “Oops,” she added, discovering she was naked, and hauled the quilt up for modesty.

“There’s a strange man in your flat. Did you know?”

To Blair’s delight, Sera looked over her friend’s shoulder and smiled at him. “Oh yes. It’s Blair.”

Blair could only see the back of the other woman’s head, but he could imagine her shocked expression, if it matched the sudden rigidity of her back or the sudden increase in anxiety that radiated from her like an explosion.

“Blair?” she repeated, clearly appalled. Her head moved, and Blair knew she was taking in the rumpled state of the bed, adding it to her observation that Blair hadn’t been wearing shoes when they’d met and multiplying the whole by Sera’s sleepiness. “Sera, you bloody idiot, you didn’t, did you?”

The smile faded into something like guilt. The other girl pushed Sera’s head ungently from side to side as if looking for puncture marks. Blair curled his lips. Any wounds created by him would have healed long since.

“Get off, Jilly,” Sera muttered. “I’m getting up. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

The girl—Jilly—stood up. “What about him?” she asked aggressively, jerking her head in Blair’s direction. “Shouldn’t he go away?”

“He can’t, can he? It’s daylight.” At least she didn’t sound disappointed.

With quite obvious bravery, Jilly stormed up to him, her eyes narrowed and spitting with anger. “If you’ve hurt one hair on her head,” she began.

“For God’s sake, Jilly, he hasn’t,” Sera fumed. “Stop the mother-hen act! I can take care of myself!”

She couldn’t, of course. Not against him. And neither could Jilly, although he suspected that together they presented a pretty formidable opposition to the rest of the world. But at least Sera recognized that he was not, at this moment, a threat to either of them. Jilly barged past him.

He glanced over at Sera, twitching his eyebrows, and she gave him a slightly shy, rueful smile. “I need to shower and dress,” she said.

“I think you should eat first. You’ll be dizzy.”

“Don’t be daft,” she scoffed, swinging her legs out of the bed and wriggling forward. “Woo.” She held on to the bed to steady herself. “Shit. What’s the matter with me?”

“Blood loss. I took too much.”

She touched her forehead, rubbing it gently. “Bastard,” she said without heat.

He walked over and lifted the fruit juice from the bedside table where he’d left it earlier. “Drink that. I’ll get you some sweet tea and breakfast. You’ll be okay then, if you take it easy for a couple of days.”

Obediently, she took the glass from his hand and drank half of it down without drawing breath. Then, lowering the glass, she glanced up at him. “You don’t seem very apologetic,” she observed.

In truth, he wasn’t. But the implication of her own regret hurt far more than it should. “Should I be saying sorry?” he asked lightly.

She stared at him, then slowly shook her head. Something like a laugh spilled from her throat. “No. Just don’t do it again.” She lifted the glass to her lips once more and drained it.

Blair left the room to make tea, but he discovered Jilly was before him, banging about in Sera’s kitchen. He watched for a few moments. When he came right in, she shrank away from him and frowned in obvious incomprehension as he spooned sugar into one of the cups.

By this time, the sounds of the shower could be heard from the bathroom. Blair politely handed Jilly the cup for Sera. She seemed almost mesmerized as she took it and scuttled out of the kitchen.

Blair rummaged for a suitable breakfast.

****

Some of it was probably blood loss, but Sera felt oddly numb as she showered and dressed. Somewhere, although her body ached from all the sex it had enjoyed last night, a warm, cozy glow burned, but she was too tired to analyze it. What she’d done last night, what Blair had done to her, almost felt like someone else’s story. But he was still here, in her flat. It had still been dark when she’d fallen asleep. It wasn’t far to his own place, and at the speed he moved, he could easily have made it home before dawn. He’d chosen not to, and she liked that. She liked it too much, considering he was a powerful, murderous being who’d drunk her blood without compunction and to whom one night of sex among centuries was a mere drop in the ocean.

Oh, but it had been good sex. And he’d liked it. He’d kept coming back for more. Was that why he was still here?

Her body flushed all over at the possibility, and she had to sit down on the edge of the bath to finish drying. Overcome with a shyness that was ridiculous after last night’s uninhibited debauchery, she’d taken a pair of jeans and a shirt into the bathroom with her.

“Sera, there’s a cup of tea on the table,” Jilly called to her. “Do you want me to stay? He‘s still here!”

“No, you’re fine. I’ll be down in ten minutes,” she called back.

Emerging, fully dressed apart from socks and shoes, she found a plate of bacon, egg, toast, and tomato on the table. Beside it was another glass of orange juice, a cup of tea, and a large chunk of melon.

Her stomach rumbled. “Tea indeed!” she murmured, smiling, before she realized Blair was standing at the window—the curtains were still shut—watching her. Her stomach flipped. He was one sexy devil, even dressed and barefoot. She swallowed. “How fab is Jilly?” she said lightly and sat down to tuck in.

Blair walked to the table and sat in the chair beside her. His knee didn’t touch hers, but she had the sudden urge to close the distance.

He said, “I declared against Smith’s vampires last night. They may consider it negotiation, which gives us time. But it may, by association, have put you in danger from them. I’ll be around at night, but in daytime, you have to remember that Smith doesn’t need the dark to operate.”

Sera waved her fork and swallowed. “I don’t believe he’ll hurt me. Can his vampires hurt you?”

“If there are enough of them, yes. And they’re creating more every day. I need more information before I can decide what to do.”

She frowned, reaching for the teacup. “We have to oppose them. We can’t allow them to dominate humans like that, use us as animals for feeding purposes and slaves while they hog all the wealth.”

“You speak like a human,” he mocked.

She took a sizeable swallow and laid down the cup. “Funnily enough, I am human.”

“I’m not.”

Her fork hovered over the final piece of bacon. She stared at him. “You wouldn’t go along with it, would you? Not now…” She bit her lip as if she’d said too much.

She had. She could see the implication register in his dark, fathomless eyes. Not now that we’ve had such fantastic sex. Would he imagine she’d done it to bribe him? Had she? Certainly she’d been very conscious of a desire to have him on her side. Because without him, they didn’t stand a chance against the other vampires. But the sex, the surrender, had been about pure lust. And this strange warmth still clinging to the region of her heart.

How the hell could she tell him that?

In any case, did it matter if he wouldn’t be on her side after all? Would she have to fight him too? How did she do that?

Grabbing the last piece of toast from her plate, she stood up, muttering, “I have to go.”

She couldn’t look at him, just walked swiftly to the door, a working girl late for work. It was good to have a role. She didn’t hear or see him move, but he was there at the door before her.

“Be careful,” he warned.

She nodded, raising her eyes from her chest to his face.

His lips quirked. “I’ll make inquiries.”

“So will I.”

He touched her face, tilted it up for his kiss. Her stomach melted, even before his lips touched hers. Sweet, and definitely too short. Then she was clattering downstairs to the office. She felt human again.