“Puh-lease,” she scoffed, and began walking again. “That’s old-school. How about blowing a gas line beneath a building or something simple like that? Working for the mob boys did teach me a thing or two. Besides, the other masters have been sending their hit men out to smoke me ever since the night I died. I need to let them know two can play that game. So, are you in or what?”
“You are mad,” he whispered, pushing a lock of her windblown hair away from her face.
“I’ve been called worse,” she murmured. “Much worse.”
“And if I go along with this insanity?”
“What’s in it for you?” She smiled.
“No. That is not my entire question.… Well, perhaps it is, but it was poorly phrased.”
She placed a palm gently at the center of his chest and watched him swallow hard. “My bad.”
“This will not wipe out the species, Tanya. As long as we’re left, as long as one is left, there will always be Vampyre. It is like a virus, just like polio still exists, the bubonic plague still exists. Evil still exists no matter how many dirty bankers and politicians—”
Her deep kiss stopped his words just as his full mouth and total embrace stopped her breath. “We can let tomorrow take care of itself and save blowing up a few blood clubs for another night.”
“If you claim me, I will help you write this book.”
He’d obviously gone into her mind searching for whatever pleased her, and that he’d even bothered to do so carved out a very special place for him within her eerily still heart. There was something impossible to resist in being wanted dead or alive.
She touched his cheek with trembling fingers. “You think too much, Anastas Baranov.”
Only inches from her face he stared into her eyes. “No, Tanya … search and you will see that my mind is blank only for you now.”
*
He was right to insist that they go down into the vault. Daylight surely would have caught them unaware. But as far as she was concerned, she’d already burst into flames. His touch was like hot embers, delicious long-awaited torture. Each kiss brought delirium, and yet he cried out as she planted more against his chest.
Slowly knowledge seeped into her brain; it was the reverb of her caresses echoing off his touch, trading pleasure back and forth down to the cellular level. His French kiss between her thighs left her weeping; warm, rough palms cradling the delicate skin of tightened nipples left her panting. Passion fusion. It was all too insane. Bodies fitted together as though welded. Sweat and sweet, pungent love essence was the lubricant that slicked all boundaries and made them move together like greased gears.
His hair in her fists, she watched him arch beneath her and give her his throat. The temptation was too great to bear; the deep knowledge rising within her, impossible to ignore. In a blinding flash of pleasure, he was marked as hers. Claimed and wanted, dead or alive. She bit him and came so hard that she was afraid she’d drain him dry.
Anastas’s wail rent the air as his fists wound themselves in the crimson satin sheets while ejaculation spasms tore through him. Her name became a broken mantra panted out in two syllables as the tremors ebbed. She lifted her mouth from his throat and dabbed her blood-wet lips with the back of her hand. Tears filled his eyes and then he suddenly gathered her up, sheets and all, hugging her tightly and rocking her hard.
“Never have I been claimed,” he said in a harsh whisper that fractured against her neck.
“Nor have I,” she whispered back, fighting a sob. “I’ve never been here before either.”
*
Tanya waited patiently as one by one, mind-stunned humans found an inexplicable need to exit the massive warehouse building. Pulsing music made the night air throb red. Some took a smoke across the street, staring out blankly at the water. Some walked around aimlessly trying to hail a nonexistent cab. A few claimed to be hungry for pizza and fare not served at the bar, and they squabbled with the huge vampire bouncers guarding the exit doors.