Bound by Blood

Chapter 3

Gregor crouched on the fire escape, panting, doubled over with desire. With grim determination he gathered together the scraps of his sanity. He would not go back in there. He would not free his throbbing cock and fuck her until the headboard slammed against the wall and her screams woke the neighbors. He would not sink his fangs into her jugular and taste her true heart’s blood. He would make do with the gamey, bruised blood he’d drawn from her ankle. He would get the hell out of Queens and go back to Tangiers, where everything made sense.

He’d erased her wounds. Mission accomplished. Guilt alleviated. Now he could get on with his life. If he decided later that he really wanted to settle down with a mouthy librarian…a mouthy librarian who tasted like heaven on earth and purred while he sucked on her. No. A mouthy librarian who slept in Hello Kitty sheets and dressed like she lived in a nursing home. In other words, if he ever lost his mind, he’d know exactly where to find her.

Maddy knelt on the bed, hyperventilating.

That was a dream.

That was not a dream.

His touch lingered all over her, a sticky honey stain on her skin. Her nipples tented her nightgown. Her panties were wet. If that had been a dream, it was one hell of a dream.

But what else could it be?

She took off her glasses and rubbed her face.

Here was the scenario: Gregor Faustin, owner of the most decadent club in New York, had become bored with the scores of beautiful, coked-up women gyrating around him all night every night. So he decided he’d get off instead by licking the feet of the poor schlep he’d run down earlier that day. Therefore he broke into her apartment, made her orgasm by sucking on her ankle, and vanished into thin air.

That, or it was dream.

Ockham’s Razor said all things being equal, the simplest solution is the best one.

She let out a big breath.

Some dreams made no sense at all in the light of day. This would be one of those.

Feeling much better, Maddy climbed out of bed and padded to the bathroom. Halfway there she realized she was walking, not hobbling. Her ankle was a little tender, but she was walking on it. In the bathroom she put her foot up on the edge of the tub. It looked normal.

Her heart started to beat fast again. She closed her eyes and tried to slow the racing with slow breaths. When it calmed, she propped her left leg up. The long cut was gone, along with the road rash.

She wheeled around to look in the mirror over the sink. The sight of her own wild eyes scared her. She lifted her hair. The temple scrape was gone. The skin was pink, nothing more.

For a crazy moment she wondered if she’d even been in an accident at all. Maybe it was all part of the same dream.

But no. There were her ruined pants, crumpled on the bathroom floor. She ran out into her sitting room and found the red parka, still wet and torn all along the left side.

Maddy ran back to the bathroom and turned her left shoulder to the mirror. It was blooming with bruises.

“You missed them, you bastard,” she said aloud. “Dream, my ass.”

Tangiers had never looked so welcoming to Gregor, and that was saying something, because for five years it had been the love of his life. He handed the car over the valets, instructing them to do something about the swamp in the passenger seat. The bouncers at the door stepped aside, and he passed into his sanctum.

Honey fell into step with him as he made a quick tour of the floor—a habit of his whenever he was nervous. The club was just stirring and stretching itself awake. The DJ was laying down a sultry, steady groove. He walked among the tables in the back, acknowledging his guests, scanning for details, sending servers flying with brief hand gestures and significant glances.

“Doesn’t some of your skin have to breathe?” he asked Honey as they wove their way past the bar. “Or is that a myth?”

Tonight she graced Tangiers in white latex—from her hood to her white gauntlets down to her wicked white boots with Lucite heels. She looked like a dominatrix from the planet Xenon. Whatever Honey wore, a fire crew had to trail behind her, beating out the flames that erupted in her wake. What most people didn’t understand was that she hid a sharp business acumen under all that flash. One day she’d leave him, start her own club, and then he’d have to kill her.

Not really.

Honey ignored his question. “Sol says you can call him until midnight, but he won’t stay up later, even for you.”

“We don’t need Sol. She won’t sue.”

“What, is she insane?”

“Pretty much.” Gregor shrugged. “She says she doesn’t want anything from me.”

The thought irked him still—that she wouldn’t accept anything from him. That frustration drove him into her room, drove him to close her wounds. Now she could bullshit all she liked, but he knew she did want something. Him. Not that he’d ever see her again, he reminded himself.

But even that little triumph over her damned self-sufficiency was satisfying.

“At least I can pay for her ruined clothes.” Gregor took a little notebook from his breast pocket and jotted down her name and address. “Send her a gift certificate that will cover a coat and a pair of pants.”

Honey nodded. “A grand, say?” Honey did not shop at the Bargain Barn. “What store do you want it from?”

Distracted, Gregor scented the air and frowned, raising his fingers to test the currents. The circulation system was supposed to have been fixed that afternoon, but it was still fucked up. “What? Oh. Wherever old men and lunatics shop.”

“Gotcha. Bloomies.”

Once all immediate business was covered Honey left him, and Gregor retired to his private back room for a little quiet before the night began to roll. As absorbed as he was in his own thoughts, he was well into the room before he realized it was not empty.

In the moment he had only a fleeting impression of a pair of pale, naked breasts and his brother silhouetted against them. Alex was feeding. Gregor turned on his heel and headed for the door.

“Gregor, don’t go.”

He recognized the languid voice rising from deep in his sofa. It belonged to Sara, a feeder. Alex and Gregor shared a fondness for willing blood donors (unlike their brother, Mikhail, who only hunted), and Tangiers provided them in quantity. Equally languid, Alex lay alongside her, lapping at her small, pointed breasts. He had opened a small vein on each of them, and the blood was pooling in the valley between.

Gregor returned to take her extended hand, crouching down at her side. “Yes, darling?” He dipped his finger in the little pool and brought it to his tongue, hoping it would block out the taste of Madelena. It didn’t.

“You don’t have to go,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

What a question after his night. His stomach churned with bruise blood. No way could he eat right now, but he was on fire. And as horny as he was, he was just as confused, because he could not place exactly what had turned him on so much about that lunatic, or why she was supposed to be his mate. All in all it was frightening.

So it was good to be on his home turf, to see familiar sights. This was his life.

Alex glanced up, giving his tacit consent for whatever Gregor wanted to do.

“I’ve just fed, Sara,” Gregor said. “But I’ll watch, because you’re beautiful.”

Sara’s lips curled into a smile. Her grip on his hand tightened, then gave way as Alex increased his attentions, so Gregor sat down in his armchair.

Gregor might be the boss of Tangiers, but Alex was its darling. His big brown eyes and puppy smile got him whatever he wanted. That, and his reputation as a lover, which was entirely deserved.

Sara’s eyes were open, but they glazed over as Alex congealed the wounds on her breasts, stopping the blood flow for the moment. Sara already had tiny wounds running down the inside of her wrist and just behind her earlobe. Alex could drag this on forever, keeping the woman in a slow crawl of ecstasy until she begged him for mercy. And that was before he fucked her.

Unlike Alex, Gregor did not have the time or inclination to make every meal a three hour orgy. There was pleasure for the donor in even the most straightforward transaction, but Alex always reveled in the process. Alex loved humans, loved pleasing them, and passed as one easily—so different from their brother, Mikhail, keeper of the old ways. Gregor went to neither extreme. He was the practical one, the middle child.

Alex lowered his face between her breasts to clean up the blood there. He swiped his face in the thickening blood, and came up with his cheek stained. That was a gesture of dominance, and an instinctive, marking behavior. Gregor’s incisors sharpened in response. A fleeting desire to challenge Alex for the girl passed through him, and was quickly repressed. It was not true desire, it was instinct. Alex claimed one of Sara’s breasts, sucking it deep in his mouth. She arched her back, rising with the suction, moaning loud.

Gregor thought of Maddy’s flannel nightgown, of how it could not hide the fullness of her breasts. He imagined unbuttoning the front, and taking one heavy breast in each hand. She’d have dusky nipples.

No.

He forced his mind back to the scene in front of him.

Alex hiked Sara’s short skirt up around her hips, exposing the tops of her stockings. Swift and sure, he punctured the soft flesh of her inner thigh, making what Gregor suspected was his final, and so deepest, bite. Sara’s body stiffened as she cried out with the pain, and then she jerked under his bite as the sucking began. This mimicking of the death throes swept all rational thought from Gregor’s mind. Now he wanted her in his mouth, full belly or no. With parted lips he sucked in the air, picking up the flavor of Sara’s blood and the rising musk of her desire. Her head rolled his direction and her eyes, glazed as they were, sought and found his. Soft feeding sounds came from Alex.

Keeping her eyes on Gregor, Sara teased her own breasts, smearing bloody fingerprints across her white skin, staining her nipples red. Some action of Alex’s made her eyelids flutter and her lips part, and it was all that Gregor could do not to jump on her.

All the way back to the city he had struggled to master his desire and now he was fanning the flames. Was it masochism, or was he just an idiot? If he had any sense, he would sit down and look over his freshly audited books and pretend he didn’t have a dick at all, and continue pretending it until Elixir opened. But there was only so much deprivation he could stand in a night. He unzipped his pants and began to stroke his cock through his boxers. Crooking her mouth into a half smile, Sara imitated him: she reached down to rub her clit with her bloody hand. Alex lifted his head, nostrils flaring.

Gregor knew what was in Alex’s mouth, the salty taste of blood and pussy combined, and the memory of it made his saliva run. His cock hardened and he pushed the boxers back so he could have full play. For an instant Sara’s dark, wide eyes fixed on his cock, and then Alex buried his face between her legs. Her eyes closed, and she was gone.

Gregor leaned back in his chair, jerking and stroking alternately, his eyes narrowing, until all there was for him in the world was the strength of his hand and the sound of Sara’s gasps and pleas in his ears. Sara’s cries became Maddy’s cries, and he was under that flannel gown, feeding off her round inner thigh, and her hands were in his hair, pleading with him to…how’d she phrased it? Move north. With pleasure he’d move north. Anything to stop that mouth of hers.

That mouth of hers.

Closing over his cock and sucking deep.

He came, each spurt reluctant and agonized.

“Fuck me,” he muttered, drawing his free hand over his face, while the other still cradled his wilting cock.

Sara’s rhythmic cries told him she was about to come, too. He took that moment to disappear. Alex could have her in private.

An empty cab appeared in Maddy’s line of vision just as she was about to bite down on a steaming hot frank smothered in relish. “Damn.”

Quickly she wrapped the foil back around it and ran forward with her arm upraised. If she got it she may not be late to her herbalist after all, and that would almost make up for the sin of eating a nitrate-and-preservative-packed hot dog on the way there.

The cab slowed down and pulled over about twenty feet away. She ran for it, juggling her bag and her dinner, dodging bodies. Even a short run was proving too much for her any more. She put one hand to her chest, feeling the disturbing, lurching rhythm of her heart. Nitrates are the least of your problems, Maddy girl.

As distracted as she was, she ran straight into someone—someone trying to steal her cab.

“Oh no, buddy. This one is mine.” He was so close, and so tall, that his chest blocked her whole field of vision. Black tie, black shirt, black suit, black overcoat. Color me morbid.

“Madelena?” the wall gasped.

She craned her neck upward to see Gregor Faustin gaping at her like he’d seen his own death.

“What is your problem?” She meant it all sorts of ways. “Let go of my cab.”

Faustin recovered enough to return to his usual unpleasant self. “It’s not ‘your cab’. I hailed it.”

“You lie like a rug.” Her mind boggled trying to figure out how he could be there. How they could possibly meet again. It had to mean he was stalking her.

“What—you think I’m stalking you?” His incredulous expression, she realized, was less than flattering to her as would-be stalkee. And did he just read her mind?

“You’re right,” she snapped. “Why would you go through the trouble of stalking me when you can just break into my apartment and suck my toes whenever you like?”

Faustin folded his arms and glared at her down his crooked nose. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Nothing was more hateful than a bald-faced lie, with the possible exception of an arrogant bald-faced lie. “Look, I don’t know what you intended that night, but if you meant to do some kind of memory wipe, you failed. At the very least you could have taken away my coat and pants. The damning evidence, you know? Sloppy work, Faustin, very sloppy.”

He arched a brow. “Tell me, did you ever get checked for head injuries, Madelena?”

“Bite me.” She smacked his hand off the door handle and claimed the cab.

As quick as a blink, Faustin jumped in on the other side. “Oh no,” he said, “You’re not stealing my cab.”

Maddy met him halfway across the seat and gave him a hard shove toward the door. “Get bent, Faustin. It’s mine.”

Faustin’s eyes narrowed at her in the most evil way, and she suspected he wanted to kill her. With a growl he forced his way in and closed the door with a decisive slam.

“I do as I please.” His tone was soft and even, but chilly, and she knew what he said was the truth. But it didn’t scare her. Maddy wasn’t afraid of him. She wasn’t afraid of anything much—except suffering more at the hands of doctors. Twice she’d died on the operating table, and twice she’d seen the tunnel and the light. Death was no bad thing. Her will was written and she didn’t have pets.

Not that she expected this cab ride to go that wrong—though who knew with Faustin? — but it was a perspective thing. Nothing was worth getting worked up about. So all she said to his icy threat was, “Nice grumpy face you got, Faustin.”

As soon as she said that the driver, who seemed pretty pissed off himself by this time, chimed in. “Tell me please if maybe somebody is going somewhere tonight? Or do you use my cab as a social club?”

“Chelsea” said Maddy, while at the same time Faustin said, “Columbus Circle.”

“I’m late,” she hissed at him.

He shot her another black look, and then said to the driver, “Go to Chelsea first.”

Maddy resigned herself to sharing; he was too big to bludgeon. The cab began to roll. Maddy took off her beret and unwound her scarf, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. She admired how well Faustin played the injured party when she was the one who had been run over and sucked on. He was without doubt the reigning Dark Lord of Sulk. What else he was, she was not sure.

With nothing more to fight over, they both sat back against the seat, arms folded, facing forward.

Maddy entertained herself thinking about what she could say that would annoy him most, because no way was he going to enjoy this cab ride in peace. It took her an embarrassingly long time to remember she had the solution in hand.

“Like my lunchbox?” She balanced it on her knees for him to see. Buffy the Vampire Slayer the logo said in bloody red letters. It was the rare one with David Boreanaz on it, her prize of prizes, evidence that she was the reigning queen of eBay.

Faustin turned his head incrementally to glance at it, then resumed staring out the front window. “I don’t know how a guy named Buffy is going to kill a vampire.”

Maddy sighed. “I take it you never watched the show. This is Angel. Angel is a vampire.”

All Faustin did was snort at the idea.

All week she’d played with the possibility that Faustin was an honest to God vampire. It was unlikely, admittedly. Well, actually, it was impossible if she wanted to keep her speculation within the bounds of reality, but when did she ever do that? And besides, the idea was so much more appealing than him being a foot fetishist with a skeleton key.

“You got opinions on vampires, Faustin?” Nettling him so directly made her a little breathless. “Theories, maybe?”

Faustin wheeled in his seat and leaned into her space, his big hand spread on the seat, way too close to her thigh. There were rules about personal space, and he was breaking them all to breathe down her neck. “You seem to have all the theories, Madelena. Why don’t you tell me what they are?”

Goddamn he was a sexy jerk. His voice reminded her of suede. Maddy met his eyes square on. Something dangerous lurked there, and her poor heart fluttered at the sight of it. She shrugged and put aside the lunchbox. “Just making conversation. Excuse me for trying.”

Faustin went back to his corner without a word, and she remembered that her dinner was going cold.

The driver had to have ears like a fox to hear the soft rustle of the foil. Or maybe it was the relish smell. At any rate, he caught on just as she was about to take her long-delayed first bite. “No food in my cab! No garbage in my cab! Thank you!”

“Relax Mr…Mr. Patel,” she said, reading his ID. She gave him her best smile in the rear view. “I promise I won’t leave a trace of evidence.”

To whit, a dangerous blob of ketchup and relish was sliding off the dog. She caught the blob with her tongue, and then sucked the end clean. As she did, she happened to catch Faustin’s expression. His face was shining with naked hunger.

“What the—?” For a second she thought he wanted the dog. Then his mouth was over hers.

“Hey, I was…” Even in protest, her lips moved against his, and he turned that protest into a kiss.

Oh. My. God.

Who in the world kissed like this? His mouth was sweet and hard at the same time, his hands coiling around her, drawing her in, drawing her under. All of the frustrated desire of that strange night came flooding back and she found herself kissing him back, even if she hated him, because…damn.

There was no sparring in the kiss, despite all their bickering. That didn’t feel right. What felt right was softening under him, opening to him. Her lips yielded, her neck wilted, her whole body relaxed in his arms, and strange as it was, she felt safe.

Very yin and yang, she thought. Whatever she had, he could take. Whatever he gave, she wanted, though it made her heart slam as sure as running.

The force of his kiss drove her back against the door, and as his weight bore down on her, she slid lower and lower onto the seat, one hand on the back of his neck, the other just managing to hold her hot dog aloft.

As they neared horizontal, their legs tangled. Like a complete slut, Maddy hooked one leg around his hips and pinned him to her. Now there wasn’t a bit of air between them. She needed the full body contact. She needed to feel his hard-on. And he obliged, grinding slowly in the saddle of her hips as his tongue swept her mouth.

Maddy answered him by circling her own hips, finding her rhythm and holding strong. Slow and steady. Hot as lava. Heat flashed and gathered in her toes, and ran up the insides of her thighs like summer lightning. She held him tighter. Miércoles! I am dry humping Gregor Faustin in the back of a cab.

His mouth left her bruised lips, and fastened ruthlessly on her neck instead, delivering a line of deep, sucking kisses under her jaw. Maddy arched under him, her nipples stiff and sore against his chest. “Jesus!”

“You drive me fucking crazy,” he whispered against her skin.

Maddy sought and found his mouth. Their tongues twirled hot and desperate, and they moaned in unison. Just like that night he visited her room, she was sopping wet, open and ready. She wanted to take him deep inside and ride him until they both dropped with exhaustion, and she begged for it now, mewling and writhing, far past coherent speech.

“What do you want, Madelena?” he asked. “This?”

His teeth, sharp as razors, scraped her throat.

“Or this?” His hand slid between her legs, his strong fingers rubbing her engorged clit through her pants.

“That!” The moment he touched her, she started to come, fiercely and quietly, twitching beneath him while he stroked it all out of her.

She needed more.

“Fuck me. Please. Fuck me.” She begged in a raspy whisper, completely lost, unaware of anything but the solid feel of this man beneath her hands, the need in her beyond anything she’d known.

Mr. Patel’s voice sliced through her dream. “Get out! Get out, you filthy perverts, before you ruin my cab with your love juice and beef franks.”

Maddy hadn’t even realized he’d pulled the cab over until he yanked open the passenger door, and she and Gregor tumbled out onto the sidewalk. The curb was upside down. Rather, she was, and her hair was in the gutter.

Faustin clambered over her and started shouting at the cabbie. Less graceful, Maddy crawled out on her hands and knees, and stood swaying in the freezing night air, trying to remember her name, her social security number, the basics. The world became a little clearer when she found her glasses tangled in her hair and returned them to her face.

Passersby took in the argument, and no doubt thought she, and probably Faustin too, was drunk. Particularly because he had the remains of her hot dog—ketchup, relish, bits of grease and bun—smashed all over his left shoulder.

Maddy twitched and ached between her legs, but the magic moment was over. It was just as well. Fucking Gregor Faustin would have been a bad idea on so many levels. She ought to send Mr. Patel flowers for saving her from her own hormones. Distracted by these thoughts, she did not see the argument end. All of the sudden there was no cab, just Faustin standing alone on the sidewalk.

He scratched his head like a confused kid, and in that moment she wanted him all over again, good idea or not. Pivoting on his heel, he paced a short distance away and paused, his hands on his hips, his expression grim. He thought they’d made a mistake too, and that hurt her more than she should have let it.

“Look, Madelena—”

“Don’t say it, Faustin. I’m disgusted enough with myself.”

As she walked away she hoped he wouldn’t discover the hot dog on his shoulder for a long time.