Vampires Need Not...Apply

Chapter Treinta y Cuatro

“So, what happened?” she asked.

Antonio sat up in bed. “Maybe this should wait another day; I don’t want to ruin what little time we may have left together.” He slipped from the bed giving her a glimpse of his perfect, tanned ass and powerful back muscles. Gods, even his butt crack is perfect. She sighed.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To take a shower.” He padded toward the bathroom.

“Wait!”

He froze.

“What’s going on?” The negative energy spiked off the charts.

Without bothering to turn around, he asked, “Did you do it?”

“What? Did I do what?” She truly had no idea what he spoke of.

“Time travel,” he said in a quiet voice.

So that’s what this was about? Time travel?

“Well, yeah. I guess I did. But—”

“Fuck.” He dropped his head and then stormed off to the bathroom.

What the hell?

Ixtab leaped from the bed and followed him. He was already in the shower turning on the water when she entered.

“Antonio?” She slipped inside the Italian tiled stall.

He shoved his head under the extra-large showerhead and leaned into the wall.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” he said.

What was going on? “Antonio! What?”

He spun around. “It’s prohibited, Ixtab! Prohibited. You will be punished.” He turned his face once again toward the water, but she could see the muscles flexing in his neck.

Oh. Now she understood. “Antonio, it’s okay—it’s not what you think.”

He hit the wall, cracking several tiles, and then turned and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Like hell it’s not. I just got you back, Ixtab.”

She shook her head and smiled. Sweet, sweet, vampire. “It’s okay, Antonio. I time traveled, yes, but when the others hear my story, I promise there will be no punishment—not for me or for Máax.” And even if they did punish her, so what? It would be banishment so she’d no longer have any powers and be forced to live in the human world for eternity. Big whoop.

“Máax?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Máax is responsible?”

Again, she nodded. “Margaret knew that Máax had used the tablet before. So when the portal wouldn’t open, she went to see him, hoping he’d tell her what went wrong—why it wouldn’t open for you. The truth was, nothing had gone wrong. I simply wasn’t there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Máax did know how to use the tablet—he was banished for using it to time travel. Anyway, he took the tablet from Kinich, opened the portal, and went back to the moment I was sucked in. He brought me straight back to the moment he’d left.”

It was a little confusing when she thought about it, but basically Máax had hopped inside the portal, grabbed Ixtab, and pulled her forward in time. So by the time Antonio tried to open the portal and make an offering in the name of love, she was no longer on the other side of the portal. The tablet didn’t react because his request of it made no sense.

When she arrived in the future, to the moment that Máax opened the portal—well, Antonio, Kinich, and the others had already left for Mexico, but she and Margaret weren’t far behind. Pretty damned cool when she thought about it.

“And my father?” Antonio asked.

That was the best part. “Máax obviously knew I’d been sucked into the portal with him.”

“And?”

Ixtab shrugged. “Máax was waiting for him the moment he entered. Seems your father’s head fell off and only corporeal beings can pass through the portal and enter the physical world. Oops.”

Antonio’s stern expression relaxed. “Perdón. Pero… You are saying you didn’t choose to time travel?”

She shook her head no, smiling.

“And my father will never return?”

She shook her head. “No. His light cannot come back to this world. To be honest with you, I wish it could.”

He made no attempt to mask his disapproval. “Why?”

Ixtab chugged down a resentful breath. “Because he’s a complete bastard, and I’d like nothing more than to squeeze the life right out of him.” She looked at the floor. “Máax told me that his last words were, ‘Tell Ixtab I sent them all. I sent them to remind her that there could never be another.’ ”

“What did he mean?” Antonio asked.

Her mouth turned down and her eyes filled with tears. “I’m not 100 percent sure, but I believe he was behind a good portion of the random men who ‘accidentally’ bumped into me and died. I think he wanted me to suffer, to be miserable without him. For that, he should be punished. Instead, his light roams free in some other dimension. Where’s the justice in that, Antonio? Where, for gods’ sake?”

He pulled her into his arms. “Have you learned nothing, woman? Nothing at all? The only thing that matters is that we are together now and that I will not lose you. Ever.”

“No. Never.” She wrapped her arms around Antonio’s neck. “Not as long as the Earth remains.”

“Wait.” He looked at her with mild concern. “So what happened to the tablet?”

Ixtab shrugged. “Máax said he had some unfinished business.”

“Then let him have it.” Antonio kissed her hard and pressed her back against the cool tile, which, at this point, felt soothing given how hard her poor body had been worked over by his earlier. Yes, she was a deity, but he was pure virility. He lifted her up and guided her legs around his waist—hard, perfectly sculpted with diagonal rivets sloping toward his erection.

Gods, she would never get enough of him. Hot water dripping from his hair and brow, the shower’s steam rising behind him as if he were a god, he thrust forward. “Gods, I love you,” he said.

She closed her eyes, savoring the feel of him entering her. Only this time, this time he knew they had all the time in the world; she could feel his calmness, his unfiltered passion for her. Heaven.