Waiting in the Wings

Chapter Seven

Rubbing against him, she kissed him harder and moaned as his hands pushed the dress down. The cotton and silk body sheath hugged her curves, but provided no real barrier to his touch. Never breaking the kiss, she fumbled her way to freeing the buttons on his shirt, ripping the fabric apart and sending them flying. Bare-chested, they kissed, exploring a passion that threatened to consume her.

What a way to go…

He swept her up, and her legs wrapped around his hips. He carried her through the apartments, tongues tangling together. Every step rubbed his cock against the sensitive folds of her sex. His fingers explored every contour of her hips and ass, gliding up and down her spine. She didn’t know who she had been, but tonight she was the woman who wanted him.

Badly.

He set her down on the bed gently, as though she were the most precious of items. She arched her hips up, eager to feel him thrusting inside her, but he pressed her back against the bed and trailed kisses down her throat to her breasts. His tongue outlined delicate circles against her flesh, tracing each nipple, sucking off the pasted diamonds until she thought she might go mad from the caress.

He worked his way across her belly, warm breath teasing her skin. His hands pressed her thighs wider. Pushing up onto her elbows, she glanced down to meet his gaze as he blew warm air against her clit. A whimper clawed its way up her throat.

She wanted him.

Needed him.

He flicked his tongue over her clit, and she let her head fall back, closed her eyes and moaned. Decadent pulses of heat skated up from the lavish contact. Every time he rolled the little nub, her body shook from the force of it. The sweet, sensuousness was familiar, as were the lazy circles he drew around her clit. She expected his fingers, and when he slipped two inside her to thrust gently, the world shattered in pleasure.

He sucked her clit between his lips and plunged her relentlessly toward orgasm. She dug her fingers into the bed and let go, riding his hands and mouth until the world completely rent apart and collapsed. Richard petted her through the orgasm, running his hands up and down her over-sensitized flesh, eliciting more tingles of rapture. He knew her body better than she did.

The little stab of resentfulness popped the balloon of sin she basked in. A growl vibrated in her throat, and she wrenched herself free of his caresses and rolled him over. Straddling his hips, she wrapped her hand around his cock and stroked him from base to tip, watching him.

A lazy, wanton smile curved his lips upward. He trailed two fingers against her cheek. “What do you want, darling?”

“I want you. I want to know you the way you know me.” She dragged her nails down his chest, leaving three red welts on the taut muscle. She rolled her thumb against the crown of his cock, spreading the dampness over the tip. Her teeth ground together—

She wanted to bite him.

But she had no fangs.

He sat up, catching her mouth in a hard kiss and working their lips together until her jaw relaxed. Another moan worked free, and she guided his cock to her entrance, rubbing him against her sex until they were both soaked and panting. He pushed her hands aside and positioned himself, thrusting into her in one swift stroke that left her gasping for air. He clamped his hands on her hips and seated himself deep inside—and then stopped moving.

Her gaze jerked to his, and she snarled. Her nipples ached, wanting his attention, and her sex clamped down on him, squeezing, and she wanted to move—to thrust and ride until they fell over the edge. But he resisted her attempts to thrust, holding the door to their mutual pleasure locked and barred.

Tangling his fingers into her hair, he guided her mouth to his throat. “Take what you want, darling…”

“I can’t.” Despair twisted inside of her. She tested her tongue against her teeth, but they remained flat, squared off and even the scent of him—musk, masculine and aroused—didn’t draw them out.

“You can.” He soothed, his free hand trailed caresses up and down her spine and his body withdrew and then thrust up inside of her hard.

She moaned, opening her lips to draw a sucking kiss against his neck.

“Take what you want.”

The salty taste of his skin teased her, and she grazed the flesh with her teeth. He jerked against her and flipped them over so he seated deep between thighs. She wrapped her legs around his hips, and he angled his throat to stay with her mouth.

“Harder.” The order reverberated through her as he drove himself in to the hilt. She bit down, terrified of hurting him—she couldn’t puncture his throat—not like he had…

“Again.” He growled and thrust.

She dug her nails into his back and started to pull away, but his fingers tightened in her hair and he dragged her mouth against his throat. Her mouth throbbed, in tune with every thrust he drove into her. Stars danced across her vision; her whole body shook with tremors of need—awareness of every brush of their skin. The pounding of his heart echoed against her ears, and she reared her head back and clamped onto his throat. Her teeth elongated, sharpening in a burst of pain, and she pierced his skin.

Moaning, she tasted him. Her head spun with the dizzying connection. His blood tasted like the sweetest nectar. It spilled across her tongue, and she rode the shockwave rocking through her body. His thrusts grew more fevered, but she drowned against the intensity of the feeling. A doorway opened inside of her, and he flooded her with pleasure. She saw herself, standing inside a rustic bar, bound breasts pushed up against the corset and grinning saucily at him.

She danced to some jaunty tune. Weaving in and out of the tables. Men occasionally tried to grab her. She always slapped them away with a smile and a flippant comment. A shyness in her eyes when she looked up at him and a breathless wonder.

The images flipped at her so fast, she couldn’t comprehend them all, and they tumbled her over, the intensity doubling and redoubling.

Her heart echoed the frantic pace of his. Mine…always mine…

She didn’t know whose thought that was, but it plunged over the edge with her as her body came apart, a second orgasm tipping her into a third. He stiffened against her and thrust a final time before following her over the edge and collapsing together, all warm limbs and nuzzling kisses. She lapped at his throat, closing the wound on instinct. Her fangs relaxed, losing their shape, and she lay there quivering.

He loves me more than himself. The depth of emotion she tasted in his blood, the loving memories he treasured—they filled her with wonder.

And terrified her.

What if she never remembered him?

Or worse, what if she did and she didn’t want him?

I left him once, didn’t I?

They lay wrapped up in each other, Richard’s face pressed against her throat. She trailed her fingers up and down his spine. She wanted to know every inch of him, to remember it the way he remembered her.

Why did I leave?

“Richard?” She whispered his name, softly and gentle. If he slept, she wanted him to sleep. Did vampires actually sleep?

He sighed and lifted his head. The troubled look in his eyes warned her that his mind traveled the same twisting path hers did. “Yes, my love?”

“What if I never remember?” No sense in holding her fear to her breast. Better to rip the bandage off and face it head on.

“You will.” Such confidence.

Lifting her brows, she trailed her fingers over his shoulder and up his neck to the spot she bit. No mark remained on his smooth, hot flesh. “You don’t know that. What if my memory is like this wound—gone, healed over and never to return?”

He shook his head once. “No. I will not accept that. A few days ago you didn’t even know you were a vampire. You didn’t have fangs. And yet here you are—you know you know me, you drank from me. What did you see when you did?”

“Me. I saw how you see me.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “You remember everything—and I’m a blank slate.”

“Not true.” Richard shifted, rolling onto his side and propping his head on a hand. His palm rubbed over her belly, warm and possessive. “You are still you. You are the woman you’ve always been. It’s all inside you—the quirky antics, devoted loyalty, playful mannerisms. You’re still my Kristina.”

She pushed his hand aside and sat up, scooting to the edge of the bed. She needed to think and not just to roll him over and fuck his brains out again.

Although that idea held a certain appeal.

“I left you.” She didn’t look at him when she spoke, staring unseeingly across the room to the leafy wallpaper with its exotic designs. “I walked out.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He was silent for so long, she thought he might not answer. He sighed, and the bed dipped as he moved. He rose and walked around. She tried not to watch the muscles ripple across his ass, but for a man—a vampire—who dressed in expensive suits, he cut a fine figure with nothing on his body.

Pouring a drink, he shot her a questioning glance, and she nodded. Her body hummed, whether from drinking his blood or the sex, she couldn’t really put her finger on the cause. He passed her a glass. She scented the coppery hints of blood. He’d been giving her blood steadily with every meal, but she couldn’t resent it.

She felt great.

“Why did I leave, Richard?”

“We argued. We often did.” He sighed and walked over to sit on the bed next to her. “You—you were always supportive of my business efforts. You even supported my bid to take New York. But the busier I became, the more you seemed to resent it.”

“And?”

“And one evening you wanted to go to some event. I couldn’t go because of a small crisis with some of the younglings who went too far. I needed to attend the situation. You were angry with me and demanded that I go, because I promised…” He grimaced and tossed back the drink.

“So you wouldn’t go to a party with me, and I walked out? What kind of shallow bitch was I?”

“You were not a shallow bitch.” His voice hardened, and he caught his hand around her neck, capturing her gaze with a passionate force. “Never—ever—refer to yourself that way again. Do you understand me?”

Trepidation shivered through her, and she nodded slowly.

He leaned in and kissed her, soft and sweet. Forehead resting against hers, he studied her eyes. “It was hardly the first time I disappointed you, sweet. I didn’t see it then, but I was often too busy to do any of the things you loved, and you were frustrated, battling for my attention when an entire city needed me. I told myself time and again, that it was just this one time more and that I would make it up to you, but that night—that night you were done with my choices. You left me to my phone calls and went to change. When you returned, you were dressed in the most provocative of fashions.”

“I tried to seduce you into going with me.” It was a guess, but it sounded like her. Dress her best and strut it out there for him to see and weep.

“Yes, and I was a complete bastard. I forbid you from wearing the outfit out of our home and then asked you to please stop so I could just get the mess cleaned up.” The forlorn note in his voice turned dark. “I was an idiot.”

“I went out that way anyway, didn’t I?”

“Yes.” He gave her a small smile. “Stubborn, sexy and supremely confident, you told me to go to hell and enjoy the heat, because you wouldn’t be there to warm my bed again. You stormed out.”

“And never came back.” Sadness welled up inside of her. Loneliness echoed in his words—loneliness and self-recrimination. She knew herself well enough to know if she had truly been that angry with him, she would have made a spectacle of herself—rubbed his nose in it.

“No. And at first, I thought it was to teach me a lesson, so I was stubborn about looking for you. I was determined that you would come back when you were ready, and I would be there. We would make up, settle our differences and it would be perfect again.”

“But I didn’t come back—” Kiki pulled away and took a drink, rolling the information around in her brain. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, I didn’t think so. But you were angry and very frustrated—rightfully so. I should have looked for you that night.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Catching his hand in hers, she lifted his fingers to her lips and kissed them with affection, the gesture both familiar and new. “Maybe I don’t remember being her, your Kristina, but I know me. I know what I would have done if I thought someone was ignoring me. Hell, I know what I do now. I make a huge scene. I dress up, I sneak out and I do everything I’m not supposed to do because I want someone to notice. So, if I was really trying to prove a point to you, I would have made a hell of a scene—one you couldn’t ignore.”

So the question was why hadn’t she done that?

Richard stilled, his expression turning pensive. “Yes. You had done something similar before—in London. I still blame you for that Bram Stoker nonsense.”

Her mouth twitched. “Really?”

“Absolutely. You went out drinking with every would-be writer and playwright in the countryside. You were determined to make headlines everywhere you could until I dragged you back in and took you to the States. London bored you—you wanted an adventure.”

Kiki laughed. “Okay, I want to remember that for sure.”

“You would.” He teased, but a somber note arrested his smile. “Still, you didn’t even arrive at the party you wanted me to go to.”

“Okay, so I was mad. I got dressed up. I wanted to teach you a lesson and make a scene. But I didn’t go to that party. Did I have guards?” It made sense, Richard traveled with them. Wouldn’t she have had her own?

“Yes. But you escaped them, trading vehicles and visiting about two-dozen different dance clubs. They spent the better part of two days trying to hunt you before they told me they didn’t know where you went.” Violence surfaced in his voice, a dark threat, and Kiki winced. She didn’t envy those guards that explanation.

Chewing her lower lip, she tried to put the pieces together. Maybe she didn’t remember, but what would she do? Right now, if she wanted his attention and he wasn’t giving it—she lifted her drink and stared at the faint bruises on her wrist. They faded, almost gone, but still…

“Richard?”

“Yes, my love?”

“Have you and Andrew always not gotten along?” She knew the vampire prince of Las Vegas, they all did. He was a regular visitor at the casino, but she’d never really cared for him, and after the events earlier this evening, she could safely say she despised him.

“We knew him in the Wolcotts, darling, and no, we have never gotten along. The sycophants around him too easily sway his choices. It’s why Las Vegas is so perfect for—” He stopped and she could almost see the leap his mind made. The leap hers already assumed.

After all, how better to irritate the hell out of her lover than to…

“You didn’t?” He didn’t quite glare at her, but disbelief and disgust twisted in his expression.

“I don’t know that I did and I’m rather hoping not, because he’s a lot skeevy, but I wanted to teach you a lesson and get your attention—why not seek out someone who would thoroughly piss you off?”

Pain flashed through Richard’s eyes, a dark and seemingly bottomless well of it that vanished behind a shuttering in his expression. He pulled away from her and rose. Kiki sighed. She didn’t want to be that woman—not anymore. Even if it meant never remembering, she didn’t want to hurt him that way.

Ever again.

“Richard, I’m—”

He held up a hand, silencing her. He walked over to the dresser and set his glass down. Hands braced on the wood, he seemed to study the counter top. Every muscle in his body rigidly flexed.

“I’m sorry,” she began again. But he didn’t seem to hear her words. He stood so very still.

The sound of the wood snapping cut through the silence as he ripped the dresser sideways. Glass crashed to the floor, and the wood slammed into the wall and shattered.

Richard exhaled a long breath. “You have nothing to be sorry about, my love.” The control in his voice didn’t match his actions at all. Nor did it reflect the fists of fury clenched in his gut. Kristina may have toyed with the Prince of Las Vegas, but he knew his bride…she would never have taken it beyond the teasing stage.

The shattered wood and glass piled against the wall, and he turned to look at her wide-eyed worry and fought to find a smile. “You didn’t do anything wrong—impulsive, I’ll grant you. But I trust you, Kristina.”

“That’s great,” her voice trembled. “But how can you when I don’t know for sure? I must have done something that landed me here. Heidi said she didn’t own my contract, which means someone else does. I have no memory of a life before being in the Midnight Mystery Lounge, but obviously I had one. And…” She rose and walked toward him, unabashed and beautiful in her nudity. “…and I don’t know. I don’t know how to find the answers and I don’t know if I want them.”

He frowned. “You don’t want to remember?” Did he hear that correctly?

She picked her way past the glass and debris until she stood in front of him. Cupping his cheeks in her palms, she stared at him with such honest devotion it took his breath away. She still loves me. He believed it, tasted it in her kisses and her caresses—but the surge of emotion he felt from her now made those other experiences pale. His blood flowed through her, the fractured, latent connection sizzled to real life.

She loved him.

“I don’t want to be the woman who hurt you.”

He looped his arms around her and tugged her close. “I hurt me too, darling. I do not blame you for our fights and I would never blame you for what has befallen you. I blame myself. I blame my stubbornness and pride. I put my city before you and I shouldn’t have done that—”

“But being Prince must mean a lot of work and a lot of responsibility—I could have been more understanding.”

“You understood for several centuries, Kristina.” He leaned back and mirrored her pose, holding her face in his hands. “Centuries. You supported every effort I made, you didn’t complain…”

She snorted. “Seriously? Ever?”

“Okay, you complained.” A reluctant grin tugged at his lips. “But you never stopped supporting me. I should have been more sensitive to your needs.” But it was easier to say later. I would do it later, and then later disappeared, and you weren’t there. He swallowed the grief of her absence, burying it deep. He’d sustained himself with irritation and anger for decades. He could hold on longer—hold on until she was his again.

Frustration rent through him, but he kissed her as gently as he could before letting her go so he could begin cleaning up the destruction. He would have to replace Malcolm’s furniture.

“I could talk to Andrew. He’s often in the Arcana Royale…”

“No.” He glared at her over his shoulder. “You will stay away from him.”

“But we still don’t know why I’m here or how to get me free. Malcolm had to play a game for Pandora. And Roseâtre… Roseâtre was only trapped because she willed it…” Kristina jerked and glanced at her wrists, examining them carefully.

Sweeping the glass onto a discarded sheet, he frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Roseâtre had on slave bands, but you couldn’t see them. I just wanted to see if I did.”

“You can’t use slave bands on a vampire, love.” He gave her an indulgent smile when she grumbled. “You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because vampires answer to their makers, the slave band can’t force them to do anything because—” He considered the reasons behind the sire-child bond. A maker had to be able to control their child, but the natural born—their makers were their parents. Those bonds stayed in effect until the parent died. Yet, slave bands didn’t affect the natural born. The act of making a human into a vampire was difficult enough, and the unpredictable results on the turned negated any potential gain.

“No. Not slave bands and even if they did, that wouldn’t take away your memory.” He carried the debris into the other room and set it in a corner. Kristina still stood in the middle of the bedroom, looking a little lost and forlorn when he returned. “We will figure this out, I swear that to you. I will not leave you here.”

“Leave?” The color in her cheeks faded. “You can’t stay here.”

“Don’t worry about it, darling. We will figure this out before I have to go.” He had one sundown left. One more day. It wasn’t enough time.

It has to be.

“Come—” He held out his hand. “Come sit with me by the fire and just be with me for now. The sun will rise in just a little while. Let us have that time…”

“No.” The rejection stung, but she took his hand and squeezed it. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I promised Heidi I would return before the sun came up and I don’t—I don’t want you to see what happens when it does.”

His gut clenched. “I already saw, love. I would rather be with you and have you know I will be here when you waken.”

But she shook her head. “No. I hate that you saw me like that. I really hate it. I want you to remember me like this. Not cold and asleep and lost. I wake at sunset. I’m whole again. And I have to dance tonight…”

Anger crashed through him again, anger at the situation, at the casino, at the stage manager—at himself. He held her in his arms. He’d tasted her sweet lips, and she’d drunk from him but still she wasn’t free. If only he just had to kill someone—Andrew. He could kill him. But would that be enough to free her?

“Please, Richard.” It was the soft note of pleading around the first word that undid him. “Please don’t watch when it happens. Let me go away where you can’t see. I swear to you as soon as the performance is over, I will be yours again.”

He wanted to deny her, to hold her captive and tell the whole hotel to go to hell. If he held her, maybe he could stop the curse from taking her. But that was what he wanted—not what she was asking.

“I hate letting you go.” He admitted. He wasn’t sure he physically could let her go. She’d escaped the night before because he’d been too dazzled by their reunion and her rebuff to stop her. But could he really hold her captive?

“I hate having to go…but thank you. You will be at the show, you promise?”

“Of course.” He would never leave her side again if given his way. She rewarded him with another kiss and snuggled against his chest, resting her head on his shoulder. Tomorrow night could very well be their last together…

He clamped off the thought and discarded it. It would not be their last, no matter what it cost him. He wouldn’t allow it.

“I’m going to shower.” She slipped away and sidestepped the glittering shards of glass in the carpet. He followed her inside and leaned against the wall. She turned on the hot jets and glanced over at him. “You could join me, you know…”

He smiled slowly. “I like to watch.”

“Dirty, dirty boy.” She winked and slid a hand over her breast. His whole body twitched as she rolled her thumb back and forth over it until it puckered. “Okay, if you like to watch. I’ll make sure it’s a show.”

She stepped under the water and left the door open. She took her time rubbing the water onto her skin. Eventually, she added soap, and when the washcloth glided up between her thighs, he launched off the wall and into the shower.

Scooping her up, he pressed her flat against the wall and claimed her mouth, thrusting into her in the same motion. Her laughter rang into his ears, and he let himself drown in her touch.

Thirty minutes later, he helped her into her dress and laid a kiss against her shoulder. “I love you, Kristina. Please don’t forget that.”

“I love you too.” Her easy declaration made his soul sing. “I may not remember where we met or all the years we spent together or even how I ended up here…but I know I love you. I won’t give up on us.”

He kissed her, slow and soft, and gentle, but when she pulled away, he let her go. He prowled after her as she walked out to the sitting room and reclaimed her shoes, shadowing her all the way to the door. The sun would rise soon—he could feel it in his blood. Another long, slow kiss at the door and he wanted to bolt it shut, but he forced himself to open it. Anton and David waited patiently along with her guardian.

He crushed the door handle as he watched her walk into the elevator. The doors closed on her winsome smile, and his faded.

“David. Find the Overseers—any of them. I want a meeting. Now.” David headed for the elevator immediately. Richard glanced at the other guard. “Anton, who do we have on the ground here?”

“A few contacts, but Sobrit’s cousins live here. And they are always reliable sources of intel.”

“Good, reach out to them. I want to know everything Andrew has done for the last few decades. What business deals is he into, where his political interests are…everything.”

“As you wish.” Anton bowed his head and paused to glance at the door. “I will have that repaired immediately.”

Richard waved him off and walked back into the suite. Picking up the phone, the trace of glitter on his hand surprised him. She may have retreated, but everywhere she touched his life—it was a brighter place for it. Clenching the hand into a fist, he dialed New York and ignored Malcolm’s annoyed “yes” when he answered the phone. “The Prince of Las Vegas is up to something. I want you to find out what.”

“Okay.” Malcolm yawned. “Have you—are you and Kristina…?”

“Together, but not. You challenged the Overseers to a game for your bride. What other leverage do we have?”

“Not much. But I’ll find something.”

“Be quick. I have one night left and I will not lose her again.”