Mia's Return (7 page)

Diego whistled softly. “Over a dame?”
He dropped onto the sofa. “Okay, then. Fuck her. Get it out of your
system. Tell her you faked your death ten years ago, any bullshit
story to cover the facts.”

“You can’t tell her what you are,” Zack
added. “You do realize you’re exposing her unnecessarily just by
being with her, right? While she’s with you, she’s fodder for the
vampeen.”

Alexander nodded. “I know.”

Zack pulled out his Glock special, with
the built-in silencer. “Then take this, too.”

Alexander took it. “Thanks.” He dropped
it into his coat pocket, where it felt heavy and reassuring.

Mia found the Starbucks he’d directed
her to without trouble. By the time she reached it, the snow was
falling heavily, making everything muffled except the traffic,
which was a constant even in the snow. Even though it was barely
six the night was dense, still and silent.

He was sitting in a big wingback chair
and she was unable to believe he’d actually kept his word. After
she’d hung up she’d realized that he could have agreed to meet just
to get her off the phone and she’d fallen for it because she was so
green at this sort of thing.

But he was here and she didn’t know
whether to kiss him or crawl into his lap. So she sat in the other
chair and put her hands on the table to still their trembling. “You
don’t have to tell me what happened,” she said. “But I do want to
say I’m so glad that what I thought happened ten years ago clearly
didn’t.”

There were too many people too close to
them for her to speak of it more plainly.

Alexander tilted his head to one side.
“So am I.” He gave an awkward smile.

She stared at him, at his wonderful
blue eyes. “God, you look so good,” she said wonderingly. She
reached out to touch his face and his hand covered hers as she
cupped it. He was trembling too. She pushed her hand so that her
palm brushed over his lips, inviting a kiss. His lips seared her
palm and his hand stilled her wrist, keeping her hand steady so
that his tongue could swirl over her palm. His eyes speared into
her as he did it.

She gasped, her nerve endings sizzling
to life, her clit pounding with energy. “Oh my god,” she whispered.
“No one but you has ever been able to do that to me.”

Alexander lowered her hand and began to
stroke the inner wrist. Little delicate strokes that made her toes
tingle and curl and her pussy grow moist. “No one?” he said, with a
smile.

“No one,” she said flatly. “Alex, can
we go somewhere? Your place? Even just for a while?”

He reached over and drew her bangs out
of her eyes. “In ten years, you’ve had a string of miserable lovers
who’ve all failed to take care of you?”

“Alexander,” she chided him, for not
letting her change subjects and for not answering her question.

He sat back and she could see that he
had given up trying to avoid her question. He looked at her
directly. “I can’t take you back to my apartment,” he said
simply.

“A hotel then,” she said. “Mine.”

He looked out the window at the falling
snow.

“What is it I’m missing?”

“What is it you’re not telling me?” He
looked at her.

She could feel her cheeks heating.
“Specifics then. I’ve had two lovers since you, both of them total
disasters. No man so much as raises my pulse, except you.”

She could see his chest beneath the
open fronts of the overcoat. His breath shortened as he stared at
her. “Christ,” he whispered, looking stricken.

“Is it too much to ask for a night?”
she added gently.

“There are things you don’t know about
me,” he said.

She almost laughed. “Worse than
before?” What she had not known in San Diego had got him a bullet
in the head…or almost had. What could possibly be worse?

“These things could kill you,” he said
softly. “I’d rather you live.”

He was trying to tell he wouldn’t give
her the night she so desperately craved. Disappointment flared in
her like a thousand fire ant bites. Suddenly she needed to move, to
be away from all these people that were lapping up her rejection
like the day’s soap opera installment.

“Can we at least walk?” she said,
trying to blink away her tears.

“It’s safer here, among people,” he
said cryptically.

There was to be no relief, no softening
of the rejection. She averted her head and staggered from her
chair, out of the store and into the muffling quiet of the snow,
letting it enfold her. Across the road was the park. Dark, quiet
and lonely. Away from everyone who had witnessed her
humiliation.

She ran.

Alexander ran after her, dismayed at her
reaction and alarmed at her direction. There were plenty of human
predators in Central Park as well as vampeen drawn to his vampire
traces.

She was just ahead of him and Central
Park had lights along the paths. He caught up with her quickly and
grabbed her arm. She was crying silently.

He pulled her to one side, onto the
snow-covered grass, their boots kicking up the thin layer of white
flakes. He wiped her tears. “Don’t,” he said softly.

“What else should I do? I’m out of
options.” Her voice was thick with more tears.

He remembered when her voice was husky
with lust rather than tears and his body tightened, strumming with
that remembered moment. Why was he refusing her now? He could go
back to her hotel room and fuck her until she was spent. That was
all she had asked for. There would be no complications. What was
stopping him?

Because he knew he wouldn’t have the
strength to let her go in the morning. Diego could do something
like that, but he had been doing it for centuries and had a
powerful motive to keep him moving from one woman to another, over
and over again.

Alexander knew he could not.

He realized he was staring into Mia’s
eyes and she was holding her breath, waiting for him. He was
holding her to him and she had felt his tension, felt his ramrod
stiff cock against her. She knew as well as he did that everything
he’d said in the coffee shop was a pretext and that this moment was
the real one.

He kissed her and it was like kissing
honey and peaches. He swept his tongue into her mouth, tasting her
sweetness, while his hands slid inside her coat, under her clothes
and found her flesh. She was guiding him, as frantic as he and he
groaned as his hand found the swell of her breasts, bereft of a
confining bra.

She cried softly, arching hard against
him, her pelvis grinding into him. His cock was throbbing now, his
balls aching with growing tension.

“More,” Mia whispered. Her hand was on
his wrist, guiding it under her skirt. He found the tops of her
stockings—
stockings!
His heart fluttered. Then, smooth
thighs and moist lace panties. It gave him an erotic charge to
realize she was aroused enough to soak through her panties. He slid
his fingers under the edges of them and found the heated lips of
her pussy and pushed inside. She clenched around him as she gasped,
her hands clawing at his shoulders.

“Harder,” she whispered.

“You know, I can smell your woman’s
scent from here,” came a drawled comment from behind him.

Alexander’s animal instincts surged
into overdrive. He disengaged from Mia and whirled, reaching for
the Glock. He pushed Mia behind him as his incisors tried to
descend. He fought to tamp down his instincts and ride them out
until he had the full measure of the situation.

A man in jeans and a denim jacket stood
ten paces away from them. His hair was sandy and his skin,
wrinkled. It was impossible to tell his age. He might have been in
his mid-forties and showing the signs of a hard life. Or he could
be in his early sixties. He was rail thin and his clothes hung off
his frame in shapeless layers.

Alexander had been so caught up in
Mia’s body and responses that he’d failed to register the man’s
approach. “Move on,” he told him. “The gun is loaded and I’m not
afraid to use it.”

The man laughed. “That so?” He moved
closer, reached into his jacket and withdrew a long, strangely
curved knife. “I don’t need to load this and I’m not afraid to use
it, neither.”

Alexander caught sight of the man’s
eyes in the lamplight and became afraid. The eyes were all black.
No irises, no whites. Nothing but black. Evil eyes.

The man sprang with a sideways leap
that looked animalistic. Alexander shot him three times, directly
in the chest. It dropped him to the ground and if he had been human
it should have killed him instantly, but the creature simply stood
up and shook it off.

“Oh my god, Alex…” Mia whispered.

Alexander handed her the Glock. “Just
keep shooting at it,” he said. “There are twelve more bullets in
the gun and they slow it down, at least.”

“What about you?” she said.

He triggered the armguard and gripped
the knife as it jumped into his hand.

Mia’s eyes got very large. He was going
to have to explain things later. Or invent things.

The creature came at him and he shoved
Mia behind him again and swiped. He nearly decapitated the creature
and it barely slowed it down.

Running footsteps from his right.
Alexander didn’t bother looking. Friend or foe, he couldn’t afford
to look. But the creature did and howled in frustration.

“Yeah, you fucking prick. Your time is
up.”

The creature turned to face the
newcomer and threw his hands up across his face. Alexander looked
just in time to see the other man bring a shotgun to his shoulder
and fire.

The shot was muffled, not explosive,
but the creature fell to the ground, writhing and kicking. The man
fell on top of it and buried a black knife in its chest. With a
black cloud of smoke, the creature disappeared, leaving oily plumes
of fumes tracing an outline of where it had rested.

The man stood up, dropped the black
knife back into his coat and brushed off his hands. He was about
five foot eleven, which put him only an inch shorter than Alexander
but he seemed shorter because of the width of his shoulders. He was
very thick across the chest and shoulders and the heavy
winter-lined denim coat just exaggerated them. His black hair was
once short and tidy but hadn’t been trimmed for a while. In the dim
glow from the park lights it glinted blue-black.

He looked at Alexander with angry black
eyes that reminded him of Diego. “You’re a fucking vampire,” he
said in disgust.

Mia
, Alexander thought and
winced.

“Only reason I don’t cut your heart out
on the spot is because we’re not supposed to these days. Can’t
believe you’re the good guys now. Fuck.” He picked up the shotgun.
“Can’t you tell a demon when it’s coming at you, for
Chrissake?”

“That was a demon?” Alexander was
stunned. “What did it want with Mia?”

“How the fuck would I know? It’s been
in the Jersey area for three days, then suddenly veered toward New
York yesterday like it had a noose around its neck. What is she?
Something special?”

“You’re a hunter,” Alexander
concluded.

“No shit,” the man said.

“Oh, I think I’m going to be sick,” Mia
muttered.

Alexander whirled.

Mia was bent over, her hands on her
knees.

Mia felt Alexander’s hands on her,
trying to comfort her, but she flinched and moved away.

“You didn’t tell her, did you?” the
other man said.

“No,” Alex admitted.

“Fucking idiot,” the man said. “Here,
take this.”

More hands on her shoulders, comforting
ones. “Take a deep breath,” the man told her. “You’re
hyperventilating. You’re going to pass out if you don’t slow down.
Breathe slowly.” Then, “She’s human, nothing fancy?”

“Yes,” Alex said shortly.

“Jesus,” the man muttered. “I’m going
to carry you over to the bench, okay?” he told her.

She nodded and felt arms under her legs
and behind her back. She was carried to the bench a few paces from
the smoking outline of the demon.

“I’m Wyatt,” the man said.

“Mia,” she gasped. She would never get
all her name out in one breath.

Wyatt didn’t just put her on the bench.
He sat on it and put her on his lap.

She went back to breathing deeply.
Slowly, the sickness ebbed.

“Feeling better?” Wyatt asked.

She nodded. “What’s a hunter?” she
croaked.

“You know nothing about this
stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“Oh, wow,” he breathed. He had black
eyes, like hers but he was not Latino. He had white skin and laugh
lines around his eyes but it looked like it had been a long time
since he had laughed. He held his mouth in a straight line and
there was a furrow between his brows, like he was more used to
anger than laughter now.

Alexander settled on the bench next to
them, holding the shotgun. He looked comfortable holding it.
“There’s no one else around,” he said. “I did a full circuit.”

“He’d know,” Wyatt said, with a jerk of
his head in Alexander’s direction. “They have superior animal
instincts.”

She winced.

“You have to forgive him for not
telling you,” Wyatt added. “They’re not allowed to. Right?” he
said, looking at Alexander.

“Right,” Alex said heavily.

“But now we have to figure out why the
demon wanted you,” Wyatt finished.

“Me?” Mia said, jumping.

“Shhh,” Wyatt soothed. “The demon was
trying to get past your friend to get to you. That’s why your
friend kept pushing you behind him.”

“Alexander. My friend is
Alexander.”

“Right,” Wyatt said. He glanced at
Alexander. “Whatever.”

Mia recalled the moments again. Alex
had handed her the one reliable weapon that would slow the creature
down, then put her behind him again and pulled out a knife from his
sleeve somehow.