GoodHunting (2 page)

Her body gripped him like a hand, sleek but so very wet. He
was out of his mind with the desire to push into her and he found he could
brace his heels on the bed, bouncing up into her warmth. Now she was truly
riding him, hanging on as he thrust with his hips flexed and his back arched.

“Oh, oh god I have missed you,” she cried, and her nails
tightened enough on his skin that he could smell his own blood.

With a muttered curse, Genevieve thrust her fingers against
her clit furiously, rubbing in tight circles until hard tremors started racing
through her legs. Daniel could feel the way that her body tightened and went
stiff, he knew she was ready to climax, and he watched her hungrily, drinking
in the sight of her above him.

When she came, a harsh guttural cry was ripped from her
throat, making her hunch down as if she were wounded. She curled up tight to
his body, burying her face in his chest as she shook, and that was all it took
for him to spill inside her. The heat of his own climax made him drive up into
her as hard as he could, and the pleasure was blinding, making him shut his
eyes and shout through gritted teeth.

Daniel opened his eyes when Genevieve finally shifted, both
of them flinching a little when she pulled away. He watched as she tottered to
her feet and made her way to a leather bag she’d left on a small table nearby.
She withdrew a wine bottle and poured a generous amount into an earthenware cup
before returning.

“Genevieve, we have much to talk about. We’ve been playing
for…”

“I know.” She nodded. “I know, dear. But here, drink this
first, please. You’ll like it.”

He did as she bid him, enjoying the spice of the wine on his
tongue. There was a smoky taste there, as well as something sharp, though he
did not know what.

“Now then, dear, what were you thinking?”

She settled down next to him and Daniel cleared his throat
experimentally.

“We’ve been playing this game for the better part of two
hundred years,” he said. “I need something more. I…”

He paused, frowning. He realized that his vision, sharp as
an eagle’s, was beginning to go furry around the edges, and he could feel a
leaden heaviness take over his limbs.

“Genevieve?”

“Hush, dear, or do you not remember that it is my turn?”

“What?”

“My turn to be chased, my turn to be the prey. I simply
thought to give myself a head start…”

That was the last thing he heard before he sunk down into a
darkness that tasted like anise on his tongue, and the last thing he felt was
her soft and tender kiss on his lips.

The moon had set by the time Genevieve stepped out onto the
cold Parisian street. A woman dressed as well as she was should have feared for
her money, her life and her virtue, but she did not. Instead, she walked
without care, picking her way over the broken cobbles like a cat at home in the
dark.

She glanced over her shoulder at the second-story window of
the house that she had left, a window that she knew was shuttered tight and
curtained with swathes of thick cloth besides. She smiled slightly, and with
delicate fingers gloved in black velvet, she blew the window a kiss.

“All my love,
mon cher
,” she murmured. “Until we meet
again.”

She made her way to the docks, looking over the ships until
one caught her eye. It rode high in the water, and under the cargo of fine
brocades and sweet lavender, she smelled clean timber and a brisk eastern wind.

By dawn, Genevieve was safely ensconced in La Sirène’s only
guest chamber. The ship was bound for Venice, and that pleased her well.
Wherever she went, Daniel would follow, and she smiled at the thought of their
game played out in Venice’s beautiful towers and dark canals. It was a good
game, and after the close of one play, she was ready and hungry for the next.

She wondered briefly what he had been trying to say before
he drank her drugged wine, but she tossed the thought away. He would come find
her. And she would know soon enough.

* * * * *

The faint ache between his temples told him it was dawn, but
beyond that, all Daniel knew was that he was somewhere in Paris and that he was
completely naked. He sat up in the rumpled bed before he realized that one
wrist and both legs were still shackled to the bed frame. Genevieve had been
kind enough to undo his right hand at least, and he freed himself with abrupt,
irritated motions. He could tell that she was no longer present, and that
irritation surged toward anger as he remembered trying to speak with her the
night before.

“Damn woman,” he growled to himself, and it only made him
angrier that his throat was raw. He dressed hurriedly, pausing only to glare at
the two livid bite marks Genevieve had left on his chest. They were purpling
even against his bronzed skin, and he knew that a bite from a woman of his own
race could last weeks.

Memories of the previous evening were coming back, of the
alley where she had finally found him, the revolver she had shoved to his spine
and her lips just inches from his ear, commanding him up to the room. Fury
mixed with arousal as he remembered her ordering him to strip, and commanding
him into the bed like any well-paid strumpet.

His mouth was still thick with the taste of the drug she had
given him. It had done what she wanted it to do. She had her head start, but
the fact that she ran off so gleefully when he had been trying to speak with
her raised his hackles.

Daniel nearly rushed to the door to pursue her, but the ache
in his body reminded him that it was dawn. The sun would not care for his rage
or his revenge, no matter how justified.

His fine white fangs slid from their hidden sheaths in
anger. He was of an old family, one that was already immortal during the time
of the Ceasers, and his fangs were sharp as glass and strong as steel.
Genevieve’s own line was murkier, with ties to the Turkish Beys and the
Merovingians, and her fangs were shorter, almost kittenish. Still, those fangs
of hers were powerful, and he had the marks to prove it.

The memory of those sweet sharp teeth made him rouse
uneasily, and he forced himself away from the door. There would be plenty of
time to chase her no matter where she went to ground, whether it was to Berlin,
San Francisco or Budapest. There would be time to humble her, to make her beg,
to make her regret ever crossing him. Then, perhaps after that, there would be
time to speak with her, to tell her that this game, while satisfying, while
exciting, was beginning to tire him. He needed more from her, and there was the
faint thread of dread that she might refuse him. He pushed it away, angry with
himself, and frustrated with her. She was feckless and careless at times, and
he could easily love her while still wanting to strangle her sometimes.

He paced the room’s length and back again. It was large
enough, but even so it felt like a cell. There were hours until night, and by
then Genevieve could be anywhere. Every moment could be taking her farther away
from him. He clenched his hands into fists, resisting the urge to wreck the
room like a madman.

It wasn’t until close to noon that he saw the tattered piece
of paper on the floorboards by the bed.

Beloved,

I wait for you. I long for you. I ache for you. Show me
what kind of hunter you are.

G

“What kind of hunter I am?” His voice was harsh in the small
room and if she had been in front of him, he would have thrown her to the floor
to show her exactly how sharp his teeth were. He could almost feel her cool
body underneath his, the way her mouth would open heedlessly as he rutted
against her.

In a fury, Daniel crumpled the paper in his hand, but before
he could throw it in the dying embers of the hearth, he paused. Instead, he
smoothed out the paper, taking in her flowing spidery script, the simplicity of
her words and the challenge, tossed down as lightly as one of her delicate
gloves.

The letter smelled of her jasmine perfume, heady and wild,
and perhaps underneath it, there was the cool-water scent of a woman of his
kind. Slowly, Daniel kissed the elegant G of her signature and folded the scrap
of paper, tucking it into the pocket of his waistcoat. Her fingers had been on
it. He wondered if she had kissed it as well.

Then Daniel sat down to wait out the torturous day. He had
business in Paris, accounts to close and debts to pay, but he knew he could be
quit of the city before the next dawn. After that, it would be down to the
docks to see if anyone had seen a small woman with honey-colored hair and a
bewitching scarlet smile.

If she wanted to see what kind of hunter he was, then by God
and all His saints, he would show her.

* * * * *

Beautiful Venice, decadent Venice, decided that the days
between the end of December and Shrove Tuesday were not enough time for their
beautiful masks, and now citizens and foreigners alike went disguised from
October until February.

This city is dying
, Genevieve thought, touching her
red and gilt half-mask.
But it will take a hundred years or more, and oh
what a wake it shall be.

She had taken up lodgings in the former home of one of
Venice’s most famous courtesans, and her balcony overlooked a narrow stone
footbridge carved with trailing vines. Venice was never quiet, and at her
window, gowned for an embassy ball and with her hair done up in golden
ringlets, she listened to the sounds of the thousand-year-old city.

Genevieve wasn’t sure what prompted her to linger at the window
for an extra moment, but then a man stepped on the bridge, one among the dozens
she must have seen cross, and it was as if her spine was shot through with
lightning. A ragged young linkboy lit his way with a lantern, but even without
that poor light, Genevieve would have recognized him.

She knew that slow stalk, and as she watched, heart in her
mouth, she saw him stop and glance in her direction.

Can you tell I am here?
she wondered, bringing a
quivering hand to her mouth.
Can you feel me, love?

Whether he knew her precise location or not, she knew that
time was scarce, and that mask or no, he would recognize her scent among a
thousand. There was no time to waste, and she started to rush for the door
before looking down at her dress in dismay.

The gown was one designed specially for her, with wide
skirts in stiff midnight-blue silk and embroidered with thousands of
mother-of-pearl beads. It was worth a fortune, but more problematically, it was
enormously heavy. She couldn’t run in it, and she certainly couldn’t hope to
evade a vampire as strong and clever as Daniel in it. With only a single pang
at the beauty of the thing, she started to tear it off.

Her strong hands ripped through the beautiful silk and in
bare moments, three hours’ work was undone and she stood in corset and
petticoat alone.

There was a gentle rap at her bedchamber door, and Genevieve
froze, her nerves achingly taut. Had she been too slow after all?

“Donna Vitelli? There is a gentleman asking for you at the
door.”

Genevieve cursed fluently in French before finding a sweeter
tone for her maid.

“Be assured, he is expected,” she called in Italian, shoving
a fistful of gold lira into her silk purse. “Give him refreshment in the gold
room, and I shall attend him immediately.”

In her undergarments and a pair of embroidered slippers, she
must look like a most peculiar sort of whore, but the excitement of the chase
was in the air, and she opened the window, ready to jump and see where in the
great city she could run.

Or at least, that was what she’d meant to do if she had not
been pushed back and clasped by a pair of terrifyingly strong arms the moment
she undid the latch.

“Kind of you to welcome me so eagerly, sweetheart,” he
murmured huskily. “Though the mask is less beautiful than your face.”

He released her so quickly that she stumbled back holding
the mask instinctively and defensively to her face.

As she watched, he leaped down into the room, moving like a
hungry panther. He was dressed all in black, like the figure of Death in an old
play, and slowly he removed his own plain white mask. Daniel had strong
features, similar to the statues of the gods she had seen in the city, but his
sensual mouth could belong to no one besides Lucifer himself.

Their last encounter in Paris had been conducted entirely in
the dark room she had rented. Now, in the well-lit bedchamber of her Venetian
apartment, she drank in the sight of him. There was a powerful ache in her, and
a small part of her wanted to surrender on the moment, to give him what he had
been hunting for. Her hands ached for him, but her competitiveness kept them
still. It had been so long for both of them, and now that she was so close, she
saw that he practically shook with the effort of controlling himself.

“Take off the rest of your clothing,” he said, and in the
ragged edge of his voice she heard her chance. He had been hungry for too long,
and that would make him careless.

“Why should I do such a thing?” she asked, stalling for
time. “Flamina is preparing a fine brandy for us in the gold room, and we have
so much to talk about.”

For a moment, Genevieve thought she wasn’t going to get her
chance, that he would simply catch her up by her corseted waist and throw her
to the bed, but he restrained himself, removing his hat and showing off that
sinfully dark midnight hair, caught at the nape with a velvet ribbon.

“Take them off,” he repeated. “Or I will.”

Genevieve shuddered with a delicious thrill, and
thoughtfully, she raised her hands to the back of her head to untie the ribbons
of the mask. The motion stretched her body, brought her breasts up high and
taut. He followed her every motion with a hunter’s eagerness, and she knew how
much he wanted her.

She tossed the mask on the bed behind her and swept her hand
briefly over her body, thinking frantically. She feinted at the hooks at the
front of her corset, touching them, loosening them not at all.

“You’ve been more than three months,” she said, keeping her
voice idle. “What kept you?”

“I thought you were in Turin, and then I heard that you were
in Milan.”

Daniel’s voice was edged with impatience but then Genevieve
swept her hands along her hips and her waist. She smiled with private pleasure,
watching him swallow hard.

“Your hair. Take it down.”

Slowly, Genevieve reached for the jeweled hairpins that held
her hair up and slid one from her tresses. It was gold and nearly as long as
her hand. She thought that it might be sharp enough.

“I missed you,” she murmured. “You should have been faster.”

Daniel snorted at that, and it looked like his patience was
nearing its end as he took a step closer to her.

“I’ll show you how much I missed you,” he started, and
shouted in surprise when Genevieve sent the golden hairpin arrowing through air
toward him. A mere man would have found himself bleeding, heavily cut or even
stabbed by the object’s sharp tip, but Daniel’s quick reflexes allowed him to
fall back and knock it out of the air, practically in one motion.

His moment’s distraction was all she needed, and in a flash
she was by him and perched on the open window, glancing behind her with a sweet
smile.

“Too slow, my love,” she called mockingly. “Perhaps next
time you will be quicker!”

She threw herself off the wall of the building, and though
he was to the window as quick as a lick of fire, she was off and away.

Genevieve heard his furious snarl loud in her ears, but then
she was darting into the maze-like alleys, tracing paths that she knew like the
back of her hand.

A pair of gondoliers shouted approvingly at her bare legs
and streaming hair, and she flashed them a grin that was surely too sharp for a
human woman, stunning them into silence as she ran past.

The moon was up and Venice’s streets were filling with
people. Men and women in masks greeted each other under the pools of lamplight
and Genevieve darted between them, a bright laugh bubbling out of her throat.

From Genevieve’s window, Daniel stared out into the night.
The first shock of being so close and losing her was gone, and now his head was
clearer. She had been so close that he could see the pulse at the base of her
throat. The thought made him want to howl.