Except Malek wasn’t drunk. He was cold stone sober and riddled with guilt so thick it felt like another person was in the SUV with him, riding his ass over emotions he had no right to be feeling.
His eyes roved, searching. One after another, the females selling themselves stepped away from the shadows, hoping to catch his attention, but he wasn’t looking for just any female. He needed one in particular.
Too bad Gina was long gone, fleeing from her own guilt after nearly killing Severin two weeks ago. And thank God she was gone, because as much as Malek’s soul wanted her, he refused to disgrace Carmen’s memory by taking another. Carmen had been his mate centuries ago. She had been human, but his biological makeup hadn’t cared, fusing with hers in the way vampires chose their lifemates.
Malek blinked hard against Carmen’s memory. He still refused to accept her death, even after all this time.
Unfortunately, his body had other plans. His mind may not have been ready to move on, but his body was, and for the first time in hundreds of years of abstinence, he needed release by something other than his hand. That need consumed and drove him, and his dark brown eyes searched the faces of the females who lined the sidewalk.
Where was Gina now? Gina. The female his body longed for? Had she stayed in Chicago or gone back to Atlanta after Sev had forced Tristan and the powers that be to pardon and release her? Perhaps she had taken off for someplace new to wallow in her guilt.
His eyes fixed on a petite female with short, black hair.
That one.
Yes, she would do nicely.
Malek pulled over, reached across the seat, and opened the passenger door as his gaze caught the one he had chosen.
“You need a date, baby?” The woman stepped forward and peeked inside. She was human, but that was okay. She looked the part.
“Yes, I do. Get in.” Not since the Middle Ages when he and Micah had caroused in the king’s city had he bought a woman’s services.
She arched an eyebrow as if considering he might be some psycho, so he smiled and said, “I’ll give you a thousand to come with me. We can stay here if you want, but I can assure you, my place is way more comfortable.”
She bit her lip. A thousand dollars was a lot of money to turn down. “Okay, but no funny business.” She got in.
Malek put his SUV in gear and hit the gas harder than intended. He needed to get her home fast. His zipper was ready to bust.
“What’s your name?” he said, pulling out onto the main road.
“For a thousand dollars you can call me anything you want, baby.”
Without hesitation, Malek said, “Gina. I want to call you Gina.” He glanced at the female. She had short, blunt-cut black hair and a petite frame. The eyes were different, and so were the clothes, but she was close enough to the real thing for his fantasies to take him there. Maybe if he pretended with this one, he wouldn’t need the real Gina to fulfill what his body was demanding of him.
“Gina it is, baby.” She licked her lips and flashed him a come-hither glance.
If he tried hard enough, he could almost see the real thing in her. Almost. “Please. Call me Malek.”
Miriam woke up to find Io sitting on the floor next to her. His gaze brightened and he smiled.
“How do you feel?” he said. He helped her sit up.
“Like shit.” She groaned. “Don’t get me wrong, I feel better than I did, but damn, this shit sucks.” Who the hell had let in the army of Terminators to play Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em inside her body?
Io chuckled at her surprisingly unfeminine manner of speaking and sat down beside her. “I gave you a potent detox with my venom. I needed to get the cobalt out of your system.”
“Ah, I see.” She leaned her face into her hands. “Great. Just great. I don’t know whether to thank you or hit you.” How did she always seem to put her worst face forward around this guy? The one male she wanted to impress and all she did was behave like a strung-out junkie around him. The vampire version of Amy Winehouse. How could he not be impressed? Uh-huh, right.
He caressed her back, his palm rubbing up and down slowly. “You’ll thank me later.” His fingertips traced slow circles over her back, the sensations soothing through her blouse.
“That feels nice,” she said, peeking over at him. His right arm rested across his lap, and she caught herself before she could reach over to follow the swirling lines of ink down his forearm. “That really is an amazing tattoo.” She remembered it from when she saw him at AKM two weeks ago.
He lifted his arm. “Thank you. I’ve been thinking about getting the left arm done, too, but haven’t had the time.”
She wondered what kind of tattoo she would get if she ever got one. A dragon, or possibly a heart broken in two. That would be appropriate for her life. Or maybe she should just get her name tattooed on her forehead. Her father would surely find that suitable. Not.
Io shifted beside her and brushed her hair off her back so he could rub her shoulders with both hands instead of just one. “Is that better?”
“Mm-hm.” She took a deep, relaxing breath and felt the tension melt away a little bit more.
She liked it here. Io’s home was comfortable. Cozy. The furniture was nice, but not too nice, and the appliances were more functional than artistic. She felt like her home was a museum to be visited and viewed, but Io’s home felt like…well, like a home was supposed to feel. The couch was soft and well-used. And there was dust on the end table. Not much, but enough to make it clear this was a living space, not a sterile room where you couldn’t touch anything for fear of breaking it or leaving fingerprints.
“I like your home,” she said.
“Not what you’re used to, though, is it?” Io’s hands worked her shoulders gently, and with a hint of something deeper than innocent intentions.
“No, but that’s why I like it.” She looked over at him. “This is what I envision a home
should
look like.” She smiled and looked down at the coffee table and traced the tip of her finger around a ring where a glass had once sat. “A water ring.” She grinned.
“I’m a slob, what can I say?” Io sounded humored.
“No, that’s not what I mean.” She started to laugh, but the Terminators inside her head hadn’t finished decimating her brain yet. She cringed then continued. “I wasn’t pointing out that you’re a slob. I was saying that it’s nice to be in a place that feels lived in.”
His sexy, see-everything gaze penetrated hers, and Miriam felt certain that he was burrowing into her deepest secrets and desires, seeing how much he affected her and reveling in the knowledge that her insides had turned to mush at just being this near to him.
Hadn’t she and Seph just been talking about Io earlier? At the time she had been certain that she would never see him again, and yet here he was. She was in his home…and he was touching her.
Look at me now, Dad.
She blew mental raspberries at her father.
“How did you find me, anyway?” she said. The last thing she remembered before waking up and tossing blue cookies all over his bathroom was dosing on cobalt, the euphoric high, and then blackness.
“Your friend, Persephone. She called me.”
Persephone had called him? “She did? Directly?” She wondered what Seph might have said to him. She hoped to God Seph hadn’t said anything that would embarrass her. As if she needed help in that department.
“No. Well, not really. She called AKM. But she asked for me directly.” His hands stopped briefly. “You know, I didn’t even think to ask her how she got my name or why she called me. She was in a bit of hysterics when I talked to her on the phone.”
Her face heated. Maybe it had been a good thing that she and Seph had talked about Io tonight. At least it had given Seph someone to call after she had let her I’m-temporarily-stupid gene take her down Overdose Lane again. “She got your name from me,” she admitted.
“Oh?” His mouth curled at the corners and he cocked his head curiously, watching her with more interest.
She glanced away, unable to hold eye contact when he was looking at her like that. “Yes. I told her about you.”
He shifted closer. “You did, huh? How interesting.”
Biting her lip, she ducked her head and huffed out a self-conscious chuff. Could he see what she had told Seph? Was he peeking inside her thoughts to see how she had blushed and carried on like she had a human teenage crush on him? She swiped a curt, sideways glance toward him. “Stop looking at me like that.” She averted her gaze again, heat blazing from her face to her neck and chest.
“How am I looking at you?” He bumped his arm against hers. A playful gesture.
She smiled. Why did she feel guilty? All she had done was tell Seph about him. But then, that did make her guilty, didn’t it? “You’re embarrassing me.”
He sat back, obviously amused. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop.” The tone of his voice implied that he wasn’t really sorry, but was simply appeasing her.
“Thank you.” She nibbled her lip. His reaction to learning she had been talking about him made it clear he was pleased to learn she had. Which meant…what exactly? That he liked her? That he was attracted to her? Both?
After several seconds, he cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, like I said, Persephone was pretty distraught when I talked to her.”
She groaned and shook her head. “She was?”
“Yeah, she was really worried. She thought you were going to die.”
Miriam cringed hearing that. “Oh man. Shit. Poor Seph.” She dropped her head into her hands, feeling like an idiot. “She’s been through enough already.” She shook her head, her arms rocking side to side as she did. “I royally fucked up.” And in her case, she could really say
royally.
Too bad she was the only one who got the joke. Miriam kept her face hidden against her palms.
For a second, Io quieted as if her use of the f-word had caught him off guard. Most likely it had. The
princess
wasn’t supposed to speak such language, after all. Well, fuck being a well-mannered princess. She wouldn’t be what others expected. She would be herself. If only she could figure out exactly who that was.
“No, you didn’t fuck up. You just made a mistake. We all make mistakes.” Io leaned toward her, holding her arms in a half-hug. “If you’ll let me, I can help you.”
Miriam looked over her shoulder. His face was so close to hers that she momentarily caught her breath and lost her train of thought before getting herself back on track. “My father will never let you. You know that. If he saw what you’re doing right now, he would cut off your hands. You heard your boss two weeks ago. No one is allowed to touch me, remember?” Resentment edged her voice.
She couldn’t let herself get too close to Io, even though she wanted nothing more than that very thing. But her father would never allow it. He would destroy Io if he knew what had happened tonight, even though Io had only been trying to help her.
“Do I look scared?” Io said, brushing his palms up her arms, over her shoulders, and down either side of her spine.
Well, actually, no he didn’t, and she almost smiled at his bravado, impressed that she had found another like her: someone who didn’t wilt under the power of her father the way most everybody else did. Still, she couldn’t let Io get hurt.
“Look, Io….” She huffed and pursed her lips. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me tonight, but—”
He pushed forward and kissed her. Not a passionate, open-mouthed, let’s-get-naked kind of kiss. It was a simple press of his lips against hers.
Her first real kiss. And it was Io giving it to her. Her heart went from zero to sixty in less than one second.
A squeak broke in the back of her throat and her eyes shot wide as she froze, but no way was she going to pull away. His lips felt too inviting, too warm, too firm. Too perfect. She had dreamed about what her first kiss would feel like and how it would happen, but she had never imagined that such a simple, innocent meeting of lips would set her insides into fits of somersaults on a lava flow.
For several seconds, he held his mouth against hers then drew back, his lips clinging to hers for a second before pulling away, leaving cold emptiness in their wake. The stunned shock written on her face apparently amused him.
“What?” he said, grinning.
Miriam opened her mouth, but no words came out. Only a quiet huff of air. No male had ever had the balls to break her father’s rules and kiss her, but Io wasn’t following in the footsteps of those others. Maybe that was why she was so drawn to him, because she could sense his fearless drive to do what he wanted when he wanted, despite the rules and acceptable social customs.
Of all the elite males who had wanted her hand over the years, and who had been flatly denied by her father when not a single spark of the mating call revealed itself in them, here was Io—who was a whole lot of nothing special—and he was the one she wanted. He didn’t have super powers as far as she could tell, and he didn’t come from any of the aristocratic families in her father’s circle, but she was drawn to him as if he were a magnet and she were steel. Io had dared to go where no male had gone before, simply taking her mouth with his without preamble or warning, and that simple, brazen gesture made her want him in a way she had never felt.
“Why did you do that?” She touched her fingertips to her lips, still in shock with her body doing a lot of dipsy-doodle in her tummy that radiated out through her limbs.
“What? Kiss you?”
She nodded.
“Well, because I wanted to.” He shrugged one shoulder. “And because I wanted to shut you up. It sounded like you were about to say something I didn’t want to hear.”
“Oh? Such as?” She bit her lip and answered his charming smile with one of her own.
Io chuckled. “It sounded like you were getting ready to say something like, ‘I can’t stay,’ or ‘I can’t be with you.’ And, frankly, that’s unacceptable.”
Her heart skipped. She had wanted to see Io again but hadn’t dared to hope he would feel the same way. And she had been scared to see him for this very reason. Now that he had kissed her, she wanted him to do it again. In fact, her body squirmed for him to do a lot more than just kiss her. In the history of bad ideas, this had to be the worst ever.