The wail faded to a soft moan, then to a sigh. I might have been blushing. Ben raised his brow. Sven’s expression didn’t change a whit.
“So,” I said. “Am I to take it that Dom is here and just. . . not answering his phone for obvious reasons?”
“Correct,” Sven said.
Ben leaned close to me and whispered, “Maybe we should take the hint.”
“Follow the example?” I whispered back, and he nodded.
“I’m sure everything here’s just fine—”
“Sven? Is that Kitty? Tell her to come in.” Dom’s voice echoed from the living room.
“Actually, we can come back later—”
Sven stepped aside and tilted his head, indicating that I should enter the vampire’s lair. The second bodyguard’s lips curled in an amused smile.
Now, this was awkward.
“You asked for this,” Ben said helpfully. “How about I wait right here?”
“Don’t you dare,” I said, taking his hand firmly in mine.
We crept forward. I peered ahead, ready to duck away at the first sign of something I didn’t really want imprinted on my memory. I didn’t have to look at Dom to talk to him. The living room with its panoramic windows came into view.
Fully clothed, Dom reclined on one of the sofas, cradling a woman, also fully clothed, in his lap. He held one arm across her chest, bracing her against him. His other hand was hidden under her skirt, between her spread legs. She was flushed, her head thrown back and her mouth open in a grimace of ecstasy. One side of her pink spaghetti-strap cocktail dress had slipped off her shoulder. She clung to him, white-knuckled, and blood trickled from a wound on her neck.
He licked the blood, kissed the spot, then carefully worked his way out from under her, barely jostling her as he moved. She remained lying on the sofa in daze, her eyes closed. Dom adjusted a pillow under her head, then smoothed her dress into a semblance of modesty.
I had never yet had the guts to ask a vampire if blood tasted better with all those sexual hormones saturating it. I figured it must, because they always seemed to be wrapping the blood thing and the sex thing together. I wasn’t sure vampires actually had sex in the conventional sense. But they could sure make people get off on being blood donors. It made a strange kind of symbiotic sense.
Standing before us, hands behind his back, looking suave as ever, Dom licked his lips before saying, “It’s really too bad that thing about having to invite people in only works on vampires.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what you get for being top of the food chain. The rest of us have to have some kind of fighting chance.”
“Why’d you come here, Kitty?”
“You’re not the oldest vampire in town. Who is that woman from Balthasar’s show, that priestess chick?”
“Set her sights on you, did she? I had a feeling.”
“And you didn’t warn me? You didn’t do anything about it?”
“Sorry. I thought you could take care of yourself. But if she decided she wanted you, there wasn’t much I could do about it.”
I swallowed back the growl stuck in my throat. But my claws were pressing against the inside of my skin. Ben put a hand on my shoulder. The touch steadied me.
“How’d you escape?” he said, continuing. “She doesn’t usually let anyone get away.”
“I had help,” I said, fuming. But I couldn’t vent. Couldn’t lose control. I didn’t have the power here. “But I guess that means you haven’t heard about what happened over there tonight? The police are still bringing out the bodies.”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “I know what I need to.”
“And where is she now? What happens to her now?”
“If she’s really as old as you think she is, what makes you think anything happens to her? What do you possibly think you, or any of us, can do?”
“Is this your city or not? Are you the Master here or not?”