“So do you love Paris?” he asked, sprinkling extra cheese on the two slices lying on his plate.
She swallowed a bite of pizza and looked down at her shirt. “I did until my parents retired there last year.
I miss them horribly.”
“Any siblings?” he asked.
Her expression darkened, and even so, he couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was without even a lick of makeup on. “I had a sister,” she said.
“Had?”
She set her pizza down. “I guess this is where I give you the same kind of full disclosure I wanted from Troy. This case is more personal to me, than not. My sister died ten years ago. Her and several other university students were all killed by a janitor working at the school. Five of them total, died before the police figured out who the killer was. The truth is, I survive the memory of losing my sister by doing my job and doing it well. I try to stay all business, and most of the time, I succeed, but I have to admit that this case is just a little too similar to my sister’s to not feel an abnormally strong connection to it.” For the first time in years, Aiden let himself see the memory of his parents, and his younger sister, lying lifelessly on the ground in front of their home, murdered by a vampire. That same vampire would have killed him and his brothers if not for Marcus saving them and turning them into Wardens. It wasn’t a place he visited. Ever. He didn’t like how it felt. He didn’t like how vividly he could recall their lifeless expressions after so many years.
“You were right about the hunt for Andres being personal to Troy and that’s his story to tell or not tell,” he finally said. “But there was a woman, a betrayal, and a whole lot more there. It isn’t a pretty story.
He’s messed up over the whole thing and he believes wrongly that Andres will somehow give him answers, and I don’t even know to what. He knows better than to get personally involved in a case, and he can’t even see that he is. It’s dangerous Kelly, for him and for you. You can’t help anyone if you aren’t here anymore.”
“I know,” she said. “I do. I’m a logical thinker, a facts person, but even so, sometimes, my past finds a way inside my head.”
“I do know,” he said. “I know because Troy’s story, my story, starts long before Andres. When we were much younger, Troy, myself, and our older brother Evan, came home to find our younger sister and our parents dead.”
Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God, Aiden. How? Who? Why? Oh…I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry. Forget I asked. But was this before or after you got into law enforcement?”
“I wouldn’t have brought it up if I wasn’t going to tell you about it but there isn’t a lot to the story. And it was before, and it was the reason we decided to take on the jobs that we do. They died in what was a random, senseless act of violence.” Which wasn’t a lie. A vampire with bloodlust didn’t chose victims any way but the easy way – whoever was in their path. “My point in this is that I’m going to get you out of this alive, but stay that way. Stop playing detective, or become one so you have a partner to watch your back.”
She studied him a long moment. “Thank you. I should have said that already. I’m glad you were at the bar and I’m glad you’re here now.”
Their eyes locked and held, a charge crackling in the air, their attraction getting stronger, nearly impossible for him to escape. And he wanted to. He wanted to escape because of the very conversation they were having. His world was about pain and death, about hunting monsters he didn’t want her anywhere near. He needed to get this conversation back to the basics, to talk that amounted to nothing, to the basic shared hunger for food. Not the more primal hunger growing inside him for this woman.
He picked up his slice of pizza. “Tell me about Paris.”
She started talking, telling him stories, of poorly spoken French and lost luggage that made him forget the idea was to put small talk between them. Instead, he was laughing at her stories, feeling more and more connected to Kelly.
When they stood up to head back to the bedroom, he grabbed the empty pizza box and put it in the trash inside her pantry, while she put the plates in the dishwasher. They turned toward each other at the same moment, and he reached out and caught her to keep them from colliding. The touch was hot, electric, consuming. He didn’t even consciously think about what came next. One minute they were staring at each other and the next he was kissing her, or more like devouring her. He lifted her, removing the barrier of his height, allowing himself to deepen the kiss, to taste her more fully. Her legs wrapped around his waist, his hand finding her backside where the shirt had lifted, where a tiny strip of a thong did nothing to cover her. He groaned with the realization, and he knew he should stop now, before he couldn’t think straight, before this went too far. Her hand slid into his hair, caressing his neck, the gentle hunger he felt in her arousing the animal that was his vampire. He could smell her arousal, almost taste the sweetness of her blood again. His gums tingled, and he knew he was in trouble.
Aiden set her down on the counter, intending to pull away, to end this now, but somehow his lip
s traveled the delicate curve of her neck, his hands the curves of her high, full breasts. His fingers found the stiff peaks of her plump nipples against her thin shirt. She gasped at the intimate touch and then moaned as he tugged the delicate peaks.
Hunger roared inside him and he kissed her again, desperate for an outlet to release the heat building inside him, the need to taste her, the need to drink from her. Sex would satisfy him. He’d lived this. And sex was only sex. It meant nothing. He knew this, he’d lived this so long, maybe too long. But in the far reaches of his mind, he knew Kelly was different, that she was already more than sex. He rejected that idea, and shoved her shirt up her body, then tugged it over her head, and tossed it aside.
Her hands went to the counter behind her, the position lifting her full breasts higher. He pressed her thighs apart, his gaze ravishing the little spec of silk in the V of her body. He leaned into her, his hands went to the counter beside her, their eyes connecting. “You’re beautiful,” he said, one of his hands caressing a path up her stomach, over one of her breasts, teasing the stiff rosy bud of her nipple.
Her lashes fluttered, dark half moons, on pale, perfect skin. “Thank you,” she whispered.
He almost laughed at the polite prim words as she sat in nothing but a black thong on her kitchen counter, and he might have teased her, if not for the urgency growing inside him. His gaze slid over her full red lips, then raked over her lush breasts and puckered nipples, his hands following the same path. He dipped his head, brushed his mouth over hers.
He reached down and slid his fingers over the wet silk between her thighs. “Tell me to stop,” he told her, shoving aside the material and caressing the wet heat of her body. “Tell me to stop before we both forget why this is a bad idea.” He pressed inside her, caressed her.
“I don’t normally just hop on a kitchen counter for a man I just met,” she said breathlessly. “And since I really can’t think right now,” she paused, rocking against his hand, then moaning softly. “Why exactly is this wrong again?”
He kissed her, fingers delving deeper insider her, moving with her. She grabbed a hold of him, buried her face in his neck. She smelled like lilac, and female, and he knew she tasted even better, he knew how erotic tasting her would be, how pleasurable it would be for her. And how much he didn’t want to bite her and be forced to erase her memory, defy her trust. He was shaking when she stiffened and then began spasming around his fingers, shaking because he wanted inside her, shaking because he wanted every bit of her, in every way possible, like he hadn’t wanted in a lifetime it seemed.
She laughed nervously, as he slid his fingers out of her. “I think I should be embarrassed that I just, um, had an orgasm in my kitchen.” She ran her fingers over his erection, tilting her chin up to shyly look at him, “Even more so that you didn’t. I want to fix that.” His cell phone vibrated with a text message loudly enough that her gaze went to his hip where it rested.
“Troy?” she asked urgently as he removed the phone and glanced down at the message. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” Aiden said, but he knew it might not have been. He’d let down his guard, compromised her safety.