“Well ...” I bit my lip and considered the matter, sensing that he was speaking the truth. He honestly was puzzled by the fact that women the world over were ready to fling their clothing off and wrestle men like him to the ground. “You guys are all dark and dangerous and sexy.”
“Other men are dangerous and sexy,” he answered, and I caught an unreadable look slid my way. “Terrorists. Madmen. Homicidal ax-murdering rapists.”
“Yes, but they’re bad. You vampires are dangerous, but in a thrilling way. Dark Ones don’t hurt women.”
“I wish that were true, but unfortunately, there are bad Dark Ones just as there are bad mortals.”
“Most of you don’t hurt others,” I amended, and he conceded that point. “And you are loyal, and protective, and have an edge to you that leaves a woman thrilled without being worried she’s going to be hacked to pieces and left by the side of the road—stop!”
I shrieked the last word, causing him to once again slam on the car’s brakes. Luckily, there weren’t many other cars on the road, and he managed to pull over onto the shoulder without endangering us or anyone else.
“What is it now?” he asked, his voice dripping with annoyance.
I had the car door open and was out of it before he finished his sentence, calling over my shoulder as I ran down the side of the road, “There’s a dog back there.”
“So?” He was out of the car now, too, standing beside it and looking very annoyed.
“This is a fast road, so I can’t leave a dog here to be hit. Here, doggy. Come here. Oh, there you are. Hi. You look scared.”
The dog, some sort of a white shepherd, shied away and ran past me. I held my breath, wanting to yell lest it run right into the traffic, but luckily, the dog had enough sense to lope along the shoulder, straight toward Merrick.
“Catch it!” I yelled, hurrying after the poor creature.
He didn’t need to. The dog ran straight up to him and tried to climb him in its terror. Merrick, with a look that would have made me laugh in a less dire situation, picked up the dog and stood waiting for me.
“Oh, good, he’s OK. I thought he was going to run right into the traffic. Let’s get him into the car.” I opened the back door, gesturing toward the interior.
“You do not honestly expect me to place this stray into one of Christian’s expensive cars,” he said, his brows together.
“Of course I do. It’s our duty to rescue those who need our help,” I said self-righteously, and gestured again to the interior.
“Since when?”
“Since you developed a moral compass. Put the dog in, Merrick.”
He considered me for a minute. And if I don’t?
I’ll never speak to you again.
That is supposed to be a threat?
“Of course it’s a threat, you great big boob!”
He pulled himself up, his shoulders squaring even though he was holding a large white dog to his chest. “I am a Dark One. I walk the night, and am feared by mortal and immortal beings alike. I am not a boob.”
“You are if you think that losing your Beloved isn’t going to make your life a living hades,” I pointed out, and tried to pull the dog from his arms.
“I’ve survived this long without you,” he said dismissively. “I don’t see any reason I can’t go another eight hundred years.”
“I am going to ignore how wrong you are, and instead, I will point out that you have to do what your Beloved says.”
He gave a short bark of laughter. “In what world is that a rule?”
“In C. J. Dante’s books!”
“Perhaps for a Joined pair, but we are not Joined,” he said, but to my relief put the dog on the backseat of the car. “Despite your ability to access my thoughts, that does not mean you hold any sway over me. We will get along together better if you remember that.”
He moved around to the driver’s side while I tried to think of a good comeback for that statement, but my Inner Tempest failed me. She was too busy swooning over just how tight his shirt had been across his muscles while he was holding a dog who must have weighed at least eighty pounds.
I got into the car, and didn’t say anything when he drove off, but I thought a lot of things.
Not all of them had to do with wanting to get him naked.
Chapter Seven
“I think the dog is going to be OK. He’s curled up asleep back there. When we get to the next town, we can find a twenty-four-hour vet hospital, and have them scan him for a microchip. Maybe he’s just lost, and his owners are frantic trying to find him.”
The woman, Tempest, spoke just as if she was not in a dangerous situation, with a dangerous man, in a dangerous location. And yet, there she was, prattling on to Merrick about being his Beloved (he gave a mental snort at that idea), the stray she’d forced him to take, and every other subject that flitted through her mind.
“I love dogs.”
Of course she did. He had no doubt she also liked butterflies, kittens, and rainbows. He felt quite certain that if he ever saw a rainbow, he’d dislike it intensely.
“My papa would never let me have one, because he said the dogs and cats have no souls, and thus aren’t worthy of our love. I call bullcookies on that one. My friend Ellis has a cat, named Jose, who is the most soulful cat you’d ever meet.”
She just had no clue about him. How could she sit there, periodically leaning over the back of the seat to check on the mongrel, and chat at him just as if they were going for a nice drive? Did she not realize she had been abducted by a man whom most beings feared?
“I hope we’re going toward Tuscany, because I’m going to be meeting my friend Ellis in Genoa in four days.”
Did she not grasp the basic concept of danger? Perhaps her mind didn’t work that way. Perhaps she was too busy jumping from topic to topic to understand just who he was, and how grave was her situation.
“This is my first time in Europe. It’s amazing how much it looks like northern California.”
He did not like women who had such trivial thought processes. Even if he was willing to admit she was his Beloved—and he most definitely was not—he wouldn’t claim her. She was all glowing brightness, the coppery redness of her hair casting an aura of light and goodness around her that simply would not work in his life. He was dark and shadows, the inky abyss of torment, and she was sunshine and happiness and a free-spiritedness that had no place in his life.
What a shame that was.
He squelched the thought before she could pick it up.
Pick up what? she asked.
He didn’t answer her, more than a little discomfited by the ease with which she managed to find her way into his mind. No, he had to let go of such trivial thoughts, and focus on what was important. He had to find the link to Victor. He knew it was out there, and if Tempest—what a fitting name that was for her; it was as if she were a storm that had come into his life, turning everything he knew upside down—if Tempest wasn’t that link, then he needed to find who was.
“What were you doing at Villa Carlo?” he asked her.
“—was a friend from high school, but we lost touch for several years while I took care of my father, and we only just reconnected ... what?”
He repeated his question.
“Oh. I told you, didn’t I? Carlo is my papa’s cousin, and since I got to Italy early—I’m meeting Ellis here in a couple of days—I figured I’d spend the time until then with Cousin Carlo. He’s not really ...” She frowned while she thought out what she wanted to say.
Merrick didn’t like it when she frowned. He much preferred her smile. That seemed to light up all the dark corners of his soul.
He squelched that thought, too. He didn’t need to be dwelling on the woman’s personality, or her wild curls that glowed like gilded copper, or the brightness of her gray eyes. He absolutely would not think about the way her legs had felt when he hefted her over his shoulder, or how enticing her ass was the two times he happened to bru
sh his hand against it. Most of all, he would not remember the scent of her, sun-warmed and vaguely floral, a scent that seemed to sink into his skin and heat his blood.
“He’s not really overly friendly. Not that he’s not-friendly, if you know what I mean.”
Merrick hadn’t a clue, but since he enjoyed hearing her talk, he said nothing.
Dammit. Now he was dwelling on the sound of her voice. It was just a voice. She was just a woman. She was nothing to him other than a means to an end.
“He was always foisting me off on his buddy, and let me tell you, that I did not enjoy.” She gave a little shiver. “Giovanni has to be a serial killer. Or at least a sociopath. Have you ever met a sociopath?”
“I am a sociopath,” he said, giving her a look that would have scared the life from a normal mortal.
She smiled at him. She actually smiled, and it bathed him in a warmth that he found both satisfying and annoying.
He didn’t want to be warm. He was a Horseman, one of the most feared beings in the Otherworld. He hunted, he captured, and if he had to, he killed. He was not a man to be warmed by a redheaded goddess’s smile.
A goddess ... a vague memory wafted through his mind. There was something that had happened at Christian’s house, something that just slipped past the grip of memory. He’d been a little foggy in the brain the day that Christian had awoken him, and didn’t quite remember what had happened beyond the fact that the Revelation had caught him and almost destroyed him.
Christian had saved him, though... No, not Christian, one of his servants.
Her red hair making a flaming halo around her head as she bent down over him ...
He slammed on the brakes for the fourth time.
“Do you not know how to stop a car properly?” she had the gall to ask him, giving him a glare just as if he was a normal person. “I don’t have a driver’s license, but even I know you aren’t supposed to come to a screeching halt every couple of minutes. For one thing, it has to be hard on the tires.”
“The goddess. You are the goddess, the woman who fed me.”
Her face lit up with joy. “You do remember! Oh, I’m so relieved! You have no idea how embarrassing it was for me to want to tell you, but it would seem like I was bragging, and then there was the whole thing where we had wild bunny lovin’ all over the rug in front of the fireplace, and oh man, there was no way I was going to tell ... you ... about ...” Her voice trailed off as her eyes widened in horror. “You ... you do remember that part, right?”
Merrick allowed no expression to escape his iron control, but his mind was frantically digging around its memories. Unfortunately, with the exception of the memory of the woman’s hair, and the sensation of life returning to him, there was nothing else.
And what a profound shame that was.
She gasped and covered her cheeks with both hands. “Glorious grape juice, you don’t! That’s it—I’m going to die of shame right here and now. You have your way, Papa! I had sexual congress with a man without being married, and now I’m doomed!”
Merrick only just managed to keep from rolling his eyes. He did, however, not only pull back into traffic; he pulled an extremely illegal U-turn and started speeding back the way he’d come.
“What are you doing?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at the direction they had been headed. “Is it because we ... you know ... were intimate? Are you disgusted by me? If you are, then you can just bite my shiny pink behind, because I do not hold with double standards, and if you’re disgusted by the fact that I’d engage in carnal relations with a man I just met, then you should be disgusted by yourself, too. In fact—”
“I’m not disgusted by you,” he interrupted, annoyed that she’d think that of him. “On the contrary, I’m profoundly grateful that you fed me when you did. I will admit that I am unable to call to mind the exact proceedings that happened after the feeding, but such things are not unknown, and so long as you did not suffer by it, then I’m willing to forget it.”
“Forget it!” She smacked him on the arm, clearly outraged.
He would never understand women.
“Well, of course you’re never going to understand us if that’s the sort of attitude you have.”
Why are you so angry with me?
Because you want to forget the fact that we had sex.
I said I was willing to forget it because you were just stating that you were going to die of shame. You were distressed, and I simply wished to ease that state.
Oh. He could feel her thinking. “Oh. That’s actually quite nice of you. Thank you. Why are we going this way? I thought you were taking me somewhere.”
“I was, but that has changed.”
She shot him a pointed look. “Because we had nooky time?”
“Because you saved my life. I cannot use someone who saved me.”
“Use how?”
He sighed, and thought lovingly of just pulling over and forcing her and the mongrel out of the car, but knew that was not an option. “Because I owe you a debt. I will find another way to reach Victor.”
“OK, let’s go back over that, because I don’t quite understand. Who is Victor?”
“A man who has killed many Dark Ones, and harmed even more mortals.”
“Bad guy, then. And why did you think I have something to do with him?”
“You were in his car.”
“I was? When?”
“Yesterday. I arrived to find a report from an informant that a man and woman were seen outside of Genoa traveling in his car. Photos were provided. You were in the photo. My informant traced you to the villa where I found you. Thus, you have a connection to Victor.”
“But the house and car belong to my father’s cousin Carlo, not Victor.”
“Then Victor has some connection to him.”
She was silent for a few minutes, and Merrick actually found himself missing her effervescent conversation. “I don’t know what that could be, but admittedly, I’ve only been here for a day, and I don’t know Carlo at all.”
“Are there others in the house?”
“Just the sociopath Giovanni. Oooh! Maybe he’s your bad guy? I can totally see him torturing and killing, and kicking puppies.”
“Describe him.”
She did so.
“He sounds like the man in the photos. I will show them to you, but I suspect your sociopath is not the man I want. There are no pictures of Victor, unfortunately.”
“Pooh. So, what do you want me to do?”
He glanced over at her, surprised by her question. “What do you mean?”
She gestured at nothing in particular. “What do you want me to do to help you find Victor?”
“This is not your problem. I told you—I cannot use someone who has saved my life. I will return you to Genoa, where you will take a room at a hotel. Then I will fetch your things from your cousin’s house, and you can continue with your vacation.”
“I doubt if my cousin would be happy to have you show up to grab my stuff. If you drive me back there, that’ll be fine.”
“I won’t leave you there. It’s possible your cousin is Victor.”
“It’s also possible he’s not.”
“It’s not safe there,” he insisted, wondering why she didn’t understand this important point.
“Fine,” she said, heaving a dramatic sigh. “I won’t stay there, but only because Cousin Carlo and I weren’t really connecting like I’d hoped we would. I’ll get my things and you can take me to a hotel, OK?”
He said nothing, but thought a great many things about her not doing as he instructed.
“You know,” she said in a conversational tone that he just knew was going to pave the way to the most outrageous statement. “You’re not actually the king of the world. You may think you are, and I bet people treat you like you are because you’re big and bad and scary and have pointy teeth—wait, you do have fangs, don’t you?—but the truth is that I’ve spent my life fighting authority, and
I have the scars to prove it. So I don’t buy this bullcookies about you telling me what I can and can’t do any more than I accept being kidnapped.”
“You were kidnapped.”
The look she gave him was filled with pity. “Do you really think I would be here now if I didn’t want to? The first thing on my bucket list was to take a self-defense class.”
He was silent for a bit. He’d never met a woman like her, and didn’t like the unbalanced feeling that she generated in him. On the other hand, he bet he’d never be bored with her, as he was with so many other people.
That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.
Now you are eavesdropping. Stop it. I dislike it.
I don’t know, it’s kind of fun. Just think about it—when you’re off at the grocery store picking up a few things for dinner, I can tell you about something I left off the grocery list.
You are not my Beloved. There will be no grocery list!
Fine.
He waited for the count of eight, knowing there was more to come.
We’ll do a grocery delivery service.
“What scars?”
“Huh?”
“What scars do you have? You said you have scars to prove your point. Mental scars, emotional scars, or physical ones?” He pulled off the highway and into the suburb of Genoa where he’d tracked down Victor’s villa.
“All of the above.” She twisted around in the seat so that her back was to him, reaching behind her as best she could with the seat belt limiting her movements, and pulled down an edge of the back of her dress. “Elder Davenport, who ruled the sect, used to deal out the public punishments. Boys got whipped on their bare behinds, while girls were whipped on the upper back and shoulders. Papa used to protect me from most of the punishments, but there were a couple of times when he was called out to do work with a sister sect, and Elder Davenport made sure I got what he thought I deserved. Most of the whippings didn’t leave permanent scars, but one time mine got infected, and left scars. You can still see a couple of stripes on my shoulders.”
Rage filled him, red and thick and unbearable. “Where were your parents? Why did they allow you to be tortured so?”