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“Perdóname, Ramona. This should never have happened.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry, too,” she said, and shifted away, nervously rubbing her palms up and down the front of the figure-hugging jeans she wore.
He reached out and took her hands to stop the jittery motion. “Please don’t take this wrong, little one. It’s not you, it’s me.”
“You’re gay?” she squeaked, obviously confused by his statement.
“No, not at all,” he began with a chuckle. “I’m just a…heartbreaker. A cad.”
“A cad? Fossilized much?” she teased uneasily at his choice of the rather old-fashioned term.
“Let’s just say I’ll break your heart, and I’d rather not do that.”
She slipped her hands from his and nodded. “I get it, Diego. No harm, no foul.”
“Right,” he said, only he didn’t think either of them believed that there had been no harm.
After the heat of that kiss, their relationship would never be the same, and that wasn’t a good thing.
Diego was always amused by a visit to the Lair. His friend Ryder had managed to create quite a tongue-in-cheek homage to his vampire self. From the faux stone walls to the hundreds of realistic bats clinging to the ceiling, everything about the establishment created the illusion of being in a cavern deep belowground.
As Diego strolled to the bar, he smiled at the sign for the club, which dripped neon blood from its bright red letters onto the gleaming stainless steel surface below.
Diego realized the crowd here only liked to play at being in the darkness, unlike those who frequented the Blood Bank, where he used to hang out before meeting Ryder nearly two years ago. Up until then, he and Esperanza had visited the place fairly regularly, knowing that they could always sip from a willing neck or drink the bloody libations the Blood Bank carried for its vamp clientele. Totally unlike Ryder’s club, which had a strict No Bite No Blood policy.
Diego had to acknowledge that coming here and being with Ryder had mellowed him somewhat, making him more of a human wanna-be than ever before. Maybe that was the reason Ramona was now so intriguing. Hanging with Ryder and his friends the past two years had blurred the lines between his true vamp world and the human world to which he could never belong.
Or maybe it was because his friend Ryder was in love with a human—something Diego refused to consider.
Ryder approached, his mortal lover at his side. Diana didn’t look well, Diego thought; her pale countenance and slight frame seemed even more delicate than it had just a few weeks ago, when he’d last seen her. As she neared, his vamp senses picked up the unusual thrum of power cast from her body, and he shot a puzzled look at Ryder.
Had he turned her? he wondered, sensing that there was something more vamp than human about Ryder’s lover. However, Diego knew if there was anyone more adamant than he about not turning anyone, it was Ryder.
“How are you?” Diego said as he rose and embraced Diana, sensing the fragility in her petite body.
“I’m fine. What brings you here?” she asked, slipping onto a stool beside him.
Ryder took a spot behind her, clearly offering her support. She shot him a look that was both grateful and sensual, as if just his touch could rouse her.
Diego realized it was enough for his friend as he bent and nuzzled the side of Diana’s face in a loving gesture, a human gesture. Even when Ryder dropped his head lower, to the crook of her neck, the vampire stayed in check.
With the scene too painful to behold, Diego turned away, focusing on the deep red of the wine in his glass. He imagined it was a fresh O positive, to remind himself of what he was. Of why emotion such as that plainly visible on Ryder’s face would bring only pain and despair.
As Diana picked up her own glass of wine, he once again wondered at her paleness and the power spilling off her body. Of course, Ryder was plastered so close that maybe it was a remnant of his vampire energy that Diego sensed.
But maybe it was time to press the issue.
“Bite any good necks lately?” His gaze skimmed to Diana’s jugular before he took an idle sip of his wine.
Ryder straightened, an angry look on his face. Diana flinched at the remark and her own face darkened with anger.
“Something on your mind, Diego?” Ryder asked, easing his hand to her shoulder, where he rubbed it back and forth as if to soothe the prickly special agent, who was clearly not amused by Diego’s comment.
“Diana just seems a bit…under the weather. Maybe she needs a more experienced vamp—”
The human Ryder had been the one to escort Diana to the bar, but it was his demon side now acting with a vehemence and swiftness Diego hadn’t expected. He found himself lifted off the stool as Ryder snared his neck in one strong hand.
“Why are you doing this?” his friend hissed against his face, his eyes bleeding out to an intense blue-green as a hint of fang slid downward.
“Woman trouble,” Diego confessed. For the last hour he had prowled Ryder’s vamp-themed club and engaged in dances with an assortment of nubile young women in the hopes of driving Ramona from his mind. When he realized that every female he had chosen reminded him of the eccentric artist, he’d given up and decided to resort to wine to force thoughts of her away.
Diana laid a hand on Ryder’s arm, urging him to release Diego, which he did. She slipped from her stool and said, “I’ll let you two talk. Be back later.”
With a quick kiss on Ryder’s cheek, she walked away, leaving the vampires alone. Reining in the anger that had brought forth the demon, Ryder said, “It’s been over a year now. Don’t you think it’s time you forgot about Esperanza?”
“You can never forget a true love, but actually, this is about someone else.”
“Someone else? This warrants something stronger than wine, I believe.” Ryder motioned to a waiter. “A bottle of Cuervo and glasses, please.”
The bartender obliged. He placed a shaker of salt and a small bowl of limes next to the tequila.
Ryder poured full shots of the liquor, then grabbed his glass. Heedless of the salt and lime, he held it up and said, “To women.”
Diego shook his head. “Never again, amigo.”
“But you said—”
“Woman trouble. As in major mistake never going to happen in my eternal life if I can help it.” With that said, he slugged back a full shot. He quickly refilled the glass, prompting a chuckle from his friend.
“This is serious. I’ve never known you to have more than one.”
With a careless shrug, Diego took his time with the second drink, sipping the tequila slowly. He winced at the sharp taste of it, so much less pleasing than either a glass of wine or a nice nip from the neck of someone willing.
Like that attractive young woman eyeing him from the end of the bar. She was barely thirty, with long chestnut-colored hair and dark eyes much like—
No. He hated that his thoughts had strayed back to Ramona. After Esperanza’s death, he had assumed he would spend the rest of his eternal life sans partner. That Ramona kept intruding into his psyche troubled him deeply.
“So tell me, Diego. Who’s the unlucky vamp who’s displeased you so?”
In the vampire hierarchy in Manhattan, Diego’s age and corresponding power put him high on the pecking order. Those who angered him could be handled without encountering much opposition from the other vampires in the city. Not that Diego took advantage of such rank. If anything, the other vampires considered him a human wannabe because he normally refused to benefit from his powers and his undead state.
As for Ramona, she knew nothing of his eternal life. Nothing other than the face he presented to the mortal world—that he was a well-off dilettante who had rather successfully dabbled in the art world. He imagined that like most humans, Ramona would not be able to deal with his true self.
“Diego?” Ryder prompted at his delay in answering.
“She’s not a vampire. She’s a mortal.”
Ryder shook his head as if to clear it. “Did I hear you right? A mortal? Like Diana?”
Diego thought about Ryder’s mortal lover, only Ramona was nothing like Diana. With a shake of his head, he teased, “Amigo, there isn’t anyone quite like your lover.”
Ryder looked toward Diana, who was busy talking to someone at the edge of the bar. He tarried in refilling the shot glass before bolting back another slug of tequila.
“Is everything okay with you?” Diego asked, sensing his friend’s suddenly troubled state.
With a shrug, Ryder said, “Diana has been tired lately.”
Diego sensed that it went beyond tiredness, but if that was what his friend wished to call it, he wouldn’t worry him more. “I’m sure she’s been working long hours on some case.”
“I guess desk duty can be difficult.”
Desk duty would be the death of someone like Ryder’s very empowered lover, he thought. “They still haven’t released her?”
“No. The review board suspension hasn’t been lifted. But enough of that. Who is this mortal woman who has you so twisted up?” Ryder asked, starting to refill their glasses for a third time. Diego waved him off. “I’m afraid I may need something more satisfying, mi amigo.” Something that would remind him of what he was and why someone like Ramona Escobar was thoroughly wrong for him.
“I’d go with you, but…”
Surprised, Diego shot a puzzled glance at his friend. Ryder only occasionally indulged his vampire needs, usually at times of extreme stress, when releasing the beast within helped restore balance.
It also helped restore the reality of their situation—that they were no longer human. That playing at being so and acquiring human desires and attachments could only bring eternal pain.
Slipping from the stool, Diego clapped his friend on the back. “Comprendo, amigo. However, a willing neck waits for me at the Blood Bank.”
Chapter 3
Diego slipped payment to the vampire guarding the back rooms and walked past him with the young girl in tow. She was medium height, with short red hair and a plain face, but her body made up for it. The black leather she wore exposed womanly curves and alabaster skin. She was much like Esperanza, who beneath her servant’s clothes had been blessed with a voluptuousness that he’d lovingly cherished for five hundred years.
He opened the door to the first room, one of a series that Foley, the owner of the Blood Bank, kept for those who wanted some unusual enjoyment. As Diego entered, he noted the chains, whips and other accoutrements on the far wall.
When the young woman saw them, she let out a squeal of delight and rushed over, selecting a small whip, which she snapped with relish.
The noise unnerved him, and in a blast of vamp speed, he raced forward and ripped the whip from her grasp.
She glanced up at his face, her head tilted at what she probably thought was an engaging angle, but which only served to expose the pale skin of her neck and the pulse that beat there.
“What’s the matter? Afraid of a little pain?” she asked coyly.
Diego laid a finger on that pulse point and met her gaze. “You know nothing of real pain,” he said, his tone soft but threatening.
“Really? But I know one thing.” She leaned closer and reached down to stroke him through the fabric of his pants.
“Yes, you do know.” He sucked in a breath as she undid the zipper, slipped her hand inside and beneath his briefs to wrap her soft palm around his rock-hard erection.
“You like?” she asked, and at his nod, she dropped to her knees, freed him from his pants and took him into her mouth.
Dios, Diego thought, enjoying how she satisfied him with her gifted mouth and tongue, while wondering at the same time why modern women debased themselves so quickly in this fashion. In his day, only the street whores would go at a man like this, without prelude or passion.
But that thought didn’t stop him from holding her head to him until he felt his climax rise to the edge, and with it, the beast who needed satisfaction of another kind.
Shaking his head, he drove the demon back, wishing to at least pleasure the woman before he allowed his own release and indulged the vampire with a different kind of fulfillment.
Urging her to her feet, he undressed her slowly, revealing each luscious curve. He paused to caress her generous breasts, which filled his hands, and the large, rosy peaks of her nipples. She moaned as he sucked at them, but with a little love bite, he moved lower down her body until he was the supplicant before her, peeling away her leather pants to reveal the nest of auburn curls between her thighs.
She gazed down at him then, her brown eyes dilated with passion, her lips full, not that he would kiss her. He never kissed any of his conquests on the mouth.
Instead he grasped her hips and urged her forward. He nuzzled the curls with his nose and then slipped his hand around and parted her, eased one finger and then another into her while he licked the nub between her legs.
She gasped in delight and grabbed hold of his shoulders. Her soft moans drove him on, until he could wait no longer. Surging to his feet, he raised her off the floor and drove into her before walking them to the far wall of the room.
With her back against the rough plaster, she shifted her hips, moving on him, and he hammered into her again and again until she nearly screamed from the force of his thrusts and the pleasure they wrought in her.
The pulse at her neck beat rapidly. Violently. Blood called him to fulfill another need.
Diego bent his head and placed his lips there. He licked her skin, finding it slightly salty from the sweat of their lovemaking. Sweet beneath the sweat.
She shot him a look from the corner of her eye, and he whispered against the side of her face, “You know what I want.”
At her nod, he surged upward into her one last time, liberating a climax that made her scream.
Then he finally freed the demon. His eyes bled out and fangs erupted from his mouth. Fangs that he drove deep into the skin at her neck.
Her body tightened around him, held him closer as the vampire’s kiss created a different kind of hunger within her. Within him.
He sucked, savoring her blood, singing with the passion from their sex. He felt filled with youthful energy. Her blood charged every inch of his vampire body with renewed strength.
He could have kept on feeding, as many did, until there was no choice but to turn the human or let her die. Instead, he took only enough to sate the night’s hunger, knowing that tomorrow there would be another willing human or a delicious libation at the Blood Bank.
Rearing back, he carried the nearly unconscious young woman to the bed. His hands trembled with the energy zipping through his veins from his feeding, but somehow he managed to rearrange her clothing and his.
As he gazed down at her, she seemed to be peacefully asleep. The bite marks on her neck were already healing. When she woke, she would feel as if she merely had a bad hangover, and remember little of their encounter.
And what will you feel when you wake? the voice inside his head asked. But Diego knew there was no waking from this eternal nightmare. From the endless days filled with only one certain thing. Death. No end to the loneliness that had returned with Esperanza’s death. Especially not with a human, he reminded himself. With a last look at the woman, he fled the Blood Bank. Though hunger was abated, the encounter had left him unsatisfied. He dived into the night to find a different kind of delight.
With the energy of the young woman’s blood rushing through his veins, Diego leaped up to the rooftop of the adjacent building. A harvest moon filled the night sky, illuminating the city below, lighting the night for him, as if knowing of his intent.
A burst of vamp speed had him nearly flying over the rooftops, vaulting from one building to another in his haste to reach his destination. The air rushed against his body, but barely cooled the heat of the demon driving him. With one last, almost desperate jump, he was on the ledge of Ramona’s building, an old converted warehouse in a part of town that had yet to be gentrified. It was probably why she could afford to have the uppermost loft. It boasted skylights at various locations that flooded the space with light so she could paint.
He imagined her down below, standing before one of her canvases, as he neared one skylight. Imagined her stroking the brush across the surface, and immediately the paintings she had completed came to mind, reawakening his earlier desire. A desire that taking the young woman hadn’t satisfied.
He suspected only one woman could slake his need tonight.
Slowly he crept to the skylight and glanced downward. The paintings were there, but that wasn’t what he wanted to see.
He shifted to the next skylight—smaller than the first, but still generous enough to provide a view.
She was there, below the glass, lying in bed, the sheets in disarray around her naked body.
Diego groaned and reared back from the sight, knowing how wrong it was, and yet unable to deny himself this. This was all he could allow himself with her—this distant passion. Anything else would be wrong on so many levels.
