Harlequin Nocturne September 2014 Bundle: Beyond the Moon\Immortal Obsession (32 page)

With Madison's scent in their noses, the fledglings searching for her like cats after a rat would never give up. After one whiff, these vampires would follow her until they found her, however long it took.

They had to be stopped before they did, stopped before they encountered other people on the streets tonight who got in their way. Fledglings didn't know how to curb their appetites. These upstarts had outlived their welcome in the West End. Madison was far too intriguing to wind up as pulp on a damp sidewalk.

Miss Chase had to be around for a while longer, so that he could see her again.

He intended to learn how much she knew about her brother's research, and what part she played in it. But the truth was there were more personal reasons for keeping her safe that had little to do with whistle-blowers, hidden inner darkness and her capricious, lacy lingerie. He just wasn't sure he wanted to accept those reasons.

As St. John kicked up his speed to a pace that made him little more than a blur to any onlooker, he admitted to himself that it was entirely possible that, darkness aside, Madison smelled nothing like a Florida orchard. Since he'd never been to Florida, he might be wrong about that.

One more alley...

He paused in an open-legged stance, listened, waited. When the five savage youngsters, probably no more than a week or two old as vampires, full of themselves and finding comfort in their numbers, stopped on the opposite side of the lane, sneering at him with their fangs exposed, St. John shook his head.

“Now that,” he said, “just makes it easier all the way around.”

Then he waited for the stupid bastards who knew no better, and knew nothing about him, to attack.

Chapter 6

S
leeping had been tough before. Trying to keep her eyes shut now amounted to torture.

In her unair-conditioned hotel room, located a short hop away from Buckingham Palace, Madison tossed and fretted on the mattress, struggling to relax, finding it impossible.

Fresh air might have helped, but there was no way she could open the window when the man who had rescued her from those thugs had freaked her out about who might be out there. Hell, he had sent her imagination into overdrive. Possibly, that damn loose screw was at that very moment turning inside her head.

She didn't even know that man's name.

She had stood in the shower until the hot water turned lukewarm, and scrubbed her skin raw with a washcloth, and she still smelled
him
on her skin. Wool and musk and that other more elusive undercurrent that permeated the air around him as he'd taken her for a midnight run were still there.

Her hotel room smelled like him. So did her sheets. Her oversize white T-shirt had picked up the smell. It had been impossible to rid her freshly washed hair of this lingering fragrance of seduction and mystery.

She didn't know why he had initially played along with Stewart's vampire games. Admittedly, though, the guy she'd been groin to groin with was too special to be a mere mortal, any way she looked at it. And way too sexually exciting. From the start, it had been obvious that something had clicked into place between them. Lust at first sight was a powerful incentive for tossing inhibitions aside.

That stuff about
them
following might have been a ploy for him to get her alone.
Them,
as in what, London's version of a low-life street gang? Certainly he didn't mean the monsters her brother would have her believe frequented London's crowded places. That had just been a game. Strange foreplay.

“Vampires. Jesus.” She made a face.

The man she'd been tight up against hadn't been some ephemeral bit of mythological mist. He had been solid, and interesting in all the right places.

“No mistake about that.”

If she hadn't come to her senses, she'd be even sorrier now about the whole ordeal.

Madison smacked the mattress with her open hand. She had placed herself in a bad situation, and luckily had come out of it reasonably well. But she had also been distracted, big-time, from the after-hours search for her brother. Distractions she couldn't afford.

“So why does this hotel room lack a minibar, as well as an all-night pharmacy in the lobby that could cough up an aspirin or sleeping pill?”

Her nerves were shot, she couldn't breathe properly, and there was no way she'd open that window, a crack, even if she didn't really believe there were vampires or some other
things
out there.

Flipping over on the bed, she knocked over the half-full box of Band-Aids that Teddy Jones, now holed up down the hall with another member of the television crew, had graciously provided after seeing her safely back to the hotel. She waggled her toes, lacerated with superficial cuts and fairly sore, though she'd been fortunate enough to have avoided broken glass.

Losing her expensive shoes was a drag. She had discarded the designer
Choos
somewhere near the club and would have to replace them with a cheaper pair. The silver stilettos had been a rare twenty-fifth birthday splurge last year.

“Shall I send you a bill for the shoes?” she asked.

If she met the handsome maniac at the club again, she'd register a complaint in person. Going beyond that, she might also press charges for scaring the wits out of her. Again, she glanced to the window to make sure it was closed.

“Sucker,” she said.

In the morning, in the daylight, and prior to her crew's meeting for updates on the Yale Four case, she would hit a department store for some forgiving footwear. She'd already done ten interviews with the families of those girls, as well as some potential witnesses. The morning broadcast cameras wouldn't need to include any shot below her knees.

She'd also need to use extra makeup to cover the dark circles that would no doubt appear from a lack of sleep, and perfume to mask the scent haunting her.

Tugging on the edge of the rumpled sheet, Madison looked to the window for the twentieth time.

“Feeling claustrophobic,” she muttered.

In Miami, in her modern high-rise condo, the windows were always open at night. No one in their right mind would attempt to climb up the outside of a twenty-four-story building to bother her, unless they were related to Spider-Man. No one would probably bother her here, either, in this busy hotel, in her cubbyhole on the sixth floor, unless the invader happened to be one of Stewart's vampires. A Protector, maybe.

She blinked slowly, in disgust, and said, “Don't even start.”

On the desk were stacks of files pertaining to her assignment. She had a few more interviews to do. If she had stayed in tonight to work on those files, none of this would have happened. No chiseled, fake vampire. Nothing embarrassing.

Then again, hindsight wasn't worth much these days. The four young women who had vanished while vacationing in a civilized country didn't have the option for a do-over.

She hoped to God those girls were alive. After tonight, she could see how one false move might have been the key to their downfall. If her crew hadn't shown up when they did, there might have been a chance she wouldn't have made it back in one piece.

Next to those case files on the desk sat her laptop, loaded with her brother's files on monsters. She'd had to work hard to crack his password.

“Absurd,” she said, her gaze straying to the window. No one could actually be out there. Her memory pulled up something. A warning, or a threat, issued by a blond stranger that she hadn't registered at the time.

“You will be marked now, from this day forward, as mine.”

“Frigging nonsense,” she snapped.

Nevertheless, she found herself at the window, searching the street below.

She saw nothing out of the ordinary. A few people meandered toward the palace and Green Park. Other than a handful of cabs and cars, London had gone quiet.

Leaning against the wall, Madison smoothed her hair back from her face. The movement caused the masculine scent she'd tried so hard to get rid of to waft over her. Coughing once, she lunged for the bed.

On her back, with the blanket pulled up to her chin, she traced small visible cracks in the ornate, slightly luminous white ceiling plaster, hoping counting cracks would be better than counting sheep. Hoping to avoid erotic fantasies about strange men...with fangs...

Even though her hand had already slid under the elastic band of her underwear, to the same spot
he
had touched.

* * *

St. John felt Madison sink beneath the surface of consciousness. Cautiously, he climbed over the window's iron railing and entered her room.

He was trespassing, but the need to see her was great. Dark had a tendency to draw dark, which was a viable reason for him being here, and maybe why the fledglings had been drawn to Madison as well.

There was something about her.

She lay curled up on the bed, with her knees to her chest. A thin, well-worn white T-shirt replaced what had earlier passed for a dress, and was equally as sexy.

Her lithe body took on softer aspects in sleep, when she didn't expect surprises, though her position told him she wasn't comfortable. Faint sounds came from her each time she moved—noises so very inviting to a hungry soul.

“I'm far too interested in you,” he said, watching Madison's eyelids flutter as if she might sense him beside her.

“For the first time in a long while, I hunger for a mortal. I am a man, you know. Not in the way other mortals might define the term, but my desire remains the same.”

A twitch in Madison's right cheek made him want to touch her, but he didn't dare.

He was aware, even now, of the darkness she harbored. It sat beneath her taut, ivory skin. She and her brother had come here under the auspices of following the case of the missing American girls, yet her brother had already shown his true hand. Stewart Chase had ulterior motives for arriving in London, and look, St. John wanted to tell Madison, where that had gotten her brother.

“Are you like him? Do you share your twin's need to find creatures that aren't mortal? Do you also hunger for the supernatural?”

There were so many kinds of vampires, he thought. Those who drank blood, and those who soaked up the very essence of others in a different way, by taking away their freedom.

Mortal souls thrived on freedom. Madison's soul needed more freedom than others, he supposed, which is why she took chances. Madison Chase, the gutsy newscaster, went to any lengths to unearth a story. This is what made her dangerous to his cause. Exposing the immortals in this city would be a stupid move.

“I wanted to look at you when you aren't looking back or looking away,” he said to her. “Few women turn the heads of beings like me. Few cause us to look beyond ourselves and our long pasts.”

She wasn't awake, or listening. Her fingers moved restlessly on the pillow.

“A moment more. Only that, Madison.”

St. John leaned over the bed.

Breath. Touch. Skin. Scent...

He ached for the woman on those sheets. His fangs were extended, and throbbing. She had made him hard. She had made him laugh, severing the bottomless world of melancholy from which he never completely escaped. Madison Chase had lightened his world for a few brief moments, and then she had left him wanting.

Her fine crimson hair spread out over the white pillow in coronas of radiant sunfire. Transparent skin stretched beautifully over the planes of her delicate face. Staring at her made St. John wonder if he might find some kind of salvation in his nearness to her, if only for a while.

There was no real future here. They weren't alike. Though his body and hers would fit together perfectly, her life's spark was what separated them.

“Can you blame me for wanting what you have to offer? I can feel your heart and your heat from here.”

If allotted the time to get to know her better, Madison still would have been hard to handle and out of bounds. If there were to be a replay of their intimate moments in the alley, he might actually learn to care for someone like her, when his agenda couldn't strain that far.

Madison was a television darling, but she hadn't dealt with the likes of the Hundred who ruled this city and what went on there. For them, and the ring of immortals surrounding the Hundred, there could be no long-lasting peace if they were discovered. The world wasn't ready for what they represented.

A low murmur escaped from Madison, as if she had heard that thought. St. John didn't step back. He was experiencing longings formulated from centuries of ignored, pent-up emotion.

He had to know everything about Madison, and he had to stay away from her. He wanted to settle himself between her long legs, and could not do so. It was essential for him to find out how much she knew about Protectors and vampires, when even this small closeness brought pain.

“You must not find your brother,” he whispered to her, observing how his breath stirred one glossy strand of her hair. “You won't like what you'd see.”

His hungry gaze traveled down the length of one pale arm to find the imprint of a breast, outlined behind the thin fabric of her shirt. His body pulsed with the effort of his restraint. He snapped his fangs angrily.

He had to get away, quickly. The turn of her head had exposed more flawless skin, and his attraction to that bit of naked flesh was disconcerting.

“I'll leave you now.”

Turning from the bed, he tucked in his fangs. A weaker being would have acted on the cravings, but he had never been weak. He had, in fact, been chosen for his strength and honor. The gift of immortality had been bestowed upon him because his Makers had known he would uphold that honor at all cost.

At the window, St. John spoke again. “You have never come across the likes of the Hundred, and must keep off their radar, Madison.”

Filled with regret so tangible that he could taste it, St. John left his sleeping beauty, refusing to look back, turn back or change his mind...already hating the necessary separation.