"You don't favor one side over the other? Consider yourself more vampire than witch?"
"If you need to label me, I usually grab the term vampire. The 'drinking blood' part is more visible, commanding, than the need to cast spells. But neither side is more prominent. I actually feel like I've been a witch longer than a vampire because the blood hunger didn't manifest until I was sixteen."
"So what can one lone vampire, who is also a witch, do? For that matter, what can one lone witch do to bring about a change?"
The teapot began to whistle and Dez turned to pour steaming water into her cup and then Ivan's. She plopped a jasmine pearl into each cup. Impressed, Ivan observed as the tight ball opened into a gorgeous bloom at the bottom of his cup.
He hadn't sat across the counter, as Dez had hoped. Instead, he stood right beside her, one hip propped against the counter, distracting her in a way only six and a half feet of sexy vampire could do.
Did he study her backside? Wonder about that kiss? The base of her spine tingled for another touch.
"The council is at a loss what to do about this war," Ivan said. "If we don't come up with something soon, the media are going to catch on."
"That would devastate the two nations if mortals had proof of our existence. So you attend the Gray Council?"
"Only as an observer." He prodded the tea blossom with a fingertip. "Do I take this out? It looks like a big hairy spider."
"Let it brew for a few more minutes."
Ivan stood between her and the stove. Not much room to move around. And she wasn't going to pull a slip-out move and show him she was uncomfortable with him so close. Because again her body struggled between wanting to push him away and needing to pull him in for a good grope.
"You smell good."
Dez turned into his personal space. He smelled good, too. Dark, intense, kissed by the sea air.
"So!" It's his job to disturb you, she reminded herself. And what a fine job he was doing. "You divide your time between being a fixer and attending the Gray Council? Bet that pisses off Himself."
"He doesn't command my days. I'm being trained-groomed, so to speak-by my parents. They both sit on the council right now. I'm invited along to watch. It's good for me to learn."
He toyed with a curl of her hair. Even that small touch flustered her, made the heat seep up her neck. Dez lifted her tea for a sip. It hadn't brewed long enough, and it tasted like hot water with very weak flavoring.
"I suppose having a half vampire/half witch on the council would be a boon," she said. "So what do you call yourself? Vitch?
Wampire?" He delivered her a wonky look. "Try Ivan."
"All right, Ivan." A tilt of her head drew her hair from his fingers. Safe, for the moment. "Funny I've never heard about you until now. I usually know the names of all the council members. Though I suppose it has been decades since I last cared. How old did you say you are?"
"Twenty-eight."
She choked on another sip. "Just twenty-eight? Years? Not...decades?"
He grinned at her over the steaming rim of his teacup.
"Wow, you're just a baby."
"I may be, but I've seen enough for a thousand years, surely."
"I bet." She could fathom what he had witnessed serving Himself. And it was too horrible.
But only twenty-eight years old? Talk about robbing the cradle.
"How old are you?"
Dez plucked the blossom out of Ivan's teacup. "Didn't anyone ever teach you it's not nice to ask a woman her age?"
"Sorry. I was, well, you know, with our kind...you can never know."
"A few more centuries than you've tasted," she offered. "Let's leave it at that."
"Deal."
He prodded the wet jasmine blossom she'd set on a plate. The man's curiosity surprised her. One moment he could be staunch, the next, he could render her boneless with a kiss. And then he could dazzle with his sensitivity.
"So, about the book," he started.
And then there was the businessman. The fixer. A ruthless hunter of souls, who punished, maimed, and-well, she didn't want to think too far beyond that.
"Listen, Ivan. Let's get this straight, once and for all. I know you're here for a job. You have orders."
"Orders I don't intend to fail."
"Yes, you've said. But I have a task as well. I've protected the Grande Grimoire for a-" His eyebrows rose in expectation, but she wouldn't serve him that treat. "-a very long time. And I don't intend to let it out of my charge anytime soon. Such results could prove more devastating than even you could imagine. So seduce all you want. There's no amount of kissing or touching or even screaming orgasms that'll make me give up that book."
"Could we try that?" He set down the teacup with a clink. Swept up, Dez found herself in his embrace. "The 'screaming orgasm'
part?"
Oh yeah?
His nose nuzzled at her hair, breathing her in. Wide, strong hands moved across her back, drawing her up close to his body. The heat of him exuded a virile power. "Which part next?" he murmured. "Which part?"
"Behind the knee or the underside of your elbow?"
Mercy.
"Ivan, you're doing this because you have to."
"I'm glad you realize that."
She sneered at him. And stepped back-okay, shoved out of his wanting embrace. It was either that or succumb. And the succumbing part felt entirely too easy at the moment. "Maybe that's not so cool anymore."
"You don't think I'd really want you if this weren't a job?"
"How can you?" Anger vied to fend off Dez's ever-present desire that seemed to surface whenever he stood close. "You don't even know me."
"I know you are contradictory. One minute you're all about meeting the challenge, the next you're pushing me away."
"A woman's prerogative."
"I also know you're very smart. You care deeply about the world and how others look at you. Elise and the shop. And the war.
We're on the same side, Dez. Don't push me away."
"Push you-if I don't push, I'll pull. There, are you happy? That's what I really want. To pull you closer. To have another one of those render-me-undone kisses. To, to...I'd love to have sex with you."
She paused to allow him to swallow the breath he'd surely choked on.
"But come back during the day. I'm not about to get naked with anyone under Himself's coercion. Got that?"
"Loud and clear."
"Prove to me that you want me more than to complete the task."
"I can do that. I should probably be going."
"So soon?"
"You've given me the rules. I know how to follow them. I'll be back with the first ray of daylight."
"I hope not. I like to sleep in."
He nodded and headed toward the front door, then swung around and jogged toward the staircase. "Better leave the way I entered. Safer. Thanks for the tea. Bye!"
"Well." Dez listened as he clumped up the stairs and leapt off the roof. "If that's all it takes to clear out a vampire..."
But he would be back.
And if it were during the day-and she could trust his intentions-she looked forward to it.
It was a good thing he had a side job to tend tonight. Something to divert the coercion into violence instead of pleasure. Dez had said she'd have sex with him during the day. He could wait that long. And he wasn't about to forgo the offer.
But why did she want to have sex?
Hell, don't think about it, man. You'll only drive yourself nuts with the contradiction that is Desideriel Merovech.
Seventy miles north of Willow Cove in the capital city of Bangor, Ivan tracked an imp down a dark alley behind a row of warehouses. Rotting fish and seaweed hung in the air.
"Trafficking in bargained souls is not smart," Ivan hissed. He shoved the three-hundred-pound imp against the wall.
The term imp implied something small and wily, but Ivan had learned differently. Imp meant "the devil's minion," in the broadest terms. They came in all shapes, sizes, colors and smells. This one was death-gray, and its sharp teeth were red as its eyes.
The thing stood as tall as Ivan, but it had perhaps seventy-five pounds on him, and it was strong. It shoved and sent Ivan stumbling backward. He didn't fall. Every muscle resisted weakness, and he charged back into the imp's chest. Contact sounded like stones slapping wet cement.
The thing roared like a hyena. As if Ivan's efforts were a mere fly to its scaly hide.
"So it's going to go this way, huh?"
Ivan stepped away and turned, knowing the thing wouldn't flee. It wanted the fight, and would toss around its weight until Ivan tired, and then it would take off before he could lift another punch.
Ivan wasn't stupid enough to entertain fools.
Summoning a chant that began silently in his brain, he tapped the air with his fingers, finding the rhythm of the spell as if a musician holding a beat. It was a trick his mother had taught him, since focusing completely on his magic had always been difficult with the vampire half of him to resist.
The vampire wanted the violence, to smell the blood.
So Ivan tapped and began to recite the nonsense tones out loud.
The imp stopped laughing, briefly tuning into the spell, then, realizing what was happening, it started to resist.
Too late.
The imp's jaw stretched wide. Its gelatinous bulk convulsed. A toad sprang out of its mouth. Followed by another huge bullfrog, and another. Quickly the ground became littered with hopping, croaking amphibians. The imp grasped at its throat, trying to close them off, but he would toss up the frogs all night so long as Ivan chanted.
Allotriophagy. It was an ancient practice that caused the victim to vomit up strange, foul objects. Ivan preferred toads, but he'd done snakes, stones, bees and even butterflies. It could bring down the most formidable opponent out of utter fear.
Soon enough the imp sank to its knees, squeezing toads blindly in its hands, and begging in a gurgled, croaking voice to grant it mercy. It would stop trafficking in souls.
"Cross your heart?" Ivan wondered over a shoulder.
The imp smashed a toad against its chest, right over the heart. It burbled what sounded like a promise, had another bullfrog not leapt from its distended jaws.Ivan instantly dropped the spell. Relief flooded his muscles and the coercion stopped pricking his shadow. He'd completed another job.
Now he was thirsty.
What did it take to put back a man like Ivan Drake? Could she defeat him with tainted blood? It could possibly work. No, his father was a phoenix vampire. Ivan had already mentioned that his resistance to witch's blood carried through to the son.
There were spells against the devil, which Dez had mastered. Would they be effective against Himself's fixer? Her home was surrounded with devil pots, ancient pottery crocks that contained spells to keep back the devil. They didn't appear to have any effect on Ivan. Bewitched bells at the corners of her house tinkled with the wind.
Obviously the fixer was immune to devil-repelling wards.
What of an impotence spell? If he intended to seduce her, well then...
Dez shook her head.
The idea of rendering such a handsome, virile man impotent seemed criminal. And she'd been serious about wanting to have sex with him. Some touch time. And more kisses. Wherever he wanted to put them.
For, to infiltrate his armored exterior, she must put herself on the same playing field as he. Did she think she could seduce him to do her bidding?
"Anything is possible," she mused.
Chapter 9.