Karen Chance - Midnight's Daughter

I reentered the main cabin after rinsing off and combing my short hair. “Would you kindly stop doing that?” Louis-Cesare’s voice was his usual measured tones, but a finger was tapping crisply on the side of his glass.

“Doing what?” I felt around my jacket pockets for one of the special joints Claire makes up for me. She’s a master herbalist and although her concoction, like alcohol, has a very limited effect on me, it does soothe my temper. I had a feeling I was going to need all the help I could get not to rip my new partner’s throat out.

“Interrupting me. I would like to be able to finish a sentence.”

“You just did.” I lit up and smiled as the familiar haze wreathed my head. Bliss. A second later, the joint was pulled from my lips and crumpled into small bits by an angry vampire.

“I need your intellect, such as it is, clear and able to concentrate!” he informed me, right before I sent him sailing down the length of the plane. A worried steward peered out from behind the curtain separating the cabin from the galley, but quickly withdrew. Louis-Cesare jumped to his feet and I lit a replacement.

“Mess with my weed again and I’ll be informing Daddy that there was an early casualty on the mission.” I saw him wince at my designation for Mircea and grinned. He was hating it that the head of the family had such a black mark against his name. Probably thought it made him look bad, too. “As I was saying, we don’t have to worry about Uncle Drac. He’ll find us soon enough.”

“Don’t call him that.” Louis-Cesare was looking less pleased by the moment.

“What? Uncle?” I shrugged. “Why not? It’s true enough.” I blew smoke in his direction and watched him struggle not to comment. “Ah yes, my dear demented relatives. Drac, the homicidal maniac, Radu, the poncy lunatic, and dear, cowardly Daddy, sending us off to manage what he doesn’t dare to face himself.” I smiled, deliberately provocative. “Just imagine, I’m actually the normal one. Sort of like that blond chick on The Munsters .”

This time, when Louis-Cesare went for me, I was expecting it. I wanted a fight—needed one after the day I’d had—and he was the only fair game around. He was also, I discovered, a fast learner. Maneuvers that had taken him by surprise before, he countered easily now, forcing me to improvise wildly. He managed to pin my arms to my sides momentarily, pulling me hard against him in the process. I hadn’t had a real sense of his power before, but now it crackled along my skin, warring with my own. I tried to knee him in a sensitive area, but he slipped a leg between mine, crushing me between his body and the bathroom door.

The fight paused. I couldn’t break his hold, but he couldn’t press his advantage without risking me slipping away. His breath was coming fast and I had a second to enjoy the thought that at least I’d winded him. Then the feel of that solid chest moving up and down against mine brought on another emotion altogether. My entire body clenched, breath coming faster, nipples hardening. I shivered, caught between fury and arousal, and stared up into a face that reflected the surprise I felt.

Louis-Cesare’s grip tightened, setting my pulse pounding in my ears. I wasn’t accustomed to encountering someone stronger than me, to being unable to break away. The fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, and despite the unexpected attraction, it took all my willpower to force myself to melt against him.

It wasn’t a big change, as we were already pretty much as close as we could get, but it felt very different. A second earlier, his body had resembled carved rock; now it was warm, muscled flesh that was very definitely male. His hold loosened, changing into something closer to an embrace. It felt achingly, shockingly good. I shifted luxuriously against the muscular thigh that spread my legs, and slid my arms out of his grasp. I ran them up his chest, and the prick of his nipples through the thin cashmere brought a sudden surge of desire, hard and piercing. I quickly moved on, twining my arms around his neck.

Some of his hair had come loose and was falling about his face in a cloud of shimmering bronze, gold and copper. I wondered briefly if it was as soft as it looked, my fingers flexing with the sudden desire to bury themselves in that shining mass and tangle in a fist… I gently pulled the clip out instead, freeing his hair to tumble around his shoulders. “Louis-Cesare,” I murmured, “I have to tell you something.”

A shaft of light from an overhead fixture illuminated the sensual blue of his eyes. The brows over them rose and a wry smile tugged at his lips. Oh, yeah, he knew exactly how gorgeous he was. “And what is that?”

I whispered my lips along his neck in a soft kiss, breathing in the warm, sweet scent of the man, the one my brain had stubbornly labeled butterscotch. His smile grew wider, softer, more genuine, forming dimples at the corners of his mouth. Curling a hand in the silken weight of his hair, I pressed still closer, until the curve of his ear was against my lips. “You’ve underestimated me again.”

I jerked down hard on my handhold, forcing his head back, and moved my other hand to the center of his chest. At the same moment, I spun, using my momentum to propel him back against the door with enough force to crack the plastic. I pressed myself against him and pulled down harder on his hair, drawing his head back so far that he was staring at the ceiling. “That’s why I always keep mine short.”

“Thank you for the tip,” he said, through gritted teeth. In a lightning movement, he hooked his foot behind my leg and jerked back, unbalancing me enough that I ended up on the floor. I couldn’t stop the fall, but I still had hold of his hair and I dragged him down with me. He landed on top, his weight causing the air in my lungs to come out in a whoosh. Before I could regain my feet, Louis-Cesare had pinned my arms and straddled my thighs, effectively immobilizing me. The few blows I managed to get in were ignored, and within seconds he had captured my wrists and forced them to my sides.

For a moment, we stared at each other, the only motion the faint vibration of the airplane’s floor beneath us. “I will not be mastered, manipulated or controlled by a… dhampir,” he finally said, his voice rough. “Regardless of her parentage!”

I bucked, but his thighs flexed, pinning me on either side. “Ditto,” I told him furiously, “except substitute ‘arrogant vamp’ in that sentiment.”

His eyes dropped and almost tangibly caressed a path across my body. “You seem well mastered to me. And if I may offer some advice, your close-combat skills require work.”

I arched up against the weight that held me down, deliberately rubbing against unmistakable evidence that his body disagreed with him. “Really? I’ve never had any complaints.”

Anger and heat flashed in his suddenly storm-colored eyes, but his response wasn’t what I’d expected. One moment to the next, something changed. It was nothing I could name, beyond a collection of gestures: one eyebrow rising in an elegant arch, a barely there, Mona Lisa tilt to his lips, a slight fall of lashes as long as a girl’s. Inconsequential details, but the air between us suddenly went electric, as quickly as if he’d thrown a switch. I was straining toward him before I knew it.

I clenched every muscle to halt the movement, while Louis-Cesare, damn him, was smiling. He slid a hand across my shoulder to my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair as he cupped the back of my head. I don’t like feeling overpowered, and when it happens, I fight back. But I wasn’t fighting now. I’d let him maneuver me into position and now I was letting him touch me. I remember thinking, Oh, no, he isn’t—even as he pulled me the rest of the way up. He dropped his other hand to my waist, settled my body firmly against his own and kissed me.