Berlin, Germany-Austria Confederacy, 2263 A.D.
The interior of the limousine seemed to be even warmer than before. Brenden shrugged off his coat as soon as the door closed and tossed it to one side.
Harriett was watching him closely. “You don’t feel the heat,” she pointed out.
He looked her in the eye. “It depends on what sort of heat you’re talking about.”
She ran the tip of her tongue over her upper lip. “I’m glad you’re not a stupid man.”
“I’m not a man at all,” he reminded her.
She slid off the edge of the seat and onto her knees, which put her right in front of him. “Let me dispute that.”
He drew in a sharp breath as she reached for his trouser fastenings. His cock stirred. His body clearly thought this was a good idea, despite his mental misgivings. She got his trousers open and pulled them down as far as the seat would let them go. He could lift his hips and let her remove them, but his doubts wouldn’t let him.
Harriett smiled, the smile with secrets behind it. “You need coaxing,” she said. She pushed her hand inside his trousers and stroked the flesh there, making the nerve ends ripple. Then she straddled his knees, the dress separating over one thigh, and pressed herself against him. Her lips brushed under his ear.
She was hot and soft against him. Her breasts were pushing against his chest and he could feel the sharp tips of her nipples through the fine material. Her scent seemed to wreath his head and fog his thoughts and his body tightened even more. His cock was throbbing now.
Her tongue thrust into his ear and he gritted his teeth, holding in a groan.
“Or should I tell the driver to head straight back to the office?” she whispered in his ear. Her hand was still pushed down between her thighs, exploring inside his trousers. As she spoke, her fingers curled around his shaft and slid up to bump over the head.
Brenden pushed his hands under her dress and around her hips. Her hips were bare, as he had suspected them to be. His fingertips brushed over the warm mounds of her ass. Then he gripped and lifted her. “Pull my pants down,” he told her.
She smiled and complied, sliding the fabric down his thighs. His cock reared up, red with need and he lowered her directly onto it. Heat and moisture enveloped him and a tight sheath of muscle that squeezed around him. She gasped, a shuddering exhalation.
There wasn’t room in the car to stretch or flex. There was barely room for her to ride him like she was. She had one hand pressed up against the roof, balancing herself. So Brenden slid down the seat, his hips barely on the edge of the cushions. He thrust as she rolled her hips in a way that massaged the length of his cock.
It was good. It was better than anything he remembered. Harriet Winslow knew what she was doing. It clearly pleased her, too. Her eyes were almost closed, as she took her enjoyment.
The pleasure on her face was a goad. He drove himself into her, the last of his reservations dropping away. He held her hips steady and thrust in hard strokes. He didn’t try to delay his climax. He strove for release in the fastest and most direct way he could.
When he came, his groan escaped in a harsh, guttural way and he relaxed back on the cushions. Harriet’s breath was hurried and uneven and she swallowed as he watched, her long, lovely throat working.
“More than man enough,” she said and lifted herself off him. She tapped the compartment bulkhead behind him and rearranged herself on the opposite seat, back in her corner.
Brenden got dressed again, moving awkwardly in the confined space. “If that’s all you want a man for, aye, I can meet that demand,” he agreed.
“Is that a promise for the future?” she asked, her brow rising.
The car came to a gentle stop. He looked out. “This isn’t your office building,” he pointed out.
“You can jump home from anywhere, can’t you?” she asked coolly.
She had known all along about his jumping ability. Brenden studied her, reassessing her. “Kicking me out, now you’re done?” he asked.
“I’m giving you the option,” she said, her voice low and musical. “Once we reach the office, you will have to accompany me back to the penthouse and spend minutes being sociable and reporting to my husband. I thought I would give you the opportunity to avoid that awkwardness.”
Brenden appreciated her sensitivity. Many men would find it too stressful to deal with an unsuspecting husband so soon after sex with his wife. But was Winslow really that oblivious? It didn’t fit with the smart way the family corporation was run. So he shrugged. “You keep making the same fundamental mistake. I’m not a man. I don’t have a man’s concerns and priorities.”
“Thank goodness for that,” she said crisply.
The door opened, stealing his opportunity to respond. He climbed out, then bent down to look at her. “Let me know about the interviews,” he said. “Watch for any weaknesses. That will show you who to focus on.”
“I’m very good at spotting weaknesses,” she assured him.
“I don’t doubt it.” He stood and let the door close. “You found mine,” he added to himself.
Spetsopoula. Private Island in the Aegean, 70km from Athens, Greece, 2263 A.D.
Cáel Stelios got up from behind the big, modern desk to greet Brenden where the guard had left him standing at the study doorway.
“Christos,” Stelios said warmly. “Are you here because of the video?”
“Related to the video,” Brenden said gruffly. He was surprised to realize he felt like a hormonal teenage fool. That was because Stelios had seen the tape. He had seen Brenden’s stupidity.
But Stelios had countered that by letting Brenden see his own vulnerability. He was emotionally attached to either Ryan or Nayara. Brenden hadn’t had time to figure out which one, but it didn’t matter. The fact alone made them partners of a sort.
“You traipsed all the way out from Athens again?” Stelios asked, drawing him into the room.
“There’s not enough room here for me to jump directly,” Brenden pointed out.
Stelios looked around the room. “If I had the desk moved into the corner, would that make enough room?”
Surprised, Brenden looked around. “It would,” he agreed.
“I’ll have it seen to. Using public transport when you can jump here directly is a waste of time.” He settled his hips on the front of the desk. “What can I do for you?”
Brenden rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’ve been trying to trace where that video came from. I got as far back as the source camera and it looks like someone did steal the footage you had, but now things have been complicated.”
“They generally are complicated when humans get involved,” Stelios remarked.
“I don’t want to wait for that side of things to unravel. It could take weeks.”
Stelios tilted his head, his black eyes narrowed. “You want to track back from my end, instead. You want to know how I got hold of it.”
“Exactly. Your ties with the Agency aren’t widely known. So it’s not like someone would just come up to you on the street and try to sell you hot property.”
“That’s almost exactly what did happen, plus or minus a couple of steps.”
Brenden could feel his eyes widening. “You got propositioned? Someone knows your…loyalties?” He frowned. “But I didn’t tell anyone. And you wouldn’t say anything…” He almost jumped as the answer occurred to him. “Psi, he breathed. “Someone read your mind.”
Stelios sighed. “There is a large homeless population in Athens. Many of them are psi-filers. They live on the streets around my family home. One of the psi-filers approached me a month ago. I knew him by sight. He’s been in and around the streets for years. He knew me. He knew who I was and many other details that convinced me he could read minds.” Stelios grimaced. “He said it was a curse, that he couldn’t turn down the volume.”
It was a sad insight into the psi-file mind. Brenden cleared his throat. “He offered you the video?”
“He thought I would know what to do with it. He said there were copies all over Athens.”
“Why Athens?” Brenden wondered aloud.
“There’s a very large anti-vampire culture there,” Stelios pointed out. “It started with the Revelation, but Constantine’s Curse wiped out almost the entire population of both Greece and Turkey and that has sustained their hatred.” He shrugged. “I imagine that copies were also distributed to other anti-vampire hot spots. Belfast, Singapore.”
Brenden narrowed his eyes. “What was the price the psi wanted for the video?”
“Food for a month.” Stelios grimaced again.
“A month,” Brenden said flatly. “You got it cheap. Didn’t he understand the political fallout it would cause?”
“He didn’t care. He only wanted food for a month because he didn’t expect to live any longer than that. He was afraid of Gabriel and wanted to hide away somewhere until the end.” Stelios shook his head. “I put him in a complete care unit in England. He’s in full psi dementia now.” Again the grimace. “He estimated his own end accurately.”
Brenden sighed. “Then there’s no way to follow that back. Damn.”
“You couldn’t canvas the area in Athens? Ask other psi-filers?”
“You know what they’re like. If they saw me coming, they’d disappear long before I saw ‘em. If they had a choice between talking to Gabriel and talking to a vampire, they’d dither into their graves.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t trust anything they told me, anyway. I’m going to have to keep following the source.”
His fingers tingled and he could almost feel the touch of soft flesh against them. Her scent and how it had seemed to clog his thinking.
Stelios stood. “I’m sorry to hurry you along, but I have a…thing.”
It was the hesitant way he spoke that alerted Brenden. “A thing,” he repeated.
Stelios shrugged. “A bar in New Orleans.”
Brenden was familiar with the bar. He’d been there a few times. “In 2003,” he said. “I know it.” So, Ryan had invited Stelios to his bar. He was doing what Brenden had suggested—measuring Stelios’ character with a heavy drinking session. “If you like jazz, you’ll enjoy it,” Brenden said. “But eat well before you go. They serve stiff drinks there.”
Berlin, Germany-Austria Confederacy, 2263 A.D.
It was too risky to jump directly to a public location. The chances that someone would be in the spot he jumped to was too high. So Brenden once more jumped to the Berlin branch office arrival chamber, then used the trams to reach the Winslow building.
“Mrs. Winslow isn’t in the office at the moment,” the receptionist told Brenden, with a very professional smile. “But she did leave standing instructions related to you, Mr. Christos.” He moved around the desk as he spoke. “I can show you to her now, if you like.”
Puzzled, Brenden let him lead the way. The receptionist took him back out through the front entrance, then across the road. On that side, there was a small building that looked like it dated back to the twenty-first century. It had classic lines and elegant details.
“They live here?” Brenden asked.
“Indeed. Mr. and Mrs. Winslow upgraded this building to residential code many years ago.”
There was only one reason to work so hard to live right next to where you worked. “There’s a tunnel connecting the two buildings, isn’t there?” Brenden asked, as the receptionist climbed the stone steps to the front door and buzzed. A tunnel would let Winslow move between the two buildings freely, his wheelchair unimpeded.
“I really can’t confirm or deny that,” the receptionist said coyly, but he didn’t need to. His lack of surprise was answer enough.
The door opened without any demand for identification. Brenden glanced around the door frame and the stonework around it. He spotted where he thought the camera was located.
The receptionist moved back to the sidewalk. “There is a reception room just beyond the foyer. I’m sure you’ll be met there.” He turned and headed back for the office tower.
Brenden went inside.
The interior was a home magazine’s example of fine living. There was a minimum of automation on display. Just fine furniture and decorations, plus a stunning display of landscapes by famous oil painters, most of them well and truly dead. The art collection would be worth more than the house itself.
“Brenden?” It was Harriet Winslow’s low voice, calling from the room just beyond the marble foyer.
Brenden climbed the two steps into the room beyond. Harriet Winslow was standing just inside a large archway. Behind her, Brenden could see another room beyond a wide corridor. She had been elsewhere in the house when she had opened the front door and hurried down here to speak to him.
“When I left that message for you,” she told him, “I expected you to phone. A personal visit is a pleasant surprise.”
Brenden navigated around couches and armchairs, heading in her direction. “You keep forgetting. I can jump anywhere I want to go. It’s sometimes faster than calling.”
She was wearing some sort of kimono-style top with a tie belt, in a shimmery red fabric that made the most of her dark hair and pale skin. The pants were wide-legged and comfortable, but that wasn’t what he was focused on. Her breasts were outlined by the filmy fabric. Her nipples were sharp tips, telling him she was bare beneath.
He cupped her breast, feeling the fullness and firmness. This was why he had come in person, although even he hadn’t been aware of it.
Harriett didn’t protest, or move away. She leaned into his hand, her eyes closing.
As the pleasure swirled through him, Brenden pulled the top open, baring her breast, then lifted her up so he could reach the tip with his mouth. The heat of her flesh was almost scalding against his mouth. Her scent was exactly what he remembered. He tugged on the nipple, drawing it between his teeth.
Her fingers pushed through his hair. She tried to hold him there, to encourage him to keep teasing her breast. Her breath was already hurried and he could smell her arousal.
He growled and lifted his head. “Bedroom,” he demanded.
She pointed.
He picked her up and carried her in that direction.
Brenden laid back on the pillows that smelled of her and no one else. He looked up at the ornate ceiling.
Harry was sitting at the end of the bed, naked, but with her legs drawn up under one hip. Like everything else she did, it was elegant. She was eating fruit from a tray of food that the cook had left at the door to her bedroom suite. She ate neatly, but enormously.
“Why did you want to speak to me, anyway?” Brenden asked, remembering what had brought him to Berlin.
Harry smiled. “That was three days ago.”
“Question still stands.”
Her smile grew warmer. “Perhaps I wanted this.” She patted the sheet by her hip.
“Not your style,” Brenden observed. “You would have asked, if that’s what you wanted.”
“Really.” She put the grapefruit segment she had been peeling back on the tray. “Three days of sex and you believe you know me, hmm?”
He tucked his hands behind his head. Harry was smart and challenging. He liked the way her mind worked and how she didn’t back down. Even from him. “I know you,” he said flatly.
“Tell me,” she coaxed. “I would like to hear what it is you think you know about me.”
“Your family has all sorts of lineage, but you grew up dirt poor and hiding it from the world. Your education was thorough, elite and short. I’m betting your family didn’t give you an advanced education because they intended to sell you off to the highest bidder. All done very discreetly, of course, the way impoverished families have been doing it throughout history. They probably had the ideal candidate lined up already. Someone deadly boring, dull, but rich as Croesus. But you didn’t sit still for that. You ran away to Austria, where your sister was already married to some stranger that no one in society knew, but he was loaded, so that was okay. That’s where you met Donald Winslow and you figured that marrying for money, if it was on your terms, was better than starving genteelly. So you struck a bargain with Winslow.”
“Actually, he offered the bargain,” Harry said, wiping her hands on a napkin. “He needed a trophy wife, someone that could watch his back for him, as he couldn’t do it himself.” She gave another smaller smile. “I liked him. And I respected him.”
“In return, you get almost total freedom to pursue…your own interests,” Brenden finished. “I imagine a degree of discretion is part of the bargain.”
“That was not part of the bargain,” Harry said. “Nothing sexual was. But I’ve reached certain compromises over the years. Discretion seemed to be a polite consideration, under the circumstances.”
Brenden raised a brow. “So what was the bargain?”
“An education,” Harry told him. “As deep and as wide as I wanted.”
“That’s why you’re running his corporation for him,” Brenden summarized. “You educated yourself into the job.”
“The job formed around me,” Harry replied. “Although I think Donald always assumed I would become more hands-on as the years went by. It is an equitable arrangement.” She smiled and this time her smile was full of mischief. “I earned my third doctorate last year.”
Brenden laughed.
Harriet put the tray on the nightstand and moved across the sheet like a sinuous otter, to rest her torso over his. Her nose was inches from him and he kissed it.
“Let me tell you what I know about you,” Harry said. “Turn and turn about,” she added.
“This should be interesting,” he said. “Tell me about me.”
“You were born in Sparta and raised as a soldier. Somewhere in the fifth century B.C.”
“You’re reading from the security report,” Brenden complained.
“True. But that’s interesting reading all on its own. You were turned when you were about thirty and after you adjusted to life as a vampire, you decided you liked it. The extra power and strength and reaction speed would have been useful to a warrior. But you couldn’t stay in Sparta, so you wandered to wherever there was a war you could contribute to.” She traced invisible circles on his chest with one long finger. “You’ve been in love, but there’s never been a love of your life. You’ve managed to keep your heart tangle free. You prefer human lovers. They keep you grounded. But you never forget the differences between you and humans. Even though you like humans, you believe you’ll never be able to eradicate those differences.”
Brenden let out his breath. Slowly, so he wouldn’t reveal his reaction to her summary. “I give you a life history, but you go for the gut, instead.”
“Heart,” she amended and patted his chest. “It’s a cleaner kill.” She raised herself so that she was looking down at him. “I was closer than I thought, wasn’t I?”
Brenden flipped her onto her back and rolled over her. He spread her thighs with his knees and slid into her. She caught her breath in a delightful hitch and her black eyes grew heated.
“Let me show you one of those unerasable differences,” he told her, thrusting slowly.
“Please…” she breathed, straining beneath him. Her hips moved and her pelvis thrust, urging him on.
Brenden pushed against the mattress, bracing himself above her, giving himself the leverage he needed to thrust deeper and harder. His climax came quickly, because he was anticipating the savory end. As he came he picked up her head and brought her neck to his mouth and bit.
The taste of her coppery, hot blood was ambrosial and he growled as his climax exploded in his chest and his groin and his head. He felt Harry stiffen. Her scream was soundless, as she came almost as violently as he had, her climax enhanced by the aphrodisiac in his bite.
For a moment or two she laid dazed beneath him and Brenden shifted away from her, to give her room and time to recover. Then she drew in a breath and let it out noisily and rested her arm over her forehead. “Oh my….” she breathed. She turned her head to look at him. “You see that as a drawback?”
Laughter bubbled inside him, catching him by surprise. He laid back on the mattress and let out a gusty bellow. It felt good. And it occurred to him that he had done more laughing in the last three days than he had in the last three years.
How strange.