Insatiable

Chapter Sixty-two

8:30 P.M., Friday, April 23

910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B

New York, New York

Hello, Meena,” he said.

Drops of rain clung damply to his short dark hair.

She caught her breath, her heart giving a sudden painful thump. She was surprised her heart even remembered how to beat, since seeing him there, just walking into her bedroom like that, was such a shock, she would have thought it would have gone into cardiac arrest.

He looked incredible, of course, just like always, even casually dressed in a charcoal-gray cashmere sweater and black trousers. Tall, broad-shouldered, taking up so much space in that tiny room where they’d once made such riotous, crazy love, trying to be quiet so they wouldn’t arouse the suspicions of her brother and Alaric, right there in the next room…

He looked so dark and so handsome and so sure of himself.

He gave off no indication at all that, less than a week ago, he’d been…

…well, what he’d been.

Or done what he’d done.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, those dark brown eyes as melancholic as ever. Still, sad as those eyes might have looked, Meena didn’t miss the way his gaze raked her, making her feel, as he always did, that he knew exactly what she looked like beneath the dress she was wearing. Which, of course, he did. “I was hoping you’d come back. I know you haven’t wanted to see me. But I hope now we can talk-”

Abruptly, Meena’s knees buckled. Just gave out beneath her. She would have collapsed to the floor-there was no furniture left in the apartment for her to grab to keep herself from smacking into the hardwood that came swooping toward her so fast-if he hadn’t caught her in his strong arms, then sunk to the floor with her, cradling her body against him.

“I’m sorry, Meena,” he whispered into her hair. There was a world of remorse, of pain, of hurt in his rich, low voice. “I’m so, so sorry. You have to know that I-”

“You have no right,” she said. She was surprised her lips and tongue worked. She felt numb all over. That’s why her legs had stopped working. But apparently, though it was weak, she still had a voice. “After what you did-”

“I know,” he said. He was rocking her, his forehead pressed to hers. “I know.”

“You can’t just come in here,” Meena said. Her voice had begun to sound stronger. “And clean up my apartment like that’s going to make everything better. Because it isn’t. Lucien, people died.”

“I know,” he said. He looked-and sounded-as if he were carrying around the regret of a thousand vampires from a thousand years, not just a single five-hundred-year-old one. “More people than you even know, Meena. My brother was evil. He always was. I should have killed him long ago. This was all my fault. All of it. He’s gone now, though. He’ll never murder anyone again.”

“People got hurt,” she said, shaking her head. He had to understand that it wasn’t enough that Dimitri was gone. If he was really gone…

“I know,” he said, and lifted her wrist in its air cast and kissed it. “And I want to spend eternity making it up to you.”

“It wasn’t just me,” Meena said, the tears in her eyes making it hard for her to see. “They kidnapped my best friend. Who was pregnant. They bit a chunk out of her husband’s neck as he was trying to stop them. And she went into early labor because of what happened. She could have lost the baby. She almost did.”

Lucien stroked her. “How can we make it up to them?” he asked. “A college savings account for the baby, perhaps? I’ll open one for them and move a million dollars into it tomorrow.”

“Lucien!” Meena stared up at him disbelievingly through her tears. “You can’t just go around paying people off to make up for your mistakes. You burned down a church!”

“I know, Meena,” he said. He reached up to capture some of her tears with a thumb. “But what do you want me to do? How do you expect me to make amends? I’ve already made an anonymous donation to the church. A sizeable one that should take care of any reparations not covered by their fire insurance-”

Meena sucked in her breath. “No. That doesn’t make it right. You turned into a-”

He laid a finger over her lips to silence her before she could get the word dragon out. “There were mitigating circumstances,” he said. “Your brother shot me. With a stake. In the back.”

She winced. “I know,” she said. He’d lowered the finger. “And you’ll never know how sorry I am about that. But, Lucien-”

“Whatever else may have happened, Meena-whatever else I may have done wrong, and I’m not denying that I did many, many things wrong that night-please allow me to point out that, despite what you insisted I would do, I killed neither your brother nor that Palatine guard you’re so fond of…despite meticulous efforts on their behalf to murder me. They’re still both very much alive today.”

Meena sucked in her breath. “Because of me,” she said. “I saved them. I put a tourniquet on one and I sent the other to the maternity ward with my best friend. But, Lucien, I can’t keep on doing that. I won’t always be there. I can’t keep watching the people I love almost get killed because of you. Oh, wait, excuse me. Almost get incinerated-”

“That’s why,” he said, leaning his head down to place his lips where, a minute before, his finger had been, “I suggested that we go away. Thailand. Remember?”

Meena stared up at him, her face wet, her mouth still tingling from the kiss.

She definitely didn’t feel numb anymore. Not anywhere. The tears and his lips had taken care of that problem.

“I can’t go to Thailand with you, Lucien,” she said, starting to shake her head. How could he not understand?

“Of course you can,” he said. “Why not?”

His hand was already traveling up her thigh, already slipping beneath the short skirt of her new-used-black dress.

“A…a million reasons,” she said.

“I know you’re frightened, Meena,” he said in his deep voice. His dark-eyed gaze seemed to have a hypnotic pull on hers…the same kind of pull his fingers seemed to have on her.

She was having a hard time remembering how angry she was with him when he was touching her the way he was. How could she ever have been frightened of him? Of those lips, which were kissing her, right now, on her neck?

“And you’re right to be,” he went on, in his deep, low voice. “There are unspeakable horrors in the world, the likes of which you can’t even begin to imagine. What happened to you that night-that day-was inexcusable. Those things-those creatures-should never have touched you. It’s my fault you were ever put in a position where they were able to. And you’re absolutely correct: none of what happened to you can ever be righted with a check, no matter how sizable.”

“I don’t want your money, Lucien,” she murmured. The feel of his mouth on the skin of her neck was almost more than she could stand. She was ready to start tearing off her dress right there on the bedroom floor.

“I know that. And I will never allow you to be put in that kind of danger again,” he said. The hand he’d dipped beneath her skirt had reached her panties. Now his fingers skimmed the lace trim along the inside of her thigh. “But in order for me to protect you the way I want to, you have to come live with me. So we can be together. Really be together.”

“In Thailand,” Meena said, her eyes closed. She’d thrown her head back against his chest, her throat arched in tantalizing invitation.

“Or wherever you want to go,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be Thailand.” His mouth moved toward her throat.

Meena’s heart thumped again. It all sounded so perfect. The two of them would go away together. Maybe to Thailand. Lucien would protect her. He could because he was so big and strong. Also rich. She wouldn’t need to worry about Leisha or Jon or Adam or Alaric or the baby or anyone else she cared about getting killed.

Because she’d be gone. She’d be far away from them. She’d only have Lucien to care about.

But…

Something tickled the back of her mind. The same thing that had always bothered her whenever Leisha mentioned the baby. The same thing that had bothered her when Yalena had shown her a picture of her boyfriend on her cell phone…

The pit of nothingness.

She opened her eyes, surprised to find that Lucien’s mouth was open and on her throat.

“Wait,” she said, jerking away, her pulse suddenly racing, her breath catching in her throat. “What are you doing?”

He looked down at her expressionlessly. The hand beneath her skirt stilled. “Nothing,” he said carefully. “I’m not doing anything to you, Meena. Except loving you.”

She reached up to touch her neck. She was relieved to find that it was dry.

But all it would take, she knew, was one more bite, and then her drinking a little of his blood…

And she would become like him.

She knew it. He knew it.

Meena got to her feet, suddenly feeling as if the walls of the room were closing in on her.

Her heart was racing as fast as a rabbit’s now. So fast, in fact, that she was worried it might actually fly out of her chest.

What am I doing? she asked herself. What am I doing here?

Alaric Wulf had warned her not to go to her old apartment. He’d told her…he’d made her promise she wouldn’t go see it.

Had he known? Had he known that Lucien would come there to find her and that he’d do this to her?

Of course he’d known.

And she hadn’t listened. Oh, God, why hadn’t she listened? She was just like all the people who never listened to her.

Because only now was the very great danger she was in actually beginning to become clear to her…this time, she was the one on the edge of the crevasse. How was she going to get away? How was she going to get out of this?

She didn’t have any weapons.

And even if she did-could she really kill the man she loved, even if it meant…

…her life?

She paced from one side of the room to the other and then back again, taking quick, shallow breaths.

“Meena,” Lucien said, looking at her curiously. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. Could he read her mind?

Yes. Of course he could. Or partly, at least. He always could.

Fine, then, she decided.

Let him read it now.

She came to a stop in front of him, her toes balanced on the edge of the pit.

“I can’t do that,” she said. “I can’t…do that.”

He looked up at her from the floor where he still sat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Oh, don’t lie to me, Lucien,” she said, exploding. “After everything else I’ve been through because of you? Your freak of a brother trying to kill me? An army of vampires trying to drain me of my blood and drink it? And you’re going to sit there and lie to my face?”

Now he climbed to his feet, his calm demeanor gone. “Fine,” he said. His large hands were fisted. There was a muscle twitching in his jaw. It was obvious he’d known exactly what she’d been talking about all along. “So what? Admit that it would make things simpler, Meena.”

“Simpler?” She laughed out loud, though without humor. “If I were dead?”

“If you were one of us,” he said, putting it in a way that he obviously found more palatable. “Then you and I could truly be together. All this talk of going to Thailand-”

“Yeah, FYI,” Meena interrupted sarcastically, “I knew that was never going to happen, because you’d go up like a roman candle on the beach.”

“-doesn’t mean anything if you’re just going to grow old before my eyes while I-”

“Oh, that’s very nice,” Meena said, interrupting again. “So you’re just going to dump me for someone younger when I get old, like every other guy? Are you suggesting I try some Revenant Wrinkle Cream or that I check into one of Dimitri’s spas-”

He reached out then and cupped her face in both his hands, looking deeply into her eyes.

“I will love you, Meena,” he said fiercely, “until the end of time. I will never stop loving you. My life, before I met you, was nothing. Can you understand that? My life was nothing, meant nothing, even if I may not have known it. And then you came along, and suddenly, everything I knew, or thought I knew, was turned upside down. I will never be the same again. How could I be? You have shown me what it is to love, to feel and laugh and, yes, even to feel alive again. So whether you choose to be one with me or not, I will go on loving you, Meena, even after you are a rotting corpse in the ground. But, Meena, I would like to do whatever I can to prevent you from turning into a corpse. I think I mentioned that before.”

She stared up at him, shaken.

“Yes, but, Lucien,” she said, reaching up to grasp his wrists and gazing into his dark eyes, in which she thought she saw flickers of flame, “tricking me into turning into a vampire so that I won’t grow old and die before your eyes? What if I don’t want to be a vampire? Which I don’t, by the way. I have a dog that hates vampires, remember? I have friends and family here in New York City who I’d like to be able to visit…during the day. Also, I’ve seen death. I really, really don’t like going there. Even to visit. Even for a short while. And, Lucien.” She took his hands from her face and flipped them over so that she could hold them, instead, in hers. “I have a special thing that I can do. I think you experienced it, at least on a small scale, when you drank my blood. I can tell when people are going to die…lately, I can tell when they’re just in danger. And that means I can warn them, give them a fighting chance against death…or at least put it off. If you killed me and turned me into a vampire…I don’t know if I’d have that ability anymore. I’m pretty sure my blood drying up in my veins would end that. And-”

She drew a shuddering breath.

“That, I just don’t think I could live without,” she said. “Because those unspeakable horrors you mentioned before, the likes of which you don’t think I can imagine and that I’m pretty sure you rule over?”

He stared down at her, uncomprehending. “Yes? What about them?”

“I think they’re what I’m supposed to be helping protect people from,” she said. She hoped the tears that had begun to stream down her face again didn’t make him think she was regretting what she was saying.

Because she wasn’t. Not at all.

“I don’t know for certain,” she went on. “But I do know that whenever I don’t help people…well, bad things happen. So…that’s what I’m going to go do.”

He shook his head. Now she was sure that there were flickers of flame in those dark eyes, twin embers, burning bright. Outside the apartment building, the rain, which had been falling gently before, suddenly began to pour. Thunder rumbled off in the not-so-far distance.

“Meena,” he said. The embers were glowing a deep, steady red, exactly the way the dragon’s eyes had. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” she said, unable to hold back a sob, “that I’m going to go work for the Palatine.”

He stared down at her for a second or two.

Then he threw back his head and laughed.

When he looked at her again, the embers had turned to flames, flaring high.

“Oh, Meena,” he said. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not joking,” she said. She reached up and wiped her tears with her uninjured wrist. “The Palatine offered me a job. And I’ve decided that I’m taking it.”

His eyes were entirely red now. The brown was gone. The dragon was taking over.

“It’s not like I would ever do anything to help them go after you, Lucien.” She rushed to explain. “You know that. I’ll always try to do everything I can to help you. Because I love you, too. I always will. But I just can’t be with you. Not if it means my friends are going to get hurt. And this job…it means I can finally do what I think I’ve always been meant to do.”

“You don’t need a job,” he said with sudden savagery. He reached out and grabbed her by the waist, pulling her hard against him. Outside, lightning flared as thunder caused the building to shudder. The storm was directly overhead. “I told you that I’d take care of you.”

Meena lifted her chin to look him in the eye. Those fierce dragon eyes.

“But not without killing me,” she said quietly.

He looked down at her as the rain and wind outside lashed the balcony, his volatile gaze smoldering in its intensity. She thought it might consume her in its wrath and wipe her off the face of the planet entirely, the way his dragon fire had wiped out the Dracul that night.

And no one would know. No one would ever know what had become of Meena Harper.

He could do it. There was nothing to stop him.

Except her courage.

“You know,” she said, swallowing hard, “when you told me the story of St. George and the dragon that night we were in the museum, Lucien, there was one thing you left out.”

“What is that?”

He was keeping himself under control with an effort. She could feel his arms shaking almost as badly as her knees were as he tried valiantly not to drop his lips to her neck and do what he so badly wanted to.

“You never told me that you were the dragon,” she whispered. Thunder-or maybe it was his voice-rocked the walls of the apartment, so hard that Meena would have clapped her hands over her ears if she hadn’t already thrown them defensively over her face, certain the next thing she was going to see were his fangs coming at her throat.

“I’m the prince of darkness.” His voice was like a sonic boom in her ears. “What did you think that meant, Meena? Did you think that meant that…I…was…a…saint?”

And, just as she thought that it was going to be all over for her…

…he let her go.

She lowered her arms and stood there, shaking, just staring at him.

She had never seen such sadness in anyone’s eyes.

“No, Meena,” he said in his normal voice. “You’re the saint.”

What did this mean? Why had he let go of her?

“Go,” he said curtly, nodding toward the bedroom door.

She jumped.

“If you’re going to go,” he said, his voice rising, “go now. Before I change my mind. I think you know what will happen then.”

She turned and ran from the apartment, not stopping to lock the door behind her. She ignored the elevator, not willing to wait for it, and ran down all eleven flights of stairs, unable to believe he wasn’t coming after her-in bat or dragon or even man form.

She didn’t slow down. Like he’d said, he could still change his mind.

She tore through the lobby, not stopping to say good-bye to Pradip. She ran out into the rain, which immediately soaked her, flagging down the first available taxi that she saw. She fell into the backseat, gasping out the address to St. Clare’s to the driver.

She didn’t look back.

She didn’t dare.