Chains of Jericho

Chapter 3

Chapter 3The initial sting burned.

It wasn’t that different from getting blood drawn, except she felt Dec’s lips pressed to the curve of her neck, felt his tongue dancing across her skin. His fangs were no longer embedded in her flesh, but he didn’t need that particular anchor to keep her in place anymore. The drawing that seemed to start someplace in the pit of her pelvis sizzled up along her spine to be sucked away, swallowed down, devoured in languor as the others merely watched.

Each drag felt like an eternity. Each time she felt his lips tense against her, felt the suction his mouth created tighten and trap, Maya lost another inch of her control, her body loosening, the desire to fight back lessening. Her voice faded into a moan, and her eyes fluttered shut, blocking out the sight of the others staring until all she was aware of was the piercing ache permeating her flesh.

Dimly, she became aware of the world tilting around her, the pressure of the ground disappearing from beneath her feet. The scent of clove suddenly filled her nostrils, familiar and yet not, and she wondered distractedly if someone was baking somewhere in these Byzantine depths. Without thinking, she nuzzled against the soft fabric that now brushed along her cheek and let the darkness start seeping into the edges of her consciousness.

Doors opened and closed. The world rocked and swayed. Maya heard a glimmer of voices ebb and flow without breaking through the fog that had settled around her.

Then, silence. And the soft of down as she sank into it.

When she finally found the strength to open her eyes again, Maya was staring blearily up at uneven plaster, disheveled quilts bunched awkwardly beneath her body. The light was low, but the scent that hung in the air didn’t need illumination to identify it.

She was back in Dec’s room. On his bed. Where did that place Dec?

A shadow loomed in the periphery of her vision.

“Drink this,” Dec instructed, and a glass of water was suddenly at her lips.

Pushing up on her elbows, Maya waited until the room finished spinning around her before sipping at the warm liquid. Her neck ached, and she wondered why it hadn’t seemed to hurt so much when he was biting her—

It was the word “biting” that made her jump.

“What did you do to me?” Her hand flew to her neck. The demand didn’t come out nearly as forcefully as she intended; in fact, her voice sounded rather like a little girl’s. Instead of the bite marks she expected to find, Maya felt the smooth, squared edges of a gauze bandage. This wasn’t going at all as she intended.

The mattress bowed beneath his weight when he sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to assume that it’s just the anxiety of the night that’s having you ask so many stupid questions.” There was no mockery in his eyes, but there was no complaisance, either. “You should have waited here.”

“For what? You haven’t even told me your name, let alone what you intend to do to me. And if you think I can just stand back while people are dying, then who’s really the stupid one here?”

His mouth twitched. It looked for a moment as if he was going to smile, but his features remained solemn. “I meant to introduce myself at the hospital, but your police intervention forced me to change my plans.” He bowed his head, in some antiquated gesture of chivalry. “Declan Jericho. You can call me Dec.”

“And you think you’re a vampire.” The observation tumbled from her mouth before she could stop it.

“There’s no thinking involved. It’s what I am.”

“You can’t be,” she continued to argue. “There’s no such thing.”

Dec sighed. “I thought you were a scientist, Dr. Sheldon. Don’t scientists believe what’s right in front of their eyes?”

“Not when it’s crazy.”

“Ah, well, I didn’t say that I wasn’t a little mad, now did I?” Reaching across her body, he took her right hand and pulled it up to his chest, pressing her palm to the corded muscle without breaking their gazes. “It doesn’t beat. Do you have another explanation better than mine?”

It had been a deliberate move on his part, she knew. He could’ve taken her left hand, which was closer, or he could’ve offered her his wrist to check for a pulse. But no. Dec had specifically chosen to force Maya to be pulled up into his body, to more closely inhale the scent of musk and clove that seemed to cling to his skin, and to remember those moments of oblivion after he had bitten her. It made the mark on her neck tingle unexpectedly, and she tore her eyes away from his to focus on the broad expanse of his chest right before her.

She couldn’t deny facts. His heart was completely still.

“Danny and Katie…” she murmured.

“The same as me. Except…younger.”

Maya tried to pull her hand away, but Dec’s grip was firm. At least it explained his strength now. “I don’t get it.” Her voice was even fainter than it had been, confusion sapping what little strength she’d regained. “I’m still alive. Aren’t you supposed to, I don’t know, turn me, or make me dinner, or something like that?”

“That wasn’t the plan, no.” Finally letting her go, Dec let Maya scoot back into the corner of the bed, though he didn’t bother rising from it himself. “It’s a long story, Dr. Sheldon—”

“Maya.”

He paused. “What?”

“You keep calling me Dr. Sheldon and it’s just weird. I’m not at the hospital, and you’re not my patient. Call me Maya.”

Slowly, he shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “So, you can kidnap me, drag me to God knows where, and even bite me, but you can’t call me by my first name?” She wondered if he realized what she was doing. If she could get him to think of her by her first name, it would personalize her in his mind. He’d be less likely to hurt her then.

That was the theory, at least.

The silence between them stretched into several minutes as he regarded her with dark eyes. She refused him the satisfaction of turning away, and watched him just as steadily, realizing in those long seconds just how attractive he really was. Under better light than what had been in the alley, she could see the thickness of his sooty lashes, the small imperfection of a scar just under his chin. She had to fight the unwanted urge to tidy her own appearance; she just knew she looked a fright with half her hair now pulled from its holder to hang in her face.

“Maya, then,” he finally said. He stood and turned his back to her. “Like I said, what I have to tell you is going to take some time, and I’d prefer that it get told while we’re both reasonably alert.” Her eyes widened when he peeled his shirt off, revealing a tightly corded back. “I’ll explain everything tomorrow. After a good night’s sleep.”

Kicking off his boots, Dec padded over to the light switches on the walls and flicked them off, drowning the room in blackness. The complete void that remained drove Maya into the corner of the bed, curling into a tiny ball as she strained to see or hear anything of what might happen next.

Nothing.

Not a breath.

Not a soft tread of a bare foot on the floor

Not even a puff of air across her cheek.

Then, the bed sagged again, the squeak of the springs a screech in her ear that made her jerk back against the wall.

“What are you doing?” Maya challenged.

Strong fingers wrapped around her ankle. “Going to sleep,” Dec said. Within seconds, her laces were untied, her foot freed, and the sound of her tennis shoe hitting the floor echoed in the dark.

“Here?”

“It’s my bed. You’re the one who doesn’t really belong in it.”

He proceeded to take off her other shoe, though how he could see so clearly in the darkness, Maya had no idea. Must be a vampire thing, she thought.

“So, where am I going to sleep?” she asked, even as she wondered how in hell she was expected to sleep in a situation like this.

“Here.” With a firm insistence she couldn’t counter, Dec slid his hands up her legs until he reached her hips, taking hold and pulling her back to lie flat on the bed. Within seconds, he was stretched out next to her, the solid muscle of his arm brushing against hers.

“You’re kidding, right?” In spite of the lethargy in her bones, Maya sat up and started to clamber down the mattress, determined to escape this time. She didn’t get very far. That iron band that had held her firm in the alley almost immediately appeared again, this time around her waist, and pulled her back to her supine position.

He didn’t let go of her this time. Rolling both of them onto their sides, Dec spooned behind her, keeping her firmly in place with his arm, the top of her head tucked neatly beneath his chin.

“I can’t risk you ending up as someone else’s dinner,” he said. “This is the only way to keep you safe.”

She shook her head at the irony of hearing a vampire saying she was only safe in his arms. “And how exactly does this particular sleeping arrangement accomplish that?”

“If anyone comes in, they’ll see you as mine,” Dec explained. “My bite does the same, but I can’t be sure that’s enough. Especially since Danny’s had a taste of you now. If he gets free, you’ll be the first thing he goes for.”

It made sense, in a twisted kind of way, but it didn’t stop Maya from stiffening. “You think he’s going to escape again?” Suddenly, having Dec as a protector didn’t sound like such a bad idea.

“I don’t know.” Pause. “Danny keeps surprising me.”

“Unpredictable?”

He snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”

She shivered involuntarily. The boy—the vampire, she corrected—didn’t necessarily frighten her; he’d seemed more scared than anything else. But then she remembered how quickly he’d honed in on her injury, and how desperate he’d sounded pleading to Dec for more of her blood, and maybe she got scared at what he might do without any restraints holding him back. Just a little bit.

Dec’s arm tightened around her, and she felt the soft feather of…something across the top of her head. “You’re safe for now,” he said, his voice quiet and reassuring. “But you’ll have to get over being nervous around Danny. He’s one of the reasons you’re here.”

Maya didn’t know what to say to that. There would be no explanations tonight; Dec had made that abundantly clear. But the possibilities behind her abduction seemed to grow exponentially inside her head with each passing second, and she was desperate for some clarity to the whole situation.

It didn’t help, either, that she was stuck in the bed of a very attractive man—vampire, she was going to have to fight to remember that—and that he seemed to be going out of his way to make this ordeal as easy for her as possible. Her body was well aware of the power in the muscles behind her, and there remained a vestige of the desire that had underlined her reaction to his bite.

It was going to be a very long night.

* * * *

It seemed to take forever for her to fall asleep.

As the minutes passed, and the first hour slipped away, Dec remained vigilant as he listened to her body’s rhythms, felt the tension slowly dissipate from her limbs as exhaustion eventually won her over. To be certain, he waited another half an hour, staying still, convincing himself that she was finally asleep, before easing out of bed. It had absolutely nothing to do with enjoying the feel of a warm human body, and a beautiful one at that, sharing his bed for the first time in a decade.

He turned on a lone light by the couch, and settled in to try and get some reading done before attempting to sleep himself. His body burned from her stolen heat, and the surge of electricity that still charged through his veins from her blood made rest impossible to contemplate at the moment. This wasn’t how he’d envisioned the night going. Though he’d always intended to bring her back to their refuge, he’d never wanted her to be so closely tied to his quarters, or to have seen the others until he’d had the opportunity to prepare her. He’d watched and researched Dr. Maya Sheldon long enough to know that was the best way to get a positive result from her. Now, however, the rules were changed.

Unbidden, his eyes lifted from his book to settle on her recumbent form. Her thick dark hair was loose from the ponytail she normally kept it in, and the soft waves against her flushed cheeks made her seem younger than her thirty years. It was the first time he’d seen her with her hair down, making her appear surprisingly softer. An illusion, he knew. Time and time again, Dec had been impressed with how assiduously she pursued her medicine, refusing to let negative diagnoses deter her from continuing to try. It was the primary reason he’d chosen her for this. She would not give up.

But had he crossed a line in biting her? Would she still help him when day came and she was thinking more clearly about her circumstances? He hadn’t had a choice; she had to realize that. If she’d only stayed put—

The direction his thoughts were going almost made him laugh out loud.

Had he really expected her not to run to the aid of screaming children? After all, that was how he had known he could get her attention at the hospital. It had been his own fault for not locking her up behind him.

He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Reluctantly, Dec turned his attention away from Maya and back to the textbook in his lap. He couldn’t return to his bed until he had better control over his body. At the moment, his every nerve was aware of her presence, his erection straining against the denim of his jeans. He wanted nothing more than to strip out of the rest of his clothes and finish what he’d started with the bite, sinking into her supple flesh in more ways than one. It had been a long time since he’d felt the desire to forget his vows, and even longer since he’d seriously contemplated dismissing them entirely, but something about Maya Sheldon made him wonder if it might not be possible to have it both ways.

She inspired hope. He’d seen it in the faces of her patients at the hospital.

Funny, but Dec had never once considered that just maybe he might be included in those numbers, not even when he’d decided she was his best hope to save Danny and the others.