He slapped my face, and my eyes briefly opened to an opulent bathroom in glass and grey marble, with the bright lights of heating lamps searing my vision. I squeezed my eyes tight, arms wrapping around him for support, reaching out blindly to find the spigot.
“What-” I gasped, hand twisting the knob as far as it would go. “What the-”
“Fight it, Dakota!” Calaphase said, shaking me. “Snap out of it!”
I gasped under the still-icy stream and glared down at him-and saw that Calaphase was absolutely terrified. “What the fuck, Cally?” I said. “I mean, what were you thinking-”
The water abruptly started to get super hot, and I dialed the big knob back, flinching again as the now- steaming water nearly burnt me. Calaphase didn’t seem to notice, he just held me up, held me in the stream, as I cussed and twisted the water from hot to cold to hot to cold until finally I hit on a lukewarm setting mild enough I could focus on what was happening.
Calaphase stepped back. “Are you all right?” I didn’t answer, and he grabbed me and shook me. “Dakota, answer me. Are you all right? Can you hear me?”
All right? Buzzkill! My bliss, my fireworks, my dizzy soreness were all gone… and as they faded to memory… I noticed my neck was tingling. I clapped my hand to my neck, and a wave of pins and needles flooded down my shoulder. “What the hell happened?”
“My aura overwhelmed you,” Calaphase said. “You were completely under-”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I was out of it because you fucked my brains out.”
“An hour ago,” Calaphase said. “You don’t remember anything after that, do you?”
My mouth fell open. The pins and needles were growing worse. “No,” I said.
“Damnit,” Calaphase said. He didn’t look like a vampire anymore. He was just a man, a man conflicted with fear and shame. “I’ve been trying to rouse you and-I’m sorry. I never meant to-I’m sorry. Can you stand on your own?”
“Always,” I said, reaching out and grabbing the soap dish just in case.
“Good,” he said, stepping out of the shower. “Sober up, I’ll be back.”
He stormed back towards the bedroom. I started to follow, then jerked back from the coldness outside. I closed the shower and turned up the heat as much as I could stand, letting the water drum against my head. What had just happened?
I remembered taking him home, coming on to him, having sex… and after that, a blur. A pleasant, blissy blur. Almost a buzz, like I’d been drunk. But I hadn’t been drinking; I never drink and drive. And my hand came back to my shoulder, feeling the tingle around the bite.
What had come over me? I’d never expected to take Calaphase home, much less for things to move this far this quickly. Not that I regretted… well, perhaps I regretted the bite but… the way it made me feel… oh, hell, I had no idea what I was feeling.
The water grew too hot, so I killed it and grabbed both towels from the rack with one long arm. In the sudden dripping chill I began to worry. We hadn’t used protection. What if I’d been ovulating? What were the signs? I pressed my breasts to see if they were sensitive, but I was too buzzed and tingly and shivery to tell any real difference.
Hell, the way I’d been acting, maybe I was ovulating. Could a vampire get me pregnant? Despite having dated one briefly after Savannah turned, I couldn’t remember what was real and what was myth-pregnancy had never come up, dating a woman. Quickly I finished drying off. When I was wrapped, body and head, I followed Calaphase back to the bedroom.
Calaphase sat on the edge of the huge four poster bed, naked to the waist, in suit pants but barefoot, talking heatedly into a cell phone. His eyes shifted over to me, then looked away as he said. “Yes, she’s coming out of it now. Thank you. I’ve never tried to break a link… ”
I stood there and watched, feeling my neck. The tingling was subsiding, but I could feel two small puncture wounds, swollen and irritated, like deep zits. He bit me. Oh my God, he bit me-exactly what I feared would come of hanging out with vampires. I was dizzy, almost drunk-no, that wasn’t it; I felt hung over. I looked at the clock: it was eleven forty-five.
“No, no, I don’t feel a connection,” he said. He furrowed his brow at me, making his eyes glow, but it didn’t feel hypnotic, and I quickly got a headache and had to look away. But beneath it all, I felt the pull: a subtle, seductive draw, murmuring out from him on the waves of his aura. “Some residual, but I don’t think the link had time to set. She’s safe.”
I swallowed. Now I knew why Calaphase was so resistant, what he meant when he said he didn’t need another thrall or groupie. It would be hard to resist his influence without his help. Fear gripped me: how could I date this man if he could sway me any time he wanted to?
But Calaphase wasn’t done rocking my world. “Well, that’s a fair question, my Lady Saffron,” he said-and I would have given good money to see the look on my own face when he spoke her name. I reached for him, but he held up his hand-and I felt the odd tingle come back. “The lady in question is Dakota Frost.”
“Calaphase!” I said, reaching for the phone. “What in God’s name are you doing-”
But there was an exclamation on the line, and he got up swiftly and turned away. “Yes, that’s her. Yes, yes, she’s all right, the cold shower worked.” He paused for a moment, and then nodded. “Of course-that is the real reason I’m calling. I didn’t just bite her. We had sex.”
I sat down on the floor next to the edge of the bed and looked up at him, pacing the room like a caged animal. I couldn’t believe he was doing this. I couldn’t see why he was doing this. I couldn’t imagine how he thought this might help.
There was a screech, and Calaphase winced. “I’m sorry,” he said. I scowled at him. He was apologizing for sleeping with me! But he ignored me and continued, “I didn’t mean to. I tried to avoid it, it’s just she was very-” he struggled for a word “-bold.”
There was no screech on the other end of the line this time. There was only a long pause. Then I heard a quiet voice, almost a murmur, and Calaphase looked down at me in surprise. “Do… do you really think so?” he asked, eyes fixed on me. “I see.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“I called for two reasons,” Calaphase said into the phone. “To apologize, and to ensure that there will be no repercussions-you know what we’ve been negotiating. I wanted you to know sooner, rather than-I see. I see. That’s magnanimous of-I see. Thank you, my Lad-”
He took the phone away from his ear and stared at it, then sat down on the bed.
“Well,” he said, hanging up the phone and scowling. “That’s done, and done.”
I struggled to remember what had happened. I remembered his wonderful voice telling me what to do. I recalled him leading me somewhere, light drumming against my eyelids, a flash of the bathroom, a flash of wonder. What had he planned for me now? A warm bath, a slow massage? I had actually giggled in the shower, when I swayed to one side and cold tile had touched my breast. Then he’d turned the water on.
But before that, nothing. Nothing before the blast of icy water but scattered images and a feeling of great contentment and affection for Calaphase, stretching back… until he had bit me.
“Oh, God,” I said, feeling my neck gingerly. “Calaphase. You hypnotized me-”
“Not precisely,” Calaphase said, still scowling. “Certainly not intentionally-but, yes I did.” He sighed. “Forming a link is like a reflex. It’s hard to stop once started.”
“You bit me,” I said fearfully, the implications finally starting to hit home. “ You bit me! Do I need to use holy water-”
“There’s a garlic derivative,” Calaphase said. “The Lady Saffron is checking for me-”
“Fuck her! She didn’t need to know about this!” I said. “ Why did you call her? ”
“Dakota, I had to,” Calaphase said firmly. “You were completely under. The sex and the bite were establishing a link-in lay terms, you were becoming my human servant. You were minutes away from imprinting completely on me and I couldn’t stop it.”
I started shivering. His voice now sounded different, yet strangely familiar-deeper, reverberating, echoing through my head, calling up intoxicating memories from my stupor. Even the wound on my neck tingling in time with his words. He was right. He’d had me under his thrall, my aura merging with his, and he couldn’t stop it. And I hadn’t wanted him to.
“This the real reason they used to kill vampires on sight. Not because we drink blood-but because we can
