Page 34 of Don't Bite The Boss
Chuckling, he shoves a pillow over my face and trails kisses and little nips down the inside of my thighs, and, well, I forget all about wanting his blood. There is something else I want more now, no,needmore, something I’ve needed for a long, long time, and he is more than willing to give it.
“Oh, Mr Bear,” I moan as his tongue follows the path his fingers had led.
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“I brought wine for us, and bread and cheese for me,” he says, laying out his laissez-faire picnic on the centuries-old stele as though it was an every-day table.
I look up in surprise. “Is the wine meant to sublimate my thirst?”
“Of course,” he shrugs “and reward you for a hard day’s labour.” He pulls out two glasses and places them near the bottle on the stele, balancing the rims gingerly against the grooves of the hieroglyphs.
“You know that thing is priceless, thousands of years old, may, once deciphered, tell us something about ancient civilisations that we never knew,” I laugh, jumping up from the almost finished grotto bath and joining him on the rock. “It’s basically an historic treasure.”
“Some might call you an historic treasure,” he says quietly, “perhaps this Solomon you are all so afraid of.”
“Yeah, right,” I almost choke on my wine. “Solomon doesn’t consider us treasures, he considers us possessions, but not the kind you value. We are, were, playthings, in addition to being his servants and whipping boys. And if Christopher’s research is correct, he needs us to make him stronger. He may have found three women he found irresistible and enslaved us, but he is thousands of years old, and it took him that long to find and collect us. Make no mistake, when Solomon catches us, and I know he will, someday, he will make us pay for leaving him in ways you couldn’t even comprehend.”
‘And if we truly give him his power, he will never stop hunting us.’
“I’m sorry,” he shakes his head and tops up my wine, “I didn’t mean to bring up something painful.”
“Ha,” I laugh, “pain.” I shake my head, blotting out images that flash before my eyes of dungeons and pincers and laughing aristocrats and little girls begging for mercy. “I know pain,” I shudder and down my wine, “words are nothing.”
“Just how oldareyou?” he asks, his voice laden with curiosity.
“I’m old enough to have known what it is to starve, to see your family starve, and to have experienced a life where it would have been unlikely I would have reached 25. And young enough to appreciate Roman ruins and buried treasure, and that is all the answer you will ever get from me on that matter.”
He laughs gently before his expression turns serious.
“Pru, I want to thank you again for saving my life. I left you without any regard for your feelings, saddled you with taking on my responsibility for Valerie. Hell, I couldn’t even do you the courtesy of telling you how I felt when I could see that you cared for me, and yet, I knew you would come for me.”
“You were heartbroken,” I frown, taking a sip of wine.
“I was,” he shakes his head and takes my hand, “and guilty. I knew my feelings were divided, that I loved Fleur, but you,” he shakes his head, “there was something about you.”
“There was never any question about me coming for you. Forget it,” I shrug, “all part of the service. And anyway, I think you’ve thanked me pretty thoroughly every night since then.”
He looks away as I say this, as though he wants to tell me something else, but changes his mind at the last minute, or it seems to me he says something other than what is on his mind.
“Valerie is back in the States, and now I need to go away for a week or so. I promised I’d meet with Christopher and go over everything that has happened.”
“Is he coming here? To the Continent?”
“No,” he shakes his head, “he was in Alaska when Valerie called him, and it frustrated the hell out of him that he couldn’t do anything for us during the attack.”
“He had doctors ready and waiting when we got to your ship,” I remind him, as much as I dislike giving Christopher credit for anything.
“He is angrier than I’ve ever known him to be,” Tristan shakes his head. “I’ve got to figure out a way to get him back with Serena, it’s killing him, even if he won’t admit it.”
“Honestly,” I sigh, “Serena is in a bad place, she must be. She’s still not talking to me, she’s grappling with the information Charlotte has given her about the Irresistibles, I can’t tell what she is going to do.
“Can you tell what I’m going to do?” he smirks, running his hand up the side of my thigh and pushing his hand into my pocket.
“Run?” I quip.
“Maybe,” he grins, “maybe I like it when you pursue me. Maybe I let you catch me.”
“Maybe I like it when you run,” I grin back, “and maybe you don’t have any choice about me catching you. I find you a tad over-confident, Mr Bear.”
