Chapter Four

I pressed my hand to my sternum, shocked, and looked up into eyes such a surreal shade of aqua I almost dived into them. They were the color of a lagoon in the tropics, waiting for me to cool off in. Except there was something hard about them, as though if I did jump in I might hit ice that would shard around me.

“And quite delicious company,” he said, tipping forward and inhaling.

“Leave me alone,” I said breathlessly. “What is it with you blokes sniffing me?” I stumbled toward the top of the stairs.

“Hey, wait.” He grabbed my upper arm and yanked me backward.

“Don’t rush off.” Again he tipped his head, his nostrils flared and he seemed to inhale the aroma of the flesh at my throat.

The skin on the back of my scalp and down my neck felt like it was shrinking, tightening. I struggled to move away.

The word vampire flashed like a beacon in my mind again. But really? Blood-sucking men? Surely I was just being over-imaginative. I had a tendency to do that, Dad was always telling me so.

“Please, be still,” he said softly, his cool breath breezing over my flesh. “I mean you no harm.”

“Ryle. Take your hands off her. Now.”

The grip on my arms loosened and I found myself free of the man whose steely grip had held me. I looked at the doorway and saw Aimery standing there. The relaxed state he’d been in moments ago had vanished. His fists were clenched, his jaw tight and his stance squared. He looked ready for battle, or prepared to pounce, at the very least. My traitorous heart did a little flip of appreciation for the dominance oozing from his every pore. Fuck, he was hot.

The other man, Ryle I presumed, strode across the landing and stood directly in front of Aimery, so close their noses were almost touching. Then he grinned, suddenly, flashing brilliant white teeth. “Bloody hell, you have, already…I can tell.”

“What concern is it of yours?” Aimery said, breaking the eye contact and moving toward me.

“Ha, I knew it.” Ryle’s laugh echoed around the high ceiling. “’Bout time, it’s been long enough. I was starting to worry about you, mate.”

Aimery rested his hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

I looked into his handsome face. Concern shone in his eyes and a frown creased his brow. “Yes, he just surprised me, that’s all. But I’m fine and…and I really should go.” I glanced down the stairway. “My father will be wondering where I am.”

“Oh Lord, she has family.” Ryle raised his eyebrows and put his hands on his hips. “That’s a real bummer, Aimery.”

“Not necessarily.” Aimery rubbed his hand down my arm, and despite the fact his fingers were cool that same warm feeling as before followed his touch. It was nice, compelling even. It made me want to stay close to him despite the fact he hadn’t given me answers to any of my questions. One of which was nudging the recesses of my hyperactive mind.

Stop it, Bea, you’re being ridiculous. Vampires don’t exist.

“Concorde will never allow it,” Ryle said, shaking his head

“There are loop holes in the 1156 amendment, you know,” Aimery replied.

“Mmm, but a father?” Ryle said.

“A father who is not a problem.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, looking between the two men. “Of course my father isn’t a problem.”

Ryle shoved his hand over his hair. It was super-short and white-blond. Like Aimery’s, his skin was flawless and his features as near to perfect as could be. Yet he was very different from Aimery, his lips a little plumper, his face a little longer, and his eyes, they were so vivid, perhaps more so because of his pale coloring. I could hardly tear my attention from them.

“You want to tell her or shall I?” Ryle asked Aimery.

“I will. She’s mine.”

Ryle was in front of Aimery again in a heartbeat, so fast I barely saw him move. “A Bombay should be shared so that she can be doubly protected. You, a hotshot lawyer with an IQ scraping the sky, should understand that.”

Ryle knew I was the rare blood type Bombay too. How could he possibly?

I stepped away. I had to get out. This was all too bizarre. First Aimery knew my blood type and then so did Ryle.

Aimery coiled an arm around my waist and pulled me close.

I gasped as he squeezed me tight. I could go nowhere.

“Keep your damn voice down, Ryle,” he said, shifting his attention left to right. “You want everyone to hear you shouting that word?”

Ryle narrowed his eyes, glanced at me then back at Aimery. “What’s to stop me if you’re not willing to share?” He gave a pained expression and lowered his voice. “What happened to us being a team?”

“You know we’ll always be a team, but look at her. She’ll die if everyone wants a piece, she’s hardly got a big stock of the stuff.”

Die! Oh shit.

I knew I shouldn’t have come here! How could I have been so stupid?

I writhed and wriggled, tried to shove myself free from Aimery. “Please, no, just let me go. They’re probably looking for me right now. My father has lots of friends, heavies, men who think nothing of using lead piping to get what they want and they aren’t scared of time behind bars.”

“Calm down, it’s okay, really,” Ryle said, pressing his hand over my cheek. “We won’t let anything happen to you. Well, nothing that will kill you anyway.”

“We?” Aimery asked.

“Yes, we,” Ryle whispered, leaning a little closer to me. “Out of everyone here at the Order, it’s me you need on your side if you want to keep her safe, Aimery. Besides…” He grinned and his eyes sparkled. “Don’t you remember how much fun we had in Calcutta?”

“Of course I remember,” Aimery said. “That will be with me for eternity, you know it will.”

I sensed Aimery had been backed into a corner by Ryle, although what kind of corner I had no idea. And what had happened in Calcutta that was so significant?

“Tell me your name,” Ryle said, tracing my bottom lip with his index finger.

I looked into his eyes and took a deep breath. He smelt fresh, like open water and sea breeze. It was refreshing after the stench of death in the market. “Bea,” I whispered.

“Short for Beatrice?”

I nodded.

“Pretty, just like you.” He dipped his head, stared at me intensely for a few long moments then stepped back suddenly.

“I will say nothing, Aimery, to anyone, while you consider the benefits of sharing Bea with me.”

“There is nothing to share,” Aimery said gruffly. “Beatrice is going now.”

“She may be leaving the home of the Company but now that you’ve found her you know as well as I do that this is just the start.” Ryle turned and walked away, taking ground-eating paces over the long hallway. “We will discuss this later when you’ve removed that lovesick look from your face.” He marched past the macabre tapestry and through an archway.

Lovesick look on his face? I looked up at Aimery, realized that I had my hand spread on his chest and my body molded to his. He looked a little gooey-eyed but maybe it was just the memories of Calcutta giving him that dreamy expression. It couldn’t possibly be me.

“I don’t understand any of this,” I said. “I just want to go home.”

“I know.” He touched his lips to the tip of my nose, a sweet, gentle gesture that seemed to dissolve the tension between us. “And you can go. In fact, I will walk you. I should have escorted you anyway. It was foolish of me to let you go alone.” He dropped his voice to a low whisper. “You just knocked me off my feet for a while back there.”

“What do you mean?”

He hesitated, then said, “I haven’t kissed a woman since my wife passed away.”

My heart stuttered. Aimery was a widower. No wonder there was an aloofness about him, it was probably to disguise his grief, protect himself from being hurt further.

“I’m sorry,” I said, smoothing my hand over his chest and wondering what pain was in his heart. “How long ago did she die?”

“Thirty years ago.”

“Thirty years.” Aimery didn’t look more than mid-thirties. How could he have been a widower for so long?

“Don’t look so shocked, my dear Beatrice. I have much to explain. I see that you are not a woman to act first and think later. You want answers before you make any moves.” He smiled. “Unless of course that fierce loyalty drives you to take action, and then I can’t see anything standing in your way. But first I fear I may already be getting myself into your father’s bad books by keeping you here for so long, and that is the last thing a gentleman should do when hoping to step out with a girl.”

“Step out?”

“Court,” he said, “date, ask for your hand. I want your father to approve of me, not think that I am some irresponsible cad who will lead his daughter astray from her responsibilities.”

Ask for my hand? Cad? I couldn’t help a small smile. The way Aimery spoke was so old-fashioned, quaint, it sounded as if he’d walked off a Jane Austen production. “Is this how you speak all the time?”

“What is the matter with the way I speak?” He frowned. “Do you not like it?”

“Yes, I do, but you just sound so posh, not like me.”

“Beatrice, your accent is merely a product of your upbringing. It is what you say that is important.”

“I suppose.”

“And the fact we speak so differently just proves how truly opposite we are.” He lowered his voice to barely a whisper. “But don’t you find not only do opposites attract, opposites also make the best matches?”

I thought he was going to kiss me again. He’d dropped his head so low and everything had faded into the distance, the way it did when he completely focused his attention on me. I thought back to the small orgasm I’d had in his office, how good it had felt, how he’d barely touched me and I’d come. That had never happened to me before. I was a long-intense-foreplay kind of girl, but Aimery, and the way he’d been with me, that tiny amount of pressure over my jeans. Oh wow.

I sighed and curled my fingers in to the lapel of his suit jacket. Pressed a little closer and tried to feel if his cock was hard beneath his suit trousers. I couldn’t sense anything.

“Mmm,” he said. “I would like to indulge you, but we really should go. Tomorrow all will become clear, I promise.”

“And Denny?” I whispered, reluctant to move and still hoping to find a hard wedge of flesh that would prove he was thinking similar things about me. If he hadn’t kissed a girl for a long time it must be even longer since he’d made love.

Thirty years. I must have misheard him.

He pulled back and offered the crook of his arm.

I took it and he led me to the stairs. “Tomorrow I will have some information on Denny.”

We exited the building the way we’d come in. Through the garden and the gate in the wall. Walking down the dank passageway beneath the upper floors of the building, he urged me in front of him, for it was too narrow to walk side by side. I couldn’t help but be aware of his gaze on my bum, which was encased in skinny jeans. Call it female intuition or a girl’s sixth sense but I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell he wasn’t admiring my back view and for some reason that made me sashay, just a little, with each step I took. And I never sashayed, that wasn’t the type of person I was, but Aimery had my head spinning, and not only that, he also had my body buzzing, crying out for more of whatever it was he’d given me earlier that had been so damn good.

It might be crazy, but it was how I felt and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to change that.

* * * *

“For crying out loud, Bea, where the bloody Nora did you disappear off to? It’s been manic here.”

My father stood at the front of our near-empty stall shoving wads of notes into his wallet. His ruddy cheeks were scarlet and despite the cold there was perspiration on his balding forehead. His part-time assistant, Teddie, was busy wiping down the bloodstained counters.

“Sorry, Dad.” I reached for a new white coat and shrugged into it. “I thought I saw Denny, went after him and then got waylaid.”

He looked up, hope flashing over his eyes. “Really? Did you find the skinny bugger?”

“No, but I think I’ve met someone who can help.”

Dad’s face softened. Despite his rough edges I knew he’d been the only other person worried about Denny. “Yeah, who’s that then?”

Aimery stepped from behind me and held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, sir. I am Aimery Stone.”

Dad narrowed his eyes and I saw him swallow, his Adam’s apple struggling to bob under the too-tight collar on his blue shirt. “Aimery, unusual name.”

“Yes, sir, so I’m told.” Aimery smiled, a beautiful, wide smile that could charm a snake.

Dad also seemed beguiled, for he grinned back and took Aimery’s hand. “Roger Benton, proprietor of Benton’s Quality Meats and Offal.”

“Very pleased to meet you,” Aimery said, pulling in such a deep breath his nostrils widened. He blew it out slowly, glanced at me, then said, “Beatrice has been telling me how worried she is about Denny and how the police aren’t interested. I have connections, I am a lawyer, and I may be able to pull in a few favors and find something out.”

“Yeah,” Dad said. “That would be good. He might be a woolly-woofter but Denny’s a nice kid and my Bea has been in bits since he just upped and left.”

“So I gather.” Aimery turned to me. “And Beatrice in bits is the very last thing any of us want.”

His earlier words came back to me, she’ll die if everyone wants a piece of her, and combined with the chill of the market now seeping back into my bones, I was unable to suppress a shiver. It rattled up my spine then trickled to the ends of my fingers and the tips of my toes. I clenched my jaw to prevent my teeth from chattering.

“You should rest and have some nourishment,” Aimery said, resting his hand on my shoulder. “It has been an eventful morning and I am sure you are quite drained.”

“Yes,” I looked up at him. His eyes were soft and full of concern as he scanned my face. “I think that’s what I need, a rest.”

“Good girl, and then come to my office tomorrow about this time and we will see what information we have to go on.”

I looked at my father. “Is that okay with you, Dad?”

“Absolutely, love, you do what you need to do. I’m going to a meeting at the bank, but Teddie will manage if you want to nip off early.”

I opened my mouth to speak, surprised by Dad’s unusually easygoing attitude. It wasn’t that he was a slave driver, but he also didn’t give me any slack in my cold, physically exhausting job just because I was a girl or his daughter. I was expected to pull my weight, even if at times it just about finished me off.

“Great,” Aimery said with a nod. “Until tomorrow, Beatrice.” He turned and strode away.

“Seems like a nice guy,” Dad said, rubbing his chin and moving to my side.

We both watched him walk toward the end of the market, his paces long and fast, his head held high.

“Yeah, he is.” I was going to add apart from his weird vampire tendencies onto the end of my sentence but stopped myself. And I definitely didn’t mention that he had a gorgeous if intense friend who seemed convinced Aimery should share me with him.

That would all be too much for my father to handle. Hell, I was on the brink of not coping with it myself.