Immortal Unchained(51)

Sarita watched the play of muscles in his arms and chest until she noted that she had an interesting view up the bottom of his boxers from her position. Clearing a suddenly full throat, she asked hopefully, "Are we going to have sex?"

"No."

"No?" Sarita squawked with disbelief. "Why not? What's all this for then?" she asked, gesturing toward the curtain of sheets now nearly surrounding the bed. She'd assumed it was so they could have sex without worrying about the cameras in the room capturing it . . . Apparently not, Sarita thought and scowled at him.

Domitian chuckled at her outrage as he continued his work, moving farther up the edge of the bed until she could have reached out and touched him. "First it's 'no sexo!' Now it's 'What? No sexo?'" Glancing at her, he arched an eyebrow. "I have plans for you, you will see."

"Hmm." Sarita muttered, but resisted the urge to touch him and sat up in the bed. She shifted back to lean against the headboard, but didn't bother tugging the sheets up to cover her lap despite the fact that she was now nude under the sheer black nightgown. The last thing Sarita had done before climbing under the sheets and duvet was to strip away the latest hated thong she'd donned earlier to wear under it. They really were uncomfortable. She wouldn't have been able to sleep with it on. Now, she was as good as naked to him from just under the breasts down.

"Oh," Domitian sighed. "You are going to make this difficult, si?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said with a shrug, straightening her shoulders and thrusting her breasts out as she pretended to examine her nails.

Domitian chuckled under his breath but continued to work. It seemed to take forever for him to finish, though, mostly because he kept casting furtive glances over her rather than paying attention to what he was doing.

"Finally."

Sarita glanced up at that to see that the sheet now reached all the way to the wall on this side as well, and frowned when she noticed that he was now outside it. She was about to lean over and tug the sheet aside to see what he was doing when he did it himself. 

Pulling the sheet back with one hand, he climbed in to join her, balancing a tray on his other hand like an expert waiter.

"What's this?" she asked with interest as he let the sheet slip closed again and settled cross-legged next to her.

"Food. You must eat," Domitian said firmly. "You have had little more than a couple of pieces of fruit all day."

"Oh." Sarita peered with interest over the tray he set on the bed between them. There was a selection of meats and cheese, crackers, olives, two glasses of juice, and one glass of wine.

"Who gets the wine?" she asked suspiciously.

"You," he answered easily. "Wine is no good for us."

"Us being immortals?" she asked with interest.

Nodding, Domitian picked up an olive and popped it into his mouth.

"How is it no good for you?" Sarita asked at once, picking up a cracker and piling cheese and meat on it.

"The only effect it has on us is to make the nanos work hard to remove the alcohol from our system. It means consuming more blood."

Sarita wrinkled her nose at that, placed a cracker on top of the meat and cheese, making a mini sandwich and ate half of it in one bite. Flakes of cracker immediately sprinkled down on her breasts and thighs and she made a face. Thinking they were going to have crumbs in bed, she raised a hand to brush away the ones on her chest, but Domitian caught her hand.

"I will lick them off later," he assured her, urging her hand down.

A slow smile spreading her lips, Sarita said with satisfaction, "So there will be sexo later."

"No," Domitian answered promptly and built a cheese, meat, and cracker sandwich for himself.

Sarita stared at him for a moment, half confused and half annoyed, but then just shook her head and popped the second half of her own cracker sandwich into her mouth. She was hungry. More like starved really. She would worry about the "sex or no sex" thing later.

They ate in silence for a bit, and then Sarita glanced at Domitian and said, "So you're a chef with your own restaurant. Why would you accept a job cooking for Dressler?"

Domitian blew a breath out and shrugged. "It is a long story."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't look like we're going anywhere for a while, so spill."

Nodding, he said, "Several immortals have gone missing from the United States over the last couple of years. No one noticed at first, because it was only one or two and they were spaced far apart. But the number has grown and the time between kidnappings grew shorter recently and it was noticed."

Sarita's eyebrows rose slightly, but she nodded to encourage him to continue.