Innocent Blood(49)

He stepped through the door and closed it behind him. Jordan lifted the heavy bar and secured it in place.

“So much for Christian’s pep talk,” she said. “That wasn’t exactly reassuring.”

Jordan moved to the chest and opened it up. He took out a machine gun and examined it. “Beretta AR 70. At least this is reassuring. Fires up to six hundred fifty rounds per minute.” Then he checked the ammunition supply in the chest and smiled as he came up with another weapon, a Colt 1911. “It’s not my own pistol, but it looks like someone did their research.”

He handed it to her.

She checked the magazine. The bullets were made of silver—fine against humans, essential against strigoi. The silver reacted with their blood, helping to even the odds. Strigoi were hard to kill—tougher than humans, able to control their blood loss, and possessing supernatural healing abilities. But they weren’t invulnerable.

Jordan next eyed the bathroom. “I’ll let you take first crack at the shower, while I see about getting a fire started.”

It was a fine plan, the best she had heard all day.

But first, she stepped close to him, inhaling his musky scent, smelling soot underneath. She tilted up and kissed him, glad to be alive, to be with him.

As she leaned away, Jordan’s eyes were pinched with concern. “You okay?”

How could I be? she thought.

She was no soldier. She couldn’t walk through fields of bodies and keep going. Jordan had trained himself, the Sanguinists, too, but she wasn’t so sure she ever wanted to be that tough, even if she could. She remembered the thousand-yard stare that Jordan sometimes got. It cost him, and she bet it cost the Sanguinists, too.

He whispered, still holding her, “I don’t mean about today. I feel like you’ve been holding something back since we met in California.”

She slipped out of his embrace. “Everyone has secrets.”

“So tell me yours.”

Panic fluttered in her chest.

Not here. Not now.

To hide her reaction, she turned and headed for the bathroom. “I’ve had my fill of secrets today,” she said lamely. “Right now, all I want is a hot shower and a warm fire.”

“I can’t argue with that.” But despite his words, he sounded disappointed.

She entered the bathroom and closed the door. She gladly shed her clothes, happy to rid herself of the smell of soot and smoke and replace it with lavender soap and a citrus shampoo. She stood for a long time under the hot spray, letting it burn away the day, leaving her skin raw and sensitive.

She toweled and slipped into a soft robe. Barefooted, she returned to the main room. The lamps had been switched off, and the only illumination came from the crackling fire.

Jordan straightened after jabbing and rolling a log into better position in the flames. He had shed his suit coat and shredded shirt. His skin shone in the firelight, bruised and crisscrossed with scratches and cuts. Across the left side of his chest, his tattoo almost seemed to glow. The artwork wrapped around his shoulder and sent tendrils partway down his arm and across part of his back. It looked like the branching roots of a tree, centered on a single dark mark on his chest.

She knew the history of that mark. Jordan had been struck by lightning when he was in high school. He had died for a short period of time before being resuscitated. The surge of energy had left its fractal mark across his skin, bursting capillaries, creating what was called a Lichtenberg figure, or a lightning flower. Before it faded, he had the pattern tattooed as a reminder of his brush with death, turning the near tragedy into something beautiful.

She drew closer, as if drawn by that residual energy.

He faced her, smiling. “Hope you didn’t use all the hot—”

She put a finger to his lips, silencing him. Words weren’t what she wanted right now. She tugged her belt loose and shrugged out of the robe. It slithered to the floor, brushing against her breasts and pooling at her ankles.

With one hand, he stroked her hair back from her neck. She arched her throat in invitation. He took it, trailing slow kisses down to her collarbone. She moaned, and he drew back, his eyes dark with passion and an unspoken question.

In answer, she pulled him by the waistband of his pants toward the bed.

Once there, he shed the last of his clothes, ripping them off and kicking them away.

Naked, aroused, he lifted her up in his arms. Her legs wrapped around his muscular thighs as he lowered her to the bed. He loomed over her, as wide as the world, shoving away everything, leaving only them, this moment.

She pulled him down for an urgent kiss, tasting him, her teeth finding his lower lip, his tongue with her own. His warm hands ran over her skin, across her breasts, leaving a trail of electricity in their wake—then slid around to her lower back to lift her higher.