as that took up an entire freaking wall—
Only no. Not a wall, I realized a moment later, when I reached out to touch the shiny surface. And fell through that doorway I hadn’t been looking for instead. And into a vortex of light and sound and oh-holy-shit that ended abruptly with me on my hands and knees in another room with another fireplace and another master vampire.
But this one wasn’t Marlowe.
Mircea sat in a big leather chair behind a bigger mahogany desk. It looked a little incongruous, because he was wearing only a pair of deep plum sleep pants. His chest and feet were bare, and his dark, shoulder-length hair, which was almost always pulled back in a clip, was loose.
He looked like he’d just gotten up, but then decided to nap in his . . . office?
It looked like one, if a somewhat generic version. The rest of the house had been an eclectic mix of old-world charm and expensive modern chic—kind of like its owner. But in here, that had given way to upscale hotel bland in beiges and browns, if hotels were regularly lit by candles: a highly polished desk, a Kerman rug on the floor, and a wall of expensive-looking books. It said upmarket accountant or big shot lawyer. It did not say Mircea.
Except for a broken Chinese figurine, a happy potbellied guy with a tambourine who was serving as a pen cup.
And, of course, the man himself, seated behind the desk, slowly caressing the chair arms.
He really liked that chair, didn’t he? I thought blankly. For a moment. Until I felt another not-so-surreptitious stroke down my naked backside. A stroke that matched the movement of Mircea’s hand on the slick leather.
Exactly matched, I realized, as he smoothed down to the end of the arm, and then swept back up, completing the circuit. And a simultaneous caress swirled around my left butt cheek. It was one of his favorite moves, and it normally would have gotten me all hot and bothered.
Except that I was already hot, and not in a good way.
And then Marlowe walked through me again.
“You might want to check in before we leave,” he said as I choked and flailed and fell back. “Horatiu is trying to burn the house down.”
“He doesn’t have to try,” Mircea murmured, without opening his eyes. “It comes naturally.”
“He needs a keeper!”
“We tried that. But he noticed their presence.” Mircea’s mouth quirked. “And complained that he was too old to be training all the new arrivals.”
“Better that than a raging inferno!”
“We’ve all become rather good at discerning the smell of smoke.”
Marlowe snorted. “No doubt. And why aren’t you dressed?”
The chief spy was, if you could call it that, in a rumpled burgundy suit and a shirt Mircea wouldn’t have used to shine his shoes. Not that he shined his own shoes. And not that Marlowe was known for sartorial splendor. Or for giving a damn about impressing anyone.
That was Mircea’s job.
“It isn’t even dark yet,” Mircea commented mildly. “And the portal to the city is virtually instantaneous. What purpose would it serve to get there hours before everyone else?”
“So what do you intend to do? Nap?”
“No. But it would appear that you could use one.”
Kit glared at him. And then flung himself into a green club chair in front of the desk. And sat there, pretending to relax, while practically quivering with repressed energy.
I’d have been more curious as to why, if I’d been slightly less furious.
Because Mircea kept doing it. The phantom touches kept gliding over my skin, and I kept getting steamier and steamier. Because he was playing with me while killing time and chatting to his buddy, and because he was in my head.
He had to be, to do this, whatever the hell this was. Some new vampire power, something I’d never heard of, something that went a lot further than just picking up a stray surface thought once in a while like some masters could do. Something he hadn’t told me about because this wasn’t surface, this wasn’t passive, this was in my freaking head.
Son of a bitch.
And then he goosed me.