Dark Carousel (Dark #30) - Christine Feehan Page 0,95
hand resumed its leisurely patterns as heat spread through her, and she had to press her face against his skin to muffle her laughter. Still, that heat went deep, igniting nerve endings she hadn’t known existed. The intimate touch of his fingers sliding over that heat only added to the need suddenly, without warning, coiling inside of her.
“You know I have to get up and take care of Lourdes. Genevieve has been so great about it, but Lourdes is mine and she’s in a new place. She needs to know this is home and I’m going to be her mom.” She rubbed her chin on his chest, her hands moving over the places where wounds should have been on his shoulder and neck—but weren’t. There was no sign of any laceration or burn.
Charlotte took a breath and decided to ignore the fact that a man could be healed overnight. She needed normal. “Lourdes has had enough trauma to last a lifetime, and she’s only three. I can’t imagine what Bella and Liv and the others are trying to deal with.” Her eyes met his. “You know I have absolutely no experience dealing with children. I restore art, Tariq; I don’t do counseling. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Carpathians can read minds. You will be able to see their worst fears and you’ll know what to say. We are polite and respectful and don’t, as a rule, invade, not unless safety or health is at stake or we feed and have to remove the memory, but in dealing with these children—our children—I don’t think we have a choice.”
She sighed and went to roll off of him, but his arm tightened like a steel band across her back and the hand on her bottom slid down to cup her cheek, his thumb brushing strokes along the seam between her cheek and her thigh.
“Not yet, sielamet. I will know when the children awaken. Right now we have private moments and I need them with you. We face a long war. Vadim will not be easy to find, let alone kill.”
“It worked last night. We drove him off the ship. If I can hear him, and you say he can use me to see what’s happening around me . . .”
“Not here. As long as you’re on this property, the safeguards we’ve woven together will hold. Emeline and Liv both need them.”
“Still, if he can ‘see’ me, then I should be able to see him.”
“We’re removing that splinter tonight. It’s too dangerous to play around with anything like that. That splinter wields power. Legend has it the carousel was cursed. The horses, the chariots. All of it. Owners and their children died and no one knew why, or they were brutally murdered with throats ripped and blood gone. We now know why. Vadim did something to that carousel, and it has to be destroyed.”
“No!” She pushed up with both hands. “It’s a piece of history. We need to remove whatever he did. I can restore it properly.”
Tariq’s hand went back to rubbing her bare skin. “You have no idea how dangerous Vadim and his brother, Sergey, truly are. Fridrick presents a terrible danger, but he is nothing compared to those two. You don’t ever take chances with vampires, especially master vampires. You kill them without hesitation and you keep the risk to yourself as little as possible. We have several experienced hunters here. I put the word out, and those in the area are coming here as well as watching all harbors. We know he’s been moving on ships out to sea in order to keep us from tracking him.”
“How in the world can he feed if he’s out at sea?”
There was a small silence. Her gaze jumped to his. “Tariq?”
“Lojos and Tomas have been watching them. They discovered that they meet up with human traffickers at sea. Ships bring them to him. All bodies are disposed of before they ever return to shore.”
She closed her eyes and slumped against him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “He has to be stopped, Tariq.”
“I know, sielamet, but it will take time. He has pawns like Fridrick. Fridrick isn’t the only master vampire under his command. They will be sacrificed before we ever get to Vadim. He should leave this area because there are too many hunters. We think we will be able to divide and conquer that way.”
Once again his fingers drew little patterns across her bottom, and it felt wonderful. She needed his