Secret Fantasies Read online

  “She feels restless though. Privately, I’m sure she has some psychic powers. She knew a change was coming. She put it down to simply a work change, thinks she’s about to start a new career path of some sort, but I honestly don’t think it’s that. I think her mind and soul were preparing her to meet me, and the changes that would involve. Her world is shifting on its axis. I think she’s my mate.”

  Vasili smiled at Mike, his heart honestly light and happy for his friend, even while deep in his soul he felt himself sink further into a cold swamp he had never before experienced. He ignored his personal pain and concentrated on helping his buddy.

  “And? I just can’t believe you wouldn’t have found out who she is.”

  Vasili felt relieved as Michael reached into his pocket and pulled out a hologram holder. He opened it, and a collage of pictures played out before him.

  Michael handed the holder to Vasili, and as he watched the holograms flip through one after another, he felt a moment of purely masculine envy sear through him. A tall, willow-slim woman stood naked in a variety of different positions, her long blonde hair cascading down her body.

  Dark violet eyes stared out, teasing and enticing any and every man, daring him to try for her. Vasili instantly recognized this seductive siren as Phoebe from the memory of the recpark Michael had unwittingly shared as he had recalled it himself.

  More than that, Vasili recognized this particular woman, and the spread the holograms had come from. Unlike he had first assumed, Michael had not convinced Phoebe to pose for him last night in his bedchamber, but instead they were a side-product of a common soft porn holo-zine. The centerfold spreads were often condensed into these picture carriers for men to slip into a pocket and carry around with them without partners or wives detecting.

  “You made it with Miss July?” he asked, astonished and still faintly envious, not to mention disbelieving what his own eyes told him. The enormous grin on Michael’s face confirmed his thoughts and had him gaping like a fool.

  “You are looking at Miss Phoebe Blenti, Miss July in the Inter-Galactic Best Bods section from about fourteen years ago. I’ve found an address for her, but have been chewing over whether to confront her or not. I really don’t want to have to beg, or not yet at least. I’d much rather have something else up my sleeve and leave the begging for a last ditch campaign.”

  Vasili cocked his head to the side, stunned but amazed at how oddly life turned out sometimes. No one down at Scooper’s Pub would believe him if he told them Mike had made it with Miss July, still one of the most drooled-over centerfold spreads of their time.

  Not even fourteen years had lessened her infamy. Vasili pulled himself together and took a deep breath, ready and more than happy to delve deeper and help brainstorm with his friend so they could form a plan of attack.

  Even if Miss Phoebe Blenti—or Miss July as he wanted to keep her just for now—was Michael’s partner, simply having something to do with her would be a brilliant thing to brag about to the other guys down at Scooper’s.

  Before he could open his mouth to start throwing ideas around, the door to Gavreel’s study slammed open and a short, pixyish young woman rushed through into the private office.

  Chapter Four

  Vasili stared in mingled shock and horror as the short, busty young blonde woman rushed into Gavreel’s office, talking without even looking up from the notes she studied.

  “Alderic!” she said loudly in what to him sounded as a frustrated and annoyed tone of voice. The woman was concentrating fiercely on her holographic notes and didn’t even appear to notice either vampire in the room. “You have to contact Gav right away. I’ve found something about the Rune—”

  Vasili felt his eyes widen even further as he recognized the woman. Was Michael right? Had the world truly gone insane? Just as he thought he’d been slammed with a baseball bat in the solar plexus, so too did the young woman finally look up from her notes, only to appear as if she had been hit over the head with something hard.

  “What the five hells are you doing here?” she asked shrilly, obviously disconcerted to find the two of them present.

  Vasili felt his mouth drop open and he stood up unconsciously.

  “Lea?” he stuttered in utter shock. He could hardly believe the woman in front of him was the tiny, barely legal escort who frequented Scooper’s Pub. For a split second Vasili considered the probability that he was having a massive, Purple Vodka-induced dream. Or would it be a nightmare?

  “Is that you?” he asked hoarsely, needing confirmation that the woman in front of him was in fact the tiny escort from Scooper’s. “What the five hells are you doing here?” he repeated stupidly. Somehow, with the tiny blonde woman’s entrance, his IQ had dropped about fifty points. How did she manage to always do that to him?

  Vasili felt his own world turn on its side and dip unnaturally. Lea Vanvlak, escort extraordinaire and all round sex bomb, had walked into Gavreel’s study as if she owned the place.

  Vasili felt his mouth dry and his heart beat practically out of his chest when he noticed that instead of her customary costume of tiny, fake tartan-printed pleated skirt and black breast band, with her blonde hair pulled back into the sexy pigtails that never failed to drive him wild, she stood before him looking older than her supposedly eighteen years.

  She wore, in fact, his boggled mind assimilated, a Force Uniform! Complete with badge and identification. With her hair neatly pulled back into a ponytail, she looked older, wiser.

  Lea still looked young, he corrected himself hastily, but much closer to twenty-five or twenty-six, rather than the seventeen or eighteen she always seemed each night down in Scooper’s Pub.

  “How old are you?” Vasili growled out, angry, aroused and yet still stunned by the amazing jumble of thoughts, emotions and new information scattered through his brain.

  Michael appeared as astonished as he, so at least his friend hadn’t been holding out on him. Vasili knew no one, not even the Montague brothers, knew he lusted fiercely after Lea. He had told no one at all, hating himself for desiring the tiny young girl, whom secretly he hadn’t even been sure had been of the legal age of majority, eighteen.

  Lea, on the other hand, merely raised herself fully erect, standing all of five foot three, even in her low heeled Force regulation boots. With her curves well hidden behind the Force uniform, she still made his mouth water and his dick stand fully at attention.

  The world has truly gone insane, he tried to assure himself. Lea was an escort. A picky one for certain, but an escort nevertheless. She was not a member of the Force. She was not wearing that badge and stunner, which appeared enormously large on her rounded hip. And she sure as bloody hell was not standing in the middle of Gavreel’s study looking as if she owned the place and desperately wished to beam the hell out of him and Michael for being there when she crashed in.

  Vasili looked around, tempted to pinch himself and wake up. He would have one hell of a boner, but he could always cleanse himself and jack off in the cubicle, thinking of a much happier fantasy of Lea kneeling in front of him and sucking him off. This was not one of his regular fantasies about Lea.

  As the moments ticked past, and all three stared in astonishment at each other before beginning to calm down, Vasili realized he was not about to wake up. Dreams, no matter how good or bad, simply did not halt and drag out like this, the embarrassment and confusion stretching out for minutes at a time.

  Lea finally charged the atmosphere again by placing small hands angrily on her hips.

  “What’s a few years to a vampire?” she asked haughtily, appearing to gather the courage to answer his angrily hissed question.

  “Besides, don’t you know it’s incredibly rude to ask a lady her age? I thought Alderic was in here,” Lea continued quickly.

  Vasili noticed as he tried to swallow his smile that she didn’t manage to try and change the topic of conversation with her usual subtlety and flair.

  “He’s not in his office or
the back room of the Book Nook,” she said, waiting for either he or Michael to answer her unspoken question of where exactly Alderic was.

  Instead of answering, Vasili signaled Michael to keep quiet, and he crossed over to where Lea stood by the door, her back ramrod straight, daggers being glared at him from her cool blue eyes.

  Vasili gently wrapped a hand around the back of her neck, forcing her to look him in the face.

  “How old?” he insisted, thinking of the many times in the last six months he had felt ashamed for his indecent lust toward a girl he thought barely, if actually, past her legal Majority Eighteenth birthday. He refused to think of the number of times he had thought of her, fantasized about her as he brought himself to completion, only to feel ashamed and appalled at himself afterward.

  “Twenty-nine,” she admitted softly, apologizing with her eyes, though not her tone of voice. Vasili felt his hand tighten around the back of her neck, nowhere near exerting enough pressure to hurt her, but more than enough to show his non-appreciation of her masquerade.

  Angry, annoyed, royally pissed off and once again aroused, he pressed his lips shut, insisting with his will alone she explain, or at least offer some sort of excuse for her misdirections. Vasili simply didn’t trust himself to open his mouth, afraid he would bark out something he would later regret saying.

  “I was especially recruited for this particular case,” she finally admitted.

  Vasili could feel her squirm in his grip. Her eyes slid past him and focused on the far wall. He felt his anger melt, but refused to release her. He knew his hand pressured her, but caused no pain or she would have most certainly retaliated. It was the words, physical sensations and emotions shimmering between them, unspoken, that had her squirming, and not the pressure of his hand.

  Vasili felt more than owed some explanations.

  When he realized she’d spoken about a case, he felt his heart constrict. Was she in any danger?

  Before he could question her more, Lea continued.

  “You have to have noticed with a short skirt, careful makeup, the right heels and my hair up in pigtails I can pass easily as eighteen or even younger if the need calls.” She squirmed once again, and before Vasili could even think of a coherent question to ask, she blurted out quickly, “I’m a quarter vampire. My maternal great-grandparents were pureblood vampires. Their only child, my grandmother, had no powers at all, one of those fifth standard deviations who for all appearances are human. Physically, my mother, grandmother and I age very slowly, but otherwise we appear fully human and even now, that small vampire trait is greatly weakened. My mother still looks young enough to be my sister, and I don’t exactly look my age as it is.”

  Vasili nodded, understanding. Rarely, but sometimes, vampires had “average” or humanlike babies born with fully whole souls. Even though a varying number of genetic traits could be vampiric, the child would be essentially human, although a longer living and much better preserved human.

  What Gavreel had mentioned once before when the topic arose was that the DNA always remained vampiric, even if the characteristics were human.

  Interesting as Vasili found Lea’s story, and as desperately as he wanted to dig further into her background and source out exactly which aspects of her were vampiric and which were akin to human, Michael seemed to at least be thinking with the head upon his shoulders.

  “Why did you think Alderic could contact Gav?” Michael asked curiously from behind them both.

  Vasili massaged Lea’s neck gently for a moment, loath to release her. Knowing he would have to wait, he let Lea go and stood a few paces back.

  He took a deep breath, willing his erection to subside and his head to get back into gear and start thinking coherently. He still felt a little off-kilter, but with a fierce force of will, he managed to bring his mind back to Gavreel and the task at hand.

  At least one of them was thinking with his brain, he admitted wryly to himself.

  Silently nodding, agreeing with the sense of Michael’s question, he looked back at Lea. A few wisps of her white-blonde hair had escaped the bondage of her ponytail, gently framing her face. With pale blue eyes, Lea looked apologetically to Michael, and then back to him.

  Vasili felt a moment where he could have sworn he was falling into those clear, pale blue pools. He felt the tug between them, not just a sexual pull, but one of hearts, something far deeper.

  For the first time, Vasili truly understood how Michael had been so annoyed when he spoke of the sex between him and Phoebe being “merely screwing”. Sometimes, the connection went far deeper than merely his dick penetrating the folds of some woman, any woman.

  “I can’t tell you,” Lea said softly.

  Michael made a rude sound, but Vasili kept his own council. He could easily see the genuine regret in her eyes.

  “You don’t have clearance,” she explained apologetically.

  Vasili frowned, not happy with that as an explanation, but unwilling to vent his annoyance on Lea. Unfortunately, Michael beat him to the punch of getting more out of her.

  “Clearance? What the hell do you mean, we don’t have clearance. He’s my father!”

  Vasili watched Lea’s blue eyes dim. He could see pity and regret clearly within her gaze, but there was also a strong, steely strength in her now. She wore her professionalism around her like a jacket or cloak. Nothing would penetrate that, he instinctively knew.

  “It means just what it sounds like. You don’t have clearance to know, and so I can’t tell you.”

  Vasili pressed his lips together, annoyed, fairly feeling the heat of frustration radiating from Michael, but unwilling to make Lea feel any more on the spot than she already was.

  “What can you tell us?” he said softly, hoping to feel out some sort of compromise to soothe Michael, but also answer their questions without getting Lea into trouble.

  Lea looked at him, and he felt his chest constrict. Her eyes looked deep into his own black ones, and he willed her to tell them what she could. When she sighed and lowered her eyes, he knew she would.

  “Gav’s been working on something for us,” she said softly, carefully, almost feeling her way verbally through the minefield Vasili didn’t doubt she dodged through.

  “He’s been doing research, of course. He told me the night before he left, down at Scooper’s, that he was going to check some stuff out on Owanus. We hadn’t heard from him, but he had told us he wouldn’t call until he’d finished what he wanted to do.”

  Both Vasili and Michael nodded in complete understanding. All too often Gavreel would find himself so deeply entrenched in his own little world of research and notes, he wouldn’t think to surface for anything. Even so, he did usually manage to make contact more frequently than once in three weeks.

  “I didn’t know until Simeon and Clare came to Scooper’s last night that you’ve all been searching for him. I was surprised. He had intended to keep in touch with you all, or that was the impression I had.” Vasili nodded, but Lea continued with barely a breath.

  “I was astonished when Si mentioned you had all found out Gav and that vampiress, Chandra, had left Owanus. He definitely should have contacted me to inform me of his movements, not to mention getting in touch with you!”

  Vasili cocked an eyebrow. He felt amusement well deep within him. He felt utterly charmed with how indignant Lea sounded, as if someone had called her cute as a button, instead of sexy or something. She sounded truly offended by Gavreel moving without “informing” her.

  “More than likely Gav found something, or was just so entrenched in his work he forgot to…ah…inform you,” Michael said soothingly. Vasili grinned wickedly.

  “Yeah, Lea, you should know enough about Gav to know when he gets on a roll all he does is run and follow the scent. Everything and everyone else just drops totally from his mind.”

  Vasili watched, amazed, as Lea merely pursed her lips together. She didn’t exactly look like a pouting child, but she managed to look annoyed
, and sexy as sin at the same time.

  He saw her look from him, to Michael, and then back to him again. Vasili cocked an eyebrow, leaning back into her as he realized she held still more information.

  “Come on, sweets. Spill. I can see you have more.” Vasili felt his cock thicken as Lea flicked out a tongue, ran it over her lower lip, leaving a damp line. She appeared to hesitate a moment, and then give in.

  “We read over some of the holo-files he had been looking at. We…uh…managed to tap into a few bits and pieces.”

  Vasili merely nodded patiently, willing to hold out and wait as long as necessary. He knew full well the wealth of information the Force had access to. Practically every database in cyberspace could be penetrated by them, either by legal or slightly less-than-legal means.

  Vasili held his control, and smiled as his patience paid off.

  “We think he’s heading to Klampor,” Lea said quickly again, as though if she spoke it fast enough, it wouldn’t count as her sharing too much information.

  “I need to contact him,” she continued earnestly. Vasili wondered again how someone who was twenty-nine could seem so sweet and innocent, especially being in the Force and mostly seeing the seedier, less-sincere aspects of the worlds across the galaxy.

  “The problem is,” she said looking pleadingly at him, “we don’t know how. I was hoping Alderic could help me.”

  Vasili turned to Michael, and both of them grinned.

  “I seriously wouldn’t hold your breath, Lea. Sneaky and paranoid bastard he is, he’s telepathically blocked everyone, even us,” Michael said. “And if he isn’t taking calls from his family, I sincerely doubt he will be taking them from any of your telepaths. You know how paranoid he gets with his research.”

  Vasili saw Lea’s shoulders slump slightly, knew she fully realized the significance of Gavreel’s stubbornness.