Provoke Me: A Reverse Harem Vampire Romance (The Last Vocari Book 2)

by Elena Lawson

  But truth be told I didn’t want Estelle punished because I didn’t care to follow orders.

  I glanced back to see Ethan poking his head above water through the mist, a worried crook to his left brow. I tossed him a shrug that I hoped relayed to him I wasn’t worried about this little impromptu meeting with my captor.

  I didn’t think it set his mind at ease, but I hoped it would quell him enough so he wouldn’t attempt to follow me.

  As we made our way through the torch-lit corridors, I shivered as the air became increasingly colder. My skin was still flushed from the spring and that only made the chill seem worse. The cold was burrowing into muscle and my teeth chattered. Soon it would be bone deep.

  “That’ll teach you to undress before you go jumping into the bath all willy nilly,” Estelle chided, and I snorted through the shivers.

  When we veered off to the right past the three-way fork, I stopped. “Estelle, where are you taking me?”

  She paused and sighed, and I caught how her face fell in the flicker of firelight further down the corridor. Going left at the fork took us to the lab. And going straight led back to my chamber. I’d never gone right before.

  “To the master’s bedchamber.”

  My jaw twitched.

  “Why?”

  “Mind your head,” was her only reply as she set off into the dark. “The ceiling dips low ahead.”

  Clenching my jaw, I hurried to follow her, my feet scratching against some sharp, loose stones. I winced as one sliced into my heel, drawing blood.

  The darkness ahead abated in stages until I could discern a circular glow of orange light where the corridor ended and a bright, wide space began.

  I quieted the beating of my heart and lifted my chin, checking quickly to ensure my towel was secure around me.

  “Master,” Estelle said, bowing as she reached the entrance to his chambers. “Shall I wait for her in the hall, sir?”

  Azrael’s voice boomed in the cave, “That won’t be necessary, Estelle. You may retire for the evening.”

  Estelle stiffened. She looked like she might be about to protest, but instead she quickly turned, tucked tail and rushed past me back the way we came. She didn’t spare me even a cursory glance before she vanished.

  “Are you going to come in? Or shall I come and retrieve you?”

  With a chortle at the jibe, I strode into the chamber, refusing to be afraid.

  Azrael and I had spent a lot of time together this past week. He was menacing as ever and infuriating to no end. But we’d formed a sort of forced camaraderie. Call it Stockholm syndrome or whatever you want, but even knowing he could kill me in the blink of an eye or compel me to lose my mind in a single glance, I didn’t think he would ever actually do it.

  It was either naivety or a brazen lack of respect for my own life, either way, he didn’t phase me as much as he once did. Even if this little unplanned meeting had me second guessing him.

  “Master,” I said in a mocking tone with an exaggerated bow.

  He smirked.

  His chamber wasn’t what I would’ve expected. Triple the size of mine, but almost barren. All it contained was a four-post bed at the center of the space with swatch of fabric hung between each post and enough pillows to suffocate several people at once. There was a roaring fire in a hearth to my left and threadbare rugs scattered about that helped keep the chill of the stone at bay. I inched closer to the fire, eager to warm my frozen bones.

  “What is it you want?” I asked as I planted myself three feet in front of the flames, my body shaking as the warmth did its work to loosen all the tight muscle.

  Azrael cocked his head at me, studying me. It made my insides twist. He sat on the edge of his bed, his hair loose around his severe face. His wide shoulders and thick neck didn’t look as prominent in the black long-sleeve shirt he was wearing with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His mismatched eyes glimmered in the firelight as a muscle in his jaw twitched.

  “It’s not what I want,” he said finally. “It’s what I’m prepared to give you.”

  I stilled at that, wondering what he was talking about. My mind ran through several scenarios.

  Maybe he got me the new truck already?

  Or he was letting me go?

  Or…maybe he just wanted to give me a quick death?

  That was a sort of gift, wasn’t it? I hadn’t given it to my prey often, and when I did, I hoped they were thankful for it.

  Azrael chuckled and the sound rolled over me like a wool blanket. Rough, but also warm and comforting. His face looked so different when he smiled. Not like the monster I knew him to be, but like a man who had seen too much pain in his many years and could somehow still find it in his bent and battered heart to laugh.

  I shook my head, my scowl returning. “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, my dear Rose,” he said between chuckles, rising from his bed to come to me by the fire. I tried not to move as his tall frame towered over me and he ran a thumb over my jaw. “Don’t you think if I were going to kill you, I’d have done it already?”

  Surprisingly, his words were vaguely reassuring. I batted his hand away from my face and had the satisfaction of watching him stiffen momentarily before he stepped away, something in his eyes changing. “Why did you summon me?” I tried again, my voice hardening.

  Azrael gazed into the fire, resting his forearm on the top ledge of the hearth as he leaned in. The fire made his blue eye glimmer with flecks of gold and silver and his brown eye darken, flashing with flecks of red in the near-black iris.

  Ocean shore and erupting volcano, my mind supplied. That’s what his eyes looked like. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I mused, remembering how one second he could be perfectly calm and at ease, and the next he could let a glimpse of his true self—the monster lurking deep within—escape. I’d seen it once or twice now.

  The first time in the spring only a day after I arrived.

  And again, when he compelled all of my guys so they would never know how to find me.

  Azrael bowed his head and grimaced. The light and shadows played on the planes of his pale face, making it look as though he could be carved from the stone he was leaning against. “I’m going to allow you to return to your…well, whatever they are to you. Your friends.”

  My heart soared and I could barely contain how it pounded with longing. This better not be a fucking joke, I thought to myself. If he was teasing me, I’d fucking cut him.

  I’d been asking when we could go back every day since the day after we arrived back at the cave and his answer was always the same, when I say so.

  “What changed?”

  Azrael didn’t move his gaze from the fire as he answered. “It doesn’t matter.”

  My brows raised, but then I relaxed. He was right. What did I care what made him change his mind? But by the way his whole face was tense, and his lips pressed into a firm line, I knew he wasn’t happy about this.

  But for whatever reason, he was going to allow it, anyway.

  “Thank you,” I said, surprising myself and really meaning it. A part of myself cursed and shouted inside my mind, you stupid bitch, why the hell are you thanking him? Are you mad? Have you gone soft?

  I cleared my throat and gave my head a slight shake, told myself to play nice.

  Azrael tipped his head to the side, his gaze roamed over my face with something akin to pain in his eyes. Then it was gone, and the tepid mask of the great and terrible Azrael returned. He straightened. “I won’t be escorting you this time. I will compel you both to sleep for the duration of the trip and to awaken once you’ve arrived.”

  My jaw clenched, but I nodded.

  “Once you arrive, you will enter the apartment and you will not leave until I come to retrieve you. That part is not up for debate. Understood?”

  I opened my mouth to protest. How could I stay in the apartment the entire time? Staying in this cave was making me stir-crazy and claustrophobic enough. I wanted to feel the moonlight on my f
ace and breathe in the crisp air you could only find just before the dawn.

  “You can agree, or you can remain here,” Azrael spoke before I could retort. “I’m having a friend of mine put a warding spell around the building. She’ll be finished by the time you get there. So long as you remain inside those walls, Raphael will not be able to find you.”

  “A what spell?”

  “A warding spell.”

  “You know a witch?” I asked, an eyebrow raised. “I thought it was illegal for witches to share their magic with the other races?”

  Azrael’s full lips tugged up into a playful smirk. “It is. But for the right price, almost any allegiance can be bought.”

  I scowled.

  “Anything else?” I asked him, my voice showing just how exasperated and exhausted I truly was beneath my carefully constructed veneer of alert calm.

  His eyes lifted as he pondered the question. His bottom lip pursed. “No,” he replied finally. “That’s all. I’ll return to collect you Sunday evening.”

  “What day is it today?” I asked, having absolutely no idea. I lost track sometime before we had even left to see the guys the first time around.

  Azrael looked at me as though I’d grown another head. Like I should somehow be able to tell the passage of time, even entombed in stone that let in no natural light whatsoever. “It’s Friday.”

  So, he was giving me two days…

  It wasn’t nearly enough, but I wasn’t about to complain. Frost and Blake would be frantic with worry by now. If he’d have offered a mere hour, I’d have taken it. Two days was more than I dared hope for.

  I was tempted to thank him again, but the more rational part of my brain shouted, oh no you don’t!

  Azrael lifted his arms and I wasn’t sure what his aim was. My body reflexively began to move into a fighting stance, legs spread wide, but he only curled his hands around my upper arms. The skin of his palms was cool against my fire-flushed flesh and I shivered, resisting the urge to shake his hands off of me.

  His gaze bored into me, his long hair falling forward to cover part of his right eye so I could only see the blue one. The ocean one. The Dr. Jekyll one. He was much less frightening with only that eye visible.

  It looked like he was going to say something, but he was having trouble getting the words out. The silence became strained and awkward. I cringed inwardly.

  Finally, Azrael sighed and let go of my arms. I breathed.

  “I wanted to thank you, too,” he whispered, unable to meet my eyes. “Even if we don’t find what we hope to…I—well, I appreciate your willingness to cooperate.”

  A single, gruff laugh rose in my throat, but I quashed it. I couldn’t smother the finger of fury zipping down my spine, though. Or how my chest tightened, and my gaze narrowed. “You didn’t give me any choice,” I reminded him with clenched fists.

  His head snapped up and his eyes met mine once more.

  Why couldn’t he understand? I would have done anything to help my guys. To undo what they did to themselves. I would have eventually agreed to cooperate with Azrael if only to prove to both of us that what he wanted to accomplish was impossible. So I could sleep at night knowing I tried—for them.

  I would have done as he asked on my own terms.

  Azrael didn’t give me that opportunity, though. He threatened me. He used my love for my guys against me. He made it so I had no other choice but to cooperate or I would see them hurt or worse…killed.

  “You obviously haven’t ever loved another person in your entire miserable life,” I snapped, the logical part of my brain finally winning out over the weaker half—the half that was stupid enough to think that maybe Azrael wasn’t all that bad.

  Azrael’s eyes darkened.

  “If you had, you never would have used them against me. Only a monster would do that.”

  I was seething once I was finished, ready for a fight. I needed a punching bag, a training dummy, something.

  It’d been too long since I let my fury out. I’d spent too long being a good little Rose. I could feel the pressure building in my chest. An image of Mom in a pool of blood flashed behind my eyelids and I winced.

  I grit my teeth.

  Why? Why did this always happen when I got worked up? If I didn’t find an outlet for the anger soon it would come to a head, and I would be reduced to a puddle of tears on the cold stone floor. I wouldn’t allow that. Not in front of him.

  Physical pain was how I dealt with internal pain.

  I stepped away from Azrael, breathing hard and low, in through my nose and out through my mouth.

  There was murder in his gaze as he watched me trying to get control of myself. “There’s a monster inside of you, too, Rose,” he said in a deadpan voice. “Or are you too blind to recognize your own darkness for what it is?”

  I hissed, my body coiling with the need to strike.

  “It isn’t rage,” he said, and the malice in his eyes gave way. His face fell. “It’s sorrow.”

  15

  We woke up as the hearse came to a stop outside of the guys’ apartment. Ethan rode in the back, asleep in the coffin, and Azrael mercifully allowed me to ride in the front with the driver. With me compelled to sleep for the entire trip he didn’t see a reason why I should have to be locked in the death box with Ethan.

  I’d scowled at him when he made the suggestion, wondering why the fuck he hadn’t just done that the first time around.

  It was near dawn when we arrived. Only about an hour out. As I came to and got my bearings, I noticed the sky was brightening near the horizon and I jumped out of the vehicle in a flash, practically tearing the back doors off the hearse in my haste to get Ethan up and out of the coffin.

  The driver stood sentinel outside the back of the hearse as I worked, watching with a blank expression and dead eyes. The poor fucker had likely been compelled half to death. “Would you get the other side?” I snipped at him as I began undoing the silver handle locks along the side where I was standing.

  He did as I requested and then stepped back as Ethan shoved the lid of the coffin off and took a long and deep breath, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the light. His honey brown eyes widened as they took in the horizon.

  “I know,” I said in answer to the worried crease in his forehead. “Let’s get you inside.”

  Ethan gulped, and then nodded, climbing from the death box with a stretch of his back. He stepped out of the back of the hearse as two young girls made their way past us on the street. Ethan stiffened as they crossed paths with us.

  I noticed then how one of them was helping the other along, with an arm around the injured girl’s shoulder. They wore short skirts and high heels. And it seems one of them had taken a pretty good fall. Her left knee was badly skinned, her pantyhose completely destroyed and caked with layers of wet and dried blood.

  I snapped my attention back to Ethan, ready to put him into a strangle hold and drag him into the apartment if that’s what it took. My body was on fire with adrenaline, preparing to take him down.

  But…his shoulders sagged and the dilation in his pupils lessened. He wasn’t holding his breath anymore, and the terror in his gaze melted away, its place taken by a note of confusion and awe.

  He smiled, turning back to me, incredulous. “Frost was right,” he said in a breath, still grinning ear to ear. “That fucker was right…”

  It took me a moment to piece together what he was saying, but when I did, I gasped. “My blood…”

  Ethan nodded, pulling me into him to plant a hard kiss on my lips. When he pulled away, there were stars in his eyes. “This changes things,” he said, and I thought he might’ve been on the verge of tears.

  I wondered when the last time was that he could safely go out in public without worrying he might attack someone and not be able to help it. I imagined being faced with fresh blood and being wholly able to restrain himself was liberating. Like one of the shackles chaining him to the beast within had snapped off.


  I smiled back at him and swatted his behind. “Rose Ward, assassin, lab-rat, and vampire juice-box extraordinaire,” I chuckled. “It has a ring to it.”

  Ethan’s face fell. “I didn’t mean to insinuate—”

  “Oh, shut up,” I interrupted playfully, tossing him a wink. “I’ll be your juice-box anytime.”

  He shook his head and together we crossed the street. I looked for any sort of signs that a witch had been here earlier in the night. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for, though. Maybe some blood on the walls. Some weird symbols. A salt line? But I saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  Before Ethan could even get his keys out, the door flung open and Frost was standing in the entry, huffing, his hair disheveled and his bright green eyes wide and wild. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  “We—”

  “It’s been a week,” he growled, glaring at us—scrutinizing each and every inch of me, and then every inch of Ethan. Searching for signs of harm.

  Behind us, the hearse started to back up and drove off.

  “Is he here?”

  “No,” I answered. “Just us.”

  His brows lowered. “Did you escape?”

  I sighed. “No. He’s given me forty-eight hours…then I have to go back.”

  Ethan’s brow drew down, but he didn’t comment. I realized a little belatedly that I’d said ‘I’ and not ‘we’. I had no intention of allowing him to return with me to the cave, but he didn’t need to know that yet.

  “Where’s Blake?” Ethan asked, taking the words right out of my mouth.

  Frost moved out of the way and ushered us inside. “Come on, get your asses inside. It’s not safe to be out right now.”

  What?

  “He’s in the shower,” Frost added, stomping up the stairs.

  “What do you mean, it’s not safe?” Ethan asked, lithely taking the stairs two at a time to keep up with Frost. From this vantage point I had a fucking fantastic view.

  Frost was still tense as hell. I could see his hands clenched at his sides and when he turned to glare at Ethan, the thick vein popping out of his neck. “Because they’re still looking for her,” he all but spat at Ethan. “Or did you forget there’s still a bounty on her head?”