by Lana Sky
He sighed, such a hollow, tortured sound. “Then I leave the country to try to regain my sanity, only to return and find you on my doorstep. And again, when I try to finally let you go, you get on your knees and suck my cock.” Awe painted his voice, as did anger, and hopelessness, and eternal frustration. “At every turn, you confound me. At every attempt to ignore your albeit lacking charms, you find a way to hook your claws into me. You called me the monster, but frankly, I must admit that I am at a loss when it comes to you. A part of me suspects that if I did kill you, you’d merely come back to life, giggling with glee that you’d finally managed to break my resolve.” His other hand came to cradle the side of my face, brushing the stray curls back. “I’m confounded by you,” he reiterated. “So I have decided that the only way to survive you with my sanity intact is to utilize you. As I see fit.”
My breath caught at the raw lust his tone revealed. As if chasing the reaction, he worked the tip of his thumb between my lips, seeking out my tongue.
“And how is that?” I managed to ask.
He seemed to mull it over. “I will no longer resist your impulsive inclinations. I’ll merely combat them. The next time you question my supposed lack of attraction to you, I will take it as an invitation over an insult.”
I drew my thighs together, aggravating the slight ache between them. “Oh?”
“I’ll strip you naked,” he mused. “For a start, at least. There is no use in humoring you like one would a sane woman. You thrive on this—corruption. I think it’s what you’ve wanted all along.”
I thought back to our very first meeting, when he’d barged into my bedroom and presented a choice: life or death?
“Stripping naked or dropping to my knees does seem to be an effective way to render you speechless,” I admitted. Then my teeth skewered my lip. “As is presenting a, let’s say unlikely, challenge to your understanding of vampire biology.”
He remained silent for so long. I flinched when he finally moved and settled his hand along my hip. Outstretched, his fingers grazed the flat of my belly. The sight triggered a flurry of emotions too complex to name. They thickened my throat and obstructed my breathing—overwhelming in every aspect.
“Regardless of what happens between us… I don’t want to face this alone,” I admitted, my voice hoarse.
“You won’t. It is true that this ‘challenge’ is unexpected,” he finally confessed. “Though, I would ask that you not make a habit of deconstructing my concept of reality.”
“What did Raphael mean?” I asked. “When he said that my bloodline is cursed. That you knew someone who—”
“It doesn’t matter.” He brushed his mouth along my jaw, taking his time in the advance toward his true destination. I inhaled raggedly, my lips parting even before his finally settled over mine. This kiss was slower than the others. Deeper. Savoring instead of frantic. His flavor lingered on my tongue, and I took my time deciphering every subtle nuance of it. He was a creature born to be deciphered.
He could taste as unyielding and relentless as ice in some aspects one moment. Then hot like winter spice the next. Sweet like wine, all the while laced with a bitter, dangerous hint that made my stomach constrict and heat spread through my belly.
When he started to pull back, I followed, craving more. His blood was an addictive substance, but even it was unmatched compared to him.
“I really do need to speak to the pilot.” The raw regret in his tone soothed any sting of rejection I might have felt. He looked tormented as he pulled away and stood. Surprising me, he reached for my seat belt and unfastened it before helping me to my feet as well.
Instead of toward the cockpit, he led me down the length of the cabin and into a space dominated by a bed. Something I suspected a vampire’s private jet might otherwise not contain.
“You need sleep,” he said, urging me onto the mattress. “The bathroom is there.” He nodded to a small door just beyond the bedroom. “I shouldn’t be long.”
I watched him go. Even disheveled in his polished suit, the man remained unmatched in poise. Doubt, that terrible fucking thing, was harder to quash without his mouth to silence it, however. That vicious voice returned, slightly louder than before.
You think he truly wants you? It’s all lies, Eleanor.
The only way to banish the thoughts was to enter the bathroom—unusually spacious with a wide sink and enough space to wash myself in comfortably—strip my soiled dress, and attack my body with a warm, wet cloth. I washed slowly, swaying in time with the plane’s various jolts and tremors.
I was doubtfully eyeing my dress, considering whether to wear it at all or just leave the bathroom naked, when someone knocked softly on the door.
“Miss? Mr. Helos requested that I bring you some of your belongings so that you can make yourself as comfortable as possible. We have about eight hours until landing.” The attendant opened the door and offered an array of items balanced on a tray. A length of black material that resembled a robe. A fresh dress. Slippers and various toiletries.
I accepted them all gratefully and dressed in the modest black shift and the silken robe. When I reentered the bedroom, Dublin still hadn’t returned. I climbed onto the mattress, gasping at the quality—divine. Before I knew it, I was groggily stirring to awareness and finding a presence looming over the bed.
“The plane won’t crash, I hope,” I murmured as another bout of turbulence rattled the cabin—though honestly the mattress was so luxurious that I barely even felt the disturbance at all. “Is everything okay with the pilot?”
Dublin said nothing, his face expressionless. Closed-off.
Unease made me swallow as I scrambled upright. “What’s wrong?”
“What exactly did you tell your sister? Perhaps you’ve had a line of communication to her all along? I had my men check for your little note. It’s gone.” His voice was so cutting that I ran my fingers along my throat just to make sure he hadn’t drawn blood. “Tell me now. Did you mention the contract? Gloat over the fact that you own me like a dog on a leash?”
I shook my head. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong?”
“We’re being followed.” He eyed me pointedly, as if waiting for a confession.
When all I could do was sputter wordlessly, he turned on his heel and stormed into the main cabin.
“Wait!” I started to follow but he stopped short, his voice like a whip.
“Don’t. Stay in here. Get your rest while I try to ensure we both don’t end up killed.”
I stared after him, my mouth agape. He crossed the central cabin, disappearing through a doorway at the other end.
I crept toward the threshold, his rage an invisible line that kept me from stepping over it. Doubt became full-blown paranoia. And then dread.
My heart felt a bit like that goddamn Gray family crypt. Dusty and chambered, filled with a million dark, shadowy spaces. And every time I let him in, he slammed the door on his way out.
Cold
It seemed that we landed hours later. An eternity perhaps, suspended in time and space—the perfect environment for Dublin’s anger to fester into full-blown apathy when he finally appeared outside my unofficial prison cell.
“Come,” he said. Dressed in a fresh suit entirely composed of black, he didn’t even resemble the man I’d clung to just a few short hours earlier. He was a stranger who dabbled in the trade of souls—but mine was already far beyond his reach. “We need to move quickly.” Suspicion lanced from him, honed like a blade.
So I parried in the only way I knew how: with equal vitriol.
“I’ll move,” I snarled, my hands on my hips, “just as soon as you tell me where the hell we are.”
He lunged, snatching my wrist, and yanked me across the main cabin.
“Get off of me!” By the time I’d managed to wrench out of his grip, we were already descending the steps onto a secluded tarmac, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
A car waited nearby, another stern-faced dri
ver standing at the ready. But Dublin’s silence couldn’t obscure everything. Evening painted the sky a stunning ochre shade, for one. Like fire, smoldering down to ebony embers speckled with starlight. Given that we’d left the city only early in the morning, it shouldn’t have been this dark yet.
“Where are we?” I demanded as I continued down the steps.
Dublin said nothing, but the moment I reached solid ground, he grabbed my arm, all but hauling me to the car. I sputtered as he shoved me into the back seat—but this time, he followed, slamming the door after us.
I scrambled as far away from him as I could, squeezing myself against the opposite door. He didn’t even spare a glance in my direction.
His attention on the driver, he commanded, “Go.”
“Where are we?” I demanded. Somewhere far, far from my home I suspected.
Foreign air lingered in my nostrils, far crisper than the stench of the city. Twisted trees lined the road and loomed above, easily displacing any view of the sky. In some ways, it felt like a parallel universe, one frozen in time.
“I’ll keep our location to myself for now,” Dublin said in a tone that made me grit my teeth. “Just in case you decide to write more letters to your sister. And here I was, assuming she might be in danger. I actually considered offering my services to assist you in finding—”
“Something happened,” I deduced. “Just tell me. If I did something wrong—”
“You? Make a mistake?” His eyebrows furrowed in mock shock. “The woman who’s gotten more people killed in her wake in a month than most will in a lifetime?”
Pain ripped through my chest, so potent that I pressed my hand against it as if that might lessen the blow. It didn’t. Once again, my defensive mechanism threatened to deploy. I wanted to say something equally harsh, enough to combat the way my eyes burned. But as I observed my hand in the waning daylight, something displaced even my anger.
“My ring.” Panicked, I felt around my seat, finding nothing. “It’s gone. Go back! I must have left it in the—”
“Did you not hear me when I said we were being followed? Yet you suggest we go back for a worthless trinket. And you still claim you don’t have an ulterior motive?”
I bit down on my tongue so hard that I tasted copper. Aching, I brushed my naked finger with my thumb as I tried to reconcile why a worthless trinket’s loss was troubling me so much. Especially when the man who’d given it to me didn’t seem to give a damn either way.
“You’re right,” I admitted, turning away from him. “It’s worthless trash. I truly hate you, and I spilled all of your secrets to a sister who abandoned me without a word. And I hope her spies blow us both up because, obviously, I have a death wish. Hopefully my cancer will speed along that outcome, at least. So tell your driver to hurry up to wherever we’re going. I’m bored.”
He said nothing, but I cut myself off from any senses that might decipher him. Instead, I did what I should have done all along—trusted my suspicious, doubtful instincts. Oh, how right they were.
But admitting as much hurt more than it should have. I hunched beneath the pain of it, wrapping my arms around my chest in a vain effort to mitigate the ceaseless throbbing.
But it didn’t.
All I could do was whisper out loud the confused, pathetic questions circling my brain in an effort to weakly combat the self-loathing.
“You want me to trust you, but how can I when every time I try you push me away, or insult me, or disappear?” Oh God. My voice was trembling, breaking openly. Tears stung my eyes, impossible to blink back. Oh well. He’d accuse me of lying regardless. I had nothing left to lose. “I confessed to you that night in the cathedral how you made me feel. You left days later, and I’m the cruel one? But now you return and I’m not only supposed to believe that you might give a damn, but that I might be—” No. I bit off any more. That was too pathetic. “I think it’s best if from now on we just…”
Exist in a silence so heavy that I didn’t have to finish defining it. We fell into our roles far too well, retreating to opposite ends of the car, glaring from our respective windows.
He never offered a word in his defense or otherwise.
And I was too tired to demand one.
Our eventual destination awaited at the end of a paved driveway lined in trees and illuminated with orange lanterns. When my gaze fell over the structure, I gasped aloud as the driver finally came to a stop.
Poor Gray Manor would blush in shame.
Composed of stone, a sprawling mansion gleamed in the moonlight as if crafted from a fairytale. Light spilled from every window, painting neatly manicured lawns, complete with bubbling twin fountains placed on either side of the cobblestone driveway.
I still gaped as Dublin exited the car without a word. His hand appeared seconds later. Warily, I took it. Had he decided to apologize? I eyed his expression, hunting for any softness as he guided me up the path to the front door. There, a man wearing a stark black uniform ushered us inside.
“Show Ms. Gray to her room,” Dublin commanded him, releasing me. He turned on his heel and stormed out the way we’d come.
I watched, flinching as the door slammed behind him.
“This way, miss.”
I turned to the butler and tried to shift my attention to my surroundings, letting their beauty negate any pain.
Breathtaking was the operative word. I’d thought his beautiful penthouse suite was impressive, but this was luxury on an entirely different scale. My mother would approve of the plain-but-quality oak-paneled walls and polished floors. The golden light fixtures illuminating wide, open hallways with high ceilings and furniture in shades of emerald and ebony, however?
She’d scoff in disgust at those.
My room, unsurprisingly, was no less elegant. For all his moods where I was concerned, I couldn’t accuse Dublin of compromising my comfort out of spite. The bed looked heavenly—solid wood, carved with extravagant reliefs of roses and vines, draped in a ruby canopy. A wide window displayed a view of yet another garden, its details obscured in the darkness.
“Goodnight, miss,” the butler called before leaving the room and closing the door.
I swallowed hard, blinking as my eyes started to prickle. It was funny how silence could bring everything into painfully clear focus. Like the fact that I was alone again.
That my lips were still swollen—again.
That the inside of my thighs ached and I couldn’t tell if it was from pain or just the shame of rejection.
I wanted to be angry. Or bitter, or hateful. I wanted to storm about the room and declare just how unaffected I was by Dublin Helos and his switchblade rage. I wanted to do anything but crawl onto the mattress and huddle beneath silken sheets as moisture spilled down my cheeks once more.
Vicci D’arte
Morning came with the intensity of a punch—literally. Ruthlessly aimed, it slammed against my abdomen and the pain jolted me from a fitful sleep. Gasping, I rolled onto my side, clutching my stomach. Every breath hurt. It was as though my lungs were in a vise grip. An invisible fist squeezed only to release. Again. Each vicious cramping wave left me writhing over the sheets.
“What’s wrong?” The door flew open and Dublin rushed in. Pale dawn light painted him in shades of gold, making him seem more angel than Devil. He wore a fresh gray suit, his hair slicked back, his overall appearance perfection.
Gritting my teeth, I sat upright and placed my feet on the floor, my back to him. “Nothing,” I said even as another wave of pain stole my breath away. My eyelids fluttered as I inhaled through my nose, gripping the sheets so tightly that my nails pierced the fabric. Eventually, the tension subsided, and I attempted to disguise my rigid posture with a shrug. “I’m fine.”
He didn’t move—and his concern irritated me far more than it should have. Now he wanted to care after accusing me of being a suicidal traitor. Yesterday’s Eleanor might have forgiven him, swayed by the display.
Not me.
&nb
sp; “I’m fine,” I hissed, biting the words out. “And I’d rather be alone now, if you please. How else will I contact my sister via telepathic Morse code and give our location away?”
He moved—a series of slow, heavy footsteps that paused near the threshold. “I’ll be gone for the day,” he told me, his tone devoid of warmth once more. “When I return tonight, be ready. There is clothing in the wardrobe—”
“Fine,” I snapped, deliberately avoiding asking him where he planned on taking me.
“And…”
I could almost taste his hesitation, cracking his callous façade.
“If you need me, ask for me.”
“I won’t.” I eyed my fingers lazily, inspecting the nails. They were trembling and I balled them into fists to hide it—though the act was in vain.
He was already gone, marching down the hall and then the staircase.
Alone, I crawled onto the center of the mattress, tense in anticipation of another bout of pain. I’d never felt anything like it before. Was this a new phase of the cancer I’d deliberately avoided thinking about until now?
Fear goaded my pulse into a frantic thrum. I tossed and turned, wavering on calling for Dublin after all. My lips parted. Closed. Parted again…
If I did call for him, it wouldn’t be out of weakness. Just in case I truly was dying, he deserved to be told what an ass he was to his face. That was all.
When footsteps approached my room, I sat upright, wondering if my thoughts alone had conjured him. But no. A smiling woman wearing a plain gray dress approached the foot of my bed, holding a tray. On it was a simple breakfast and a nondescript black cup containing a suspicious-looking liquid.