by Alyssa Day
“Do you know that I have fantasized about your hair? More vividly and more sensually than any fantasies I’ve ever had? Waking dreams of your hair spread on my pillows, these lovely dark waves silhouetted on Atlantean silk. Of long curls falling on my chest while you straddled my naked body. Of burying my hands in it while I take you from behind. Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?”
He bent his head to the curve of her neck and inhaled deeply, and the feel of his breath on her skin was so arousing that her knees weakened and the sword dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers.
“You—I—” But she couldn’t think. Couldn’t form coherent thoughts in order to speak them. All she could do was moan when he opened his mouth and gently bit down right where her neck curved into her shoulder.
Her arms reached up, almost without her own volition, and twined around his neck. She pressed herself even closer to him until there was nothing between his chest and her hard, aching nipples but the thin cloth of her cotton bra and T-shirt.
Even that was too much. She wanted him naked. She wanted herself naked.
She finally gave into the secret desire she’d had since she first saw him walk into the room in St. Louis. She put her hands in all that gorgeous golden hair, and the tactile sensations from the silken mass of waves nearly made her moan. His hair was so many colors that simply calling it gold didn’t do it justice. It was champagne and sunlight; gold and bronze and copper. It was lush fantasies of a wild jungle cat who only she could tame.
A wild Atlantean only she could tame.
If only it were true.
“You’re so beautiful,” she whispered.
He lifted his head and stared down at her, something dark and forbidding in his expression. For once, he made no attempt to hide the viciously scarred left side of his face. “So I have been told, many times, before this damage was done to me. My appearance meant nothing to me then. A way to divest women of their skirts, perhaps.”
His arms tightened around her almost until it hurt, but she said nothing, sensing that he was on the brink of a revelation that she was afraid to hear, but needed to know.
“Then there were those who spoke of beauty to me, but they were talking about pain. My pain. I was captured, Grace,” he confessed, the words rough as though she’d ripped them from his throat. “Captured while trying to save my prince, but he was captured, too. They were Algolagnia, the vampire goddess Anubisa’s cult of pain worshippers. They only find beauty and sexual release in their own agony and that of others. For so long—so unbearably long—they tortured and defiled and corrupted me until I, too, almost began to believe that beauty was only found in blood, pain, and despair.”
A wave of mingled sympathy, rage, and something like terror sliced through her. She started to speak, but he shook his head.
A warning or a denial.
“I ask not for your sympathy—I will not accept your pity. I have never spoken in any detail of the eternity I lived during those two years, and I never will. But you need to know that if you continue to tease me, you’re baiting a beast the likes of which you have never encountered. I fear something in me was broken and still lies twisted, with jagged edges, inside the boundaries of what I once experienced as desire.”
Grace didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to do. Only knew that she had to say or do something to help dispel the horrible aching loneliness in his eyes.
“I’m tougher than I look,” she said, trying to smile. “Despite how little trouble I’ve given you here in the practice ring. And I’m very good at fixing broken things. I’ve never tried with a broken person, though.”
Abruptly, he released her and stepped back. “And so you should not have to, lovely Grace. I will avoid you as much as possible during this assignment. You have my word. Please accept my deepest apologies for this inappropriate display on my part.”
He turned and had begun walking away before she could formulate a response. She wanted to follow him, but she needed to be careful. After all, she didn’t know what had happened to him. What was wrong with him. What violence was masked by his undeniably stunning exterior. She’d come to see even the scars as an enhancement, turning classical beauty to rugged. But she needed to be cautious.
She watched him as he walked away from her, his body held rigidly upright, having rejected her before she could reject him. He was protecting her. He was protecting himself.
Her defenses shattered. To hell with cautious. She was going after him.
“Alexios!” She started walking, then running, until she caught up to him. She lifted her hands to cup his face. “Don’t. Don’t apologize to me. Don’t treat me like I’m fragile. Don’t run off on me. I think . . . I think there’s something between us, and I’m . . . I want to take the time to figure it out. Life is short—”
She broke off, laughing. “Well, okay. Life may not be short for you. But for me, for humans, yes. I learned that brutal lesson ten years ago. Give me a chance to be not just your ally, but . . .”
“But?” he prompted.
She lowered her hands and stepped back, suddenly embarrassed at her own presumption. What was she, a psychologist? How did she think she could offer anything to this man who’d clearly been through so much?
“I’m an idiot,” she mumbled, closing her eyes. “Total idiot.”
“I seriously doubt that, but why would you say it? Grace?” He caught her arm and stared down into her eyes. His own had turned nearly black, with a peculiar blue-green flame in the exact centers of his pupils. She knew that Atlantean eyes were sort of like mood rings, but this blue flame thing was new.
“Grace?”
She blinked, feeling like she’d just nearly hypnotized herself in his gaze. “Maybe, maybe we could take it slow. Find out . . . discover if there’s anything between us worth pursuing. I’m not exactly girlfriend material.”
It was his turn to blink, and then a wide grin spread over his face. “Girlfriend material,” he repeated slowly. “Oh, may the gods help me. I can’t believe I’m going to have to talk to Alaric about this.”
“What? What does Alaric have to do with it?”
He bent and kissed her forehead, then bowed deeply. “As you say, we will take it slow. Until tomorrow, mi amara .”
With that, he whirled around and started to run across the courtyard, then took a giant leap and dissolved into mist in midair. Grace watched the shimmering cloud that had recently been an Atlantean warrior as it sailed off through the sky.
Well. That was one way to end a conversation.
Show-off.
Chapter 9
Washington, DC, the Primus, later that night
Vonos, lord high vampire of the Primus, smoothed out a minuscule wrinkle on the sleeve of his Armani suit jacket and then swept a triumphant glance around the room. He smiled as he signed his name to the document in front of him. Vonos, Primator in Chief. That fool Barrabas had been content with the weak title of senator during his term as head of the Primus. But no human appellation would serve to describe Vonos, the most powerful game player that vampire kind had ever known. His first act as newly installed leader of the Primus had been to pay a social call upon the human leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Each one of them still cringed when they saw him walk by.
Vonos lived for political power. All other pleasures withered with time. As one who had survived centuries’ worth of lifetimes, he, more than others, lived for the game. The animalistic lusts and need for violent feeding on both blood and emotion that consumed so many vampires as they aged had somehow passed him by. Perhaps the austerity in which he’d lived his life as a human had followed him through death and beyond. He’d never know; at any rate, it was an intellectual exercise, no more. He had no need to analyze the reasons why he was superior to others of his race and age. He was content merely to accept it.
However, he contemplated with no little nervousness the arrival of one who was beyond analysis. Th
e goddess of Chaos and Night had ordered him to remain in waiting for her, so that they might discuss strategy. Unfortunately, Vonos could think of many, many things he’d rather do than discuss strategy with Anubisa.
Like having his fangs ripped out of his jaw with pliers, for example.
It was not merely that she was emotional, as most women were. Nor that she had the power to force him into an existence of never-ending pain and agony with no more than a thought.
No, the primary problem he had with Anubisa was that she was completely and utterly irrational. She would discard or demolish a decade’s worth of careful planning on a moment’s whim. The obsession she had with the Atlantean royal family bordered on insanity. Although, perhaps insanity composed the very essence of one who ruled over Chaos, and any other action on her part, indeed any other form of reality, would be counterintuitive.
Dangerous to wonder. Dangerous even to think such thoughts. Especially now.
His only warning of her arrival was the abrupt temperature change in the central chamber of the Primus. Silver-white frost formed on the teak desktop in front of him. So she was making an entrance this time. That, in itself, was information. A clue to her mood. A possible indicator to whether he would survive the encounter or not, the risk he took every single time she came to him.
But reward never arrived without risk, and he had gambled throughout his centuries with political power the scope and breadth of which had toppled kings and crushed dictatorships. He considered Anubisa to be his greatest challenge.
Bowing his head, he waited. It was always difficult to gauge the level of subservience that would appeal to her vanity on any given occasion. If he bowed too low, or fell to the ground prostrating himself, she was as likely to crush him as unworthy of her time as to reward him for his fealty. If, however, he did not show the level of humility that she considered proper . . .
Well. He had heard that one such still hung, skinless and screaming, in a very deep cavern.
Something in the air pressure of the room changed, and he knew she’d arrived. “You wear it well, my Vonos. The evidence of your ascension in power as my right hand,” she said. Hers was no ordinary voice, but of course one would not expect ordinary from a goddess. Within the tone of it, which rang so melodiously on the surface, the crashing cymbals of cowering death danced and gibbered like a corpse on a hangman’s scaffold.
Even he, undead for these thousands of years, felt the flesh rise along his spine as though trying to escape the room from the mere sound of her words.
“Thank you, my lady.” He finally dared to raise his head and look at her. Her unearthly beauty far surpassed any that a mere mortal woman had ever known. Hair so black that the reflection of light caressed blue highlights into it curled down to her hips. Her face was perfection as sculpted by dark angels cast into hell for blaspheming their natural talents.
As always, her beauty failed to touch him. His taste had never run to the female, and that had not changed after his death. She knew this, and yet occasionally took his choice as challenge. She seemed to lack the ability to understand why any man or, indeed, any woman would not be drawn to her. It alternately infuriated and amused her, and he supposed sometimes that the puzzle of it was one reason he still survived.
“I have news for you,” she said. “I learned enough of the Atlantean’s plans, before that fool’s mind broke completely and I had to throw him into the Void, to know that we need more of an army to defeat them. You are, of course, among the best at training my blood pride to enthrall the humans. The members of my Apostates have declined since that unfortunate raid by the panther shifters.”
A palpable fury swept through the room at her words. Furniture trembled, papers sailed off tables, and light fixtures exploded in a shower of glittering glass. “This is unacceptable,” she raged. “I have decided that the bratling princes three will serve me well as bedchamber slaves, when Atlantis rises from the waters currently holding it captive, and I claim it for my own.”
Vonos clenched his teeth together to keep from making any comment about the futility and wasted resources involved in Anubisa’s obsession with the Atlanteans. Political power was of no use to a pile of dust upon the ground, and dust would be an optimal result in store for one who defied Anubisa.
“Prevacek, too, has some great skill with enthralling humans. He is my second-in-command and is currently in Florida. If you will it, my lady, I shall contact him so that we may plan our strategy together to more effectively serve your needs.”
She inclined her head; royalty granting a boon to a peasant. One day, perhaps, she would bow to him, instead . . . but, no. Even to think such thoughts was heresy. Vonos was well trained in suppressing all but the most loyal of thoughts. If she were to learn that he had not yet told her of the diamond, for example . . .
Suddenly Anubisa’s eyes flashed deepest scarlet, and Vonos trembled where he stood. Surely she had not caught such a brief thought? But she was a goddess—
She screamed, a sound of such frustrated rage that the walls themselves shook from the force of it. “No! No, no, ten thousand times, no!”
Blood-colored flames seared forth from her eyes, her mouth, and her nostrils. Flames shot forth out of her fingers and the tips of her toes in their pointed slippers. In seconds, she was surrounded by a conflagration of fire, an inferno that blasted such intense heat he did not know how she could not be consumed by it.
He could do nothing but throw himself to the ground, cowering before her. The scorching heat from the flames scalded the air around him until he realized he would be immolated. His last thought was philosophical, rather than outraged. He’d played the game and taken his chances.
Now he’d take a loser’s punishment.
But then, somehow, the fire disappeared. The flames were gone, as if they’d never existed. Only the black and charred scorch marks on the floor of the chamber and the smell of sulfur in the air served as silent witness to Anubisa’s tantrum.
A small, delicate hand in his hair yanked him up off the ground and threw him against the wall some twenty feet away. He slid down the wall and crumpled to the floor, afraid to rise. “Have I displeased you, my lady? If you only let me know, I will—”
“Silence, you babbling slug!” she roared. “The heir is born! Conlan’s whore of a human female has borne him a healthy son.”
He dared to glance at her and saw that she was trembling with a fury that was apparently too great to be contained within the space of her small form. “They do not escape me. I release them, or I destroy them. They do not escape me and breed bastards to carry on their hated line,” she raged.
He began to speak, but then trapped the words before they escaped his mouth. In the more than six centuries that she had deigned to recognize his existence, he had never seen Anubisa react like this. Her confidence was always unshakable, her arrogance sublime.
A goddess who showed signs of being vulnerable was a goddess who would destroy any who had seen her weakness. He lowered his face to the ground and shut his eyes tightly.
She laughed, and the sound of it was as razor blades and salt to tender flesh. “So even after all these years, you fear me, Vonos? As you should. As they all should.”
She paused for so long he nearly raised his head, but then at last she spoke again, in a more thoughtful voice. “I threw Alexios away, which may have been . . . hasty. But Justice escaped. Yet, in order to cross out of the Void, death magic had to be in play. If Justice killed in order to escape, then he is mine. The stain of death magic upon any soul is enough to consecrate them to the power of Chaos and the dominion of Night. If he killed, then he is mine,” she repeated. “And there was no creature living in the Void who would offer self-sacrifice to such a one as he.”
Vonos’s mind whirled with questions, hypotheses, and more questions. He’d seen the gateway portals to the Void before. What he had never known, and wondered about now, was if a willing sacrifice made from the other side of the portal would ope
n the entryway to release a captive. He knew enough about these Atlanteans to know that they were the type to consider such foolish self-sacrifice to be noble. Especially if it had anything to do with the new heir.
However, if the thought hadn’t occurred to Anubisa, he would certainly not be the one to bring it to her attention. He shuddered at the memory of the flames as the stench of sulfur still clung to his clothing and body. No, it would definitely not be he who would point out any flaw in her logic.
The question then arose: If her logic could be flawed, was her goddesshood flawed as well? Ruthlessly, he silenced that line of thought as something to consider another day. First and most important was to survive this one.
He finally found the courage to speak. “Then perhaps he is already yours, my lady. You will then be one-third of the distance toward your goal of enslaving the three brothers. Shall I hurry now to find Prevacek and put the rest of your plan in action?”