Seducing the Vampire

by Michele Hauf

  “Get him out! I can save him.”

  “Save him?” He laughed. “He just saved you, lady.”

  “My name is Viviane.” She sauntered toward him and ran her fingers down the front of his shirt. Warm, so warm. Never get warm again. The mortal’s eyes tracked hers, sobering him instantly. “Rhys is my lover.”

  The man nodded. “I know about you two. You remember him? You’re not…mad? Insane?”

  She tilted her head. The scent of his blood hypnotized. “Would you not be insane after being buried alive two centuries?”

  “Yes. But you seem pretty rational right now.”

  “The blood makes me clear.”

  And it would make Rhys clear, too.

  “You will open this door right now.”

  Lunging, she bit into his vein again. Hot, thick blood oozed over her teeth and tongue. He did not struggle but instead embraced her as she forced her persuasion into his thoughts.

  Open the door. “Now.”

  “Yes.” He leaned aside and tapped on the number pad near the door. “But this only opens the outer door. He’s locked in a cage inside.”

  “You’ll open the cage.”

  “I—” She gripped his chin and squeezed. “I will,” he hastily agreed. “Anything you ask of me. But as soon as I do that, I’m closing this outer door. I will not let him loose to torment innocents. You’ll be trapped inside.”

  “Trapped with my lover?” Viviane stood aside. “Open the door for me.”

  The square cage stretched to the ceiling, twice as high as a man. Around the top tiny blue lights cast an eerie glow over the creature who now stood at the center of the cage, seething, its fangs revealed, its talons bared and prepared to strike.

  Not a creature. “My lover.” A man who had taken her away from the despicable Constantine de Salignac.

  A man who had not rescued her when Salignac had enacted his greatest revenge.

  “Rhys?”

  The wolf huffed, and slapped a paw about one thin bar.

  It was him, her lover. The gray fur declared it so. She was not afraid.

  “Why? Why did you not save me?”

  The werewolf twisted its head and reared back, howling long and loud so that the sound cloaked Viviane like a sodden garment she could not shuck. It charged the bars, slashing out with an arm. It meant harm.

  “Your werewolf does not scare me.” She lifted her head, drawing a breath through her nose for courage. “You couldn’t be there,” she said, remembering now it had been a night like tonight when the moon had reigned. “I wish you had been. I thought of you. Always.” She lifted her head proudly and beat her breast. “Not dead!”

  The bars rattled, but no matter how much the wolf beat against them, they did not budge. Strong metal. Must be magical, she decided. But the cage door had been unlocked. The werewolf was unaware. She sought the door, eyeing the far side, and found it.

  Dare she?

  So many years she had thought about this. Decades, surely. And then the rats would make her scream. Silently. Achingly. She had only desired Rhys’s warm embrace. To know safety. To remember love.

  “Do you love me?” she asked, walking toward the cage door. “I love you, Rhys. I think.”

  She glanced aside, opening her palm. A wooden hummingbird? Who had given her this?

  Viviane shook her head. Her thoughts jumbled so easily. “Blood,” she whispered.

  Yes, the blood.

  Gripping the cage door, she swung it wide. The werewolf leaped out and slammed her body to the floor. Her skull hit the floor hard, and she winced, blinking at the bright flashes interspersed with blackness.

  The beast roared, exposing its long maw of glistening teeth. Teeth that could take off her arm or head with one bite. Fearless, Viviane clasped his head, determination forcing her actions before she lost focus.

  “I love you, Rhys Hawkes, and I will tame you this night. I know what you need.”

  Chasing the painful and unanswerable desire she had lived in for two centuries, Viviane lunged. Her fangs descended, and she bit into the werewolf’s leathery neck where the fur receded to bare skin. The wolf bucked, but she held tight, wrapping her legs about its waist and clinging. Hot blood gushed into her mouth and over her lips, streaming down her chin and neck.

  It was difficult to hold fast, but she shoved her hands into the fur on its scalp and licked at the heavy, throbbing vein. So sweet, virile and hot, his blood. The werewolf’s blood.

  It was all that she needed. Knowledge fit into that empty slot in her mind. She knew. She remembered. She was Viviane LaMourette, strong, free. Rhys Hawkes’s lover.

  Yet right now her lover, while in werewolf shape, had the mind of a vampire. A vampire who had been enchanted to shackle its vicious desire for blood. A vampire who needed to know a new master, a new patron, a new lover who would blood bond with him.

  That master would be her.

  With a ferocious twist of his shoulders, Rhys shucked her off him. Viviane landed on the floor, sprawled, crying out at the pain of landing on her hip. The wolf charged her.

  She bit into her wrist, opening the flesh raggedly, and the blood spurt. It hit the wolf’s maw, staining its teeth crimson.

  “Take it,” she gasped. “Taste me for the first time, lover. Know I am yours, and you are mine.”

  Dizzied by the gush of blood from her vein, Viviane’s lashes fluttered. She closed her eyes to the tug at her wrist as the werewolf lapped in her life’s blood.

  RHYS CAME TO, SPRAWLED facedown in a sticky puddle of blood. It did not offend. It smelled sweet. Like wine on a summer afternoon.

  He studied his hands, covered with blood, and looked down at his naked body. He had survived the full moon once again. Yet he lay outside the titanium cage.

  “Viviane.”

  Slapping a hand in the blood, he twisted at the waist to spy her frail body lying next to him, her hair strewn across the floor and curling into the crimson puddle. Her wrist was caked with dried blood where his werewolf had fed, spurred by his vampire to take every last drop—yet he had not.

  He must not have taken it all.

  “Viviane?” He tugged her into his arms and shook her. So pale, her skin. Her mouth lolled open. “No, you cannot be dead. Please.” Tears dropped onto her blood-stained lips. Rhys cried out.

  Just then the lock clicked. The outer door moved inward a few inches. No one entered. It was merely the timed mechanism setting him free.

  Never free. Not if you have killed her. Again.

  He slapped two fingers aside her throat, searching for a pulse, but he could not find one. Too much hair in the way. He scrambled to move it aside when suddenly her body jerked and she sucked in a breath.

  Azure eyes blinked open and fixed to his. The tiny crease at the right side of her mouth appeared.

  “Rhys, my love,” she managed to say in the smallest voice. “I’ve saved you.”

  Had she? Hell, the notion of it made him chuckle.

  Had their sharing blood indeed tamed his vampire and released him from the darkness? Had she traveled through time, frozen in a glass coffin, to finally set him free?

  Only time would tell—and the next full moon.

  He wanted to tell her how sorry he was. To explain why he had thought her dead. He wanted to erase the centuries and do it all over again.

  Right now, all he needed was to hold Viviane. To kiss her.

  Deep in Viviane’s kiss he found the man he once was. The man who had walked through the Enlightenment in dark clothing and with his head held down stepped aside. The proud half-breed who had pursued Viviane without relent stepped up and breathed in.

  Her breath moved into him, warming him and reigniting his spirit. And he noticed their heartbeats, pressed chest to chest, pulsed in synch. He had consumed her blood, as she had his. Only time would determine their fates.

  “Lover,” she whispered against his mouth. For the first time since he’d found her, her eyes were bright, so clear. She mov
ed his hand down to her belly. “Can you feel it?”

  The odd question redirected his focus and when Rhys pressed his fingers gently to her smooth stomach, he thought he felt another rhythm. Rapid and small. But how was that possible?

  “A child?” he asked.

  “I’ve been aware the entire time I was in the coffin.” She slid her bloodied hand along his cheek. “The first will not be ours.”

  “No, but it must—”

  And she kissed him silent, so that his protests rang in his heart and regret surfaced, and he knew then why the faery had appeared outside of the cathedral.

  “The future promises to be quite challenging,” he said, then bowed to kiss her again.

  They spoke no more, instead answering the centuries-long hunger for one another as Rhys stripped the clothes from Viviane, and found his place inside her. A place where he belonged. Home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Nine months later…

  MOONLIGHT SHONE THROUGH the nursery windows. A twinkle of stardust seemed to beam over the twin cribs nestled against the wall. Rhys helped Viviane stow away the diaper-changing supplies, quietly closing the cupboard doors so as not to wake the newborns.

  Two of them born two days ago, one but moments after the other. A surprise. Rhys had sent Poole out to buy another crib before the midwife had left.

  Viviane nudged a shoulder against his chest and turned to nuzzle against his neck. His beard was thick for the moon was soon full. But he needn’t fear a raging werewolf. Since Viviane had lured his werewolf to take her blood, he had continued—as vampire—to drink from her once a fortnight. And he allowed her to take from him. It bonded them so deeply he had never thought it possible to love someone more.

  And it seemed to keep Viviane sane. She had to take blood every day from a donor, because if she missed a day, Rhys noticed her mind wandered.

  She would ever struggle with insanity, but he would not allow it to win.

  Simon had actually been doing research into post-traumatic stress disorder and anything he could find regarding madness and possible cures. He had been Rhys’s rock since he’d gotten Viviane back. And to pick up the work Simon could not manage, he’d hired Steve Monroe to assist at the Paris office of Hawkes Associates.

  Viviane kissed him, and he indulged in the moment, holding her in the moonlight, the babes sleeping peacefully nearby. Her dark hair veiled his neck and tickled his skin, stirring him as her touch always did. Life could not be more perfect.

  How odd that they had journeyed through the centuries, each at their own pace, and while once she was the one two centuries older than he, now they were both the same age. Time had literally frozen her, and the gestating babes, until the moment of her release from hell.

  Grasping his hand, she led him to the cribs and the two looked over the tiny beings. Viviane stroked the thick sprigs of hair on the first infant. “Red,” she whispered. “And so much of it.”

  “I’ve been told my father had red hair,” he said quietly.

  “Yes? That explains it, then.” She pressed a kiss to her fingertips and placed it to the baby’s nose. “Trystan, who makes me laugh to look at him.”

  She delivered a kiss to the next infant’s nose. “Vaillant, my dark prince.” The babe’s hair was black as Rhys and Viviane’s hair, and he was not such a tubby bundle as his brother and had yet to cry. “They are blessings, yes?”

  He hugged her from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Truly, we are blessed. Have I told you today that I love you?”

  “This afternoon when I rose, and then an hour later after I’d fed, and just ten minutes ago. Don’t ever stop, lover. I need to hear it always.”

  “I love you, Viviane. Ever after.”

  Viviane suddenly stiffened, and Rhys momentarily wondered when was the last time she’d drunk blood. It had been a few hours earlier when they’d stolen a moment in the shower while the babies had been snoozing.

  “What is it?”

  She turned toward the open nursery doorway where a brilliant shimmer danced upon the opposite wall in the hallway.

  Rhys’s heart dropped. Viviane slipped from his embrace. Not now. Not ever, he pleaded fruitlessly.

  His lover kissed his lips, and lifted his hand to clasp against her mouth. Bright azure eyes spoke things they had not spoken since the eighteenth century. A promise had been made.

  “I cannot stay in here,” she said. “This is for you to do.”

  “Viviane, I—”

  She kissed him silent. “I love you, Rhys. Now you must pay the boon.”

  And she slipped noiselessly across the room to the door that adjoined the master bedroom, closing it with a click of the lock behind her.

  Only then did the faery enter the room. With a dazzle, the faery’s wings swept the door frame and the top of the vanity and dressers as she approached.

  “So soon?” Rhys asked. And then he had the brief thought that perhaps sooner was better.

  It can never be better. This was the most horrible thing.

  And yet, two had been born. Almost as if… No, he would not think it.

  “Two?” Cressida said as she approached the cribs.

  Rhys wanted to wrest her away and fling her out the patio doors. If he could harm the faery he would—and then he would not. He was a man of his word. Hell, he’d not been able to bring himself to seek out Constantine. Much as his brother deserved to die for his crime, he was not the heartless man to enforce that punishment. And besides, he now spent every moment with Viviane. He would not taint the time they shared with foul acts against his brother.

  “I have waited a very long time,” Cressida announced.

  “You have.”

  “Which one shall it be?”

  He joined her before the cribs and looked over the sleeping infants, blissfully unaware that both their lives would now be irrevocably altered.

  His chest tightened and his throat squeezed. How could a father be expected to make such a choice?

  “You must do it,” he said, and turned his back to the cribs. “Quickly, please.”

  Eyes closed, he listened intently and sensed the faery leaning over one crib and studying the child.

  “So bright, his hair,” she commented.

  Rhys winced. Trystan now slept on his back, a bit of his plump belly showing beneath the soft shirt he wore. His thumb was always securely in his mouth, a habit he’d assumed but moments following birth.

  “This one is rather thin. He barely breathes as he sleeps.”

  And Vaillant, Viviane’s dark prince. The quiet one who never cried, and would not suckle from his mother no matter how Viviane tried. But she cooed to him and rocked him, with bottle in hand, and seemed to spend more time with the babe, perhaps because he was so different.

  Would they both be half-breeds? Or would his vampire blood and Viviane’s make them full vampire? Impossible to know until puberty.

  Viviane was brave to grant him this situation without raging or protesting. He knew she loved them both, as did he. How dare he cast away one of his own children?

  “Cressida, there must be some other manner in which we can—”

  Rhys turned. The faery no longer stood in the room.

  He rushed to the cribs. Trystan lay untouched.

  Vaillant’s crib was empty. A glitter of faery dust stained the sheets.

  “No.” Rhys grabbed up the sheets and pressed them to his face—soft, powdery, baby scent—then flung them down, and quickly grabbed up Trystan.

  He pressed the babe’s warm head to his cheek. Tears wet the thick crop of red hair. Falling to his knees before the cribs, Rhys rocked back and forth, struggling to hold in a raging howl.

  EPILOGUE

  Fourteen years later in Faery…

  VAILLANT HAD ACHIEVED puberty last eve. Cressida had seen the wild look in the young half-breed’s eyes, and had expected them to go completely gold as he then shifted to werewolf for the first time. He must shift. His mother had b
een vampire, his father a half-breed. Vaillant’s blood was mixed to a delicious brew. Faery rejoiced in those of mixed blood.

  He did not shift.

  Instead he’d claimed intense hunger, and she suspected it was his vampire half that needed mortal blood. She’d had a mortal brought to Faery.

  He did not drink blood.

  But still he insisted hunger.

  Frustrating. She had chosen the half-breed child as her boon in repayment for enchanting Rhys Hawkes’s vampire so long ago. Half-breeds were valued to mate with the sidhe. Their mixed blood combined with faery ichor produced powerful hybrid offspring.

  “What have you determined?” Cressida asked the seer, who had just come from Vaillant’s quarters. The sylph in red silks floated beneath a canopy of intoxicating honeysuckle. “Is he ill?”

  “No, he is a perfectly well, bloodborn vampire.” The seer cringed at Cressida’s sharp inhale.

  “What?” Cressida drew the seer to her with a crook of her finger. “You lie to me. I have no need for a bloodborn vampire. They are common and unusable.”

  The seer shrugged, then shifted to small size and fluttered off into the bright white sky.

  Seething, Cressida spread out her wings, which swept the honeysuckle, and scythed off the fragrant blossoms in a golden storm. She keened long, high and loud, and it shook all of Faery. The entire Unseelie court shuddered to recognize the faery’s anger.

  She had chosen incorrectly.

  And yet, how was it possible Vaillant was bloodborn?

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7903-6

  SEDUCING THE VAMPIRE

  Copyright © 2011 by Michele Hauf

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.