The Dark's Mistress (The Saint-Pierres)

by Hauf, Michele

  Kam’s heart bounced. She wanted to leap toward the man and his sweet confession. “Most men would try to take my heart,” she challenged.

  “I’m not like most guys. They’re a bunch of over-muscled, boastful, alpha males who, when they see a woman, decide they’re going to have her no matter what. They take what they want. That’s so not cool.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Truth? I have a streak of alpha in me.” He flexed an impressive bicep that, indeed, would look awesome inked in tattoos. “But I don’t ever treat women poorly, especially not a woman like you, Kambriel.”

  Twisting on the narrow platform, he stood up over her, stretching his arms out. To lean backward would see him falling. “You know what?”

  “What?” she answered breathlessly to the rock star standing above her.

  “I want to become worthy to you. Earn your interest, and maybe even your love.”

  Wow. That sounded so not like any man she had known in her lifetime. Because he was right, most men walked up and kissed her and claimed her as their own. And even the one who had only ever kissed her had indelibly marked her. Forever his.

  She wanted to be free to learn Johnny’s worth, and to, in return, make his efforts to impress her worthwhile.

  “I want to win Kambriel’s heart!” he shouted, lifting his arms high and declaring it to the heavens.

  He swayed backward and Kam reached for his leg. “Johnny, be careful!”

  Teetering on his heels, he almost tipped over backward, but lunged forward and landed on his knees, straddling her legs and cupping her head in his hands.

  “It’s begun,” he said, his lips but a breath from hers. His eyes dashed back and forth between hers. “Tell me I’ve the right to vie for your heart. Give me permission, Kam. I don’t want to presume anything with you.”

  She gripped his shirt. “Yes. Please. Win it and set me free.”

  Again, she stopped herself from begging him to help her, to truly open the gates to her escape. Instead, she pulled him down for a kiss.

  The world fell away and they were perched on the pinnacle, the air hugging them and spilling through her unbound hair. Johnny’s kiss started sweetly, tasting her, dashing his tongue across her lips, and then venturing deeper. The shimmer sparkled within her veins. And as their connection solidified his arms banded about her back and he held her safely in the sky. She could fly, and did not fear a fall.

  She whispered against his mouth, “Let’s fly.”

  He didn’t reply ‘Whatever you wish’. She would hate that. Only the Dark one said that. All the time. Instead, Johnny pulled from her, studying her gaze, unsure, perhaps startled she’d made such a wild request.

  “We can’t fly,” he said. Then that charming smile assumed control. He held out his hand for hers. An eyebrow quirked above his twinkling, do-you-dare gaze. “But we can jump into the unknown.”

  “Sounds exciting. Do you dare?”

  “Dare?” The cocky man, who knew how to work the crowds as well as she, thrust back a shoulder and fisted the air in a rock n’ roll salute. And then he swept her into his arms and jumped.

  They fell quickly, not flighty or dreamy as Kam imagined this kind of leap of faith must go. The air burnished her skin, so she pressed a cheek against Johnny’s chest and clung to him. His powerful build hugged her so she felt no matter what happened at the bottom the jump would be worth it. If for the thrill, a few brief seconds of freedom.

  In his arms.

  Halfway down, Johnny kicked off from the side of the iron structure. It widened as they fell, so he did it a few more times. Vamps could jump great distances, but flying was out of their range (unless magic was involved). He landed on his feet, legs bending to cushion the abrupt landing. The jar of their bodies hitting solid ground shook out an ouff from Johnny. Cradled in his arms, Kam remained safe.

  “Hell yeah!” He spun her around on the grass before the tower.

  Kambriel’s heart pulsed for this new and wondrous adventure inside this man’s heart.

  * * *

  Johnny walked Kam home, across the pont d’Iena and past the Trocadero where the protestors still sang some kind of mellow save-the-trees ditty. The sky was beginning to lighten by the time they reached the massive black door that opened to the private courtyard before Kam’s home.

  She must have sensed his apprehension because her fingers landed on his cheek softly and she smiled at him. Her gentle touches felt real, like the only part of her that was genuine. Not that he thought she was faking anything. He bet even she wasn’t sure who she was at times, because he couldn’t get a read on her.

  “Sunrise soon,” he said. “I need to be behind closed doors and in a dark room when that happens.”

  “You don’t do the sun?” she asked.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the sun rise. But I’m not Anakim.” That vampire tribe was actually allergic to the sun. They couldn’t walk in daylight without instantly burning. His breed could go out in the sun for short periods before their skin would slowly burn. “My parents raised me this way. Up all night. Sleep through the sunrise. I do need to check in with my mother, too. The family thing I mentioned earlier. But Kam, I’m not sure how to walk away from you.”

  He didn’t sense she wanted to invite him in, because she hadn’t punched in the digital code or suggested he come inside. That was cool. He didn’t want to rush her. And he’d meant what he’d said atop the Eiffel Tower. He wanted to feel worthy in her eyes and not push the relationship to something it was not.

  “The sunrise is beautiful,” Kam said. “I hope to show it to you some day. But not this morning. Okay?”

  She tilted up on her tiptoes and kissed him, finding an ease at his mouth that he devoured in more ways than physically. She’d opened some part of herself to him and had grown confident in his arms. He cherished that.

  “Bonsoir,” she said, “or rather, bonjour. Will I see you tonight at the club?”

  “The devil won’t be able to keep me away.”

  She gasped, and quickly turned from him. Not sure what he’d said to stir such a reaction, Johnny traced his fingers over the back of her lush hair and to the tips where he lingered, teasing the ends against his palm.

  “This was the best date,” she said, still not looking at him. “Ever. Thanks, Johnny.” And she punched in the code and slipped through the doorway without looking back.

  Johnny caught his hand over his heart and spun out onto the sidewalk. Yeah, it had been some kind of heart pounding, universe thumping best.

  Chapter Six

  Casa Hawkes was a quiet little limestone chateau capped with pepperpot turrets about a half hour drive out of Paris’s most western suburb. Rhys Hawkes owned a hundred acres, mostly wooded, which was excellent because it served the werewolf half of him, which liked to wander free. His vampire half would argue the jaunts through the prickles and trees, but that half didn’t get a vote when it came to fulfilling the wolf.

  Johnny stopped in to visit his grandparents every week, usually on Wednesdays when his grandmother Viviane was alone because her husband, Rhys drove in to the city to supervise the Hawkes Associates office.

  Johnny loved Viviane and was probably the only one in the family who didn’t walk on tiptoes around her. So the woman was crazy—literally. Being buried alive in a glass coffin for two hundred fifty years will do that to a person, even a vampiress. She’d given birth to twins nine months after emerging from that hell. Boys, each fathered by a different man. Trystan was Rhys’s son, and he was all werewolf. Well, mostly. Vaillant—Johnny’s dad—had been fathered by Rhys’s evil vampire half-brother, Constantine de Salignac. Only when her children had lived for decades had Viviane finally been able to rip out Constantine’s heart to show him how much she respected the asshole.

  Vaillant had grown up in Faery, due to a deal Rhys had made with a faery regarding handing over his firstborn (the deal was made way back in the eighteenth century). Presented with twins, the faer
y’s unfortunate choice had been Vail. The sidhe preferred half-breeds to procreate with their own kind. Full-blooded vampires didn’t cut it. Vail had come to the mortal realm for the first time when he was in his late twenties, nursing a nasty faery dust addiction. But Vail had met Johnny’s mother, Lyric, and the rest, as they say, was history.

  Or so Johnny hoped. He’d called his mom this morning. Vail had found his way home and he’d confessed to Lyric about the faery dust. She was keeping a close eye on him, and Vail was cool with that. He understood the implications of even one more hit of dust.

  Only a little relieved, Johnny couldn’t help but wonder what his dad had meant last night when he’d said he wanted to dance with the devil. He was too smart to fall into addiction again.

  “How’s the little biter?” Viviane asked.

  She sat beside him on the couch, paging through a book. Always clothed in gorgeous gowns with diamonds and elaborate stitching, she embodied goddess. And sensuality.

  “She’s not biting yet, G-ma. Summer is a usual one-year-old. She doesn’t walk either, but she does run.”

  Summer was Johnny’s little sister by a few decades. He loved that little bundle of giggles and spitup, and suspected she would forever have a twist upon his heart with those springy blonde ringlets that bounced when she toddled through a room. He couldn’t imagine her sucking on a mortal’s neck, but innocence was always abandoned when the blood hunger struck at puberty.

  A finger trailed along Johnny’s neck. Upon sitting down, Viviane had handed him a time-yellowed book of lascivious drawings that had been bound in the eighteenth century. Rhys had purchased the prize for her at an auction for a cool quarter million euros.

  “G-ma, don’t.” He shooed away Viviane’s hand. “This one is insane.” He tapped the sketch that featured a lusty fop in a hip-swinging frockcoat offering his lover a huge wooden dildo; his erection was as large and bursting through his breeches. “An excellent definition of morning wood, eh?”

  Viviane giggled and sniffed his neck.

  “Seriously, G-ma, no biting! That’s not cool. Leave family members alone. Do you need me to drive you in to town for a bite?”

  His grandmother needed blood daily; a condition of her insanity. And she had no boundaries with family members, which made family get-togethers challenging. Johnny took it in stride. She couldn’t help that she’d gone mad. And she was sane more often than insane, so there was that.

  He set down the book and clasped her hand, beringed in diamonds and rubies. A tilt of her head onto his shoulder, spilling her thick black hair over his shoulder. Like the darkest night without stars, she’d once described the family’s propensity for dark tresses to him.

  “You hungry, G-ma?”

  “Just teasing, my pretty. I drank Rhys’s blood this morning before he left for the office.”

  “You know I’d give you my life, but drinking from your grandson is not cool. The sexual connotations make it squicky.”

  “My twenty-first century boy, I have no idea what that word means.”

  “It’s like squirmy and icky mixed together.”

  “You’re such a prude, Johnny.”

  “And you are a libertine, Viviane Hawkes.”

  “And proud of it!” She hugged him and snuggled in closer, tugging away the book to tuck alongside Johnny’s thigh and the sofa cushion. “So what have you been up to since we last spoke? Tell me tales!”

  His grandmother loved to talk about her paintings and gardening projects, and in turn listen to him talk about his life.

  No way could he tell her about Vail’s mistake.

  “I climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower last night. With a pretty woman.”

  “I’ve a rival for my heart?”

  “Never, G-ma. You will always be my favorite vampiress. But this woman. She’s…” He sighed and shook his head. An irrepressible smile was impossible to hold back.

  “Oh. That’s the way of it. My bright young boy can’t even find the words? She must be special indeed.”

  “I haven’t known her long, but I feel like I already know her so deeply. Like I can see inside her. I want to win her heart, G-ma. I’m not sure how to do it.”

  “I once ripped out your grandfather’s heart.” She giggled.

  “I know about that. Well deserved, as I understand. If at all possible, I’d like to keep Kambriel’s heart where it is, inside her chest. There’s gotta be less violent ways to woo her.”

  Viviane mocked a pout. “Not as interesting, but certainly easier to prolong a relationship when one’s paramour has an intact heart.”

  “Most definitely. How did Grandpa Rhys win your heart?”

  “He won it twice. So long ago, and not so long ago.” She danced her fingers before her as her mind slipped into the past.

  Johnny knew the past was more dangerous to Viviane than the present so he abruptly stood and took her hand. “Let’s wander out to the patio and check the flowers climbing the pergola. While we’re at it, you can give me some suggestions how to woo a lady.”

  “Oh, sonnets!” she trilled as she danced out behind him onto the stone-paved patio that was shaded from the burning rays. “When Rhys taught me to read sonnets he won me forever.”

  “Sonnets, eh? I’m not sure Kam would be into that.”

  “Do you even know what they are?” Viviane peeked around a spill of delicate white moonflowers.

  He leaned closer to the flowers, nudging one aside with his nose, and gave his grandmother his patented charmer smile. “’My lady carries love within her eyes’

  “’All that she looks on is made pleasanter’

  “’Upon her path men turn to gaze at her’”

  He tipped up Viviane’s chin to meet her bright blue eyes, and she fluttered her lashes.

  “’He whom she greeteth feels his heart to rise’

  “’And droops is troubled visage, full of sighs’

  “’And of his evil heart is then aware’

  “’Hates loves, and pride becomes his worshipper’”

  That was about half the Dante Alighieri sonnet. He knew it all, but it proved as effective as he’d hoped when his grandmother sighed.

  “Oh, Johnny, you’ve become a real heartbreaker, haven’t you?”

  “I would never break your heart, G-ma.” He kissed her on the forehead. “I love the classics. Mom introduced me to them when she homeschooled me. But Kam’s probably more a Rimbaud kind of girl.”

  “Something more dark and disturbing?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Your mother raised you well enough.” Viviane made the face she always did when she spoke of Lyric. So she didn’t get along with her daughter-in-law. Who could ever be good enough for her son? “I’ve a chapbook signed by Rimbaud in my room. Another gift from Rhys. You stay here and I’ll run fetch it.” She floated away like the ethereal ghost of the past that yet haunted her.

  Johnny flicked a white flower near his shoulder, pinching if off at the stem, but finding it didn’t have a scent. “Signed by Rimbaud? My grandparents are so cool.”

  * * *

  He stood up in the balcony again tonight. Watching her with that crazysexy switchblade smile. While Kam sang to the frenetic crowd of sweating bodies drowned in leather, lace, studs, and blood she could only wonder what Johnny’s blood tasted like. It would be like nothing she had ever tasted and like everything that could drown her.

  Or it could rescue her.

  As the guitarist peeled into a thundering riff on his glittery black Stratocaster, Kam wandered to the edge of the stage, allowing the red spotlight to infuse her pores as she looked up at the man who swam through her veins. He made her smile, and that wasn’t cool. Not during this stage show.

  The song she sang was a popular one, though her rendition hardened it, burned the edges to a crisp. Johnny knew it; she’d seen him singing it a few times. Winking at him, and waggling the microphone in invitation, she received from him a ‘what me?’ point of his finger to his c
hest.

  She nodded, and announced over the guitar solo. “We have a treat tonight, my dark pretties. You want a duet between the Dark’s Mistress and Johnny Angel?” The name for him just came to her. It was corny but it fit with him standing high above promising her salvation with a spread of his arms and a wink from his blue eyes.

  The crowd chanted and bounced, pumping their fists.

  Kambriel threw the microphone toward the balcony.

  Johnny leaned out to snatch the mic, and picked up the next line without missing a beat. He stepped up to the railing, balancing on the narrow iron bar. From his scuffed boots, up the snug-fitted black leather pants to the tee shirt and vest studded with spikes, he was heavy metal to the bone. Add in the guyliner, and a raspy croon and the vampiric angel won them over. He crouched on the railing and growled the dark and sexy lyrics to the masses, which they sucked up like blood raining from above.

  And there it was. That gorgeous smile. Singing and smiling, and commanding those below him with his dark charm.

  Kam grabbed the backup mic from a stagehand and met his vocals with a harmonization that meshed as if they’d been born to make music together.

  Johnny climbed onto the outside of the balcony railing, one hand clasped about a bar and his body leaning out wide. He knew how to work the crowd. She was surprised he wasn’t a headliner in the local clubs. Hell, on the international stage. He was that good. His voice liquid and deep, she wanted to lose herself in Johnny Santiago. She was one of those who stood below, arms raise in worship and voice honed to a shout.

  Bringing the song to a close, Johnny screamed out the repeating, defiant pledge to rock the night. He thrust up a triumphant fist. The audience raged and stomped their feet.

  Thumping the universe, he’d called it. Yeah, it sure as hell felt like it.

  The guitarist nodded to Kam, sort of a ‘he’s not bad’ acknowledgement, and the band took their leave of the stage to wait for the encore.

  * * *

  Johnny tossed the microphone down to a stagehand, and jumped back onto the balcony booth. He was high on the adrenaline rush singing always injected through his veins. And Kam had given him that injection.