by Dani April
“Yes.”
“What about after? When you became…what you are now? How many people have you murdered since then?”
He brought his arm around her shoulder and found her face with his fingers. He forced her to look up at him. “Since I became a vampire, I have never taken a single human life to quench my thirst.” His speech was strangled with what she thought must have been desperation. It was important to him that she believe what he told her. “I continued in my life as a warrior. I continued to kill men on the field of combat. But that’s all. I am not a murderer. I can promise you this much, I have never killed a woman or harmed a child. I have not done so in over a thousand years of life. I doubt many men can say the same.”
Somehow she knew he was telling her the truth. Peter had a lot of faults, but dishonesty was not one of them.
“But you’ve forced other people to become vampires against their will like you’re forcing me now?” She continued, not willing to forget about his beastly problem so quickly.
“Have I?”
“Isn’t that what vampires do?”
“Before the twentieth century, I had to drink from a human body to sustain my own life. But I tempered my thirst. I never allowed the person I drank of to be endangered. What’s more, I made certain they never even remembered the experience. I suspect they woke up feeling a bit weak the next day, but probably also felt a strange renewal of their life. Since most of them were female, they probably just thought it was due to a night of satisfying lovemaking with a handsome stranger, one whom they would never see again.”
He allowed his hand to roam down her body. She certainly could relate to the feeling of satisfying lovemaking with a handsome stranger. She only wished that he would allow her to forget like all the others had.
“Then when we got to the twentieth century, I was able to go to the hospital and get blood supplies,” he continued with his explanation. “Only problem has been convincing the doctors I needed it at times. They of course have never understood my condition.”
“And that’s what you’ve got Tex and Ramos helping you with now?” Mentioning the names of her two lovers from that afternoon brought a blush over her face and forced her to hide herself further beneath the covers. His arm enveloped her again, and she felt safe.
“Throughout the years I have hired many men and women to help me in my journeys. Your companions from yesterday have been two of my best. I consider them my friends and not just my employees. In the brief time I’ve known them, we have had some amazing adventures together. I only hope their association with me has helped ease the burden of their lives somewhat.”
His hand cupping her butt and her thigh spread across his leg under the covers made her become wet and horny once more. She ran her hands down his chest and gloried in the feel of his hard abs under her touch. She wanted to make love with him again, but feared it was getting close to sunrise. She had no idea what would happen after the sun came up outside, and so she contained herself and rested her head back down against his chest.
“How many other women have there been?”
“Remember I have lived for over a thousand years. All of that time, I have been in this young man’s body.”
She looked down, wondering where the smart journalist inside her had gone. “Sorry,” she told him. “Dumb question.”
“It’s understandable that you are struggling with all that you have just learned.” He placed another kiss delicately on top of her forehead. “There are no dumb questions between us, my love.”
She shuddered inwardly to hear him call her that. She did not want to be his love. A stark realization was overcoming her that she was lying under the covers cradled in the arms of a vampire.
“All right.” She decided to go with his sentiment toward her. “If there are no dumb questions between us, Peter, then tell me how many people you have changed into vampires during the course of your life?”
“No one.” He shook his head. Her words seemed like they gave him pain.
“You’ve never changed a woman into a vampire to be…with you before?”
“I told you I don’t harm women.”
This was crazy. Her entire conversation with this man, lying naked and in bed with him, was just pure lunacy. She ran her hand slowly through her hair and cast a disbelieving glance up at him.
“Then why me, Peter?” she asked, her voice desperate. “Why have you chosen me as the first woman in a thousand years that you decided to hurt?”
“I will never harm you.”
She laughed. “No, you haven’t threatened to harm me. Let me remind you again, you just threatened to kill me.”
“Not the type of death humans think about.”
She reached down and clung to his shoulder, hoping to shake some sense into his broad frame, but he lay beneath her as solid as a mountain. “Any type of death is bad, Peter. Maybe you can’t understand that. Maybe you don’t understand what death is because you’ve lived so long. I don’t want to die!”
He reached up a soothing hand and ran the back of it along her cheek, combing a loose strand of hair back behind her head as he did so. “Don’t be afraid of what I offer you, Rebecca. I offer you a wonderful new world, one where you’ll never have to be afraid of anything ever again. All you have to do is accept it and accept me.” He looked down between the covers at their two nude bodies pressed tightly against each other. “I think tonight has been a good beginning for us. Just think about the countless nights of passion we’ll have to spend once your transformation is complete.”
She winced at his use of the word transformation. Was he turning her into a monster like he was without her even knowing it? Although in the dim light cast over the bed, his stunning body looked like anything but a monster.
“Am I a vampire yet?” she asked him.
He laughed and caressed her shoulder. “Not yet.”
“You’re beautiful, Peter.” She propped herself up against his body and stared down at him. “When I look at you like this, I still can’t believe you’re a vampire.”
“Why should it matter what I am?”
She lay her head back down on his chest and thought about that for a moment. Actually it did matter a lot. But she didn’t tell him this because somehow she felt he was vulnerable now after their talk, and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Or maybe she was just too tired to argue with him. Anyway, she would have to find a way keep the conversation on point.
She looked up into his eyes and realized she was no longer afraid of them. “I don’t want to become a vampire, Peter,” she told him.
“It’s the only way we can be together.”
“We’re together right now.”
“In fifty years, you’ll grow old. In another fifty years beyond that, you’ll be dead.”
She ran a leg between his thighs, feeling his still rock-hard cock under the blankets as it grazed her knee. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled herself closer to him trying to concentrate and think of a rational comeback to his words.
“Being a vampire means I would have to die, and I don’t want to die.”
“Then do you think I am dead?”
She ran her hand down his chest and stomach, feeling the warmth radiating from his engorged cock before she even touched it. She had to give him a point here. She smiled. Although she knew she was not about to change her mind.
“But to become a vampire you have to die first, right?”
“My heart stopped beating and my body shut down, but it was only for a few minutes. The blink of an eye really. Doctors of this age would have called me medically dead. Then I was reborn.”
“Reborn as a vampire?”
“That’s right.”
“If I became a vampire, I could never see my family or my friends again. I love my mother and my father. I’m even pretty crazy about my kid sister. If I thought I was going to lose them and that I could never see them again, I think I would rather be dead.”
He squeez
ed her shoulder tightly. “But you would have me,” he reminded her. “We would have each other for all eternity.”
She raised herself back up by a few inches and looked into his eyes. This time she was the one to penetrate him with her gaze. “But, Peter, I don’t love you. How could I after what you’ve done to me?”
“What have I done to you?”
“Do you really want me to recount it for you?”
He just stared at her.
“You’ve drugged me with your blood. I don’t take drugs—not ever.”
“Vampire blood isn’t really a drug. It is a natural element the same as your blood, only humans seem to find it arouses their sexual libido. It’s an aphrodisiac mostly. When it flows in a human’s veins, it seems to offer them a temporary euphoria from all of life’s troubles.”
“Yes, well, that’s not something I want.” She felt like hitting him under the covers when she thought of everything he had put her through in the past couple of days. “You didn’t give me any choice in the matter. Because I took your aphrodisiac, I let Tex and Ramos take me to a seedy little roadside motel this afternoon and I had sex with both of them at the same time. Then tonight I had sex with you. Three men in one day! My God, what have you turned me into, Peter?”
“I’m afraid I still don’t see anything wrong with that.” His voice sounded tired as if he was bored from talking with her, and that made her angrier still.
“You’re holding me here in your castle against my will! Do you see anything wrong with that?”
The blankets had fallen away from her breasts, and he wasn’t staring at her eyes anymore. She reached down and pulled a cover up over her chest. He stroked her shoulder lovingly, and this only flamed her anger more.
“Answer me, Peter!”
“I explained earlier that I am sorry for having caused you fear. Unfortunately this could not be avoided under the circumstances. I wanted to make you mine, and I wasn’t clever enough to think of an alternate way of so doing.”
“And as I explained to you earlier, Peter—I hate you. I still hate you.” She knew her voice had filled with venom and spite, and she didn’t care. “I hate you more now than I did before. Did you think if you got me off and gave me a few orgasms tonight, I would start to love you?” She laughed at the image. “I saw you as a man for the first time tonight. Only a cruel man could think of doing what you’re about to do to me.”
He continued to caress her bare shoulder, unfazed by her outburst. “I think you will feel different after I have made you mine, truly made you mine forever.”
“Not if I’m a vampire with you for a million years will I ever forgive you for taking away from me the life I had.”
“At the very least I’ll get a million years to try.”
“You’re a monster!” She wanted to reach out and strike him, had even raised her hand to do so, but in the end just snuggled up closer to him under the covers of their enormous bed. She was starting to fear him all over again, but this was a new fear, different from the one she’d had before. It would take her tired brain awhile to sort out all the details of this new feeling.
He reached up and held her face in one of his large hands, wiping away a tear. “I believe after you’ve become one with me you’ll see the world through different eyes.”
“I’ll see the world as a vampire sees it?”
“Yes…” His voice had grown husky in the darkness of the giant bed. “You’ll find a new world and new things to love.”
“Maybe,” she admitted biting back another tear. “But you’ll never be one of them. If you do this to me, I’ll hate you forever, and a vampire has forever to hate.”
He gave her an indulgent smile. “You’re forgetting one thing, Rebecca.”
“What’s that?”
“You have no choice in the matter.”
There was such calm assurance in his voice. This man, this vampire, knew what he wanted, and he was going to take it. Nothing in the entire world could stop him. A shiver ran down her spine. In spite of her feelings, she held herself closer to his naked body and gladly soaked up its warmth. A horrible resignation settled over her. Her fate had been sealed by this man who she currently had her legs wrapped around. The dream she had awakened to a few moments before had become a nightmare.
“I don’t believe you really love me, Peter. I don’t think you know the meaning of the word.”
“I do love you, Rebecca.” He ran his fingers down her spine, tracing its line beneath the blanket. “You’re the only thing I’ve loved in a thousand years of living. Until I met you, I did not know what love was. Your presence here with me brings me the only happiness and peace I have ever known. I swear to the heavens I will never let you leave my side.”
Rebecca knew she was utterly trapped. There was no escaping the vampire.
Chapter Thirteen
What would happen when the sun came up?
She laid down against Peter’s body and felt his quiet form beneath her. His breath was peaceful, and his eyes were closed. Not a muscle in his body moved.
Staring down at him, she examined his square jaw and the cleft in his handsome chin, tracing it with her finger. Beneath her, his body seemed to have grown colder. This man who had terrified and threatened her was now temporarily losing his power over her as the dawn broke outside. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“Peter?” she whispered down to him to test his response.
He stirred slightly. “The night is at an end,” he told her. “You should leave me now.”
She smiled down at his weakened state as a thought crossed her mind. “Aren’t you afraid to leave me alone down here with you in the day?”
He shook his head tiredly. “There is sixty feet of earth above us. There is nothing you can do to me down here. I am well protected from the sunlight above.” He rose up to a sitting position and gave her a kiss on the lips. Every time he was tender with her, it surprised her. “I’m going to sleep now. You should go and enjoy the day.”
“I think I will.”
“Get some rest. You must be tired from last night.”
She crawled out from under the covers, not feeling as happy to be away from him as she thought she would have been.
“Get some rest and eat lots of healthy food, Rebecca,” he commanded her again. “You’re going to need it for tonight.”
When she turned around to look at him again, his eyes were closed. She stood above him for a moment and watched him to make sure. Then she decided he had gone to sleep. Her day could now start. She could concentrate on getting the hell out of this nightmare.
Her clothes were in a crumpled pile on the floor. She hastily put them on, feeling that her business suit was terribly out of place for this setting. Casting another sidelong glance back at the bed, she found him in the same state of slumber. A quick glance down at her watch as she rolled it over her wrist told her it was after seven in the morning. The sun was up, and she was safe for a few hours. Then she thought of her adventure of the day before and realized she had to amend that thought to safe from Peter for a few hours. The vampire blood was coursing through her veins stronger than ever after their sexual encounter of the night before. She would have to make sure she didn’t lose her head like she did yesterday, or all was lost.
She climbed several flights of stairs on her way back up to the surface. When she got to the door leading to the outer part of the castle, she experienced a moment of fear. What if it was locked?
The knob turned in her palm, and she gratefully let herself out of Peter’s quarters.
“So how was your night with the vampire?”
Rebecca almost fell back through the door at the sound of those words. Ian, the huge man with the beard, long hair, and tattoos whom she had met but never actually spoken to was standing in front of her as if he had been keeping a vigil on the exit from Peter’s rooms all night.
“You scared the shit out of me,” she told him, angry at his intrusion.
“I
don’t think I did.” She realized he had an accent, maybe Australian or New Zealand. She always got those two mixed up. His accent was thick and his voice deep. “Any woman who can spend the entire night in the lair of a vampire and walk away sane the next morning is not likely to be scared by the likes of me.”
“What are you doing here, Ian?”
“Well, I was going to ask you the same question, but since you asked first…” He motioned her forward, placing a hand on her shoulder and leading the rest of the way up the stairs. She could already see the first streaming ray of sunlight at the head of the flight. “I came down here, waiting for you to leave this Godforsaken hell hole.”
“Well, you found me.”
“Come on then.” He led her out into the sunlight. A bright blue sky was over the courtyard. The sun had never looked more beautiful. “I told the boys to fix you up a big breakfast. You’ll need it after what all you and he must have done last night.”
She looked up at him. His outward appearance made him scarier than Peter. The big man turned out to be playful after he finally spoke.
“Listen,” she told him. “My sex life, even with a vampire, is my own business.”
“No, it isn’t,” he chided her. “There’s vampire blood running rampant around here through all our veins. It makes us as horny as hell. No one keeps their sexual activity private around this castle for very long.”
“I think I should probably tell you something like, fuck off.” She was only half serious with him. Somehow the irreverence of the big man made everything he said a joke.
“That’d be a good thing to tell me,” he agreed with her. “And if you really get pissed off at me, I’ve got a Chevy Blazer waiting to take you back to Vegas.”
“Thanks. If I can overcome this vampire blood hangover, I just might take you up on that.”
“That’s a big if, pretty lady.” He led her across the courtyard and motioned up to where her room on the top floor was located. “You go up to your room and get cleaned up and then come on down and get the boys’ breakfast.”
“Okay.” She hesitated. She wasn’t for sure how to take this big foreign guy yet or exactly where he fit into the scheme of things at the castle. Yesterday when she had gone out with Tex and Ramos, they had filled her in on their own lives, but they hadn’t made mention of Ian once. He was definitely an unknown element, but she thought he meant her well and might even be the key to her salvation.