“With me,” Michaelson hissed at her. He slithered from behind the desk to stand in front of it, placing him much too close to her for her comfort.
She no longer bothered concealing her weapon. She brandished the palmed dagger as she released its twin into her left hand from its hidden pocket within her sleeve. “Care to elaborate.”
Michaelson slunk closer toward her. “I will keep it short and to the point. You recently killed three vampires on the Lower West Side I was quite fond of. They were my made children and had been with me for half a century. The Vampire Lords may see them as disposable and be unwilling to seek vengeance for their deaths, but I will not standby and allow a lowly, filthy hunter to execute my children without repercussions. The business we have here is one of recompense and I will take my reparations in blood.”
When Michaelson attacked she was ready for him. As predictable as any vampire he went for her jugular first. Cara dropped to her knees and drove a dagger through his sternum. She would have preferred it to be his heart. The fight would have been over as quickly as it began. But she thrust upward at an odd angle and was too close the ground, having to drop low to avoid being nicked. Cara swore she was experiencing déjà vu all over again. Without giving the vampire time to react or recover, she shot to her feet and drove her other dagger into his chest. She pushed it past his rib cage but it did not make it to his heart before she felt her body slam against the wall behind her. Two twin vampires who looked as if they could pass for professional wrestlers pinned her arms against the wall on either side of her. Where the hell did they come from? Cara thought to herself. Only she and Michaelson had been in the room and they could not have possibly entered via the door. It was behind her and the vampires slammed into her from the front. Cara struggled against their grips but the twin wrestlers seemed intent on restraining her until Michaelson recovered.
He straightened to his full height and sinisterly smiled at her. “You just forfeited a quick death.”
One moment Cara was pinioned against the wall and in the next breath she was not. The pair of wrestlers parading as vampires lay dead at her feet. Gaping holes permeated their chest cavities. Cara looked up from the corpses to see Aiden standing silently in the middle of the room holding still beating hearts in each hand. He casually let them fall to the ground. In a morbidly pompous gesture he removed the handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his hands free of blood. He then let it fall to the ground just as casually. He fixed Michaelson with a merciless glare and Cara saw true terror in the eyes of the haughty Master of the New York Coven. Michaelson’s eyes bulged as blood oozed from their corners. His lips parted but Cara was not sure if it was to beg for mercy or scream in anguish. Either way she never found out. A short, gurgling sound was all that escaped the Master before blood seeped from his mouth as well. He was being made to asphyxiate on his own blood. A cold shiver passed through Cara. If the Dark Prince could inflict this much torment and pain on a person without ever laying a hand on them, she shuddered to think what he was capable of accomplishing when he did. When he spoke his tone was laced with a detached coldness Cara never wanted to be on the receiving end of.
“I believe it is you, nearly departed Master Michaelson, who has forfeited the quick death. Fool hearted as their actions were, Ethan and Derrick were merely following their Master’s orders. You however are guilty of much higher crimes. You failed to carry out my orders regarding the hunter. Do you know what I like even less than disobedience? Disloyalty. For your treachery you will suffer as you are now until your torture no longer amuses me. At which point I will borrow one of the hunter’s daggers to carve out your heart piece by traitorous piece.”
“Dorian,” Aiden beckoned to someone just outside the doorway.
The newcomer stepped into the room and bowed exaggeratedly. “My Liege.”
Aiden scowled at him. “Cut the crap. I’m not in the mood. See that the House is aware that anyone who attempts to ease Michaelson’s suffering in anyway will share in his punishment. And show the hunter to the library. I’ll join her in a moment.”
Dorian leisurely straightened out of the bow. A facetious smirk lingered on his face. “Yes, My Liege.” He only bowed from the waist up this time.
He turned to Cara. He fixed her with a withering stare but offered his arm nonetheless. She was sure this new vampire that seemed to be close enough to Aiden to be facetious with him without losing life or limb would just as quickly and gleefully kill her as Michaelson would have done. However, she was also sure that unlike Michaelson he was much too loyal to Aiden to act against his orders, which obviously were for her to be unharmed. Cara hesitated briefly before deciding between the lesser of two evils. In that moment, the tanned vampire standing in the middle of the room in a tailored suit was not the same vampire who sat at her grandparent’s table. He was the Dark Prince, Heir to the Dark Throne, and every bit as terrifying as all of the rumors portrayed him to be. Cara welcomed the reprieve, however brief, from the chilling presence of this version of him.
“What the hell is taking, His Darkness, so long,” Cara muttered to herself as she scanned volume after volume of literary classics.
It seemed as if it had been hours since the blonde vampire with blue eyes as cold as ice and an attitude to match left her shut up in the library. Admittedly, it had been all of ten minutes but a two year old possessed more patience than Cara and she detested waiting. On the bright side the massive library she was holed up inside was a wet dream come true. Cara loved a good book. She could shut herself away from the rest of the world and read for hours upon days at a time.
“If that is your idea of a decent wet dream, you have obviously had some really shitty points of reference.”
What the hell? Did I think that last part out loud? Cara thought to herself before addressing Aiden. “And you obviously don’t harbor a love of reading. Otherwise you would know that a good book can rival a good orgasm any day.”
She turned around to see Aiden coolly leaning against a bookshelf near the entrance. He had cleaned up since she last saw him and traded the blood-soaked Armani for a pair of nice fitting denims and a black sweater. It was a look that screamed arrogant and casual as opposed to the pompous and tailored style he sported before. The sweater clung to his broad shoulders and finely muscled chest. He oozed a heady combination of power and sex. It was enough to make her knees slightly weak. Cara blinked to clear the fog from her mind. When she opened her eyes Aiden was standing a hairsbreadth in front of her.
“Like I said, really shitty experiences. Otherwise you would know orgasms are not meant to be good.”
The way he said the word orgasm sent little jolts of electricity through her body, making her knees that much more unsteady.
“Then what they hell are they meant to be?” Cara flung the question at him. Using snappishness to smother the embers of unwanted desire.
Aiden leaned in closer to Cara and pressed his lips to the curve of her neck where her pulse beat below the lobe of her ear. “Mind-shattering,” he breathed into her flesh.
Her pulse thrummed in sync with the movement of his lips against it. The flesh his mouth touched seared with heat and tingled from little electric currents that sprung back and forth from his lips to the sensitive spot on her neck. Visions danced before her eyes: Aiden picking her up and wrapping her legs around his powerful, chiseled frame, her back forcefully connecting with the bookshelf behind them, Aiden violently thrusting in and out of her… Her knees finally gave way and buckled from under her. Cara spied an empty chair beside her and rather ungracefully landed in it moments before she would have hit the ground. She picked up a book from the table within arms reach and pretended to read its cover. She fought to keep her voice steady. “This one looks interesting. I don’t know about mind-shattering, but definitely intriguing.”
Thank God she did not sound as shaky as she felt. She would have died of mortification. Still, her voice came out too breathy for her liking.
Aiden took the book from her hands and tossed it back on the table. “I’ll have someone deliver it to you later. Afterwards, we can compare notes. Discuss which was more mind-shattering, it or me.” Aiden extended his hand as if there was no other outcome but for her to accept it.
Cara stared up at him offended. “I am not getting into bed with you. Not here and not now. Well actually, not later or ever either, but especially not here and now.”
Aiden growing tired of waiting on Cara to take his proffered hand grabbed hers and yanked her to him instead. He snaked an arm around her waist and meshed their bodies closer. He slid his nose along the length of her neck and took in her intoxicating twin scents of wild summer storms and freesias. Before he completed his business in the Americas he would have her. This hunter was becoming infectious to him. She permeated his thoughts and stirred up intolerable emotions better left unfelt. The only way to excise her from his system was to bed her. Then he could forget about her and continue on as usual.
“Of course not here and now, Hunter. We have pressing business to attend. But you delude yourself in regards to the latter. I will have you later.”Aiden let go of her just as abruptly as he had pulled her to him. “After you,” he gallantly held out his arm.
For perhaps the first time in her life Cara was rendered speechless. Aiden had told her he would have her with such conviction and authority that it held zero room for repudiation or discussion. In the back of her mind she was aware she should feel wholly offended and revolted. However, the only feelings she could muster up were a surge of desire and anticipation, which she quickly and quite forcibly replaced with steadfast, stubborn denial. She straightened her spine and held strong to that denial as she exited the library with a very hard to ignore vampire at her back.
Eight
A desolate Tuscany on a Friday night was so absurd that Cara’s mind refused to accept she and Aiden were the only beings except a lone cook and server in the upscale restaurant. Her gaze kept wandering from Aiden to the tables around them expecting to see New York’s elite and wealthy scattered about. No matter how many times she scanned the room it remained lifeless. It reminded her of the ghost towns in the old westerns she used to watch with her father as a child. Cara winced before quickly pushing the memory and its unwelcome pain to the back crevices of her mind.
“When you said we had pressing business to attend I assumed we would be doing so at the coven house.”
Aiden took a sip of his cabernet franc whose color was so richly red Cara suspected there was more in the glass than wine alone. “It is customary among my kind to discuss business over dinner. I planned for us to dine at the coven house but Michaelson was in charge of the preparations and decided to forego them in favor of killing you. You’re welcome by the way,” he winked at her.
Cara crossed her arms over her chest. “For what?”
“For stopping Michaelson from tearing out your carotid.”
“The way I see it no thank you is owed. If you had not summoned me from headquarters, your high and mighty darkness, I would never have been in a house full of vampires in the first place.”
“Touché. Consider Michaelson’s agonizing torture and a five star meal as my apologies.” Aiden’s tone sounded every bit as sincere as the words he spoke, but the mischievous glint in his eyes said differently.
“Sure why not add an air of civility to the otherwise ruthless dealings of vampires.” Cara’s tone dripped with acid. Between Michaelson’s bid to rip out her throat and Aiden getting under her skin in the library, she had had enough of vampires for one night. The sooner she and Aiden completed their business with each other the better. For that very reason she had purposely been ill mannered since they arrived at the restaurant in hopes he would hurry the conversation along to be rid of her. Regrettably it had little effect on the vampire sitting across from her, except to cause him to relax back in his chair and smile at her in amusement. Which only aggravated her even more. She would like nothing more than to knock that brazenly imperious smile off his face. She was not fool enough to physically attempt it though. She was sitting across from the Prince of Darkness himself. He could crush her like a bug without even batting an eye. She was however fool enough to attempt it with words.
“Is superfluousness and self-importance also customary among your kind because this was completely unnecessary.” Cara gestured to the empty tables around them.
Aiden simply shrugged lackadaisically. “The owner was more than adequately compensated.”
“How magnanimous of you. I’m surprised you didn’t forego bribery in lieu of threat of torture.”
“As you said, I prefer to add a touch of civility to the otherwise ruthless dealings of vampires. Why employ brutality toward that which can be just as easily accomplished with wealth and finesse. I have enough of both to last me a thousand lifetimes over. I can spare a little when the situation calls for it.”
Cara rolled her eyes at the inherent egotism in his statement. She thought back to how swiftly and mercilessly he had handled the situation with Michaelson earlier in the night. She was sure that while he may prefer civility to cruelty he had no problem reigning death and destruction down upon those who crossed him. He did not strike her as the type who tolerated betrayal or challenges to his authority very well. She saw the cracks in his mask of civility while he ripped out Michaelson’s heart. She shuddered to think about what he looked like when the mask completely peeled away. If fate were on her side she would never be around to find out.
“Was it necessary to clear everyone out?” She questioned him, still in disbelief that he had actually accomplished it.
“It was. The details of our discussion are confidential in nature, and as a general rule vampires do not dine alongside humans.”
“Of course you don’t. You vampires are far too superior to sully yourselves by associating with lowly humans. We are only worthy of being preyed and fed upon.”
Aiden sat his wine glass down and stared into her eyes. “Something tells me dear Hunter that you have not been prey in a long time. Not since the night your father was killed.”
Cara’s spine steeled as she fought the urge the leap over the table and cut the vampire’s tongue out, Prince of Darkness or not, for daring to speak of her father. Especially, when it was one of his kind who had killed him. “What the hell do you know about my father,” she hissed low and threatening.
He leaned closer to her and smiled that stupidly infuriating and dimpled grin of his. “Admittedly not much more than the Division. But I do know one thing that N.A.D.H does not… It was not a vampire who killed him.”
“Wow, that is a new one. What are you talking about? I don’t know anything? I won’t talk to a hunter. Those are the typical responses I’ve grown use to from your kind and can even understand. After all vampires protect their own. You all would never willingly or even unwillingly betray another to the humans. The penalty of doing so is torture and death. I do know that much about your culture and customs. But I have never heard vampires didn’t do it. Of course they did. What else is capable of tearing a whole the size of a grapefruit into a man’s throat? And please spare me with the maybe it was a wild animal excuse. We were on a private beach in the Caribbean.” Cara was so furious she saw red by the end of her tirade. How dare he insult her intelligence? If vampires didn't kill her father, then what the hell else did?
“I never meant to insult your intelligence. I hold it in rather high regard in fact. As for the latter, that is exactly what I intend to find out. I believe you can help me do so.”
Cara blinked both stunned and confused. Her mental shields were iron-tight, but in her anger she must have let them slip, allowing Aiden a window into her mind. That never happened. Ever. Her mental shields held under the most strenuous of circumstances. Then again, her father and his death was a more than strenuous subject. When it came up, she lost all ability for rational thought. Feelings of guilt, rage, and helplessness all seemed to break free from the recess
es of her mind at once. Cara zeroed in on the rage and used it as ammunition against the guilt and helplessness. She dropped a dagger down from her sleeve and forcefully embedded it in the wooden tabletop.
“Stay the hell out of my thoughts,” she warned Aiden.
“Learn to control them better,” he challenged her.
“Fuck you. My shields are unbreakable,” Cara spat back at him.
Aiden’s demeanor flickered to something dark and dangerous. But it happened too quickly for Cara to precisely define what it was. It was only there for an instant and gone in the next. He spoke his next words with the same smug arrogance he had displayed throughout the night. “Except at the slightest provocation with your father’s murder. Then they go to shit. Your rage should be a source of strength not weakness.”
Cara shot out of her chair and grabbed the dagger from the table, leveling it at the vampire across from her. “Again, fuck you.”
Just as soon as the words left her lips Aiden was on her. One hand curled tightly around hers that held the dagger and the other possessively cupped the nape of her neck. His pressed his body into hers, ensuring she felt the hard, rigid length of him.
He growled into her ear.
“No one speaks to me that way without consequence. While your preferred method of dealing with those that provoke you is swift and immediate, mine is more languid. It is slow and excruciating. That is twice now that you caused me provocation. Be warned, dear Hunter, upon the thrice I will exact my revenge in a pound of flesh. And in the end you will either beg me for release or beg me for death.”
Cara’s palms moistened making her grip on the dagger unsteady. Aiden’s tone was low and threatening, but at the same time it held an undercurrent of deadly desire and lust that made her unsure as to with what he was threatening her. There was no doubt his words promised endless, agonizing torture. However, Cara had the unsettling feeling that he was speaking in a sexual rather than physical sense. That frightened her even more than the prospect of physical torture, which Cara might prefer. At least then she would not be faced with the dark reality that what he was possibly threatening her with sent shivers down her spine and made neurons all over her body fire in over drive. There is a certain pleasure found in pain,” Cara found herself thinking to her horror.
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