“How did you sleep?”
“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms and surveying the empty plate in front of her. As if they had read her thoughts someone appeared by her side, exchanging the empty plate for one laden with a full English breakfast. Her stomach grumbled at the irresistible smell of bacon and sausages that wafted up to her. To be honest, it had been a long time since she’d had something that wasn’t directly out of a can.
“I suppose your connections with the auction houses extends as well to the farmers that supply the inner city?” She glanced up at Nero, who merely nodded as she looked back down at the food again.
“It’s not poisoned,” he said chidingly as she picked up her fork and loaded it up with a full sausage.
“Poison would be better than bled dry, I assure you.” She returned the tone as she shovelled half the sausage into her mouth. The grease and juice exploded in her mouth and she couldn’t resist a moan of delight as she chewed on it.
The next time she made eye contact with Nero he was staring at her with bemusement, “good then?” He teased as she finished off the rest of the sausage in one swallow.
“The way to a woman’s heart is meat.”
“I’ll remember that for future use then.” He was amused with her as he watched her attack the plate with savagery. When she finished off a plate someone anticipated her needs and was by her side with a second one, then a third and by then she was starting to feel full. When she looked back up at Nero, he was sipping from a wine glass but her mind knew that the contents, although the colour of merlot, was not wine at all.
“I have business in the city tonight, but I wanted to see you before I left.”
“Right,” she said as she picked up her water glass and swished her mouth clean. It was comments like that which made her believe there was an ulterior motive to his keeping her here.
“What do you have to do?” She decided to bite at the leading statement.
“Well, you caused a bit of a ruckus yesterday and so the council is asking questions about what happened. I have to clean up your mess so no one goes looking for you.”
“Why would they go looking for me?”
“Well, you saw the auction house - which you shouldn’t have. How did you find it by the way?”
“Two lieutenants led me there… But why would that matter?”
“You’re apart, or that is - you were apart, of the Desecrated and so of course if you had seen anything - which we know you did - you would’ve gone back to your leader and told them - which you did - and so that would give them a reason to want to find you and the others that might know.”
“So then what are you going to do about my leaders then?”
He gave her a judgmental look before standing up, “I’m sure I don’t have to answer that question.”
“You can’t kill them!” She leapt to her feet, thinking about her sister… Tate, Orion, Blast, Striker and all the others she’d come to class as family. There had to be another way, an alternative to offer them.
“It is you or them,” he said back, his voice just as loud and sharp as hers.
“Then me! Choose me every time!” she said, grabbing his arm and forcing him to look down at her. He glared at her, a heated look in his eyes. The second pull on his arm drew him into action, just not the kind she had wanted. He moved before she even had the chance to blink, his hands curled around her upper arms as he backed her into the China cabinet. The carefully chiselled wood bit into her lower back as his body pressed hard and possessive against her. His eyes were on fire as they stared down at her a burning passion she’d never seen before ignited there.
“Never. I would never risk you for some lowlifes.” His voice was tight with restraint. If this was him holding himself together, she didn’t know what it would look like if he let go completely.
“They aren’t lowlifes, they’re my family.” She struggled in his grip, trying to pull herself from the tightness of it and regain the upper hand.
“Your sister is your family and she is safe and free. But the others have been dealt with.”
“It’s done already?” It felt as though someone had taken a bucket of ice and dropped it down the back of her shirt. Reality around her spun. Tate was dead, Orion - gone, what of the breeders? Innocent women who had just been looking to avoid patronage. Her throat was too tight to ask, the probable truth too much for her to voice.
“Of course,” he said with the cold tone of someone delivering the answer to a math problem. But this wasn’t such a stupid, emotionless thing. She felt numb with horror as she stared at him. She wanted to hate him and yell at him, blame him for all of this, but that wasn’t true was it? She had done this… It was her fault.
Her knees buckled and if not for his steel grip on her arms she would’ve fallen to the floor, “no…”
Nero gathered her in his arms, holding her completely upright against his chest. He didn’t seem bothered by the weight he carried, keeping her off her toes completely. It was a good thing too, she would’ve been a heap on the floor.
“I am sorry for your loss.” It was the same dead tone he had used on her before. He wasn’t sorry, but he was trying to be kind. It was an uncharacteristically gentle gesture and she hated it.
“It had to be done,” he carried on talking, trying to justify his choice. When had he passed the order - because that’s what it had been wasn’t it?
He’d sent some of his guards to her home and massacred her family. Had they fed on them? Was there bits of them splattered on the wall? Quill pictured all the grisly details behind her closed eyes. Each image making her hate him more and more. Why did he pick her? What was she doing here?
“Or they would’ve come, we would be in danger here…” She had tuned out what he was saying, she didn’t care. “Your sister would’ve been ripped apart or worse. I am truly sorry for your loss, but this is the way it had to be.” He didn’t sound sorry at all, no matter how much he said it that much she knew as she glared at him.
She tried to shake his hands off of her, but he held fast. They stared at one another; her: fuelled by hatred and him: fuelled by passion.
“Why me?” She asked the burning question on her mind. She didn’t expect him to answer. Like all the times before he would change the subject and she would be left in the dark again.
“Why not you?” he countered with a smooth cock of his eyebrow. She growled in frustration, receiving a chuckle in response. “Because you took my Rose,” he said, repeating himself like always.
“You owe me a debt,” she finished for him with a sprinkle of sarcasm. She pushed both her hands into his chest and forced him away from her. He wanted her to live with the guilt of having killed her friends. That had to be it then. He wasn’t going to physically hurt her, but he would mentally torture her.
“When you’re ready I’ll tell you the truth, Isabelle.”
“Fuck your truth, Lord Nero.” She shoved him again, and this time he released her before she turned and stomped out of the dining room. Her single-minded thought was to get away from him so she heading back upstairs to her bedroom. But she knew even there she wouldn’t be able to escape him. She had nowhere to go.
Halfway up the stairs she turned and looked at the front door. It only took her a few seconds to rush to the door, slipping through it and past the bewildered guards standing on lookout. She hurried down the steps and started across the vast plains of the property. Nero didn’t follow her, which she was thankful for. It was for the best if he didn’t have a death wish. He might be old and difficult to kill but right now vengeance bubbled through her veins and she would find a way to get it.
Quill stomped around the grounds for as long as it took to cool down. Her mind was racing too much to focus on any singular thought or emotion. She yo-yoed between feeling heartbroken, guilty, worried and severely pissed off. Then there was, of course, the hopelessness she felt at being trapped here with nowhere to escape to anymore.
As she st
arted to feel a little more calm, she realised someone was following her and she frowned, turning around to face him. He at least had the decency to not even try to act like he hadn’t been skulking around behind her as he stepped from the shadows and approached her.
“Are you my bodyguard?”
“I’m just here to make sure you don’t go anywhere.”
“Where can I go now? My home, as I knew it, has been destroyed now. He saw to that. It’s like he needed to give me a reason to stay with him.” The vampire guard didn’t say anything to her so she turned and kept walking. There was nothing else he could offer her if he weren’t willing to at least offer her words. She was sure Nero would be faithful to his promise that none of his people would be willing to get involved with her.
She was his.
The words made her shiver at the implication behind them. What did that mean for her future? Would she eventually become a subscriber to him? Would she eventually fall to her knees and offer him his neck?
No. Never. She would never do that. No matter what happened she would never let him have that part of herself.
Rounding back around the property she walked back up the steps, feeling childish and embarrassed as the eyes of the guards at the front door watched her go back into the house like a chastised child. She walked up the stairs to her bedroom and closed the door, uselessly locking it as she slumped onto the bed and stared at the wall.
She didn’t know what else she could do now that the anger had subsided and given away to defeat. She hated the feeling but without Nero she had nothing here. She had to rely on him. Perhaps that’s what he had wanted. She would feel better if she had a weapon though and for a moment she considered making one.
Then the thought struck her: somewhere here, behind one of those forbidden doors, she could find a weapon that he kept in some secret armoury. She couldn’t imagine he would dispose of any weapons that his guards took off of people who entered the property. They were too valuable and it would be a waste to not keep them, just in case.
But then, if she did find it and took something from it, he would know she had snooped. He would know she had something dangerous to defend herself with. No, she wanted something he didn’t know about, just in case. Something no one knew about and then maybe she could take back a little bit of the control that she felt slip through her fingers the longer she stayed here with him.
Grabbing the mattress she hauled it up and pushed it aside, revealing the slats of the bed underneath. Prying one out of its holder she quickly replaced the mattress so no one had any reason to suspect. Sitting down on the bed she turned the slat piece over and over her hands, considering how she was going to carve a stake without a knife or anything.
Balancing the two sides of the slat in between her hands she pressed them in toward each other. The wood they’d used for the bed was flimsy and flexible, it caved under the pressure she exerted and after a few tries snapped in satisfaction. One piece was more pointed than the other so she discarded the piece she had on the bed, moving into the bathroom to look around for anything sharp enough to carve the stake.
Nero had been true to his word, ensuring there was enough to keep her comfortable - including a razor. He must’ve deemed the item safe. She grinned to herself and filled the tub up with warm water, pushing the wood underneath and watching it swell. When it was soft enough she pulled it back out and sitting on the closed toilet she worked the razor’s edge slowly along the point.
It was slow, tiresome work, but she soon had managed to fashion the wood into a decent enough point. The razor hadn’t fared as well. Dropping the useless beauty tool into the bin she grabbed the stake and brought it back into the bedroom.
She set it on the windowsill to dry before sitting on the bed again. She didn’t feel any safer with the stake when the only thing she knew that guaranteed real safety was knowledge. She needed the truth from Nero about why she was here without the facades and masks he used with ease. If she was going to accept being here with him, she needed to know everything.
Her hands were shaking with nerves as she walked through the second floor looking for his room. She suspected his room was the one guarded by two surly looking vampires eying her with suspicion as she approached them.
“You can’t go in there.” The one to the right spoke first, angling his body so he loomed in front of the door but also over her. Pulling herself together, calling on the cool, steely killer that lived under the surface she rose to her full height, letting him know he didn’t scare her.
“Nero asked me to wait for him in his bedroom.” Righty looked at Lefty for confirmation before looking back at her.
“He didn’t mention anything to us.”
This was the moment she suspected she would have to reveal her cards to the guards. Slowly unwrapping the robe from around her waist she let the silk kimono hang at her sides. Underneath she wore an intricate piece of lingerie: black bands of material wrapping along her chest in a very revealing bra that held her cleavage up on display while the bottom half was manufactured carefully to hide the important bits but be just as enticing as the top half.
She knew it was working by the way the eyes of the guards swept over her body appreciatively, working their way from the curve of her breasts down the hard toning of her stomach from years of rigorous training down to her thick, curved thighs.
“Are you going to make him wait when he comes home and finds you didn’t let me in?” she asked in a curt tone, snapping both guards out of their appreciative gaze.
“No. Just - turn around and let us make sure you have no weapons behind you.” She swept up the bottom of the robe, her motions careful to avoid knocking the concealed stake from its resting spot and she lifted it up high enough as she turned around. She doubted they were looking for weapons as much as admiring the thong shape of this awful outfit she was wearing.
“Alright, go in.” Lefty opened the door for her and she dropped the robe, tugging it tightly around her as she walked past them. They whispered something to each other, but their practiced tones were deaf to a mortal ear like hers.
CHAPTER 8
His bedroom wasn’t exactly what she expected, but then she hadn’t considered what to expect from a vampire’s bedroom. Firstly, there was a real bed and not a coffin. She didn’t know if that was more disturbing than the other might have been. The shades were opened to let the full moon’s light waft into the room like soft waves illuminating the otherwise dark and rich room.
There was a collection of items littered about that spoke of how long he had been alive for. She wanted to ask him about the lives he had lived and about the things he had seen.
She fingered the stake in her pocket as she moved to the window and stared thoughtfully out it. If she ran how far would she get before they caught up to her? Not long, she reasoned, she’d seen how fast he’d moved yesterday to catch the falling vase. There were so many questions she had but every time she was around him her mind became muddled and confused. She forgot so easily what it was she wanted from him. In fact, she forgot herself entirely sometimes. That could be an effect of something he was doing to her with his compulsion.
The door opened behind her and she turned sharply, not having expected him back so soon. The surprise registered on both their faces as they stared down at each other.
“Isabelle,” he said as though he’d anticipated her all along, closing the door behind him and moving into the room, a vague look of interest on his face.
“Nero,” she returned, turning back to the window afraid to make eye contact with him.
“What brings you to my chambers unannounced?”
She took a deep breath, not naive enough to think he hadn’t heard her as she let the robe go a little bit feeling its silkiness slide off her shoulders and dip low on her back.
Nero’s eyes devoured each inch of milky flesh she revealed under the material, but there was something wrong in her submissiveness. This was not how he wanted this moment to go.
The fight couldn’t truly be gone already; perhaps she wasn’t the woman he thought she was.
“Are you here for sex then?” He teased her, making her burn hot with embarrassment as if this crass seduction wasn’t embarrassing enough.
“Is that what you want from me?” She glanced over her shoulder at him and there was something predatory in his gaze, it made her shiver but not out of fear.
Nary a breath had passed her lips and he was suddenly behind her. His hands were ice, ghosting along the curve of her exposed spine. She felt her body shudder from the sensation of his fingertips, so gentle and considering. She didn’t even notice she was holding her breath, her complete attention attuned to the closeness of his body and the longing she suddenly felt throb through her.
The danger and threat he presented was intoxicating, but more so than that it was the extreme control he exerted over her. She could tell every little motion and movement he made was carefully calculated and nothing was out of his control. She wanted to be the reason he was out of control. But then she also wished to drive this stake through him.
Shaking herself from her confusion she turned slowly into his arms, looking up at him while his eyes roamed the display below him. The way he watched her was different from the devouring gaze of his guards outside the door. To Nero, she wasn’t a meal to be consumed but she could see in his eyes she was the chef. There was power in that role, her ability to create what he wanted but also the ability to withhold it from him.
It was a power she planned to use.
“To the bed,” she commanded, pressing gently against his chest to make him step away. As she suspected, he submitted not without ensuring she understood he was doing this because she asked and not because she presented a threat. She wondered if he had ever had a woman stand up for herself in a position like this with him. She doubted it by the way he spoke of them.
Desecrated Beauty (Twisted Fairy Tales #1) Page 8