Holidays Bite: A Limited Edition Collection of Holiday Vampire Tales

by Laura Greenwood

  Slowly, the music morphed and changed. Saxophones began to sing, and the first blare of the trumpets hit right as she reached Owen.

  “Let’s show them how it’s done.” She smiled up at him. “You do know what you’re doing on the dance floor, yes?”

  He chuckled at that. “Baby girl, I think I can teach you a thing or two.”

  She didn’t have time to respond before his hands were guiding her toward him once more as they danced a merengue first. As the music changed, they switched to a salsa, and finally a cumbia before she knew she needed to tap out. They had been too caught up in the music and each other to notice the crowd gathering to watch them. As they started to slow down, Charlotte saw a flash of silver in the crowd, and her heart began to thud in her chest.

  “Can we dance our way out of here, do you think?” she whispered as she looked at the crowd.

  “I think if we did, they’d follow,” he whispered in her ear, his mouth so close that his breath seemed to caress her flesh as he spoke.

  She took a deep breath. Everything would be fine. She just needed to get out of the ballroom for a while and away from prying eyes. When they came to a standstill and the music changed to something stodgier, the crowd applauded lightly, and she and Owen took an awkward bow before departing the dance floor.

  “I have to go mingle for a while, but please don’t leave without saying goodbye,” Owen said as he took her hand and kissed her knuckles. It was enough to make a girl get butterflies. As one brother left her, she turned and found another brother waiting for her just outside the glass double doors that led to the balcony. As she wove through the crowd, people complimented her on her dancing, and being raised in a royal household, with the expectation of setting a good example at all times, she smiled and thanked everyone. Silas was waiting and watching as she made her way toward him, and that let loose a whole swarm of butterflies.

  “Hey, I’m glad you came,” the vampire prince said, although his tone was cool.

  “I wanted to apologize for disappearing on you the other night. There’s a lot we don’t know about each other, and Julian seemed intent on finding out everything all at once.”

  “He’s like a dog with a bone sometimes,” Silas said, shaking his head. After a moment, he added, “Those are quite the dancing feet you’ve got there. Where did you learn how to dance?”

  “I had lessons as a kid.” Charlotte knew she needed to change the topic or face a deluge of questions about her past. “Did you have any luck finding a mate at the last ball?”

  A storm cloud passed over the prince’s face before he looked at her and grinned. “There was one candidate, but she ran off after my brother interrogated her.”

  Her heart froze in her chest. Not one, but two of the brothers were thinking about pursuing her as their mate? “I’m not a suitable candidate. You need to find someone else.”

  “Why aren’t you? You came to the ball, and I see no wedding ring.”

  “It’s complicated,” she said as her brain frantically tried to cobble together something that was truthful enough that he wouldn’t sense the lie, but also wasn’t actually the truth.

  “You’re here!” Julian’s voice rang out over the balcony, saving her from further explanations.

  “I am, but I’ll need to leave soon. I just wanted to wish Owen a happy birthday,” she said, hedging her bets.

  “That show the two of you put on was spectacular,” Julian gushed.

  “Thank you.” She dipped her head in the same way she did as a maid. It was only after she had done it that she realized they might recognize the behavior. When neither of them said anything, though, she decided not to worry about it.

  “Listen, I know I was a jackass last week, and I wanted to apologize. It’s been on my mind since you left. Everyone is entitled to their own secrets, and I shouldn’t have been so suspicious. I got this for you to make it up to you,” Julian said, handing her the small black velvet box that had a white ribbon tied around it.

  “Julian . . .”

  “You have to take it. I can’t bear it if you don’t let me apologize. Please.”

  She had been doing fine until he whispered that please. Reluctantly, she took the box, and when he looked at her expectantly, she opened it. The white satin ribbon slid against her fingers in the most tantalizing way before she tugged on the top of the box.

  Inside lay a silver bracelet. It looked like a garland, but it was dotted with diamonds and pearls next to the leaves. “I can’t accept this,” she whispered.

  “I got it just for you,” Julian said.

  “I helped pick it out, and so did Owen.”

  She looked up at the two brothers, glancing between them as she tried to figure out what to do.

  “Do you want me to put it on?” Julian asked, taking the lack of a second protest as acquiescence. She didn’t have the heart to refuse him again, especially when they were the first friendly people she’d talked to in almost a year. Most of the staff ignored her, and she was usually fine with it, but now, she wasn’t sure how she was going to cope after the balls were over with. Going back to being plain Jane the housemaid and generally catch-all servant wasn’t exactly an exciting prospect.

  As she realized that Julian was still waiting for a response, her words still wouldn’t come out, so instead, she just nodded. He deftly removed it from the case, which he handed off to Silas, and clasped it around her wrist. The silver was warm, as though it had been tucked in his pocket all night, just waiting to see if she would show up.

  “It’s beautiful,” she breathed, looking at how the delicate metalwork and gems wrapped around her skin. “Thank you!” Without thinking, she popped up on her tiptoes and wrapped an arm around both brothers, pulling them in for a hug.

  As she pulled back, something in the air changed, and lust seemed to assail her from all sides. These brothers would be the death of her.

  “By the Maker, that dress should be illegal, Charlotte,” Silas groaned as his hand slipped down her satiny side.

  “Agreed,” Julian murmured as his hand trailed down her arm until he could hold her hand. “Thank you for accepting my gift and my apology.”

  “Kind of hard to say no to two princes,” she teased.

  “You can if you want, though,” Silas said, suddenly serious as worry creased his brow. “We don’t want our titles or jobs to force you to do something, or accept something, you don’t want.”

  “He speaks the truth,” Julian added. “If you truly don’t want the gift, I will take it back.”

  “I love it. It’s perfect. I just haven’t had anyone give me a gift in so long. It feels weird, if that makes any sense,” she said, blushing profusely under their attentions.

  “If you were ours, we would shower you with gifts until you begged us to stop,” Silas growled.

  “Ours?” She breathed the word, and it seemed to dance in the air, saturating it with possibilities as her mind reeled, imagining herself the center of attention of the three princes. Her whole body tingled and grew hot while the pregnant silence hung in the air.

  Silas kept rubbing his hand lightly up and down her side while Julian stepped closer. His full lips parted slightly as he moved slowly toward her. Finally, it was too much. She couldn’t wait for him to inch closer any longer, so she pushed up on her toes, not that she had much height to gain considering the heels she was wearing, and brushed her lips against his.

  A groan of approval had Julian’s arm slipping around her waist and pulling her tightly against him while Silas moved against her back, effectively sandwiching her between them. Her whole body lit up with need and the burn of her desire. The pull she felt toward both of them made her feel like the sea under the sway of the moon, except in this case, there were three moons and she was drawn to each of them equally. Hands in more places than she could pay attention to had her moaning into the kiss. Silas’s mouth came down on the exposed side of her neck, and she had to mentally stop herself from climbing the two of them
and wrapping her legs and arms around them in an effort to keep this one blindingly pleasurable moment from being ruined.

  “Princess Charlotte?” an unfamiliar voice called behind them. The three of them jumped apart like teenagers caught in the act. Silas had moved away, and she was frozen in place, praying to the Maker that when she turned around, it would be someone else standing there.

  “Can we help you?” Silas asked.

  Her eyes traveled over the mage. He was older, clearly wealthy based on his robes, and was most definitely a member of the Bloodmoon clan. His silver hair and eyes combined with his blood-red lips were dead giveaways. She knew he was using glamor to make his skin appear a more human shade and not the blue-tinged hue it naturally was.

  “Princess Charlotte, we’ve all been so worried!” He took a step toward her as he spoke. She backed up, almost stumbling over her dress as she did so.

  “You-you have the wrong person,” she said quietly as she took another step back and partially hid herself behind Silas.

  “I think you should return to the ballroom,” Julian said. His voice was kind, but she saw the tension thrumming through his body, his muscles tense for an attack.

  “But our princess has been missing for so long! Please, Princess, come home!” The mage’s voice got louder as he became more desperate.

  “I’m not your princess. I’m sorry,” she said, knowing that her lie was probably obvious to the two vampires.

  Charlotte couldn’t worry about that now, though. Now she needed to get away from all of them. Silas and Julian closed in on the man, forcing him to back up through the doors to the ballroom or stand firm with them crowding him and invading his personal space. No mage would ever allow that since they were all trained from birth to always have enough room to work magic.

  While they were distracted, she hurried through the other set of doors, even more thankful that she had made the slit in the skirt of her dress. As she wove through the crowd, she glanced over her shoulder and found Silas and Julian watching her escape while they each had a hand on the mage’s shoulder.

  Her eyes sought out Owen on the dance floor with another woman who was contentedly chatting away while the prince’s eyes were locked on Charlotte. She mouthed the word “sorry” and slipped through one of the side doors that only the servants knew about. It was her only option without exposing herself on the stairs. At least going through the side door gave her a crowd to use as a shield.

  Chapter 7

  Morning came much too soon, as Charlotte had only ended up going to bed in the early hours of dawn. She had even been able to see the pink rays of first light touching the treetops before she disappeared into her room for a couple of hours of sleep. Now, as she emerged with her disguise securely in place, her limbs were leaden, and moving felt like she was trying to walk through waist-high water.

  “Come on, lazybones. I’ve almost got breakfast for the princes ready. You take it upstairs to their formal room while I work on breakfast for the rest of the house. Don’t disturb them, though. Apparently there was some commotion last night about a female mage, so I’m sure they will be sleeping late today,” Chef said when Charlotte appeared in the kitchen. Usually she was up before Chef, with the food laid out for cooking and her other morning duties well underway.

  “Sorry, Chef, I’m not feeling well. Maybe someone else should take the food?” she asked, hoping that illness would excuse her from anything that would lead her to running into the princes.

  “I’m up to my elbows in dough, so you’ll have to do it. There’s no one else here today. Besides, it’s not like the princes can catch a cold,” Chef grumbled.

  “Yes, Chef,” she said, moving to pick up the large tray and take it upstairs.

  It felt like it weighed as much as she did as she carried it through the servants’ quarters and upstairs. Just as she went to open the door, she realized she’d never taken off the bracelet from the night before. Somehow it already felt like a piece of jewelry she was used to wearing to the point that she was shocked to find it on her wrist. She was also surprised that the bracelet wasn’t covered by her magic from the amulet, since it was designed to do just that. Without her ring or any other sharp object to prick her finger, she just had to mutter an incantation to hide it as fast as she could before anyone became suspicious of a maid wearing a few thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry on her wrist. As she came to the formal room that held the entrance to the princes’ suite the door opened just as Charlotte finished the incantation, and she almost fell forward into the room.

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize there was someone coming, Your Highness,” she said quietly with her head bowed.

  “It was my fault. I moved too quickly. Please, come in,” Julian said as she walked past him and set the tray on the table. Her body flushed with the same desire from the night before.

  “Did you see that tarantula video I sent you two?” Julian asked as Silas and Owen entered the room.

  Part of her wanted to linger and listen to the conversation, but she’d made it through without them realizing who she was so far, and she didn’t want to push her luck, so she just dropped into a quick curtsy before leaving the room and hurrying downstairs. There was still plenty of work to do to get the house cleaned up after the ball last night, and she knew that after barely getting any sleep the previous night, she was working on borrowed time before she collapsed with exhaustion.

  While her mind raced with thoughts of the brothers, she mentally scolded herself for becoming too attached. It wasn’t like they could ever be hers. She was so busy cleaning and chasing her own thoughts around in her head that she hadn’t even heard them approach.

  “So who are you really?” Owen’s voice sounded, slicing through her thoughts and making her freeze mid-motion.

  “Wh-what?” Charlotte stammered. Her necklace was in place, and she had no reason to think that she looked any different than she should. “I apologize, Your Highness, I’m not sure I understand the question.”

  “Don’t lie to us, Charlotte.” Silas sighed. He’d called her Charlotte, as though he could see exactly who she was, who she really was, not Jane or street rat.

  “Your Highness, please . . .” she trailed off, unsure what she could say that would get her out of her current situation without them picking up on her lying.

  “Show us your wrists,” Julian said quietly, a sense of sadness blooming in his words.

  Without a word, she lifted her arms and prayed to anything and everything that would listen that the incantation she’d spoken earlier still held.

  It didn’t.

  At least, not judging from the way the three of them were staring at her wrist and the piece of jewelry that resided there. She had two options—either tell them the truth, or figure out a way to lie to them without actually lying, since they’d be able to sense that.

  “Is there somewhere we can go to talk?” she asked quietly.

  Julian nodded and led their little group up the stairs and back to the princes’ suite. Her heart hammered in her chest the entire time, like a hummingbird had taken up residence there. The suite seemed different somehow, but she couldn’t put her finger on what had changed, or maybe it was just her perspective that had changed. She was entering the room as Charlotte, not a nameless maid.

  “Please, have a seat,” Silas said, his voice low and colored with regret.

  Charlotte did as they asked and took a seat on one of the luxurious sofas in the living area. The three of them sat opposite or to the side of her in armchairs. She knew they were upset, possibly even angry with her for the deception, but she hoped that when they found out why, they would forgive her transgressions and allow her to stay on as a maid.

  “Is your name really Charlotte?” Owen asked.

  She nodded.

  “And are you a mage? A princess of the Bloodmoon clan?” Julian asked.

  She nodded again.

  “Why are you here, then? Why work as a maid?” Owen chimed in once aga
in.

  “It’s a long story, but I ran away from home a few years ago. When Silas found me on the streets, it had been so long since I’d had purpose or felt any kindness that I was desperate for anything he could give me. You took me in, gave me a job and a place to sleep, which was so much more than I had ever hoped for.”

  “Why did you run away?” Silas asked.

  “My family was using me as a chess piece. I was just something to be traded for a greater political alliance, more power. It was all I had ever been, and I knew my fate, but I’d never expected the man they picked.” Charlotte paused, waiting to see if they would make her say it, and when no response came to her tale, she knew they needed more before they would accept it as the truth. With a sigh, she continued. “The mage they picked was known for his . . . peculiar tastes, but was the head of the most powerful arm of the Mortemdark clan. He is five times my age, and it shows. I couldn’t give up everything for him. My freedom, my life, what little control I had, he would take away.”

  “What were his tastes?” Silas asked.

  Charlotte blanched as she remembered. “The Mortemdark clan has gifts based in necromancy. He is the most gifted necromancer who has risen within the clan’s ranks in hundreds of years. He apparently . . . um . . . has the ability to drain the living to help him raise the dead and it’s rumored he has used the ability to extend his life. He’s had a number of suspicious disappearances happen around his household, but there’s never any evidence to convict him. He’s the patriarch of his clan, and my parents wanted to form a strong alliance so that when he dies, eventually, there won’t be a power struggle and the Bloodmoon clan can rule over both as there aren’t any necromancers powerful enough to take his place.”