by T. A. Grey
TEMPTING GRAY
The Untouchables
Book 2
T. A. GREY
WARNING: The story in this book contains explicit sexual content. This book is intended for mature audiences only. It contains sexually explicit scenes that may be offensive. Please keep your file in a safe area on your computer and away from minors.
This book is not transferable. If it is sold, shared, or given away it is infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and scenarios are solely the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, though references to actual events or locations may be real.
Any trademarks mentioned herein are not authorized by the trademark owners and do not in any way mean the work is sponsored by or associated with the trademark owners. Any trademarks used are specifically in a descriptive capacity.
Cover Design by: Hallie Chandler
Edited by: Lea Ellen Borg/Night Owl Editing Services
Tempting Gray (The Untouchables #2)
Copyright © November 2013 Grey Ink Press LLC
www.tagrey.com
All Rights Reserved
ALSO BY T. A. GREY
THE KATEGAN ALPHAS
Breeding Cycle
Dark Awakening
Wicked Surrender
Eternal Temptation
Dark Seduction
Tempting Whispers
THE BELLUM SISTERS SERIES
Chains of Frost
Bonds of Fire
Ties That Bind
The Fallen King
THE UNTOUCHABLES
Take Me
Tempting Gray
THE MacKELLEN ALPHAS
The Loneliest Alpha
STANDALONE WORKS
Capturing Jeron
Jace
Midnight Sex Shop
Ecstasy Overload
Evernight Romance Anthology –
‘The Vampire’s Mate’
Dedication
To all of those who share their love and support with me.
PROLOGUE
Castle Glimmeric, Northern Ireland
100 years past
Of all the things he’d be doing on his mating day, shivering on a balcony in the middle of nowhere was not something that had crossed Grayson Blackmoore’s mind.
A puff of white cloud billowed from his cold breath as he sighed with resignation. The cloudy sky looked like a gray mass hovering above. Moonlight lit the sky into a hazy glow. Snow graced the hilly landscape with such suffocating density that Gray couldn’t tell what was tree from road anymore. Then again, out here where more vampires lived than humans, at one of the last standing vampire strongholds, maybe Castle Glimmeric was the last sign of life here in the deep wilderness.
The outside air did nothing to alleviate the pressure against his lungs keeping him from sucking in a full breath of air. His heart hammered far too hard and too loud for his liking. A sign of weak nerves. He hated it. He yearned for the day he could keep his chaotic emotions under control. As it was, every single day felt like a battle.
There’s always been something wrong with him, he suspected. Though he didn’t dare speak a word of his suspicions to a living soul, not even his new brothers. Any one of them was liable to slip his secret to his father and then Grayson would never live down the humiliation. Or worse, the failure to his mother. Besides, how did he try to explain that whenever someone was in trouble he felt compelled to help them? That he cared about people, their interests, their lives, everything in a way that no one else seemed to. All his life he’d felt like he was always seeing people through a different pair of eyes than everyone else did. Even though he knew that couldn’t be true. He wasn’t different or special. If anything, he was nobody.
A thud not far away sent Grayson spinning around on the balls of his pristine leather boots. They’d been shined, tailored, and created solely for this ceremony. All the time and money spent on the boots alone could have been saved. Grayson would have easily done the ceremony barefoot. The silver sword hanging from his hip swung as he turned around.
Please be my father.
The sooner this day was over, the better.
Grayson tugged on the heavy metal ring that served as a doorknob. The castle had seen better years. It looked worn from years of dealing with harsh winds and cold winters—much how the weather was today. In fact, Grayson had seen several pillars holding up the second story of the house which looked in desperate need of repair. It was only a matter of time before those pillars toppled down. It might not kill a vampire, but if it caught an unlucky subject’s head in the process—then there was no coming back from that. Even a Were couldn’t survive decapitation.
The sound came again, this time of someone singing—Grayson pressed his ear to the door to hear better. Even with his vampire hearing, the voice, that of a girl, sounded far down the hall. Her voice. That voice held him spellbound.
May the wind blow and the trees grow and the wild things grow all around them!
It sounded like an old folk tune. The voice faded as the girl moved further away. Grayson pushed away from the door to pace. Where was his father anyway? His father had ordered Grayson to stay here until the ceremony was ready, then his father would retrieve him. Not even his brothers were allowed to stay.
His mother’s words came to him. You must be strong, my love. You must impress your father, do what he tells you, and you will succeed in ways I never could. At the time, only years ago, Grayson had raged inwardly at his mother’s command. He’d do anything for her. But that had nearly broke him. To leave his mother behind in Turkey and go on to be raised by a man who’d done nothing more than impregnate his mother had changed Grayson. In that time though he’d learned a precarious respect for his father, his new brothers, and even his step-mother. Though every action he made, every choice he decided, was for his mother.
From the hallway, Grayson heard a crash and the sound of a feminine yelp. He only hesitated for a moment before breaking his father’s word and leaving the room. He found a girl kneeling on the ground over a broken vase. She was hurriedly trying to clean the mess. Her frantic gaze darted up to meet his.
“Please, could you help me?” The soft, breathless question had Grayson walking down the hallway toward her. A look of such relief swept across her face that Grayson couldn’t help but smile at her. That’s when she smiled back. Her smile packed a punch like a hard right hook. Everything turned upside down. He forgot where he was, why he was there, who he was. Her smile dazzled him.
The girl had the prettiest hair Grayson had ever seen. It swept down to her slender waist and hung in curling waves. It wasn’t her hair that he couldn’t tear his gaze away from though—it was her eyes. Gray eyes much like the cloudy sky he’d been looking at.
“Thanks for your help,” she said.
Grayson picked up the pieces and disposed of them in a bin. He felt awkward standing there staring at this beautiful girl. And she kept smiling at him, which only made him smile back, but he had no idea what he was smiling for.
Finally, he snapped the heels of his boots together and remembered to bow as he’d been taught. The girl did not bow back however. Instead, she pressed three fingers over her mouth and giggled, her cheeks turning a pretty red. He’d made her blush. Another strange feeling came, this one warm and pleasurable.
“Grayson Blackmoore, at your service, my lady,” he recited as he’d been taught.
Another giggle, this one softer but lasting much longer. “Grayson Blackmoore? Impossible.” The smile she gave him dazed him. “You’re far too nice to be
a stuck-up Blackmoore.”
She was teasing him. A girl hadn’t teased him since… Grayson struggled to think of a single time. No matter how hard he tried to recall a name, a face of any girl who’d flirted with him, had smiled at him like this girl did, not one had since coming to live with his father. He was the Blackmoore son no one wanted to talk about. He came from the womb of a mistress whose blood was not wealthy.
“In that case,” the girl said, bringing him back to reality, “I’m Anita of Redenver.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to admonish her—impossible! She was not his—the woman who would become his mate on this day—when the floor dropped beneath their feet. One moment Grayson stood before the beautiful girl, and in the next, he had her pulled close as the floor gave way.
The floor caved in with an explosion that surely shook the entire castle. Rocks rained down upon Grayson’s back, cutting his jacket and scraping skin, but he did what he was always good at—protecting people. With the girl in his arms, he used his speed to land on the ground only seconds before rocks pummeled all around them. Grayson leapt out of the way. No sooner than he’d made clear of the wreckage, did the whole ceiling collapse in.
He took in his surroundings. They were now one floor below where they’d been. The door to this room was caved in by the tons of stone, debris, and dirt now filling the space. He didn’t see any way out without removing the heavy rock encasing them inside what looked like a small storage room. There were crates of vegetables and fruits, barrels of wine, blood, and beer stacked to the ceiling. Some had been crushed when the floor gave and now the scent of alcohol permeated the room with its bittersweet scent.
“My father’s going to kill me!” The girl pulled at her hair. “I wasn’t supposed to go off wondering by myself, and now look at this mess.”
“I think we have bigger things to worry about,” Grayson said. He started lifting away rocks, trying to make his way toward the door. Only, for every rock he moved, more came falling down from above. Beneath the rubble were crushed, heavy boulders. Those would be impossible for him to try to lift. Maybe one day he’d be strong enough but not now.
The girl smiled. “It looks as if we have time to spare until we’re rescued. Why don’t tell me who you really are?”
One eyebrow went up. “I’ve already told you.”
The girl narrowed her eyes on him, assessing. After a minute, she smiled and batted her lashes. “If you’re Grayson Blackmoore then I’m Anita of Redenver house. At your service, my lord.” She performed a grandiose bow.
“I really am Grayson Blackmoore.” He felt this need to make her understand. He really was who he was, but who was she? Somewhere deep inside him he knew she couldn’t be Anita of Redenver, the woman he was to meet for the very first time tonight. He had yet to see Anita’s face, had only heard whispers of her appearance from others. The whispers he’d heard spoke of dark brown hues in her hair, eyes the color of oak. This girl couldn’t be her. She had hair men fought wars over; it was the color of a glowing candle. For a brief moment, Grayson wondered how stunning her golden blonde hair must look in the sunlight. Not that he could ever see her thusly. This girl had cloudy gray eyes not ones like oak. Surely it couldn’t be her, and yet, a part of him so strongly wished it be her that his heart nearly felt like it’d doubled in size. The new size of his heart added pressure to his lungs making it difficult to breathe and speak at the same time.
Grayson cleared his throat then snapped a pose—cocking one hand out to her, the other forming a gentle fist at his hip as his feet once again snapped together. The beginning dance move was something else he’d been taught since coming to live with his father. “Seeing as it may take some time for us to be rescued, may I ask you for this dance?”
Her reply might have made scared him if she hadn’t taken his hand as she said it. “But there is no music playing!”
Grayson swept her into a traditional dance, one where music wasn’t necessary. The beats of the music played silently in his mind as their bodies swayed in a counted rhythm.
“What if I am really Grayson Blackmoore and you really are Anita Redenver?” he asked suddenly. He hadn’t even meant to ask, yet, Grayson was dying to know the answer.
“Well I know I’m really Anita Redenver,” she said, smiling like she knew a secret.
“And I’m really Grayson Blackmoore,” he said, somewhat forcefully.
She looked contemplative. “If you’re Grayson, then why do you speak with that heavy accent? The rest of the Blackmoore’s don’t sound that way.”
“Dominic, the eldest, also speaks with an accent,” he told her. He did not explain why; only he and Dominic had accents while the rest of his family didn’t. She did not need to hear about his father’s multiple bastard sons from different women.
His hand resting over hers, his arm around the middle of her small back, her white-gloved hand holding up the top of her ball gown as they stepped in time together. She made him feel so big to her small, feminine size. Simply feeling her dancing in his arms gave him a renewed strength. Surely he could toss all those boulders away from the door one-handed now.
“Hmm. I’ve never met Dominic, I’ll have to be honest. Where are you from then?”
“Turkey. I was raised by my mother in Turkey.” No one had asked him about his past. Not since coming to live with his father in this new world. His brothers had and of course his father knew, but no one else had asked him. No one else had cared. This was the first he’d heard about his ‘heavy accent’.
She smiled and held his hand a little tighter. Where their hands joined, energy swirled. He couldn’t see it but he could feel the presence of something special in her. Maybe she really was his bruid. A flicker of hope sprung. That could explain why she made him feel so strange…so good.
“My mother’s not around. My father’s always traveling so I go with him. He’s really good at finding people. He says I’ll be better than him some day.”
“My father is Argonzo Blackmoore, president of the were and vampire council.”
Her fingers flexed at the name. Everyone knew the name of his father. He was one of the most powerful people in the world. “That’s if you’re really that awful Grayson.”
“Awful?” Surprise got the better of him.
A playful look crossed her face. “I hear Grayson is a stalwart hero who’s as impenetrable as a rock in a fight.”
That almost made him laugh. “No one says anything so poetic about me.”
“True. I believe what they really said was that you were a quiet vampire with a temper.” She threw her head back and laughed, revealing the smooth length of her neck, and the thumping pulse beating beneath the skin. Gray tried to force his gaze away from her vein. Too late! He saw the throbbing vein. The muscles in his neck locked tight in a painful knot as he straightened his spine. His fangs distended. Only weak, or young vampires couldn’t control their compulsion to feed at the sight of a vein. Panic grabbed at him. How shameful to reveal his fangs to her, to show weakness to this woman.
No! Grayson’s heart beat frantically, sweat slicked the back of his neck; he wouldn’t do it. Even if he had to kiss her to keep her from seeing those vile teeth. Wait. His mind slowed. Kiss her? Grayson froze, his wayward thought garnering far too much consideration.
“Are you feeling well?” Concern pulled the girl’s eyebrows into a furrow that still made her look impossibly sweet.
His eyes locked on her mouth. All he could manage in answer was a brisk shake of his head—no.
“Is there anything I can do?” Again, he shook his head. How was it he knew he needed to open his mouth and speak to her, yet he couldn’t think of a single thing to say?
He was nearly hugging her. They’d long stopped dancing. They merely stood there touching each other. Suddenly words he hadn’t known he wanted to say burst from him. “Please tell me if you are her!” He shook her with the question. “I must know.”
The smile on her face faded. Melanch
oly transformed her face into something beautifully sad. The look made his own heart break into pieces. “Are you truly Grayson Blackmoore or are you funning me, my lord?”
Just then the sound of rocks being removed began. They’d been found. People on the other side of the rubble started clearing it out. The crashing of stone made it difficult to answer her without yelling. Grayson grabbed the girl’s hand and pulled her further back into the room as dust and small rocks trickled down from the pile.
When he had her attention he told her, “I am.”
She blinked as if she’d forgotten what he was talking about. Then she remembered. Grayson must admit he wasn’t prepared for the impact her stricken face had on him. He nearly took back his words—however stupid that’d be. He nearly denied truly being Grayson; he’d do anything, to remove that expression from her face. Anything.
The rocks were being pulled away faster. They didn’t have much time. Grayson felt like he held a delicate kite in his hands on a thin string and the wind was whipping by trying to tear the kite from him.
Leaning close he asked, “Are you her?”
Her lips parted before she fixed her expression into an unreadable mask. He hated the look; she was hiding something. That secret look made his stomach plummet. But her next move caught him completely by surprise. The beautiful blonde Were, not the dark-haired vampire who he’d be mating with tonight, stepped up on the tips of her toes and pressed her lips to his.
It was Grayson Blackmoore’s first kiss.
Grayson jerked in surprise, but didn’t sever their tentative connection. Their breaths stirred, mingled. Eyes stayed locked in a warm embrace. Gently, he pressed his lips more firmly against hers. Their lips touched completely now. He yearned to close his eyes and kiss her properly, but he could hear voices now. The wall was nearly torn down.