The Secret Vampire Society

by Lisa Childs

  The doctor snorted his disgust. “She was a movie star. People would have questioned why she never aged. At least they would have fifty years ago. The secret society would have been discovered. She couldn’t live forever.”

  “But she didn’t die,” Conner reminded the doctor, whose dark eyes burned with madness.

  “I was going to kill her,” Dr. Hoekstra insisted. “But she was so beautiful…and so frightened and confused.”

  Conner closed his eyes on a wave of regret, imagining how she must have felt when she’d regained consciousness to a new reality. To eternity. “Miranda…”

  “I realized I could use her fear to persuade her to disappear. So I convinced her to hide,” the doctor explained, “from you. I told her that you’d tried to kill her, that you wanted her dead.”

  And she had believed the crazy doctor because Conner hadn’t been there when she’d awakened. He’d left her lifeless body with the doctor, believing the physician when Dr. Hoekstra had pronounced her dead.

  The man continued, “I told her she needed to hide or that you would find her and finish the job.”

  Conner laughed at the doctor’s failure. “Instead of hiding from me, she spent fifty years tracking me down.” For vengeance, not love, he reminded himself.

  Dr. Hoekstra sighed in acceptance of his defeat. “I should have killed her when you brought her to me. I should have killed her then.”

  Conner shook his head. “No. Except for lying to her and me, you did the right thing. She was no threat to the secret society. She’s one of us now.” No matter how much she resented being a monster.

  “After tonight, after the documentary that aired, there’s renewed interest in her disappearance,” Dr. Hoekstra pointed out. “People will start investigating what happened to her, and we can’t risk them discovering the truth.”

  “We?”

  “The society,” the doctor said as he lifted a wooden stake from where he’d held it below the metal surgical table. “You need to kill her for real this time, West. Or I will.”

  “I’ll take care of her.”

  Miranda shivered at the icy resolve in Conner’s deep voice as he calmly assured the doctor he would murder her. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back, silently cursing herself for being so weak that she had nearly believed his claims. He wasn’t sorry he’d taken her life; he didn’t love her.

  She’d wanted so badly to believe him. Hell, she’d just wanted him so badly. Her fingers trembling, she unclasped her purse and reached for her own wooden stake. They hadn’t seen her yet, where she lurked in the shadows of the doctor’s underground operating room. Like Conner, she’d wanted answers. Hell, she’d wanted proof that Conner had told her the truth—so that she could return to his bed, to his arms…

  She’d been such a fool. She barely held in a gasp as he reached for the stake in the doctor’s outstretched hand. He might not have meant to kill her last time, but she had no doubts about his intentions this time.

  Until he spoke again, telling the doctor, “I’ll take care of her. I won’t let you anywhere near her.”

  “Her very existence threatens the safety of the entire society,” the doctor insisted. “She has to die.”

  Conner shook his head. “You’re not going to hurt her. You’ll have to kill me first.”

  “You would have been killed,” the doctor said, “had I told anyone what you’d done, how you’d risked revealing our secret by trying to turn her.”

  “I didn’t just try,” Conner reminded the other man, “I succeeded.”

  She heard the surprise in his voice, and the relief. He really had suffered with guilt over what he’d thought he’d done to her. She hadn’t had to punish him; she suspected he’d spent the past fifty years punishing himself.

  “But turning her puts us all at risk,” the doctor repeated. “The rest of the society will agree with me. She needs to die.”

  Conner shook his head. “No. They’ll realize that she’s lived as one of us for the past fifty years with no one suspecting who she is. They’ll know she’s no threat.”

  The threat was the doctor, whose hand held tight to the stake Conner tried taking from him. Miranda gasped aloud as the two men began to grapple over the weapon. Distracted, Conner turned toward her, and the doctor gained the upper hand. The stake pressed against Conner’s chest, right above his heart.

  Then a guttural growl emanated from his throat, and he fought back. But she suspected he wasn’t fighting for his own life but for hers, knowing that if he didn’t prevail that the doctor would kill her next.

  “Get out of here!” he shouted at her, confirming her suspicion.

  “No,” she said, “I’m not leaving you.” She rushed from the shadows, her weapon clutched tight in her hands. But before she could help, the metal table crashed over and the two men fell to the floor, locked in combat.

  Another cry rang out in the room, this one of excruciating pain. Then silence fell, broken only by her agitated breaths. “Conner!”

  For fifty years she had wanted him dead, but now she begged for him to live as she knelt near the tangled bodies. The doctor shifted, rising from the floor. And she tightened her grasp on the stake, ready to defend herself. But the doctor rolled over, as Conner pushed off his body. Blood spurted around the stake buried deep in Dr. Hoekstra’s chest.

  Conner stared at the other man, his blue eyes wide with horror. “I—I killed him….”

  How had she ever considered him a murderer? Would he ever forgive her for doubting him?

  He had become what she had thought he was—a killer. Although, hours ago, the society had exonerated him of any wrongdoing in the doctor’s death, he knew better than to hope she would. And so he packed his belongings to leave Zantrax and her. Forever.

  “Where are you going?” a husky female voice asked.

  Startled, Conner whirled around to the door where she stood, her amber gaze on him. “Miranda…”

  “Or Brandi,” she said as she crossed the room to him. “I’ve spent more years living as her than Miranda.”

  He opened his mouth to apologize again, but she pressed her fingers across his lips.

  “I see it in your eyes,” she said. “You don’t have to keep saying it.” She stroked her fingertips over the stubble along his jaw. “You don’t have to keep feeling it.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not possible. I took everything away from you. Your career, your future…” And he would never forgive himself for acting so recklessly, so selfishly…

  “My career?” She laughed. “I would have been forgotten long ago if not for my mysterious disappearance. I was a second-rate starlet. You made me a legend.”

  Confusion…and desire…filled Conner as she stepped closer, her body brushing up against his. She’d changed out of the black satin dress for a curve-hugging knit one in nearly the same red as her hair. “You were so mad at me,” he reminded her, “mad enough to kill me. How can you forgive me?”

  “I haven’t,” she said even as she arched her hips against him.

  “Of course.”

  “And I won’t…if you leave me,” she said as she wrapped her hands around his nape and pulled his head down to hers. She kissed him hungrily, her lips pressing his apart so that her tongue slid into his mouth and tangled with his. Their fangs scraped, sparking his desire into smoldering passion.

  He slid his hands down her back to her hips. He cupped her butt in his palms and lifted her as she tilted her pelvis, rubbing her hips and abdomen against his erection. A groan slipped from his lips, and his control snapped. He couldn’t take it slow; he couldn’t make love to her as thoroughly as he had before.

  He needed her now.

  Her hand pushed between their bodies, and she unsnapped and unzipped his jeans, freeing his cock. He lifted her dress and tugged aside her panties as she guided him inside her. She was wet and ready for him, her body moist and hot as her inner muscles gripped him.

  Her nails dug into his shoul
ders. “Hard,” she urged him as she wrapped her bare legs around his waist. She slid up and down.

  Not bothering to knock the suitcase from the bed, he stayed on his feet, widening his stance to brace himself as he thrust inside her…as frantically as she rode him. Panting for breath, she pressed her mouth to his throat, nipping his skin with her fangs, but she didn’t drink. Instead she invited him, “Bite me….”

  He met her gaze, and seeing the acceptance and excitement in her eyes, he buried his face in her neck and sank his fangs into the silky skin of her throat. Her blood trickled over his tongue, sweet and sticky, like the passion that poured over his cock as she came.

  All his muscles taut, he thrust again and again…and joined her in blissful oblivion. “Brandi!”

  She smiled against his mouth as she kissed him. “I prefer Brandi,” she admitted. “Not just the name but the life. I don’t feel so lost anymore….”

  In his arms, she felt just the opposite as that abandoned child who’d never known love. She felt as if she belonged…with him. To him.

  “You didn’t take away my future,” she assured him. “You gave me one…with you.”

  His blue eyes bright with hope, he met her gaze. “Are you saying…”

  “That I love you?” she asked then nodded as he smiled. “Yes, I love you. And I want to spend eternity with you.”

  His arms tightened around her, pressing her breasts against his chest, where his heart—the heart she’d doubted he had—beat hard and fast. “I love you,” he vowed.

  This time she believed him, not just because she trusted him now, but because she realized she was worthy of love. Her parents might have abandoned and forgotten about her. But in fifty years, he never had. Happiness filling her, her lips curved into a smile. “I know.”

  “I love you now, and I will love you forever,” Conner promised.

  She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, holding him tight. “That’s good because I spent so long looking for you I’m never going to let you go.” She’d tracked him down for vengeance and had found love instead.

  If you liked this story, read Lisa Child’s other paranormal romances from Silhouette Nocturne and Silhouette Nocturne Bites, always available in eBook format!

  RESURRECTION

  IMMORTAL BRIDE

  DAMNED

  PERSECUTED

  HAUNTED

  Plus, don’t miss the other spooky and sensual NOCTURNE BITES, available at www.ebooks.eharlequin.com and wherever eBooks are sold.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4268-4178-1

  The Secret Vampire Society

  Copyright © 2009 by Lisa Childs-Theeuwes

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