And why were her clothes gone?
She scrambled across the double bed and peered down at the floor in case they had fallen off. They were gone. Her shoes were too. Only her black handbag remained.
Had Kearn taken them?
She blushed from head to toe at the thought of him coming into the room while she had been sleeping in his bed wearing only her knickers.
Her eyes widened.
He had even taken her bra.
Her cheeks burned now.
Amber wrapped herself in the brown duvet and shuffled carefully to the bedroom door. She opened it a crack and looked out into the main room. She couldn’t see Kearn. The television in the white dividing wall above the low rectangular open fireplace was off. The apartment was silent save the noise of the television behind her.
Kearn was gone.
She hitched her duvet toga up and went back into the bedroom, crossing it to the bathroom. There was a white bathrobe on the back of the door. She dropped the duvet and put on the robe. It was too big for her but it was better than walking around Kearn’s apartment in only her knickers.
She made the bed, turned off the television and then returned to the bedroom door and opened it.
There was no sign of her clothes in the living area, or in the kitchen in the right hand corner opposite it. The glasses and bowl were on the drainer, and Kearn’s bloodied shirt was gone. She picked up one of the glasses, filled it with water and drank it down in one go. Her stomach growled. Food. She hadn’t eaten in almost a day.
Amber checked the pale wooden cupboards. The first two being bare didn’t bother her, but after the fifth, she started to find it strange. When she had checked every cupboard and found only a few glasses and some other kitchenware, but not cutlery or plates, she was disconcerted. She approached the large white refrigerator with caution, fearing what she would find in it. Vampires drank blood. What if the fridge was full of bits of people or blood bags stolen from the local hospital?
She grabbed the refrigerator door and yanked it open.
A blank white space greeted her.
Her heart pounded against her ribs.
She was going crazy.
She had to stop being so suspicious.
Vampires killed people. Maybe he didn’t keep his food in the house. Maybe he ate street food of the vampire kind.
Amber shut the fridge door. She really was being stupid now.
Kearn hunted vampires.
Maybe he ate out all the time. There were people who did that. She had seen television programs where famous people had never used the expensive stove in their oversized kitchen. Kearn could be just like them.
Or he could eat blood.
She walked out of the kitchen, trying to distance herself from her thoughts as easily as she could distance herself from the refrigerator.
She stopped at the black front door of the apartment.
There was a note stuck to it, written in neat cursive script.
Do not even consider leaving. I shall return by the time you have showered and shall bring you breakfast. Kearn.
She tried the handle anyway. Locked. Some of the locks she could open from the inside, but one of them needed a key.
Well, that was considerate of him. He stole her clothes and locked her in his apartment, and then offered her a shower and said he would bring her breakfast. He was confusing her more every minute that she knew him.
Breakfast?
Amber glanced to her left, through the small study area to the bank of windows that formed the wall there. The sun was heading towards the horizon, casting a golden glow over the rooftops of London. He had a strange concept of meal times, but then he hunted vampires. It was probably a job he could only do at night.
She perused the books in the beech bookcase that lined the wall of the study opposite the open fireplace, her fingers tripping from spine to spine. There were many novels on the side nearest the front door, but closer to the wooden desk in front of the window, the books were all factual, and some of them were definitely not available in stores. Books on demons, vampires, werewolves and other creatures. All of them old and large, and leather-bound. None of them had authors or publishing houses on the spine. She took a thick, heavy tome on vampires, placed it down on the desk and opened it carefully to somewhere near the middle. Her gaze scanned the neatly hand written paragraphs on the yellowing page and stopped on a name she recognised.
She had to read it three times to make sure she wasn’t imagining it.
Earl Huntingdon.
She cast a quick glance around the apartment, her heart starting to race and tremble at the thought of being caught snooping in Kearn’s things, and then read the passage about the earl.
A vampire.
Kyran knew vampires. Was that why Kearn didn’t like Earl Huntingdon? Perhaps there were good vampires after all and that was why Kyran was friends with him.
Or perhaps not.
Amber read the page, enthralled by the things it said about the earl and his bloodthirsty ways. He sounded dangerous, the sort of vampire that people had written tales about centuries ago, like Vlad the Impaler. He sounded like the sort that Kearn should kill.
She went to turn the page and read on but stopped herself. Reading about the horrible things vampires did to people and to other vampires would only frighten her. She closed the book and placed it back on the shelf. She was better off not knowing. They said ignorance was bliss after all. When Kearn had caught the vampire, she would be going back to her life. Kearn wouldn’t be there to protect her from the scary vampires. She would be alone again and she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life afraid, fearing that someone like Earl Huntingdon would somehow find her. She wanted to live life.
Dragging herself away from the study, she walked around the wide white dividing wall of the modern double-sided fireplace and stopped dead when she saw a black jacket and Kearn’s gun on the end of the long black couch against the bedroom wall. The setting sun glinted off the silver gun, luring her to it.
She stopped at the window-end of the couch beside the gun and stared hard at it, memorising the weapon’s exact position on the jacket so she knew where to place it so Kearn wouldn’t know what she had done. With her heart in her throat, she reached a trembling hand out to the gun and closed the fingers of her left hand around the grip. Her whole arm shook as she lifted it. It was heavier than expected and felt cold against her fingers. She kept it pointed away from her, afraid it would go off, and studied it. It looked like a gun from a movie, sleek and modern, and dangerous.
What kind of bullets did it take? They had to be special to kill vampires.
Amber tried to figure out how to open it, turning it one way and then the other, and even looking closely at the bottom of the grip. In the movies, people changed the clip so quickly she never saw how they got it out. She lifted her other hand, tempted to pull the top part of the gun back and then stopped herself. She didn’t know what would happen if she did that. If she blew out a window or made a hole in the white wall, Kearn would know that she had been messing around with his gun. Afraid of the consequences if that happened, Amber placed the gun back down in the precise spot and position she had found it, and stepped back from it. She didn’t like it.
Turning away, she walked back to Kearn’s bedroom and through it to the bathroom. Take a shower. Kearn had said he would be back when she had showered. She looked at the large white cubicle to her left. Take a shower she would.
She stripped off the bathrobe and her knickers, and closed the bathroom door. The clear shower door squeaked when she slid it open. She turned the water on and stepped under the jet, showering quickly and holding her hair up so it didn’t get too wet. It would frizz if it did and she didn’t want to look like a prize poodle around Kearn.
Amber shut the water off and stepped out of the shower. Her head spun. She closed her eyes and waited for it to clear. It had done that from time to time last night too. Was it the vampire trying to control her?
She shuddered at the thought. She didn’t like the idea that someone could control her and make her do things against her will. She unravelled the bandage on her hand. The cut across her palm was still raw and it was bleeding in places again. She washed it in the sink and then looked for a new bandage, finding some in the cupboard in the black sink cabinet. She carefully wound it around her hand, tight enough that it would stop the bleeding, and pinned it.
The vampire had wanted her to taste her blood but she hadn’t been tempted this time. Was his hold over her fading?
The sound of a door closing made her look up at herself in the mirror. Kearn.
She clawed her hair back into a neat ponytail, slipped the robe on, and tied it.
Kearn was in the kitchen when she walked out of the bedroom. He glanced over at her, his green eyes as impassive as ever. Not even the sight of her in his bathrobe fresh from the shower provoked a reaction. He crossed the room and held two large black paper bags out to her. There was a store name she didn’t recognise written on the side in a white cursive font. She peered inside the first one at the clothes. The second had a cardboard shoebox in it.
“What is it?” She looked at Kearn.
“Your outfit for tonight.” He dropped another similar bag on the couch facing the window and she looked in it too. Her own clothes. He had taken them to a store and, judging by the bags, it had been somewhere expensive.
Kearn held a small brown bag out to her.
“What’s this?” She took it from him.
“Breakfast,” he said without any trace of emotion, his eyes not leaving hers. “Coffee and pastries. I asked the woman what you might like.”
Amber frowned. What she might like? As though a stranger would know such a thing. Couldn’t he have judged for himself? Maybe he didn’t know what food tasted like. Maybe vampires didn’t eat anything other than blood.
Maybe he just didn’t eat pastries. She had known men in her past that didn’t touch sweet things. He could be like them.
“What about you?” She placed the clothes bags down on the couch beside the other one and eyed him closely, studying his face.
“I ate when I was out.”
Amber stared at him. He stared back, colder than ever. He really wasn’t very talkative. The effort of trying to make conversation with him was exhausting.
Kearn walked around her and along the length of the couch beside the wall to the far end of it. He leaned over and paused with his hand just above his gun. He kept his back to her as he picked it up.
“Do not ever touch it again,” he said and went into his bedroom, closing the door.
A few minutes later the shower was running and Amber was still standing in the middle of his apartment feeling guilty for snooping and wondering how the hell he had known she had touched the gun. It had been in exactly the same place as he had left it.
He was an enigma.
He had no food, a lot of money, and treated her coldly even though she was helping him. She looked at the clothing and the food that he had bought. She couldn’t figure him out at all. She had never met anyone so distant either. Was it his work? Maybe he was just unused to company. He hadn’t been that at ease with his brother too.
Maybe he wasn’t human.
She couldn’t push that thought away. Whenever she gave it a chance, it came back.
Amber walked over to the kitchen island and placed the brown paper bag down on the granite top. She sat on one of the black and wood stools that followed the curve of the island, and opened the bag, removing the white paper cup of coffee. She took off the lid and scooped up some of the foam with her finger. Cappuccino. Just the fix she had needed.
There were a lot of different pastries in the bag. Covering his bets?
The bedroom door opened and Amber looked over her shoulder at Kearn. He rubbed a brown towel against his wet hair. Water dripped from the ends of the long silver strands and rolled down the bare strip of chest and stomach visible between the two sides of his black shirt. His body was delicious. Just what she wanted to eat for breakfast. His muscles shifted and bunched with each move he made as he dried his hair, a feast for her eyes only. She stared, unashamed of what she was doing. If he was going to put it out there, then she wasn’t going to shy away.
Kearn tossed the towel back into his bedroom, ran his fingers through his hair, and then walked over to the jacket on the couch. He picked it up and placed it over the back of the couch facing the window. Amber sipped her coffee and kept watching him, or at least his body. He ruined her fun by buttoning his shirt and tucking it into his black trousers.
He came over to her and looked at the paper bag. She took another sip of her coffee and drank her fill of his face, putting to memory the curve of his lips as they parted and the way a line formed between his dark silver eyebrows when he frowned. He was undeniably good looking and was starting to creep back into sexy territory.
“Want one?” Amber offered the bag, part of her doing so out of politeness and the other part wanting to test him.
His green eyes shifted from the contents of the bag to her hand that was holding it. Blood was seeping into the bandage again.
“Take it if you want it,” she said and his eyes met hers, incredulous and searching. It was the first sign of something other than cold calculation in them today. He almost looked shocked.
“No, thank you.” Kearn pushed the bag back at her. “You should dress. We need to arrive at the club before everyone else so we do not look as though we are together.”
She took a long leisurely sip of her cappuccino, unwilling to be rushed by him, and then slipped down off the stool.
When he had said they would go to a club, she had expected them to be together the whole time. The thought of being alone when the vampire could be stalking her was frightening but she had promised to play bait for him. She picked up the bags of clothes from the couch. What sort of bait did Kearn have in mind? The clothes would give her a hint.
She walked into his bedroom, kicked the door closed, put her coffee and pastries down on the side cupboard and dumped the bags on the bed.
Refusing to hurry, she ate a croissant and drank half of her coffee, and then devoured another pastry.
Amber pulled the large shoebox out of the first bag and opened it.
She tipped the contents of the other bag out on the bed beside it.
Her eyes widened.
“What the hell!”
CHAPTER 6
Kearn stopped putting on his shoe the moment the wave of anger washed through the apartment. Amber wasn’t happy about something. He couldn’t think what it would be. He had seen humans enjoying coffee and sweet things, and the woman at the boutique had assured him the clothes would suit her.
He looked at the door, shrugged it off, and finished putting on his leather shoe. He picked up his jacket, considered bringing it with him to the club, and then thought the better of it. He didn’t want to look too formal.
The door to his bedroom swung open with force and Amber came out.
Kearn only meant to glance at her but it became a stare when he saw her. A strange gut wrenching jolt rocked him, and it wasn’t just his desire for her blood this time.
She looked incredible.
He couldn’t help himself. His gaze started at her feet, roaming up the length of the black leather knee-high heeled boots, over the sheer tights that barely hid her slender thighs, to the short black layered skirt that wouldn’t have a chance at covering her backside if she bent over, and finally to the black leather corset. Her cleavage, pushed up and on display, was temptation in its most alluring form, but he forced his eyes to keep moving upwards. She stepped towards him and placed her hands on her hips.
Soft waves of brown hair caressed her shoulders.
A thick black velvet choker with a silver cross on it ringed her neck. The cross didn’t bother him, or any of his kind, but he couldn’t stop staring at it and the sublime curve of her throat. He resisted his desire to lick his
lips and swallowed to wet his dry throat. It burned and he fought the terrible hunger that had been rising since he had awoken this afternoon. Her blood was weaker within him now, but his thirst wasn’t abating as he had expected. It gnawed at him, making his insides twist and spasm, and he placed his hand on his stomach. He couldn’t take it. His fangs extended behind his closed lips and his mouth watered. He kept his feet planted to the wooden floor, refusing to give in to the urge to cross the room, drag her soft body flush against his, and sink his fangs hard into her throat. The battle raged inside him and her blood spoke of her growing confusion over his silence and staring. It took every ounce of his will to force his fangs away but he managed it and clawed back control.
When his gaze finally found her face, another jolt hit him, this time in his chest and worrying.
She was beautiful.
The make-up the lady in the boutique had recommended when he had described her enhanced her natural beauty until he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. The dark brown around her hazel eyes turned them pale and mysterious, and the red lipstick tempted him to take hold of her and kiss her until she was moaning for more. Begging him to bite her.
Kearn ripped his eyes away and fixed them on the window, shaking off his desire. She was bait. That was all. This was business. His gaze crept back to her.
Amber held her arms out and glared at him. It didn’t suit her.
Neither did the rage emanating from her.
“I look like a slut!”
Kearn couldn’t resist the excuse to peruse her again. She looked more attractive than he had imagined she would. A perfect lure for his hunt.
“I think you look good.” It wasn’t a lie or at all difficult for him to say, not even when she was human.
She blushed and cast her gaze at the floor. Her teeth teased her red lips, nibbling in a way that increased the dry burning feeling in his throat.
He instinctively took a step towards her and her eyes met his, her pupils wide and dark. She had looked at him like that when he had come out of the shower. Her scent said that she wasn’t here purely for protection. She was attracted to him. He looked at the windows. She shouldn’t be. There was a whisper in her blood sometimes that said she knew what he was. Why hadn’t she confronted him about it yet? Was she going to keep pretending that he was human?
Forbidden Blood (Vampire Venators Romance Series) Page 6