Out of all her siblings, Isabelle had been the only one who’d always believed Brian was, or could be, decent. Abby had never opened up to Issy about her strange feelings for him because Issy had left with Stefan shortly after they were married, and by the time she’d returned, Abby had been determined to get past her hang up on Brian.
Abby realized now that he could be kind and understanding, and he could be giving, but he was also very much the brutal man her family had spoken of.
Which side of him is the more dominant one? She had a feeling she’d find out the answer to that before this was over.
***
“What is this place?” she asked as they rode up the elevator past floor after floor.
“My apartment.”
“You have an apartment in Boston?”
“Yes, for as long as I’ve been a vampire I’ve had numerous apartments in this city. I also have a beach house on Cape Cod.”
“You must really love Boston to stay here for so many years.”
He shrugged as he stared at the silver doors across from them with her suitcase in hand. “I was born here. The city is my home.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I’m sure there’s much you don’t know about me.”
Abby glanced away from his probing stare. There had been a cool distance about him ever since they’d left that house behind and he’d told her he wouldn’t call Ronan. “Are you and Ronan good friends?” she asked.
He snorted as he ran his fingers through his platinum hair. “I have no friends. Not anymore.”
She winced at his words. “Not since Stefan?” The tick of a muscle in his jaw was the only indication she’d hit the nail on the head. “You two talk more now.”
“We can never be friends again; our worlds are too different.”
“Maybe so, but you’re not a killer. I can’t smell the rotten stench of death on you anymore.”
Relief filled him when she revealed this to him; the last thing he wanted was to smell repulsive to this woman.
“How did you and Ronan meet?” she asked.
“He heard about Stefan and me, about how we were murdering vampires who killed humans and gaining power from drinking their blood. He warned us if we ever started destroying humans, he would come for us, but he left us be. After Stefan and I went our separate ways, he found me again and knew from my scent I had killed humans. When I explained I’d been attacked by hunters and had only been defending myself, he allowed me to live, but kept a closer eye on me. Over the last eight years, I’ve worked more and more often with him and his men, especially these last five years.”
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open on the top floor. He made a sweeping gesture with his arm. She hesitated a moment; she was going to see where Brian lived. If someone had told her last week that this was where she’d be right now, she’d have laughed in their face.
Taking a breath, she stepped into the massive loft. She was fairly certain her eyes bugged out of her head as she gazed at the beautiful open space before her. The entire top floor of the building was his.
“Wow,” she breathed. Her gaze latched onto the floor-to-ceiling windows across the way. “Amazing!”
She rushed across the floor and just barely managed to stop herself from flattening her hands and nose against the glass to stare out at the city laid out below her like a million twinkling stars. Cars moved through the streets; lights blazed from the buildings surrounding them. She spotted the Prudential building in the distance, rising high into the night sky.
Right then, she would have killed for Paige’s artistic talent of being able to bring things to life with a pencil or brush as she gazed out at the sprawling city. Her sister-in-law would love to come up here and paint this view.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
Brian stared at the city skyline then back at Abby’s awed expression. He’d bought this place five years ago, but felt so out of place with all the luxury it offered that he rarely spent any time here. He’d been a street urchin for only ten years of his life, yet he’d never shaken his basic urge to be out in the open, in nature, and free to hunt. He’d only bought the apartment because he could, and it made for a good stopping place when he needed one while in town.
Looking at this place through her eyes, he realized it really was a spectacular view, even for one as old and jaded as he was. Seeing her reaction to the city skyline was almost as breathtaking as the view itself.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked to distract himself from the urge to touch her pale cheek still tinged with color from the fall air.
“Water is fine. My throat is dry.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Not enough for it to be a concern,” she replied with an absent wave of her hand.
Forcing himself to turn from her, he made his way over to the open kitchen with dark wood cabinets, black granite counters, and ultra-expensive appliances he would never use, except for the fridge. He pulled a bottle of whiskey from one of the cabinets and poured some into a tumbler.
“Come now, young Byrne, growing up in that household, I know your brothers and uncles introduced you to something better than water to drink over the years.”
“They did,” she replied, without looking back at him.
He removed a bottle of water from the fridge, stocked by the housekeeper he’d hired to come in once a month just to keep the place clean. He’d implanted it into the woman’s mind that she never remembered anything about this place other than it was often tidy and unoccupied. She certainly never remembered the bags of blood in the fridge.
He walked over to rejoin her near the windows, handing her the glass of whiskey and the water. “One is for your throat, the other is for your nerves. I have blood in the fridge if you get hungrier.”
“Thank you,” Abby said and sipped at the water as she placed the whiskey on a glass table. “So if Ronan isn’t your friend, what is he to you?”
“A necessary acquaintance,” Brian replied as he turned and walked back to the kitchen area. Watching her swallow the liquid was testing his restraint more than anything else he’d encountered in all his long life. That luscious mouth of hers wrapped around my cock—
“What does that mean?” her question cut into his musings.
He turned subtly to adjust his growing erection so that she couldn’t see his physical reaction to her doing nothing more than drinking a bottle of water. He had to pull it together if he was going to continue being around her for long enough to locate her sister.
“He pays me to handle jobs that require killing some of the turned vamps who murder humans when he and his men can’t do it. Sometimes I help him locate problem vampires who are proving difficult to find. Other times, I help Ronan and his merry band when they have a large group to take down.”
“So you’re a mercenary of sorts.”
“Not of sorts,” he replied as he leaned a hip against the kitchen counter. “That is what I am. I enjoy destroying those of our kind who think it’s acceptable to prey on the human race. No one should harm those weaker than they are. Those vampires deserve to die. If I make some money doing it, it’s an added bonus.”
Abby grabbed for the glass of whiskey. She hoped it really would help settle her nerves. “Do you think you’ll ever stop?”
“When I’m dead.”
For some reason, those last words caused her heart to turn over and she almost screamed the word no! She managed to bite it back before making a complete fool of herself, but her hand clenched around the glass so forcefully it cracked. His eyebrow rose as beads of liquid slid down the side and onto her hand.
He walked over to remove it from her claw-like grasp. “Guess you don’t know your own strength yet, purebred.”
“I… uh… I’m sorry,” she managed to stammer as he tossed the glass into the trash and poured her another one.
“Try not to destroy this one, Hulk,” he told her when he returned to hand her the new glass an
d a napkin.
“I won’t,” she muttered as she wiped the liquid from her hand.
He stood over her, his head tilted to the side as if in confusion while he watched her. Abby’s pulse raced again, and heat flooded her body as those ice-colored eyes surveyed her from head to toe and back again. She felt like a child in his oversized jacket, but the hunger in his eyes said he didn’t see her as one at all.
That hunger. It made her burn to do things to him she’d never done to any man before. He’d haunted every one of her fantasies for years. No human or vampire had ever been able to compare to the image of him in her mind.
She’d messed around with human men over the years, but only one vampire. A sophomore in college at the time, she’d been sure the hot vampire had been the answer to her problem, and she would finally feel something for someone else. It was another epic fail. She could still recall the clammy feel of the vamp’s lips against hers and the way her stomach had turned over when his fangs scraped over her lip.
Would Brian’s kisses do the same to me?
She felt the resounding answer to that question was a no. His lips and taste would only make her crave more and more of him. He would consume her, and she so desperately wanted to be consumed by something other than worry for her sister. Her family would have an absolute fit if they knew whom she was with, and what she was thinking about doing to him right now, but she didn’t care.
Even Vicky, who had always been one for the bad boys and was certainly wilder than her, didn’t like or trust this man. Abby had once tried to tell Vicky that something had happened to her when she’d first seen Brian in that hotel room, that she couldn’t shake him from her mind, but the minute she’d brought up the whole ‘so you remember that guy, Brian’ conversation, Vicky had rolled her eyes.
She could still clearly recall her sister’s words at the time. “How could I forget? He’s a killer who smells of death and nearly got us all killed. I hope we never see the bastard again.”
Those words had clamped Abby’s mouth shut on any further conversation about him. It had been exhausting over the years to try to find someone else out there for her, instead of being so focused on the one vamp who her family would be completely against her dating. Before she’d met Brian, all she’d dreamed of was finding her mate. Afterward, she’d spent a lot of time hoping she hadn’t just met him.
Her family may be against a relationship with him, but she longed to kiss him and ease her curiosity about this frightening, powerful, magnificent vampire. If it turned out he wasn’t her mate, at least she would finally know it hadn’t been him who had ruined her for other men; she was simply broken or off in some way.
If it did turn out he was her mate, her family would have no choice but to accept him. They well knew what it was like to discover a mate and the irrevocable bond it formed between vampires. They may not like it, but they wouldn’t stand in the way of mates. They understood what would happen if the bond was denied or broken, and they loved her too much to have her endure the insanity and death that would result from that.
Brian couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. The increased beat of her heart thrummed in his ears, and the enticing flush of her skin did nothing to slow the blood flooding to his cock. Her tiny tongue darted out to lick her lips, which was something he now realized she did when she was aroused.
It would be so easy to take the glass from her hand and wrap his arm around her waist. She wouldn’t push him away if he pulled her against his chest, sank his hand into her hair, and took possession of those enticingly wet lips.
Her brothers will cut your dick off if you try.
That mental reminder had him stepping away from her. He never denied himself anything he wanted, he saw no reason to, but he couldn’t have her. Abby was too good for the likes of him and deserved better than what he could offer her. He knew instinctively that one time with her wouldn’t be enough but the guilt was bad enough when it was only once with a woman; what would it do to him if he was with Abby countless times?
Memories of Vivian and his children haunted him continuously. He should have died with them. Instead, he was still here, standing in a room with the first woman he’d truly desired in almost two hundred years. He downed his whiskey and walked over to pour himself another glass.
“Where do we look for Vicky next?”
Her husky voice sent shivers down his spine. “I’ll need something else of hers, another picture maybe.”
“I have nothing else,” she whispered, “not on me now.”
CHAPTER 6
Brian glanced at her over his shoulder. He really didn’t want to have to touch her again if he could help it, but he didn’t have a choice. “I can try on you,” he said. “You are a piece of her after all, and you look just like her.”
“So I’ve been told,” she replied with a wistful smile. She placed her glass on the table and tugged up the jacket that had slipped over her shoulder. “Whatever you have to do, do it.”
He would have to touch her, which could be the same as opening Pandora’s Box. In one gulp, he swallowed his fresh glass of whiskey before walking across the room to where she stood. She thrust out her rounded chin and tilted her head back to look him in the eyes. So proud, so determined, so alluring, yet he still couldn’t bring himself to reach for her.
“I don’t care if it hurts,” she said.
“It won’t.” If it did, he never would have offered to do it. He wouldn’t knowingly do anything to cause her pain, no matter how badly she wanted her sister back. “Remain absolutely still.”
She nodded her understanding and stood stock-still. Taking a deep breath to brace himself, he took hold of her hand. Her skin was silken beneath his, the bones in her hands delicate to the touch. Her breath caught in her chest and her eyes searched his as he rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand.
The scent of her arousal filled his nostrils. He suppressed the growl rolling up his throat as he fought the urge to draw her against him. He’d love to know what those pert breasts felt like pressed against his chest. She wouldn’t fight him if he tried to draw her closer; no, she’d eagerly meld her body to his.
He tried to block out his body’s need for her as he closed his eyes and focused on the brilliant spark of her soul. He concentrated on finding the link she had to Vicky. Searching through the tangled, interconnected waves of her soul, he finally found the thread he sought.
Latching onto Abby’s connection to her twin, the apartment fell away from his conscious mind when he was mentally pulled forward by the thread of Vicky’s soul. Blinding white stars rushed past him in a blur as he was sucked down what felt like a tunnel toward somewhere else. The tunnel ended abruptly; he opened his eyes and found himself standing on a piece of land staring at a calm sea.
Turning, he realized he stood at the foot of a large statue. Tilting his head back, he stared at the towering woman before him with her torch raised proudly in the air. A smile curved his lips as he lifted his eyes to stare across the water. Millions of lights blazed from the buildings on the other side and reflected off the water.
Manhattan. This vision was probably as close as he would come to finding Vicky given the amount of people in the city. Locating her in Manhattan would be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack, but he’d promised Abby he would find her sister, and he would find her.
Abby stared at Brian as his eyes closed and a blank expression came over his face. He still stood before her, yet she sensed he was a million miles away, completely unreachable. She had no idea where his mind had gone, but since she’d met him, this was the first time she’d seen him look almost peaceful.
She itched to brush back the strand of blond hair that had fallen against the corner of his closed eye when his head bowed forward, but she didn’t dare disturb him right now. There was no way to know what would happen if she disrupted him while he was like this.
“Shit,” he muttered and lifted his head. His blue eyes blazed into hers.
Abby’s shoulders fell. “You couldn’t find her.”
“She’s in Manhattan, but that’s as close as I’m going to get to her. There are too many people there for me to pinpoint an exact location.”
“But you found both those houses in the city tonight.”
“They were both on the outskirts of the city so there were fewer people around either of them. It’s not the same where she is now. Plus, I still only knew the general area of where those houses were located until I was closer to them. Trying to do that in Manhattan will be about as easy as pulling a star from the sky.”
“We can still find her.”
“It’s going to be tricky.”
“Doesn’t matter. Manhattan it is. I’ll get changed and—”
He tugged her wrist to stop her before she could start rushing around. “Tomorrow, we will go to New York. Tonight we both need some rest, and we have to feed. You may not be hungry, but I am, and I’m not up for a nearly four drive right now.”
“But—”
“No buts, we’re staying here tonight. Getting so exhausted you can’t keep looking for her or you get yourself hurt won’t do anyone any good. Vicky will still be there tomorrow.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Then we will find her next location, and if she moves again, we will find the one after that. She can’t run for long; she has a disadvantage we don’t.”
“And what’s that?”
“She’s going to be looking for places to feed that will satisfy her new appetites. It will slow her down.”
“Vicky isn’t like those vampires in that house. I know she’s not.”
He didn’t know what her sister was messed up in, but after what they’d seen tonight, he wouldn’t rule anything out. “Maybe you should consider staying here while I go,” he said as he released her hand and took a step away from the wrath simmering in her eyes.
Undone (Vampire Awakenings, Book 5) Page 5