“Oh, shit,” I whispered, able to talk now that my vocal cords had healed with supernatural swiftness. “Szilagyi must’ve done the same thing Cynthiana did: booby-trapped himself with a spell so if I ever linked to him, it would end up killing me.”
“For the hundredth time, I feel fine now,” I called out, yet Vlad’s response was a derisive snort from the other room. “Seriously, you can let me out,” I continued.
No response to that, only more sounds of things being moved around and/or carted out. Well, I hadn’t really thought he’d capitulate. I was dealing with the trauma of my near suicide by refusing to dwell on it. Otherwise, the horror of how close I’d come to killing myself would break the thin control I had over my emotions and I’d fall completely to pieces. As Vlad had said, survival first. Panic, self-recriminations, and hysteria later.
Vlad was employing his own coping methods. I tried to shift into a more comfortable position, but that was impossible, probably because I was at the bottom of the tub I’d admired, with a grand piano and five marble columns on top of me. I could get out from underneath the massive, weighty barriers, but Vlad would hear my attempts long before I freed a single finger.
And then I’d really be in for it.
Vlad hadn’t forgotten that Mencheres was telekinetic when he piled heavy objects onto me so he and Mencheres could clear out any lethal objects from the villa. No, Vlad was sending me a one-ton memo that there would be no more attempts to link to Szilagyi. Yes, I’d reached him easily, and yes, I now knew that Szilagyi was on the move with an unknown young man, but that wasn’t enough to tell me where he was. Vlad wouldn’t consider me trying again, whether I was safely restrained or not.
“You don’t know if the spell is set to reactivate as soon as you have another opportunity,” he’d ground out as he stacked the weighty objects on top of me. “Szilagyi would be laughing in hell if we found him and killed him, then you celebrated by committing suicide under the lasting directive of his spell.”
“Cynthiana’s spells always wore off after I dropped my link to her,” I’d argued.
“Not before they did lethal damage,” had been Vlad’s short response. “You’re only alive now because you were human and vampire blood kept bringing you back.”
“Then let me try linking to Maximus. He left with him, so he might be at whatever place Szilagyi was heading to—”
“After your rescue, he’s either dead or similarly spelled,” Vlad had responded brutally. “Either way, the answer is no.”
He had valid points, and I didn’t want to die any more than Vlad wanted me to commit spell-induced suicide. But the idea that Szilagyi was only a psychic link away was as enticing as it was infuriatingly out of reach. After everything he’d done, I wanted that man dead. Truly, permanently dead, but that couldn’t happen until we found him, and after my recent rescue, he would have probably gone to ground again. He’d managed to hide himself for hundreds of years before. What if he did it again?
After what felt like hours, Vlad unloaded the tub and let me out. I arched my back to relieve a kink that had been bothering me since the piano had landed on me, then began to dust myself off before I stopped. What was the point? The dress was covered in so much blood; a little dust hardly mattered.
“This is ruined,” I said before the ridiculousness of my comment struck me. One trashed dress was quite literally the least of our concerns.
Vlad said nothing. Just watched me with expectant wariness, as if he was ready to pounce on my slightest move.
“I’ll return in a few hours,” I heard Mencheres call out, then a door closing signified his exit.
“He’s going back to gamble with the others?” I asked, more to break the tenseness than because I cared what he was doing.
“No,” Vlad said, his unruffled tone not fooling me. “I told you Mencheres was well versed in magic. He should be able to break Szilagyi’s spell, once he has the right supplies.”
I was stunned. If Mencheres could get this hara-kiri mojo off me, why did he waste time helping Vlad move furniture?
“He can find what he needs in Vegas?” I love you, Vegas! I wanted to crow.
“The dark arts are very alive and well here. How else do you explain Cirque De Solei’s best tricks?”
Since I hadn’t been to one of their shows, I’d never had cause to wonder. “I don’t even care. I’m just so relieved Mencheres can break this spell, I can’t even tell you.”
Vlad’s smile had a definite edge to it. “No need to.”
Of course not. If there was one person who could understand my relief over this news, it was him.
“While Mencheres is out magic-shopping, I’m going to wash this blood off,” I said, giving him a lopsided smile. “Can’t hurt myself with a little soap and water, right?”
“Don’t.”
The single word stopped me before my hand reached the shower door. Good thing, too, because with a blast of heat, the glass began to melt like ice under a blowtorch. I jumped back to avoid the scalding puddle that hit the ground near my feet.
“Why?” I managed.
Vlad didn’t spare a glance at the gelatinous blob that, moments ago, had been lovely, frosted glass doors.
“You could have broken them and used one of the shards as a weapon. Now you can’t, but best wait until it cools before you step inside the shower. Otherwise, you’ll burn your feet.”
He could have stayed and watched to make sure I didn’t try anything with the glass doors. Instead, he’d melted them into a puddle that fused with the marble floor. If that didn’t make me realize that tonight’s awful events had pushed him past his limits, nothing would.
“Okay,” I said a little shakily. “Guess the mirror’s next?”
He bared his teeth in more of a threat than a smile. “You guessed correctly.”
His emotions were contained, but his coppery green eyes shone with a wildness I’d only seen when he was in battle. From the way his aura kept coiling like dozens of snakes readying to strike, he was barely able to stop himself from further drastic action. If I’d been through a lot over the past couple weeks, so had he, and this had clearly been his last straw.
I walked over to him, careful not to step in one of the rivulets that snaked out from the main glass puddle. Then I put my arms around him and leaned my head against his chest. His body felt far hotter than normal, as if he was holding back the fire in him with great effort. Maybe it had done him some good to burn that glass into liquid. A mini-release, of sorts.
Well, I knew another, more effective means of release.
“I didn’t like those doors, anyway,” I breathed against his chest. “This new, open look is much nicer, if you ask me.”
His short exhalation wasn’t a real laugh, but it was the closest I’d heard since he’d stormed Szilagyi’s underground train-station lair to rescue me. Then his arms encircled me, and I closed my eyes in bliss at the feel of them.
“The glass won’t burn you,” I whispered, kissing his chest through his shirt. “And you need a shower, too.”
A harsher sound escaped him before he picked me up, leaving footprints in the slowly hardening puddle as he carried me to the shower. Once inside, he turned on the water, sending up clouds of steam where it bounced off us and hit the molten mass on the floor. I tipped my head back, letting it fall beneath the spray to wash the blood from my face and neck. Fingers warmer than the water unbuttoned my dress, then a scalding mouth traced a path from my throat to the front of my bra. That gave way with a slice of fangs, baring my breasts while my dress slid down in a sodden heap around my hips.
I moaned when his mouth closed over my breast, searing it before a graze of teeth had me clutching him closer. He didn’t bite me, although I wanted him to. Instead, he lightly scored the tip with his fangs before laving and sucking my nipple until it throbbed with the same intensity as if he had bitten it. I tried to pull his head up to kiss him, but his arms clamped around my back, holding me in place. When h
e moved to my other breast, giving it the same deliberate, passionate attention, I stopped resisting and gave in to the sensations.
The water had washed all the blood off me by the time he lifted his head. Very slowly, he lowered his arms, allowing my body to slide along his until my feet touched the ground. All the while, his mouth dragged from my breasts to my shoulders and up to my neck. When it finally slanted over mine, his kiss was more demanding than sensual, as if his need had long since transcended passion and burned with something far stronger.
I shoved my hands into his hair and opened my mouth to take him in deeper. He tasted like wine-soaked fantasies mixed with dark, unspeakable cravings. It wasn’t enough to rake his tongue with mine, or have my head fall back at the bruising intensity of his kiss. I wanted more, and the moan that vibrated in his throat as I pierced his tongue so I could suck his blood only inflamed my need.
Far too soon, he tore away, his grip on my hair keeping me from resuming our kiss. With his other hand, he pulled my dress and underwear off with a single, impatient tug. Now I was only covered in the water that continued to spill over us, and I drew in a sharp breath as his gaze raked me with palpable hunger.
“Vlad.”
I said his name more pleadingly than anything else. Gooseflesh broke out on me, as if my skin were finding its own way to beg for his touch. His clothes were soaked but he hadn’t taken them off yet. When I started to, he caught my wrists. Then his hands settled around my waist as he knelt in front of me.
“Leila.”
My name was a growl that had me shivering before his mouth even touched my stomach. When it slid lower, those shivers turned into shudders. All thought fled at the feel of his tongue probing me. I couldn’t even form words as he continued to lick, suck, delve, and sensually torment my flesh. Then I couldn’t stop myself from clutching his head, and when he yanked me closer and buried his tongue deeper, my moans turned into sobs of pleasure.
The ecstasy that followed made me feel like the glass he’d melted; one moment I was solid, the next, I’d dissolved into liquid heat. Dimly, I was aware of him holding me up, followed by a rending sound and the slap of wet fabric at my feet. Then he swept me into his arms and carried me out of the shower.
I barely registered the mattress dipping beneath our weight. His mouth covered mine before I could moan his name, and the feel of his hard, naked body was almost too much for my senses. His skin was so hot, I expected steam to replace the water clinging to him, and when he moved between my legs, I arched upward in desperate need.
His mouth absorbed my cry as he cleaved into me while dropping his emotional shields. For a few, dizzying moments, I drowned in an ocean of fierce need and overwhelming pleasure, mine or his, I didn’t know. Each new thrust intensified the sensations, until I lost myself in them. Our emotions were so deeply entwined, we didn’t feel like separate people anymore.
My nails raked down Vlad’s back, and he arched at the sharp bliss of them scoring his skin. He moved deeper inside me, and I shuddered at the rapturous clench of my flesh around him. I urged him to move faster, and he slowed because he needed to hear me beg from pleasure instead of pain.
When he finally released his control, the climax that had him shouting brought me to my own shattering release as well. While I was still shuddering from ecstasy, he rolled me on top of him and brushed my hair out of my face. With our emotions still inexorably entwined, I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if Szilagyi had killed me, Vlad would have burned the entire world down if that’s what it took to make him pay.
I had never loved him more, yet in that moment, part of me was also afraid of what he’d become if something did happen to me.
Chapter 22
Dawn wasn’t far away. I sensed its approach in the lethargy that crept up my limbs, making them harder to move.
Of course, that could also be from over-satiation. Vlad had wanted to hear me plead from passion several times, as it turned out. I’d been drowsily tracing my hand behind his neck when a familiar essence trail flared beneath my fingers, reviving me as if I’d been doused with a bucket of icy water.
“I forgot to tell you something,” I said, then cursed at my choice of words, not to mention my lack of tact. Way to ease into a highly personal, traumatic subject, Leila!
“What?” he said, and though his tone was normal, his shields went back up.
I closed my eyes, still cursing myself. “First, let me apologize for not telling you sooner. It’s not that I forgot, really, it’s just . . . well, a lot’s happened, as you know, and—”
“What?” he repeated, his tone sharper now.
I opened my eyes, not surprised to find him drilling me with his Interrogation stare. Under that hard, unrelenting gaze, no one in their right mind would give him anything less than the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, which is what I’d intended to do anyway.
“It’s about Clara.” When he showed no reaction, I amended, “Your first wife, Clara.”
That widened his gaze a fraction, though he still didn’t blink or look away. “What about her?”
I don’t know why, but I touched the spot on the back of his neck before I spoke. The first time I’d felt it, I’d known it was hers. Though faint from age, the essence imprint still pulsed with the kind of love that time could never fully erase.
“When Szilagyi found me during the castle attack, he said he was going to kill me just like he’d killed your first wife.”
“Clara wasn’t murdered, she jumped to her death,” Vlad said, unknowingly echoing the same denial I’d made.
My hand left his neck. “Szilagyi said he erased everyone’s memory of him being there so you’d think that. He wanted your guilt over Clara’s ‘suicide’ to crush you, but . . . he told me he pushed her off that roof, and since he’d intended to kill me when he said it, he didn’t have any reason to lie.”
Vlad said nothing. His emotions were still locked down, but from the new rigidness in his posture, he was now questioning what he’d believed for over five hundred years.
If I were still human, I would have held my breath as I waited for his response. He’d loved Clara so much that his self-appointed culpability in her “suicide” marked his worst sin. Besides, judging from his emotions, Vlad had already been tightrope walking between a justified need for vengeance and a near psychotic obsession to bring Szilagyi down. Would this end up pushing him over the edge?
In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have told him.
“Even if he had no cause to lie, I can’t bring myself to trust Szilagyi’s word,” Vlad said at last. “At least in this case, I don’t need to. Your abilities can discern the truth.”
I sucked in a breath of surprise. Serves you right! my inner voice jeered. You just had to tell him about his wife. Now you know that he values her vengeance more than your life.
“Okay,” I said, stumbling over the word while I tried to bury my vindictive inner monologue—and my hurt—under a practical mindset. “You’ve already weapons-proofed the villa, so it should be safe for me to try linking to him again—”
“Not Szilagyi,” Vlad interrupted, his shields cracking to spill frustration and fury over my churning emotions. “You are not linking to him again, Leila!”
How many times do I have to tell you that? his glare seemed to add, but instead of feeling chastised, I was relieved. Suck on that! I shot back to my hated inner voice.
“I meant Clara,” Vlad went on, unaware of the schizophrenic battle going on within me. “You can read a person’s death through their bones. Once I’ve dealt with Szilagyi, I want you to read hers and tell me if she jumped or if he pushed her.”
“You kept her bones?” How oddly sentimental of him.
He gave me a look. “No, but I remember where I buried her.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering why the word came out slurred.
Vlad grasped the blankets we’d kicked to the bottom of the bed and pulled them over me. I would have asked why,
but my mouth suddenly didn’t work. My vision went dark, too, but I felt it when he pressed his lips to my forehead.
“Sleep well,” he murmured.
If he said anything else, I didn’t hear it. Oblivion had already claimed me.
My first conscious realization was of chains wrapped around my arms and legs. For a terrifying moment, I thought I was back in my old cell and my rescue had only been a dream. Then my eyes opened and I saw the crystal chandelier above me, and a turn of my head revealed Vlad sitting on the floor a few feet away. Relief that I wasn’t back in my former cell turned to confusion. Why was I tied up? And why did the bedroom look so trashed; it was as if coked-up rock stars had been partying here for a week.
“What’s going on?”
Vlad rose, nailing me with that hard, almost predatory stare. “You don’t remember?”
That didn’t sound good, as if waking up chained in a trashed room hadn’t been ominous enough. “No,” I whispered.
He approached the bed. My restraints wrapped around the four iron posts of the canopy before being nailed into the floor for additional support. His bill for this villa would be astronomical, but that wasn’t my biggest concern at the moment.
“If you don’t remember, then the spell compelled you to act in your sleep,” he said, touching my chains but making no move to undo them. “It makes sense. You’re too newly changed to be awake that soon after dawn, let alone with such strength.”
I looked at the chains, broken furniture, and deep gashes in the walls with new, shocked understanding. “I did this?”
“Most of it,” he said, his gaze never leaving mine. “Some of it I did during our struggle. You were determined to kill anyone who tried to stop you from harming yourself.”
My gut constricted so tightly, it hurt. “I tried to kill you.” Not a question; a realization, and with it came another clenching that was so strong, I began to dry heave.
His hand went to my stomach at once. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Crazed laughter slipped out between my gags. “I tried to kill you, that’s what’s wrong, and knowing it is making me sick!”
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