“I have no idea.”
They kept walking, the sound of footsteps popping against rock. As a breeze whistled through the tunnel, Eva slowed down, gravitating toward a wall. She ran her hand over a slightly discolored patch, and a rumble from ahead shivered the air.
While her mother concentrated on her task, Dawn stole a glance at the actress’s perfect profile, her forever-young skin.
“What do you think your life would be like if you looked your age?” she whispered.
The vamp’s hand flew up, as if wanting to touch her face, then did a slow free fall. “I try not to think about that.”
“You’d be . . . what—forty-seven?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Oh, right.” Dawn wanted to hear that her mother really didn’t care so much about the youth and beauty part of being a vamp. She wanted to know that the devastation she’d seen on Eva’s face in the screening room had been only a reflection from the film, not reality.
“Dawn, I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Too bad, because I know you’ve considered every angle of being a vampire. I know you’ve analyzed what would happen to you if your master died when Limpet visits.”
Eva turned, her blond hair blowing from the tunnel’s wind. “We don’t talk about that, Dawn. You shouldn’t, either.”
“Would it be so bad if you went human again?”
Her mother got a look that made the skin prickle.
“So it’s that bad of a thing to be human,” Dawn said.
“No, it’s that good of a thing to be long-lived.” Bit by bit, Eva collected her poise: first in her posture, then in her expression. “I know you understand what I’m saying. It’s in the way you gazed at Jesse. Except, you don’t want to desire what we have, so you try to hate us.”
The urge to lash out was overwhelming, but Dawn resisted. “You’re full of yourself.”
“I’m being honest. If you’d think rationally, you’d realize that you could be just like me.”
A wave of yearning hit Dawn, so powerful that it felt like her body was winding through itself, traveling paths she didn’t want to explore.
Or did she want to? What would it be like to mirror Eva Claremont, to have everything she had?
The possibility knotted Dawn up. She’d tried to tell herself so many times that she liked being her everyday average self, that she didn’t want anything to do with her mother. But what if . . . ?
In a last-ditch effort to hold on to her sanity, Dawn struck back, sudden tears edging her words. “It was never about giving your family a better life in the long run. You’re down here because of what you need, and that’s why you’ll always serve your master, first and foremost.”
Eva reared back and slapped her daughter.
Dawn bashed against the wall, smacking her head and seeing stardust. As a moan escaped her, Eva darted over, holding a hand to her daughter’s head. The pain subsided like a wave drawing back from a shore, leaving froth behind.
She nudged her mother away. Eva had done some vamp healing, but Dawn could hardly be grateful for it, seeing as the other woman had caused the damage in the first place.
“I’m sorry,” her mother said, one hand fluttering up to her chest. “I’m so—”
Someone cleared his throat.
Both Dawn and Eva straightened up at the sight of a severely handsome vampire. He had straight brown hair that came to just below his wide shoulders and wore all black, including a voluminous coat that undulated in the slight wind.
“More problems, Eva?” he asked in a refined voice. An accent—stronger than Costin’s or the Master’s—made his tone crisp and officious.
“This doesn’t concern you, Sorin,” Eva volleyed back.
His mouth formed something like a smile, but it didn’t exactly encourage any sparkly thoughts from Dawn.
“I beg to differ,” he said, “because the Master has been attempting to contact you, and he sent me to search you out. Your mind is closed to him . . . again.”
Even Dawn could interpret this as a bad turn of events, especially after Eva had confided that she’d been keeping the Master in the dark about so many things.
With a defiant glare at Sorin, Eva walked a couple of steps away from Dawn, quiet, clearly getting into that Awareness groove with her master.
This left the male vampire to give Dawn the once-over. She did the same right back. He remained expressionless.
Their standoff was interrupted by Eva saying, “Oh, Benedikte.”
When Dawn glanced at her, she found her mother wearing an expression a person might adapt if they disapproved of something a friend was doing but didn’t have the power to stop them.
But in the next moment, she was moving in the direction of the Underground. “Let’s go,” she said to Dawn. “Benedikte says he has something you’ll be interested to see.”
Even though Dawn was still smarting from Eva’s well-deserved slap, she decided to get far away from Sorin, too.
The male vampire’s voice rang from behind them. “Eva?”
They both turned to see him running his hand over the control panel. A grumble of rock sliding closed made Sorin’s glare even eerier. She’d neglected to shut the entrance.
“Thank you,” Eva said coolly. “I suppose I’ll have to try to find Frank by connecting with him another time.”
“I suppose you will.”
This had to be the guy whom Eva suspected of bugging her chambers. He was a mean-looking lug.
As they left, Dawn noticed that Eva was walking a little too casually to fool anyone.
When they were well away, her mother whispered, “Sorin is the second-in-command. Don’t be intimidated. And Dawn?”
Her daughter continued going right past her, but Eva cut her off at the pass.
“The Master wants you alone this time,” her mother whispered, “so if he doesn’t behave, just call my name. I mean it.”
Whoa. So suddenly Eva didn’t think Benedikte would be such a good boy? What was up with this? What had the Master told her during their latest Awareness connection?
As they both headed back, Dawn thrust her mother’s strange offer to the back of her mind.
Where she stored all the junk she didn’t want to sort through.
After a subdued Eva left her daughter at the door to Dawn’s fugly chambers, Dawn knocked, thinking she would just get this meeting over with. Afterward, she could go back to the tunnel exit to see if she could figure out how to open that wall panel herself. Not that she would probably manage to do it without getting caught by Eva or scary Sorin. But how could her mother have shown her an exit without expecting Dawn to take advantage?
Just another thing to mull over. Maybe Eva was being as cocky as she’d been with storing the machetes in the open.
She opened the door by touching the wall where Eva had done the same earlier. Then she walked in.
A trickling from the fountain in the corner hinted at a peace she wasn’t feeling while she took a few more steps. The peacock feathers decorating the walls and sticking out of glass vases trembled in a breeze from an overhead fan.
“Hey, Bene?” she yelled.
Something . . . someone stirred from behind the veiling that draped her sunken bed.
And out stepped the last person she expected to see. Her heart seized.
Matt Lonigan, dressed in his new denims and his untucked khaki shirt, kicked at a bedpost with his boot. He shrugged, as if resigned and somewhat amused by his situation.
“Here I am. You get what you ask for, I suppose.”
Astonished, she couldn’t move. She thought she saw profound disappointment heft a weight onto his shoulders when she didn’t run right into his arms.
He thunked down to the bed, where he came to rest his forearms on his knees. “After Eva took you, I went outside and . . . There they were. I don’t remember much after that.”
Dawn blew out a breath, coming to her senses. Matt was the only person she
could depend on, so his presence should’ve uplifted her. But it didn’t because, now, he could be in real danger down here.
Speaking of which, where was the possessive Benedikte? Was he leaving her and Matt alone as a weird peace offering?
Or was he watching to see if she took some kind of unexplained bait?
First things first. She went to Matt’s side, her bandaged knees sinking into the silken mattress. “You okay?”
Now he was all aglow. “Yeah, they didn’t touch a hair on my head. I have no idea what’s going on, though.”
Tentatively, she reached out to finger a brown bunch of strands. “If they’d hurt you—”
Without warning, he captured her hand in both of his, pressing it to his forehead and closing his eyes. “Dawn,” he whispered.
His intensity stunned her, shooting her through with a slow warmth. Matt—the only person around here who really cared. Her pulse started hammering, pelting away at her veins as if to smooth out all the hard feelings she harbored for the rest of the world.
“How’ve they been treating you?” His lips brushed against the sensitive underside of her arm.
You getting this, Costin? You see how I can still feel?
“Aside from hanging around with a psychotic mother and being gaped at by her freak master?” Dawn laid her free hand over Matt’s arm out of instinct. “I’m fine.”
His head had shot up, blue eyes wide and full of . . . anguish? What had she said to cause that?
But just as quickly as the emotion had come, it was gone.
“I’ve had better nights,” she added, still scanning him, “but considering everything . . .” She shook her head. “Okay, aside from meeting Jesse Shane, I can’t say it’s been great.”
“Jesse Shane.” His tone seemed forced.
“Yeah, he’s one of the undead movie stars, but,” she continued, going for some levity, wanting to make him smile again, “don’t be jealous. He’s only a vamp.”
Just as a grace note, Dawn ran a hand over Matt’s cheek.
That was when his gaze seemed to get even bluer, deepening and heating.
“Matt?”
His breathing quickened.
A gasp fought its way out of Dawn’s chest, but before it could escape, Matt swung her to her back, knocking the air out of her. He pushed her hands over her head, straddling her hips with more aggression than he’d ever shown, his eyes narrowed so that she couldn’t really see them.
In her mental chaos, Dawn’s body responded, her sex nudging to a hard ache. She wanted this kind of anger, wanted to take it inside and mold the heat into the tight ball that was already burning in the pit of her belly. She didn’t care if the Master was watching from behind some hole in the wall, didn’t care if anyone was.
See, Costin? Do you see me?
“You’re all I can think of,” Matt said, tightening his grip on her wrists. “Not being able to be around you . . . You don’t know what it’s . . .” He choked off.
His bulk made her feel as insignificant as she deserved and, as he hovered over her, she fed off of his feral longing.
“You really missed me?” she asked, breathless.
With a strangled moan, he moved back on his haunches, then leaned back his head. His posture imitated an animal ready to cry out. But when he caught sight of himself in the mirror above the bed, he stiffened, gaze locked to his reflection.
He stared, face wracked with something like devastation caused by what he was witnessing.
“Matt?” she said.
Whatever it was that’d been holding him back seemed to break loose at the sound of her saying his name. He bolted forward, buried a hand in her loose hair, and fisted it until she winced. Then he crushed his mouth to hers in a hard kiss.
That was all Dawn needed.
As they bit at each other, sucking and fighting for dominance, she imagined what they looked like in the mirrors above and surrounding the bed. Two foes fighting, meeting on a primitive field where they would draw blood.
Costin, she thought, just watch me.
Spurred on, she reached up to grab Matt’s shirt, hauling him down and rolling him to his back. Now she was straddling him on hands and knees, her spine arched while the ends of her loose hair scratched his face.
“You’ve made me wait for you a long time,” she said in a voice that was too raw to be her own. “You’ll pay for that.”
And for what he’d done when he tried to get her to wear that Eva-like dress.
Still on her knees, she slid down until her pussy skimmed over his arousal. She rubbed, the ridge of him skidding against her, separating her even through her jeans. She pressed harder, needing more.
He gave a small grunt, then reached up to flip her on her back again with a breath-stealing thud. She could tell she’d pushed him beyond endurance—no more gentleman Matt. He was all flesh and blood now, stripped of civility.
As he bent her legs and whisked off her boots and socks one foot at a time, she watched in the overhead mirror, her image a blur, almost unrecognizable.
Are you watching . . . ?
Dawn fumbled with her button snap and zipper, helping Matt to rip her jeans off. When they got to her panties, he hesitated, breathing raggedly.
“Damn it,” Dawn said, taking the initiative and removing those, too.
For one odd moment, he averted his gaze from her bare skin, then locked eyes with her. Even in the wildness of his irises, she could see that he wanted all of her, not just an easy lay.
Oh, God, it was the last thing she needed to know. In rebellion, she sat up and began undoing Matt’s fly.
“No,” he ground out, sliding his hands behind her thighs.
By lifting Dawn, he urged her back to the mattress, bending her legs at the same time. The air caressed her sex, hot, wet. . . . She was ready for him to tear her apart.
When he bent to kiss the inside of her leg by the knee, he seemed so tender that Dawn couldn’t watch. Pushing back from him, she flipped to her stomach.
“Do it,” she said.
Once again, Matt paused. Then his hands made contact with the backs of her thighs, upward, over her ass.
She imagined a different pair of hands there: invisible, connected to a body that was only lived in part-time. Costin . . . Jonah . . . who . . . ?
She made a low sound of thwarted yearning, opening her legs.
A pair of very solid palms coasted downward, cupping the curves of her cheeks. Then Matt’s thumbs slipped between her legs, separating her damp folds and delving in.
Dawn pushed her face into the mattress, biting, tasting the sheets. In her mind, she was in a different room, a different house.
Costin . . .
“Dawn,” said Matt’s voice.
She opened her eyes as he pressed her clit, massaging it until she gathered the sheets in her fists.
While Matt continued working her with one hand, he slipped his other palm below her hips, raising them. Then she felt him sink down between her thighs, nipping the sensitive inner flesh. His mouth was so warm and wet, so real.
He was quaking now.
She closed her eyes again, not wanting to picture what that meant, what emotion he might be investing while she felt empty.
Almost intuitively, she groaned in response to what he was doing to her. She’d be an actress for him. He couldn’t know that she was imagining another man between her thighs, kissing her higher, higher. . . .
She thought she heard a swishing sound. Then more kisses—these cooler, like pinches, flickers of pain—took the place of Matt’s mouth.
He traveled over her thigh, her ass, her waist, her back, up to her neck, and she pressed her face into the mattress even harder.
His breath came cool and heavy against her ear, and she remembered how he used to love to play with the blood-moon earring there. Her mind swam as she fought to imagine Matt—this was Matt, not anyone else—making her skin raise with goose bumps.
“Dawn . . .” he breathed, ti
ckling her neck until her jugular pounded in time with her sex.
Then she felt it—a scratch like a razor, like—
She heaved in a gasp, pushing herself up and catching a hint of . . . another man besides Matt? . . . in a mirror next to the head of the bed. Her mind pushed out a bolt of confused shock, and the mirror cracked, fragmenting the image.
Whipping around, she heard the same strange sound, like the one the Elites made when they changed form, and just as it ended, she found Matt. He looked just as shocked as she was, except maybe he was thinking about the shattered mirror . . . or her sudden withdrawal.
Even though her body was one connected, brutal heartbeat, she closed her legs and covered herself. Then something shifted in her memories, creeping to the front of her skull like a thick, viscous flood. Something that’d been bothering her about the night Cassie had killed Breisi.
“You found the Vampire Killer?” Matt had said when she’d come to ask him if he would help her hunt down Eva. “I saw what was on TV.”
Dawn’s forehead throbbed. On the sly, Eva had told her that Cassie’s attempted broadcast of Breisi’s killing had not gone public.
No one could’ve said that they’d seen the Vampire Killer on TV. No one but an uninformed member of the Underground who didn’t know that Eva had told Dawn the truth about the transmission plans.
Oh, God.
Dawn armed herself, forcing a casual smile that almost split her face in half. Meanwhile, she sought her clothing, trying not to fumble as adrenaline screeched at her to run. “I got carried away. We’re Underground, maybe being watched. What a time to forget.” Acting!
But her pulse was screeching.
Matt took a look at the mirror Dawn had mind broken, his breath coming fast and heavy. “I’d think that you, out of anyone, would . . .” He planted his hands on his hips as he remained kneeling.
She got dressed. “I don’t want to be vamp entertainment. That’s all.”
“Okay.” Matt knitted his eyebrows. “I can understand. Another time, another place . . . ?”
Break of Dawn Page 19