by Tessa Dawn
No, he didn’t want her as an individual, not at all: He didn’t want to deal with all her occultist nonsense, nor would he tolerate all her inane sacrificial pets. And the endless orgies with human men?
That was definitely out.
But…
And this was really the point worth considering…
She could prove to be very useful, indeed.
After all, a mere woman could go where a Dark One could not, like straight into the heart of the house of Jadon. She could even knock on Napolean’s front door. Hell, she could take a job in one of the various industries: at Marquis’s beloved casino or the Dark Moon Stables, at the Dark Moon Lodge or even DMV Prime, working for the queen or her blond-haired friend. Or she could just beat down someone’s door while wielding a chainsaw, bloody but effective. The possibilities were truly endless, and the Light Ones would never suspect a thing. They would never see her coming.
Why would they?
As long as she stayed away from the wizards, those who might detect her malevolent aura, those who might suspect that she was somehow Vampyr after all…
Salvatore placed the cube back on his bedside table. He stood up and exhaled a deep sigh of resignation: Some things just had to be done for the good of the whole, for the brethren he so adored, for the beloved house of Jaegar.
Leaning over the cube, he whispered, “Yes, Miss Tawni Duvall, I believe it is time for you to succeed in summoning a demon—or a vampire. Tomato, tomahto. There are some things a male of honor simply must do, and tonight, I believe I will do… you.”
three
Ramsey pulled into the long, sloping driveway that led to his modern cliff-side estate and finally brought the roomy Cadillac Escalade to a halt in front of the spacious five-car garage. “Home sweet home,” he muttered to Tiffany, who continued to stare out the window like a zombie being led on a leash.
He climbed down from the cab, circled the vehicle, opened her door, and took a judicious step back, trying to avoid any further intimidation. “Carlotta is packing some of your things,” he said casually. “She’ll have them sent tomorrow. Anything else you need, we can pick up this week.”
Tiffany shrugged with indifference. “And that’s that?” she said caustically. “No garish castle-tower in which to lock up the captured princess?”
Ramsey reached out and ran his fingers through an errant lock of her wispy blond hair, and then he smiled a wolfish grin. “Too short to be Rapunzel,” he said. “How would I ever get to you?”
Tiffany flicked his hand away and drew back. “I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t touch my hair—or me—without my permission.” Her voice contained a confidence her posture didn’t match.
Ramsey cocked his head to the side. “So I take it that means sex is out, at least for tonight?”
Tiffany visibly recoiled. She placed both hands on her hips and glared at him, which only brought a twinkle to his eye. Rolling her eyes, she gestured forward and then followed him through the garage, toward the back door of the house, where he placed the palm of his hand against a strange-looking panel—it appeared more like a ward than an alarm. “What is that?” she asked, her curiosity getting the best of her.
“Just something to keep the boogeymen out,” Ramsey replied. “I’ll have Nachari calibrate it to include your palm later this week.”
Tiffany shivered, but she didn’t reply. When they entered through a long hall, passed an elaborate butler’s pantry, and stepped into a stunningly designed modern kitchen, her jaw dropped open, and she simply gaped. “Holy… shit. All of this for a male who doesn’t even eat?”
Ramsey watched as her eyes swept around the room, taking in the double gourmet ovens and side-by-side refrigerators, the smooth granite counters and the glimmering stainless-steel appliances, as she appraised the intricate hand-painted mosaics and the light travertine floors. Everything was modern lines, sleek design, and contemporary elegance. “Housekeepers and gardeners, pool hands and window-washers all eat food, or at least accept a drink,” he commented wryly. “So do human servants and occasional human guests. We don’t live alone in this valley, Miss Matthews.”
Tiffany just shook her head in what looked like bewilderment.
“You hungry?”
She clenched her eyes shut and grimaced. No doubt, she was thinking about the prospect of blood, letting her imagination get the best of her. She blinked several times, turned her attention to a built-in wall cooler, stocked heavily with rare bottles of wine, and frowned. “Do you drink… other things?”
“Occasionally,” Ramsey said, glancing at the cooler door. “Would you like some wine?”
She shook her head. “No.” And then she remembered her manners. “Thank you.” Her eyes met the floor, and she waited to follow him further into the house.
Ramsey sighed, feeling very much like the predator he was, as he strolled further into the luxurious domicile. “This is the living room,” he said brusquely. “Well, one of them.”
As Tiffany walked tentatively across the gigantic space, Ramsey couldn’t help but appraise her shapely legs and absolutely perfect derriere, though he wished she were wearing one of those killer pair of stilettos. Sue him—she was a truly beautiful woman. When she got to the floor-to-ceiling glass panels that flanked the entire northeastern wall, she stepped forward to check out the view. “Do you own stock in Windex?” She placed a perfect, deliberate fingerprint on the glass. She eyed the door to the outdoor patio circumspectly and then stepped away, apparently thinking better of it. “Is there a barbeque outside? For the occasional human guest?”
Ramsey shook his head. “Nope. Waterfall, fire-pit, eight-man hot tub, but no barbeque.”
Tiffany sighed. She walked further into the room, gazed up at the fireplace that reached all the way to the vaulted ceiling, and then gaped at the eighty-five-inch-screen TV that might have been missed if she hadn’t stared straight at it. The furniture was ultra-modern, all clean lines and linear angles, tasteful… expensive. “Bachelor pad,” she commented absently.
Ramsey pointed to an adjoining room, connected to this one by a wet bar and a decorative art-niche, with three consecutive arches. There was an exquisite pool table and four more flat-screen TVs anchored tastefully to the hand-textured walls in the parlor. “What gave it away?”
Tiffany shrugged, apparently still hiding inside her defensive shell. She peered down the hall toward the dual master suites, then turned toward the lavish staircase and grimaced. She didn’t have to say a word; what she was thinking was obvious: Where will I sleep?
Ramsey took a deep breath and dove in with both feet. “My master is on the main floor at the end of this hall, to the left. The second master is across the hall on the right. I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’m willing to let you out of my sight, even for a moment.” It was the truth, and there was no delicate way to put it, at least not that Ramsey knew of. “But I’ll show you both rooms, just in case.” He pointed to a perpendicular corridor that shot off to the right, about five or six feet forward of the second master bedroom. “There’s a library and another unused bedroom to the right, down that hall, plus a half bath just to your left. Any other guest bedrooms are upstairs.” He gestured toward the staircase. “Six in all.”
“Bathrooms?” she asked, seemingly confused by the complexity of the floor plan.
“Six bedrooms, eight baths,” he replied.
She gawked. “Good lord, you don’t do anything in moderation, do you?”
“I’m not a moderate guy,” he said, his voice sounding far more insinuating than intended.
Tiffany must have taken it as a threat because she took an unwitting step back and grasped both arms with her hands.
“Tiffany,” he said, growing increasingly frustrated, “come here.” He held out his hand.
She shook her head emphatically. “No, Ramsey. I—”
“C’mon,” he repeated, and he felt his pupils radiate with heat, a result of the unfair compulsion he had j
ust given her, the vampiric command.
Tiffany shuffled toward him—she really had no choice—and he could literally hear her heart thundering in her chest. When, at last, she stood before him, he reached out and cupped her face, noticing how large and rugged his hands appeared, contrasted against her delicate skin. “Look at me, Miss Matthews,” he rasped, not really knowing how to speak softly.
She stared up at him, and her sea-green eyes glimmered like jewels in the dim light of the living room.
“I’m a lot of harsh things, little lady, definitely rough around the edges, but I’m not an animal. And I’m not a rapist. I am not going to hurt you.” He bent to place an innocent kiss on her forehead. “Not ever.”
She grasped his hands where they held her face and shivered. “Ramsey, I can’t… I can barely… breathe.”
He sent a pulse of warmth into his thumbs and gently rubbed her cheeks, well, as gently as he knew how. “Better?” He tried hard for a softer voice. “How about now?”
She drew in a deep, unsure breath and nodded. “A little.”
And then, gods forgive him, he took her in his arms.
He knew it was too soon, and he didn’t have the right, but propriety be damned. What the hell was he supposed to do with her? She was like a frightened mouse in the paws of a lion, and he was at an utter loss for words. He tightened his arms around her slender frame, careful not to crush her with his rock-hard body. He slid his hands down to her waist and let them rest on her hips, unmoving, as she slowly settled down. “Like I said before, there’s another unused bedroom next to the library, catty-corner from the second master suite. Tomorrow, we’ll turn it into an office so you can work from here, keep doing the things that are familiar for DMV Prime.”
Tiffany swallowed her fear, and perhaps she swallowed a sharper retort. “Then I have to stay in these four—these fifty—walls?” She frowned. “Like a prisoner?”
Ramsey shook his head. “No, you can work at Napolean’s—when I’m at Napolean’s. You can work at the DMV offices, when I go into town.”
She stood quietly for a moment, perhaps collecting her thoughts. “And what about you?” Her voice was muffled as she spoke into his massive chest. She was only moderately tall compared to his towering frame. “Are you going to keep working as a sentinel, for now?”
His lip twitched unintentionally, and he hoped he didn’t look like a stray pit bull, the kind that was just about to eat a little white rabbit. “Damn, that’s a hard one.” He considered the question and the implications. “Some things I still have to attend to. But others?” He cocked his head to the side. “I might be able to let them go for a while.”
Tiffany squirmed in his arms—she clearly wanted to be free—but something inside of him was not ready to let go. Not just yet. He relaxed his hold, hooked both thumbs into the forward belt-loops of her jeans, instead, in order to keep her close, and then he waited her out.
She sighed. She shifted her weight restlessly from one foot to the other. And then she awkwardly looked down. “So… just what is it that you do, Ramsey? I mean, specifically. What does your job entail?”
He chuckled at the awkward change of subject. “You don’t want to know exactly what I do, baby doll. Trust me; you’ll want no part of that business.”
She used her own thumbs to unhook his from her jeans, and then she drew back and stared at him with a mixture of surprise and concern in her expression. “Then how will I get to know you? I mean, if everything remains a secret?” The words were so soft, so tentative, that they tugged at the iron-strings of his heart: Was she willing, if only a little, to actually get to know him?
He placed the tips of his fingers gently on each side of her waist. “We’ll take it one day, one step, at a time. Trust the celestial gods to sort it out.”
She seemed to measure his words carefully, and then her eyes sparkled with a hint of mischief, if only for a moment. “Are you saying you have faith in the gods, Ramsey Olaru? In something other than violence and blood?”
He meant to chuckle in reply, but the sound came out like a muted growl. Hell, he was a little bit rusty. “In the gods… in my king… in my weapons. Yeah, I have faith.”
Tiffany froze.
All at once, her shoulders stiffened, her stomach clenched, and she set her jaw in a hard, implacable line. “Ramsey… ”
“What?” he asked, instinctively sending his six senses outward, searching for impending danger.
“Your hands,” she whispered.
He looked down, gazing over her narrow, elegant shoulders, past her gracefully arched back, to that gloriously round derriere. Sure enough, his hands were planted firmly on her rear, each massive palm resting possessively on a respective globe. Shit, he swore inwardly, quickly bringing them back to her waist. “My bad,” he whispered.
And then he let her go…
For now.
*
Tiffany literally trembled in her French-heeled boots.
The vampire could not keep his hands off her, even when he tried.
She had never felt more cornered, more uncertain, more threatened in all her life.
Well, maybe when she was hiding in Kagen’s clinic with a bunch of half-wit vampire hunters, or soon after, while she was waiting for Nathaniel and Marquis Silivasi to rip out her heart for daring to attack their women. She had never touched Ciopori or Jocelyn, but still…
This was overwhelming in a way that defied imagination.
Ramsey Olaru was overwhelming in a way that defied reason.
And her head was virtually spinning.
When they had first climbed into Ramsey’s truck, she had felt like she was being led to the gallows, following an ice-cold executioner to her death. And all along the drive, on the way up the secluded switch-back to the steep, imposing house on the cliff, she had wanted to dive out of the luxurious SUV and take her chances, plummeting over the rocks. And now that they were inside his house, his modern, architectural wonder of design and technology, the reality of it all was as overwhelming and intimidating as the man himself.
Correction: the male.
The vampire.
On one hand, his home was breathtakingly beautiful, just like Ramsey—his features, his mouth, and that body? Dear Lord. But on the other hand, it was also foreboding, just like the vampire, stunning on the outside yet somehow distant, closed off, and unwelcoming on the inside, all in some intangible, elusive sort of way: guarded yet unassuming; harsh yet also inviting; surprisingly gentle, yet powerfully imposing.
Confusing!
Tiffany thought about his voice, the way he walked, the way he maneuvered all that hard, unyielding muscle, and then she thought about the kiss to her forehead and his pacifying words: I’m not an animal or a rapist. I will not hurt you… ever.
And still, she shivered.
He offered to set up an office for her, to give her a sense of the familiar, yet he told her in no uncertain terms that she would not be going anywhere without him.
He didn’t hesitate to use his powers when it suited him—to compel her to come forward, to use his eyes and his voice to control her—yet he sent gentle streams of warmth into her cheeks with his hands in an effort to try and soothe her.
He tried to hold her, to somehow give her comfort, yet and still, he had cupped her ass!
The male was a barbarian trapped in a GQ model’s body. He was a primal, instinctive being, trying to play at being a gentleman… if only for her comfort. And Tiffany had no idea which part of him would emerge dominant, which base instinct would eventually win.
Stepping back from his contradictory embrace, she turned toward the kitchen and sighed. Human guests, indeed. “I think I’ll have that glass of wine now.” To hell with propriety: What was she supposed to do with him? How would she ever get through this? “In fact, just bring a bottle, if you don’t mind.”
Ramsey chuckled, deep, low, and gravelly from the throat. Would you please stop doing that? He took a few steps toward the kitchen
. “Red or white?” His voice was positively lethal.
Tiffany cringed at the unspoken implication: red or white?
Blood or wine?
“White,” she quickly asserted. And then she inadvertently eyed the stocked pine-and-glass bar situated next to the parlor. “Unless you have something stronger.” What the hell, she was not too proud to self-medicate.
His lips turned up in a wicked grin as he sauntered to the bar instead, grabbed a thin plastic toothpick out of a crystal jar, and stuffed it between his ridiculously pouty lips. “Now you’re speaking my language,” he mumbled around the toothpick. “Name your poison.”
Tiffany searched for the nearest seat in the living room, whichever chair was small enough to seat only one person at a time. Poison? Oh yeah, the male hardly understood the power of his words. Or maybe poignancy was a better term. “You choose,” she said evenly. And then she watched as he set about creating the perfect mixture of poison in an exquisite, monogramed glass.
Geez, could the male be any more of an enigma?
She buttoned her tailored blouse to the very tippy-top and waited for her drink.
four
Tawni Duvall set down her chalk on the kitchen counter and checked the time. It was 11:00 PM, and the moon was an unusual shade of pale coral, almost as if it had some kind of red dye in it. She stared at the immaculate crisscrossed lines outlining the carefully drawn, five-pointed star which made up her latest diagram, and she frowned in spite of the perfection. She was at her wits’ end, honestly. As in, what did the elusive entities of the underworld want from a faithful servant in order to grant her an audience? Hells bells, she was beautiful, college-educated, and willing to delve as deeply into darkness as the devil himself.