Twice Tempted

  Its head came off, bouncing onto the base it was welded to. Another snap of currents and the statue lost an arm. Then the other arm. Then everything above the waist, yet my seething hurt, disappointment, and humiliation didn’t lessen. Instead, I felt like I could go nuclear at any moment.

  I didn’t stop lashing the statue until it lay in dozens of ragged pieces. Before Vlad, I’d only worked to suppress my power, much as I’d done with the loneliness that came from my inability to touch anyone without harming them.

  Vlad had changed all that. He taught me to turn my abilities into an asset and awakened feelings in me I’d never thought to experience. He was more than my first lover. He was also my first love, yet I’d let myself fall too deeply. Despite all the warnings, I’d dared to hope that one day, he might feel the same way about me. This is where that hope had led me: to a basement, taking out my crushed dreams on an inanimate object.

  I looked at the remains of the statue and felt a grim sort of kinship. Like me, it used to be solid and whole. Now, also like me, it was so shredded from destructive emotions that neither of us would be the same.

  “Damn you,” I whispered, and didn’t know if it was directed at me, or the vampire I’d foolishly fallen in love with.

  My gorgeous dress was now damp from my exertions, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going back to dinner. Everyone had figured out the reason why I left so they’d understand my continued absence. If they didn’t, screw ’em. I was done being the evening’s entertainment.

  Worn out, I climbed up the multiple flights of stairs to my room, glad I didn’t pass anyone along the way. With luck, Vlad would be up late with his guests and I wouldn’t see him until tomorrow. It would give me some much-needed solitude.

  That’s why I groaned when I saw that my bedroom wasn’t empty. Vlad stood by the settee, hands clasped behind him, that cursed jewelry box thankfully out of sight. A rake of his gaze took in my sweaty, disheveled appearance.

  “Feeling better now?” he asked with his usual bluntness.

  Not even close. Just seeing him shattered the fragile control my electrical workout had given me.

  “I’m glorious,” I said curtly. “In fact, aside from intending to get blackout drunk, I’ve never felt better.”

  An emotion I couldn’t name flickered across his face. Then his expression became impassive again.

  “I regret how tonight turned out. I should have discussed my offer with you in private, but I never expected you to misinterpret it in such a way.”

  I don’t know what I’d wanted to hear after this fiasco, but whatever it was, he’d missed it by a mile. His ironclad self-control was also salt on the wound. I was barely holding myself together, and he’d never looked more cool and collected. Anger joined all my other roiling emotions.

  “The dress, the fancy dinner, all your flattering words, then the jewelry box.” I ticked the items off on my fingers. “Really, what was I supposed to think?”

  His snort cut me to the bone. “Anything but that. You and I have been together mere months. Do you know how insignificant that is to someone my age?”

  A fresh wave of hurt made my tone scalding. “Yes, you’re almost six hundred years old, but in today’s world, when you say things like ‘eternal bond’ before giving your girlfriend a ring-sized box, there’s usually only one kind of ring in it!”

  “For centuries, every vampire I’ve made has been given a replica of my ring because it’s proof of membership in my line. That’s useful if my people are captured by allies. Or enemies.”

  I believed him, but it did nothing for the acid continually being poured over my emotions.

  “You don’t get it,” I said sharply. “We haven’t been together long by my standards, either, but your scorn at the thought of marriage shows how differently we value this relationship. That’s the real problem, and I can’t ignore it anymore.”

  His mouth tightened and flames erupted in the fireplace as that shell cracked and his temper flared. I didn’t care. I was the one who’d been emotionally filleted in public and now again in private.

  “I do value our relationship. I’ve never shared my private bedchamber with anyone except you—”

  “Yet you can’t be bothered to install a toilet,” I interrupted. “It’s like you keep showing me ‘This far, no farther’ every chance you get.”

  Now his gaze blazed pure emerald, all traces of copper gone. “I offered a different solution to that issue tonight.”

  Turning me into a vampire would indeed negate my need for a toilet. It would also ensure that I spent the rest of an unnaturally long life loving a man who never wanted me any closer than arm’s length. Vlad was known for his mercilessness, but I didn’t think he realized what a cruel fate he’d be sentencing me to if I accepted his offer.

  Part of that was my fault. I’d let the emotional standoff between us go on too long because I didn’t want to lose him. Problem was, I never really had him, as tonight had forced me to acknowledge. Despite my heart feeling like it split apart within me, I met his gaze without flinching.

  “It didn’t occur to you that I’d see the ring as a proposal because you have no intention of ever offering me a real commitment. I was okay with that once. I’m not anymore.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  His tone was flat even as the flames nearby shot higher.

  “Divorce doesn’t exist for vampires. With how people can change over time, few of my kind choose to marry. Feelings may fade, but a vampire union never will.”

  Then his warm, strong hands cupped my face.

  “I am offering you a real commitment—a place in my life forever. Even if our relationship ended, our tie to each other never would. Let me make you a vampire, Leila, and watch decades slide by like days while you’re by my side.”

  I wanted to say yes. The word trembled on my lips, but I forced it back with a ragged, indrawn breath. He wasn’t offering me anything different, only a longer version of what I already had. The fact that I’d be willing to shed my humanity like an old suit was proof enough that I’d do anything for Vlad, yet he still kept his heart deliberately out of reach.

  I couldn’t live like that, as a human or a vampire. If it hurt this much now, how would it feel after decades of loving a man who regarded me as little more than a pleasant bedmate?

  “I’ll say yes on one condition.”

  He caressed my face. “And what is that?”

  I didn’t blink. “You can read my mind so you should already know. I love you, Vlad, so more than blood ties or the chance to live forever, I want you to say you love me, too.”

  His hands dropped to clench into fists at his side. “We talked about this—”

  “I remember,” I cut him off. “The first night we slept together, you told me you’d give me passion, honesty, and monogamy, but not love because you’re incapable of it. I believed that then, but I call bullshit now. You remember the last thing Szilagyi said before he detonated that explosion?”

  From the granite set of his jaw, he did, but he wasn’t going to volunteer it. I continued on.

  “Szilagyi said he was going to kill me along with him because that would hurt you. Even your worst enemy could see I was more than a mistress to you, but you refuse to offer me anything else. Until you do, I can’t—”

  My voice broke, and despite my resolve, two tears slipped past my lashes. I dashed them away, forcing myself to speak through a throat closed painfully tight from emotion.

  “I can’t be with you,” I summarized. “It hurts too much to be close to you, but continually pushed away.”

  His expression changed to disbelief. “You’re leaving me?”

  From his tone, the idea was more shocking than hurtful. Another sledgehammer hit me in the chest, causing more tears to leak out that I couldn’t suppress.

  “What choice do I have? I know how this will end. With my abilities, I’ve relived it through countless other couples. I even watched my mother give everything
to a man who kept rating her as second-best and I refuse to make that same mistake.”

  Despite knowing every word was true, I couldn’t stop the spate of thoughts that ran across my mind.

  Tell me you love me and I’ll stay. Hell, tell me you’ll be open to the IDEA of loving me and I’ll stay. Tell me anything except to resign myself to always ranking a distant second to the coldness you keep wrapping around your heart.

  He didn’t say any of that. Instead, he said, “It’s not safe. We excavated much of what’s left of his mountain lair, yet we still didn’t find Szilagyi’s remains. If he managed to survive, he’ll come after you.”

  That was his biggest concern? Not our relationship ending, but his enemy using me against him again? For a moment, I couldn’t breathe from how savagely that tore at my heart. I thought I was braced to handle a rejection. I was so, so wrong.

  “Szilagyi’s dead,” I managed hoarsely. “Even if he did survive, my abilities are gone. No finding people in the present or seeing into the future means he’d have no use for me.”

  Tell me that’s not the only reason you want me to stay! burst across my thoughts with all of the vehemence of my last hope. Willpower alone kept me from saying it aloud.

  Vlad only stared at me, his gaze changing from copper to emerald and back again while the fire raged on in the hearth. With every continued moment of silence, the tears I couldn’t will away kept sliding down my cheeks.

  Then, each movement slicing like razors across my emotions, he walked to the door. When he reached it, he paused for a moment, his hand hovering over the knob.

  Don’t do this! I wanted to scream. I love you; can’t you even try to let yourself love me, too?

  The fire flared so high that it breached the grate and licked up the wall, but still he didn’t speak. When it reached the ceiling, I started toward it with an instinctive urge to douse the flames, but then they vanished in a whoosh that left nothing more than a trail of smoke.

  By the time I turned around, Vlad was gone.

  Chapter 5

  The car came to a stop inside the airplane hangar. I opened the door immediately, not wanting Maximus or Shrapnel to get it for me. About ten yards away, a gleaming, ivory-colored jet waited. Underneath my misery, I thought that it was a good thing I was traveling back to the States in Vlad’s private plane. Even if my electricity issues magically disappeared, if I tried to fly commercial, my grim expression would guarantee that I got “randomly selected” for a pat-down.

  A young, russet-haired man waited on the rollaway staircase next to the jet, but upon seeing me, he hurried down.

  “Where are your bags, miss?” he asked in accented English.

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Yes she does,” Maximus replied, getting out of the driver’s seat. “They’re in the trunk.”

  Only Gretchen’s presence kept me from losing my temper. “I told you I didn’t want any of that stuff. I came with the clothes on my back and that’s how I intend to leave.”

  “You’re taking them, Vlad’s orders,” Maximus said in a tone that made Redheaded Man hurry to the back of the limo. “What you do with them once you’re home is up to you.”

  Vlad must not want any reminders of me cluttering up his house. He’d once told me that if I ever wanted out of this relationship, he’d let me go without argument. Had to give it to the man for keeping his word. Not only hadn’t he argued, I hadn’t seen him since the night he left my room. He didn’t even say good-bye before Gretchen and I left for the airport.

  No matter how hard I tried to tell myself that it was for the best, it hurt more than anything I’d ever endured.

  “Fine,” I said, forcing a smile for Gretchen’s benefit.

  My caustic sister had been uncharacteristically protective of me the past couple days. It reminded me of how close we’d been before the accident that claimed our mother’s life and gave me my abilities. I kept telling her I was fine, so I couldn’t ruin that by informing Maximus I’d sooner go naked than torture myself with memories by keeping the things Vlad had bought me.

  Besides, he was right. I could throw them away later.

  “Well . . . good-bye,” I said when Maximus and the other man finished transporting our bags from the trunk to the aircraft.

  He smiled slightly. “Not yet. I’m traveling with you to ensure that you are delivered safely to Marty.”

  Delivered, like a package. Once again I bit my tongue to keep from losing it in front of my sister.

  Gretchen snorted. “What about me? No one cares if I make it back to my apartment in one piece?”

  Maximus nodded at the bald, mocha-skinned vampire who got out of the front of the limo.

  “Shrapnel’s taking care of you.”

  He grinned, showing his flawless white teeth. “We didn’t think Marty would want to see me again.”

  Since Shrapnel once tortured Marty, probably not. Then again, Marty might not be overjoyed to see me, either. My best friend and carnival partner had warned me not to get involved with Vlad. Looked like I owed Marty an apology. I’d give it to him, too, probably while falling into his arms and sobbing. I hadn’t let myself cry since the night Vlad walked out. With Marty, however, I could finally quit pretending that I wasn’t devastated by the breakup. He’d always been there for me and I needed him now more than ever.

  I cast one final look around, hating that part of me had hoped Vlad would show up, saying everything he’d refused to say before. Then I smiled at Gretchen, wondering when I’d be able to do that without it feeling like a lie.

  “All right, little sister. Let’s get both of us home.”

  Eighteen hours later, Maximus and I arrived in Gibsonton, Florida, also known as Showtown, USA. The heat and humidity assaulted me as soon as I got out of the car. It was only May, but the temperature had to be near one hundred degrees. Maximus got out, too, looking at the homes lined up like splotches of dough on a bakery assembly line.

  “Why do I smell elephant manure?”

  “That’s Betsy,” I said, pointing at the gray modular house. “Her trainers keep a pen for her in their yard . . .”

  My voice trailed off as I looked past the line of houses. I should’ve been able to see Marty’s trailer since this was the shortest route into the RV park, but the spot where his 1982 Winnebago should be was empty.

  “Oh no,” I moaned.

  Instantly Maximus was on alert, a silver knife appearing in his hand. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing that knife will help,” I said, cursing to myself. “For once, Marty must’ve decided to get on the road early.”

  Both golden brows rose. “He’s not here?”

  “No.”

  I should’ve called, but Marty never started the season early. Plus, I’d wanted to tell him in person what happened.

  Maximus put his knife away and pulled out a cell phone. “Call him. Find out where he is.”

  I gave him a jaded look. “You don’t know Marty when he’s on the road. He’s doing great if he remembers to bring his phone, let alone charge it or answer it. But don’t worry. I know another way to find out which carnival he’ll be at.”

  After a quick stop to talk to some of the other carnies, Maximus and I got on the road again. At least Gretchen and Shrapnel had continued by air after dropping us off in Florida. If I thought I had a chance at convincing Maximus to let me catch a bus, I would’ve, but he wouldn’t leave until he’d fulfilled his sire’s instructions to the letter.

  Several hours later, in a north Georgia carnival parking lot, I saw a Winnebago with our stage names of Mighty Marty and the Fantastic Frankie painted on the side.

  “There,” I said, pointing at the RV.

  Maximus parked as close as he could get. At this predawn hour, everything was quiet in the employee section of the carnival. I got out, so tired I almost stumbled past the vehicles, tents, and cages along the way, yet I was also relieved. I was back to my old life where Marty and I traveled state to state per
forming our act. In a few months, if I was lucky, my time with Vlad might even feel like a strange, faraway dream and it wouldn’t hurt so much. Propelled by that thought, I banged on the trailer door.

  “Marty, open up! It’s me.”

  The door opened so fast it bashed into me. I caught a glimpse of bushy black hair before Marty’s quick grip saved me from toppling. Then I was enveloped in a fierce hug around the waist. I bent until I was even with Marty’s four-foot height and hugged him back so hard that a current made him yelp.

  “Sorry,” I gasped.

  He chuckled. “My fault. Forgot to brace for one of those.”

  Then Marty pulled back to get his first real look at me. He inhaled, and his mouth thinned into a single slit while green enveloped his chestnut-colored eyes.

  “You smell awful, kid. What happened?”

  I knew he wasn’t talking about it being a day since I showered. Vampires could scent emotions and I was probably serving up a stink platter of brokenheartedness.

  “What you warned me about,” I responded with an unconvincing attempt at nonchalance. “Guess I’m one of those people who learn the hard way.”

  Marty sighed before giving me another hug, and then he patted my back when he let me go.

  “No one’s died of a broken heart yet, so you’ll survive. Now come inside, you look like you’re going to collapse.”

  I felt like it, too. Then Marty scowled, looking past me.

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “How do you think she got here?” Maximus replied coolly. “Now help me with this luggage.”

  I was about to reiterate that I didn’t want it when someone else appeared in the trailer behind Marty.

  “Who’s here?” a groggy feminine voice asked.

  If the moonlight hadn’t broken through the clouds at that moment, the darkness would’ve made me miss the sheepish look that skipped over Marty’s face. In the next moment, I figured out why. A slender girl with long black hair blinked sleepily at us, and she couldn’t have been more than twenty.