Once Burned

  I grimaced at the memory. “A silver-haired vampire who looked a little like Anderson Cooper threw me into it after I electrocuted him.”

  Both dark brows went up. “You attacked him?”

  “Maximus was fighting the other three vamps and Silver had just killed Hunter. He was about to jump Maximus, so I zapped him. It gave Maximus time to beat one of the vamps and get out of the way. But Silver Hair was pissed and chucked me through the coatroom wall to show it.”

  “What were you thinking, risking yourself that way?” Vlad muttered.

  Did he miss the part where Maximus was about to get killed? “I’m drunk,” I said testily. “I’ll try anything if I’m drunk.”

  His teeth flashed in a quick grin. “I’ll remember that. We’ll speak more about this tomorrow. Now, you need to rest.”

  His authoritative tone reminded me of why I’d gone to the club in the first place. Despite feeling like I might conk out, I pushed myself up on the pillows.

  “Not yet. We have some things to clear up first.”

  “Such as?” The question was mild, but his eyes glinted.

  “Why have you been avoiding me?”

  “I haven’t. I was out gathering items with Mencheres and the others. I’d only been back an hour when Ben called to report the attack on the club.”

  His gaze never wavered, but . . . “Then why did Maximus say you ordered him to shadow me there?”

  “He called to tell me what you were doing.” Vlad’s tone hardened. “Though it seems you did a better job protecting him.”

  Okay, so he hadn’t been ducking me. That left the bigger issue.

  “Why didn’t you tell me there was a catch to drinking your blood? Maximus said that doing it made me, ah . . .”

  “Mine,” Vlad finished without hesitation.

  My temper rose at his complete self-assuredness. “I didn’t agree to that, so forget it.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned down, setting his arms on either side of my face.

  “You think my blood is the only tie between us?”

  His voice was low, yet edged with palpable hunger. It seemed to rub me in places I’d only ever touched before, making my anger fade under a flash of desire. Vlad was so close that his hair was a shadowy veil all around me, and when he began to caress my face with light, sure strokes, it was all I could do not to close my eyes in bliss.

  “This is our true tie,” he whispered, his breath falling hotly onto my lips. “You’re meant for me, and I will have you.”

  Then his mouth lowered in a hard, claiming kiss. A groan parted my lips and his tongue snaked between them to stroke mine with sensual dominance. He tasted like sin made into wine: dark, heady, and impossible to resist. The raw demand in his kiss and his hard body pressing me into the bed made my nerve endings flare with blinding sensation. Need overwhelmed me, causing an exquisitely painful clenching in my loins. I pulled him closer, tangling my hand in his hair and gasping when I felt his fangs slide out. My trepidation vanished when he kissed me deeper, drawing my tongue into his mouth and sucking on it until the throbbing between my legs matched the pace of my pulse.

  Suddenly, he was across the room, his eyes scalding green and a bulge straining against the front of his pants.

  “If I don’t stop now, I’ll forget about searching for your attackers or you still being weak. Rest. I’ll see you soon.”

  Vlad was gone before I had the chance to reply. I blew out a frustrated sigh. Rest, riiiight. As if anyone could rest after that.

  Chapter 21

  After some pacing drained away the last of my energy, I finally fell asleep. When I awoke, I’d come to two decisions. The first was that I was having sex with Vlad despite the dangers of a relationship with him. The second was that I needed to go back to the club. Right away.

  I showered and got dressed, noting that sometime while I’d slept, the dressers and wardrobe had been stocked with clothes from my old room. This room had two doorways, and after determining that one led to an elegant sitting area, I went out the other into a long hallway with only two more doors until it opened into what looked like a set of interior crossroads.

  Damn huge house. I should’ve paid more attention when Vlad carried me here last night, but I’d still been a little woozy.

  “Hello?” I called out. Someone else had to be up here. Vlad said his most trusted staff had their rooms on this floor.

  I heard a door open, and then Maximus’s voice.

  “I’m coming, Leila.”

  He appeared moments later, wearing the same ripped and soot-stained clothes from last night. Once he saw me, he shocked me by dropping to one knee.

  “No apologies are adequate for my leaving you in danger . . . nor can I ever thank you enough for saving my life.”

  I glanced around, glad no one else was witnessing this. “Maximus, get up,” I urged. “You were fighting several vampires. It’s not like you decided to go out for a beer.”

  He rose, but his head remained bowed. “I thought the silver-haired one took you. He escaped while I fought the others, so after I killed them, I chased after him. I should have searched the bar instead. You almost burned because of me.”

  I smiled bleakly. “And Hunter’s dead because of me. We could spend the day piling on the guilt, or you can help me make it right by taking me to those other vamps’ bones.”

  Now Maximus did look up at me. In confusion. “Their bones?”

  “Vampires might shrivel into beef jerky when they die, but they leave their skeletons behind,” I said with grim satisfaction. “Nothing’s filled with someone’s essence more than their bones. Let me touch them, and I can tell you who they were, and if we’re lucky, who sent them.”

  Maximus began to smile with such savage anticipation that it made me glad I wasn’t on his shit list.

  “I’ll have them brought here at once. In the meantime, you must eat.”

  I waved a hand. “Not hungry, thanks.”

  He gave me a stern look. “You barely ate yesterday and you were almost killed last night. Soon you will use more of your power. Vlad’s blood cannot sustain all of your body’s needs.”

  Crap, he was right. All I’d had to eat since breakfast yesterday was vampire blood. I wasn’t about to get in the habit of blood being the main staple of my diet.

  “On second thought, I’m starving.”

  I’d finished a large helping of eggs Benedict when Vlad strode into the dining room. He dropped a burlap sack onto the table and then stood behind my chair, leaning down to brush his lips against my cheek.

  “Beautiful and diabolical. You make me impatient indeed to claim you.”

  I shivered at the graze of his mouth and his seductively growled words. If he used that same tone of voice in bed, he could probably get away with skipping foreplay.

  He laughed, his hands settling on my shoulders. “I very much enjoy foreplay. Didn’t your vision show you that?”

  I closed my eyes against the flash of memory those words elicited, trying to will away the instant clenching in my loins. Stop. We have killers to catch, remember?

  “Yes, first things first. Maximus, quit lurking and come in, I might need you. Leila, are you finished eating?”

  Did he think I’d want dessert before attempting to find who murdered Hunter and tried to kidnap me again?

  Vlad came out from behind my chair and swept my dishes aside, his lips curling.

  “Straight to business—another thing we have in common. The fire caused the building to collapse so this bag contains random remains, but some are bound to be your attackers.”

  Maximus entered the dining room, his expression stony as Vlad emptied the bag where my breakfast plates had been. Four skulls and various other bones spilled onto the shiny oak surface, Vlad catching one of the craniums before it rolled off.

  “May as well start here,” he said, holding it out to me.

  I mentally braced myself and then took the skull. A black and white stream of
images played across my mind, showing a laughing girl named Tanya who looked to be the same age as my sister and whose worst sin was shoplifting.

  I set the skull down, blinking past the sudden moisture in my gaze.

  “She’s not one of them. She was next to me when everyone started panicking, and she brushed my hand . . .”

  And that ended up killing her, whether my touch had stopped her heart or knocked her unconscious long enough for the fire to finish her. I never should have gone to the club last night. If I’d stayed in, this girl would still be alive.

  “No, Leila,” Vlad said quietly. “Her blood is on my hands because she was killed by my enemies. Even if you’d touched her out of sheer carelessness, without that attack, she would have survived. Don’t carry sins that aren’t yours.”

  I swiped my eyes and silently resolved to get another huge rubber glove at once—and never go out without it no matter how much unwanted attention it drew. Then I grasped one of the other charred skulls. Vlad was right. First things first.

  More colorless images skipped across my mind. This skull belonged to the vampire Maximus had decapitated. His name was Cordon, and seeing his worst sin made bile rise in my throat. I tried to push past that and the images of his death to see what happened before. It felt like watching a movie on rewind because everything moved so fast as to be mostly incomprehensible. That was one of the drawbacks to pulling information from bones. They held a lot more history than a single object.

  Vlad and Maximus remained silent, which helped with my concentration. After several minutes, I caught a scene that seemed promising: Cordon and the silver-haired vampire, their expressions serious as a distinguished-looking man in his forties with a frame like a tree trunk barked at them in a very odd-sounding language.

  This was the other drawback to pulling information from bones—I wasn’t experiencing everything as though it was happening to me. If I had been, then I’d understand what was being said because I’d be in Cordon’s mind, but this was similar to linking to someone in the present. I was merely an invisible observer in the memory I’d stumbled across.

  “I think I’ve got something,” I said aloud. “I see two of the vampires from the attack and it looks like they’re getting orders, but I don’t understand the language.”

  “I’m fluent in dozens of languages, repeat whatever you hear,” Vlad directed.

  The other man had spoken rapidly and the language wasn’t easy to replicate, but I gave it my best shot. After I parroted some sentences that may or may not have been accurate, Vlad’s whistle yanked my attention away from the memory.

  “I believe you’ve found our elusive puppet master.”

  I disengaged the link to center my attention back on him. “You understood him? What language was it?”

  “Old Novgorod.” A tight smile twisted his lips. “I haven’t heard that since I was a boy. Either he is at least as old as I am, or he’s very clever by communicating through a dialect few knew even before it became extinct.”

  “What was he saying?”

  His smile remained, but his expression hardened. “You were missing a few words, but I heard enough to determine that surveillance equipment in the town alerted them to your presence. Once you were spotted, his men were told that if they couldn’t succeed in returning with you, they were to kill you.”

  Considering the silver-haired vampire had broken my legs and left me trapped in a burning building, the “capture or kill” order didn’t come as a surprise. Still, it didn’t give me the warm fuzzies. Before, I’d wanted to help Vlad catch the mastermind because then I would be safe. Now, I wanted to catch the bastard so he could pay for everything he’d put me through.

  “Tell me more and you’ll get your vengeance,” Vlad promised. “Do you know his name or where he is?”

  “No,” I said, and explained why. Even their surroundings were of no use. The three men had been in small room with wall-to-wall concrete and not much else. Vlad stroked his jaw when I was finished, his expression thoughtful.

  “Maximus,” he said at last. “Find out who the world’s best sketch artist is, and have him or her here by dawn.”

  Chapter 22

  The other bones didn’t reveal anything significant. Just more images of their owners’ sins and more flashbacks of the distinguished-looking gentleman who spoke Old Novgorod. Vlad left to find the surveillance equipment and to, I assumed, burn the ass off anyone involved with its setup. I kept trying to sort through the deluge of memories to discover more about the people behind the bones, but after several frustrating hours, I called it a day. The truth was that I might be giving myself a headache for nothing. Now that I had a face behind last night’s attack, if the sketch artist panned out and Vlad recognized him . . . checkmate would come tomorrow.

  That left tonight to settle the other issues between us.

  I ate dinner alone in the wood-paneled sitting room that adjoined my new bedroom. Then I stayed there after the plates were cleared away. The modern leather furniture and large flat-screen TV looked out of place next to the antique bookcase containing editions so old, I could barely read the letters on the bindings. Those contrasts in extremes, plus the ancient shield above the fireplace bearing the same dragon design as Vlad’s ring, made me guess where the other door in this room led to. Therefore, when I heard it open, I didn’t turn my head, but stayed on the couch and continued to stare into the crackling orange flames.

  A tall form blinked out of the corner of my eye before I felt warm, strong hands slide down my arms and then the rasp of stubble against my cheek. Despite my resolve to settle a few things first, I couldn’t help but think that the heat seemed to travel from his hands down to a specific place in my body.

  “Wait,” I said, but the word came out wispy.

  Dark laughter made my neck tingle where it landed.

  “How unconvincing. Try again.”

  I couldn’t stop my eyes from closing when his mouth settled in the same spot where his breath had been. A slow graze of his lips had me exhaling in pleasure, then the sudden firm suction made desire stab me right in the center even as I gasped.

  “Vlad!”

  Another chuckle before I felt the dangerously sensual pressure of fangs. Vlad continued to draw on my neck, those sharp teeth grazing my skin without breaking it. My pulse jumped against his mouth as if begging to be bitten, but then I slid off the couch, pivoting to face him.

  He stalked over, his eyes glowing with emerald highlights. Now that I got my first look at him, I saw that his cuffs were undone and the top buttons of his black shirt open, that V of hard flesh entrapping my gaze even as I backed away. The most I’d seen of his skin before was when he rolled up his sleeve to give me his blood. I found myself wondering if his chest had the same crisp dusting of hair as his arms, or if the hint of darkness I glimpsed was from the firelight’s shifting shadows.

  His teeth bared in something too predatory to be called a smile. “You’ll soon find out.”

  I stretched out my hands as if to ward him off. “Not yet. I want to know what your end game is first.”

  Another flash of teeth, this time showing his fangs. “To have you screaming my name within the hour.”

  Those words made my pulse pound so strongly that my neck felt like it vibrated. His gaze flicked there and then he reached me in the next stride, catching my hands and using them to pull me closer. Excitement shot through me as he pressed our bodies together, his arms a sensual cage around me. When I felt something hard pulsing against my belly, lust burst forth with enough strength to shove my other concerns aside. I wanted to touch him there. Taste him. Feel him so deep inside me that I screamed out his name just like he promised—

  “Not until you tell me the catch to sleeping with you,” I managed before those cravings washed away all rational thought.

  He’d already slipped his hands under my sweater and unhooked my bra, but at that, he paused.

  “The catch?”

  My rapid br
eathing made the words come out jumbled. “Yes, the catch, cost, downside, or thing that will make me say, ‘Oh, shit’ tomorrow when it’s too late. Tell me now.”

  He pulled back to stare at me in the strangest way, like he was amused but also debating whether to ignore me and finish taking off my bra.

  “Ah, that catch,” he said at last. “To start, if you betray me with another man, I’ll burn him to death in front of you.”

  I’d expected something like that, but I wasn’t about to agree without conditions. “Only if you hold yourself to the same standard, and don’t pull any of that ‘You’re mine’ garbage if things don’t work out between us.”

  His hands left my back to weave in my hair. Then he leaned down until his face was very close to mine.

  “I never set a standard that I won’t keep myself, and if you ever want out, you need only say the word. But mean it, Leila, because once I leave, I’m gone forever.”

  Vlad’s eyes bled back to deep copper as he spoke, and though they were no longer glowing in that inhuman way, somehow, they were more compelling.

  “Right back at you,” I said, matching his unyielding stare. “Is that all?”

  His lips twisted. “No. I can give you honesty, monogamy, and more passion than you can stand, but not love. That emotion died in me long ago, as I suspect you already know.”

  I took a deep breath, fighting a twinge that made no sense because he was right. I had guessed that about him.

  “Good,” I replied in a steady voice. “I was worried that you’d turn into one of those obsessed, emo movie vampires, and that would be embarrassing for both of us.”

  His laughter rang out before changing into something rougher and infinitely more sensual. Emerald overtook his gaze once again.

  “Enough talk,” he muttered, and lowered his head.

  The firm warmth of his lips combined with the dominating flicks of his tongue made me groan deep in my throat. Desire unfurled as he held me closer, his hand slowly tightening in my hair while I gave myself up to the aphrodisiac of his kiss. His other hand left a trail of heat down my back as he explored my curves with possessive hunger. My loins clenched in response, that inner throb almost painfully insistent. I clutched him, digging my fingers into his back and sending a sharp bolt into him before I moved my right hand away.