Absolon? Fascinated by me? I’m the one who is fascinated by him. I mean, how can I not be? Ignoring the fact that he’d kill me in another life, that he’ll probably send me off to some terrible doom I refuse to think about, he’s…well, mind-blowing.
“I guess he did call me mythical,” I say under my breath.
“Mythical?” Wolf raises a brow. “He said that? Oh, he’s definitely enamored then.”
I nearly laugh. Enamored is a totally different word from fascinated. Enamored implies having affection for someone, and Absolon views me as nothing more than fucking cold currency. But still, the word gives me hope.
“Enamored enough to let me go?” I ask, hating how hopeful I sound.
“We’ll see tonight,” Wolf says, taking another swig of his beer.
“Tonight? At the party?”
He eyes me thoughtfully. “I thought you knew. The party tonight is for you.”
“For me?”
“Yes.” He gives me a grim smile. “We’re auctioning you off to the highest bidder.”
Chapter Ten
I stare at Wolf across from me, absolutely dumbfounded, too shocked to even feel the fear that’s slowly seeping through my veins. “An…auction?”
The party tonight is an auction?
“Mmhmm,” he says. “Tonight it’s the vampires. Tomorrow it’s the witches.”
I grip the arms of the chair so hard my nails are piercing through the wood.
“I’m sorry,” he says, eyeing my fingers briefly. “I thought Solon had told you.”
“He doesn’t tell me anything!” I exclaim, the fear turning into fury.
Suddenly, I feel ice run down my spine, making me shiver, and I don’t even have to turn my head to know that Absolon has just stepped into the bar.
Speak of the Devil.
“And what do we have here?” Absolon says, voice low and rich, tinged with amusement.
I finally turn to see him standing by the main doors with Amethyst by his side, both of them carrying shopping totes. The expensive looking kind.
I meet his eyes, shadowed and cold as they stare at me. His mouth shows a faint smile. He knows what I just said. And even if he doesn’t, I’m mad enough for him to pick up on my thoughts.
Well then, fuck you, I think.
His brow lifts for a moment, then he looks past me at Wolf. “How has she been? Amethyst told me she tried to take a bite out of her.”
“I didn’t try and bite her,” I say indignantly. I know I was trying to get at her, but who is to say what I was going to do?
Absolon doesn’t look amused. “Normally, I would suggest Amethyst help you get ready for the night, but I can’t trust you around her. Without her, we wouldn’t get by.” He gives Amethyst a somewhat affectionate look, affectionate coming from him anyway, and once again I feel that ridiculous flare of jealousy.
And she stares back at him, all googly-eyed, almost blushing.
My god, does he have this effect on everyone? Guess so. Should make me feel a little better, but it doesn’t. I loathe the man—vampire—with everything I have, and I have every reason to, and yet there’s something deep inside me that is drawn to him, despite how awful he is.
Anyway, there’s no way that he wouldn’t get by without her. He’s survived for how many centuries?
Okay, now I really sound petty. I tear my eyes away from them and turn back around in my seat. I pick up my glass with a shaky hand and finish the rest of my drink in one gulp. When I look up, Wolf is eyeing me with surprise. “Guess you need another one,” he says, getting to his feet.
“Amethyst, take the bags to her room,” Absolon commands her, and I feel his presence get closer. He stops and stands right beside my chair, the scent of roses and tobacco filling my nose, wanting to unravel me. I keep my eyes on Wolf as he walks over to the bar with the beer and my empty glass, and I hold my breath, not wanting to breathe him in anymore. I can’t drown, so this should be a piece of cake.
And then Absolon puts his hand on my shoulder, sending a jolt of electricity through me, causing my mouth to drop open, my lungs to inhale sharply. He keeps his hand there and I feel his eyes on the top of my head, turning my scalp to ice.
I raise my chin and look up at him through my lashes.
He’s peering down at me, an inquisitive expression, that ever-present frown and arched black brows.
What? I snap inside my head.
His mouth curls into a cool smile. But he doesn’t say anything. He breaks our staring contest and looks over at Wolf. “I’ll have two fingers of the Bowmore. Two of my fingers, not yours.”
Wolf smirks. Giant man, giant hands, not that Absolon’s are any different.
“Care to have a cigar with me?” he asks, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s talking to me.
“With me?” I ask.
He steps behind me and pulls out my chair. “Yes, you.”
Then he comes around and holds out his hand, looking like every inch the vampire with his wavy black hair, cold, hypnotizing eyes, his long black coat over charcoal wool pants, crisp white dress shirt, steel watch gleaming.
And I get up.
Without his help.
Because I’m seconds away from hitting his hand away but I know I should probably play nice. Absolon is not enamored with me, but he is fascinated, and I need to hold on to whatever little foothold I have. The more I can get him to like me, the better it is. My life depends on it.
“Making a point?” he says under his breath, taking off his coat and folding it on the back of the chair.
I ignore him, walk over to the bar and lean against it, waiting for my drink. “You smoke cigars too?” I ask Wolf, hoping he does.
“Not today,” Absolon answers for him. “He’s got a party to prepare for.”
“You mean an auction,” I practically spit out as I twist to face Absolon, my nails digging into the bar in a rush of anger.
Absolon’s expression turns threatening as he looks at Wolf. “Giving her the details already?” he asks tightly.
“I thought she knew.”
Absolon reaches over and grabs my hand, prying my fingernails from the bar. He glances at the scratches in the wood underneath and then gives me the most ferocious look that makes me want to turn, run, and hide.
“Solon,” Wolf says sharply, enough that Absolon meets his eyes. “I’m sorry. Wasn’t her fault.”
The ferocity in Absolon’s stare tempers only a little, turning cooler, calculated. “I know what you’re doing, Wolf. Don’t bother. Just make the drinks.”
Then he grabs my arm and pulls me away from the bar and toward the glass door into the cigar lounge. He opens the door with a skeleton key and practically throws me inside. I stumble a few feet before catching myself on the back of a leather armchair, making sure I give him the same wicked look he gave me earlier.
Of course, nothing bothers him.
“Sit,” he says to me, nodding at the chair.
“I feel more comfortable standing,” I tell him.
“Oh, really?” He shakes his head and walks past me to the walk-in humidor in the corner. Other than the humidor and the rows of old books along the walls, the décor is the same as in the main lounge, dark and lush. “You want to smoke a cigar standing up?” he says, before going into the humidor.
“Who said I’m smoking a cigar?” I yell after him.
He comes out holding two cigars and a cigar cutter, gesturing to the chair once more. “Sit,” he says, fishing a packet of matches out of his pocket. “Don’t make me ask again. The more obedient you are, the better it will be for you in the end.”
“Why?” I ask, but I plop down in the chair. I don’t know why I didn’t get the graceful end of the vampire bargain. Absolon and Wolf seem to glide with their movements.
“Why do you think?” he asks, sitting down across from me with all the elegance I lack. He cuts off the end of his cigar with an intimidating snap of the cutter’s sharp blades and sticks the end
in his mouth, concentrating on lighting it. The flames put half his face in shadows, the furrow between his brows like a crevasse.
“Can’t you just snap your fingers to light things?” I ask him. “Wolf can.”
He glares up at me, cheeks going in and out as he draws the smoke from the cigar. Finally, he pulls it away, smoke falling from his lips. “I can,” he says. “But I consider that showing off.”
Then he holds the cigar between his teeth, the fangs nearly puncturing it, and reaches over and cuts the end off the other cigar, handing it to me. “Take it.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Oh, is that why your apartment smelled like several pounds of weed?” he says dryly.
The mention of my apartment, of weed, brings me into another state. I stare at Absolon for a moment and realize that I can’t afford to be stubborn anymore if I want to return to my old life. Obviously, there’s probably no chance I’ll get it back, but being alive brings chances, and being dead doesn’t.
“Fine,” I say, taking the cigar from him. I stick it in my mouth and wait while he lights another match. The flame dances at the end, but he’s watching me, so close.
“Inhale,” he says. “All the way into your lungs.”
I nearly choke on it. “That’s not how you smoke a cigar!” I tell him.
“Why not?”
I pull the cigar from my lips, feeling my skin buzz from it. “You’ll hurt your lungs. You’ll damage them. That’s how you get lung cancer. It’s not a cigarette. You hold it in your mouth and let it go and…”
I don’t like the little smile on his lips. “Lung damage?” he repeats. “We’re fucking vampires, Lenore. We’re immune. Breathe it all the way in.”
It feels so fucking wrong, but I do what he says because I’m curious. I inhale, the smoke thick and black, and I know I should be coughing like hell right now, and yet…it feels good. Smooth. It immediately relaxes me, hitting a bunch of pleasure spots at the back of my head, and I sink deeper into the chair, barely noticing when Wolf comes in and places the drinks on the table.
“She’s a quick learner,” Wolf comments, looking me over, impressed.
“She’s a lot of things,” Absolon muses. Then he gives Wolf a pointed look and Wolf leaves the room, closing the door behind us.
“What the hell is in that cigar?” I ask dreamily, admiring the look of it in my hand. So far, it’s better than any weed.
“Nothing particularly special,” he says. “It’s Cuban. But it affects us differently, especially when you smoke it the way that we do.”
Jeeze. The room starts to fill with clouds of our smoke and I feel like I’m sinking deeper and deeper, lost in the haze.
But however loose I feel, Absolon stays sharp, watching me with intention.
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
At the mention of hunger, I clench my jaw. “For what?”
“You haven’t eaten food for a week.”
“I’ve been here a week?”
My god.
“Do you even eat food?” I ask him. Will I ever want to eat food again?
He gives a slight nod. “I do. Our taste is heightened. Good food is amazing. Bad food will turn off your appetite for weeks. You learn to be very particular about what you consume, but one of the finest things in life is enjoying a good meal, accompanied by good alcohol, and then maybe a cigar.”
“And then blood.”
He tilts his head as he studies me through the smoke, eyes drifting over my nose, my mouth. “Food is for enjoyment. But it doesn’t keep us alive. Blood does.”
“But you enjoy…it.”
“That’s an understatement. And you enjoy it, too.” He takes the cigar from his mouth and places it in the ashtray. “Amethyst was scared of you today, and she doesn’t get that easily spooked. Guess there’s something about you that made her want to run the other way.”
“I was nice,” I say softly.
“Nice,” he says with a dry laugh, fishing his keys out of his pocket. “None of this is about being nice. You smelled her. I know you did because I used to smell her too. Candied ginger, sweet things, like her blood. Correct?”
I don’t say anything, all the pleasant buzz from the cigar disappearing like the wavering smoke.
“You didn’t just want a taste of her, you wanted to feed. It’s your bloodlust, the final stage, it’s just a lot more tempered than I thought it would be. Guess that’s what happens when you’re only half a monster.”
He flips the blade open on his Swiss Army knife, and I watch with wide eyes as he brings it up to his neck, making a swift and vicious cut along his skin. Blood rushes to the surface, filling the air with his scent that hits me so hard it nearly knocks me off-balance, then it spills over, soaking the collar of his white shirt in red.
I’m horrified.
Not only at the fact he just did that, but at the ropes inside me that were holding me back, they’re all snapping one by one.
“Normally, the blood of other vampires won’t do much for you unless…well, perhaps you’ll find out one day,” he says, and a heated look comes across him for a moment. “But right now, you’ll take anything.”
I’m breathless, speechless, trying to hold myself together, to look away, to go inward to where I’m strong, where I’m not some bloodthirsty beast.
But that part of me doesn’t exist right now.
The cigar falls from my hands to the carpet and in a second I’m jumping across the table, drinks knocking over, glass smashing, climbing on top of him in his chair.
I grab his head, my mouth going right for his neck, and the minute his blood hits my tongue, I know I could easily kill him. I’m that starved, that mad with hunger.
And so I let myself go. I suck at his skin, drinking down the blood, feeling it hit every one of my cells, making them come alive, filling the empty parts of me with the lifeblood of him.
I barely notice anything else. Just his smell, the taste of his blood, sweeter and better than anything I’ve ever tasted, the taste of life itself.
Beneath me, Absolon moans, a low throaty sound that turns me inside out, and his hand goes into my hair, holding my head against his neck, the other hand at my back, pressing me to him.
Fuck. I want to consume him, all of him.
I dig my nails into his shoulders, grinding myself down on him, my lips sucking, tasting, feasting, his blood making my soul sing. It’s like a constant orgasm without a release.
I don’t know how long it goes on for, time seems to stop, and finally, finally I feel like I’ve had enough.
He puts his hands against my shoulders, pushing me back.
I’m breathing hard, my mouth a mess, and he’s staring at me with dilated eyes, big, black, and round, and I’m looking at his lips, wanting the energy to continue, to shift, to become something even bigger.
He reaches out with his hand and gently pushes the hair off my face, eyes roaming over my features, a hint of tenderness in them. And I feel that, just for a second, because what could be more intimate than drinking someone’s blood when that blood is what keeps you alive?
Fuck, I want him.
I lean in, going to kiss him, to taste his beautiful lips, but his hands remain firm, preventing me from getting closer.
“Feel better?” he asks, his voice quiet and hoarse.
I swallow down the last of his blood in my mouth and realize just what happened. The gash on his neck seems to be healing already, but his white shirt is soaked red, and the front of my nightgown is the same. His skin seems even paler than before, if that’s possible.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
I quickly scramble to get off of him, but he holds me in place. “Don’t be sorry. I wanted you to do that.” He licks his lips, which are almost white. “I may have underestimated you, but you obviously needed it. There’s a part of you that either doesn’t want you to give into your vampire tendencies, or it’s a part that doesn’t need to. But I thin
k, going forward, you shouldn’t deny it for too long. I can handle it…others won’t be able to.”
I look away, feeling shame, but everywhere I look I see blood. “Would I have killed you? If you didn’t stop me?”
“Only three ways to kill a vampire,” he reminds me, adjusting his grip, loosening a little. “You can’t bleed one dry. But you can take a lot of their life force. You can make them weak.”
“Have I made you weak?”
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
I nod. No use lying. “If I make you weak, maybe you’ll let me go.”
“It’s too late, Lenore,” he says gravely. “You’re mine now. You just cemented it.”
I gulp, my stomach flipping. “You’re auctioning me off tonight.”
“And that’s of my choosing. But, until I consciously let you go, you’re mine. That’s what happens when you feast on the blood of another vampire when you’re still becoming.”
Realization dawns on me, kicking me in the head.
“You tricked me,” I say, my voice a hush. “You weren’t trying to feed me—”
“I was trying to keep you,” he finishes, observing my face with little flicks of his eyes. “You belong to me now, until I decide to let you go.”
“But…I already fed from you before. In bed.”
“You were in The Pause. It has to happen now, just as it did. I knew that I couldn’t get you to attack me on your own accord, but if I let you see the blood, smell it, it would have pushed you over the edge. I was right.”
I shake my head, fighting to get off him. “You don’t own me. You never will. No one will.”
“You can keep saying that, but it doesn’t make it true.”
“You sicken me,” I seethe.
“I know I do,” he says. “But this a whole new world, Lenore. And it’s your world now. You’re going to be sickened by a lot of things.”
He finally loosens his grip and I scramble to get off of him. I step down on the carpet and turn my back to him, face in my hands, feeling so lost and unscrambled that I don’t know what way is up anymore. I certainly don’t know who I am. I mean, look at me. I’m covered in blood, I must look like a monster.
Black Sunshine Page 14
