Dark Seduction: A Vampire Romance (Vampire Royals of New York Book 2)

by Sarah Piper

  “Sasha!” Charley gasped. “No! You’re not allowed to get that crazy look in your eyes over Aiden Donovan.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “You’re too young, for one thing. And he’s too old. Like, seriously old. And he’s a… No. Just no.” Charley had enough trouble keeping Sasha out of the criminal life. Now she had to worry about keeping her out of the supernatural life too?

  “Aiden’s not a no-just-no. He’s a yes-hell-yes. A hot, sexy yes I want to lick and—”

  “I’m not listening!” Charley sing-songed, pretending to cover her ears, knowing damn well she could no more keep her sister from gushing over her new vampire crush than she could keep herself from obsessing over her own.

  It didn’t matter anyway. Once they figured out this Rudy business, she and Sasha would be out of Dorian’s life for good. Out of Aiden’s. Out of the lives of the entire Redthorne clan.

  “Anyway,” Sasha said, sitting up again. “Aiden’s working today. But he told me there’s a movie theater in town, and guess what? They’re showing a double feature this afternoon—Romancing the Stone and Pretty Woman. I thought maybe we could go? And get a late lunch after?”

  “Don’t you have to get back to the city? I thought you had to open at Perk tomorrow. And what about class?”

  “Darcy picked up my shift, and I already emailed my professors that I’d be out a couple days. I turned in my English paper early, so it’s no big deal.”

  “Hmm. So you’ve got it all planned out, huh?”

  “I like it here.” She shrugged, her voice softening. “Don’t get me wrong—I love the city. But here, I feel like I can actually breathe.”

  “It is beautiful,” Charley said, her gaze drifting to the window. Her room faced some kind of orchard, the trees bursting with leaves the color of ripe apples. “Especially with the fall colors.”

  “Not just that, Chuck. I like you here too. You’re way more relaxed. Not looking over your shoulder every five seconds, waiting for another stupid order from Uncle Boss.” Sasha glanced up at Charley, her eyes glassy. In that moment, she looked as young as she had when she’d shown up on Charley’s doorstep all those years ago. “Why can’t you and Dorian just, like, get married or move in together or something? You deserve your happily ever after.”

  A deep despair welled up in Charley’s heart, but she smiled through it, joining her sister on the bed and wrapping her in a hug.

  Sasha was right. Charley was more relaxed here. Inside the walls of Ravenswood, it felt like her real life couldn’t touch her. A momentary pause, sure—one that would shatter the moment she returned home to Park Avenue—but one she appreciated beyond words, despite her regrets over losing Dorian.

  “It doesn’t work that way, Sasha,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to Sasha’s head. “Besides, I already have a kickass roommate, and I wouldn’t leave her for the world.”

  Sasha cracked up. “Who said anything about leaving me? We’re a package deal, Chuck. Where you go, I go.”

  “I see.” Charley nudged her in the ribs. “So this isn’t really about me and Dorian finding our happily ever after. You just want a permanent invite to that pool.”

  “I mean, I wouldn’t say no, but…” She pulled out of the embrace and blew a breath into her bangs, her eyes serious once again. “I really do want you to be happy. I want you to be okay.”

  “Me too, baby. Me too.” Charley smiled and smoothed her hand over Sasha’s ponytail. “Hey. Is that movie and lunch date still on the table?”

  “Definitely.” Sasha beamed. “Should I get us an Uber? We need transportation.”

  A slow grin stretched across Charley’s face. “You leave that to me.”

  After taking the scenic route to town, Charley pulled the Ferrari into the parking garage on the main drag, expertly guiding it into the spot.

  “This car was made for you,” Sasha said, still gaping. “You look so hot right now. Seriously.”

  “I know, right?” Charley fluffed her hair and laughed. She still couldn’t believe Dorian had let her take it—she was sure he’d send Jameson to chauffeur them around. But then he’d surprised her by offering it up, with no more than a firm warning that she stick to the speed limit and not park too close to anyone else.

  She had no idea why he was being so kind, given her treachery. But she wasn’t about to look that particular gift horse in the mouth. For now, it was all part of her fantasy life—the one where she got to live in a beautiful manor and eat delicious food and spend a fabulous day tooling around town with her favorite person in the world—and Charley planned on making it last for as long as possible.

  Linking arms, the girls headed down to the theater at the end of the block. They’d just reached the entrance when Charley noticed the creepster lurking outside, leaning against the brick facade and smoking a cigarette as if the tiny theater in the tiny town was his regular hangout.

  Her stomach twisted, her heart giving her a swift kick.

  She knew that fucking chain smoker.

  And there was only one reason he’d be in Annendale-on-Hudson, mere hours after she’d gotten her phone back and texted Rudy that she and Sasha would be spending some time up here.

  Her uncle had sent him to spy on her.

  The man turned to glare at her, offering a fake smile.

  “Why don’t you head inside,” Charley said to Sasha. “See what kind of candy they have. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep. I just remembered I need to text Dorian about something real quick.”

  “Okay. Don’t take too long—I want to get good seats.” Sasha disappeared inside, and Charley stormed over to the spy, her skin hot with anger.

  “How you doin’, Charley-girl,” Bones said, taking a drag of his Marlboro. “Been awhile.”

  “What the hell are you doing here, Bones?”

  He shrugged and blew a plume of smoke into her face, not answering.

  Jesus Christ. She’d practically grown up around the guy. And now, he didn’t even have the grace to acknowledge how fucked up this situation was.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said, waving away the smoke, “I’m here with my sister. Who’s nineteen years old and has nothing to do with this. So please fuck off.”

  Bones shrugged. “No boyfriend today?”

  Charley rolled her eyes. So Rudy had told him about Dorian, then.

  Odd, considering she was pretty sure Rudy had cut the other crew guys out of the Ravenswood gig.

  “What part of ‘fuck off’ was unclear?” she asked.

  Bones didn’t respond. Just stood there scratching his stubbled jaw, the cigarette burning to a nub between his fingers.

  “I liked you better when you worked for my father,” Charley said.

  “Yeah, me too. Catch you later, Charley-girl.” He exhaled another cloud of smoke, then flicked away the cigarette butt and walked off, disappearing around the corner.

  That was it. No outward threats. No shake-down. No warnings.

  Just an appearance. A reminder.

  Charley leaned against the bricks and sighed. She wasn’t afraid of Bones, but she hated being spied on. Hated what Rudy had done to her. Hated that he was doing it even now, intruding on the one place she’d wanted to believe he couldn’t reach.

  Rudy wasn’t even trying to scare her—he could’ve sent goons to threaten her for that. No—he just wanted her to know he was watching. Always fucking watching.

  “Who’s the creep?” Sasha stuck her head out through the doorway, nodding toward the spot Bones had just vacated. “I saw you talking to him.”

  “Just some guy looking for beer money.” Charley forced a bright smile. “Did you scope out the candy?”

  “Yep. I’ve got it all planned out. Let’s go.”

  As they waited in line for the ticket booth, Sasha hummed and bobbed her head, totally comfortable, totally content. For her, the future looked bright and happy, even if she had to navigate a few bump
s along the way. Her seemingly endless joy was a firm reminder that Charley had done the right thing, asking Dorian for help.

  Charley’s own future didn’t hold many bright spots, but Sasha’s certainly did. And Charley would see that it stayed that way—no matter what.

  “Two tickets for the double feature,” Charley said to the kid behind the ticket window.

  He pushed the credit card machine toward her. “Twenty-two even.”

  Charley swiped her card, but the machine wouldn’t read it. She tried again—no luck. Just a series of angry beeps.

  “Sorry about that,” the kid said. “Thing’s been wonky all day. I’ll have to manually enter it.”

  She handed over the card, a trickle of unease rolling through her chest.

  The machine beeped again.

  “Sorry,” the kid said again. “It says the card’s declined.”

  “What? That’s—forget it. I have another one.” Charley fished out her secondary card and handed it over, but no matter how many times the kid tried the numbers, the machine kept up its incessant squawking.

  “Did you put a fraud alert on your cards?” he asked. “It’s declining this one too.”

  The trickle of unease turned into fear, sinking like a stone in Charley’s stomach.

  There was only one reason both her cards would suddenly be declined.

  “I have no idea what’s going on.” She held out her hand for the card, cheeks burning. “I’ll have to call the company.”

  “Sorry, I have to keep it. Do you have cash?”

  Holy fuck.

  The reality of her situation slapped her hard in the face.

  Those cards were her only access to money.

  Without warning, Rudy had just cut her off.

  “Charley?” Sasha was at her elbow, tugging her arm. “What’s wrong?”

  She met Sasha’s eyes, shame slithering down her spine.

  I can’t even buy my sister a movie ticket.

  “Something’s wrong with my cards,” Charley said. “I have to call the bank, but for now, I can’t get the tickets.”

  “That’s it?” Sasha laughed, her brow crinkling with confusion, as if this were just some minor pothole on the road of life. “Damn, girl. I thought someone died. I’ll get the tickets—it’s no problem.”

  Charley tried to refuse, but Sasha was already handing over her debit card. The machine chimed happily, and the kid handed over two tickets.

  “Enjoy the show,” he said.

  Sasha insisted on paying for the candy too, and as she headed to the snack counter, Charley waited on the sidelines and took stock of her assets, wondering how far she could make them stretch: a few hundred bucks in the false-bottomed cookie jar, a monthly MetroCard that was good for another three weeks on the subway, a coupon for a free latte at Perk…

  That was it.

  Her mind spun with new worries. What if Rudy stopped payment on the maintenance fees of her penthouse? What could she do about it? Report him to the labor board for unfair practices?

  Charley bit her lip, cursing herself for being so naive. She should’ve been taking cash advances out from the credit cards, a little at a time, squirreling it away for a rainy day.

  Now, she was about to walk straight into a hurricane, and she didn’t even have an umbrella.

  Stupid, stupid girl.

  Her whole life she’d been shuffled from one man to the next, never given the opportunity to grow, to change, to be anything other than Charlotte D’Amico, the phantom art thief. She was her father’s, and then she became Rudy’s, and in some ways, even Dorian’s. He’d offered without hesitation to buy her out from Rudy’s clutches—a deal Charley knew her uncle would never take. But even if that wasn’t an issue, how could Charley accept those terms? Well-meaning or not, how could she allow herself to become indebted to another man?

  She’d lived for decades in a constant shadow of fear, afraid to speak up, afraid to defy, afraid to truly live. But she wanted to. God, how she wanted to. It was more than just keeping her sister safe, dodging Rudy’s threats, eking out some kind of living that didn’t involve stealing. Deep down, she wanted to give her sister a life, and to build one for herself. She wanted to go to school, to study, to learn something, to be something, to find and follow her passions. She wanted to work hard. She wanted to be free to fall in love.

  Love.

  The last word stuck, echoing through the endless canyons of her heart.

  She missed Dorian—missed the potential of what could have been. In all her years of loneliness and fear, she’d never once felt as scared and empty as she had yesterday in the dining room, when Dorian made her open that drawer. The moment she saw her notebook and floor plans, she knew she’d lost him forever, just as she knew—no matter what her future held—losing him would be the single biggest regret of her life.

  I have to figure this thing out. No matter what.

  Sasha returned with an armload of goodies—Reese’s Pieces, M&Ms, a giant bag of buttery popcorn, and two jumbo sodas—grinning at Charley like the credit card issue was no big deal, like this sort of thing happened all the time. When they got inside the theater, there was only enough space in the back, but Sasha didn’t mind. She was just happy to be with Charley, to be hanging out together, waiting for the lights to dim and their day of frothy, rom-com fun to begin in earnest.

  Charley could barely pay attention to the movies, her mind racing with jagged thoughts and terrible memories, desperate to work out this puzzle and get Dorian the evidence he needed.

  By the time they left the theater, Charley felt as used-up and wrung-out as a dishrag. Thankfully, Sasha wasn’t hungry after gorging on all that candy and popcorn, so they decided to skip lunch and take a drive through the mountains instead.

  Charley took the long way again, heading over toward Cole Diamante’s property to show Sasha the view, knowing how much her sister would appreciate it.

  Despite her anxiety, the hum of the road relaxed her, the sun warming her skin, the snap of the autumn breeze whipping through her hair. The fall colors ignited the surrounding forest in a fiery tapestry of reds and golds that nearly took her breath away.

  It was enough to give Charley the faintest ember of hope—an ember she urged into a tiny flame.

  “Okay, it’s coming up,” she said with a genuine smile—the first since they’d seen Bones outside the theater. She reached over and tugged on Sasha’s ponytail. “Ready to see something amazing?”

  “Hell yeah,” Sasha said, trailing her hand out the window, surfing the breeze.

  The hidden turnoff was coming up fast, and Charley downshifted, readying them for the turn.

  In that moment, with her sister laughing at her side, the car humming beautifully beneath her, the sun shining relentlessly upon them, Charley felt—for just an instant—content.

  Then something blurred in Charley’s peripheral vision.

  Sasha screamed.

  Charley jammed on the brakes.

  The car clipped something in the road and spun, careening to a stop on the shoulder, facing the opposite direction.

  After checking to make sure Sasha hadn’t been hurt, Charley unhooked her seatbelt and got out of the car to go see what had bolted out in front of them.

  Huge. Fucking. Mistake.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dorian wanted to burn them all. Every last fucking gray, every last fucking enemy, until there was nothing left of them but a smudge of black ash.

  He’d just wrapped up his meeting with Chernikov and the dark witch when he’d gotten Charlotte’s frantic call.

  Now, even as she stood before him in the gardens, very much alive and well, he still couldn’t shake the feeling of dread from his heart.

  She could have bloody died today. At the hands of a fucking gray.

  “It jumped out at us near the turnoff to Cole’s land,” she said, pacing. “We clipped it. I thought it was a deer or something, but when I got out to check, I knew right away it was a
man. But not a man.”

  She stopped long enough to glance up at him. The moonlight reflected in her wide eyes, making her look young and frightened and vulnerable.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it, Dorian,” she whispered, rubbing the chill from her arms. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to scrub that image out of my mind.”

  Dorian hated seeing her in pain. He wanted to go to her. To wrap her up in his arms and promise he’d take her away from the cold, brutal world they lived in—from anything that would hurt or frighten her.

  But he knew it would only confuse things for both of them. So instead, he stood in place on the garden path, gently urging her to continue. He needed to know exactly what had transpired today. What she’d seen.

  “It… No, he. He was naked,” she said. “His skin was blistered and cracked, like he’d been burned in a fire. Some of his ribs were poking out, and…” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “He had fangs—that’s how I knew he wasn’t human. His mouth and chin were covered in blood. He was just lying there and reaching up for me, his mouth opening and closing, but he couldn’t get up. It was like the sun was just… just cooking him.”

  She shivered, tightening her arms around herself.

  Dorian took a step closer. “Did you happen to notice if he had anything around his neck? Like a pouch?”

  “Yeah, I guess he did. I didn’t get a good look, but I’m pretty sure it had a red cord. The pouch itself was covered in blood.”

  “Did your sister see it?” he asked gently.

  “No, thank God. I made her stay in the car. I told her it was a deer, then made a fake call to highway patrol to come remove it.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she reached for his arm, her touch warm. “Dorian, I’m so sorry. The car seems fine, but the tires might be a little messed up. Or the brakes. I hit them pretty hard when—”

  “I don’t give a damn about the car, Charlotte.” He cupped her face, unable to go another moment without comforting her. “You did the right thing. You kept yourself and Sasha safe.”

  The gathering tears finally spilled from her eyes. “Where did that thing come from? Are there more?”