Her eyes darted around the library. “It’s an article on using stem cells to treat types of blood cancer.”
What was she so nervous about? Her evasiveness triggered more questions. “And?”
“It’s a treatment where you clean out stem cells and replace them with healthy ones from a donor.”
“Is that what you’re studying?”
“I’d like to be a hematologist one day.”
Interesting. My little blood courtesan wanted to study and treat blood conditions for a living.
“Why?”
She pursed her lips and avoided my gaze. “Personal reasons.”
“Like what?”
She gave me an exasperated look. “Anybody ever tell you that you can be a bit pushy?”
Of course they had. Not that I was going to apologize for it. If I didn’t set expectations for what I wanted and go about making things happen myself, then it wouldn’t happen. So what if I had to be a little abrasive in going after what I wanted? It helped ensure I get what I want, rather than staring longingly from afar at what I didn’t have the courage to go after.
“Anybody ever tell you that you can be a bit of a perfectionist?”
Our eyes locked and the only sound was her escalated breathing. I’d riled her up by prying into whatever she wanted to keep to herself. Of course, that made me want to uncover her reason why.
Plus, that stubborn glint in her eyes made her irresistible.
“Maybe.” She jerked her head over her shoulder as if shaking off the response.
“I don’t mean it in a negative way,” I clarified. “I love the way you line up your pens when you’re studying. They must be just so. Equidistant from each other and the book. And you spin your ring around your finger, when you’re nervous, I believe.”
A flicker of alarm appeared in her eyes before her gaze drifted off. “There’s so little I can control in the world. So, whenever I can, I might take it a bit far.”
Her melancholy tone dislodged something deep inside my chest. She’d suffered through something. Something painful enough that she kept it close. A secret. What was it?
She returned her focus to me and shrugged. “All right, so now you know. I’m a control freak. Like you are—but different.”
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing.” I tried to lighten the mood. Anything to remove that sad glint in her eyes. “In fact, it’s kind of sexy.”
She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head while she examined me. “Sexy? I can’t see that.”
“Because you’re not watching you. You get so intense with your reading. Your expression, so focused. I can’t help but think of how you look in bed. It makes me want to grab you from your books and carry you to your room. “
Her lips parted while her eyes widened slightly. Then she laughed. “I guess you’re a bit of a freak yourself.”
“With you, yes.” I moved closer to her in two steps and cupped her chin, tilting it back so she was forced to look up at me. “I’ll show you how much right now.”
Then I picked her up around the waist, threw her over my shoulder and gave her rear a slap. She squealed in protest, but then laughed as I carried her into her room.
No matter how many times I’d spilled my seed into her warm, welcoming body since she’d arrived, I wanted more. Rather than tiring of her, my need to be near her increased, like an addiction. Since I’d given her a break from drinking her blood last night so she could replenish her reserves, I craved the taste of her like a thirsty desert dweller. After I was pleased with the number of times I’d brought her to climax, I found my own satisfaction with her sweet body and blood.
We lingered in her bed, naked limbs entwined around each other.
She lifted her head off my chest to look at me. “Why don’t we ever go to your room?”
“That’s my private space, Mia. Nobody goes there.”
She scrunched her face before changing the topic. “You haven’t left your house for days, have you?”
“No need. It’s the twenty-first century. I can take care of most matters from my home office.”
“But don’t you need—fresh air?”
She paused. I wondered if she was about to say sunlight, or if she was second guessing her question, wondering if a vampire needed any air. Of course, my little med student would want to know the physiology of a vampire.
“I’m not human anymore. I don’t need the same things you require.”
Blood was key to our existence. Unfortunately, we couldn’t restore our supply like humans could and had to replenish from a provider.
“You’re right, though. Let’s go for a walk.”
This time we headed toward Watertown rather than Harvard Square.
When we reached the gates of the cemetery, I led us down a side road.
I wrapped my arms around her waist and said, “Hold on.”
She gave me an odd look but followed my instructions. When I bounded over the fence, lifting her at least ten feet off the ground, she yelped and hung on tighter.
Once we landed on the grass inside the cemetery, she regained her footing. “I didn’t expect that.”
“Shh. You’ll alert security.”
I took her hand as we walked over the trails and around one of the ponds.
She gave me a teasing smile. “A vampire in a cemetery. You didn’t strike me as the type to be so cliché.”
“Ah, my sassy minx, many of us find comfort among the dead. Where else could the undead feel alive, but among those who are truly gone?”
Mia tilted her head as she listened.
“We may not be alive like you are,” I added, “but we are not like them.”
Mia
As we walked through the serene grounds of the cemetery, with imposing trees swaying from the night breeze above the tombstones, I tried to ignore the darker images my mind conjured as to what lay in the shadowy darkness. After all, I was with a vampire. Who better to have at my side than a supernatural being?
Renato’s words replayed in my head. If you were immortal, wouldn’t you always feel alive? Or because you were technically dead, did you need to find new ways to feel alive again?
“How long have you been alive?” If that was the right term to use. Saying undead didn’t seem appropriate.
“I am not so old,” he replied, “for a vampire.”
When he didn’t elaborate on that answer, I prodded, “Meaning?”
“I was turned in the 1940s,” he said. “World War II was a dark time.”
His answer triggered more questions, but I forced myself to be patient and let him tell it on his own timetable, so he wouldn’t shut down. In the week since I’d been with him, I’d learned little about his past.
When we reached a pond circled with willow trees and ornamental grasses, and he still hadn’t explained, I couldn’t wait any longer. “Would you tell me more?”
He gave me a sidelong glance. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because you might not like me as much after you hear my story.”
If I had been intrigued before, now I was bursting with anticipation. Trying not to sound too excited, I replied, “I’m willing to take that chance.”
Seconds pounded like a ticking clock as I waited.
Finally, he spoke.
“My mother came to Boston from Sicily with her family around 1910.” He paused to trail his fingers over the leaves of a willow tree in a gentle manner. “They lived in a cramped apartment in the North End and worked any jobs they could to make ends meet, hopeful for a new start in this country. My mother met my father, a son of a rich Brahmin family, and they fell in love. They kept their romance a secret as both of their families would disapprove, but when my mother became pregnant, and she could no longer hide it, it all fell apart.”
“What happened?”
“After putting it off, my father went to his family and told them he was in love with a woman whom he planned
to marry. When they realized she was a young, pregnant immigrant, they forbade him from seeing her any longer. And guess what? He listened to them. My mother’s family was furious with her for bringing shame on the family. They were trying to make a new start in the New World, and she’d created a scandal. They sent her back to Italy with a broken heart. The only person who showed her any understanding and did not shun her was my grandmother.”
“Oh, your poor mother.” What she must have gone through.
“And then, I was born. A bastardo.” His tone took on a bitter edge. “I grew up poor and struggling with my mother and grandmother. They both died within five years of each other, leaving me on my own.”
“Renato.” I touched his arm, not sure what to say. “What did you do?”
“I moved through Italy, working odd jobs. I vowed that one day I’d go to America and find my father’s family. Make them pay for what they’d done to my mother and me. That all changed when a vampire attacked me near a canal in Venice, making me what I am.”
I shook my head, mouth opening and closing as I tried to make sense of all of it. “Who was it?”
“It doesn’t matter. She’s gone.”
The icy tone in his voice made me think he might have had something to do with it.
“Did you—?” I didn’t finish the sentence, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
“She was evil, but she was all I knew of this world. I relied on her, yet despised her. We moved west through Europe and eventually to America after the War ended. She created others in her cruelness. Even one of my long-lost relatives, just to torment me.”
So many questions arose that I’d forgotten all about the cemetery and my unease there in the dark. Before I could shape them, he continued.
“I found my father’s family in Cambridge. They lived their lives without a care in the world, no thought to the branch of the family tree they’d cut off hoping it would rot and die.”
His voice affected me, the way it had since I’d first met him, but with that twinge of pain drawing it closer to a whisper, it reached me on a deeper level. Feeling so much for him and what he’d gone through.
“For years, I watched them while I carried out a plan to take what was rightfully mine. Being undead gives you certain advantages in the business world. I preyed on human weakness in real estate investments and built a fortune. Finally, I seized an opportunity to force my father’s family out of their home and moved in. What sweet revenge I found on finally having what was denied to me. I was the eldest child. It should have come to me, and not that second child my father doted on with his prim and proper wife. If my father had done the right thing and married my mother, I would have grown up there, and that idiota never would have been born. We might have been happy together. A famiglia. Or, at least we wouldn’t have been hungry.”
“Did you ever tell them who you were?”
“Yes, I told my father. And I told him that I was immortal. He looked at me like I was a monster.” He fixed his gaze on me. “It’s true. I am one. I only exist to feed and fuck. I only exist by feeding and fucking.”
“That’s not true. I’ve never once thought that about you.”
“You don’t know me well enough. I’d killed many in my past.”
“And now?”
“I use blood courtesans.”
Use. That word echoed in my head, making my insides groan. I was one of them.
Renato’s pain pushed my own feelings aside. His father’s rejection had clearly torn him apart.
“Did he ever show any remorse for never having known you?”
“Perhaps. But it was too late. My mother was dead. His neglect destroyed her. And he deserved the same.”
I listened with fascination, sympathy growing both for him and his family. Everyone did something for a reason, and it wasn’t always easy to say who was right or wrong. Plus, this was only one side of the story. Yet, he’d grown up poor and shunned by his family. That wasn’t right.
“What happened to them?”
“My father died decades ago.”
“What about your brother?”
“What about him?”
“Didn’t you ever want a relationship with him? After all, he was your brother. What happened wasn’t his fault.”
Renato’s eyes gleamed with fury under the moon, showing he was not a mere mortal. “Why? To be tormented by his life as a beloved son, a glimpse of what I had been denied?”
He had a point there. The things he’d experienced were ones I could not make judgment on having not lived them. As an only child, I always wondered what it was like to have siblings. I missed out on all the times playing or fighting. What a difference it must have been, knowing you had a sibling who had been treated better than you.
“I’m glad you told me all this.” I guessed he didn’t tell this tale often, one that left him in so much pain. I couldn’t help but feel special with him confiding in me, and for a moment I forgot he was a vampire and I was just another courtesan.
CHAPTER 7
Renato
Buried emotions had welled up when I told Mia my story. All those years of pain and longing as I sought revenge. And here I continued to exist decades later, having accomplished my goals, and still, the ache remained. It hadn’t brought me any peace. I’d spent many nights brooding under the moonlight as I walked alone among the gravestones. I still wasn’t sure why I’d brought Mia with me and confided in her. Something about her made it feel natural. Safe.
Enough dwelling on the past. I wanted the comfort of her body. Opening my arms, I pulled her into an embrace, inhaling her scent. With her body pressed against mine, I began to sway. Soon, we were dancing in sync on the manicured lawn beneath the dark cloak of the unlit cemetery.
“Dancing without music?” she asked.
“We don’t need any.”
It was true. We moved in perfect harmony with one another, her movements mirroring mine.
A smile crept across my face. “Does this add to your cliché? Now you’re dancing with a vampire in a cemetery?”
She laughed. “Are we being filmed for some B horror movie?”
I chuckled. “I so love your dry wit. It turns me on.” I raised my brow and gave her a sly smile. “If you want me to film us, I’d be happy to record our time together.” After a pause, I added, “All of it.”
“No, thank you. I’d hate to find myself starring in vampire porn on the Internet one day. It might kill my chances of getting into med school.”
“Ah, my star student. You work too hard, always thinking of your studies. When you’re dancing with me, I want you to be with me.”
“I am with you.”
“You know what I mean. Don’t think of med school, or courses, or homework. Live in this moment. Think about how your body feels.”
Her heart beat hard and fast against my chest, commanding all my attention. I was aware of her closeness, her scent, her blood pulsing through her veins. She was as affected as I was as we shared the cemetery night.
“It feels good.”
I trailed my hand down her lower back to cup her cheek. “This ass is perfection.” I surprised her with a light swat.
She cried out. “Hey! I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Get used to it. I always want to touch it.”
I bent down and kissed her neck, which made her moan. At some point, we’d ceased dancing. All I could focus on was her blood pulsing beneath her skin.
“A taste?”
She tilted her head. “Yes.”
I sank my fangs into her sweet flesh. The moment her blood flowed over my tongue, I slipped into the sweet nirvana only she could provide.
It took all my restraint to pull away and not take her on the cemetery floor. “Let’s go back to my place.”
Desperately hard, I could barely keep my hands and lips off her as we returned home. As soon as we stepped into the house, I began to undress her. By the time I had her on the bed, she was wet and as frantic as
I was. I slipped into her, finding the ecstasy I craved.
“Climb on top of me.”
I’d introduced her to many new positions since our first night together, and loved being her first in so many ways. We hadn’t tried this one yet.
Her eyes flickered with anxiety, but desire soon won over. “Yes.”
We switched positions, and she slowly moved up and down on top of me.
“Yes. Just like that. Follow what your body craves.”
She quickened her pace, and I thrust against her, following her into a dark wilderness overwhelmed by sensation. She considered herself inexperienced and watching her take charge of her sexuality turned me on like nothing else had in ages. Her breathy sighs turned to moans, signifying her growing pleasure. My fangs lengthened as my body craved her blood. I was on the verge of losing control.
Without knowing why, I turned my fangs to my wrist and bit it.
“Drink.” I offered it to her.
She paused and leaned back, eyes widening as she watched me. She knew what this meant. I’d warned her about it when she’d first asked to taste my blood. Now I wanted it. We’d be connected by a blood bond, and I needed a part of her with me.
Her eyes locked on mine for a highly-charged moment. She nodded and leaned forward, darting her tongue out for the first taste, licking the blood that trickled down from my wrist. A low moan escaped me.
Peering at me through lidded eyes, she suckled. Her lips on my skin, her tongue lapping at blood while her tight muscles clamped around my cock had to be the most erotic moment of my life. I’d never experienced anything like it, with my senses heightened to almost unbearable levels. Her desire, longing, and aches combined with my own. She pulled back, and our eyes locked again. Now her lips were stained with red, my blood. I cupped her face and kissed her, tasted me in her mouth as our flavors mingled.
She moved against me, and I joined her as we renewed the rhythm of our bodies seeking pleasure in each other. It was as if we’d waited centuries to embrace in this dance. The way we fused gave me a moment of utmost clarity, showing how lonely I’d been. I’d never felt as close to anyone as I did with her.
And I didn’t want to lose her.
Pursued: A Vampire Blood Courtesans Romance Page 8
