“True,” he said with a hint of a smile.
“Do you see me as a pet?”
Stefan laughed, causing all the tension and worry to leave his face. The vampire had an amazing laugh. It was deep and loud so that it filled the entire space, leaving you feeling as if it were hugging you close. Every time he laughed when we were together, it was always so quick like he was surprised by it. I could only guess that he didn’t laugh often.
“No, ma petite. You are definitely not a pet.”
Leaning back against the sink, I frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“Because my pet would be far better behaved than you.”
“I think you are better off with me not listening to your every command. I might stop being so unique,” I teased.
“That may be true,” he whispered as he started to lower his head toward me.
My lips tingled at his gaze and I froze. He was going to kiss me. He might have kissed my neck and drank my blood while I writhed against his body last night, but we never kissed. This seemed like a dangerous new complication to an already complicated situation. My brain was shouting that this was a bad idea, but it wasn’t drowning out the screams of “Yes!” from the rest of my body.
Lucky or not, something stopped Stefan before his lips could touch mine. The vampire instantly straightened and his arms tightened around me, as if he were preparing to protect me with his body. He cocked his head slightly to the side, listening to something. I strained my own hearing, but I could nothing besides the usual creaks and groans of the old building.
“Someone is coming,” Stefan said before I could ask.
Grabbing my hand, he pulled me toward the front door just as someone knocked. I started to reach for the doorknob but the vampire held up a hand, stopping me. Wordlessly directing me to stay behind the door, Stefan opened it. While I couldn’t see who had arrived, I could hear him. Surprisingly, Stefan stuck with English rather than Italian as I would have expected him to. Apparently I needed to hear this.
“I am sorry to disturb you, sir, but she has arrived. They are ready to begin the meeting.” There was something in the messenger’s voice that struck me as odd. His tone was subservient, but there was also a mocking undercurrent as if he knew Stefan was trying to hide me and he was purposefully calling attention to me.
“Fine. Consider your message delivered. I will be along shortly,” Stefan said in sharp, clipped tones.
“Will you bring the woman with you?”
Stefan snarled and it sounded like a tiger had been set loose in the tiny apartment. He lunged forward and grabbed the messenger by the neck, slamming him against the doorjamb. The violent act knocked the door wide open so I could see the other vampire. He was a small figure, reminding me more a teenage boy with wild hair the color of straw. He snarled back, baring his fangs while Stefan held him up off the ground by his neck.
“No one touches her. Not here and not at the Coven. Is that understood?” Stefan growled.
“Yes,” the vampire hissed.
Stefan gave him a little shake before slamming him against the doorway again. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, my lord.”
With a growl, Stefan tossed the other vampire aside with the same ease as throwing away a piece of paper. I gasped and stepped back as the vampire bounced once as he hit the floor and skid toward the stairs. Stefan slammed the door shut as the vampire was pushing to his feet, but not before I saw the mocking leer he directed at me.
Stefan reached for me and I backed away from him, my arms tightly folded over my chest. I didn’t handle violence well. I didn’t like to succumb to it and I didn’t like it in my life. “What’s going on?”
Dropping his hands back to his side, Stefan looked at the closed door with a frown. His expression was a painful mixture of frustration and helplessness that made me feel bad for stepping away from him. While he might look human, he obviously wasn’t. It meant that he had a culture, a way of interacting, that I knew nothing about and certainly didn’t understand.
“Knowledge of you is spreading through Venice,” he murmured almost reluctantly. “There was no need for a personal messenger. He was sent to get a look at you.”
My sympathy evaporated in an instant. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? I haven’t done anything.”
“No, you have not. But my interest in you has captured their attention as well. It is unusual and they are now focused on you as a potential target.”
“What’s unusual? Your interest or their attention?”
“My interest. There has been no one since I rose to power and they are looking to see if my interest in you will make me vulnerable.”
A little laugh escaped me. The smile rising on my lips was tinged with a kind of desperation and panic. “But you’re not interested in me, right? You just wanted to do something nice for me and I made it blow up in our faces with my stupidity.”
Stefan gave me a little smile and I knew he was trying to reassure me. “I do not know.”
I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse. Did I really want a vampire interested in me, as impossible as that sentence sounded? It’s wasn’t like we could really have all that much in common. He was old and dead. I was young and alive. He liked blood and I liked just anything but blood. Sure, I was unquestionably attracted to him, but the man ... err... vampire had a body like a GQ model and I wanted to kiss every inch of him.
And there’s your problem...
My decisions were being driven by my libido rather than my brain. Wow, I hadn’t been sure that women could do that. I thought only men did that. Stefan proved me wrong on that fact.
“You have the most interesting expressions crossing your face,” Stefan observed when the silence had stretched unnoticed by me.
I blushed lightly. My thoughts had detoured from a panic of how it was impossible for him to be interested in me to exactly how I was interested in him. “Sorry,” I murmured. “My thoughts wandered for a moment. What are we going to do?” There. That was back to the business at hand.
Stefan slowly closed the distance between us and I was grateful that I didn’t try to step away from him again. He lightly placed his hands on my shoulders and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “I will look into this matter and do what I can to safely remove you from their interest. You will not be harmed.”
“Am I in danger?” I asked, looking up at him.
He paused, carefully weighing his words. “Not tonight, but I will not lie to you. You could be while you are in Venice. I think they will lose interest once you leave.”
“I’m in town only for a couple weeks. I’m here for a job.”
Stefan nodded. “Then I will keep you safe while you are here.”
“And who will keep you safe?”
A broad smile crossed his face and he kissed my temple. “I can protect myself, but I thank you for your worry. I must go now. I will try to return later tonight.”
Winking at him, I gave Stefan my best saucy smile. “Right. Looking for a midnight snack before bed?”
A surprised chuckle rose from the vampire and he stepped away from me. “Ma petite, you are more than a snack. You are a feast for my soul.”
And on those sweet words, he slipped silently out the door and out of the building, off to wherever the vampires gathered for their important meetings in Venice.
I plopped on the sofa, my emotions a knotted mess that I hadn’t a hope in the world at untangling. If this job wasn’t paying so well, I was sorely tempted to pick up the phone and book myself on the next flight out of Venice.
But then Stefan had to make that sweet comment and I suddenly didn’t want to leave him. I liked listening to him speak and watching the way surprise regularly danced across his handsome face. He had called me unique and he was the same to me. I wanted to be near him so that I could learn more things about him and his people.
By the time the last of the trembling had subsided, I had convinced myself that I had nothing
to worry about. Stefan would keep me safe and clear up this entire mess. If I was lucky we’d spend some time together while I was in Venice and then we’d go our separate ways as friends.
Yep, that was the depth of the delusion I was willing to cling to because I was that attracted to the man ...er... vampire.
Chapter 3
Something was wrong. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I was suddenly awake when I had been in a deep sleep just a minute earlier. Lying still in my bed, I listened to the creaks in the building and the wind rattling the window in its frame. There were no odd sounds to indicate that I wasn’t completely alone in the apartment. Taking a deep breath, I tried to will myself into relaxing so I could return to sleep when the same scents that I associated with autumn filled my nose. It was spring in Venice and I wasn’t alone. Every muscle in my body stiffened and I strained to hear anything.
“Shh, ma petite,” whispered Stefan frighteningly close. “It is only me.” The bed shifted as Stefan curled up against me as I lie on my side.
I rolled over as far as I could so that my back was now pressed to his front while I looked up at him. The room was dark, but I could make out an outline of his face just above mine. He leaned up on his right arm in the pillow beside mine and the fingers of his left hand slowly threaded through my hair, brushing it away from my face in a gentle caress.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, inwardly wincing at the low husky tone of my voice caused by sleep.
“I said I would return tonight. I wished to watch you sleep.”
“I thought when you said you’d return, you meant before I went to bed.”
“Business took longer than I had anticipated,” Stefan grumbled.
Softly chuckling, I rolled back onto my side and closed my eyes. As I did, Stefan snuggled closer, keeping his long body pressed along the length of mine.
“What do you find so amusing?”
“A vampire with business,” I murmured, biting back a smile. “I never heard of any vampire having a job.”
Sleep was a lost cause now that I knew Stefan was here. How could anyone sleep when he was near? And it wasn’t fear talking. My heart picked up its pace every time he inched a little closer to me.
“I have a very important job, ma petite.” His deep voice was little more than a whisper, a gentle caress of my senses.
“And what would that be? Do you model capes?”
“Nightwalkers do not wear capes.” His tone became stiff and I could so easily imagine the affronted expression pulling at his features, thoroughly insulted by the idea. He must have seen a couple Bela Lugosi movies.
“Are you the main coffin tester for all the vampires in Italy?” I teased.
“I can’t say that I am fond of coffins. Beds have become far more comfortable over the centuries.” As he spoke, he snuggled down so that his head was lying on my pillow. I didn’t think he could get any closer and still remain a separate person. He was also not cool to the touch anymore. I wasn’t sure if he was leaching some of my own body heat or if he’d gained a little warmth from feeding prior to visiting me.
The thought gave me some pause as some uneasiness twisted in my stomach. The image of him holding another woman like he’d held me as he drank from her throat left me feeling ill. I no longer felt special to him. What’s worse, jealousy flared in my chest. How dare he feed from someone else and then come snuggle in bed with me! I knew that I couldn’t possibly supply him with blood every night. I wouldn’t be able to function after a couple days and he’d drain me dry in just over a week. But I still didn’t like the idea of him holding another woman. Damn, I was so freaking screwed.
Stefan sat up suddenly and leaned over me so that he could clearly see my face, assuming that he could even see anything in the dark. “Erin, what is wrong? Something is bothering you.”
I stared at his shadow-cloaked face, stunned that he’d picked up the shift in my emotions without me saying a word. “How...?”
“I can clearly feel your emotions and something has upset you.”
“You can read my mind?”
Stefan paused and he seemed to stare at me. After a couple seconds of tense silence, he shook his head. “No, and that’s a mystery to me. I can pick up the occasional stray thought, but I can’t read your mind when you should be an open book to me.”
“Can you read everyone’s mind?”
“Humans, yes. Most lycanthropes as well. Nightwalkers can be harder.”
“I hope that is not why you think I’m so special,” I muttered, glaring at the wall instead of looking up at him.
He captured my chin with two fingers and forced me to look up at him. “No. It makes you intriguing, but your actions are what make you so unique. Now tell me what is bothering you.”
“Did you... hunt tonight?” I asked, not really liking that word when it came to describing his feeding habits.
“There was no need. I fed from you last night. So long as I’m not injured, I won’t need to hunt for a few weeks.”
“Oh.”
“Is that what was disturbing you?”
“Yeah, just worried.” I burrowed down into the covers so that I no longer had to look up at him, but Stefan remained leaning over me as he weighed my response against the emotions he was picking up from me. He had to be getting acute embarrassment now.
“You’re jealous,” he whispered and there was no missing the wonder in his tone. “You thought I held another woman as I held you and it disturbs you.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said between clenched teeth, feeling more and more like a total ass.
Stefan gave a triumphant laugh and dropped back into the bed, bouncing me on the mattress. Both his arms snaked around me and he easily turned me so that I was now facing him as I was pressed against his chest, a bundle of blankets trapped between us. He buried his face in my neck and I shivered at the touch of his lips against his bite mark. “It’s true,” he murmured. He kissed along the curve of my throat and across my shoulder, making me instantly grateful that I’d worn a tank top to sleep in rather than a bulky sweatshirt. “You are jealous. Do you think I spent my evenings in the beds of all those I feed from?”
“I have no idea how you spent your nights,” I groaned. This was where I was supposed to be saying that it didn’t matter what he did since I was just a warm meal to him. That we were just acquaintances, but I couldn’t complete a clear thought. I wished I had the strength to push away from him. But his lips felt so damn good on my skin. Hell, I wished I had the strength to undress the man so that all these clothes weren’t separating us.
“There is no one in my life. I told you that earlier this evening. No one else has my protection but you,” he said, lifting his face so that he could look me in the eye.
“Sorry. I don’t encounter a lot of people who feel the need to offer protection,” I said a bit breathlessly as I tried to get the wheels to turn in my brain again. “I think it would be best if we moved to the living room for the rest of your visit.”
“If we move to the living room, how am I going to watch you sleep?”
“We both know that sleep is not even close to possible with you in this bed,” I said, poking him in the chest with my index finger.
Stefan wrapped his longer fingers around my index finger and pressed a delicate kiss to the tip. “It was my desire upon arriving that if you were asleep, I’d watch you sleep. I wondered at the idea of you being still and quiet when you are always so full of energy. But lying beside you, the delicious smell of you, I can’t stop touching your soft skin. I wish to make you moan in my arms again.”
This time when Stefan brought my index finger to his lips, he slipped it inside of his mouth, sucking on it while his tongue swirled over the tip. My eyes rolled back in my head and what meager attempt I was making at putting some distance between us dissolved in an instance as the delicious rush of desire poured through my body. I wanted to roll him onto his back while I pulled his clothes off so I could finally
get back to the strong chest and arms I remembered seeing last night.
As I pulled my finger free of his mouth, I touched the tip of his fang. It was amazingly sharp, which shouldn’t have surprised me since his fangs had already been embedded in my neck. I knew the moment that he tasted my blood because his entire body stiffened. He blinked and his eyes glowed bright bluish-gray in the darkness.
“Stefan?” I whispered, the desire I had felt disappearing in a sickening rush so that I now felt lightheaded.
The vampire released my finger and gave his head a little shake. “Forgive me. You... you taste amazing.”
I stared at him and the person that I was accustomed to speaking to returned to me, but there was a flicker, a heartbeat of time, when Stefan no longer seemed to be in the driver’s seat and it was frightening.
“What’s it like?” I asked. Scooting back a little, I leaned up on my elbow while lying on my side so that I could face him.
“What do you mean?”
“When you drink a person’s blood. What’s it like?”
Stefan remained quiet for a long time. I had started to think that he wasn’t going to tell me when his low voice rolled over me. “It’s intoxicating. That first taste is an amazing relief no matter how long it’s been since you last fed. It’s as if a large knot of fear and worry are finally released from your chest. At the same time, a wave of power sweeps through you. You feel as if you are the most powerful being in all of existence and that you can do anything.”
“It’s like that every time you feed?”
“Nearly. If you’re injured and low on blood, it eases the horrible pain.”
“If it’s so great, why don’t you feed every night?”
Stefan paused, shifting a little bit closer in the bed as he seemed to think about my question. His fingers lightly stroked up and down my arm, threatening to scramble my thoughts. “Sex feels very wonderful, does it not? Why do you not have it every night?” While I couldn’t clearly see his expression, I could hear the smile in his voice.
“I’m not dating anyone at the moment,” I said because it was the most obvious answer.
Stefan (Lost Nights Series Book 1) Page 4
