by Nalini Singh
Choking the river of memory, she focused on the here and now, on the anger so incandescent in her vision. “Where did you get this?” Her hands trembled with the need to hurt him, this vampire who played with her as if she was an amusing toy.
Stalking to the window where she’d stood only moments before, he said, “That’s not really a question.”
No, it wasn’t. “You bastard,” she said, throwing everything onto the coffee table, the edge of pleasure she’d taken in his presence eradicated by the ice of his voice, an unforgiving reminder that he was not human, that he had no conscience as she knew it. “What right do you have to invade my privacy?”
“I wanted the images they took,” he said without turning.
Her stomach roiled. “I knew you liked pain, but I didn’t realize you got off on torture.”
A glance over his shoulder. “Of the bite marks, Honor.” Her name sounded like the most decadent of temptations, touched by a sensuality that was as natural to the male in her apartment as breathing . . . even when he was coated in the ice of what she belatedly recognized was rage, tempered and deadly.
Bite marks.
Her own anger chilled by the cold of his, she picked up the stack of paper and photos, flipped until she came to the pages that listed the bites on her body, with associated images. “There’s nothing you can learn from this.” At the end, they’d torn at her as if she was a hunk of meat, shredding and ripping.
“You’d be surprised.” Shifting on his heel, he shrugged out of the coat, throwing it over the back of one of her sofas to reveal muscled arms free of weapons . . . but for the long, thin blade angled in a sheath across his back. Somehow it didn’t surprise her that he was a blade man, though from the gun she was certain he had in an ankle sheath, she knew he didn’t have a problem with modern weaponry either.
She stood her ground when he came to stand next to her, though the force of her clenched jaw sent pain shooting down the bone. No more fear, she vowed, even knowing it couldn’t be as simple as that, the primal core of her brain scrabbling at her to run—or to fight, shooting and cutting and kicking.
The heat of his body insistent against her skin, Dmitri pointed out a set of three bites that were small and evenly spaced. They’d survived the violence later because of their location—the only mercy was that they had healed without leaving scars, so she wasn’t constantly reminded of how they’d come to be. “Back of my left thigh—”
“—a few inches up from the knee,” Dmitri completed.
Small, fine-boned hands on her body, delicate fangs sinking again and again into that one area. “Blood Ruby,” she whispered. “The vampire always smelled of Blood Ruby.” The fashionable perfume had been an opulent cage around her senses, and it brought up her gorge still—a stranger on the street, in a store, it didn’t matter. She caught a whiff of it and bile coated her throat as a cold sweat broke out over her body. “I used to dream of slitting her throat and watching her flop about at my feet while I drowned her in that stuff.”
Dmitri’s eyes—dark, so, so dark—met hers. “Would you like to pay her a visit?”
9
Silence. In her mind. In her soul. An endless stillness. “You’ve seen her feed before.” The words shattered the quiet, had her dropping the papers in her hand. They floated to the carpet with a strange, serene grace.
“She’s five hundred years old—peculiar habits tend to get around. Feeding from the femoral artery in the thigh isn’t unusual.” A dangerous pause. “Not between lovers,” he corrected, and it made her wonder if that was how he preferred to drink. “But from the back? It’s muscle.”
“It hurts,” Honor said, not knowing why she admitted that. “That’s why she does it. It always hurts.” Looking down at the gun somehow in her hand again, she said, “Will you stop me if I shoot her?”
“No.” Not even the slightest hesitation. “But you might want to wait until after I finish questioning her—it’d be a bitch to wait for the bullet wound to heal.”
Part of her wasn’t sure if he was joking, but she read the cutting anger in his eyes well enough. She knew it had nothing to do with her. No, what had him ready to mete out the most brutal punishment was the fact that an old vampire he likely trusted to maintain order had been playing some very nasty games. Honor didn’t much care about his motivations if it got her to within killing distance of one of the creatures who had turned her into their own personal “blood pet” for two interminable months.
They pulled up to the gates of an estate in Englewood Cliffs just as dawn was streaking the sky in watercolors of peach, pink, and golden blue. Dmitri had stored her laptop in the trunk of his Ferrari and put down the top. She found a welcome freedom in the crisp whip of the wind, using the time to gather her defenses, to ready herself for the thick, nauseating scent of Blood Ruby.
The gates, tall and ornate and covered with dark green ivy, swung open with stately grace the instant the guard saw the car. The drive was dappled in sun and shadow from the oak trees that lined it, and the house, when it came into view, spoke of another century—a heavy and ostentatious one. “Not a vampire who believes in moving with the times.”
“No.” Dmitri brought the car to a halt in front of the shallow steps that led up to the entrance. “In certain periods, it was the done thing to keep your ‘cattle’ within easy reach. Valeria continues to hold to that practice, though it’s come to be considered an archaic one by most of her contemporaries.”
Valeria.
Her hands wanted to grab the huge hunting knife in the sheath at her ankle and rush through the door, gut the vampire, but she forced herself to wait though her pulse beat only a single word—vengeance. “Did the cattle volunteer?”
“There are always those who volunteer.” He pushed open his door and stood to strip off his coat, revealing the soft black cotton of his T-shirt.
She thought of Carmen, how the blonde had debased herself before Dmitri, until Honor had been humiliated for her. “You’ve never had any trouble.”
Dmitri didn’t answer until they met in front of the car. “There are different kinds of trouble.”
She saw something unexpected in him at that moment, a quiet, dark thing as raw and painful as that which lived within her. “Dmitri,” she began, just as the door of the house opened to reveal a maid in a crisp black and white uniform.
“It’s time.”
Her entire body going hot then cold at his words, she walked up the three wide steps with him. The maid stepped aside as they neared. “The mistress is in the morning room, sir.”
Honor had no idea what a morning room was, but Dmitri gave a clipped nod. “We won’t need you. Take the day off. The Tower will contact you tomorrow.”
The maid paled, but said only, “Yes, sir. The cook is also here.”
“Tell her she doesn’t need to be. Valeria’s cattle?”
“In the guesthouse.”
“Get them out. You have five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” Bobbing her head, the maid bolted down the hall.
That was when Honor realized she’d caught a glimpse of fang. “She was a vampire.” Yet Honor felt no fear; the other woman was obviously so much weaker than her, regardless of her vampirism.
“Young,” Dmitri answered, shutting the door with a quiet snick. “Serving out her Contract. I’d say first decade.”
“No wonder she seemed so human.”
“Some of the weak ones never lose that core of humanity.” With that, Dmitri led her down the corridor—it was lined with carpet of deep burgundy, the walls covered with the most exquisite cream paper embossed with a subtle motif. Near-immortality did give the Made longer to gain wealth, but Honor had known vamps hundreds of years old who’d never reached this level of affluence. So either Valeria had begun with wealth or she’d created it through a combination of power, will, and ruthless determination.
Dmitri entered a doorway to the right, a shadow in black.
“Dmitri, darling,” came
a smoky voice that made Honor’s body fill with cold terror. Then she caught the dark, musky scent of Blood Ruby. Freezing with her back to the wall beside the doorway, she tried to get the tremors to stop, to control the nausea that threatened to bring up the tea that was all she’d had for breakfast.
“Valeria,” Dmitri drawled, even as he twined tendrils of exquisite chocolate and rich liqueur around Honor’s senses. The potency of it overwhelmed the musk of Valeria’s signature perfume, allowed Honor to draw in a breath.
Dmitri spoke again before the woman in the room could respond. “Did I get you out of bed?”
A low, intimate laugh. “That’s one thing you’re always welcome to do.”
Another sickening jolt. She’d never thought to ask Dmitri if he’d slept with the female vampire. Anger followed hard on the heels of the roiling ugliness of the supposition, a hard, vicious bite that made her want to stab him in that muscular back. The very strength of her reaction was a slap, grounding her once more. Wiping her palms on the thighs of her jeans, she pulled out her gun.
Dmitri seemed to sense the instant she steadied, because he straightened and said, “I’ve brought you a visitor.”
“Oh?” A curious question as Dmitri shifted aside to allow Honor to step into the opening.
Valeria was reclining on a cream-colored chaise lounge set in front of a window, dressed in a crimson satin robe that stopped midthigh—the belt tied loosely enough at her waist that the inside curve of one perfect breast was artfully exposed. She’d angled her head to ensure the early morning light hit it at the ideal angle to heighten her already stunning features. Long golden brown hair curled over her shoulders to bounce against nipples gone hard and ready where they touched the satin.
As an invitation, it couldn’t have been clearer.
Until that deep blue gaze turned from its appreciation of Dmitri’s body to fall on Honor. Suddenly Valeria was limbs in motion, fury a red flush across the creamy skin of her face as she rose to her feet—but Honor glimpsed a split second of the most vicious hunger beneath the rage. Valeria was recalling how she’d used Honor, debased her. And she wanted only to do it again.
“Well . . .” Calculation in those stunning eyes that spoke of immortal beauty. “You brought me a snack. You always were a sweetheart.”
Honor saw Dmitri tense and—without thinking—reached out to touch him on his back out of sight of Valeria. Not yet. Coiled tension, taut muscle, but he didn’t strike, this beautiful predator with death in his eyes. “This is a nice room,” he murmured instead in that silken voice Honor never, ever wanted to hear in the dark.
Lines marred the smoothness of Valeria’s forehead. “What?”
“Small windows, though,” Dmitri continued, his back flexing slightly under Honor’s spread hand. Startled to realize she was still touching him, she dropped it. “Means,” he added, “there’s only one exit.”
Honor had always known Dmitri was ruthless, but it was when she glimpsed the dull haze of fear creep over the lake blue of Valeria’s gaze that she understood exactly where he stood in the food chain. The female vampire glanced around, her eyes wild when she faced them again. “It was just a bit of fun, Dmitri. You know how it is.”
“Hmm. Tell me.”
Valeria seemed to take the slow purr as encouragement. “Life can get so tedious after centuries of excess. It was a naughty little thrill to have the hunter at our disposal.” Walking forward, sleek thighs exposed in teasing glimpses through the crimson satin, she ignored Honor to stroke her hand down Dmitri’s chest, slow and with unhidden pleasure.
Honor’s fingers clenched on the gun. It took teeth-gritting control not to put a bullet right between those blue eyes so wide and alluring.
Dmitri simply raised his hand, closed it over the vampire’s. “An intriguing game,” he said, his voice dropping as he tugged Valeria ever closer, until he was speaking with his lips brushing her ear, her breasts flush against his chest. “I wouldn’t have thought you that creative.” He fisted his free hand in the brunette’s hair.
Valeria’s eyes closed, her body shuddering from the contact with his muscled body. “I would take the credit”—a husky whisper—“but you’d find me out.”
Dmitri’s laugh would’ve made Honor thrust a blade in his gut and run as far as humanly possible. But Valeria smiled, opened her eyes. “I got an invitation.” A greedy look over at Honor. “Her fear was so potent by the time I got there, but she wouldn’t scream or beg. Not for weeks.”
Dmitri jerked Valeria’s face back toward him, the act ungentle. “You kept the invitation, didn’t you?”
“Yes. It was a memento.” Lips trailing over his jaw. “Did you bring her for me, Dmitri? Can I have her all to myself?”
Honor touched her hand to Dmitri’s back again, not knowing why she believed that would do any good, not even knowing why she thought she could possibly read this vampire so old and powerful it made her bones ache to think about it.
“First tell me who you shared her with,” he whispered, ignoring the fact that Valeria had tugged open the tie of her robe to expose creamy skin framed in crimson. “I want to know who else has your tastes.”
“But I want her to myself.” Petulance.
“Valeria.”
The woman all but orgasmed at the command in that voice full of knife blades and midnight screams. “They say you make it hurt, Dmitri.”
In response, he used his grip on her hair to pull her head back so hard it made tears form in her eyes. She licked her lips, made no effort to cover the dark pink nipple exposed by the shift of satin over skin. “Tommy. I saw Tommy there once when I ran late during my turn with her.”
Honor remembered that day, remembered the elegant female voice arguing with the deeper male one as Valeria cajoled the man into allowing her to stay.
“We’ll play together.” The sound of clothes brushing up against each other, the wetness of a slow kiss. “You know you like the way I play.”
The man—Tommy—had eventually folded. Together the two of them had . . . they’d made Honor scream. Her hand clenched on Dmitri’s T-shirt as he moved the hand not in Valeria’s hair to close around her throat. “Just Tommy?”
“There were others, but I never saw. We had our own times.” Breasts rising and falling, lips parting.
“The invitation, Valeria.” Unvarnished command. “Tell me about the invitation.”
The brunette shaped the rigid muscle of his chest with possessive hands Honor wanted to break into a thousand pieces. “In my bedroom, in the top drawer of the little table beside the bed.” Fingers trailing down to tug up his tee, revealing skin of a warm, dark tan. “I’ll show you when we go up.” Again, her eyes shifted to Honor. “I want her.”
That was when Dmitri smiled, arched Valeria’s neck again . . . and slit her throat with about as much emotion as might be expected from a hunting cat taking down prey, the heavy blade a sleek silver shimmer in the morning sunlight.
As the female vampire clapped her hands around her throat, he gripped her by that throat and pinned her against the wall with the blade thrust into her neck. “Don’t pull it out,” he ordered when Valeria went to do exactly that. “Or I’ll cut off your hands.”
Honor had jerked up her gun at the first slice, but now her eyes met Dmitri’s as he raised an eyebrow. She shook her head. “I can’t shoot her now.” Not when the vampire was pinned like an insect, the red satin of her robe a wetter, richer shade, her skin bloody cream.
Dmitri moved toward Honor, and she realized that aside from the hand he’d used to grip Valeria’s throat, he’d managed to avoid getting any blood on himself in spite of the arterial gush—which led to the very scary conclusion that he’d done this before. “You,” he said, touching her chin with the fingers of his clean hand, before ripping out the roses from a vase and upending it to wash the bloody one clean, “are too human.”
Yes. It was a welcome shock, a confirmation that she’d retained the core of herself no matter the h
orror of that dark pit where Valeria and Tommy and their grotesque friends had used her until they tore her very spirit to tatters. Walking past Dmitri to face the brunette vampire, she said, “Anything else you’d like to share about my kidnapping and assault?” to the monster with the wide blue eyes.
Dmitri took a seat on the chaise, reaching over to choose a chocolate from the crystal bowl on a nearby table. When Valeria bared her teeth at Honor, refusing to answer the question, he shot the other woman through the thigh, in almost precisely the spot where the female vampire liked to feed.
Valeria screamed, high and shrill.
Honor understood that the punishments used for immortals, their bodies able to recover from brutal injuries, weren’t the same as for mortals. But she’d never been up close and personal with the merciless reality of it. “Does it bother you at all?” she asked Dmitri when Valeria’s screams died out into sobs.
He shrugged, shoulders moving with muscled grace beneath the thin cotton of his T-shirt. “No.” Putting his gun down beside the crystal bowl, he said, “Valeria, be a good hostess and answer Honor’s question,” before popping one of the chocolates into his mouth.
“I don’t know anything else,” the vampire sobbed, her eyes rimmed red with her tears. “J-just about T-Tommy.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Honor said, remembering how Valeria had sipped at her own tears, how she’d giggled when Honor screamed so much her throat turned raw, her voice gone, “we’ll get to Tommy.” She didn’t know what Valeria heard in her voice, but the vampire suddenly looked afraid in a way Honor would have never expected in a vampire of her age and power.
“He did everything, remember?” Valeria said, hands rising to her throat again as the wound began to heal around the heavy hunting knife.
“I wouldn’t.” Dmitri ate another chocolate.
Dropping her hands in spasming fear, Valeria continued to speak to Honor, eyes shimmering with tears. “He was the one who hurt you—I just wanted to feed.”
