“You’ve made it clear that you prefer him to me,” he said softly.
I opened my mouth to protest that I might be many things, but I was not the sort of woman who would have two lovers at the same time. Before I could, however, Christian stopped me.
“You deny all the charges, then?” he asked mildly, making a note on a piece of paper.
I looked from him to the faces of the others in the room. Allie looked sympathetic. The vampires regarded us with expressions ranging from Christian’s apparent mild indifference to Sebastian’s outright hostility, Rowan’s uneasiness at meeting my eye, and Andreas’s stony countenance that gave nothing away.
My eyes moved to Kristoff, sitting so still next to me, obviously having gone through great personal torment in the last few months, and just as obviously too pigheaded and stubborn to bother asking me for help.
Anger boiled up inside me, anger at the stupidity of men, anger at the vampires who were either gullible or fools, and anger at myself for trying to hide away for the last two months. I’d wanted to give Kristoff the space he needed to come to grips with our situation, but all I’d done was leave him believing I was coldly indifferent to him.
Well, that time was over. “I most certainly do deny them!” I said, getting to my feet, slamming my hand down on the table to emphasize my outrage. “I don’t know what this proof is that you claim you have showing we’ve done anything wrong, but I can assure you that I will not sit here and let you railroad me! Kristoff might be content playing at being a martyr, but I’m sure as hell not!”
“I am not playing at being a martyr,” Kristoff objected, leaping up to glare at me.
“No? What do you call letting yourself starve nearly to death, huh?”
His jaw worked for a moment. “I told you-once we were Joined, if I took any of your blood, we would be bound together for the rest of our lives.”
“And that’s so awful you just couldn’t stand the thought of it?”
“The matter really isn’t-” Christian started to say.
“No!” Kristoff shouted back at me. “I was thinking of you, dammit! You wanted Alec.”
“Oh, really?” I took a step closer to him until we were almost touching. “What about you?” I asked, poking him in the chest.
“If we could please stick to the point at hand,” Christian said.
We both ignored him. Kristoff grabbed my fingers as they poked him again. “What about me?”
“You’re the one so madly in love with your dead girlfriend that you can barely stand to be around me. Oh, yes, the incredibly hot sex is fine and well to take the edge off now and again, but when it comes to a little thing like being grateful to me for saving your soul, not to mention your life, then it’s a whole other story, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know about anyone else, but I, for one, don’t underestimate the value of incredibly hot sex,” Allie said mildly.
“You’re not helping,” Christian growled.
Kristoff’s eyes all but spit blue sparks at me. “You told me you disliked me.”
“You told me you wanted to kill me!” I countered.
“You made it very obvious it was Alec’s attentions you wanted.”
“That is so patently false!” I said, outraged and incredibly aroused at the same time. I just wanted to grab his head and kiss the breath right out of him.
Christian took another stab at regaining control. “Your relationship questions aside-”
“You let him touch you, right there in front of me!” Kristoff yelled, his hands gesturing wildly as he spoke. His Italian accent became more pronounced, which for some reason just aroused me all that much more.
“I what ?” I asked, momentarily taken aback by his accusation.
Silence followed. Everyone in the room turned a speculative eye on me.
“Well, now,” Allie said. “That’s rather interesting.”
“When did I let him touch me?” I asked Kristoff.
“That morning when we were in the restaurant, he touched you, touched your hand and your knee, and pulled you close to him, and you said nothing!”
My own hands did a little waving about. “Trust you to remember that and ignore the important stuff!”
“What important stuff?”
“Important things like the fact that I told him we had just slept together! I thought that was a pretty definitive statement!” I shot back.
His eyes burned, his breath hot on my face as he leaned in to me. Once again, the scent of him made a heady aphrodisiac. “You said that just so I couldn’t!”
“I said it so he’d know he wasn’t the man I was interested in!” I yelled.
An odd look crossed Kristoff’s face. “You didn’t want him?”
“No!”
“Then who . . .” His eyes narrowed suddenly, his words coming out with a hiss. “The sacristan . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” I gave in to my desires and twined my fingers through the soft, silky curls on his head and pulled his mouth down to mine. I was well aware we had an audience, but at that moment, nothing mattered but showing Kristoff that he occupied a place in my heart, not Alec.
“Awww. That really is sweet, in an odd sort of way,” I heard Allie say over the wild beating of my heart. I didn’t pay much attention to her words, my mind and body wholly focused on the man who was kissing me with a fever that left my brain reeling and my heart soaring.
“Much as I regret interrupting this fascinating, if somewhat confusing scene, we do have a hearing to conduct.” Christian’s voice cut across my thoughts.
Kristoff’s lips moved on mine, his tongue gently probing and tasting, his body hard as he pulled me closer, his fingers biting into my hips. I wanted to capture that moment and hold it, unchanging, forever, a perfect state where passion mingled with desire and need and the beginnings of something I really didn’t want to name. How on earth could Kristoff believe I preferred Alec to him? How could he not understand?
You said you were his Beloved. You wanted to see him, not me. How could I think otherwise?
CHAPTER 5
You talked to me!
“I don’t know, Christian. They’ve been apart for two whole months. I think they deserve a little reacquaintance time.”
You did the mind thing!
“I’m not disputing their need for time together, my love. I simply would prefer that we finish up here before they indulge in acts better suited to a more private situation.”
Of your own free will you mind-thinged me!
“Might I point out that you are the one who detained Kristoff? Personally, if I were Pia, I’d jump his bones right in front of you just to make a point, but she appears to have more dignity than I do. That really must be one humdinger of a kiss, though. I haven’t seen them stop even once to breathe.”
Kristoff’s sigh was a mental one, brushing around in my mind with a disturbing sense of intimacy.
Why did you not tell me you didn’t want Alec?
I broke off the kiss, moving back a few steps, my fingers touching my still-burning lips. He might be easier in his mind now that he knew I wasn’t secretly pining for Alec, but that hadn’t really changed anything between us. He was still mourning the loss of his love, and there wasn’t anything I could do to change that.
“I’m sorry,” I said, turning around to apologize to the vampires. Allie grinned at me. The others had less pleasant expressions.
“If you’re quite through?” Christian inquired politely, his eyebrows raised in gentle chastisement.
“We haven’t seen each other in a while,” I said lamely, waving a vague hand toward Kristoff. “Obviously, there are some issues we still have to work through.”
“Ones I trust you will discuss at another time,” he said with a pointed look at Kristoff.
“Assuming you allow Pia the opportunity to visit me while you have me incarcerated, certainly,” Kristoff answered with no little sense of irony.
“Nice one,” Allie
said, nodding approvingly, adding, “What?” when her husband turned a frown on her. “I can root for both sides, you know.”
“You’re supposed to be on my side,” he said with a touch of indignation.
“Only when you’re right, my little mashed potato of love,” she answered.
Christian’s expression bore an uncanny resemblance to the one I’d seen on Kristoff’s face, but it slipped away quickly enough when he glanced back toward us, eyeing me a moment before saying, “Your argument, albeit out of place, was regardless convincing. I admit to finding it confusing as well.”
“Confusing how?” I asked, waving toward Kristoff. “He was sitting right next to me when I told Alec that he and I had spent the night together-”
“You can’t possibly blame me for thinking that you only did that to steal my thunder, not that I was going to tell Alec,” Kristoff interrupted me.
I rounded on him. “How was I supposed to know that? You told me you were dumping me on Alec, and that I was his problem!”
“You just had to set that off, didn’t you, Mr. Trou-blemaker?” Allie said, laughing at her husband.
Christian sighed and, before Kristoff could protest, said quickly, “If we could refrain from continuing the ‘I said, you said’ argument and stick to the facts.”
“You know, you guys sound just like Christian and me on a bad day,” Allie said in a confidential tone.
Christian took exception to that. “They do not! We never argue!”
“In your dreams we don’t! What about last week, when I wanted to send Josef to a nursery school for some socialization, and you had that great big scene where you ranted and raved about him mingling with mortals?”
Sebastian snickered. It distracted Christian from the retort he was clearly about to make, but it didn’t stop him from sending his wife an annoyed glance. “We have strayed from the point again.”
“I’ve told you I’m innocent of your ridiculous charges,” I said-somewhat snappishly, it was true, but I was beginning to feel the effects of jet lag. “I don’t know anything about Kristoff’s financial status, but I’m just about willing to guarantee he hasn’t done any embezzling.”
“ ‘Just about’?” the man of my dreams asked, obviously outraged.
“We haven’t known each other very long,” I said in a soothing voice before turning back to Christian. “Just exactly what proof do you have that either one of us committed such atrocities?”
“There are financial records,” Christian said, gesturing toward a file folder lying on the table.
“I’ve seen them. They’re clearly false,” Kristoff said. At a nod from Christian, I shuffled through the paperwork. Most of it was financial statements and transaction logs, showing sums of money in various currencies being moved from one account to another. “Easily created, but not so easily proven.”
“There is the matter of your own personal account,” Christian said as Sebastian held out a single sheet of paper.
“What about it?” Kristoff asked, his brows pulling together. “I gave you the access information for my account so you could see for yourself that I do not have an inordinate amount of money.”
“I printed this balance statement for your account this morning,” Sebastian said, offering Kristoff a sheet of paper.
He took it with a swift intake of breath. I peered over his shoulder to read it, my eyes widening as I did a swift mental exchange-rate calculation. “Holy moly. It’s too bad we really aren’t married-you could really keep me in style with that metric butt-ton of money.”
“Pia, my dear, I may not have known you for long, but as you are a friend of Allie’s, I feel I can offer a little morsel of advice-a lady never refers to a gentleman’s holdings except in the most obscure terms, and never as a metric butt-ton,” Esme chided.
“Sorry,” I said, amused.
“That isn’t mine,” Kristoff protested, shoving the paper back. “I don’t have anywhere near as much money as that.”
“And yet, the money was transferred to your account two weeks ago, just about the time that Alec disappeared,” Sebastian said. “You’ll notice that the amounts deposited over a five-day period correspond exactly with the funds withdrawn from the trusts set up to provide for the families of those slain by the reapers.”
“It’s not mine,” Kristoff repeated with stubborn finality.
“You know, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how to transfer money to someone else’s account. Someone is setting Kristoff up.” I felt obliged to point that out, since it obviously hadn’t occurred to anyone else.
“Why would anyone want to do that?” Rowan asked. “The money has gone to him. No one else would benefit from that.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said in a tone lighter than the way I felt. I held his gaze firmly. “I can see someone who hated Kristoff going to all sorts of lengths to get revenge. Someone he thought of as close, but who turned out to be a traitor.”
Rowan leaped to his feet and was over the table before the last word left my mouth. Instantly Kristoff was between us, his hands fisted as he scowled at his cousin.
“Oh, my!” Esme said, clutching the belt of her tattered bathrobe. “Fisticuffs!”
“Your Beloved is ill advised to speak thusly to me,” Rowan spit.
“And you dare much to threaten her, cousin ,” Kristoff answered, making me look at him in surprise. His lovely lyrical, Italian-accented voice was thick with anger. It warmed me that he’d be so protective, even when his heart wasn’t touched by our bond.
“Sit down, both of you,” Christian said, sounding weary. “What the Zorya says is true.”
“My name is Pia,” I said somewhat forlornly as I sat back down in my chair. “I really hate being called the Zorya.”
“It is what you are,” Sebastian pointed out.
“Not for long it isn’t.”
“Zoryas cannot be unmade,” he answered with a curl of his lip.
I smiled. “They can if you approach it the right way. But before I discuss that, I’d like to deal with the rest of the ridiculous charges against us.”
“It’s so nice to see another Beloved who refuses to be a doormat,” Allie said with a happy sigh. “Remind me to introduce you to Nell. You’ll love her. She doesn’t take any crap, either.”
“Nell is perfectly charming and has exquisite manners,” Esme agreed, with a look at me that told me she found mine lacking.
“The charges against you were not brought without ample proof, I assure you,” Christian said after giving his wife a long look. “Nor do we make them lightly.”
“You sure could have fooled me. So far all I’ve seen is a bunch of confusing paperwork that anyone could have faked,” I said. “You might find that compelling, but I certainly don’t. And while we’re on the subject of this council, can we discuss the fact that you’re all so very quick to turn on Kristoff? I’d think you would be acquainted with him well enough to know he isn’t the sort of man to embezzle. I mean, really! You’ve all known him for what? Three hundred years? Four?” Without intending to do so, I found myself on my feet again as I expostulated. “What sort of friends are you that you are so willing to believe the worst about someone who you’ve known that long? Don’t you have any concept of what loyalty means, what it means to call someone a friend?”
“Pia, dear-” Esme started to say.
I ignored her. “From where I’m standing, you guys are nothing more than a bunch of hypocrites, talking big, but when it comes right down to standing up for a friend in a time of need, you’re all nothing but lame-asses. Yes, you heard me! Lame-asses! Of the . . . er . . . lamest kind!”
I sat down with a hrmph . Silence fell heavily in the room. It was at that moment that I realized just who I was yelling at-a roomful of vampires who had made it their life’s calling to rid the world of Zoryas.
“I really like you,” Allie said, applauding. She met the look her husband was sending her way with one of her own. “Oh,
don’t look at me that way. I told you all along that I never believed Kristoff would do any of the things you guys believe he’s done.”
“Tsk,” Esme said sadly, shaking her head. “Women these days just have no idea about the subtle art of persuasion. One never shouts, dear. And one certainly never refers to those in a superior position as asses of any kind, no matter whether or not they deserve it.”
Christian shot Esme a look of surprise.
She smiled a little regretfully at him. “I’m sorry, dear Christian, but I do believe that in this case, the ladies are right and you gentlemen are the teensiest bit mistaken. Kristoff has been nothing but polite and a true gentleman when I pay my daily call on him, and, as you know, a gentleman would never steal money from others.”
“Thank you, Esme,” I said with a curt little nod at Christian.
“I am willing to concede that perhaps we have been overhasty with regards to the proof of the financial issue, although I find myself most curious as to how such a sum of money could have found its way into Kristoff’s personal account without his knowing. Regardless . . .” He held up a hand to stop me when I was about to protest. “I agree that it would be relatively easy for someone to arrange for him to look guilty, so I am willing to dismiss those charges, pending, of course, a further investigation into the matter.”
“One down, two to go,” I muttered to Kristoff.
“It matters not,” he grumbled.
I patted his hand before I could stop myself. His eyes darkened as my fingers lingered on the backs of his, capturing them in a gesture that made me flush to the tips of my toes.
“However . . .” Christian continued in a louder voice. I dragged my attention off of Kristoff and onto him. “However, two charges do remain.”
“Yes, let’s talk about that,” I said agreeably, trying not to let the feel of Kristoff’s thumb stroking the back of my hand distract me. “I don’t know where you got the idea that I killed Anniki, but I certainly did not. In fact, it was because of her that I got involved in the first place. If she hadn’t been mere seconds from death when I discovered her, I never would have agreed to become a Zorya.”
Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang do-7 Page 7
