by Chloe Hart
Bound by the Vampire: A Paranormal Romance Novella
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
About the Author
BOUND BY THE VAMPIRE
a paranormal romance novella
by Chloe Hart
Blood and Absinthe, Book 2
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by Chloe Hart
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Chapter One
“There’s a woman here who wants to see you.”
Evan Grant looked up from the neck he’d been drinking from. His bar manager was standing in the doorway of his private office, looking uncomfortable.
“I’m a bit busy here, Shank.”
“I know, sir, but…well…she insists.”
Evan sat up a little straighter, licking blood from his fangs. The woman kneeling at his feet, whose name he couldn’t remember, looked up at him with pleasure-blurred eyes. “Do you want me to go?”
He glanced down at her briefly. “Yeah, love, might as well. Got something here needs looking into.”
She nodded and rose unsteadily to her feet, grabbing her purse before she edged out past Shank.
Evan’s fangs retracted as he leaned back in his desk chair. “She insists, does she? A dozen people a week insist on seeing me, and you send them on their merry way. How did this woman convince you to interrupt me in the middle of a meal?”
Shank looked even more uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, sir. But she did mention Jack Morgan.”
The vampire who’d once saved his life.
“A point in her favor. Anything else?”
“Well…”
“Spit it out.”
“She’s a real pretty little thing,” Shank said in a rush. “And she looks like she’s in trouble.”
Evan stared at him. “The club is full of pretty little things.”
“Not like her,” his employee said, sounding certain.
Evan’s eyes narrowed as he studied the other vampire. Shank hailed from Lubbock, Texas and was six foot five and three hundred pounds. He’d played linebacker for the New England Patriots before he was turned and he’d never shown any symptoms of chivalry before. Had the “pretty little thing” put some kind of spell on him?
“Vampire?”
“No.”
“Human?”
Shank frowned. “She looks human, but there’s something about her…”
Fae. He’d bet everything he owned that the mysterious woman was one of the Fae.
That tied into her mention of Jack Morgan. His old friend Jack had been idiot enough to fall hard for a Faery female—a member of their warrior clan. The same clan that had killed his maker more than seventy years ago.
“What’s her name?”
“Celia Albright.”
Jack’s mate was named Liz. Liz Marlowe. So, not her—but one of her kind. He was sure of it.
He opened his top drawer and pulled out the chunk of obsidian he’d spent a fortune on a decade ago. He muttered the spell he’d bought at the same time—also for a fortune—and smiled grimly when he saw the tiny motes of light creating a faint shimmer in front of him.
His curiosity was piqued but he wasn’t an idiot. If the bitch had done something to Shank, she wouldn’t be able to do it to him.
He leaned back in his chair again. “Show her in.”
A minute later, he heard Shank’s voice outside the door, and a woman’s voice answering him. She spoke softly, but his enhanced hearing told him she was nervous…and young.
Then the door opened, and Celia Albright stepped over his threshold.
He was expecting something spectacular—something that would account for Shank’s reaction. But on the surface she wasn’t spectacular at all.
He liked his women openly sexual and dressed to thrill, and Celia Albright was neither of those things.
He liked high heels, and this girl was wearing tennis shoes. He liked tight and low cut, and she was wearing a shapeless sweatshirt over an old pair of jeans. She had gorgeous hair, a soft, silken mass of red-gold, but it was pulled back from her face in a no-nonsense ponytail.
Definitely not his type.
“Have a seat, Ms. Albright,” he instructed her, and she sat down on the very edge of the chair in front of his desk, like a bird about to take flight. Her pretty, heart-shaped face was pale and tense and determined, and her green eyes were full of trouble. Her hands were folded primly on one knee, but the knuckles were white.
“I’m guessing you’re not here about the job,” he said.
She blinked. “Job?”
“Yeah. We’re looking for dancers.”
She blushed, and the sudden pink in her cheeks made her face glow. She might not be spectacular, but Shank had been right—she was a pretty little thing.
“You mean for the…for the club?”
“Yeah. You interested?” He let his eyes rove over her, just to provoke her into another blush, but found himself suddenly curious about the body hidden behind her baggy clothes.
She cleared her throat. “No, thank you. Your club isn’t really my…uh…scene. Not that it isn’t very nice,” she added quickly. “Everyone seemed to be, you know, having a good time. But that’s not why I came. I’m here to ask you a favor. I need…” she hesitated.
He decided it was time to cut to the chase. “Is Jack Morgan in some kind of trouble?”
She looked away, biting her lip, and the action distracted him. Her mouth didn’t quite go with the rest of her. It was full and soft and sensual, and for a moment all he could think about was what those satiny pink lips would look like wrapped around his—
“Jack’s not in trouble. I am.”
He brought his focus back to what she was saying. “And you thought I’d help? Why not go to Jack, if he’s a friend of yours?”
“Because he’s not here. He’s up north, fighting demons in the Canadian Rockies.”
“Ah. So you’ve come to me, have you? On Jack’s advice?”
“No. I mean…he’s mentioned you, which is how I knew where to find you. But he didn’t tell me to come here.”
“He’s mentioned me. And did he tell you what a good citizen I am? Full of the milk of human kindness, all hell bent on rescuing damsels in distress? Did he tell you that underneath my gruff exterior lies a heart of gold?”
Her green eyes showed a flash of humor as she shook her head. “Not exactly. He said you’re mercenary to the core and won’t do anything for anybody unless you’re paid. He told me you’re rude, self-centered, and dangerous, and one of the most vicious fighters he’s ever known.”
Evan raised an eyebrow. “An accurate description. Which begs the question, pet—what the hell did you come here for?”
“Because…”
Suddenly she tilted her head to the side, peering at him. “Are you…is that a warding spell?”
It wasn’t supposed to be visible to anyone but him, which pretty much confirmed that she had Fae blood in her. Fae
ries could see magic much more easily than humans.
“Well spotted.”
“But…why? You can’t possibly think I’m any sort of threat to you.”
Did she think he didn’t know what she was?
“It’s there so you can’t work your mojo, Faery girl. Now tell me what sort of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“I don’t have any mojo. I mean…I’m not working any magic. And I wouldn’t do anything to you against your will.”
“Good for you, Tinkerbell. Now state your fucking business.”
“I’m not…I mean…I’m only an eighth blood Fae. I’m more human than Faery.”
He shrugged impatiently. “Look, sweetheart—I don’t really give a shit what you are. You’ve got about five seconds to tell me why you’re here. After that I’m going to get a lot less polite.”
She chewed on her lip for a few seconds, and he clamped his jaws together when he felt a tingling in his incisors.
“I need protection.”
“Protection? From who?”
“Whom.”
“What?”
“Not from who, from whom,” she explained, and he realized she was talking about grammar.
Jesus.
“Who is a subjective pronoun,” she was saying. “Whom is in the objective case. With a prepositional phrase, whom is the—”
She must have noticed that he was staring at her like she was demented, because she flushed bright red. “Sorry. I tend to babble a little when I’m nervous.”
“Yeah, I picked up on that. From whom do you need protection, Ms. Albright?”
She took a deep breath and fumbled with something at her waist, and he realized she was wearing one of those fanny pack things. Christ, this girl was fashion-impaired. She unzipped it, pulled out what looked like a wadded up handkerchief, and set it on his desk. He frowned as she carefully opened the edges of the handkerchief to reveal what was inside.
“I need protection from whomever shot this at me.”
It was a stone knife. No—an arrowhead. An arrowhead carved from obsidian, like the piece he had on his desk. He leaned forward, wanting to get a closer look.
“Don’t touch it,” she said sharply. “It’s been dipped in some kind of poison.”
He glanced back at her. “Lovely. And where did this little toy come from?”
“I don’t know. I heard the sound of a bow—a crossbow, I think—when I was walking across the Common. The arrow missed me by inches. I broke off the arrowhead and came straight here.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I can’t tell you how flattered I am. But if someone’s trying to kill you—however unlikely that seems—I ask again: why come to me? I understand Jack’s up in the wilds of Canada or wherever, but what about your own people? The Green Fae are no friends of mine, but they take care of their own. Why not go to them?”
She took a deep breath, and suddenly she looked very young. “Because they’re the ones trying to kill me.”
Chapter Two
For a minute Evan just stared at her, and Celia had to force herself to meet his gaze without letting her own drop. His eyes were dark brown, like mahogany, and there was keen intelligence behind them.
He wasn’t anything like what she’d expected, especially after walking through his club to get to this office.
She’d known about Blood and Whiskey by reputation, of course. Every Faery in Boston did. Those who’d been called to the warrior clan—demon hunters like her best friend, Liz—kept a watchful eye on both the club and its owner, but since there had been no deaths or violent incidents (at least none that weren’t consensual) associated with the place, the Fae had never tried to interfere.
Evan Grant skirted the edges of what the Fae considered ‘safe’. He wasn’t an ally like Jack Morgan, a vampire who worked with the Fae to protect humanity, but he wasn’t an enemy, either. He didn’t kill humans, but he didn’t live solely on animal blood like Jack did. Instead, he owned Blood and Whiskey—a place where vampires could satisfy their taste for human blood without going too far and drawing the attention of either the Green Fae or the human authorities.
The humans who came here to indulge their own dark urges thought it was a hardcore vampire fetish club. Which it was, of course. The only thing they didn’t know was that some of the members were actual vampires.
The club wasn’t all about blood. It was about sex, too, which was on display in the corners where men and women in leather and chains danced on small raised stages, or engaged in activities Celia had previously thought of as private in velvet upholstered booths.
If that was the kind of thing you did in public here, she didn’t want to think about what might be going on in the curtained recesses and back rooms.
As much as she wished she were the kind of sophisticated, worldly woman who could take all that in stride, the fact was, she was totally out of her depth in this place. Everywhere she looked, something had made her blush.
So she’d been half expecting Evan Grant to look like one of the guys out there, all leather and handcuffs and over-the-top dominance. Instead, she’d found a cool-eyed man in jeans and a plain black shirt, with military-short hair and a disturbingly handsome face. He was tall and powerfully built, and he held himself with a careless, easy confidence that reminded her of someone or something she couldn’t quite place.
He leaned back in his chair as he continued to study her. “What did you do to piss off the Fae?” he asked in his rich, British-accented voice.
“Research.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? I didn’t know the research game had gotten so dangerous. Is it right up there with drug trafficking and gun running, now?”
She felt herself flushing. “I’ve been looking into some of the properties of Faery absinthe.”
Now Evan raised both eyebrows. “I see. And what have you found out?”
Celia hesitated. The Fae kept most of their culture a secret from other supernaturals, and absinthe topped the list of things you never, ever talked about outside the clan.
As an eighth-blood Fae and a spellcaster, she’d been taught how to make the brew as well as indoctrinated into the necessity of guarding with her life the recipe and magic involved in its preparation. The oaths she’d sworn weighed heavily on her tongue.
“You don’t need to know that. All you need to know is that the direction of my research has upset some of my clan leaders. Enough that at least one of them would rather kill me than let me continue doing what I’m doing.” She bit her lip, feeling the pain of that knowledge sweep through her again. The thought that one of her own people could hate or fear her so much…
But there was nothing to be gained from that maudlin train of thought. She reached into her waist pack again and pulled out her checkbook.
She placed it on Evan’s desk and tried for a cool, business-like tone. “I need protection, and I’m willing to pay for it.”
Evan glanced down at the checkbook and back up at her. “Make things right with your clan,” he said. “Stop doing your research. Then you won’t need protection.”
If only it were that simple.
She shook her head. “What I’m finding out…” she paused. “It’s important. So I can’t stop. I need to convince the clans to…to take a certain course of action. But I can’t do that without learning more. So I need somewhere safe to work. Somewhere the Fae can’t reach me.”
Saying those words out loud sent another stab of pain through her. They were her people—and she was afraid of them. Or one of them, anyway. But because she didn’t know which one, her fear was formless, all-encompassing.
She took a deep breath. “I want to stay here,” she said. “The Fae could get to me almost anywhere, but not here. I sensed the protection spells around this place when I walked through the doors. And you’ve got a reputation that…well, that would make anyone think twice about going through you to get to me. And that’s assuming anyone will figure out I’m here, which is doubtful. None
of the Fae would guess I’d go to a vampire for help.”
She took another breath. “So let’s talk terms.” She pulled a pen out of her pack and gripped it, waiting.
Evan shook his head slowly. “I doubt you can afford me, sweetheart.”
She gripped the pen harder. “My father is Elton Albright, the president and CEO of Boston Investment Bank. I have a trust fund I’ve never used. How does fifty thousand sound? Bearing in mind that you don’t have to do anything to earn it—just let me stay here for a few weeks. Maybe less.”
