“Mila.”
My whole body clenched. Air backed up in my lungs.
I can’t do this.
But I had to.
“Gabriel.” I coolly inclined my head and slipped past him to the bar. “A beer,” I told the bartender.
“Of course. Which one?” She indicated the row of craft beers on a shelf above her.
I hitched a shoulder. “Whatever you—”
Behind me, a dark voice murmured, “She’ll have the honey beer.”
The bartender didn’t wait for my okay, just opened the bottle and poured it into a tall glass. When the crown prince spoke, you obeyed.
“You’ll like this.” Gabriel handed the glass to me himself. “It’s got ginger, too.”
My heart squeezed. He’d remembered. That I liked not just honey beer, but ginger. The day we’d met, I’d just eaten a couple of ginger snaps. From then on, Gabriel said, whenever he smelled ginger, he thought of me.
Oh, God. I can’t do this.
I wrapped my fingers around the icy glass. My lips felt hot, dry. I ran my tongue over them. His gaze tracked the movement, and I stilled.
A long finger touched the bottom of the glass, tipping it toward my mouth. “You’re thirsty. Drink.”
I obediently sipped. It was good, sharp with a hint of sweetness. “Mm,” I said with genuine pleasure.
He regarded me unsmilingly. He was too close, his wild green scent wrapping around me like a seductive scarf. My stomach tightened with yearning. My nipples beaded against the satin scrap they’d given me as a bra.
I set the beer down and inched closer, desperate to press myself against him, to ease the ache.
His gaze flicked to the hard tips, lingered. He traced a finger up my cleavage and over my collarbone before closing a hand around my nape, lightly controlling me. At that firm touch, my knees melted.
I set a hand on his chest. Even through the suit, I felt his heat.
His mouth was so beautifully shaped; sculpted, with a full lower lip, his sexy scruff the perfect frame. “Why are you here, Mila?” His thumb caressed the side of my neck.
I blinked—and recalled the tiny mic masquerading as my left earring. Andre was listening to ensure I stuck with the script.
I stiffened. Gabriel tightened his grip on my neck, keeping me where I was.
I forced myself to meet his eyes. “I missed you.” That was the God’s honest truth.
Gabriel scrutinized me expressionlessly. “Really.”
“Honest.” My free hand twisted in the tight red skirt, pulling it even higher. I was a lousy liar and I knew it.
But I had to lie like a champ. Joey’s life depended it.
“Hm.” His fingers caressed my nape. “I missed you, too. But then, I wasn’t the one who left without a goddamned word.”
I stared at him. Was that hurt I heard in his voice? But his face was about as forthcoming as a blank sheet of paper. Even his eyes were blank now.
His mouth came closer, hovered over mine. “They got to you, didn’t they?” he said against my lips. “What did they promise—a million? Two?”
My mouth dropped open. “No!”
“Don’t lie to me.” He was the crown prince now, his mouth a stern line, his eyes emerald chips of ice. It was like facing his father. I had to fight not to cringe from him.
I lifted my chin. “I’m not.”
He shook his head in disgust and turned away.
“No!” I grabbed his sleeve. “Wait, Gabriel—”
A vampire was instantly at my back. Cool fingers wrapped around my bare upper arms. “Should I toss her ass out of here, boss?”
He nodded curtly without looking at me.
“Gabriel,” I whispered. “Please.”
The vampire pried my fingers from Gabriel’s sleeve. I watched in despair as he slipped into the crowd.
Two vampires held me now. When I tried to shake them off, their grip tightened.
“Come quietly, babe,” the one on my right said. “You don’t want any trouble.”
“Or maybe you do,” said an amused voice in my left ear. “I’m sure we can…accommodate you.”
I froze. “No. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Good girl.”
They hustled me toward the front door. I twisted to look over my shoulder at Gabriel, but his back was toward me.
I opened my mouth to call his name, shut it again. Nausea welled up in me.
I can’t do this.
I could still stop this. Let him walk away, allow security to hustle me out of the dark club.
No one but the two of us knew that three years ago, Gabriel Kral had offered me the blood bond. He’d even sworn his half of the oath. It was only left to me to accept. Once I did, he was honor-bound to protect me.
If you’d have told me that one day, I would use it against him, I’d have said I’d die first. But I thought of Joey and made my mouth form the words.
“Gabriel Kral, I accept your blood bond.”
His spine snapped straight. I hadn’t spoken loudly, but I knew he’d heard.
I hurriedly said the rest, “And bind myself to you in return. To be yours, and yours only, for the rest of my life.”
The vampires released me and backed off. A murmur went through the speakeasy. One by one, people turned to stare at me, the vampires on the couches rising to get a better look.
Gabriel swung around. A thin blue halo encircled the emerald of his irises. I gulped, excruciatingly aware I was facing his vampire half.
The speakeasy was completely still now except for the throbbing of the music. He prowled toward me.
“Be sure, Camila.” His eyes bored into mine. “There’s no going back.”
No!
I forced my fingers to unclench from my skirt. “I’m sure,” I rasped. I cleared my throat, tried again. “I want this, Gabriel.”
“Then let it be so. Camila Vittore is now mine,” he added with a cool look at the avidly watching crowd.
All around the speakeasy, eyebrows shot up. The thralls shot me envious looks, then pasted smiles on their faces and congratulated us. Some of the vampires joined in, but most just eyed me with indifference, like cold-eyed snakes behind a glass wall sizing up prey they’ll never taste.
“Come.” Gabriel took my upper arm and hustled me toward the exit, the two guards on our heels.
“Wait.” I dug my heels in. “My purse—I left it with security.”
“You won’t need it,” was the curt response. He started up the steps two at a time, dragging me with him until I stumbled in the high heels. He muttered a curse but slowed to a more human pace.
We came out on a chic little block in the East Village. New Yorkers dressed in the latest summer fashions strolled by, unconcerned that this street was owned by the Kral Syndicate. I’d had time to study the organization while I was on the run, and I’d come to see what a genius Gabriel’s father was.
Karoly Kral had brought vampires out into the open, welcomed humans at his clubs. Not only that, he hired humans at obscene wages and pumped money into politics so that local officials would do almost anything to land a Kral casino or nightclub for their city. In return, vampires moved freely in the human world, and their syndicates had their pick of humans willing to be thralls in return for the generous pay and the high of being a vampire’s blood toy.
And the Kral Syndicate? It was now the wealthiest, most powerful vampire syndicate in the Americas, maybe even the world.
The bodyguard to my left raised his hand, and a limo down the street purred to life. In the three days Andre had spent preparing me, the temperature had remained high. The sticky air pressed on my skin, but I gave a shiver as I waited on the sidewalk next to Gabriel.
He still held my bare upper arm. At my shiver, his grip tightened. I glanced up to find him glowering down at me.
“You can’t change your mind,” he gritted, low-voiced. “The bond has been accepted, witnessed.”
I jerked my chin in ackno
wledgment.
Oh, God. What have I done?
Andre had said all I had to do was get close to Gabriel. “I just want information,” he’d told me. But it didn’t take a genius to guess how he intended to use that info.
I glanced around, desperate for a way out—and saw Martin on the sidewalk across the street, a pretty thrall on his arm.
I froze. Fear crawled, spider-like, down my nape.
Martin and Stefan had spent the past three days “training” me, just the three of us in a windowless basement room. Touching me: my face, my neck, my breasts. Whispering that if I didn’t obey Andre to the letter, they’d do that and more. Speculating what a good little blood slave I’d make… And the only thing stopping them from doing the same—or worse—to Joey was me.
The blond vampire sauntered past, his attention seemingly on the thrall, but I knew better.
My hand went to my throat. Tonight, right before I’d been dropped off a few blocks from the club, Martin had licked me right over my jugular vein. “Remember we have Joey,” he’d murmured, then politely helped me out of the taxi.
Gabriel’s gaze followed mine to Martin. He gripped the back of my skull and turned my head so that I was looking at him. Displeasure came off him in hot waves.
“And Camila? Don’t even think of running. This time, I’ll drag your ass back before you get five feet.”
I moistened my lips. “I don’t know what you mean. Why would I run?”
“No?” His fingers dug into my nape. “Well, know this. The blood bond means you’re mine. Tonight. Tomorrow. Next month. Next year. It’s permanent, a contract recognized in both the human and vampire worlds. Run, and you’ll just make me angry. And trust me, cher, you don’t want to make me angry.”
The limo pulled up to the curb. One bodyguard opened the door for us while the other sat in the front with the driver.
Gabriel released me. “After you,” he said with an icy courtesy.
I climbed inside.
6
Gabriel
I settled my long limbs onto the opposite end of the seat from Mila. The driver pulled into traffic, followed by two other limos of the same make and color. One turned left, one went straight, and we went right—a sample of the increased security I lived under these days. Precautions I’d already grown to hate, even though I understood the need. If it was up to me, I’d take my Jag out to the island instead.
Mila swallowed, the sound loud in the small space. But her face was serene. A mask I ached to rip off to find out what she was really thinking.
What did she want?
I’d meant what I’d said. The blood bond was permanent. Now that it had been invoked and accepted, only I could break it, which as far as I was concerned, made it forever.
And she knew that damn well. Three years ago, I’d explained exactly what it meant before I’d sworn my half of the oath. She’d said it was what she wanted, too…and then run.
Now, in accepting the blood bond, she’d put herself under my control. This was more than a thrall contract. A thrall had choices, could leave when the contract was up. But Mila would be mine, and only mine, for as long as I wished.
I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a dark thrill.
My woman. My blood toy.
Mine.
I’d loved Mila—once. Hell, I’d spent the first year after she’d left angry and depressed. But I’d understood. I was the crown prince, my father’s heir. The various vampire syndicates around the world were our version of the human mafia.
I’d told Mila straight out that if we bonded, it was for forever. A Kral simply couldn’t allow his women to go free. It was as much for their own safety as the Syndicate’s. And besides, a vampire didn’t share his toys, and where Mila was concerned, I was very much a vampire.
But now she was back, and I wanted to know why.
I eyed her moodily. She shifted the tiniest bit under my scrutiny.
I’d hungered for even a glimpse of her, and now I had her alone in this small, enclosed space with only my driver and a Syndicate soldier on the other side of the sound-proofed partition. Even racked with suspicion, I couldn’t help drinking in every detail.
The etched silver hoops in her ears. The way the crimson dress dipped low over her breasts to show soft, bitable curves. The strong, intriguing muscles of her legs. Her tangy, very feminine fragrance.
Her gaze jumped from the dark street outside the window to the men in the front seat and finally to me. Her fingers knitted together on her lap, but she maintained that serene mask.
In that moment, I’d have given half my fortune to sense her emotions. I wanted—no, needed—to know what she was feeling. But she was as unreadable as a field of new snow.
“Where are we going?” Her voice was huskier than I recalled, another reminder that she’d changed in the years we’d been apart. Back then, she’d always seemed so young to me, so fresh-faced—hell, the day we’d met, she’d just turned twenty-one. I was only four years older, but it had seemed more like ten.
Now she was a woman—a woman who’d turned up at a damn convenient time.
Because if my father’s enemies had searched the world for the one woman guaranteed to slip under my guard, her name would be Camila Vittore.
You won’t be sorry you left me in charge.
My jaw hardened. “Somewhere we can be alone,” I replied.
“Oh.” Sooty black lashes swept down, concealing her eyes. “Good.”
I eyed her. “Are you afraid of me?”
I already knew the answer. I might not be able to sense her emotions, but I knew Mila, and that tense body and too-serene expression said she was anxious, uncertain. The gods help me, but I took a dark satisfaction in it. Let her suffer. She deserved it for running like that.
Her chin lifted. “Should I be?”
“You tell me.”
She shrugged and looked out the window.
Several beats passed in which she sat stiff and composed as a queen going to her execution before I relented. The vampire part of me took a dark enjoyment in her fear, but another, better part—Father would sneer that it was the human in me—felt a curl of shame. Once, this woman had been my whole world.
I pressed a button and soft music filled the interior. Another button, and a minibar slid out from the console in front of us. I gestured at the bottles. “Would you like a drink?”
She licked her full red lips, and my cock went from half-mast to a full salute. ”Yes, please.”
I swallowed against a vivid, very erotic image of her naked and on her knees, saying yes, please in those same husky tones. Later, I told myself.
“Beer?” I asked. “Or a glass of wine?”
“D’you have anything stronger?”
I raised a brow. The Mila I’d known had stuck to beer, wine, and the occasional sweet, slushy drink.
“Whiskey?” I showed her a bottle of single-malt scotch, and at her nod, poured two fingers worth into a Glencairn whiskey glass.
Our fingers brushed as she accepted the glass. Her breath sucked in.
So she wasn’t as unmoved as she appeared.
She tossed down a hundred dollars’ worth of scotch in a single gulp, and then wheezed. Her face flushed.
I stifled a smile even as pain twisted through me, sharp and sudden.
There you are.
That was my Mila. Half-tamed, impetuous. A wild child running free in fields and forests. The woman whose tastes ran to cut-offs and bare feet and crooked daisy-crowns, not chic little dresses and elegant hairdos.
She shoved the glass at me with a scowl. “What is that stuff—gasoline?”
I eyed the pretty heat in her cheeks. Beneath the smooth skin of her throat, a vein throbbed.
My fangs lengthened. Mine.
Gods, I wanted to taste her, drink from that hot, succulent vein.
She stared back, dark eyes wide, a rabbit facing down a wolf.
I dragged my gaze away. Took the whiskey glass from her and s
et it on a tray in the mini-bar.
“No,” I said, rough-voiced, as I poured myself a large glass of blood-wine. “It’s a limited-edition scotch from a brewery we own in Scotland. Next time, try sipping it.”
“Oh.” She chewed her lower lip. “Actually, now I kind of like it. I feel—.” She shook her head.
“What?”
Her sleek updo was already showing signs of wear. I tucked a wayward strand behind her ear, amused in spite of myself. The woman was the polar opposite of most of our thralls with their perfect faces and surgically enhanced bodies.
Mila turned her head to rub her cheek against my hand, then went rigid when she realized what she’d done. But she didn’t pull away.
“What do you feel?” I prompted. I fingered the hairclip, itching to remove it for the sheer rush of seeing her silky brown curls tumble down around her shoulders.
But I hadn’t forgotten the men in the front seat. I could wait until we were alone.
“Hot,” she whispered without looking at me. “I feel hot.”
I stifled a groan. Need churned in me like a savage, white-capped river.
It was only the thought of Zaq—chained with silver and at the mercy of some sadistic vampire who couldn’t even be bothered to heal the wounds he’d inflicted while feeding—that made me withdraw to my side of the limo.
I sipped my blood-wine, deliberately focusing on its rich, slightly saline taste.
The woman ran. Hid from you for three fucking years. So desperate to escape you that she lived in tiny, roach-infested apartments and drove a beater car.
Even if she wasn’t a plant, she was only here now because she wanted something.
Mila withdrew into herself again, toeing off the high heels and curling up in her corner of the limo to stare out the window. As we crossed the Williamsburg Bridge, she jerked to attention.
“Where are you taking me?”
I set my finished glass on the tray and closed the mini-bar. “Why do you care?”
Something flickered in her eyes. “I want to know. What’s so strange about that?”
Suspicion formed a hard, ugly ball in my stomach. “You’re mine now,” I reminded her softly. “You go where I tell you to go.”
Pursued: A Vampire Syndicate Paranormal Romance (The Vampire Syndicate Book 1) Page 4
