The change in Valerie’s voice and the widening of her eyes accompanied a shift of the mattress that had Chloe jerking around to stare at who—what—she knew had to be lying beside her in the bed. She glared at the reason why her friend looked so stunned … and impressed. Even as ticked off as she was, she had to admit there was plenty to be impressed with. The light from the hallway gleamed on the muscular slant of Luca’s bare shoulders, highlighting the long, powerful muscles in his arms, the dark shadow of curly hair on his chest. He was propped up on one elbow, his long, dark hair mussed, his eyes sleepy and seductive and plain sexy as hell.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” said Valerie, plainly amused.
“You’re not interrupting anything,” Luca said, his voice like dark silk. “You must be Chloe’s friend Valerie.”
Valerie nodded, as if dumbstruck. Chloe knew the feeling. She hadn’t yet managed a single word.
“I’m Luca. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Valerie said, as she self-consciously ran a hand through her short hair, which was too short to get mussed but some gestures were ingrained.
“I’ll let myself out,” said Valerie, backing away. “It’s really nice to meet you, Luca.” She smiled and closed the door behind her.
Chloe glared at him, which didn’t seem to bother him at all. He looked so smug she wanted to slap him. Even worse, he looked completely comfortable, as if he belonged in her bed. “What are you doing here?” she asked sharply. “You couldn’t have slept on the couch?”
“No,” he responded simply. “You have blackout curtains.”
“I—Oh.” What was there to say? She’d been thinking he’d jumped at the chance to get naked with her, and instead he liked her curtains. She supposed blackout curtains would make a vampire happy.
Besides, she wasn’t naked. She peeked under the sheet. Yup. She was wearing exactly what she’d put on before going to bed—a T-shirt and boring underwear—so he evidently hadn’t even tried to get naked with her. She was thinking that she was either very lucky or completely unattractive when she glanced up and saw the way he was looking at her, his expression so intent and male she might as well have been wearing a teeny slip of silk, or worse (better?), nothing at all.
That expression cut deep to her bones, in an entirely sexual way. It made her breath come short, made her want to turn in to his arms and let whatever happened, happen. She fought the impulse away, because sleeping with a vampire struck her as an inherently stupid thing to do. She supposed, though, that given the existence of vampires, a lot of people had slept with them both knowingly and unknowingly, and if there had been an epidemic of people dying from being bled out the news agencies would have been all over it, so presumably vampires could have sex without sucking their victims dry. And wasn’t that a cheerful thought?
“Exactly when did you get in bed with me?” she asked suspiciously, though she couldn’t have said why it mattered. When she’d gone to bed, he’d been sitting on the couch. She’d assumed—foolishly, as it turned out—that he’d remain there.
“Not long after you went to sleep. I was tired from the fight, and I needed to rest. There was too much light in the living room, so I got into bed with you. You never knew, and I didn’t touch you. I thought about it, though,” he finished with a devilish gleam twinkling in his eyes.
“You can think about it all you want,” she retorted. “Just don’t do it.” She needed to get up, she needed to go to the bathroom, but she was reluctant to get out of bed and let him see, well, probably nothing spectacular, if she was honest with herself. She was obviously braless under the T-shirt, but her boobs were on the smallish side, her panties covered more than a bikini, and he could see more by going to a park and watching some of the joggers.
Well, hell. She might as well get up. On that thought, she threw back the covers and got out of bed, still grousing. “First you stop by the restaurant, and now this. Valerie will tell everyone at work that I have a boyfriend.”
“No, she won’t,” he said calmly, sitting up so the sheet fell to his waist. His bare chest was sculpted and hard, essentially mouth-watering, if her own mouth was anything to go by. She swallowed. Was he wearing anything? She glanced around the room, looking for his clothes, but they were either on the floor on his side of the bed or he was an extremely neat vampire and had hung them up somewhere. Oh, shit. Could he tell that her heart was now beating like a drum in a marching band?
“You don’t know. This kind of gossip is too juicy to keep to herself. She’ll tell everyone. Maybe not everyone, and if I ask her she’ll try to keep it to herself, but one way or another it’ll slip out,” she said glumly.
“I don’t see why you care what others think,” Luca said, supremely unconcerned. “So what if you sleep with me?”
“For one thing, I don’t make a habit of sleeping around, so finding out that I have a sex life at all would get them interested. Maybe Valerie can just not mention your name. The last thing I need is all my cooks and waitstaff Googling your name to see who the boss is sleeping with. What the hell are they going to find?”
“Nothing important,” he said simply. “It certainly won’t say: vampire. I have all the necessary paperwork for traveling, but for the most part I fly under the radar.”
“In more ways than one,” she muttered, and left him lying there, looking very much at home in her bed—too relaxed, too comfortable, too tempting. She didn’t need this complication, she fumed to herself as she shut herself in the bathroom. When a man—even one who was of another species, or magically enhanced, or cursed, or whatever the hell Luca was—ended up in a woman’s bed, sooner or later he’d expect more than sleep. Probably sooner.
She didn’t bother with a shower, just dragged a brush through her hair, hastily brushed her teeth, then pulled on the robe she seldom used, but kept hanging on the back of the bathroom door just in case.
She found Valerie in the kitchen, pouring herself a cup of freshly made coffee. “I hope you don’t mind,” Valerie said when Chloe came in. “I’m in desperate need of caffeine, the more the merrier. You have the night off, but I have to be at work in a couple of hours, and my head is killing me. Whatever possessed us to make margaritas? And so damn many of them?”
The glamour really worked. Chloe hid her reaction. She’d love to tell Valerie there had been no margaritas, but in this instance the lie was a gift. It was better that Valerie remember a pitcher of margaritas and a hangover, rather than vampires and fang marks. She studied Val’s pale face. The lack of color could definitely be attributed to a hangover rather than a bloodletting. As for the fang marks … they were gone. Not even red spots or bruises marked where Sorin’s fangs had torn into her flesh.
Chloe took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Listen, about Luca—” She should’ve practiced this speech on her way to the kitchen, but it had happened so fast she wasn’t sure where to start.
Valerie took a sip of hot coffee, leaned her hip against the counter, looked Chloe in the eye, and asked, “Who’s Luca?”
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Sorin strode down the stairs into the basement of the Potomac mansion. His little witch upstairs was completely unaware that her family was in the basement, but the area was used for other things than their prison. The basement walls and ceiling had been fortified and secured against both invasion and eavesdropping. Even more, there was an underground entrance through which they could come and go without being seen. The size of the grounds was what made the tunnel possible, because otherwise they’d have run into the same problem they had at Council headquarters: properties too close together, water and sewage lines, underground cables—all things they hadn’t had to worry about in the past, but now seemed to frame almost every waking minute.
He wasn’t in a good mood. The fight with Luca had left him more drained than he liked; damn, that bastard could fight! It had been a long time since Sorin had been in a battle that came even close to testing
his mettle; he’d enjoyed the exercise, but the suspicion that Luca had just been playing with him really pissed him off.
Now she had come here, which was far too risky. Luca’s presence at the conduit’s house told Sorin that somehow the assassin had put together far more pieces of the puzzle than was comfortable. If anyone could sow confusion and fear in the insurgents’ ranks, it was Luca Ambrus. Just knowing he was against them would make some of them either drop out, or switch to the other side.
Luca had obviously followed Enoch from headquarters to the conduit’s house, which explained Enoch’s disappearance; he’d no doubt gone to dust at Luca’s hands. What Sorin didn’t know was whether or not Luca had been able to question Enoch first, but given the fact that Luca knew the Fallon woman was a conduit, Sorin suspected the worst.
He entered the private underground room where she waited. To his relief, she was alone, which meant he could speak frankly.
“You shouldn’t be here. You’re safer in the Council headquarters.”
She waved his concern away. “I wanted to check on the witch’s progress.” She gave a thin smile. “Seeing me always seems to make her work harder.”
That was true enough, because Nevada was both terrified and repulsed by the vampire they called Regina to disguise her true identity. She always went into a frenzy of studying and practicing after a visit from Regina, but on the other hand, Sorin thought she was less productive when she was so frantic. He didn’t think pointing that out to Regina would make any difference; she had a cruel streak that might enjoy frightening Nevada even more.
“Won’t the other boys and girls at the clubhouse miss you?” he asked sharply, though he knew that daytime was when the other Council members were less likely to miss her. Her visits were usually brief and made in the middle of the night, when she was at her strongest. While she was able to go into the sunlight for brief periods of time when necessary, exposure to the natural light weakened her, and to get here she had to very briefly brave the light. This wasn’t her best time of day.
Regina gave Sorin a cold smile. “There’s nothing on our agenda, and all of us may come and go as we please. I owe no one any explanations. Besides, they’ve been catered to and mindlessly obeyed for so long, they’ve forgotten how the real world works. The majority of them don’t even believe there’s a rebel faction. They’ll never know I’m gone, but even if they find out, they won’t think anything of it.” Her smile faded away, her gaze sharpened. “The D.C. conduit is dead?”
“No.”
Her expression showed pure displeasure, lips thinned, eyes darkening and then turning ruby red. “Why not? Surely two of you couldn’t have failed to kill the same human! I know she isn’t far along in contacting her Warrior, but she’s right here, practically under my nose. If she has a strong psychic bond, the connection could be made faster than we expect, and I want her gone. Now.”
“She has a protector,” Sorin said grimly. “Luca was there.”
Regina didn’t gasp, but her red eyes flashed back to their normal dark color as shock overrode her anger. “Are you certain?”
“I fought with him. He protected her, he literally placed himself between us.”
“You fought—If you’re here, then why isn’t he dead?”
“We were interrupted by the police.”
She stared at him, and he could almost see the wheels turning in her head. She wasn’t a natural strategist, at least not in the field of warfare, but she’d survived for a very long time on her wits and instincts, so she was quick to grasp the nuances of the situation.
He didn’t like her, but liking wasn’t required. She was necessary. She was difficult, vain, proud—and powerful. Without her, there would be no rebellion. She’d been the one who had searched ceaselessly, for literally centuries, for a witch who could undo the sanctuary spell and finally located Nevada; she had been the one who had made the connection between Jonas’s ability to locate rogue vampires—he’d often worked with Luca in the past—and his ability to identify and locate the conduits so they could be killed. Jonas hadn’t exactly been willing, but Regina had been ruthless enough, cruel enough, to force him to her way of thinking.
Her increasingly strong gift of glamouring made it possible for the rebels to have human servants among them. As a Council member she had food provided for her, but the rebels’ situation was more problematic. They needed servants for food, for handling the details of everyday life while the sun shone and the vampires were either fatigued or hiding in darkness; though only the humans with the weakest minds were suitable for such tasks, they were essential to success. Trying as she could be, Regina was the rebellion.
“If Luca was at the conduit’s house he must have followed Enoch,” she said, reaching the same conclusion Sorin had. Her skin was so white it couldn’t be said that she paled, but her pupils constricted. “If Enoch talked before he died—”
Sorin had changed his opinion about that in the past few minutes, subconsciously processing strategy even as he talked. “He may have talked some, but I don’t think he gave away your identity.”
“How can you assume that?” she snapped. “If anything, I have to assume that he did.”
“You’re still alive,” Sorin pointed out. “If Luca knew your identity, you’d already be dead. All of the security at Council headquarters couldn’t keep him out, and you know it.”
She took a deep breath, fear warring with his logic. Luca Ambrus was every intelligent vampire’s worst nightmare, but Regina was also a supremely logical being, her decisions made coldly, uncolored by emotion. “You’re right. He wouldn’t even have to force his way in. No one knows what he does or doesn’t know, so he might come to the front door as usual, and I couldn’t argue against letting him in or all the other Council members would immediately know I’m the rebel queen.”
Not exactly, Sorin thought. They’d know she was the traitor. The queen part … that was her ego talking.
“I’m strong, but if they all turned on me … even if only two or three turned on me … I wouldn’t have a chance.”
That was true enough. Council members weren’t chosen because of their personalities. They were, one and all, among the most powerful of the kindred.
“Your being there is a strategic advantage for us,” said Sorin, “because we’ll know what they plan, but there’ll come a time when you won’t be safe there. You’ll have to be the judge of that, because I’m not on site.”
Those cold eyes thoughtfully examined him. “It occurs to me, Sorin, that you’re now a liability, too. Luca knows about you. He could follow you back here. He might already have done so.”
She’d kill him without hesitation. Sorin knew that, but then he’d always known that. Most vampires were concerned, first and foremost, with their own survival. For that matter, she knew that he’d sacrifice her without a qualm, too, if it came down to a choice between her life or his.
“He didn’t. He stayed to protect the conduit. I watched from a safe distance to make certain he did.” Sorin gave her a cocky smile. “Not only that, if you kill me, the witch will stop cooperating.” He couldn’t say that Nevada was exactly comfortable with him, but she far preferred him over the other vampires she’d met, and refused to talk to them, so, ipso facto, he’d become the liaison between her and Regina.
“She will if I begin tearing out her family members’ throats in front of her.”
Savagery was her answer for everything. Usually she was right, but there were times when more finesse was needed. “Then you don’t know her at all. If you harm any of them, as far as she’ll be concerned the deal is off, and she’ll use whatever power and knowledge she’s gained to hurt you in any way possible. Don’t discount the power of witchcraft; look what happened the last time one of us didn’t take it seriously.”
“I can kill her, too, before she can complete a spell. If she rebels, then she’s of no use to me, anyway.”
He said casually, “So take your chances with an incomp
lete spell, which may begin with your eyeballs melting out of your head, but then you kill her before the spell is completed and you’re left with melted eyeballs.” Sorin barely held back a grin as he put forth this fairly preposterous supposition. A spell had to be completed before any part of it could work, as far as he knew. But Regina’s weakness was her vanity, and he’d use whatever argument he could to protect his little witch. That she reminded him of his daughter didn’t do anything to negate his sense of protectiveness toward her. He wanted it to, he didn’t want to feel responsible for any human, but the connection was there whether he wanted it to be or not. All he had to do was catch her scent, and it was almost as if he could pick up his child again and swing her around, hear her joyous giggles.
He pulled himself away from that long-ago memory, and watched Regina mull over the possible horrors of an incomplete witchcraft spell. He knew he’d won when she shrugged. “Then you must make her study harder. Jonas said more and more conduits are getting close to contact. We don’t have a lot of time left, a few weeks at the most.”
He didn’t ask her how he was supposed to hunt down and kill conduits and at the same time force Nevada to study more, how he couldn’t be in two places at the same time, but kept his mouth shut. Nevada was doing all she could, and pushing her harder wouldn’t accomplish anything except add to the pressure on her, which would be counterproductive.
“I’d love to bring Luca to our side,” she said, tapping a finger against her cheek. “He’s so incredibly powerful, no one knows for certain exactly what he can do; did I tell you he used Voice on the Council members? We were all so shocked, we didn’t know what to do. Think about it: a vampire wizard, a blood born. If he switched to our side, success would be inevitable, because very few would take a stand against him.” A malicious gleam lit her eyes. “He’d make an acceptable king.”
If she’d wanted to annoy him, she’d succeeded. Not that he’d thought about being king in the new regime—too many restrictions, plus he seriously didn’t want to fuck her—but judging by the sparkle in Regina’s eyes she knew her jab had landed. To too many of their kind, Luca was the be-all and end-all of the kindred. The hell of it was, even Sorin liked the bastard. Sort of. And he’d be a lot more confident of their success if Luca was on their side.
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