Crimson Lust

by Rebecca Royce

  He tasted of mint and wildness. Yes. She moaned, deepening their embrace. Cian had been made for kissing and she’d find a way to get him to see that having sex with her was just what he wanted to do all afternoon. The library could wait.

  Chapter Three

  Cian had to get back control of this situation. He’d brought her to the library to show her the documents that would prove what he had to tell her—that he’d become one of the undead over three-hundred years earlier. The texts with reference to his death were stored inside some of the volumes here. After all, it had been a local scandal at the time. Particularly when his body had vanished.

  But now she was kissing him. How did a man—any man let alone one who had to fight every second of the day to not kill and slaughter—turn down such softness, beauty and light from his life?

  For just a second he would kiss her. Then he would tell her what needed to be told and move on. This whole adventure, pretending for even a second that he could do anything romantic with a human woman, had been a mistake. He’d get his necklace back, then he’d get out of this cursed place.

  Walking through the door had been hell on earth.

  Completely different from kissing Felicity, which had to be akin to heaven. Or at least the closest he’d ever get.

  She deepened the pressure and he moaned, both from the need to kiss her harder and the warring desire to suck on her sweet blood until he sated himself on the feel of her. Oh yes, Felicity would be a morsel both in the bed and as his afternoon snack.

  He pulled back. The way his thoughts were moving…they didn’t make him feel horribly confident that he could control himself.

  “We have to stop. I’m sorry.”

  She narrowed her eyes and he wished he could be the kind of man to kiss the distress lines from the sides of her eyes. “Are you not attracted to me?”

  The hardness in his pants spoke volumes to how incredibly turned on he was by her. Also, he’d had the best ejaculation of his existence from her scent alone. She wanted to know if he found her attractive? She could simply look down and see for herself.

  “I brought you in here because I felt the atmosphere the correct one for saying what needs to be said.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “You didn’t answer my question. At least have the decency to admit I’m not your type.”

  “You’re everyone’s type. It would be impossible for any male in spying distance of you to not want to fuck you immediately upon sight.” He winced at his own words. Why did he have to be so crude? Just another sign that the monster had begun to win the war they waged with each other.

  Felicity’s eyes heated, some of the tension easing. He could feel the fangs in his mouth throbbing. He bit down on his tongue to distract himself. He could not—would not—lose control and hurt this woman.

  The demon inside him moved restlessly. This would be a long fight and one he might not win. His years of fighting the beast had taught him that sometimes his struggles were futile at best.

  He took a step back from her, colliding with the bookshelf behind him. The furniture rattled upon the slight collision and a book fell with a loud thud to the floor.

  Cian stared at the fallen item for a second before he sniffed the air. A sudden odor wafted through the room, catching his attention. The smell of roses passed by him. Where had that scent come from? In the distance he heard a noise, like two wings rubbing together. He looked right and left, trying to identify the cause. After a second, he had to relent. Nothing seemed to have occurred.

  Had he imagined the weird moment or had a winged creature moved through the room, smelling of roses? His beast took a deep breath inside him, calming down as if someone had placed a salve on his need to feed, turning off the sensation.

  “Um.” He didn’t know exactly what to say to Felicity, who was staring at the book on the floor as if observing some kind of foreign object she’d not seen before.

  She bent down to pick it up, caressing the cover beneath her long fingers. He wished he could be that book, with her hands running all over him.

  “This is very old.” She brought the volume to her nose and sniffed. “You can smell it. I’ve spent a lot of time in libraries looking things up so I can properly identify origins or worth. I love the old books.”

  He knew she worked as a thief even though she hadn’t yet told him. Libraries were also places she could probably hide out without getting caught by the authorities.

  “What type of book is it?”

  “It’s entitled Great Love Stories of Kilmorny.” She bit down on her lip. “Does this area have a history of famous lovers?”

  He snorted. “No. There isn’t too much wonderful about this area, certainly not love stories. In fact, the last time I left I intended never to return because I hate it here so much.”

  “Then what brought you here today?”

  “Work. I have to collect something and it happens to be here. I go where I must.”

  “You sound like such a martyr. Shall I build you a statue?”

  He shook his head. “You do have a mouth on you.”

  She flipped open the book. “Some of these stories are hundreds of years old.”

  His heart beat hard against his ribs. Could he have known someone in the pages? Had there been wonderful, sought-after love tales going on while all he’d been able to focus on was revenge, wealth and theft? Regret lodged itself in his veins. It had been a long time since he’d spent time with that particular feeling.

  Usually his monster wouldn’t let him indulge in the softer human emotions, not when there were so many animalistic things he could be doing instead. Like blood-sucking.

  “Look at this one.” She held up the book, her cheeks a reddish hue. Something about the stories had made her blush. He narrowed his gaze. Exactly what kind of book did she have in her hands?

  He took the old volume into his hands, staring at the words on the page. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be any kind of a dirty book. He would have liked to imagine Felicity reading sexual stories with her pale skin getting more and more crimson every second.

  Instead he read the tale about a couple who must have lived close to the cottages he’d grown up in. Apparently they’d lived and loved near him and he’d never known them. Or maybe he’d simply forgotten. Less and less of that time remained with him.

  They’d been neighbors and apparently become some kind of local heroes by giving charitably to the community. Somehow they’d also managed to create a local charity that still gave money to young people from the area who were first starting out.

  The charity, Le Grá, now made possible by newer donors, still existed. He nodded his head as he read the stories. Occasionally, really good people lived in the world. Most people passed through the years without ever making an impact. But those two, they’d done their share. Still, the description of their love story appealed to him.

  Old stories about the seemingly ordinary man and women holding hands as they walked down the street, always together, appealed to him. He hadn’t pondered it in years, even though when he’d been human the idea of a lifetime together with one other person had seemed virtually impossible to him. Did true love really exist?

  And who had written this silly book? Author unknown. He rolled his eyes as he flipped through the pages. Not one story in the book seemed particularly interesting. Sure, the charity had been important. It would hardly qualify as Romeo-and-Juliet-esque.

  “You’re so quiet. What’s the matter? You don’t like romance?”

  He smiled at her, shutting the book and placing it behind him once again. “Seems like local love stories from Kilmorny are really uninteresting. Why would someone write this book?”

  “Maybe they were sentimental.”

  “It’s just ridiculousness. No one cares about small-town love. Congratulations, you managed not to get divorced or die too young. Let’s write a book about a bunch of those stories? Seems really…nonsensical. None of them even have names. They co
uld have been made up, and if that’s the case, they’re not even interesting fake characters.”

  “Look.” She stretched her hands over her head. “I get it, okay? No one will ever call me a romantic. Ever. I deal in real life. It’s hard, nasty and difficult and it’s not likely to ever change.”

  He’d been thinking the same things earlier. Yet hearing the thoughts come out of Felicity’s mouth made his heart stutter. She had far too few years beneath her belt for her to be that cynical.

  “I didn’t mean…”

  She waved his response away while she kept talking. “Sometimes it’s nice to think that the whole world doesn’t feel the way I do. Out there in the world someone, somewhere must be living differently than you and I do. It’s nice. That’s all.”

  “Then why are you blushing if it’s just nice?” Why is your blood rushing so fervently through your veins as if you’d been running?

  “Don’t you know you shouldn’t ask women questions like that?”

  If he had known, he’d long forgotten. “You don’t want to answer.”

  “I don’t.” She shook her head. “What I want to do is to go back to my room upstairs with you, lock the door and not come out again until morning. If then. Only you don’t want to, even though you’ve told me you’re attracted to me.”

  He gulped. Women of this modern age. They just said what they thought. Amazing. He’d never get used to it.

  “You’re silent. No response?”

  Cian wanted to say something but he couldn’t stop staring at her mouth. Just moments earlier he’d had her pressed against him, her mouth fused to his. His vampire side lay calm for the moment.

  “Are you married?”

  “What?” Her words confused him.

  “I asked if you were married.” This time she spoke slowly, as if he couldn’t understand the words she’d spoken. Felicity really had an edge to her. Did it follow her everywhere? Was she feisty in bed?

  “No. I’d not have necked with you like that if I had a wife.”

  “Necked?” She covered her mouth, her eyes glittering with amusement. “What decade are you living in?”

  The problem all vampires faced when speaking to humans reared up. Keeping up with the trends of the modern day could be a full-time job, and not one he’d done much of lately.

  Necklace. He needed to focus on the necklace.

  “I don’t like it when things are taken from me. I don’t have many things I care about. But there is one thing, and…”

  She interrupted him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m going to be in my room. It’s upstairs. On the third floor, the old wing. I have a mini-bar.” She leaned closer until he could feel her breath in his ear. “And I’m not wearing any underwear.”

  He stopped breathing for a second, watching her walk out of the room. Her hips swayed in the seductive way a woman’s did when she sauntered. Did they take women somewhere in adolescence and teach them how to do that?

  Cian knew he should leave her alone. He didn’t have to follow her upstairs to know which room belonged to her. He could have found it with his eyes closed, the same way he’d located her here. The predator in him would always find her now.

  Her scent on the wind, he could taste her, track her, find her…forever. Until she died, as all humans did, in a flash of a second. They hardly lived before they ended, their lives brief and fleeting. Except that sometimes they could love eternally. He stared at the book on the shelf next to him. Or so the book would have him believe.

  Even now, with her having left the library, he could beat her upstairs, take the jewelry and be on his way. So why had he bothered her to begin with? Because he’d had to put a face to the scent that had made him so horny and he’d had to hear the voice that went with the face.

  Why had she propositioned him? She couldn’t possibly be hard up for male attention. Any woman who looked like her could have her pick of willing men. He closed his eyes. Therein lay the problem. He wasn’t a man, not really. As much as the boy he’d once been lived somewhere inside him, the undead remained the utmost force in his life.

  If only he could pretend for one night that it could be different. He stomped into the hall. He’d get his property and move on with his afterlife. Perhaps he could find two liters of blood to feed on before he left the hotel. A sort of bloody goodbye to Castle Tullamore, something to remember him by.

  Cian waited for the surge of feeding lust that should overwhelm him. Hell, he’d give the demon leave to go off and feed to its heart’s content. Yet nothing surged inside him.

  He stared down at his hands. Why hadn’t his fingernails elongated to handle the kill?

  Cian didn’t stand around wondering why, not for another second. If his vampire had temporarily gone to sleep he’d use the opportunity to get what he wanted, for a change.

  He rounded the corner, heading for the staircase that would take him upstairs. The strange sound he’d not been able to identify earlier swept by him again, forcing him to come to an abrupt halt. Things like this didn’t happen. He could small, taste and feel everything, beyond the capabilities of the humans around him. So why couldn’t he figure out where that noise had come from?

  Felicity’s scent called to him and he decided he didn’t care one bit about fluttering noises and strange smells. Not when the most appealing human woman he’d ever encountered waited for him upstairs.

  He took the stairs two at a time, making himself maintain a speed that humans wouldn’t find odd. Also, the calmer he stayed the more likely the vampire inside him would remain that way, instead of rearing up to take control of him again.

  A smile threatened to spill over onto his lips. When was the last time he’d felt this giddy?

  Sniffing the air, he caught her scent and inhaled deeply. A ding in the distance called his attention and he turned to look at the lift as it arrived on the floor. Nothing out of the ordinary about the elevator or the maid coming onto the floor, except that a cold feeling washed over him. He shuddered, his stomach tightening up.

  There was something wrong with that elevator. If he didn’t know better he’d swear it had a presence of its own, as if it was watching him—or something inside it was. Yet he could see for himself that it lay empty.

  He took two steps in its direction even though he didn’t know exactly what he was planning to do. Maybe burn it down? Destroy it? Threaten whatever paranormal creature existed inside it until the thing came out and showed itself to him?

  A cough sounded down the hall in one of the rooms. He knew instantly that the noise had come from Felicity. It shared the same scratchy tone that her voice held, which had made his groin jump to attention the second he’d first heard it.

  The elevator would have to wait.

  He leaped to her door, not caring if anyone noticed. If she’d coughed that meant something was wrong. Maybe she needed help. Humans were such fragile creatures. He wouldn’t have this one dying, not for anything in the world.

  Cian knocked for courtesy’s sake. He had every intention of breaking the door open if she didn’t answer.

  The door swung open and Felicity grinned at him. She cleared her throat before she spoke. “I hoped you’d come. I really did.”

  “Are you okay?” Her pulse sounded strong, her blood rushed properly. Still, she’d been coughing…

  “Yes.” She moved so he could enter the room next to her. “I took a sip of water and it went down the wrong pipe.” She cleared her throat again. “Hate it when that happens.”

  “You need to be careful with yourself.” Before she ended up another corpse in the ground whose presence on the planet quickly diminished into nothing, as if she’d never been there at all. Like his should have long ago.

  Hot rage threatened to spill from his veins at the thought of Felicity being gone, which made him want to turn around and walk away. He shouldn’t be having such a strong reaction to a woman he’d only met an hour earlier. Even if her scent alone had driven him to a stat
e of arousal he hadn’t known possible.

  “It’s nothing. What? It never happens to you?”

  “No. Everything I consume goes down smoothly.” Despite the fact that he’d lived in utter horror about that in the beginning.

  “Then I guess you must have a bigger esophagus than me or something.”

  He shrugged, amusement making him feel lighter. She didn’t appear to be about to die. She still looked as ravishingly hot as she had moments earlier.

  “Or something.”

  Felicity’s good health meant he could take a deep breath. He stared around her room, decorated to match the Victorian theme of the old wing of the hotel. He could remember when he’d actually seen the grand excesses of the time displayed in people’s homes.

  Not the most comfortable of eras but he’d basically been concerned with finding places to sit while he fed, not with the ease in which he sat. That had been the time when he’d struggled the most with not killing his food sources.

  Looking at the chair in front of him, with the ornate gold design lining the outside of the fabric, brought the whole thing rushing back. Damn this hotel, the location, the castle. It had never brought him anything but trouble.

  Felicity ran a hand up his back, tracing the line of his spine. He shuddered beneath her touch, all thoughts of blood and death fleeing.

  “Maybe I should be asking you if you’re okay.”

  He smiled. “Yes. More than okay.”

  Cian pulled her into his arms, loving the way she fit so perfectly against him. “You aren’t going to understand this.” He kissed the side of her ear, running his tongue down the side of her cheek. “But you make me feel as if I could be the man I should have been. At least for a little while.”

  Whatever she might have said to his remark, he didn’t know. He never gave her a chance to answer. Her warmth called to him and he pressed his mouth to hers. Hard. Claiming her, for that moment, as his own, as he had the right to do so.

  Chapter Four