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Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520
Macon GA 31201
Night Rhythm
Copyright © 2008 by Charlene Teglia
ISBN: 1-59998-888-7
Edited by Angela James
Cover by Dawn Seewer
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: March 2008
www.samhainpublishing.com
Night Rhythm
Charlene Teglia
Dedication
For my guy, who doesn’t have fangs but is just as romantic as Valentine.
Chapter One
A restless movement in the bed woke him. A wayward elbow nudged his ribs and the fringed end of a thick braid tickled his nose. Valentine smiled at the disturbance, now fully awake although his eyes remained closed. He had no need to open them to know what he would see. His arm tightened around the slight form bumping into his side, drawing her closer. “Having trouble sleeping? I have the cure for that malady.”
The cure he spoke of rose thick and full from his groin, drawing his sac tight. That part of him had woken first in response to her nocturnal stirrings. It jutted forward when her bare thigh brushed against it, as if eager to volunteer its services.
A musical giggle answered him. “I wonder which of us has a malady. You seem to suffer from a great swelling this night.”
One small hand splayed against his chest while another closed around his cock in a bold grip. Valentine felt himself growing even thicker in her hand, swelling with lust and need that never fully slept and woke easily to her lightest touch. If he was honest, it took far less than her touch to rouse the slumbering beast inside him. The scent of her perfume, the sound of her skirts rustling when she moved, the sight of her. Any of these things would suffice to incite him. All of them together could madden him.
The most innocent gesture she made aroused him, and when she deliberately inflamed him, running her tongue along her lower lip when she knew he was watching her, or stretching to display herself for him with her eyes full of mischief and daring, she was likely to find herself with her skirts tossed up and her legs spread at any hour of the day and in any opportune place.
“A great malady,” Valentine agreed in a solemn voice. “You torment me all day and then all night, waking me from a sound sleep because you must have more of me. I am never safe from your demands.”
She let out a soft snort. “You were the one lunging about in this bed like a rutting beast. I was having the most wonderful dream.” Her hand stroked up and down the length of his engorged shaft in a slow caress as she spoke.
“A better dream than this?” Valentine asked.
“Nothing is better than this.”
She slid onto him, all satin skin and heat, thighs parting for him, lips reaching for his kiss. Hunger leapt up like a flame given air and roared through him. The scent of her desire told him she was flushed and eager, her heartbeat increased, rich blood pulsing through her veins just beneath the surface of that delicate skin. His fangs lengthened as his cock throbbed, all of him ready to take all of her…
The doorbell rang again. More insistently this time.
He wanted to roar with rage as the phantom memory that was all he had of her now slipped away, the past shattered by the intrusion of the present.
Valentine was in a foul mood. This was nothing new. His mood had been black for decades, but it was worse today. On All Hallow’s Eve his friend and partner, Romney, had gone to claim the woman he loved. Valentine knew the effort succeeded; two pairs of footsteps had entered just ahead of the sunrise.
He’d fallen into his daytime sleep with the reminder of what he had lost uppermost in his mind. He’d woken alone, aroused, and frustrated. And now there was somebody at the door. A stranger.
The interruption was not welcome. He hungered and he wanted to feed, not play at being human to protect his cover. But it seemed he had no choice. His friend and partner was in love. That was a state Valentine didn’t begrudge Rom but also didn’t particularly want to witness. Being all too well acquainted with the distractions love presented, Val didn’t expect Rom or his lady to stir so early in the evening. Which left him to answer the door.
He entertained himself with a brief fantasy of the violence he’d like to wreak on the stranger who disturbed his dream and dared to intrude here uninvited as he went to the door. He opened it with a snarl ready, which died in his throat when a woman burst through the opening as if she expected to be welcome. She nearly plowed into him.
“Meghan?” The stranger managed to stop short of collision and stared at him with hazel eyes gone wide in surprise. “Oh. Hello.”
Val stared back at her for a long moment before he spoke. What he saw was impossible to the mind of the man he’d once been. And yet he’d spent every day since he’d heard the gypsy woman’s prophecy hoping and praying for the impossible. Now here she stood before him. Today, on Samhain, the dead had returned.
“Lisette.” Her name fell from his lips with the ease of habit.
“Lisa,” she corrected.
He took a step forward without thinking. Instinct drove him to close the small distance between them. As if moved by a will of its own, his hand reached up to touch her hair and then tuck a strand behind one ear in a lingering caress. It was the same sable brown he remembered, the same silken texture. But the style, that was new. “You’ve cut your hair.”
She gave him an odd look. “No, I always keep it short. It gets in the way enough as it is.”
He shrugged. “Let it grow and I’ll braid it for you.” They’d both enjoyed that once. She’d sit between his legs at the end of the day to rest against his chest while he drew the brush through the curtain of her hair until it shone. Then he’d massage her scalp, finally winding the length of her hair around his fist as one intimacy led to more.
The woman who now called herself Lisa snorted. “What is that, a pick-up line? I don’t date Goths.”
“You don’t like my clothes?” Val leaned into her and gave her a heated look. “They come off.”
“I thought you said he didn’t like women,” he heard Meghan say from behind him.
“He doesn’t. He likes this one, though,” Rom answered. “This should be interesting.”
Val ignored them. He heeded only the woman before him as he devoured her with his eyes. It had been so long and he was as hungry for the sight of her as he was for the sound of her voice and the clasp of her body.
“It’s rude to stare.” Lisa stepped around him and turned her attention to Romney’s woman. “Hi, Meghan. The movers won’t be here until the end of the week with your stuff, so I came to see if you needed anything else in the meantime.”
The redhead leaning into Romney laughed. “You mean you came to check out the reason for the move.”
“That too.” Lisa grinned, not at all put out at being seen through.
“Well, meet Romney. And you’ve already met Valentine.”
Val watched as she greeted his friend, then turned back to him. “Valentine. Romney. Interesting names. Is
that what VR Inc. stands for?”
“Yes,” Val answered. “We write custom software programs.”
“You’re programmers?” She blinked. “You don’t look like programmers.”
“What do we look like?” Val asked her, wondering how he looked to her now. He was not the man he had once been. More than years had changed him.
“Well.” She shrugged and spread her hands. “Most computer geeks don’t look like movie stars, for starters.”
She saw him as a movie star and not a monster. That was promising. Although Val knew how easily he could cloud her mind, make her see or not see anything he chose. But he didn’t want to interfere with her perceptions. He wanted her to see him clearly. He wanted her to remember him, to know him as he knew her.
“I don’t think these guys are typical,” Meghan said, and then drew Lisa into conversation, giving Valentine the opportunity to study her while her attention was focused elsewhere.
She was different, and yet so very much the same. The energy in her movements, as if her body was too small a container for so much spirit. She had always been so, feet tapping even at rest, as if some part of her always heard a distant rhythm and wanted to dance to it. She had not been a peaceful bed partner. She had scooted and rolled and flopped and cuddled, waking him repeatedly. And once awake, Val had often given her another outlet for her need to move, moving in time with her to a rhythm they both knew well and that belonged only to the two of them.
He missed seeing her hair spread across his pillow when he freed it from her braid. He missed her voice saying his name. Missed the scent of her. Missed the light in her eyes and the smile that had always been just for him, like a secret they shared.
And now she was here. Almost within his grasp. But no longer his love or his wife. The need to cross that gulf, to touch her, to make her his again in her body and in her heart roared inside him.
Val knew better than to act on impulse, to rush. He was too powerful, his need too great. He had to temper it with caution, control himself. His memories of what had been remained intact. But there was no answering memory, no recognition of him in her eyes. If he overwhelmed her, she might pull so far away he could never reach her again.
This one chance he had been granted. There might not be another opportunity, another lifetime to win her back.
So he held himself in check. He kept his distance. He paid careful attention to the way she stood and moved and spoke and what that told him about the woman she had become. He let her leave even though the urge to stop her was almost more than he could withstand.
He wasn’t losing her, he assured himself. Their conversation had told him Romney’s woman knew where to find her and knew far more about the woman she was now than he did. So he would learn of her from Meghan. And then he would pursue her and Lisette would again be his.
He had to believe she would be his again in time. Failure was unthinkable.
Chapter Two
After Lisette had gone, Val followed Meghan into the kitchen. “Tell me how to win her.”
Meghan poured a cup of the coffee she’d made for Lisa, took a sip, made a face and set it back on the counter. “Ugh. What’s wrong with this stuff?”
Valentine inspected the contents of the cup. “You made it too strong.”
“I made it the way I always make it.” She frowned, perplexed.
How to tactfully remind her that she was no longer human? “Things have changed.”
“That’s the truth. This vampire gig is full of surprises.” Meghan turned away from the coffee, leaning her hip into the cabinet as she considered him. “I take it you believe Lisa is the reincarnation of your dead wife. Rom told me you were looking for her. How did you win her the first time?”
He didn’t simply believe she was Lisette. He knew it was true to the depths of his being. But Valentine let that pass and answered the question. “I was an aristocrat. She was the daughter of a neighbor of good family. I saw her. I wanted her. I told my father to arrange the marriage and then she was mine.”
Meghan arched a brow at him. “Well, that was difficult. What about after the wedding?”
“She adored me.” The memory swept over him and the dual emotions of love and loss tore him in two. “I showered her with jewelry and attention.”
“And sex,” Meghan guessed.
“And sex,” Val agreed.
“What happened?”
“She became pregnant in the fifth year of our marriage.” Val gazed off into space, seeing the past and not the present. “I had duties at court. I went to attend to them and left her at home. That might sound neglectful but travel then was nothing like it is now. It was dangerous and grueling and I didn’t want her subjected to any ordeal in her condition. I wanted her safe and comfortable and surrounded by family and servants. I should have been home in plenty of time.”
“But?” Meghan prompted him, her tone soft.
“But something went wrong. The child came far too early and I lost them both.” And then he’d nearly lost himself in grief, until he’d been given hope. A hope he’d clung to with single-minded determination.
“It probably would have happened sooner if you’d taken her with you.”
“I know that.” Val’s hands tightened into fists and he forced them to relax, to open. “But I wasn’t with her. I should have been with her.” He’d been her husband, her lover, her protector. She shouldn’t have suffered alone. She should have had the comfort of his hand holding hers and any ease he could have given her.
“You didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“I didn’t want to say goodbye.” The old anger had never died and it rose up in him again. “I wanted her back. I still want her back. After I received word of her death, a gypsy woman came to me. She told me that my wife would be reborn, that love would return to me in the Emerald City.”
Meghan nodded. “So that’s what you guys are doing in Seattle.”
“Yes, after it was established and I heard the name. It seemed a likely place, and it didn’t have too many sunny days. So Romney and I came here.” Val shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and scowled at the floor. “I should have gone with him to all those concerts of yours. I would have seen her sooner.”
The knowledge that his Lisette was now Lisa Atkins of the Seattle-based band Meghan played bass for, the Sirens, and that she had been so close for the past several years made him want to drive his fist through a wall. She’d been just under his nose and he hadn’t looked in the right place. But how could he have guessed she’d become a drummer for a rock band? It suited her energy and her drive. He’d just never thought to look for her in the spotlight.
She’d won a place for herself in this time, earned fame and fortune, found friends. She was well and happy. But alone. He’d noted the flash of yearning in her eyes when she saw the way Meghan and Rom stood together, the bond between them nearly palpable. She had everything she could want or need, with one exception. She’d known love once. Somewhere inside her he had to believe the memory lingered. The woman he’d known would never have been content without a passion to match her own and a love worthy of her heart.
Meghan interrupted his thoughts. “And somewhere in there you decided to become a vampire so you wouldn’t die before you found her again.”
“I didn’t want to forget her.” Val paced around the kitchen, too restless to remain still as decades upon decades of need welled up. “She deserved to be remembered. What if I died and was reborn and let her slip away from me because I didn’t know her any longer? Worse, what if we never found each other again because I’d forgotten where to look? I met a vampire and I saw my opportunity. The same vampire who made Romney, as it happens.”
“So you guys did the undead male bonding thing and here you are.”
That did sum it up fairly well. Val waited for Meghan to tell him what he wanted to know as he paced the room.
“I haven’t known Lisa as long as I’ve known the rest of the band,
” she said. “She joined us when our drummer retired and we held auditions. All of us knew she was the one. She has rhythm in her blood and bones and she meshed with us right away. There’s chemistry in a band, a mix of personalities and styles. It’s not all about being good enough and dedicated enough as a musician. If somebody clashes too much, there’s too much conflict and it gets in the way of work. If somebody blends in too thoroughly, they don’t add that extra dimension to the whole.”
Meghan picked up her abandoned cup of coffee again and took a wary sip, made another face. “Damn. This is going to take getting used to.” She gave Valentine a long look. “I have to ask you something. Five years of married life followed by a few hundred years of distance, how can you be sure you’re not romanticizing things? Maybe the past seems rosier than it actually was. You look at Lisa and you see the wife who loved you however many centuries ago and you want what you used to have. But what you used to have is gone and Lisa is human. You’re not.”
“I am aware of that.” Valentine let his next circuit around the kitchen bring him past Meghan. He plucked the cup out of her hand, dumped half the contents into the sink and refilled it with water before handing it back. “Try it now.”
She sipped cautiously, then smiled. “Hey. That’s better.”
Valentine nodded and continued on his way. “Were either of us perfect? No. Was our marriage perfect? No. Was it the best thing I’ve experienced in my life and beyond? Yes. I know the value of what we had. I know that love is far too rare. And I know it’s the only thing that makes the heartbeat of all the worlds go on.”
“Well. That’s poetic. And convincing.” Meghan set the cup down again and started keeping pace with him. “You’re making me dizzy so I’m going to walk with you. I don’t really think you need any tips on modern courtship. Lisa can handle herself and she can decide how to handle you. I’ll give you her address and phone number, not that you couldn’t find out for yourself where she lives. If she wants to boff you in your coffin, who am I to object? For whatever it’s worth, I’ll wish you luck. But if you hurt her, I’ll sharpen a stake with your name on it.”
Night Rhythm: Sirens book 3 Page 1
