I grimaced and rolled the wheelchair forward. Useless fucking legs. They hadn’t worked right since Gianna broke one the night of Selena’s attack, and nobody could figure out why. God knows, Elizabet had sent me to enough specialists. Every single goddamn one of them had prodded and poked and run enough tests for a hundred men, then sent me on my way with a baffled shake of his head. I’d finally called it quits. There was only so much of that shit a body could take. I’d hit my limit around the time I turned twenty.
We picked up our luggage and headed outside where darkness reigned in a moonless sky. Eric flagged down a taxi, and soon, we were on our way to the hotel. He rested a hand over mine and rubbed his fingers over my rings, the gold one Gianna had given me circling my left ring finger and the platinum one he’d given me, worn on my left thumb.
“If you had it to do over again, would you still be mine and Gigi’s?” he asked.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the window, blocking out the street lights flashing by outside the taxi and the sorrow underlying Eric’s slow Georgia drawl. “Have you been peeking into my head again?”
“I caught a hint of regret earlier, some nostalgia.” He slid his hand into mine and squeezed. “We’ll figure out how to fix you, Jase, I swear.”
“I know you’ll try.”
“Do you?”
I opened my eyes and glanced at him. He was looking at me, his expression as closed as his mind. “Yeah, I do.”
“Keep that in mind the next time you get depressed over your situation.”
Remember what you mean to me.
No sweat there. I flipped my hand over, meeting his palm to palm. A surge of something good flowed through the connection, something right. “Tonight.”
“What’s happening tonight?”
I slid a coy glance at him out of the corners of my eyes. “What do you think?”
“No, absolutely not. Doc said no sex until you can feel again on your own.”
“I feel when you touch me,” I murmured. God, I loved that, loved when he put his mouth on me, his hands, his skin. It didn’t matter where he was, I still felt him, every glorious inch. “Wasn’t talking about that anyway. I want you in my mouth, all of you.”
A sigh shuddered out of him. “I’ll think about it.”
“Think hard, baby. Think about how good I’m gonna make you feel.”
Jesus, Jase. You’re giving me a hard on. How the hell am I supposed to walk into the hotel like this?
I grinned. Do you here if I could.
He groaned and thumped his head against the back of the seat. You promised me you’d be good this trip, promised me you’d keep a low profile around your family. You swore it on your grandmother’s grave.
We’re not there yet, won’t be for another week unless you wanna skip the sightseeing. Besides, both of my grandmothers are still alive and kicking. I glanced out the window and frowned. I wasn’t that familiar with St. Paul, but I was pretty sure we were going in the wrong direction. I leaned forward and rapped a knuckle on the plexiglass window dividing us from the driver. “Hey, mister. This isn’t the way to the hotel.”
The driver’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. His held a slight glow that hadn’t been there when Eric had flagged him down, and he sure as hell hadn’t had the aura of a beacon then, either, though it flared bright enough now.
Uneasiness slid down my spine, and with it the cold hand of dread. Shit. How had we missed that?
“The Mistress wants to meet you,” the driver said in a flat, Midwestern twang. “Says I’m to bring you straight there.”
Eric leaned forward and met the driver’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “I realize you’re under strict orders from your mistress, but this isn’t protocol.”
One of the driver’s beefy shoulders shrugged toward his ear, then fell. “You ain’t met the mistress if you think she gives a fuck about protocol. She said to pick you up. I picked you up. Got it?”
Eric slid back in the seat. “The queen guaranteed us safe passage through your mistress’ territory.”
“Long way from here to New York.”
The indifference lacing the man’s voice raised my hackles. Eric rubbed his thumbs over my knuckles. The skin there tingled and hummed like he’d kissed me, and I relaxed a little.
“If the queen’s orders are violated, she won’t be happy,” he said.
“Whatever, man.” The driver lifted the bill of his worn Minnesota Twins baseball cap and resettled it over a buzz cut. “Mistress ain’t near as nice as the queen when it comes to being obeyed, know what I mean?”
I didn’t, but I had a sneaky suspicion we were about to find out.
Oriana, the mistress of Minneapolis-St. Paul and not much else, lived in the middle of an affluent neighborhood caged within wide streets and high fences on the outskirts of St. Paul. The houses were gargantuan and spread far enough apart to afford a privacy others living in the twin cities had a hard time scraping up. We rolled through a large, wrought-iron gate and the unease roared back to life, shoving my heart into my throat. Fuck all. I hoped like hell we weren’t walking into the kind of bad situation my gut said was headed our way.
We didn’t know much about Oriana, not nearly enough by any standard. Marco had briefed us before we’d left Georgia. Most of what he knew came from rumor, seemed like. Oriana had risen to power half a century ago after the former mistress had gone bat shit crazy and walked into the sun. Most of the vampires holding key parts of her territory were wiped out in the ensuing struggle for control. When the dust cleared nearly a decade later, Oriana and a dozen other relatively young vampires had taken over the major cities, leaving the suburbs, smaller towns, and rural areas to fend for themselves. Not one ruling vampire had gathered enough strength to extend her reach outside the city she controlled, let alone to reunite the former territory.
Shame, too. Apparently, the old mistress’ lands had stretched from Wisconsin all the way to Idaho and had been a refuge of sorts for vampires and other creatures that didn’t quite fit in anywhere else.
One thing Marco had known for sure was that Oriana was in some kind of squabble with the vampire holding the area around Fargo and Grand Forks, North Dakota, not far from my hometown. Ten to one, the reason we were being detained had something to do with that feud, though God only knew what. Growing up, I’d never met a vampire, had no reason to suspect one was even active in the Crookston area. That was a long, long way from Oriana’s territory anyhow. What the hell could she possibly want with us?
The taxi driver dropped us off at the front steps. Two pets were waiting for us, big, steely eyed men with close-cropped hair and hard expressions. One retrieved my wheelchair from the cab’s trunk and lifted me into it, ignoring Eric. The other unloaded our luggage and sent the taxi driver on his way.
Eric’s gaze followed the retreating taxi. “We’ve already booked a hotel room.”
“Mistress wants you here,” the second pet said.
Eric nodded and followed the man up the broad, stone steps toward the house’s entrance. The first pet rolled me toward a newly built wooden ramp to one side. Awfully convenient, that ramp being there, right when a man in a wheelchair was scheduled to pay Oriana a visit. I’d like to think she was just considerate, but I’d met too many vampires over the past few months and knew way too many sorry as shit humans. Something was wrong. I didn’t need the tingle at the base of my skull to tell me that.
I reached out to Eric, my mind to his. I don’t like this.
Me, neither. Whole thing feels like a setup. I just can’t figure out what kind.
My hands tightened on the wheelchair’s arms. Don’t let them separate us.
Not a chance, Jase.
Inside, we were greeted by a bulldog of a man. His wild eyes glared at us out of a glacial expression. “I’m Fen, the mistress’ favorite.”
Eric nodded. “Respectfully, I’d appreciate an audience with your mistress, at her earliest convenience.”
&
nbsp; “She’s feeding now,” Fen said, and I caught a whiff of an accent. Irish, maybe? If so, he’d been in the States long enough to lose most of it.
Say, long enough to’ve fought by Oriana’s side when the old mistress greeted the sun.
“My companion has special needs,” Eric said.
“We’re accommodating them.” Fen jerked his chin at the other men. “Show them their rooms.”
“Room,” I snapped. “Where he goes, I go.”
Fen’s thin lips curled into a satisfied smirk. “So be it.”
The man standing beside Eric wrapped a meaty hand around Eric’s upper arm. “This way.”
My handler rolled me out of the foyer and down a long, empty corridor. The longer we walked, the harder my heart thudded in my chest. Shit. Where were they taking us, the dark side of the moon?
Eric’s mind touched mine. Calm down, Jase. No point panicking until we know what we’re up against.
We stopped in front of a solid wooden door at the end of the corridor. The knob was an old-fashioned, metal latch, wrought iron, maybe. My handler locked the brakes on my chair and opened the door, then took Eric’s other arm, manhandling him through the opening into the darkness beyond. A minute later, the distinct snick of metal on metal drifted to me.
A lump of something cold and thick lodged itself in my throat. I swallowed it down and braced myself. I’d been right. Sweet God in Heaven, I’d been so right. We were in deep shit and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
Chapter Two
The man who’d been pushing my chair around ducked through the doorway. His flat, brown eyes met mine. “You sure you wanna be in there with him?”
“What have you done to him?” I asked.
“Exactly what the mistress said to do.” He unlocked the wheelchair’s brakes and rolled me through the room’s entrance, flipping on a light as we eased past the switch into a narrow hallway. “Gonna get uncomfortable in here.”
“Why here?”
“Not my place to say.”
“Whose place is it?”
“Fen’s, if he wanted. The mistress, when she’s ready.”
The hallway opened into a round, stone room about twenty feet in diameter. Eric was sitting fully dressed on the bare stone floor next to the pet who’d dragged him inside. His hands were handcuffed to a metal ring embedded in the wall a few feet off the floor, not far above his head. Aside from a dozen similar rings dotting the stone walls at various heights and a rectangular, metal grate in the center of the floor, the room was empty.
I gripped the wheelchair’s arms. “What the fuck?”
“Mistress’ orders,” my handler said, his voice gruff. “Hang tight. We’re bringing in a mattress for you. Bathroom’s through there.”
I glanced around. Two arched, wooden doors were set into the wall near the hallway’s terminus. One was open. The bathroom, maybe. The other had no handle. A deadbolt at the top had a lock through it and there was no key in sight. “I need help.”
The handler snorted. “We know you can control yourself.”
Eric caught my eye. Don’t volunteer anything.
Like I’d do that. “How do you know what I can and can’t do?”
The man standing by Eric grinned, baring fully-descended fangs. “We know all about you, Jason Elis Bellmont.”
I grunted. “Yeah? What am I thinking right now?”
My handler coughed into his hand, barely hiding a bark of laughter. “Mistress’ll be down soon. Don’t try to escape. It’ll go bad for the both of you.”
I wheeled around, watched the two leave just to make sure they were really gone, then rolled over to Eric. “You ok?”
He wiggled his hands, rattling the handcuffs. “Peachy.”
“Christ, Eric. Why’d you let them do that?”
He closed his eyes and dropped his head back against the wall. “I went digging in their pea brains. They were going to use you to force me. I simply removed that option.”
A cold fist squeezed itself around my lungs. “They were what?”
“They were going to hurt you,” he said, enunciating each word carefully.
“Fuck that. Don’t you ever put yourself in front of me like that again.”
His eyes popped open. The normal gold-green-brown was as black as a moonless night. “You’re my husband, my favorite, my fucking best friend. I will not ever let you be hurt again. Is that clear?”
I sucked in a breath. The cold man. Shit. If he was out, things must be pretty goddamn bad. I cupped Eric’s face, tilting it toward mine, and stroked my thumb over his cheek. “You get the chance, you save yourself. Promise me.”
The door opened behind us and half a dozen footsteps rang out. A cunning smile spread across Eric’s mouth. “Too late, Adonis,” he murmured. “Let the games begin.”
One thing I hated about the cold man? He spouted more philosophical nonsense than any three men put together. It was all Eric, every bit, but it was a part he never let out when he was one hundred percent geek.
I wheeled my chair around and faced the coming horde, two men carrying a twin mattress between them, my handler bearing a covered dish, Fen, and a statuesque woman wearing a filmy white, floor-length dress, a stark contrast to her ebony skin. Her face was round and saved from complete blandness by high cheekbones, full lips, and the splash of bright color across her eyelids.
She glided forward, her feet a small whisper against the hard floor. “Jason, darling. So lovely of you to join us.”
I bit back a smart remark and nodded respectfully. “Mistress Oriana.”
“I’ve been waiting for you a very long time.” She brushed the tip of her finger down my nose and smiled. “You’ll be so happy here, once we settle the unpleasantness between us.”
“The unpleasantness,” I said flatly. Is that what she called kidnapping, chaining, and threatening us?
“Yes, of course, darling, but let’s not get into that on your first day.” She beckoned my handler forward. “Amos has brought you a meal. I’m sure you’re famished after your trip.”
My stomach was too tangled for food, probably for the first time ever.
Take the food, Jase.
I gritted my teeth together. Not until they let you go.
They’re not letting me go.
The thought was gentle, sweet even. A chill ran down my spine. What aren’t you telling me?
The cold man’s laughter echoed through my head, exacerbating the dread growing in my gut. Everything.
Oriana’s fingers gripped my chin and yanked my head up. “I said, I’m sure you’re famished.”
I met her dark, hollow gaze evenly. “Thank you, Mistress Oriana.”
“There’s no need to use my name.” Her hand slid away as she straightened. “I am your mistress now, Jason. Remember that.”
Fen stepped up beside her. “You have one hour to eat and care for yourself.”
“And then what?”
His upper lip curled back. “Punishment.”
He took Oriana’s hand and led her out of the room, followed by the two unknown men. Amos pried the lid off the covered dish and handed the plate full of food to me. “Eat while you can.”
I stared at the roast beef, whipped potatoes, and asparagus, just enough portion-wise for one person. “What’s going on here?”
He shook his head and pulled a fork wrapped in a white, cloth napkin out of the back pocket of his jeans. “She’s listening,” he whispered.
I glanced at the hallway, now empty, and lowered my voice. “At least tell me why we’re being punished.”
“Not you. Him.”
Amos dropped the wrapped fork onto my lap and walked away, scuffing his boots along the stone floor. I tucked it firmly between my useless legs and wheeled my chair around one-handed. Damn things weren’t meant to be maneuvered like that, so it took me a while and was awkward as hell. Finally, I’d turned myself around and faced Eric.
I dug the fork out of the napkin, speared a
chunk of beef, and held it out to him. “You get half. Don’t even bother arguing.”
He laughed softly. “God, Jase. You really think that plate of food is gonna do both of us?”
“It’s better than nothing,” I retorted, and waved the meat in front of his face. “Open up, lover.”
I fed us slowly, alternating bites between his mouth and mine, and stewed over the steaming pile of shit we’d landed ourselves in.
Fifteen minutes before our hour was up, another pet entered the stone room. He looked young, maybe mid-twenties. Wavy auburn hair curled over the collar of his shirt, oddly striking against alabaster skin. His nose had a slight crook to it above a mouth bracketed by dimple grooves, and his eyes were a pure, light green, the color brightened by the soft glow of a beacon.
I wheeled around, placing myself between him and Eric. “Don’t come any closer.”
The pet held his hands up, palms out. They were like the rest of him, long and lean and elegant. “My name is Kyle. I’m a nurse-practitioner. Amos said you might need help.”
I snorted. “Yeah, right. What do you really want?”
“I want to help.” His voice was gentle and far sweeter than the hard tones we’d heard since arriving at Oriana’s. “Look, you don’t have to trust me, but if you need help, at least take advantage of my expertise.”
My bond with Eric tingled. He’s really a nurse-practitioner.
That doesn’t mean we can trust him.
It means we can trust him to help you get in and out of the bathroom.
I rubbed a finger over my mouth and studied Kyle. My own skills as a pet hadn’t developed enough to be able to judge him the way Eric could. I was just too new at it, but Eric was something else. He knew how to look deep inside another person, so deep most never knew he was there. He could ferret out the truth, lay open a person’s soul, and uncover hidden nuances even the recipient of his attention wasn’t aware of them. Him, I could trust.
I dropped my hand and said, “I could use some help getting from the bathroom door to the toilet. The door looks too narrow for my chair.”
“It probably is. This room wasn’t exactly built for comfort.”
The Vampire's Favorite Page 2
