It occurred to her then that since she was off, no one would notice her disappearance for days. By the time anyone did, it would be too late for the police to find her and stop Hadrian.
At that thought, she pulled on the bindings, but she only tightened the fabric ties at her wrists.
Frustration brought tears to her eyes, but she battled them back.
Now was not the time for tears or indecision.
Using the bindings to hoist herself upward, she examined the knots he had made and realized that the only way to be free of them would be to chew through them.
Hadrian’s earlier words suddenly filled her brain. I can feel it coming, much as I can sense the approach of night.
I’d better start chewing, Connie thought.
Chapter 8
T he warmth of her, soft and female, crept into his consciousness along with the call of the night.
He opened his eyes to find their legs in a jumble and his arm across her waist.
Connie was asleep beside him, her hands still tied, but he could see threads sticking out at odd angles. She had tried to gnaw through the bindings.
He admired her spirit.
As he pulled away the bedcovers, he also couldn’t avoid admiring the lush curves of her body, made more obvious by the way the silk clung to her. The fine creamy fabric also exposed the dark aureoles of her nipples.
He itched to touch. To taste.
In his dreams he had done both and more. A smile came to his face as he recalled those dreams.
“You’re not so scary when you smile,” she said, the tone of her voice husky with sleep.
He forced the smile away, although her words only made him want to smile even more.
“Scary is good,” he said, and to prove his point, he called forth the demon.
She didn’t react outwardly, although he heard the slightly faster beat of her heart. Where their legs were still intertwined, his skin was chilled before she seemed to realize the intimacy of their position and untangled her legs from his.
He missed her presence immediately and morphed back to his human form, wanting to return to that earlier sense of comfort. It had been so long since he had felt anything like it.
“Tell me a little about yourself,” he said, aware that he knew nothing about her other than the fact that she was a lawyer.
“There’s nothing to tell. I’m an ordinary person—”
“With an ordinary life?”
“Boring compared to what you must have seen in your long existence.”
“Tell me anyway.” He was eager to hear about the stuff of ordinary life.
“You miss being human, don’t you?” she asked and shifted in bed. When she did, she moaned and a grimace crossed her features.
An unwelcome and hardly experienced emotion rose up in him—guilt. “Are you—”
“Okay? I’m tied to a bed and sometime today I’m going to become your meal. How okay is that?” she said, each word escalating in volume. She jerked roughly against the ties, biting her lip to hold back any outbursts of pain.
Hadrian observed her struggles and said, “If I free your hands—”
“What will I give you? What do I have that you couldn’t take without asking?”
She was right that he could take all that he wanted, but what he wanted most he didn’t want to take.
“I want to kiss you.”
Connie nearly recoiled. Not just from the request, but from the thread of need laced through his voice.
“A kiss?” She stared hard at him, trying to read his face for confirmation of the emotions she had heard.
Unlike the hard and dispassionate cast to his features she’d seen that first night, tonight his face was alive with sentiment. The dark of his eyes glittered and a small grin peeked from one edge of his lips. The grin broadened as he seemed to realize he had her complete attention.
“A kiss? Where?” she asked.
“Wherever I want.”
His gaze settled on her lips before skipping downward to her breasts, where his gaze lingered.
Heat raced through her body and her nipples tightened in response. She shifted, attempting to ease her discomfort, but the gentle glide of the fabric only increased her distress.
“So may I?” He shifted closer to her on the bed until their legs touched once again and the jut of his erection brushed the softness of her belly.
“May you what?” she asked as he raised his hand and cradled her cheek.
“Kiss you. A simple kiss.” The words came as a mere whisper, low and urgent, strumming alive a need between her legs. Then he passed the pad of his thumb across her lips and said, “Here.”
Her senses were on overload. She wished she could say it was because of some vampire thrall. Only she suspected it wasn’t.
“You’ll let me go—”
“I’ll untie you…for a bit.” He shifted his thumb to the line of her cheek, his caress delicate, and trained his gaze on her lips.
Being free, even if only for just a moment, would be heaven.
And it was just one little kiss, she told herself as she nodded and he closed the distance between them.
They were body-to-body. His hard and masculine, but still chilled from the night. She ignored that immortal tell as he bent his head toward her.
He hesitated and his gaze locked with hers. Seeking what? she wondered. Acceptance? Acquiescence?
But then he closed his eyes and made the first tentative pass of his lips across hers. She did the same, torn between ignoring and acknowledging the kiss. But as he passed his chilled lips across hers once again it was impossible to ignore him.
Connie gave herself over to his simple kiss, meeting his lips again and again until his were warm. Wet as she opened her mouth and accepted the slide of his tongue across them before he slipped it into her mouth.
He groaned then, a very human sound that reverberated through her body.
He had dropped his hand back to her waist. As they continued kissing, he applied gentle pressure to bring their bodies even closer, until her breasts were pressed to his chest and his arousal was impossible to miss.
She sucked in a shaky breath as she battled with herself. She shouldn’t respond to all that blatant and perfect masculinity melded to her. To the gifted mouth and tongue that were turning that initial simple kiss into the kind longtime lovers shared.
Only they weren’t lovers and as something nipped her bottom lip, sharp and threatening, it reminded her of just why that was an impossibility.
He muttered a curse and shifted away. As he did so, she noted the hint of fang and the bright crimson of her blood where he had accidentally cut her. When she met his eyes, the regret in them roused an emotion she didn’t want to admit.
“You hate this as much as you hate the part of you that still desires a human,” she said, trying to create needed distance between them. Both because the kiss had been too tempting and because she wanted to understand the complex creature that he was.
Hadrian’s reaction was swift.
He undid the wraps around her wrists. When her hands were free of the bindings, he glanced down at them and noted the raw pink sections where the silk had bitten into her skin during her struggles. He passed his fingers over them gently before looking upward and encountering her confused gaze.
“I made a promise, which I intend to keep. Do not mistake that for kindness, because it will be a grievous error.”
Her hand slipped over his, her touch consoling. It might have hurt less if she had staked him. He pulled his hands away abruptly, but that didn’t seem to dissuade her.
She cradled his cheek and passed her thumb across his lips, still moist and warm from their kiss. To his surprise, she traced the fang that had nipped her, seemingly unfazed by its presence. When her gaze locked on his, she said, “Tell me why you hate so much, Hadrian.”
To his surprise, he did.
Rome
311 A.D.
It had been nearly fou
r years since that fateful Saturnalian tryst had taken one existence and provided him with another. He had hated Stacia at first, confused as he was by what she had made him and all that had seemed forbidden to him after his transformation.
He was no longer human and all things human seemed beyond his reach.
Even something as simple as a daytime walk was no longer possible, although he had discovered that by the very late afternoon hours he could venture out.
To compensate for his new existence, he lost himself in endless hours of work during the day and meaningless nighttime trysts meant to satisfy the new desires that rose up in him, sometimes beyond his control.
When on one occasion he had nearly drained a woman to death, he swore off human feedings and instead subsisted only on beef and pig blood. Despite that, the urge to sink his teeth into human flesh proved to be a temptation, so he shut himself off from others, even from his family. Thanks to Maximillian, who had also been turned that fateful night, Hadrian found a keeper who tended to his feedings and other needs.
In time he learned control, and control brought him an unexpected gift—a wife.
Anastasia had been a teen when he had first met her—the daughter of one of his father’s friends. She had grown into a beautiful young woman before his eyes and on those occasions when he had involved himself with family, she had caught his attention. He discovered that he had also caught hers.
But what had intrigued him more than her beauty had been her wit and independence. His hope that the latter might somehow make her more understanding of his condition proved true, and after a rather short courtship, he married her. Barely six months later and hopelessly in love, he had turned her after discovering that Anastasia was dying from consumption.
The transformation he had hated now brought him eternal life with his beloved wife, but it also brought an unexpected gift—a son.
Anastasia had been fertile when he had turned her and bedded her. The sweeping physical changes caused by becoming a vampire had allowed for the conception of a child—a human child.
They named him Justus and his family lived happily in one of the neighborhoods in Rome that had become a mecca for others like them—vampires living relatively normal lives.
But then the rumors started. Just one or two at first, but they grew with alarming speed. A small but extremist sect within Emperor Constantine’s sun-worshippers had decided to eradicate the elements of darkness they viewed as a threat.
Vampires were being dragged off the streets. Families were pulled out of their homes and carted off in wagons, which were left to sit in the open so that the vampires would roast beneath the sun’s rays.
Hadrian ignored the rumors at first, thinking that they were just wild talk, although he sensed the undercurrents at his business and elsewhere. People were being more careful about with whom they consorted. Constantine was taken with the new religion and meant to firmly defend it when he could. Those extremists within his fold intended to take it a step further, punishing any who were nonbelievers.
Hadrian had even seen one attack himself just a few doors down from his shop in the Forum Vinarium. One of the other wine merchants, a practicing pagan, had been nearly beaten to death by a gang of young sun-worshippers. He had helped the old man back into his shop and realized that it was time to consider moving his family to the large country villa his father owned.
He sent word for the villa to be prepared and ordered his keeper to make sure it would be suitable for their needs.
Unfortunately, he had waited too long to make the move.
Chapter 9
“I found my wife and son hanging from the portal of our home, which had been set on fire.”
Hadrian’s hands were clenched tightly in his lap and Connie placed one hand over his. “Justus was just a boy.”
“But tainted by having a vampire mother.” To her surprise, he turned his palm upward and grasped her hand as he continued his story.
“I wanted to cut them down, bury them. Only Constantine’s thugs had returned, eager for more bloodshed. So I ran to my father’s, thinking it would be safe there.”
He tightened his hand on hers. His gaze glittered with unshed tears. His voice, when he continued, had a husky note from the emotions he tried to suppress. Emotions that were limning the dark brown irises of his eyes with the shocking glow of the demon.
“They were all dead. My mother and father. My younger brother and sister, barely into their teens. Slaughtered because of me.”
Connie cradled his cheek. “Not because of you. It was because those thugs were afraid of something that was different from them.”
“Don’t all humans have the same fear? Wouldn’t you stake me if you could?”
“I’m not like that. I—”
“Could accept what I am?” he challenged with a sardonic arch to his brow, all traces of his earlier vulnerability walled up behind the stony features of his face.
Could she? Connie wondered, running her thumb across his lips. Human lips right now, but in her mind’s eye came the recollection of his lethal fangs. Of the nip at her lip and the sharp bite of pain from last night.
Slowly she withdrew her touch. He was more right than she cared to admit, having always thought herself rather liberal and unprejudiced at heart.
Her encounter with Hadrian was proving her wrong on so many levels.
His lips curled in a mocking grin, but before he could rebuke her, a knock came at the door.
At Hadrian’s bidding, George entered the room, wheeling the now almost-familiar cart. If he found it odd that she was free and sharing Hadrian’s bed, he said nothing. He merely took the cart to the far side of the room and the small table she had noted earlier. He quickly transferred the contents of the cart to the table and left the room.
“Are you hungry?” Hadrian asked even as he was moving from the bed to the table, the loose folds of his tunic falling to just above his knee, exposing the defined muscles of his legs.
She rose as well and joined him, the slide of the silk sensuous on her skin. He watched her as she approached, hunger in his gaze.
Human hunger.
Inside of her, something awakened with that look, contradicting her earlier thoughts that she couldn’t accept what he was. When he looked like this—admired her like this—it made it easier to forget that he was a demon who had sucked her blood. Who intended to suck her dry unless…
She convinced him she was different. Would that be enough? she wondered, but as she recalled his dislike of the bell and the Santa suit, she suspected it might not be.
She had to find out what would be enough because the answer could be the means to her salvation.
At the edge of the table, he behaved as any well-mannered gentleman might. He pulled out the chair for her, but instead of sitting across from her, he took a place right at her side. Like a lover.
He served her cheeses, prosciutto, olives and assorted vegetables from a small antipasto tray. The smells were sharp and earthy, in contrast to the yeasty aroma from the bread nearby. He passed her a crusty slice before serving himself some of the food.
She remembered seeing him eat the night before and wondered aloud, “Vampires eat?”
With a shrug, Hadrian speared a piece of grana and popped it into his mouth. As he chewed he said, “It brings no sustenance, but we can still savor the taste.”
“So do you eat food often or only when you have guests?”
He had been dipping a peace of bread into the olive oil from the vegetables. He stopped mid-dip. “I don’t have guests—”
“You have meals?”
Hadrian chuckled and resumed dipping. “If by meals you mean humans, then the answer is ‘no.’”
“So you have guests—”
“I don’t have guests. Ever. Now eat,” he said and punctuated the statement by popping an olive into his mouth.
Connie recalled his words from the night before about keeping up her strength. He wanted her to eat and be st
rong so that he would be satisfied when he fed.
Even though she had been hungry, she pushed away her plate.
“I’ve lost my appetite.”
“Coward. Somehow I expected more from you, being a fellow bloodsucker and all.” He kept on eating, seemingly undisturbed.
“I’m not in top form this week. Chalk it up to being on vacation. Some vacation it turned out to be.”
Hadrian examined her as she sat beside him, her hands held together in her lap. Her face downcast. “Christmas vacation, I gather.”
She nodded and her thick swath of hair shifted back and forth with the movement, obscuring his view. He reached up and tucked it behind her ear, needing to see her expressive face. “Tell me what you had planned to do.”
A shrug sent the shift slipping off one shoulder, exposing the creamy skin of her upper arm. He ran a finger along the line of her shoulder and she shivered from his touch.
“Am I that disgusting?”
With a quick look in his direction, she said, “It depends.”
He had no doubt what it depended on. “If I promise to stay human, will you eat?”
A furrow formed above her eyes as she considered him, confusion and something else lingering in her gaze.
“That would make it easier for you, wouldn’t it?” he said.
The furrow deepened as did her confusion. “Easier? How?”
He stroked the ridge of her collarbone with his thumb and then dropped it a bit lower to just above the swell of her breasts. Another shiver danced along her body, different this time.
“It would make it easier for you to deal with this…need. With your attraction to me.”
He dared to drop his hand a little lower and passed his thumb across the taut peak of her nipple. The shudder that ripped through her body this time was stronger. The gasp escaping her lips left no doubt about his effect on her.
“You don’t want to enjoy my darkness.”
“No,” exploded from her lips as he took her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and rotated it gently.
If the truth were told, he didn’t want to desire her, either. She was goodness and light and, worst of all, human. Needing her could bring him nothing but more pain during yet another dismal Christmas season.
Holiday with a Vampire Page 13
