Ward of the Vampire: Complete Serial

by Kallysten

  Being crushed was the very least of my worries right then. I half turned toward him, rubbing my cheek against his shoulder and enjoying the coolness of it.

  “In a bed is a lot better,” I babbled. I knew I was babbling. I couldn’t summon enough brain cells to care. I’d just shared great sex with him. I was allowed to babble. “Not that the balcony wasn’t fun,” I continued, pressing a hand to the center of his chest where the skin was silky smooth and pale. “It’s definitely more practical than… I don’t know. The back of a car.”

  “The back of a car, hmm?” he repeated, brushing his fingers through my hair. “Are you speaking from personal experience?”

  I pressed a grin against his shoulder.

  “I might be. Don’t tell me you’ve never had sex somewhere stranger than a balcony. I absolutely would not believe you.”

  So, yes, I admit, it was a lame attempt at getting him to share about his past. It didn’t work. At all. His fingers stilled in my hair for a second before starting to comb through it again. He didn’t say anything, and I was afraid to look up to see his expression.

  “Just…” I went back to safer subjects. “You’ve got to admit, a bed is a lot more comfortable.”

  “It really is,” he said in a tone that conveyed that he both agreed and was humoring me.

  “And you know what else?” I said, hiding a yawn behind my hand before resting it on his chest again.

  “Hmm?”

  “We can just… lie here. No fear of anyone walking in on us or anything.”

  He caressed my forehead with his lips.

  “True.”

  “I could even… sleep here. I mean, unless you—”

  Unless he didn’t want me to, but I knew, a certainty as deep and powerful as his eyes, that he wanted me to sleep right here, next to him. And I wanted it just as much. I even felt like I needed to or something bad might happen. What a silly idea!

  “Do you sleep at night?” I said instead. “You don’t, do you? I mean, vampires—”

  This time, my voice didn’t shake quite as hard when I said the word. But I didn’t get to finish the thought. He shifted lower on the pillow and brushed a kiss against my lips.

  “No,” he murmured, “I’m not going to sleep now. But that doesn’t mean you can’t.”

  I felt his grin against my mouth more than saw it.

  “Or at least,” he continued, “you could rest for a little while, until you’re ready for more. The night is still young.”

  I was smiling when I closed my eyes. As light as feathers, his fingers settled on my cheek, cupping, caressing ever so gently. I drifted into sleep with that touch anchoring me to him.

  I don’t remember dreaming, and I have no idea how long I remained asleep, but his hand was still there when I woke up. Still cool, too, like he’d just laid it on my skin. I opened my eyes and was startled by how close he was—close enough that I could have drowned in his gaze. Or kissed him.

  Before I could do either, he did one small, innocuous, meaningless thing that changed everything.

  He blinked.

  *

  Morgan—No. Not Morgan.

  Mr. Ward blinked. For a second, his eyes didn’t seem quite as dark, like an inner light brightened them.

  My heart was racing, my mind swirling even faster.

  Like the previous night, two realities were battling in my head. I knew which one I was in and which one I liked best, and they definitely weren’t the same. But why couldn’t they be the same?

  I had fun with Morgan. I liked him. I liked him a whole lot. Maybe we’d had sex a little fast—all right, there was no ‘maybe’ about it—but I didn’t regret it, not in either reality. He hadn’t pushed me into it. Both times, I’d been the one to initiate things. Not that he hadn’t been enthusiastic, but that first step had been mine to take.

  Maybe…

  Maybe if I took that first step now, Mr. Ward’s icy demeanor would melt and Morgan would emerge. Maybe he was only waiting for me.

  It was crazy, I know. Like I said, things had happened too fast in that alternate mind world or whatever you want to call it. Going too fast in the actual world couldn’t possibly be good. Add to that Mr. Ward’s antagonism toward me—or rather, our continued mutual antagonism toward each other—and the fact that there was an underlying element of coercion to everything I did since I was trapped in this house against my will…

  Crazy, yes. I must have lost my mind somewhere between reality and that lovely fantasy. Or maybe I had Stockholm Syndrome.

  Whatever the case, after a few seconds when he still hadn’t moved, I leaned forward, ever so slightly, until our lips brushed together. I watched his eyes close and was about to deepen the kiss when they snapped open again and he bolted out of the bed. And when I say bolted… Think bolt of lightning. That fast. And not just out of the bed, either. He was out of the room before I even knew what had happened.

  Clearly, only one of us enjoyed our fantasy meetings. The realization was about as pleasant as being drenched in icy water on a cold winter day

  With the shame and embarrassment of rejection flooding me, I could only be glad he wasn’t there to watch me leave his bed. And yes, I could leave, I realized after I had picked up my shoes and left the room, barefoot. I had no issues breathing or trouble controlling my body.

  The compulsion was apparently satisfied that I’d followed Miss Delilah’s order: I had slept in his bed. I have this weird mental image of a miniature-sized Miss Delilah sitting in my brain and commanding my lungs or legs to stop functioning properly if she didn’t like what I did. Not a pleasant image.

  I had been on my way back to my room when I passed the door that, in the fantasy, had led to the dining room. Feeling suddenly curious, I opened it, just enough to peek inside. The decor was the same as in the fantasy, except that the table was bare, with no placemats, candle, or rose. I closed the door again and tried to figure out what that meant. I had never set foot in that room, so its image had come from Mr. Ward.

  Which brought up the question: how much of the whole daydream was his doing? Last night, he’d said I made my own choices. They’d certainly felt like my own choices. But would I have known if they’d been forced on me?

  My head was reeling with the uncertainty of it all. I was beginning to feel trapped again, claustrophobic like I had that afternoon. I could have gone back down to the balcony. Instead, I went up to the sun room.

  The smells, the moist feel of the air on my skin, the heat, all of it slammed into me as soon as I pushed the door open. They brought me back to the fantasy—and erased the feeling of entrapment. I stopped a few steps in and turned to the flower Morgan had touched.

  Right here on this spot, we’d kissed, and there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that it had been my own doing. After all, he’d been surprised when I brought our mouths together. And if he’d only wanted us to have fantasy sex—sensual, soul-searing fantasy sex—he wouldn’t have needed to do the whole dinner-and-date charade; he could have made me enter his room when I’d gone to thank him for the shoes. The same shoes now dangling from my fingers.

  Feeling reassured, I continued along the concrete path, thinking I might sit for a while in the center of the room—not to fantasize about my fantasy, no, I’m not that pathetic. Really.

  Except, when I passed the curve in the path and the armchairs and chaise lounge came into sight, I realized I wasn’t the only one who had sought refuge here. Mr. Ward slouched in the same chair he’d occupied in our minds, his feet up on the coffee table in front of him, his gaze fixed straight ahead of him. A bottle of alcohol was on the floor next to him.

  I froze when I saw him. Very slowly, a little afraid that a sudden movement would attract his attention, I took a step back. I was about to turn around and walk away when he said, low enough that for a second I wondered if he’d spoken at all, “I’m sorry.”

  Was he speaking to me? He hadn’t moved or given any indication that he knew I was there. Should
I reply and risk intruding? But if his words had been meant for me, what was he sorry about?

  I hadn’t decided yet whether to ask or just leave when he answered.

  “I’m sorry you got caught in this. This is a… family matter, and you’re being used like a pawn by someone trying to make a point. It’s not a fate I’d wish on anyone.”

  The echo of Morgan I could hear in his voice drew me forward. And yes, I knew that technically he was Morgan. But how else could I distinguish between those two sides of him—the one I wanted to kiss and the one that mostly brought snark out of me?

  Very slowly, I approached the sitting area. My first instinct was to sit by his side, like in the fantasy, but I changed my mind halfway through. Better to keep some distance and remember this was a different situation altogether. If I forgot, I might try to do something stupid again, like I had in the bedroom. So I sat on the chaise lounge, sideways to keep my feet on the ground, on the other side of the table across from him.

  He picked up the bottle from the floor and held it out toward me without a word. I shook my head.

  “What point is Mi… is Delilah trying to make?”

  In my head, I couldn’t think of her as anything other than ‘Miss Delilah,’ but aloud at least I could refuse her the honorific.

  Mr. Ward shrugged. “Nothing that would matter to you,” he said, and even though I was right across from him, he wasn’t looking at me.

  “Well, it’s the reason I’m here, so excuse me for thinking it does matter. A lot.”

  My voice turned harder with each word. It had absolutely no effect on him. My irritation grew a little deeper.

  “In the… in the fantasy? You said you were still trying to convince her to free me. How can you do that when you’re here and she’s in Paris?”

  He frowned at that.

  “Paris? How do you know she’s in Paris?”

  “When she called, I could see the Eiffel Tower behind her.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, his frown deepening a little more as he took another swig from the bottle and set it down again. Supporting himself on one arm, he raised his hips off the chair—a move that wasn’t suggestive in the slightest and didn’t cause my breath to hitch in my throat, not at all—and fished a half crushed pack of cigarettes from the back pocket of his pants.

  “Well?”I said, watching his every move as he pulled a cigarette from the pack and brought it to his lips. “Are you going to go there and drag her back here?”

  My fingers twitched. I couldn’t wait for him to light up. I hadn’t craved a smoke as much as I did right then in a long, long time. Was I under that much stress? Of course I was. And it wasn’t just the whole compulsion and captivity thing. It was also about the two sides of the man facing me, and how conflicted I was about him.

  He’d pulled a metal lighter from the pack, but he only played with it and didn’t even flick it open. Tugging the unlit cigarette from his lips, he answered without looking at me.

  “It’s useless. She’d be gone by the time I got there.”

  I watched him play with the cigarette and lighter. He was avoiding my gaze. What was he not telling me?

  “So… We’re just going to wait for her to come back?”

  He stood.

  “I told you, I’ll do my best to get you out of here. But I don’t know how long it’ll take.”

  Before I could say a word, he stepped away, not toward the staircase but in the opposite direction. As I watched him go, I wasn’t sure what annoyed me more: that once again he’d left me with no real answer, or that he’d taken away that damn cigarette without allowing me one whiff. Or maybe I was annoyed at myself for wanting to follow him so much —and not only for a hit of nicotine.

  I went after him, following the path between tropical trees and blooming orchids, some flowers bigger than my closed fist. I didn’t catch up with him, and soon I was standing in front of a glass wall. I must have missed a fork in the path or the way to an exit, because I couldn’t see any door. Instead I saw Mr. Ward on the other side of the glass, leaning against a security wall and looking out to the lights of the city.

  A red pinprick of light told me he’d finally lit up his cigarette, and again the need for nicotine flared through me. I was thinking about joining him when he pulled a cell phone from his pocket, pushed several buttons, and brought it to his ear. Who was he calling? Part of me hoped it was Miss Delilah, and that he really was trying to talk her into letting me go, as he had promised. Another, treacherous voice wondered if it would be so bad if I spent a few more days in the mansion.

  Those fantasies were obviously not doing much for my sanity—or my self-control.

  I was strong that night. I didn’t go after him or that cigarette, and instead I went back to my room.

  But I can’t say the same was true all those other nights until Miss Delilah finally came back to New York.

  Awkward Holidays

  The door of my room made a soft clicking sound when I turned the key in the lock. After a second, I turned the key again, unlocking it. By now, I was pretty sure that Mr. Ward, my very reluctant host and owner of my gilded jail, wouldn’t try to sneak into my room while I slept. He’d made it quite clear that he wasn’t interested in me.

  Not that I was interested in him, mind. I’d have been stupid to be. Stupid, or suicidal.

  I mean, of course he was handsome. The air of mystery wasn’t in the negative column, either. He’d saved my life twice when he could have just let me die and got rid of me as he so wanted. And I knew, with every inch of my skin, every nerve ending in my body, what a wonderful lover he was, and how well we fit together. I knew it despite having shared nothing more than fantasies with him—very realistic fantasies, so realistic, in fact, that I had trouble distinguishing them from reality, but that didn’t make those experiences real.

  What was real, as improbable as it might sound, was that Mr. Ward was a vampire, on top of being a millionaire philanthropist and brother to my boss Miss Delilah—and now that I thought about it, I needed to tell her I was quitting because there was no way I could go back to working for her after the way she had treated me. ‘Being gifted as property’ wasn’t part of my job description as a personal assistant.

  But as I was saying: vampire. As weird as it still sounded, I had no doubt that Mr. Ward was one. And that was why I’d have been stupid to be interested in him in that way.

  That was also why I’d have been stupid to wish I were still on the roof with him, in that hothouse full of gorgeous orchids where we’d made out in our shared fantasy. What had really happened up there was that he’d been cryptic and annoying—as usual.

  So yes, it was much better for me to be back in my room. Alone.

  The same room where, an hour or so earlier, I’d almost suffocated when I tried to fight back Miss Delilah’s compulsion.

  I glanced at the netbook on the desk. It had gone into sleep mode. Was it still connected to the net? Was Miss Delilah still on the other end? What if she was? Would she give me another order—compel me to do something, so that I’d have to obey, or die resisting?

  Of course I didn’t want her to order me back to Mr. Ward’s bed. Not at all.

  I approached the netbook as slowly and carefully as I would a sleeping tiger or lion, or anything that could have torn my throat out without even trying. Strange how I couldn’t manage the same kind of caution when I was in front of Mr. Ward.

  A finger across the touch pad and the screen flashed back to life. The video-chat window was closed. I breathed a sigh of relief… then gasped. The chat program had blinked on again.

  I might have been caught in an earthquake for how unsteady I suddenly felt. My finger shook too much to guide the arrow to the little cross in the corner of the blinking window. I took a deep breath to try again, and only then did I notice the name of the person contacting me. It wasn’t Miss Delilah. It was my parents.

  Calling myself silly, I slipped into the chair, took a second or two to regain
my composure and plaster a smile on my face, then accepted the call. My mother’s image filled the screen.

  “Lini! You didn’t tell us you were going to that big party!”

  I stared at her, startled beyond words. I’m an only child, and I tell my parents a lot. Or rather, they ask so many questions about what goes on in my life that even if I only answer a select number of them, they still get enough news about me to keep them happy. When I first told them I wanted to move to New York, they weren’t thrilled. They’d watched the same cop shows on TV that I had, and their image of New York wasn’t all that flattering. When I wouldn’t budge, they bought me a can of mace and made me promise I’d call at least once a week. I’d never used the mace, but I did keep my promise.

  I hadn’t told them a word about the Ward bash—why would I? It wasn’t like I expected to attend, and even if I’d wanted to talk about Miss Delilah being invited, that wasn’t the kind of thing they wanted to hear from me. They cared about what I did, people I met—and potential husband-material boyfriends, of course.

  “I… What?” I managed to say with rare eloquence. “How do you know about that?”

  My mother chuckled and turned her eyes to something next to the computer. “Hear that? I told you it was her!”

  She looked back at me before she added, “Your father didn’t recognize you in that dress. He said it didn’t look like you. But I’d have recognized you anywhere.”

  “The dress? How…”

  And then it dawned on me what had happened. Those photographers in front of the mansion last night had taken pictures of Miss Delilah and me. Well, they were certainly more interested in her than they were in the little miss nobody at her side. But those pictures must have ended up on the internet, and since my mother has a rather large appetite for gossip websites…

  “My picture is online?” I couldn’t help blurting out.

  At the same time, I resized her image to the side of the screen and launched a browser window next to it. I went to the first news website I could think of, searched for ‘Ward bash,’ and it only took me a few moments to find the pictures. Meanwhile, my mother was rambling.