Mistress of the Underground

by Lisa Childs

  “So what’s up, Doc?” Cooper West asked with a grin. He was like Sebastian—not a monster but a playboy. Still, he’d made mistakes…like Ben was beginning to believe this meeting had been a mistake. “Why’d you call us all here?”

  Now it was time they learned what he was capable of—to what extremes he’d go in order to protect the woman he loved.

  “Things have been happening around here,” he began. “The new owner of Club Underground has been receiving threats.”

  “Because she doesn’t belong here,” a feminine voice murmured.

  He glanced to Ingrid, but she sat silently, staring up at him with those dark, crazy eyes. “She owns this club now.”

  “But she’ll never be the mistress of the Underground,” another voice murmured.

  “Sebastian never should have let her buy the club,” Cooper said with regret.

  “Well, if anyone harms Paige—again—I’m out!” Ben said as resentment fueled his rage.

  “What do you mean?” someone asked.

  “You can’t!” A chorus of variations of the protest rang out.

  Cooper shook his blond head. “You’re the only one who can provide us medical treatment now.”

  They’d had another doctor once, but he’d proved unworthy of the trust they’d put in him.

  “Of course, Sebastian has broken more hearts than you’ve mended, Doc,” Cooper observed with a chuckle. Happily settled now, his playboy past behind him, Cooper was just amused and a little mocking that his friend still lived his old lifestyle. “Where is he?”

  “At the hospital…”

  Gasps emanated from the group.

  “…with Paige,” he continued. “Someone attacked her again tonight. There are fang marks on her throat.” He slammed his fist onto the bar. The members of the society flinched, probably not over his anger but over the damage his gesture could have inflicted on one of the instruments of his special power. “This has got to stop! Now!”

  “So you think one of us is threatening her?” someone asked.

  He sighed. “If not one of you personally, then one of you must know who is.”

  “Besides what happened tonight, what were the other threats?” Cooper asked.

  Ben chronicled everything that had happened, then added, “The stakes, the bite tonight…whoever’s doing this is risking her discovering the secret. She’s going to catch on.”

  “Then you know what has to happen to her,” Ingrid said, the madness bright in her dark eyes.

  “If Paige learns the secret, none of you will be harmed,” he promised. “And I will continue to provide medical treatment. Nothing will change—as long as she doesn’t get hurt.”

  “So you’re the one with the threats now,” Ingrid observed. “And you’re not in a position to issue any ultimatums to us.”

  The hair rose on Ben’s nape at the ominous tone of her husky voice. Ingrid, alone, wouldn’t have concerned him, but he noted the nods of agreement from other vampires.

  In calling them together, he’d acted on his rage—not his common sense. Because if he’d been thinking clearly, he would have realized how dangerous it was to be the sole mortal in the secret society.

  He’d seen the atrocities some of them had done—to one another and to hapless mortals. Was he about to experience it personally?

  “Where’s Ben?” Paige asked as she struggled to hold up her lids. Maybe Renae had given her a sedative, or at least something that had numbed Paige from feeling the pain of the stitches that had closed the wound on her neck.

  A muscle twitched along Sebastian’s cheek. “He had to leave. He had to…see a patient,” Sebastian explained. Or lied on Ben’s behalf.

  “Why did he have to leave then?” she asked. “Isn’t his patient here in the hospital?” Ben didn’t keep regular office hours; as a surgeon, he primarily worked out of Zantrax Memorial Hospital. The only office he used, besides the O.R., was a private suite on one of the floors of the hospital.

  Sebastian nodded. “Yeah, he’s probably around here somewhere.”

  “That’s good,” Kate said from where she stood next to the gurney on which Paige lay, a curtain separating her from the other patients in the E.R. “I’ll have him paged, then, since I have some questions for him.”

  “I can answer them,” Sebastian offered. “I was there with him tonight…when we heard Paige’s screams.”

  She flinched, her throat burning as she relived those terrifying moments—crying out in fear and desperation. She’d thought no one would hear her.

  “You both were there?” Kate asked. “He was never out of your sight?”

  “No,” Sebastian claimed. “We were having a drink at the bar.”

  Paige bit her lip so that she wouldn’t call her brother on his lie. While Kate was her friend now, she’d always been a detective first and foremost. It was bad enough that Detective Wever had suspicions about Ben; Sebastian didn’t need to get added to her suspect list.

  “I don’t have questions just about tonight,” Kate clarified. “I want to question him about how he happened to be with Paige the last time…when the vehicle was vandalized. And wasn’t he also at the club the night the flowers were left in her office?”

  Sebastian shook his head. “You’re wrong about Ben.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Kate said.

  “You don’t need to interview him, Kate,” Paige finally said, struggling to clear her vision and her mind. “I know he’d never hurt me.”

  “He wouldn’t?” She arched a dark brow in apparent skepticism. “He hasn’t?”

  “Not intentionally,” Paige insisted.

  Kate shrugged, obviously unconvinced. “I’m going to see about getting him paged.”

  As soon as the detective slipped around the curtain, Sebastian leaned over the steel railing of the gurney. “You believe that, right? That Ben has never meant to hurt you.”

  She nodded. “Of course. But I have been hurt….” She touched her fingers to the gauze taped to her throat, but this was not the wound Ben had inflicted. That wound was on her heart.

  “He regrets that,” Sebastian claimed. “He would do anything to protect you…even risk his own life.”

  “What are you telling me?” The adrenaline that pumped through her veins chased away the effects of whatever drug Renae had given her. “Is Ben in danger?”

  A muscle twitched along Sebastian’s tightly clenched jaw as he nodded. “I’m afraid that he is.”

  Chapter 10

  Ben winced as he eased out of the driver’s seat of his Escalade. Pain radiated from his bruised ribs, echoing the pounding at his temples. He hadn’t been attacked during the meeting, as he’d momentarily feared. Instead, he’d been attacked as Paige had been—in the dark. As he’d been ascending the stairs to the street, someone had stepped out of the predawn gloom and knocked him down the steps.

  By the time he’d made it back to the hospital, Paige had already been checked out. Sebastian had assured Ben that she was home—safe and sound. Since the sun had risen, he believed that she was safe—for the moment. So he could sleep without worrying about Paige. Until the sun went down again…

  He walked across the garage to the service door to the kitchen. After punching in the security code, he stepped into the kitchen with its rich cherry cabinets and white marble countertops. And he saw Paige’s touch. She had decorated it as she’d done pretty much everything during their marriage—alone. Maybe that was why she hadn’t wanted it in the divorce: it held too many memories for her. Or maybe she’d wanted him to have it more than she’d wanted to keep it. Maybe despite how little he’d shared with her, she’d known that the house had become something to him that he’d never known growing up. A home.

  After his mom had died, he’d been shuffled from foster home to foster home, and to group homes when he’d gotten older. Because no one had been able to locate the father who’d taken off when his mom had first gotten sick, no one had been able or willing to adopt him for
fear that his father would come back and take him away.

  Unlike Paige’s father, his had never come back. Just as Paige had never come back to this house; it had to be that it held too many painful memories for her. While he’d told her about his past, he’d never really shared with her what it meant to him—that he’d become a cardiologist because of the helplessness he’d felt watching his mother slowly die of heart failure.

  He opened the fridge to look for an ice pack for his ribs. But he didn’t care about his own injuries. He cared about Paige. He should be with her, taking care of her.

  But she wouldn’t let him now…even though she had a stalker. Maybe after last night, she would finally admit she had one; that it wasn’t all a mistake. But then there was so much Paige insisted on denying. Like her feelings for him.

  They were still there; he saw them every time she looked at him, her gorgeous blue eyes soft with emotion. Every time she touched him, her affection flowed over him with sweet generosity. She might admit to having a stalker now, but he doubted she would admit to her feelings about him. What was the point, since they had both already agreed they had no future? They only had a past.

  One he’d screwed up. A pain jabbed his chest, but it wasn’t from his ribs. He didn’t need an ice pack right now. All he needed was a soft bed and as many hours of sleep as he could manage before someone paged him.

  Actually, all he needed was Paige.

  He headed up the back stairwell to his bedroom. The master bedroom, but it had always been more Paige’s than his, with its periwinkle walls and lacy curtains and spread. He should have moved out when she had; he should have sold the house.

  But he’d kept holding out hope that she would change her mind. That after she’d taken the time she’d needed alone, she would come home. But she’d never come back to this house. The last of his hope had evaporated when she’d had him served with divorce papers. But still he hadn’t sold the house…even after he’d signed the papers, unwilling to fight with her then when they’d both been hurting so much.

  He pushed open the door to his bedroom. With the wooden shades closed at the windows, it was dark, the darkness beckoning him to bed. After some sleep, he would talk to Paige whether she liked it or not. And this time he’d get through to her; she had to give up the club. And maybe, after he got through to her about that, he would attempt to talk to her about some other things, things they should have talked about four years ago.

  He stepped into the master bath, off the bedroom, brushed his teeth, then headed toward the bed, dropping his clothes as he approached. He pulled back the blanket and crawled between the cool sheets. But when he shifted, warmth reached out to him, from the blankets and from the naked, curvy body next to his. “What the hell!”

  “Don’t you mean who the hell?” Paige murmured as she struggled to fully awaken.

  “Damn it, Paige,” he cursed her, “you shocked the hell out of me.”

  Out of herself, too. After she’d been released from the hospital, she had insisted Sebastian drop her here. She couldn’t believe she’d actually come back to this house. She’d been reeling from the memories and emotions since she’d walked in the door, the one where Ben had carried her over the threshold when they’d moved in ten years ago. Having lived in a loft the first few years of their marriage, it had been their first real home.

  Ever. Except for the foster homes in which Ben had lived, their single mothers had never been able to afford a house, or to provide them with security. Ben’s because she’d been too sick and physically weak; Paige’s because she’d just been too weak.

  With as much as they’d had in common, it was no wonder that Paige had fallen for him. They should have been able to make their marriage work; they should have been able to have a lasting relationship.

  She struggled again, not to awaken, but to bury the memories and the emotions. What they had now wasn’t about the past or the future. It was the here and now, and that was all she would allow herself to think about.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Fine. It was just a scratch.”

  “A scratch doesn’t require stitches.”

  “I’m fine,” she insisted. “In fact, I think I’m better than you are.” She couldn’t see him in the darkened room, but there was something about his tone that revealed his tension.

  “I’m…just shocked that you’re here,” he said.

  “You’re not used to women sneaking into your house to wait naked in your bed for you to come home?” she teased, willing to play any role—even the jealous ex-wife.

  “The alarm usually stops them.”

  Her heartbeat accelerated as the emotions crept back in. “You didn’t change the code.” And she couldn’t help but wonder why. For the same reason she’d used it as hers, probably because it was easy to remember.

  “No,” he said, his body taut next to hers, as if he didn’t dare touch her. “I didn’t.”

  She had to know. “Because you didn’t think I’d come back or you didn’t want to keep me out if I did?” she asked, holding her breath for his answer.

  “Probably both.”

  “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I’m not here to stay.” She was brave enough now to visit, but she could never come home again even though he had asked her to move back in. To protect her. Only to protect her…

  “Why are you here, Paige?” He kept to his side of the bed, something he’d never done when they were married. “Is this about playing another game? Who are you tonight?”

  Someone who owed him an apology and, damn him, he was going to make her say it.

  “I have something I need to tell you,” she admitted.

  Taking off her clothes and crawling into his bed had been insurance so that he would accept her apology, and so that things could go back to the uncomplicated fun and games they’d been having. Well, as uncomplicated as anything could ever be between the two of them.

  “You want to talk?” he asked, his voice deepening with surprise.

  She sucked in a breath and confessed, “I owe you an apology.”

  “Really?”

  Damn him. He was going to force her to say all of it.

  “You were right,” she admitted with a grimace she hoped he couldn’t see in the dark room, the only light spilling through the partially open bathroom door. “You had every reason to be worried about me, about my safety.”

  He expelled a weary-sounding sigh. “I’m sorry…that I was…right.”

  “Yeah, me, too. I just don’t understand…I don’t know why someone would come after me now. I’m not practicing law anymore.”

  “Why?” he asked again. “Why did you quit now?”

  “When I hadn’t when you asked me to?”

  “I just wanted you to take it easy.”

  Would it have made a difference? Now she’d never know, and she would never forgive herself for taking the risk. “I didn’t leave by choice,” she admitted, too tired and scared to worry about her pride.

  “Turrell fired you? After all those years you worked your ass off for him?”

  She could have argued the point about her ass, as she still had plenty of it left. But she shrugged instead. “He probably thinks I had something to do with his wife finally deciding to divorce him.”

  “Did you?”

  “I wouldn’t have been a good friend if I hadn’t.” If only she’d been as good a wife…

  “You can still practice law,” Ben pointed out.

  She shrugged again. “Maybe I finally took your advice. I thought owning the club would be easy.”

  “You couldn’t have been more wrong,” he remarked with a ragged sigh. “After all that’s happened, do you see now that you need to stay away from Club Underground?”

  Flashing back to the attack in the dark, she couldn’t argue with him. She had to concede, “I hate being scared.”

  Ben rolled onto his side so that he faced her, his eyes aglow in the dark. “I want you to be scared, Pa
ige.”

  She tensed with her own shock. “Why?”

  “Then you’ll be more aware and more careful,” he explained, “and this stalker won’t be able to hurt you. Again.”

  But Ben would. She shouldn’t have come here. She should have left things between them as they were, with Ben thinking she wanted him to stay away from her. But then he touched her, sliding his hand over her bare shoulder, down her arm to her hip. Desire flooded her, heating her skin and hardening her nipples, and she remembered why she hadn’t been able to stay away.

  “I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you,” he said, his voice raspy as emotion choked him. His fingers clenched her hip, pulling her closer.

  Paige’s heart contracted, and she fought for breath. “You don’t know me,” she said.

  “God, isn’t that the truth?” he murmured against her shoulder as he nibbled her skin.

  She shivered. “No, I’m a stranger who’s broken into your house.”

  Amusement lifted his lips, against her skin. “Are you looking for the safe under my pillow?”

  She shook her head, sending her hair cascading around her shoulders, across his face. “No, you caught me, so I’m trying to convince you to let me go.”

  “Oh, Paige…”

  “Shh,” she said, pressing her finger against his lips. “You don’t know me. I’m just a desperate thief, trying to change your mind about calling the cops on me.”

  “So—” he flopped on his back and linked his hands behind his head “—convince me.”

  Paige sat up and leaned over him, so that first her hair, then her nipples brushed his skin. His breath shuddered out, and the muscles in his arms flexed as he gripped the pillow beneath his head. She rubbed her breasts against his chest, where his heart beat as wildly as hers. Then she kissed him, making love to his mouth with her lips and her tongue. Soft, sipping kisses, then hot, slippery ones as their tongues mated.

  Still he refused to touch her, keeping his hands behind his head. So she moved. Sliding her lips down his throat, then along his shoulder, nipping and laving the bitten areas with her tongue.