Mistress of the Underground

by Lisa Childs

  “It’s not open yet,” Ben pointed out, fully aware that she was now using the club as an excuse to get away from him. He wished her luck, because distance had never gained him any perspective. He had yet to figure out a way to keep his secret and Paige.

  She lifted her wrist and glanced at her watch. “But there are deliveries scheduled soon. I need to be there to accept them.”

  “Sebastian is there.” The vampire was always there. “He’ll sign for them. He doesn’t need you…like I need you.”

  Renae cleared her throat. “I…I’ll leave you two alone, then.”

  “No!” Panic shone brightly in Paige’s eyes. She didn’t want to be alone with him; she didn’t trust him with her heart anymore.

  He didn’t blame her.

  “I’m on duty,” Ben said. “I have to stay here in the hospital. But there’s someone here that I want you to meet.”

  “You’re on duty,” Paige said. “We’ll have to do this another time.”

  “I’ll answer your pages,” Renae offered. Unrepentant, she smiled when Paige glared at her and held out her hand for his beeper.

  Ben reached for it, holding it tight in his palm for a moment before passing it over. It was daylight; no one from the Underground would need him.

  God, if only it was daylight all the time.

  His hand empty, he closed it around Paige’s and tugged her along with him. She sputtered and protested but followed him into the elevator. A slow day at the hospital found them alone in the small car.

  So Ben took advantage of the privacy and her. Pulling her into his arms, he covered her mouth with his.

  A creak out in the hall drew Sebastian’s attention from the paperwork strewn across his desk—Paige’s desk since she’d claimed it as hers. He had to get her to back away from the club. Completely.

  “Paige?” he called out.

  She’d insisted on coming in early to accept delivery of this week’s shipments. He’d tried to argue her out of it—as she had no idea what was included in the club’s supplies. And he wanted to keep it that way—with her entirely in the dark. She had to literally be in the dark out in the hall as the bulbs must have burned out of the wall sconces.

  “Paige, I’m in the office,” he called out again, hoping she wasn’t trying to get into the secret room again. Another reason he needed to keep her away from the club. She was entirely too curious about it. But with good reason.

  She had never asked him many questions; she had easily accepted his claim that he was her brother. She’d accepted him as family. He didn’t deserve her loyalty or her love.

  If she only knew the truth about him.

  And yet another reason he needed to keep her away from the club—his fear that she might discover not just the society’s secrets, but his as well.

  “I thought you were going to be at the hospital,” he said, as he rose from behind the desk. “That sexy doctor friend of yours has to take out your stitches.”

  Usually any reference to her friends got a rise out of Paige, but there was no disapproving remark forthcoming. Only another clang—of metal against metal as the door to the secret room opened. His blood slowed in his veins with dread and foreboding. It wasn’t Paige in the hall.

  While it was dark in the club, it was daylight outside—the time that members of the secret society were forced to go literally underground. If not for the deliveries today, he would have been back at the condo—sleeping in his windowless room. Now he was wide awake, his heart beating hard as he stepped into the dark hall.

  The metal creaked again, drawing his attention to the end of the hall and the door that stood ajar. A faint light filtered between the steel and the jamb.

  “Ben?” The surgeon was probably stocking his makeshift O.R. with supplies. It had to be Ben.

  But no one responded.

  “Ingrid?” He shuddered at the thought of being alone with the pit viper. To think he’d once hit on her…but that was before he’d noticed her crazy eyes.

  Of course he hadn’t earned his womanizing reputation by being discriminating. He pressed his hand against his chest. Even through two layers of cotton, he could feel the ridge of the old scar from when Ben had saved his eternal life—after one of his psycho exes had tried to take it.

  Hell, he’d rather think it was rats than Ingrid in the secret room. But the rats wouldn’t have been able to open the door.

  He sucked in a deep breath and pushed open the door—and his blood stopped flowing entirely. “Oh, God, it’s you….”

  The blond-haired woman turned away from where she stood over Ben’s table. Her hand was bleeding from a wound caused by the scalpel she grasped. She stared at him—her eyes far more full of madness than Ingrid’s had ever been.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. She had been gone so long, so deep in hiding, that he’d almost convinced himself she would never come back.

  “I killed you once,” she mused as she watched her own blood fall—one drop at a time onto the stainless steel table. “I killed you but you’re still here.”

  “You don’t want to do this,” he said as he forced his patented charming smile.

  “Because of him…that doctor…” The hatred shone brighter, her bitterness shrill as she demanded, “Call that doctor!”

  Sebastian shook his head. “This isn’t about him…or about my sister. You’re the one who attacked her.”

  “Your sister?” She laughed. “She’s your daughter.”

  “You know?”

  “It’s about as secret as the society.”

  “Paige has nothing to do with the society. She doesn’t know about it. She doesn’t know that I’m her father.” He glanced around the room, looking for a weapon—some way to overpower her so that she wouldn’t try to hurt him again or herself.

  After she’d shoved the stake in his chest the last time, she’d lifted one to her own. He’d had just enough strength left to stop her then.

  “She’s not the only one.”

  His attention snapped back to her. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve lived up to your virile reputation, Sebastian.”

  “You’re saying that you had my baby?” He swallowed hard. “But we haven’t been together for years.”

  “She’s nine.”

  He gasped his surprise. She’d been pregnant then—when they’d fought over that stake….

  “She’s so beautiful. And sick. So very sick, and your doctor can’t fix her. He tries.” Bitterness and disdain twisted her mouth into a grotesque scowl. “But he can’t.”

  “Ben can,” Sebastian promised. “He’ll save her.”

  She shook her head. “No, he can’t.”

  “Isn’t that why you want him to come here?” he asked, trying to reason with her. But the last time he’d tried, he’d wound up with a stake in his heart. “You want him to help you and her?”

  She shook her head again. “No.”

  “Then why are you here?” he asked to buy himself some time. He had no doubt as to her intentions.

  She lifted her other hand, the one that wasn’t bleeding. And in it she held a wooden stake, the point honed sharp. “I’m here to kill you. And this time I’m going to make damn sure he doesn’t bring you back.”

  Passion flooded Paige, heating her blood. Her skin burned everywhere that Ben touched her. And he touched her everywhere, running his hands down her back to her hips. He pulled her tight against him, where his erection throbbed behind his fly.

  A bell dinged, forewarning the opening doors. And Ben’s withdrawal. Breathing hard, he pulled back but kept his fingers entwined with hers. She followed him, eagerly now, down another hall. Instead of leading her to his private office, though, he led her to a room…and a fragile patient sitting up in her bed as she colored a piece of paper on her bedside table.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” Ben murmured as he dropped Paige’s hand and settled on the bed next to the child.

  “Hey, Doc,” the little girl said, a smil
e brightening her face and blue eyes as she gazed up at him. “I’m drawing you a picture.”

  Paige’s heart ached with regret and loss. She struggled to process the image before her—the child who could have been theirs…had she not lost their baby and the chance to give her husband any more children.

  “I brought a friend to meet you,” Ben said, holding out his hand for Paige to join them. “This is Addi.”

  Addi giggled. “Only Dr. D. calls me Addi. My name is Adelaide.”

  Paige’s legs trembled with the urge to flee the room, but she forced herself to walk toward the bed. “Hello, Adelaide.”

  “This is Paige,” Ben said, introducing them. “She’s very special to me…like you are.”

  The child met her gaze, and despite her youth, the wisdom of an old soul shone from the depths of her eyes. “You can call me Addi, too,” she offered. Then she held out the picture she’d been working on of a house with two adults and one little blond-haired girl standing beside a dog.

  “Very nice,” Paige praised her. “Is that your family?”

  Addi shook her head. “I don’t have a family.”

  Paige’s stomach pitched in reaction. She had no family, either…not since she’d lost her baby.

  “You have a mom,” Ben reminded the child. “She works really hard—that’s why she can’t be here with you.”

  Like he wasn’t there for Paige when she’d needed him—because he’d been working.

  “I know,” the child murmured, lowering her gaze to her picture—her eyes filled with longing for what she’d wanted but believed she would never have.

  “Oh, honey…” Paige sighed, recognizing a kindred wounded spirit. She joined Ben on the bed and pushed her fingers through the child’s blond curls. “It’s okay that you don’t understand, that you want your mom here with you instead of at work.”

  “That doesn’t make me selfish?” Addi asked.

  Paige shook her head. “No, it just means you love her a lot and want her with you.”

  Addi stared up at her, confusion clouding her eyes along with fatigue. “I don’t know….”

  Paige’s arms ached with the need to close around the child and comfort her. But Ben tugged her up.

  “You need to rest, Addi,” he told the little girl.

  Her thick lashes fluttered over her closing eyes. But she fought to keep her lids open and her gaze fixed on Paige. “You’ll come see me again?”

  Paige nodded. It might kill her…to face everything she’d once longed for and lost, but she would. “I will. I’ll come back.”

  A smile curved Addi’s lips as her eyes closed and she slipped into a deep slumber.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Paige asked, turning to Ben the minute he led her back into the hall.

  “She had some birth defects to her heart. It’s been a long road for her, but I think she’ll be fine now.”

  “You think?”

  “There are no guarantees.”

  “No, there aren’t,” she agreed as she followed him into the elevator again. They weren’t alone, but even if they had been, she doubted they would have fallen into each other’s arms.

  But he caught her hand and pulled her off onto the floor of professional offices. “I have to go to the club,” she reminded him.

  “Not until we talk.” He tugged her along to his office, unlocking the door that bypassed the reception and opened directly into his private suite of rooms. An office and a bathroom.

  She wanted to use the bathroom—to splash cool water on her face. To brace herself for what she knew and dreaded was about to come.

  They were going to have that talk…the one she’d put off for four years. Paige and Ben needed to make a clean break, and that wouldn’t happen until they did what she dreaded most. Until they talked about what had happened.

  What did the shrinks call it? Closure. Because she’d walked away the way she had, they’d never gotten closure to their relationship.

  “Why’d you take me to meet Addi?” she asked.

  “You know why.”

  She nodded. “How do you work on her…without thinking of…”

  “Of the child we lost?” he asked. “I can’t. I think of her every time I see Addi.”

  Chapter 14

  “I try not to think of her at all,” Paige admitted. “It hurts too much.” She pressed a hand to her chest now, to her aching heart, and she fought to catch her breath.

  “It’s been four years, Paige. We need to talk about her, about what happened.”

  “What’s to talk about?” she asked. “We both know what happened and why. It was my fault.”

  “No!”

  She nodded as tears stung her eyes and hysteria bubbled out of her, “It was. I…I didn’t slow down like you wanted me to. I kept working long hours at the firm and doing the pro bono work for the public defender’s office. That’s why I developed preeclampsia…how…how I nearly died. It’s how I killed our baby.”

  Strong hands closed around her shoulders and shook her gently. “Paige, stop it, it wasn’t your fault.” His arms closed around her, pulling her tight against him. “I had no idea that you blamed yourself.”

  She swallowed hard, choking on emotion. “You blamed me, too. That’s why you pulled away from me. Why you spent even less time with me than you had.”

  “No!” he hotly denied. Too hotly. “I never blamed you.” He held her more tightly. “And I wasn’t the one who pulled away, Paige. You were the one who filed for divorce.”

  Oh, God, the pain ripped through her as she wrestled with the memories. That was why she had avoided this talk for so long. “And you didn’t fight me,” she reminded him, “because you blamed me.”

  He sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t blame you, Paige.”

  “Well, that makes one of us.”

  His voice full of wonder, he asked, “You’ve been blaming yourself this whole time?”

  She nodded, biting her lip to hold in the sobs burning her throat. But she couldn’t fight back the tears anymore, and they spilled from her eyes.

  “God, Paige.” He pulled back and pushed a hand through her hair, sweeping it back from her damp face. “I thought you blamed me.”

  Confused, she blinked away the tears to stare up at him. “Why would I blame you?”

  “Because I was never there for you when you needed me,” he said, his voice hoarse with self-disgust. “I’m a doctor. I should have recognized the symptoms.”

  “It came on suddenly,” she reminded him. “The blood pressure rising. The swelling. The headaches.”

  “But if I’d been with you, I would have realized what was about to happen. The placenta abruption…the hemorrhaging…” He shuddered. “I didn’t just lose a child. I nearly lost you, too!”

  “That wasn’t your fault,” she insisted. She slid her arms around his lean waist and hugged him close, absorbing his guilt through the fierce beat of his heart against hers. “I was working too hard. I wasn’t taking care of myself or our baby.”

  “You nearly died,” Ben said, his voice cracking with emotion. “I never would have forgiven myself. I’m there for my patients—no matter who—but I wasn’t there for my wife or my baby. I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me. I thought you did. That’s why I didn’t fight the divorce.”

  “I don’t hate you, Ben.” If only she could. Her life would be much simpler. But nothing had ever been simple about her feelings for this man.

  “You should,” he said. “I failed you.”

  And for a man like him, a man who was almost superhuman with his life-saving abilities, any failure hit him hard.

  “You’re only human,” she reminded him, because sometimes she needed to remind herself. “You couldn’t be everywhere at once.”

  “I should have been with you.” He cupped her face in his palms and tilted it up as he leaned down. His lips brushed across her eyes, which must have been swollen from her tears. “I should have been there for you before…”

>   “I lost our baby….” She could say it now and somehow the words filled some of that emptiness that had yawned inside her for the past four years.

  He nodded, his throat moving as he swallowed down his emotion. “And after. You had to deal with that loss…”

  And they had lost more than the baby who’d been too undeveloped to survive her premature birth. The hysterectomy to stop the bleeding had ended the possibility of their having any other children together.

  He swallowed hard. “You shouldn’t have had to deal with all that pain—and unfounded guilt—all alone.”

  “You’re here now,” she pointed out, “with me.” But holding each other wasn’t enough anymore. Not with so much pain and passion between them.

  His mouth moved over her face, kissing the curve of her cheek, the side of her nose before touching her lips. He kissed her gently, with a tenderness she hadn’t felt from him in years, if ever. But then the passion, as always, ignited between them. She parted her lips, and he slid his tongue into her mouth, mating it with hers.

  All their pain turned to passion, passion that had them clawing at each other’s clothes. Ben pulled up her shirt and pushed down the cup of her bra so that his palm cupped her breast instead. Her nipple rubbed against his skin, peaked and sensitive.

  She bit her lip and murmured. And reached for his fly, sliding her fingers up and down the hard ridge beneath his zipper. Then she parted the metal teeth and pushed aside cotton briefs so that his erection sprang free. She wrapped her hand around his cock and stroked the pulsing flesh.

  “Paige,” he growled against her lips—kissing her with heat and desperation before lowering his head to her breast. He nipped the point with his teeth before laving it with his tongue. And his hands were as busy as hers, moving up beneath her skirt and tugging aside her panties. His fingers slid inside her—in and out.

  She threw back her head and bit her lip as a small orgasm shuddered through her. “You, I need you,” she admitted. Not just now, but always, she feared.

  But before she could react to her fear and pull back to protect herself—her heart—he lifted her. Instinctively she wrapped her legs around his waist and helped guide his cock inside her. They kissed, their mouths mating as their bodies did. He thrust deep, then deeper.