The Dark Rose

by Ramsey, Valentine

  Kissing her belly he then rested his head on her hip, trailing his fingers over her stomach, tracing her bellybutton. The lightness of it tickled and made Pan jerk.

  She giggled and shoved his hand away. “No.”

  A grin exploded onto Dom’s face, brightening his eyes with new found joy. “No?”

  Pan nodded.

  He laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so. You can’t reveal to me such a delicious treat and simply say no.”

  “You better not,” Pan warned, reading his wicked intent.

  “Or what?”

  “Or I’ll—”

  He began to tickle her.

  “No!” she screamed, laughing, twisting and kicking, trying to grab his hands.

  Managing to capture his wrists, Pan tackled him to the bed, pinning them. He smiled as she laid on him. Content to just gaze at him, Pan released his wrists, resting her chin on his chest. Pushing up him, she kissed him.

  She had meant it to translate tenderness and adoration, but as kissing usually did with them, it turned heated in less than a second completed. His hands went under her top, holding her tight against him. Pan didn’t know whether she shivered from the slight chill of them or his kisses trailing down her neck.

  Dom sat up and Pan sat back. She pulled at his top, the masculine exotic scent of his skin driving her wild.

  “Dom, Dominic,” she panted. “Make love to me, make love to me now.”

  A growl rumbled low in his throat. “You’re tempting my very sanity to say no.”

  “Then don’t. I don’t know how much longer I can wait for marriage. It doesn’t come swiftly enough.”

  Dom tore his lips from her neck, resting his forehead against hers. “I know,” he breathed.

  Pan stared into his eyes that glowed from excitement. He carefully kissed her and Pan ran her tongue over his lengthened fangs making him groan.

  Taking her shoulders, he held her away. “I’ve tracked down a priest. It will be awhile before I can get to him. He lives in Europe in exile.”

  She groaned. “So long?”

  “Impatient are we? What is the rush when we have eternity?”

  “The rush is my burning desire to know my sire.” Pan tried to force him back, pushing against him so she could straddle him, but he held her firmly away.

  “Don’t think it easy for me either. It’s torture being the level head here. You are a Princess and my life love.” He stroked her neck. “You deserve marriage and vows before a tryst in the night, this I insist.”

  Pan had never been an advocate for chastity until marriage. Those weren’t her beliefs even though they had been drilled into her. She believed in the right moment, the right feeling and most importantly, the right person who made her heart flutter wildly. A person she loved and cherished more dearly than words could explain. Someone to share such immense passion with it was hard to contain, who created such love in her it was a physical pain and Dom…he was it.

  He was everything.

  But Pan still wondered, why wait for marriage when Dom was right, they would spend the rest of eternity together. There were a variety of answers that would temporarily temper her fever—the suspense, the excitement, and Dom, he wanted to.

  “But I want to be with you now,” Pan said desperately.

  Dom tucked her hair behind her ear. “You are with me.”

  “I want to feel your skin against mine,” she said, slightly pouty.

  “As do I. It will come. But until then we have to settle for making love with…our lips.”

  Pan couldn’t help but smile. He was right. They had turned kissing into a delicate art form of making love. Pan wanted so bad to experience the real divine action with him, pain and all as he took her virginity, their final vow of contract sealed with her blood and his claim. She wanted it so bad, it was worth the wait.

  Pan sighed, cement in content as he laid her back. Dom smiled at her adoringly.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I look upon the face of beauty and she stares back at me. What have I done to deserve this?” he said in awed wonder.

  “You love me.”

  “Mm, my sweetness.” Dom grazed her cheek with butterfly kisses. “I obsess you.”

  + Chapter 17 +

  Princely Politics

  The next afternoon a smile brightened and graced Pan’s face for thrilling reasons she couldn’t dare mention though it drew attention. Her nurses, Magda and Gertrude, kept glancing at her surreptitiously thinking her unaware. As lowly humans, little did they know the vampire born noticed nearly everything, which of course, involved them.

  Her hair messily pinned up with jeweled bobby-pins and a few cherry blossoms, Pan bathed in the huge Egyptian alabaster tub with solid gold faucets, in the center of her lavish bathroom that was completely revetted in the exquisitely carved rock. Cherry blossoms sprinkled the sudsy water that was scented with fragrant oil. Statues and white roses in giant gold urns provided the decoration along with ornate armoires that housed fluffy white towels her nurses were now folding.

  “Why do you smile so brightly Pan?” Magda, her head nurse asked as she folded a towel against her legs.

  Humming happily, Pan ran a sponge over her arm. “An angel came to me in my sleep last night.”

  “An angel?” Both nurses traded amused looks. “If one were to be so lucky it would be you child.” They chuckled, or more like giggled like school girls trading gossip.

  Magda sighed. “Sweet dreams you have child. Out of the water now, time is short and you need to begin preparing for the council.”

  The night had finally come for Pan to be revealed to the covens. It was her initiation as her father’s chosen successor. She would meet all the King’s along with their successors to the thrones. Naturally, as tradition coincided, they were all Prince’s, so it provided that she was her father’s pride. Pan knew most of the Prince’s as it was.

  Magda held a towel open for her. Pan stood, water cascading down milky skin and carefully stepped over the edge of the tub onto the step where Magda wrapped her in the cotton.

  “Go dry off and I’ll bring you lunch,” Magda said, swatting Pan on the bottom as she headed into her room.

  Fear was a feeling Pan was becoming all too familiar with. Her stomach seared with it as Andre offered his arm to escort her down the stairs.

  “You look beautiful,” he said.

  Pan smoothed a hand down her belly. “I’m so nervous.” He was the only one she would dare admit that too.

  “You’ll do fine.” He spoke with unhesitating authority.

  “You sound so sure.”

  “Of course I’m sure. You make everyone fall in love with you by simply smiling. And your father is evermore sure. He sends a gift.”

  Pan followed his gesture. An ice white Bentley Continental Supersports sat parked with a huge red bow tied around it.

  “For me?” Pan said excitedly, pulling from his arm and skipping over.

  “Mind your dress!” Gertrude called from a window above.

  Pan flapped her hand at her to be quiet.

  Andre laughed. “Who else would it be for?”

  Cupping her hands around her eyes, Pan peeked in the tinted window. The interior was two-toned burgundy and black.

  “It’s so pretty,” she said, opening the door. “Can I drive it there?”

  “Do you have a license?”

  Pan scowled, sensing an answer she didn’t want to hear.

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t drive it there.”

  “Oh pooh,” she pouted and slammed the door. “Vampires don’t need licenses.”

  Andre laughed as he opened the back suicide door to the awaiting two-toned black and white Rolls Royce Ghost. “Your father’s wishes.”

  Rolling her eyes, she climbed in.

  The sun had set as they pulled through the gates. Opulent rows of classic and modern Bentley’s and Rolls Royce’s lined the drive. Pan spotted the plates of her father’s Silver Clou
d Rolls Royce parked under the Rose crest. Andre pulled around to the front of the mansion that resembled the Blenheim Palace in the United Kingdom.

  In a flash, he was out the door and opening hers. Offering his arm, he tossed the keys to a valet and led her up the stairs.

  The décor was dark and elegantly gothic with an undertone of macabre. No one was in the quiet halls save uniform wearing servants. Having been here many times, Andre led her to the Rose corridors since this was her first time in the neutral territory of the Vampire Embassy.

  Reaching a door with a Rose crest, Andre knocked. After a moment, it opened to reveal the looming frame of Hector, one of her father’s fierce bodyguards.

  “Princess,” he said with a strong Albanian accent. “Your father has been most anxiously awaiting your arrival.”

  “Then let me appear before him,” Pan said.

  He stepped back to admit them.

  Unhooking the plush gray white fur stole from around her shoulders, Pan passed it to Andre and sought her father. The stole had once been the hide of the werewolf who had killed her mother, Evangeline, when she was an infant.

  Victor Rose, who had tracked and slaughtered that werewolf for revenge, had been unfortunate in his transition. A rare malady, it had come upon him in his late thirties, making him one of the oldest appearing vampires of the group, though by no means did it make him any less handsome. If anything he was more distinguished with his faint lines of age and his bald head. Elegant in black robes, metal scroll work adorning the collar, Victor stood regally off to the side, observing the members of their royal family conversing as they sipped blood from crystal wine flutes.

  Three of his main bodyguards, Louis, Anton and Cylar, flanked his sides, watching the scene stone faced. As a little girl, Pan had always had a crush on Louis and he had known it, always being careful never to indulge her. Now as she approached, he glanced at her, but did a quick double take. Now that she was of age and all grownup, admiration was new in his eyes but gone from hers.

  So long as she lived her heart would never be caught by another other than her Dom’s, a Gray.

  Approaching her father all talk subdued and attention on her ensued. Black eyes glazed in thought, Victor looked at her. He blinked, coming out his trance and smiled. It warmed his usually stoic face.

  “My daughter,” Victor said affectionately, opening his arms.

  Pan walked into them, hugging her father, momentarily at ease with her treason. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed him as he was away so often for diplomatic reason.

  “Father,” Pan said, breathing him in. As always he smelled of roses.

  “Let me get a proper look at you my dear.” He held her at arm’s length and smiled. “A Princess indeed, you proceed beauty in its own name.”

  Pan wore a formfitting satin gown of deep emerald green. The back mirrored the front in a deep plunging V showing off the slight swell of her breasts. A mermaid train cascaded over her feet, wrapped so tightly around her hips and thighs she could only take small quick steps.

  A gold jeweled Egyptian styled headdress wrapped around her hair that had been done up in thick braids woven with gold threads. The shape was like cresting sun with heart shape pendants that came to points on her forehead, the largest in the middle with an emerald in the center. Completing her attire was a wide gold Egyptian usekh collar with various jewels; a gift from her absentee grandmother. Light on the makeup, all she wore was mascara that made her already thick lashes look like fans.

  All intending to show her off to the other covens, in a way of her father saying “look what I have and you don’t. Na-na-na-na.” Victor’s vanity was his only insanity. He took the upmost pride in being bold and different and having a Princess successor made him so. He wanted all to be envious.

  Besides, he was also announcing his readiness to consider royal pairings with her and the other covens Prince’s. Courting would begin tonight and Raphael was already in the running.

  “She’s gorgeous Victor,” Gurion, a distant cousin praised.

  Victor glowed with pleasure. “I know.”

  “Pandora,” called a deep silky voice with a heavy African accent.

  An Amazonian tall woman with creamy black as night skin held open her arms.

  “Aunt Nanon!” Pan said and rushed into her embrace, hugging her tight.

  Aunt Nanon chuckled, rocking her from side to side. “Oh, the tides! It has been far too long, one too many dawns.”

  “It has,” Pan agreed.

  Aunt Nanon was not relation by blood, but love. After Pan’s mother had been murdered, Nanon had stepped in to help Victor raise her along with the help of Magda, as being a few thousand years old Victor had no clue how to handle a human infant, let alone a girl human.

  When Pan was five Nanon had taken her leave, having grown far too affectionate towards Pan, knowing it to be dangerous when her Persian enemies sought to destroy her in any way possible. She was terrified of having Pan used against her.

  Nanon had been an African Princess hundreds of years ago until her village had been raided and destroyed by slave traders. After fifteen years of slavery in first the Arabian empire and then the Persian, Nanon found herself at what she guessed to be the age of twenty-eight, owned by a merchant.

  One day, most of which Nanon could not remember as she told Pan, a man had come, a Persian Prince, or he had once been upon a time. Rich with wealth, slaves, and women, he was revered among the people despite his strange ways. Having fallen in love with Nanon’s beauty, the strength in her eyes and what Nanon laughed about to this day, her very long legs, he offered her owner a price he could not refuse and bought her.

  Nanon always spoke affectionately of him and the rare thoughtfulness he showed towards her in rather than raping her like others, he sought to woo her. Nanon allowed him and discovered his mysterious secret. He was a vampire, and a very old one at that. All of his concubines had expected his fascination with her to wear off within a few months as it had with them, though it never did and in his greed to have her forever, he turned her.

  And Nanon, with her newfound newborn strength that is hard for any vampire to match, killed him. Sex, blood and murder they had shared, but never had Nanon bared to him her secret. The oath she had made to herself the night she had watched her father being murdered as he tried to protect his children, the night she had been taken as a slave, the night she had been beaten and raped, she had sworn to herself, no matter what, no matter how long it took, she would be free.

  But that freedom cost her. Her maker had “family” in very lofty imperial places and they wanted revenge for his death. For hundreds of years they hunted her and for hundreds of years she had picked them off one by one, the African Princess, the daughter of a lion hunter, proving she was not to be fucked with.

  A few of those angry Persians still remained, but they no longer sought her destruction or else they knew they would find the downfall of their own. It was only these two years Nanon felt comfortable in coming out of hiding. Pan had seen her occasionally over that period but as Nanon had said, it was never enough. Pan had never known a mother, but if one was to hold that label, it would be sable Nanon.

  As the baby of the Rose coven, Pan was passed around to all her extended family. Many like Nanon, not of royal blood, but having earned the title with their loyalty. Many she had not seen for years.

  The twins, Amorette and Anchoret, her mother’s adoptive aunts were quick to swoop in. Erasmus, who had once served in the ancient Greek army approached with Pascal, a once French scholar. Dallas, whose real name she never knew; only that he had been a cowboy in the eighteen hundreds. He looked no older than her with curly blond hair. Saxona, her father’s niece and her cousin, Madam Daron, Madam Madhur Antoinette, Jon Kida and his daughter Kida K., Theodor or Teddy, to name a few others.

  Paul, Danna, Brighton and Isla’s blood parents were there as well, though they weren’t, as they had yet to transition. Some vampires brought their chil
dren to council meetings; the Rose’s did not as they preferred to protect them from the world of angry politics.

  “It is time my daughter,” Victor said, pulling her away from Kida K. and Erasmus.

  “Though out of sight, we will be there with you,” Nanon said, her smooth voice sounding mystical. “Seek comfort in that my darling.”

  Her nervousness must have been showing. Pan gave a weak smile as Nanon stroked her cheek. While Victor and she would be seated below with the council leaders, non-ruling members of the covens sat silently above in the balconies.

  Arm looped through her father’s, they stood in a hall in front of another door bearing the Rose crest. A servant stood erectly at the side waiting to admit and announce them. A red light flicked on in signal.

  “Hold no fear,” Victor said. Then he laughed. “As if you ever do.”

  If he only knew, Pan thought.

  The doors swung open. The hall was even more dark and gothic than the rest of the mansion with muted light and many dark shadows. Dais’s circled the floor with black thrones, each with their crests emblazoned in the velvet and before them in the marble floor.

  Striding in, graceful and erect, years of training squashed her nervousness and indifference slid over her face as the herald announced them: “Now entering King Victor sir Capulet Rose of the Rose Coven and his daughter Princess Pandora la Juliet Rose.”

  Mummers went up in the balconies, though it was so dark she could not make out whom from. The Rose name in itself was a synonym for power, privilege and patronage.

  Walking along the seats of all twelve covens, a couple of the Prince’s shifted, their expressions admiring. Pan felt Raphael’s eyes following her, along with the handsome childless King Jordan Dove. Raphael sat on his father Rourke’s left in the smallest throne of the Stone Coven, his older brother Roman and rightful heir, on the right.

  Reaching their dais, Pan met Raphael’s heated black gaze then quickly glanced away. Victor steered her to her throne and once she was seated took his. He was radiating smugness, savoring the reactions of the eight covens already settled. Pan wished she could feel the pride that was practically vibrating off of him, but all she felt like was fresh meat.