Craved: A Vampire Syndicate Paranormal Romance (The Vampire Syndicate Book 2)

by Rebecca Rivard

  And Étan’s attention was on me.

  He smoothed a hand down the back of my dress. “You look beautiful tonight. White suits you.”

  “Mm.” I stole another hungry look at Rafe.

  The glamour only changed his face. His body was exactly as I remembered: lean, hard, powerful. In his black evening clothes, he appeared sleek and a little dangerous, like the Crimson Ball was a stop on the way to a rendezvous with an enemy spy.

  The cute little thrall in the postage-stamp skirt was certainly interested. She gazed at him like he was a treat she wanted to gobble up.

  My mouth turned down.

  Étan lifted a brow. “Is something wrong?”

  I forced the corners back up. “No, no. You were saying?”

  I zeroed in on Rafe’s bowtie. Blinked, looked again. From far away, it appeared to be red-and-black polka dots, but the black dots were actually snarling wolves, the Kral mascot.

  Trust Rafe to flaunt his syndicate affiliation in our face. This was the Tremblay Syndicate’s biggest event. The entire inner circle was present except for those handling security.

  Étan spoke again. “…that dress for me?”

  I widened my party smile. “I beg your pardon?”

  He tightened his grip on my back, pulling me closer so that the tips of my breasts brushed his tux. His sharp male scent invaded my space. “Did you wear that dress for me?”

  My smile froze.

  Étan was a good match. Smart, capable, good-looking, and like me, he wanted to take the Tremblay Syndicate to the next level.

  The perfect mate for Princess Zoe.

  But there was a Zoe inside the princess, and she had other ideas. She knew Étan could never be my true mate, the one with whom I could form a mate bond, a unique, soul-to-soul connection.

  I pulled back so we weren’t touching.

  His blue eyes sharpened. He swung me in a circle, dipped me over his arm.

  “I will have you,” he said, his face an inch from mine.

  Play along. Keep your options open. Nothing’s been decided.

  “Will you?” I gave him a small smile, aware of my mother’s all-seeing gaze, and spun away.

  Victorine had promised the choice was mine. My mother could be cold and controlling, but she didn’t lie.

  That didn’t mean I could drop my guard. She was also capable of setting a snare for me to walk into, unsuspecting, and before I knew it, I’d be mated to Étan.

  I might even convince myself it was what I’d wanted all along.

  “Oh, yes.” Étan drew me closer again. This time, I allowed it. It made it easier to peer over his shoulder, searching for the cocky dhampir who’d crashed our most exclusive party.

  Rafe had disappeared into the crowd, but I knew he was still in the ballroom. My skin was electrified, my heart still beating fast and hard.

  What did he want?

  Étan spoke. “You’re a beautiful woman, Zoe. I’ve watched you grow up. Waited for you.”

  Whoa. I stopped searching for Rafe and gave Étan my full attention.

  “I’ve always thought of you as a friend…an older friend, like an uncle.” I emphasized the word uncle. “That means a lot to me.”

  An indulgent smile. “With your father gone to his final grave, I was happy to fill that role. But you’re an adult now, chérie. And my regard for you has only grown.”

  Deflect. Deflect.

  I forgot all about playing along with Étan. I stared up at him—and swung my head left. “Is that Marie-Pierre? I haven’t seen her for years.”

  A quick, irritated frown. “She was on an assignment in Bordeaux, overseeing the vineyards.”

  “I’ve never been to Bordeaux. That’s where you were turned, wasn’t it? Victorine found you working at the Chateau de Peyron.” It was one of the Syndicate’s largest vineyards.

  His eyes hooded. “Is that a reminder that I’m not a blue blood like your mother and father?”

  I felt a flicker of shame, because I knew it was a sore point with him, although I’d only said it out of desperation. Étan had been picking grapes when Victorine had seen him and taken him as a thrall. Eventually, he’d convinced her to turn him.

  “Of course not,” I said. “You’ve earned your position in the Syndicate. Victorine thinks very highly of you. We all do.”

  A cold nod. But he fell silent.

  The song ended. “Thanks for the dance,” I said and tried to move away.

  Étan tightened his grip, keeping me where I was.

  I stiffened. Everyone was looking at us, including Victorine. Especially Victorine.

  He traced a fingertip over my jaw and down the center of my throat. Toyed with the strands of the gold necklace.

  You didn’t touch a vampire’s throat without permission. He might as well have announced to everyone present that I was his.

  I swallowed something acrid, not quite daring to slap his hand away. He’d be humiliated, and I wasn’t sure what he’d do if I pushed him too far.

  Étan moved his hand to my shoulder. His fingers dug into the soft flesh. “We’ll speak later,” he promised—or maybe it was a warning.

  I dredged up my Ice Princess glare. “As you wish. Now, if you don’t mind…” I glanced pointedly at the hand on my shoulder.

  He waited three long beats before releasing me.

  An enforcer stepped up—Louis, another vampire I’d known since I was a toddler. “May I have this dance?”

  “Bien sûr.” I moved into his arms without another look at Étan.

  He watched me, though. His stare burned into the vulnerable spot between my shoulder blades.

  Louis complimented me on my dress, then got right to the point. “I’d be honored to take you as a mate.”

  My step hitched. I was still back there with Étan, furious and a little afraid. That snare was looking harder and harder to avoid.

  Louis smoothly righted me and kept dancing. With an effort, I brought my attention to him.

  “Word’s gotten around,” I said. Louis didn’t even belong to my mother’s coven, but to one based in Quebec City.

  A small shrug. “You know how it is.”

  My mouth twitched wryly. “I do.”

  Vampires liked their gossip as much as humans, and my mating was valuable intel if you wanted to move up in the Tremblay Syndicate hierarchy. By now every syndicate in North America would’ve heard, and probably the ones in Europe as well.

  “And?” Louis prompted.

  I cast a surreptitious look around the room. Where was Rafe? But there was no help from that quarter—and really, why would there be?

  I met Louis’s eyes. He was powerful, yet easy in his skin, with a native Quebecois’s dark good looks.

  And I felt…nothing. No spark. No heat. Not even a hint of the belly-deep excitement simply being in the same room as Rafe ignited.

  “I’ll consider it,” I said.

  He inclined his head. “Thank you.”

  We moved onto small talk. The weather and how the vineyards were having a good year. The human economy and how it affected the Syndicate’s interests in Quebec.

  With each second, my body wound itself tighter and tighter, until it took all my self-control to keep myself from doing something very un-Zoe-like, like throwing back my head and laughing hysterically.

  Rafe was here. A Kral, in the chateau. At the freaking Crimson Ball.

  I should report him. It was my duty to report him.

  Simply remaining silent made me complicit in whatever he meant to do.

  And yet I couldn’t. Not until I knew why he was here.

  By the time the song ended, I desperately needed a drink. I thanked Louis for the dance and headed for the crystal fountain spouting arcs of blood-wine—and almost ploughed into Rafe and the thrall plastered to him like a starfish.

  The near collision lashed me like a jolt of electricity. I went stick-still, aftershocks reverberating in my chest, my stomach, even my fingers and toes.

&n
bsp; Rafe’s mouth curled in his trademark lopsided grin. Without taking his gaze from mine, he set the thrall away from him.

  “Some other time,” he told her in an American accent no glamour could camouflage.

  “But—” She placed a hand on his arm.

  “Later,” he said in a soft voice that somehow sliced like a knife. She jerked her hand away and slunk off.

  Rafe’s dark eyes remained trained on me. Daring me to out him. “Bonsoir, Princess.”

  Around us, couples danced and talked, but they seemed somehow far away. The music had grown softer, the lights dimmer, like we were alone in the ballroom.

  I swallowed, unable to find the words to respond. Half-convinced I was dreaming and if I moved, I’d wake up and everything would be ruined.

  Someone jostled me and I came back to myself. I’d taken too long to answer. People were shooting curious looks in our direction.

  And no, this wasn’t a dream.

  “Good evening.” I inclined my head and continued toward the fountain. A server handed me a glass of wine. I sipped it and waited through another song, smiling and nodding as people wished me happy birthday.

  The aftershocks hadn’t settled. Instead, they’d generated new tingles. Excitement mixed with uncertainty mixed with flat-out suspicion.

  I tracked Rafe from the corner of my eye as he moved to the edge of the ballroom and slouched against the wall like he had every right to be there.

  What did he want?

  And did I care? Because he was here, and that was almost enough.

  But we couldn’t talk here. When the song ended, I set down the glass and left the ballroom.

  Rafe would follow. Of that, I was certain.

  Upstairs, I almost stopped in the conservatory. It was my baby, my happy place, an indoor garden with a fake sun to mimic the one I could only observe from behind smoked glass. The place where I felt most able to meet Rafe on equal ground.

  But the cams would pick him up, and security would wonder why I was meeting privately with an unknown vampire.

  So instead, I continued up another floor to my suite. Rafe would find me; beneath that suave, who-gives-a-hell veneer was a smart man. I left the door ajar, because to follow me undetected, he’d have to enter the shadow dimension, and while we’re in the shadows, we can only interact with the physical to a point. We can walk up steps or ride in a car, but we can’t open doors or pick up objects.

  I went directly to the bathroom, the one place free of cameras. A few taps on my phone, and a blank feed of my rooms was fed to the cams. To security, it would appear I was still in the bathroom.

  Back in the living room, I left the lights off; I didn’t want to chance being seen from the gardens. I lit a couple of black pillar candles and went into the bedroom. I dropped my mask on the vanity, then checked my hair and touched up my makeup.

  The way a woman did when a man mattered.

  Because Rafe mattered. I might not want him to, but he did.

  The turret had air conditioning, but I rarely used it. Like a cat, my cooler-than-human body craved heat. Instead, I’d left the casement windows open.

  I should’ve guessed Rafe would come in through a window—the man never did the expected—but instead, I was watching the front door.

  Which is why I gave an embarrassing squeak when warm lips touched my spine above my dress.

  8

  RAFE

  From the garden below, the turret had been silent, the third floor dark, but my gut said Zoe would want to confront me in her lair. The first floor of the chateau was filled with Tremblay vampires, so I’d joined a few other guests strolling the grounds. I’d wandered to the garden’s edge, ducked into the trees and faded into the shadow dimension.

  A running jump took me halfway up the tower. I continued up, scaling the rough greystone to the open casement windows on the third floor in time to see Zoe walk into her bedroom.

  I crouched on the wide stone windowsill, watching from the shadows as she brushed her hair and rubbed a tube of something glossy and red over her lips. She set the tube down on the vanity and turned away, a slim white silhouette in the candlelight.

  The back of her dress dipped in a deep V, exposing her shoulder blades and upper spine. The bare, fragile vertebrae made my breath snag in my lungs.

  There you are, said something deep inside…something vulnerable, needy, primal.

  At last.

  It drew me closer, too powerful to resist…even if I’d wanted to.

  I dropped out of the shadows and pressed a kiss to her moon-soft skin. Her scent curled around me, new green grass after a rain.

  Zoe’s muscles locked. She swallowed but didn’t speak or turn her head. Instead, she moved unhurriedly out of the bedroom, heels tapping on the marble tiles. I stayed near the window, glamour still in place, waiting to see what she’d do.

  She shut the door to the stairs and touched a keypad, locking us inside the suite. Only then did she turn to face me.

  “Hello, Rafe,” she said in her best Ice Princess voice.

  So we were private. That’s all I needed to know. I dropped the glamour, dragged off my mask.

  “Hello.” The ragged edge in my tone shocked me.

  That flash of vulnerability—of need—had left me shaken.

  I took a breath, prepared to turn on the charm. It was what I was known for, after all. The likeable, media-savvy prince whose primary job was to put a human—well, half-human—face on the Kral Syndicate. It didn’t even matter if now and then the façade slipped. Humans love a badass.

  Zoe studied me from across the living room, her long-lidded eyes glimmering gold in the candlelight.

  “Explain to me,” she said in tones that had dropped another ten degrees from ice to arctic permafrost, “why I shouldn’t call security on you.”

  I shoved the mask into my pocket and closed the distance between us. “Because you missed me.”

  Her lip curled. “Try again.”

  “Because you don’t want to see me held down and beaten to a pulp by your mother’s enforcers.” I halted a few feet away from her—and decided the hell with being charming. “Oh, wait. You already did that. If you didn’t want to fuck, Princess, you should’ve told me straight out.”

  Something flitted across her face. Remorse? Sorrow?

  “I shouldn’t have let things get that far.”

  “You think? They beat me, Zoe. Your mother threatened to stake me if I ever came back. And she said she wouldn’t stop with me, either—she’d go after my brothers, too.”

  Her face shuttered; whatever I’d thought I’d seen replaced by a frosty stare. “I didn’t know.”

  “And that’s supposed to make it all right?”

  “No, but—”

  “You left me to take the fall—for something you set up. Because the way I remember it, you came on to me.”

  Her chin came up. “I thought it was mutual, but blame me if you want.”

  My fingers clenched, unclenched. “Oh, I do blame you. For coming to my room that night. For making sure I sent my bodyguard away so that I had no warning when your mother showed up. Alone, both of us—that was the agreement. And yet, Jean-Michel was with you, wasn’t he?” My mouth twisted. “I guess I should be grateful for that. Hell, if he hadn’t warned us, Victorine would’ve found me balls-deep inside you. Or maybe that was the plan? Get me naked and weaponless so your men could take me without even having to break a sweat.”

  Zoe went rigid. “You think I set it up? I was as surprised as you when she showed up.”

  “Yeah? You’re the one who arranged the time and place. You’re the one who came to my hotel—alone. And yet somehow your mom turned up just in time to save you from the Big Bad Kral.”

  I prowled around her, aware I’d gone way past charming to flat-out offensive. But now that I’d started, I couldn’t stop.

  I wanted to hurt her. I’d trusted the woman. I’d even let myself fall a little in love.

  And she’d
stabbed a knife in my chest, then stomped on the twitching corpse.

  “I wanted to see if you lived up to the hype.”

  Maybe Zoe couldn’t have prevented the beating, but she’d humiliated me in front of Victorine and her thugs. She might as well have kicked me in the nuts and been done with it.

  “You didn’t think I was serious, did you?”

  “You let me suck your tits.” I was behind her now. The high heels gave her an extra few inches, but she was still three inches shorter than me. I leaned down, put my mouth next to her ear. “Stick my fingers up your cunt. Your hot, wet, needy cunt.”

  A tremor went up that fragile, delicate spine, and the gods help me, I felt a dark thrill. I backed up, not sure who I was more disgusted with, me or her.

  “You’re wrong.” Zoe turned to face me. “I didn’t want my mother to catch us, and Jean-Michel was supposed to wait in the lobby. Think about it. I had more to lose than you.”

  “Yeah.” I sneered. “Guess you didn’t want to be caught with a Kral, Princess. And a dhampir on top of that.”

  Her mouth compressed, but she didn’t deny it. And why that hurt after all this time, I don’t know.

  “You didn’t come all this way to pick a fight,” she said. “I want to know why you’re here—now—or I will call security.”

  “Stop pretending you’re going to call security on me. We both know you won’t. Because you still want me. You’ve wondered what it would’ve been like if we’d finished things that night.”

  Her mouth opened, then shut. Then she swallowed.

  So I was right. She did still want me.

  My dick stirred, all that anger needing an outlet—or at least, that’s what I told myself. Because I was damned if I’d admit even in my own head that I’d wondered myself what it would have been like.

  “Try me.” She folded her arms over her chest, causing the tiny white handkerchief of a dress to ride up and show even more of her long, toned legs.

  My dick got harder. Two years, and I still wanted her. Two years to replay that scene in the hotel room over and over in my mind. Two years to absorb how Zoe had played me for a fool. Two years to promise myself I’d never get caught like that again.