Chapter 5 #2
He takes my arms. The hold is firm but doesn’t bite like before, and yet I know I couldn’t break free if I tried.
I don’t want to try.
“Monty,” he whispers my name like a sigh, and my heart flutters.
“She’s my friend,” I say. “She’s the closest to family I have. And you can’t keep me locked up forever. That’s cruel.”
“I need to trust you to let you roam freely.” He lets me go and straightens. His face turns into an unreadable mask. “I have meetings.”
“You’re leaving me again?”
A ghost of a smile touches his lips. “Be aware, the elevator has guards on every stop.”
Before I can snarl choice words at him, he draws me to him and kisses me. My mouth opens beneath his of its own volition.
A hunger rises, taking over everything. I can’t help myself, melting into him like I’m ice under an intense sun.
He smells the same, but deeper, more compelling, like there’s an addicting scent beneath the one I know.
The kiss he gives and cajoles out of me is pure devastation, and I fall into it, into him, mating my tongue with his in a slow, sinful dance.
The kiss tastes to me like forever—and love—and that’s a lie. Nothing but a fallacy, and something I reject. I don’t want soft with him.
I want hard. Shallow. Sex and sex only, because if we kiss like this then it’s a lie I’m buying into. I want him, desperately. My body throbs for him, my pussy drips and heats, a hollow ache between my thighs only he can fill.
I want him.
But it doesn’t mean I like him.
I want him to suffer for what he did to me, his lifeblood in me, singing in my veins and giving me the strength of him.
I want Lucian but I hate him, too.
So soft is something I reject.
I pivot the kiss, pressing into him, turning the kiss into altars in the rain, thunder threatening to rip open the heavens.
Lucian moans, his erection pressing into me. What I want is to rub up on it. No, what I want is to climb on him and fuck myself stupid. I want to suck him off. I want him to tie me down and do whatever he wants with me.
I bite his lip. Hard. The heat of blood, salty, darkly sweet, touches my tongue, and he growls, shoving me away.
“You don’t get my blood anymore, Monty. You’ve had enough. And I’m late.”
With that, the fucker leaves, elevator dinging as it descends. The wall slides back, hiding it once more.
But…now I know it’s there.
Blood’s still in my mouth, a few drops, a lick, but it swirls like a ferocious gale through me, and I lunge forward for the elevator…where I know it is. But I stop myself.
Make myself breathe.
If I’m to survive, then I need to control the blood and not the other way around. Do I still want to bathe in pools of blood?
Yes.
But right now, that’s fantasy.
So I take a breath again, turn from the elevator, and go searching for the kitchen.
It’s sleek, modern, untouched it seems by food. Which makes my mouth twist into a semblance of a smile.
Of course there isn’t food per se. He’s a vampire. He doesn’t need to eat food. There’s a fruit bowl filled with protein bars, and when I open the giant fridge that’s integrated into the cabinetry, my breath catches.
Blood. Five pouches. Dated. And I want one. One? I want them all.
I start to reach out, but snatch my hand away, and instead close the door and grab a few of the protein bars, shoving them in my pocket.
Next, I spend some time exploring. The space is the entire top floor, and I think it covers the whole block VMR sits on.
Since the sun pours in but doesn’t touch me at all, no heat, nothing, I’m guessing the windows are specially designed, but I don’t care about that.
I don’t care about the lore to do with the sun and I’m no sun freak, either.
Who would be in a place like Tenebris? Already I can see dark clouds gathering in the distance.
There are two enclosed decks, one with a dipping pool. There’s a gym, a locked room, and two other living areas, both cozy, one with a big TV.
He has a library full of old and new books.
There are about six bathrooms, though I’m not sure the seal’s been broken on any toilet or toilet tissue roll.
I move along. He has four guest rooms, and his main suite with a king-size bed. Though it has the walls of glass, it also has black-out blinds. It’s done in whites and grays, and out of all the rooms I’ve explored, this one actually feels lived in.
I trail a hand over the pale gray of the sofa, body throbbing as I keep looking at the bed.
“I can’t be in here,” I mutter. I need to get the fuck out of his room. It’s like being surrounded by Lucian, the man who turned me, killed his old lover, and probably did something horrific to my friend.
What if…?
I push the thought away, glad I didn’t guzzle the blood. Unless it’s fresh from the source, I’ll stick to the bars.
My stomach knots and twists.
Nope, no blood. At all. It clouds my mind.
I force myself out of his room and keep exploring until I find a huge study.
It’s a room for show, and as I look around, I see it’s also for function.
The study has the same feel as his office downstairs on his floor at VMR, intimidating but practical.
I go to the computer, open it and turn it on, hoping there’s no password.
I sit shakily in the leather chair as the computer comes to life. This place up here has to be harder to get into than Fort Knox, I’m sure.
But to my surprise, the desktop flashes on the screen.
The computer is seemingly an open book, and I go through it, poking into everything.
The financial files, emails from other vampires—do they email each other?
—or business people. There’s a whole business deal proposition from someone named Santiago Angelus who wants a merger between VMR and Sanguine, an online powerhouse that organically grew from short, succinct posts online.
They own, silently, movie studios, and online news feeds that look like rivals to VMR but complement instead. In fact, when I was first investigating VMR after Kayla disappeared, I had thought Sanguine was VMR under another name.
Is there another group of vampires out there running parts of the world under the noses of humans?
It makes my skin crawl.
As I continue my snooping, I find other offers, too. For instance, Heather McMannus in Scotland, a land I can see vampires loving, is looking for partnership for her newspaper empire.
But there’s no mention of my friend.
I switch gears. There’s an unopened email with the subject line “Diamond Hills,” and I recognize the suburb name of the de Santis compound.
Shaking, I click it and look for info on the kid I wanted to eat, a feeling that now makes me roil greasily, but all I see is that the women and children have been moved to a new undisclosed location.
At least they’re alive and safe.
I move on.
I run my hand along the desk’s wood and pull open drawers. Blank notepads, pens, all the stuff you’d expect. It isn’t until my fingers brush against a rough notch on the underside of the deepest drawer that I pause.
I flick it and a secret tray pushes out.
My heartbeat jumps with excitement.
There’s a small square piece of paper inside, creased down the middle and worn at the corners. Fragile. It’s lying on top of black velvet, as if Lucian had been meticulous in wanting to preserve it exactly the way it is.
Carefully, I pick it up.
Four numbers are written in ink: 1954
I turn it and come face to face with the image of a beautiful young woman.
It’s a photograph. The colors are muted, but her smile is bright, her hair curly, and she’s wearing a spotted bathing suit on a beach with the ocean behind her. She looks like one of those pinup models from old magazines or calendars. Something classic.
Why would Lucian have this?
Then I see the curved handwriting at the bottom corner.
Always Yours, Penelope
My chest clenches.
I can see the similarities now. The slope of her nose, the shape of her mouth…
I had met her decades older.
“Holy shit,” I whisper to myself. “This… This is Nell.”