Chapter 4
Four
Nero
I looked down at the packed dance floor below, muted music reaching me through the large window in my office. The humans who frequented The Bank were oblivious to who and what they were dancing with, who they would take home and fuck later that night. I didn’t care what happened to them when they left my club, why would I? I didn’t care about anything, and I didn’t dwell on things, but for some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
My little doll in her pretty room below ground.
I had grown so numb to my own instincts, so disconnected to all but the need to occasionally feed that this new sensation inside me, the one that drove me to seek her out, was all-consuming. It was primal, built into the fabric of our being, and part of what made us vampire, but it had been buried deep inside me under layers of ice. Until now. The force of it was a shock to the system, pumping life back to the withered and cold places that had been long forgotten, and I hadn’t decided if this partial reanimation was unwelcome or not.
I craved the pain that being near Mina gave me, but now, even when I wasn’t with her, it remained a constant ache inside me—and so was my thirst for her.
Drinking, fucking had both been biological needs that I fulfilled when necessary. I didn’t need to feed often, not anymore; it had become a tasteless, joyless endeavor. Fucking, much the same.
The last time I was inside a female was in The Vault, the feeding club I owned just below this one, and I’d felt nothing. The encounter happened a short time after I found Mina, after I stood at her window and felt the incredible pull that I recognized instantly.
I hadn’t sought out a bedmate since.
And now that I’d tasted my little Lalka in the garden, I’d been, hungry for her, off-balance, ever since.
Draining the bourbon from my glass, I strode to the door on the other side of my office and took the private hall, then down the stairs to my basement apartment. Opening the door at the bottom, I kept walking. Mina’s room was only a few doors down, but I refused to let base instinct take over. Instead of going to her, I used my key and entered The Vault through my private access, rounded the faux wall in the darkened corner, and strode into the feeding club.
The scent of sex and blood filled my senses instantly, heavy and rich, and for the first time since I opened this club, the smell actually turned my stomach. Ignoring the churning inside me and the fawning donors watching me as I strode across the floor, I took my place at my usual table.
Pretender appeared at my side a moment later with another glass of bourbon, then stayed there to stop anyone who might think to approach me.
“Did she eat today?” I asked him. My stubborn bonded hadn’t eaten in three days, not since I told her what I wanted from her.
Pretender shook his head under his hooded sweatshirt. “She’s still refusing.”
“Did she say why?”
He didn’t meet my eyes, but I could see his glittering. “She said she’d rather starve to death than live in a prison.”
My ward was concerned. I knew that look on his face well.
“You believe her?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I believe she believes it. I don’t think she’ll hold out forever, but I could hear her stomach growling.”
I sipped my drink. “She’ll give in soon enough.”
Pretender nodded, but the way he was unable to stay still told me there was something more he wanted to say.
“What is it?” I said.
He looked uncomfortable. “I’m of course not telling you I know best. I know nothing about these matters, but I do know young vampires like her, new to feeding from the vein and newly bonded, need to feed much more often. She’ll waste a lot faster than, for example, I would.” His gaze came to me. “You may have forgotten what it’s like to be truly hungry.”
He was right. I had. Until Mina, I hadn’t been hungry in longer than I could remember. I knew when I needed to feed, and I fed, but there’d been no pleasure in it. No urgency. “You think she’s wasting already?”
He shrugged. “She looked thinner than the first time I saw her. I don’t think it’s developed beyond that, but I can see the affects her refusal to eat or feed is having on her.”
Stubborn little fool.
I should have thought of it, of course. It was her age, her new situation. “I told her to tell you if she needed to feed.”
Pretender chewed his lip. “I don’t think her pride will allow it.”
I curled my fingers tighter around my glass. Her behavior was illogical. Death was far worse than living in the comfortable room I’d provided for her. I’d painstakingly recreated it. It had taken years to get it just right, to make it a perfect replica, and she would rather die than be in it?
A strange sensation burned in the center of my chest.
I stood abruptly, then strode back through the room, leaving the club through my private access and back out into the hall.
For centuries, there’d been nothing that I wanted or needed. Nothing drew my eye or held my attention. Nothing made me feel.
Until my little doll.
I’d visited her room every night since I’d brought her here, and besides that one night, she’d lain still, silent like I’d asked, while I watched her, while I basked in what only she could give me. The pain she caused in me, the hunger, had awoken something inside me that I thought I’d lost forever. I would not lose that, not now.
Mina would not give up and waste away. I wouldn’t let her do that to me.
I would not let her take this from me.
Removing the key from my pocket, I unlocked her door and walked into her room. She wasn’t in her bed and, for a moment before I saw her on the other side of the room, a strange and sharp feeling stabbed through my gut.
She sat in the chair by the window. The city lights that had managed to reach her through the window made the side of her face look pale and her blond hair impossibly glossy. She was wearing one of the dresses from her closet, not the gown she’d been wearing at the ceremony but a different one.
They were all pink and lacy, modest. I liked seeing her like that, untainted by the outside world—innocent, safe. She had her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees, the fabric of her gown hanging almost to the floor. Her head was slightly turned, staring out at nothing.
“Look at me, Mina,” I said, my voice oddly rough.
“Why?” she said, though it was barely a whisper.
Why was she doing this? “Because your bonded has asked you to.”
“Yeah? Well, your bonded wants you to let her the hell out of this room, but that’s not going to happen. Get used to the disappointment. I have.”
I wasn’t sure what to do, what to say. When I gave an order, it was obeyed, always. Closing the space between us, I took her chin in my hand. I needed her eyes on me, for some reason. I needed my little doll to look at me. She let me turn her head my way, but she kept her eyes averted, refusing to give me what I wanted as if she knew how desperately I needed it.
“Look at me,” I said, and it came out an animal growl, my voice so different, I barely recognized it.
Her lashes fluttered, but still she refused.
I gripped her chin harder, and she winced. I quickly let go. I didn’t like that, either, that wince of pain. “Mina,” I said again.
Still she gave me nothing.
“Why are you behaving this way?”
She turned back to the window, looking out at the concrete wall across from it. I stared down at her while the thump of her racing heart throbbed through me. She wasn’t afraid, not really, there was something else. I didn’t know what she was feeling. It tasted bitter like fear, but there was more to it.
“You need to eat, and you need to feed,” I said into the silence. “I demand you stop this.”
Still, she gave me nothing.
She was hungry, I could hear it, and I could already see how her lack of sustenance of any kind for the last three days had affected her. Her shoulders looked narrower, her wrists and arms thinner.
Being this close to her had my own pain radiating through my body. It was sweet, an intoxicating agony, and it increased daily, worsening when I was close to her like this, and staying away was becoming much more difficult.
Every instinct roared at me to snatch her from her seat, to force her to feed, to fuck my stubborn bride, to claim what was mine, to mate , but I wasn’t sure I could survive such an onslaught of sensation and come away with my sanity intact. I’d gone too long without emotion, without true pleasure. There was a real chance I would kill her if I gave in to the force of need that burned inside me.
There was a real chance that if I did give in, if I allowed myself to have her, I would tear her apart, glutting on her in every conceivable way until there was nothing left.
For the longest time, I’d convinced myself I was glad I felt nothing, but now…now she was here, I felt a shift inside me, and I wasn’t so sure anymore. All I knew was if I let my control slip, even a little, I could lose her.
I hadn’t wanted anything, not like this, in a very long time, and I wanted to keep her, which meant I couldn’t let her die, not by my hand or hers.
Not knowing what else to do, I sunk my fangs into my wrist and held it in front of her mouth. She jerked away, pressing back into the chair, trying to escape my blood as it dripped onto her pink gown. “Drink,” I ordered.
She turned away completely when I held my wrist closer. I gripped the back of her head and held my wrist to her tightly clamped lips. Mina thrashed wildly, exploding from the chair, and dragged the back of her hand across her mouth, wiping away my blood. Her eyes flashed and I felt her fury. She ran to the bathroom, slamming and locking the door after her.
I strode up to it, gripping the handle. It was impossibly hard to hold back, but I didn’t turn it. Gritting my teeth, I wrestled down the sensations flowing over me, through me. It was dangerous, what I was feeling, I recognized that much. I could easily break through the door, hold her down, force her mouth open, and make her drink.
But I wouldn’t stop there. I knew that after I fed her, I would feast on her, on her blood, on her cunt. I’d take and take. I would break her down and tear her apart until there was only a bloody shell of my little Lalka left.
So instead, I forced myself to release the door handle and retreat before I did something I couldn’t take back.