Chapter 5 Oleg #2
Whoever Pavel’s social secretary was, Oleg would have to tell Mika to make sure she got a bonus for getting his most irritable and antisocial brother—and that was saying something, considering Lazlo existed—out of his office.
There was that buzzing again. Oleg narrowed his eyes and scanned the crowd. What was it? Who was it?
“Who else is here from the family?” he asked. “Is Ivan already here?”
Pavel frowned. “Yes, but I don’t think he’s at this party. Apparently there is another one that not everyone was invited to, which makes no sense if you’re going to—”
“Yes, yes.” Oleg was distracted. He felt like his blood was going to boil. There was a sense of urgency that had him abandoning Pavel and striding through the crowd.
He had no destination in mind, just an instinct that something—someone—was there.
Calling him.
Calling his blood.
He strode through the crowd and froze when the mass of vampires parted, revealing the object of his desire, his obsession.
She was dressed in ice-blue silk, wearing a designer gown that fell around her slender curves, with an intricately embroidered cape of Poshani design draped over her right shoulder.
Tatyana Vorona, standing next to her fellow Poshani terrin, Kezia.
His mate… with her hand tucked under the arm of a silver-haired wind vampire he still hadn’t managed to kill.
The immortals around him fell silent as Oleg stepped through the crowd and slowly approached Tatyana and Kezia. Everyone had heard some variation of what they thought was the truth.
Tatyana had stolen from him.
Oleg had killed her sire.
Tatyana had killed her sire.
Oleg had kidnapped her.
Tatyana had run from his aegis.
They were rivals. Lovers. Sworn enemies. Secretly plotting to conquer Eastern Europe.
The rumors swirling around the new terrin of the Poshani clan and the very old vampire lord of the Kievan Rus were myriad and contradictory, and Oleg and Tatyana had done nothing to clarify anything for anyone.
Oleg’s fangs fell just seeing her hand touching another man.
“Lord Oleg.” Kezia greeted him. “So good to see you again.”
Tatyana met his stare, not flinching for even a second when she saw him. “Lord Oleg.”
He was keenly aware that this was a test, and he was irrationally angry that she hadn’t prepared him for it. Did she think he would enjoy this surprise? Enjoy seeing her in public, visibly attached to Arosh’s son?
“Kezia le Almásy.” He bowed. “Tatyana le Tala.” He used both their formal names and addresses. “What a pleasure to see the two most beautiful terrin of the Poshani here in Budapest.”
The room around them seemed to unfreeze when Oleg spoke, and he heard someone giggle in the crowd. Tatyana looked at the nervous laughter, and then her eyes met his.
She seemed to forget she was still touching the silver-haired wind vampire on her left, because her blue eyes were dancing. Surprise.
“I hope that you are coming to the art exhibition we’re hosting tomorrow evening,” Kezia continued. “I know you are a keen collector.”
“I would not miss it.” Oleg suspected that his mate thought this was supposed to be fun. He felt a bubble of joy in his blood and knew that it was coming from her.
Then… confusion. Her energy changed, and her body leaned away from the wind vampire ever so slightly.
“Oleg?”
He felt a hand slip under his arm and smelled Karoline the Austrian princess at his side.
“Oh, who have you found?” She looked across the gap in the crowd. “Kezia!” She blew an air-kiss. “And her new sister. I love your dresses. They’re so… colorful.”
“Thank you,” Tatyana said.
A hot spike of fury ran through his blood, and Oleg caught his mate’s eye.
She was jealous. She was ridiculously, irately jealous.
Good.
Oleg smiled and cocked his head toward her.
“Such a beautiful reception tonight, is it not?” He kept his words smooth and even, betraying nothing.
“I should keep circulating.” He tightened his arm against Karoline’s hand and looked down.
“I still have not found my boyar, Karoline. Would you join me in searching for him?”
Karoline batted her painted eyelashes. “Of course.”
He stepped away from the crowd gathered around Kezia and Tatyana, who were doubtless the most stunning women in the room, light and dark beauties with an air of mystery they both carried like a familiar cloak.
He felt the phone he carried buzz in his kaftan and released Karoline’s arm to reach for it. “I believe that is Mika calling me.”
It wasn’t Mika. Mika didn’t have his number.
“Oh.” The blond woman pouted.
Second floor. The billiard room.
“Yes, I must apologize.” He shook his head. “I am needed elsewhere, but we shall meet again.”
“Of course.” She fluttered as Oleg walked away. “I’ll see you, Lord Oleg. Soon.”
Oleg entered the billiard room on the second floor to see Tatyana standing in her ice-blue column dress, staring at the door. She let out a breath when she saw him.
“It’s you.”
He hung back, crossing his arms over his chest. “What would you have done if it was not me?”
She reached over toward a long blue drape and pulled out a long-handled throwing axe. “I found it hanging on a wall. I’m honestly not sure how to put it back up now that I’ve taken it down.”
The corner of his mouth curled up. “Good girl.”
“Also, Sándor is behind that door.” She pointed to the connecting door in the corner of the room.
“You need to tell him about us. If you want him to truly protect you, he needs to know, and if he’s any good at his job, it won’t be news to him.”
“You are likely correct.”
“I know I’m correct.”
Her eyes were uncertain and cautious. “Surprise!”
Oleg slowly walked toward her. “Surprise? I asked you if you were going to be here and—”
“You didn’t actually.” She was trying to hold back a smile. “You mentioned it, and I changed the subject.”
His body was raging—it had been nearly a month since he’d seen her—but they were both wearing too many clothes, and they didn’t have time to disappear from the party for long. “You were with that wind vampire.”
“Samson is here representing Arosh’s court,” Tatyana said. “We’re friends. You know we are friends.”
He was standing a foot away from her, and the scent of her blood had his erection standing at attention. “He would take you back to the Fire King.”
“He knows that’s not an option.” She waved a hand. “Hello, Oleg! Isn’t it fun that we are in the same city and that we might have time to spend together?”
“If you had told me that you would be here, we could have coordinated better.”
“Oh, like you told me you were going to be in Bucharest the last time I was there?”
“That was a last-minute situation, and you had to expect that I would—”
“I never know what to expect from you!” She threw out her hands. “That’s kind of the point. You surprise me. I thought I would surprise you. I thought it would be fun, and you are making it… not fun.”
“You were standing with a man that you know I do not like, and you were touching him,” Oleg snarled.
“And you had women hanging all over you!” she hissed. “I saw you earlier with at least three women who all wanted to sink their teeth into you.” She looked him up and down. “Don’t tell me I’m overreacting.”
“Those women are playing a political game. Arosh’s son is not. He is in love with you.”
She stepped toward him and bared her fangs. “Well, I am not in love with him. I am in love with you!”
Oleg’s blood roared in his ears, and he cursed the Báthory Summit, their responsibilities, and every vampire on the first floor. “You’re in love with me?”
“Of course I am fucking in love with you!” she whisper-yelled at him. “Do you think I would go jump through all these ridiculous hoops, marry you, take you as my mate if—”
Oleg grabbed her arm, drew her to him, and kissed her soundly on the mouth. He wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her to him and pressing her heart to his chest, feeling the slow movement of blood pick up in her veins.
He wanted to plunder.
He didn’t.
Oleg took his wife’s mouth in deliberately soft kisses. His fingers wanted to rip and tear, to stake his claim on her body as she’d offered the gift of her heart.
Instead, his fingers danced over the silk of her gown, smoothing the dress over the curve of her waist and her hips.
She sighed into his mouth. “Oleg.”
“Shhh.” His body was as riotous as his mind, but this moment needed control or he would rampage through this palace and set every vampire in his way on fire. “We have to get back. You know how vampires gossip, and they will be looking for both of us.”
She took a deep breath and looked up, meeting his stormy grey eyes. “Surprise.” She ran her hands down the front of his kaftan. “This looks very cool, by the way. You look like an emperor from some historical film.”
“This was made before films were invented.” And when she was his queen, he would have a matching coat made for her so that every vampire in his aegis would bow down and worship her beauty.
“Right.” Tatyana fingered the ermine trim on his cuff. “That makes me feel a little better about the small animals that were killed.”
Oleg forced himself to smile. “You’re right. This will be fun.”
This would not be fun. This would be torture.
She smiled, and her eyes were dancing again. “Text me when this is over and tell me where to go. I’ll sneak away with Rumi.”
A few hours. That was all he would have to last.
Just a few hours, and she would be his again.
“Good.” He nodded to the door. “Go. I’ll figure out where to hang up the axe.”
“Oh good.” She looked at the weapon near her feet. “Yes. Thank you. I completely forgot about that.”
She stood on her toes, pressed a kiss to his cheek, then darted out the door.
And Oleg was left in the billiard room with a two-foot axe and no relief except the mental picture of slicing that wind vampire’s head from his body with an antique axe. It could take several strikes with this dull a blade. There would be blood and gore. It would be painful and take some time.
He enjoyed picturing it.
Half his immortal soul had walked out of the room and back to the party, and Oleg could do nothing about it.
He had to stop this.
They might have agreed five years ago that patience and discretion were necessary, but Oleg had changed his mind approximately five seconds after Tatyana admitted that she loved him.
One hundred years was far too long to wait.