Chapter 7
Will
The young woman flinches in my grasp before going still. I cock my head. Consider her strange reaction. She isn’t fighting?
It can’t be an accident that she’s in the BDSM room. She could be into the scene.
She feels like a natural submissive.
A beautiful one, too. Her light brown hair is soft against my fingers.
I have better-than-human ability to see in the dark, so I can discern the hazel of her eyes, the pink of her lips, the curve of her generous mouth.
Her body is crunched into this godawful cupboard, so I don’t have a good sense of her figure.
Her scent, though. Quite lovely. How could Xander not notice it? His sense of smell is stronger than mine.
“Well, aren’t you cozy in there?” I say.
She gives a full-body shiver, but still she does not fight my grasp.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” Her voice is a whisper, her voice throaty and low. Combined with her scent, her angelic face, it goes straight to my cock.
I’m responding to her in ways that I thought long dormant. Arousal, domination—those are easy for me. Sex and feeding do not need to be connected to emotions or even much care beyond the basic niceties.
But I’m feeling this girl’s presence in my fucking chest. I haven’t felt anything quite like this before.
Wait, that’s not true. Hell.
Elisabeth. I felt something like this for her.
Anger follows my wonderment. This young woman has been hiding here, eluding Xander and me. She’s been here for several days if I’m to assume she’s been here since I first picked up her scent.
Right under my very nose, all along.
“Come with me,” I say, releasing her hair.
She flicks her gaze past me. She’s looking for an exit. As if she could run and escape. I almost want her to try. I could chase her. Hunt her all over again.
And this time when I find her, I won’t be half so gentle as I’ve been just now.
Fortunately, she doesn’t run. Damned pity, that.
She emerges from the cupboard and straightens.
Winces slightly. The cupboard can’t have been comfortable.
Now that she’s standing, I can get a better look at her.
She has generous hips. She’s not tall, but not short for a woman. The top of her head reaches my chin.
She blinks in the bright moonlight shining through the windows. “Did Xander tell you to look for me?”
How does she know his name? “No. Why would he?”
“I just thought…since he saw me….”
“He saw you?”
She nods.
That bloody arsehole. He made me think I was going mad. Is this what that new term, “gaslighting,” means?
Shaking my head, I say, “I’ve known you were here for days now. I’ve been looking for you.”
And my blood thrums with anger. Not only at this woman for being so hard to find. At Xander, too. The prick.
“Come with me,” I say again, and turn away from her.
She doesn’t move immediately. I’m patient. I stride toward one of the exits, the one leading to the hallway.
She runs for the other. It leads to the Horse Breeding room. No problem. I’m easily faster than her. I enter the Horse Breeding room from one of the other entrances. She stops in her tracks. Gasps.
“You may as well come willingly,” I say.
She dodges toward the other end of the room.
Vampires are like cats. We like to play with our prey.
I pause long enough to make her think she has a chance. A smile pulls at my mouth. She’s never going to escape.
She nearly makes it to the exit, but then I’m there, standing in her way.
“How?” she asks, her lovely lips pursing into a frown.
I only smile.
She’s in full flight mode. It’s actually quite cute.
I corner her, backing her up beyond a display case and toward the wall. I think she expects to find a doorway there to the Japanese Fashion room, but it’s on the other side of the book case.
Sure enough, she looks behind her. I can hear the faint hitch of her breath. Surprise. Fear.
It’s a fucking aphrodisiac.
She tries to dart past me. I’m faster. Catch her in my arms, walk her to the bookcase. I pin her hips with mine, struggling not to rub my cock against her. I crave relief. I need it. For days she’s been tantalizing me with her scent. Now I’m holding her.
But she hasn’t consented.
“Do I have to pick you up and carry you?” I ask, close to her ear. “Will you kick and scream, love? I think I’d like it if you fought back.”
“Let me go.”
“I can’t let you do that. You’ve been trespassing in my library. Why, exactly?”
Her lips press together. Stubborn.
I inhale deeply, taking in her scent. There’s more than the flowery notes, though.
I can smell female arousal. It’s not only coming from her cunt.
I look to each side, to the hands I have pinned next to her head.
Her left hand is pressed against the thick spine of A Compiled History of Thoroughbreds in South America.
Her right hand is pressed against two thinner tomes which I don’t recognize.
It’s her right hand which smells sweet and salty.
I inhale deeply once more. My dick is uncomfortably hard.
“You were touching yourself,” I say.
“What?” She shakes her head in denial. “Obviously not, you have me trapped.”
“No. It must have been before I found you. Tonight. How many times did you get yourself off, love?”
“I—” Her face flashes between confusion and indignation. “That’s not—I’m not talking to you about that.”
What a fucking delight. I want to defile her. Drink her. Share her with Xander, even if the wanker doesn’t deserve to put a fingertip to her skin after lying to me.
“Let’s go, love.” I step back, but I keep hold of her wrist. Not because I’m afraid she’ll get away. I would easily catch her again. “No more running. Let’s go meet Xander, shall we?”
Autumn
I can’t breathe. Am I about to die?
Will’s hand is warm against mine. He’s not cold-blooded or dead. Another vampire myth, busted.
I really like how he’s holding my hand, too, which is stupid because he’s probably about to take me to their basement where they’ll drink my blood. I might die.
But at least I’ll die after having his strong hand firmly encasing mine, right? Bonus.
Maybe they’ll fuck me first, like they did with that other woman. I know I aroused him, so there’s a chance. I felt his hard cock when he pushed me against the books. And I know what that cock looks like. It turned me on.
And how mortifying that he started talking about how I touched myself. Did he see something? No. I think back to the way he inhaled so deeply. Shit. He smelled it.
My humiliation is complete.
I don’t want to die, even if I’m embarrassed enough to wish for oblivion.
And I’m still ridiculously turned on. There is seriously something wrong with me.
“Are you going to kill me?” I whisper.
He stops mid-stride and snaps his head to the side, alarmed. “What?”
“I just…are you?”
“No. Bloody fucking hell, we’re not going to kill you.”
I like his accent. I like what he’s just said even more, because I believe him. If he says they aren’t going to kill me, then they aren’t going to kill me. “Okay.”
“Why would you even think that?” he demands.
I’m not sure how to answer. He didn’t see me watching them last night. He doesn’t know that I know he’s a vampire.
But Xander knows. I may as well tell Will.
“I, um…I saw you. And Xander.”
He gives me a sly look. “Doing what, exactly?”
My face burns with what must be an epic blush. “You were, um, with someone? A woman?”
“Were we?” A faint smirk graces his lips.
How is he so wicked and so handsome at the same time? His brown hair looks like it must be permanently messy. And those blue eyes are fixed on mine as he waits for me to elaborate.
“I don’t—I don’t want to say anything more,” I say.
“Hmm.”
He resumes walking, and I keep pace, my hand in his.
“You saw us with a woman,” he finally says as we take the last set of stairs down to the basement. “Were we clothed?”
Something compels me to answer. “No.”
He leans past me. His breath hits my neck as he whispers in a low, raspy voice, “Did you see us bite her?”
I shiver and slam my mouth closed. I want to say more, I want to tell him exactly what I saw. But the way my body responds to his, unbidden, keeps me silent. I can’t give myself away. I have to be stronger than that.
We move through the dark basement. The lights remain off, but Will navigates us past tables and shelves without issue. Maybe he can see in the dark. I bet he can. He easily tugs the bookcase from the wall, revealing the secret entrance, and ushers me through.
“From your lack of surprise and the fact you were a little voyeur last night,” he says, “I gather you’ve already found this entrance to our home.”
There’s no chance for me to respond, because sitting on a couch off to the side is none other than Xander.
His short blond hair is not quite as unruly as Will’s.
It looks like it would be thick between my fingers.
His jaw tightens and he looks up, using one finger to mark his place in the book he holds.
“I see you’ve found our little mouse,” he says, his dark gaze flicking from me to Will.
“You,” Will says, pointing at him, “made me think I was going insane.”
Xander focuses on the place where Will’s fingers intertwine with mine. “We don’t keep mice as pets, Will. They’re vermin. They move in without invitation and nibble away at everything.”
“Please,” I say, my face hot again. Not with embarrassed arousal this time, but with pure shame. “I’m sorry. I know that staying here was wrong. I just…I don’t have anywhere else.”
“You cannot remain here,” Xander says. “It’s out of the question.”
I look between the two of them, from Xander’s angry expression to Will’s thoughtful one.
“She can stay tonight,” Will says.
Xander glares at him.
Will squeezes my hand. “What? You’re telling me we’ll throw this girl out onto the street at midnight? She can stay one night.”
“She’s already been here for, what, four nights? Five?”
I nod and look down.
“Christ, she is a scared little mouse.” Xander makes a scoffing sound. “And what, pray tell, are we going to do with her? We like our women submissive, not cowardly.”
I feel my hackles rise at the word cowardly. But maybe Xander isn’t wrong. I ran from home like a terrified rabbit, panicked and fearing Dale’s retribution and reach.
“She’s brave enough to ask sanctuary from two vampires,” Will says.
“It only means she’s more scared of what’s waiting for her out there.”
“Exactly.” Will stands taller. “I’m not going to put her back out there tonight, defenseless.”
I should be bothered that they’re speaking about me like this, like I don’t have a voice in what happens. But in this instance, I really don’t. This is their home, their library, and I’ve been squatting in it.
Xander frowns harder. “Well, we can’t fuck her. She’s not our type. We don’t do damsels in distress.”
Damn, that hurts. It shouldn’t hurt, but it does. I was turned on by this guy, but not anymore. He makes me feel so small.
“We’re not fucking her,” Will snaps. “We’re giving her a sofa to sleep on. Did you know she’s been curling up in the bloody cupboards?”
Xander is quiet for a moment, but his face betrays no emotion. He stands up, throws his book to the coffee table, and stalks away. Not turning around, he says two words: “One. Night.”