Chapter 17
Dorian
Edie sleeps for an hour.
I don’t leave her side, content to watch her sleep.
Her chest continues to rise and fall in an even rhythm, her lips slightly parted, and her body at peace.
She is glorious in all her unguarded serenity, and I’m enthralled by her beauty, utterly addicted to her soft curves, obsessed with her sharp wit, floored by her trust in me.
She’s the complete package, and I’ve no idea how the fuck I’m ever going to let her go.
Everything about this is unfamiliar. I’ve never lingered with a woman after sexual intimacy.
As a vampire, sex often goes hand in hand with feeding, and once I’ve had my fill of blood and orgasms, any physical closeness ends. Always.
As a human, intimacy ended the moment sex was over. I never sought out comfort. Never offered it either. I took what I wanted and walked away.
I have lived selfishly, first as a man, then as a vampire—until now.
Since meeting Edie, I’ve only fed from donors, never once tempted to take them to bed. The idea of betraying her turns my stomach. Lately, I can’t even bring myself to drink from the source.
Edie stirs, her eyelids fluttering as she wakes up, pulling me from my thoughts. “Good sleep?” I ask, brushing away a stray strand of hair that has fallen across her face.
“Please don’t tell me I snored.”
“You sounded like a freight train,” I tease, surprised by my own playfulness.
She gives my chest a gentle shove. “So, you’re a comedian, too.”
My fingers wrap around her wrist, and I press a kiss against her pulse. “On occasion.”
“So, what happens now?” she asks, her gaze steady as I unfasten the button at her wrist and slide up her sleeve, my tongue following the delicate map of blue-green veins beneath her skin.
“It’s almost midnight. I should take you home,” I say.
“Are you worried I’m going to turn into a pumpkin?”
“I’m not worried you’ll turn into anything,” I say, tracing the crook of her elbow with my tongue before letting her arm fall gently. “But if you stay, I might have to sample some pumpkin spice.”
She laughs, shifting beside me so we’re lying chest to chest. “Can I ask you something first?”
“Of course,” I say, not quite ready to let her go just yet.
“The other day I took Nina and Elizabeth to the Scottsdale Art Gallery, and they were showing artwork by a woman named Basilia Hallward…” I force myself not to react as she searches my gaze.
“She’s the same artist of the paintings you have displayed in your home.
The owner of the Grayhaven Estate donated them to the gallery.
According to a website Elizabeth found, you’re the last living heir. ”
“You seem surprised,” I remark, guarding my expression.
“A little, but that wasn’t the most interesting thing.”
“Oh?”
“On the website, there is a painting of Basilia and her husband, Dorian Gray, a man who has a remarkable resemblance to you.”
Fuck. I flinch, but if she notices, she says nothing.
“Well, you know what they say. Everyone has a doppelganger, perhaps I’m his?” I reply with a shrug, hoping she lets this conversation go. I’ve no idea who the fuck put the website up, and I make a mental note to get it shut down the second I’ve dropped Edie home.
“Her paintings felt so heartbreakingly sad,” she continues, “Yet in that portrait with her husband, she looked truly happy, despite what the gallery said about her.”
“What did the gallery say about her?”
“That she was emotionally unstable, and she died tragically. Elizabeth thought she remembered you saying that she was an old acquaintance…” Her voice trails off as she laughs softly. “Of course, she must’ve misheard.”
“I’d be the oldest man on Earth if that were true,” I reply with another forced grin, hoping she can’t sense how uneasy I’m feeling.
“The most attractive, oldest man on Earth.” She pauses, searching my face. “Do you know much about Basilia? As I said, her paintings are exquisite but terribly melancholy, and I do wonder what the gallery meant by her being emotionally unstable. Do you know how she died?”
“Why does this matter to you?”
Edie shrugs. “You haven’t been very forthcoming about your life or how you came to own this club and the hotel, so maybe if you shared something about your family’s history, it would give me a sense of who you really are.”
“Ask me anything you want to know about my business, and I’ll tell you what I can,” I offer.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to hear about your organisation,” she says, lifting a brow. “Perhaps we should start with the past and work our way up to the present.”
Realising Edie isn’t going to let this go, I nod, forcing myself back to a time I haven’t thought about in centuries.
Keeping my voice even, I say, “Basilia and Dorian married young. She was eighteen, he was twenty-two. In the early years of their marriage, he was infatuated with her. She was beautiful, sweet, and everything he wanted. But Dorian loved beautiful things and soon found his attention wandering—”
“I can guess where this is going,” Edie says.
I nod, masking my truth behind the story of a supposed ancestor. “He chased other women, leaving her alone for days. Sometimes he even brought them back to their home.”
“That’s just cruel.”
“Yes, it is,” I reply, as an odd, sickly feeling churns my stomach. I’ve done many terrible things. Treating Basilia with such contempt was one of the worst.
“It was bad enough I knew about Robert’s infidelity, but to witness it? Honestly, I think I would’ve committed murder if Robert had done that to me. ”
“It would’ve been warranted.”
“Is that what they meant about her being emotionally unstable?”
“I assume so.” It’s not something I ever passed onto the gallery and I wonder who had, given no one but me, truly knew Basilia. A thread of unease spreads through me, but I push it aside for the moment.
“So her husband gets off scot-free, and she’s left being remembered as emotionally unstable. That’s utter bullshit.” Edie shakes her head, anger billowing off her. “Why didn’t she just leave him?”
“Divorce wasn’t an option for Basilia. Not in those days. The shame would’ve been too much to bear.”
“That was why all her paintings were a view through that window, that’s why they all seem so sad, because she couldn’t leave him, because she was trapped.”
“Yes.”
“And her death?”
Reaching for Edie, I brush my fingers against her temple, the same way I did when I found Basilia’s body in her bedroom that day, the floor slick with her blood. “Suicide.”
“That’s so tragic,” she whispers.
“It is,” I acknowledge, realising why my stomach is so unsettled. I feel guilty.
Over the years, I’ve smothered any guilt I might’ve felt with hate towards my wife for what she did to me. Every now and then, like today, that guilt rises to the surface like oil in water, and I’m forced to face the part I played in her unhappiness and subsequent death.
“What happened to Dorian?”
Flicking my gaze away, I exhale a shaky breath.
I still remember the vines appearing on my skin and the sharp, sudden sting as the thorny barbs impaled my flesh.
I remember the searing, white-hot pain as every single cell inside my body reformed into something else, something barbaric, monstrous.
I remember how my skin melted, the sun’s rays burning every inch of me.
I remember the first sharp sting of my fangs extending in my gums, and the utter bloodlust raging in my veins.
I remember Sybil’s screams of fear that continued as I dragged her into the house, seeking shade from the sun.
I remember the uncontrollable bloodlust and the moment I buried my fangs in Sybil’s neck.
I remember the moment she died in my arms, and the strange urge to feed her my blood, bringing her back to life moments later, condemning her too.
“Dorian?” Edie questions, her fingers feathering across my arm.
“Eventually, he died too.” My voice cracks, and I clear my throat, burying the guilt and the pain of those memories deep inside, back where they belong.
“You’re upset,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. I had no idea that talking about this would cause such a reaction. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“That’s all in the past now. Some things are better left there,” I say, meeting her eyes as I gently guide her onto her back.
I lower my mouth to her neck, lips grazing her pulse, drawing in her scent as I try to lose myself in her embrace and forget the weight of my sins, if only for a moment.
The truth is, I haven’t thought about Basilia for a long time.
I’ve locked those memories away, refusing to confront them, but somehow, with Edie, confessing feels like a strange kind of relief.
Edie’s arms encircle me, her heartbeat steady against my chest as her hands trace gentle patterns across my back. The comfort is unfamiliar, undeserved, yet I allow myself to sink into it.
“Sometimes I think familial trauma can be passed on,” she whispers, caught up in the moment just as I am. “Like a disease infecting our veins, informing every decision we make.”
She pauses as I nuzzle closer, not willing to admit how close to the truth she is. “How so?” I ask.
“My father left when I was a teenager. He ran off with another woman. It left us all devastated. It almost broke my mum and had a lasting effect on my sister and me. My mother told us after he left that his father did the same to him as a child, repeating the same pattern of behaviour.”
“Your father isn’t in your life now?” I ask.
“No. We’ve not seen him for years. Looking back, I think I married Robert because he was the first person outside of my sister and mother who promised to love me forever.
I forgave him over and over again because I didn’t want to give up on us.
I didn’t want to be the one to leave as my father had, and his father before him.
I stupidly believed my love would be enough, that if I could be the right person for him, he’d stop having affairs, he’d stay. I was wrong, of course.”
“I’m sorry, Edie. I’m sorry he broke your heart,” I mutter.