Chapter Seventeen #2
“But you were funny, always searching for ways to rock the boat and push buttons, but never revealing your hand. Then, shortly after that, your father had a heart attack, and I turned him.” Stark rubbed his chin.
“But not because your uncle begged me. I did it for myself. I feared that this tiny rascal of a girl would cease her shenanigans and leave me without my daily dose of entertainment.” He shrugged.
“I’d hoped to save your father and thus preserve your innocent, but very wicked, little personality. It was not in the stars.”
So Daddy had been turned into a vampire because Stark saw me as the pubescent Jackass?
I was about to tell Stark how crappy a reason that was, but he added, “Then after your father’s ‘death,’ I observed as your sorrow changed you. I began watching over you, fearing you would not survive the pain. I believed you might…kill yourself.”
I frowned. “The thought never crossed my mind. Not once. I had Mamma, Maybell, and Uncle Jimmie there for me. But I don’t get why you’re bringing this up.” These memories were beyond painful. “Did you plan to stop me?”
“No, woman.” He scoffed. “Vampires don’t do charity.”
He’s the worst. “Then why?”
He didn’t answer, but my mind supplied a few scenarios. “You were going to feed on me.” Waste not, want not.
“Partially. Yes.”
“You were thinking of turning me?” I guessed.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
“But I was just a kid.”
“In my day, an unmarried fifteen-year-old was considered a spinster if not already promised to someone. Of course, humans only lived to forty on average. Nevertheless, I thought if you were intent on ending your life, I could at least put you to work. Perhaps as a clown or maid.”
“What?”
“For your father,” he said sternly. “Not for me. I have no need of a clown, and there are no shortages of slaves in my home.”
Stark truly saw nothing wrong with this plan?
“All right.” I lifted my chin with a big inhale, preparing for whatever hard truth might spill next from his immortal mouth. “We’ve established that you knew who I was the night you saved me. But why were you there in the first place?”
He cleared his throat. “I did not lie about that. I suspected you were my Anna.”
“Why?” He’d watched me for years. Shudder. It meant that he’d seen me in the wild, making a fool of myself with my first boyfriend, Thomas. He’d watched me barely graduate high school and settle for a life so small that most of the world would never know I existed.
“Besides the fact that after you turned twenty-four, your scent became identical?” he said.
That had to be a coincidence. Or in his head. My scent, if anything, had mellowed out in my twenties. No more raw-onion, teenage-hormonal stink. “Yes. Besides me smelling less like a taco.”
“I saw her—in every movement of your hands, every smile you offered your intoxicated customers, and every roll of your eyes when your uncle allowed a disease-ridden rooster to prance upon your tables, defecating and cock-a-doodle-dooing.”
“Barney does not have a disease.” Though, he occasionally left behind a few rooster cookies. “But now you know I’m not Anna. Reincarnation doesn’t exist.”
“India would disagree.”
“Stark, I’m not her,” I said firmly. “I don’t make vampires cry when I walk into a room. I am not a martyr or selfless saint.”
“What if I said you were?”
He’d already admitted that I wasn’t. Then again, Stark lied about everything. “I’d need proof.”
He rubbed his chin. “That would require trust.”
“I’m not the one with the problem in that department, mister pants on fire.”
He glanced down. “I fail to see what my jeans have to do with it, but you have lied, too. You have also called for my execution on TikTok. I have weirdos with green hair stalking my mansion at this very moment.”
Oh, boohoo. “The hunter being hunted. How’s it feel?”
“Like DoorDash for vampires.” He licked his lips. “I was not complaining.”
“But you were just comp…never mind.” I sneered. “You’re the worst.”
“Worst. Best. It is all a matter of perspective; however, I am willing to tell you the truth about who you are—what you are—if you are willing to be truthful with me. What did you mean when you said ‘we lost our one chance’? What were you up to?”
This felt like a big trick. He had no intentions of building trust. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be inside a soundproof room. “You need to earn my trust first. Not the other way around.”
“So you admit you are hiding something.”
“I admit nada, Mr. Vampire.”
“I will give you one chance to come clean with me, Masie,” he growled.
I felt a threat coming. “There you go. Building that trust.”
“You kissed another man.”
“After you kidnapped me! Drugged me! And made me think I was a vampire!” I yelled, coming unhinged.
“I was helping you!” he roared.
“I am not a child!” I roared back.
“You are mine.”
“I am mine,” I retorted.
“Very well.” He stood. “I gave you an opportunity to come clean of your own volition.” He walked over to the wall and pressed one of the black satin buttons. The cloth panel popped open.
“I’m not drinking any more of your vampire-brain smoothies, Stark,” I said, thinking there was a minifridge in there.
“No more moonshine for you.” He pushed on the wall again, and another panel opened. Inside were shelves and hooks displaying every sized dildo imaginable along with whips, chains, and leather straps.
My stomach dropped to the floor. “If you come near me with any of those—”
Stark rushed at me in a blur, and before I knew it, my wrists were handcuffed to rings on both sides of the bed. I hadn’t noticed them before.
“Stark, no. Don’t do this.”
“Your choice. Not mine. Though, I will enjoy it all the same.” He chained my ankles, over my jeans, to something at the foot of the bed in each corner, basically leaving my legs open.
“Stark. No.”
“I. Gave. You. A chance.” He stared down, a wicked gleam in his now dark eyes.
“If you rape me, I’ll kill you.”
He laughed. “Did I not tell you once? Rape is very unsportsmanlike for vampires.”
“Then let me go!”
“Not until you come clean. What are you hiding from me?” he snarled.
I glared at him, silently wishing for a meteor to crash through the ceiling and evaporate him.
“All right. But understand,” he said, “you brought this upon yourself.” Stark untied my tennis shoes.