He yanked me closer, his iron grip in stark contrast to the brush of his lips against my forehead.
“On the contrary, I’m reminding you that it will never happen.” I tried to wrench away and his other hand snapped up, tightening on my hair until I couldn’t look away from his relentlessly piercing gaze. “I would never harm you, but until you’ve learned to use your abilities wisely, I will continue to strip you of them as fast as they return.”
“You have no right.”
Something other than anger sharpened my words. Deep down, I was also afraid. Didn’t he see that he was crippling our marriage? We already had different backgrounds and a six-hundred-year age difference to overcome; how did he think we’d make it if he kept insisting that my opinion didn’t matter about my own life? I might have put myself in hypothetical danger last night, but with all his enemies, Vlad put himself in real danger every time he left the house, yet you didn’t see me expecting him to become a recluse. And sure, as a former prince Vlad was used to being obeyed, but I thought he’d learned how to compromise in our relationship—
“You gave me the right,” he breathed against my lips, “when you made me admit that I loved you.”
At those words, I remembered what Maximus had said the last time I saw him. I love Vlad and I’d gladly die for him. But whenever he loves something, he ends up destroying it. He can’t help it. It’s just his nature.
At the same time, my hated inner voice crowed, I TOLD you it would never work between you two!
Vlad released me, walking out of our room without another word. I let him go, fighting to get control over my wildly swinging emotions. I wanted to go after him, but he’d made it clear that he wouldn’t change his mind and he wasn’t even close to being sorry, so what was the point?
After he left, I stared at the wedding ring on my hand, refusing to believe I’d made a mistake. Despite his infuriating act, I still loved Vlad and he loved me. Not so long ago, that was all I wanted out of life. Now that I had it, I needed to make it work without surrendering my will, identity or abilities.
It wouldn’t be easy. Vlad had survived for hundreds of years by being ruthless and calculating. No wonder he treated our marriage like a war he had to win. Guess I should’ve expected what he’d done, not that I intended to stand for it. My abilities were part of me, and Vlad couldn’t just decide to rip out the parts of me he didn’t like. I couldn’t do the same to him, which was why both of us would have to compromise if we wanted our marriage to last.
Still, how did you show the world’s biggest control freak that the secret to lasting love meant giving up control? I didn’t know, but I intended to find out.
Chapter 4
I sat next to Vlad in his luxurious private aircraft. Instead of holding his hand to make sure I didn’t accidentally short-circuit the plane’s electrical system, I wore specialized rubber gloves. We hadn’t touched at all since his domineering stunt three days ago. Compromise Lesson One: Pull a dick move, and your dick gets denied. Every woman knew that, and now, so did the vampire sitting next to me.
If his new abstinence was bothering him, he didn’t show it. In fact, it might be messing with my emotions more than his. I’d gone to bed the past three nights in the ugliest pajamas I could find; Vlad walked naked from the shower, and with the size of his bedroom, that walk was longer than a model’s runway. It gave me plenty of time to see the steam rising from his hard, heated flesh as the drops clinging to him evaporated, plus see how his hair looked wilder and darker when wet, and don’t get me started on the way he’d look at me as he slid into bed. If my ugly pajamas were a proclamation of “you can’t touch this,” his challenging, sensual gaze practically screamed “you know you want to touch this.”
Yeah, I did, but I had to focus on the big picture. If Vlad thought a few days of flashing his skin—glistening when wet, highlighting those ripped muscles, hollows and sinews while that steam reminded me of how hot he felt deep inside . . . dammit, focus!—would be enough to make me forget what he’d done, he was wrong. Abstinence was merely the first step in my plan. Compromise Lesson Two involved Vlad doing something he didn’t like for the greater good of our marriage. I didn’t know what yet, but I’d figure it out.
Hopefully soon, because Lesson One sucked.
In Romanian, the pilots announced that we were about to land. I glanced out the window, seeing mostly darkness below. Wasn’t Paris called the city of lights?
“Why the sudden trip to Paris?” I asked in a casual tone, as if I hadn’t been wondering this for the past few hours.
“Not Paris, Payns,” he said, enunciating the word more clearly than he had when he first told me we were going to France. “I’m looking for someone and I believe this is where he is.”
“Szilagyi?” I guessed before logic told me it couldn’t be.
An eye roll preceded his response. “If I thought he were here, would I have brought you?”
No, of course not. If he thought I was too reckless to search for Szilagyi’s people among his self-proclaimed allies, Vlad certainly wouldn’t bring me to his long-awaited showdown with his enemy. I stifled a snort. It’s like he’d forgotten all about the times I’d saved my own butt through my abilities, starting with how we’d met.
After a bumpy landing, the plane taxied to a stop. When the door opened, I was surprised to see we were in a small clearing in the middle of a field. Payns must not have an airport, but wasn’t there somewhere else we could have landed? When the pilots immediately switched the plane’s lights off, I understood. Vlad didn’t want anyone, even a local control tower, to learn about his visit tonight.
“Stay here,” Vlad told the pilots as he descended the steps built into the plane’s door. I followed after him, not speaking until we were too far away for the pilots to hear.
“Who are you trying to find?”
Vlad’s didn’t look my way, nor did his long strides falter, but I caught a glimpse of a quick, hard smile. “Maximus.”
“Maximus?” I repeated, disbelief raising my voice an octave. “Why? And why here?” I added in a softer tone, looking at the farmlands surrounding us.
Now Vlad did turn toward me, his smile becoming jaded. “This is where he’s from. He’s been thrown out of my line and most of his friends won’t speak to him out of fear of angering me. When people have nowhere else to go, they usually go home.”
He hadn’t answered my first question. With Vlad, that wasn’t an oversight. I shivered. Maximus had been his oldest friend, yet months ago, he’d betrayed Vlad by repeatedly lying to him. Worse, he’d done it over me. The only reason Maximus wasn’t a pile of bones was because I’d extracted a promise from Vlad not to kill him, then used Maximus’s freedom as my “bride price.”
If Vlad was looking for him, he still thought they had unfinished business, and that didn’t bode well. My only hope was that Maximus was nowhere near this rural slice of France—
“What are you doing here?” a harsh voice demanded.
Ha! my inner voice sneered. You lose again!
I turned around, seeing a tall, thickly muscled man next to the river that ran along the edge of the crops. Maximus’s blond hair was shorter, but the rest of him looked the same. The wariness in his gray gaze was certainly familiar. He’d given me the same look the last time I saw him, when he predicted doom for my marriage.
“I had an insatiable craving for turnips,” Vlad replied mockingly. So that was the field we were in. Then his voice hardened. “I came to see you, of course.”
Maximus glanced down at himself and let out a short laugh. “I suppose if you were here to kill me, I’d already be on fire.”
“Yes,” Vlad almost purred. “But I made her a promise. She’s here to witness that I can keep it.”
Some of the chill left my body. Vlad was known for keeping his word, but I couldn’t imagine why he’d want to seek Maximus out. He’d barely been able to keep himself from killing him the last time he saw him. Then again, that might h
ave been because Maximus had told him we’d had sex. We hadn’t, but Vlad hadn’t known that. What he had known was that Maximus kept telling me he thought Vlad had been behind an attempt on my life, and thus I shouldn’t tell him I’d survived the gas line explosion.
You know. That old bro spat.
“I guess I should invite you inside, then,” Maximus said, sweeping his hand toward a ramshackle structure near the river’s edge. I’d call it a stone barn, except it smelled like old fish instead of hay.
I kept my nose from wrinkling out of sheer will. “You live here?” I asked carefully.
Maximus threw me a sardonic smile. “Not as nice as what you’re used to, I know.”
My chin rose. “I lived in an old RV with a fellow carnie for years, remember? Vlad’s the billionaire, not me.”
Vlad let out a derisive noise. “This hovel and her RV are palaces compared to some of the places I’ve lived, so if we’re finished with the poverty pissing contest, I have business to discuss.”
Maximus held open the door and we entered. Inside, it was slightly less decrepit, though the floor had patches of dirt poking through the stone near the front. Water was visible through the back, but that looked to be deliberate, as if part of the house had been built on top of the river. Maybe this used to be the caretaker’s home for an ancient water wheel. Since it looked as old as Maximus, it was possible.
“No wonder you’re not answering cell messages or e-mails,” Vlad commented. “I doubt there’s service here.”
Maximus shrugged. “There might be. I didn’t bring anything electronic, so I don’t know.”
The interior room had a table, but there was only one chair. Both men seemed to expect me to take it. I remained standing, still racking my brain to figure out why we were here.
Vlad didn’t waste time revealing it. “I want you to infiltrate Szilagyi’s operation to spy for me.”
I don’t know who looked more shocked, me or Maximus. “Him? Why?” I sputtered.
Vlad’s coolly appraising gaze never left the blond vampire across from him. “Szilagyi has managed to stay one step ahead of me because he keeps surprising me. I never expected him to successfully fake his own death, let alone wait three hundred years to exact his revenge, yet here we are. Quite frankly, he’s outwitted me because he’s using my knowledge of him against me.”
A muscle twitched in Maximus’s jaw. “And you think you can do the same to him with me?”
Vlad smiled with the same friendliness that usually meant someone was about to die. “Everyone knows I would never forgive someone who betrayed me, and every time I’ve cut someone off from my life, it’s been permanent. Who then would believe I’d offer forgiveness and reinstatement to the man who lied to me while attempting to seduce my wife?” An elegant snort. “No one, especially not the enemy who knows me so well, he’s been able to predict most of my actions before this point.”
I had to admit, I had a hard time believing it. Vlad’s arrogance went hand in hand with his actions—case in point, the current strain in our marriage—but in offering this to Maximus, Vlad was murdering his own ego. He was right: Szilagyi would never suspect that of him. He knew Vlad too well.
My hopes began to lift. Maybe, Vlad was closer to learning how to compromise than I realized. This was practically him completing Step Two, in fact.
But still . . . “How will Maximus find Szilagyi? We sure haven’t been able to. Plus, even if he does, why would Szilagyi let Maximus close enough to learn anything useful, even if he doesn’t suspect him of being a traitor?”
“All my enemies are rooting for Szilagyi,” Vlad said shortly. “There will be plenty of people for Maximus to express his interest to, and one of them will relay it to Szilagyi. Since he recently lost his two best spies, he’ll be keen to recruit someone who knows my operations as well as Maximus.”
Okay, true, but that left the other thing no one seemed to want to talk about. “If he gets caught, Szilagyi will kill him.”
Vlad glanced at the ruined structure around us. “And how tragic it would be for Maximus to leave all this behind.”
“This isn’t all I have,” Maximus said, his expression changing from shock to defensiveness.
“Yes, but you aren’t touching the rest of it, are you?” was Vlad’s instant response. “Instead, you’re punishing yourself by staying in the same pile of rocks you went off to war to avoid when you were human. I’m offering you a better way to atone for your betrayal.”
“Why?” The word was so soft, I almost didn’t hear it. “You could find another way to defeat Szilagyi. Why are you really offering me this?”
Vlad said nothing for a long moment. At last, he shrugged. “Because of my promise to Leila, I can’t kill you, so I may as well get some use out of you being alive.”
I sighed at the ruthless assessment. Maximus didn’t share my dismay. Instead, his mouth twitched into a shadow of a smile.
“Now I believe your offer is real.”
“And are you accepting it?” Vlad asked, his emerald-ringed gaze never leaving his former friend’s.
Maximus let that twitch slide into a smile that looked anticipatory and relieved at the same time.
“Oh, yes.”
Chapter 5
Gretchen slid her plate away with a groan. “For creatures that only drink blood, your people can cook,” she told Vlad. “It’s their fault I’ve gained five pounds since I’ve been here.”
“Nine,” he replied blandly.
Gretchen’s eyes narrowed. “Mind reader,” she muttered.
I suppressed my smile. Vlad didn’t. He flashed a wicked grin at Gretchen.
“Right. That’s how I knew.”
“How’s Dad?” I asked to change the subject.
My sister gave a final glower at Vlad before she answered. “His knee’s been bothering him, but he refuses to let anyone look at it. Says he’ll wait until we’re home and he can see a living doctor, which is stupid, right?”
She raised her voice until she was yelling the last few words. I winced, both at the assault on my supernaturally sensitive hearing and the reason behind it. Gretchen had run out to see us when we arrived at the lovely Tuscan house Vlad had hidden them in, but my father stayed in his room. He didn’t join us for dinner, either, yet he was listening. Gretchen didn’t need super senses to know that and neither did I.
Vlad caught my gaze, his brow rising. I shook my head. No, I didn’t want him to forcibly heal my father’s knee, just like I refused to use my new mesmerizing powers to make him forget how much he hated my turning into a vampire. Hugh Dalton would have to come to terms with that on his own. If that meant we didn’t speak for a while . . . well. It wouldn’t be the first time my father and I had been estranged.
“How much longer do we have to hide out here?” Gretchen asked, giving up on my dad coming out and answering her taunt. “This place is better than Romania, but one day, I’d like to quit playing hide-and-seek and get on with my life.”
I winced hearing her give voice to my guilt over their circumstances. “I know, and I’m sorry. We’re working on it.”
She blew out a sigh and then gave Vlad a speculative look. “It’s Szilagyi, isn’t it? He’s not dead after all.”
“Why would you say that?” Vlad asked, his tone dangerously silky. We hadn’t told her. Had one of his staff been loose lipped?
She huffed. “You’re Dracula, so everyone knows your enemies don’t live long, but my dad and I are still locked up, so whoever’s yanking your chain must be the king of badasses. The only person I know who fits that description is the same old vampire you couldn’t kill before.”
Vlad’s nostrils flared while I stared at my sister in disbelief. First calling him Dracula, then bringing up Szilagyi successfully faking his death twice? The nine pounds Gretchen had gained must’ve come from her new brass balls.
“You are correct,” Vlad said, the words barely a hiss. “That is why staying hidden is your only hope. If I’ve had
trouble killing Szilagyi, what do you think your survival chances are without my protection?”
“Zero,” she said with a sigh. Then her mouth quirked as she looked at me. “Guess it’s a good thing you’re already dead, sis. Harder to kill you a second time, right?”
“Right,” I said, my voice catching as Vlad’s feelings briefly crashed through his shields, searing my subconscious with echoes of rage and a darker, stronger emotion. To say he didn’t like remembering how I’d died was an understatement.
To punctuate that point, Vlad stood. “I’m sure you would enjoy time alone with your sister before we leave in the morning. Gretchen”—a brief nod—“good night.”
I stared at Vlad as he left. Part of me wanted to go after him, but I hadn’t seen my sister in weeks and who knew when I’d get to spend time with her again? Our trip to Payns gave us an opportunity to swing by Tuscany, but I couldn’t visit often. We had to make sure Szilagyi didn’t get a hint of my family’s location, plus, with their war heating up, Vlad would rather I never left the lavish fortress he called home.
Besides, when Vlad was in a mood, sometimes it was better to leave him alone. At least for a little while.
I forced a smile as I turned back to Gretchen. “Let’s finish catching up over dessert. I think I smell someone hand-firing crème brûlées in the kitchen . . .”
Vlad’s Tuscan house was small compared to his Romanian castle, but it still had six bedrooms and a servants’ wing. After a couple hours chatting, Gretchen went to bed because she couldn’t contain her yawns. Unlike me, she wasn’t used to being awake all night. It was easy to figure out which of the remaining rooms Vlad was in. Even if I couldn’t tell by scent, I could feel him. His aura filled the house, the power he gave off ominous in its potency even when it also felt relaxed.
Like a sleeping dragon, I thought, spying him through the half-open door at the end of the hall. Vlad was in a chair, his long legs stretched out on a nearby ottoman. He didn’t stir as I came inside the room. He must have fallen asleep while using his tablet. It was still open on his lap, his hands resting on the attachable magnetic keyboard as if he’d drifted off in the middle of typing something.