My Book Page 5

  “You keep saying things like that. It’s nonsense. Again, male, we’ve never met before. And I… I really should get going. This was a terrible idea.”

  Panic that could not be feigned gripped his face and he looked in agony as he tossed an arm across his middle. “Do not leave me, Rose. Do. Do not leave me. Please.”

  At that please he squeezed his eyes shut and he trembled violently.

  So violently that I thought for a second he might be growing ill. Terrified of losing him and too worried with sudden grief to wonder at that strange knot of terror flooding through my system I was back at his side in a blink. Sliding my arms around his shoulders and dragging him against me. He did not fight my pull, simply slumped into me with a heaving sigh as he turned his face into my breasts and his massive frame trembled silently against me.

  Shocked by his display, I ran my fingers through his hair. Crooning nonsense beneath my breath, not paying attention to what it was I was saying at first, until I heard myself murmuring things that made no bloody kind of sense to me.

  Things like…

  Never, my dark Prince. Always you will have my heart. Always I will return to you. Always you will be mine and I will be yours. Always.

  But that hadn’t even been the strangest part. Because I’d been speaking in a tongue I knew I did not know, nor should I be able to understand. And yet I had. It was some kind of ancient Gaelic.

  My heart thumped like a drum beat in my chest, and I might have given into the panic, except his hands were digging into my shirt and he’d turned on his hip and our mouths were so unbelievably close to one another. His breath licked over my mouth, and he smelled of wine and fruit and dark temptation and it was not him, but me that made the first move.

  With a hungry moan I stole his lips for my own and his entire body heaved with a dark violence that thrilled me endlessly. He wrapped me up in his arms and I wasn’t sure when we’d moved again, but I was lying down and my thighs were spread and he lay between me and was gently rocking into me even as our tongues and lips dueled as though we’d done this before. Countless times before.

  And in between feverish kisses he was whispering back to me in that strange tongue that I’d first spoken in and I understood it all.

  Evanora, Evanora, you are come home. I will love you for eternity. As I already have. I will always wait for you. I will never cease being yours. Only yours. Forever…

  I wasn’t sure where I found the will, but I was finally able to break away. In one lithe movement I was out from under him and up on my knees, hand clutching at my wildly beating heart as I gazed at him like a wolf that was ready to pounce and rend me limb from limb.

  “What is this?” I murmured heatedly. “You speak of another even while I am with you,” I hurtled the accusation with more pain in my voice than I’d intended there to be.

  He hung his head and the long shoulder-length strands of his dark hair hid his beautiful face from me.

  “Rose, you should go. I am not strong enough to resist you. You should go.”

  And that had been what I’d wanted to do just a second ago, but now I couldn’t seem to make myself move. “But.”

  “Now!” He growled and his face was a tight mask of anguish and pain and a vampire’s fury.

  And fear drove me to my feet. I raced from his room on feet like eagle’s wings, but I did not leave his manor, though I thought that perhaps I should have. I ran instead to my room and locked the door and I breathed against it, shocked. Body alive with sensations I’d never known before, and not scared at all but thrilled to my very core.

  Oh my gods, I’d liked his fire.

  No, I hadn’t liked it.

  I’d bloody loved it.

  With a soft moan of confusion I thumped my head against the doorframe hard before I slid down its side and curled my knees to my chest. Hugging them tight, I laid my cheek down and then I began to sob.

  I didn’t know why, only that something inside of me was scared, confused, and desperate.

  For him.

  I wasn’t at all sure I should have come here. I should leave. But the very thought of doing that felt like taking a blade to my soul.

  So I cried.

  Because that was all I knew to do.

  Chapter 4

  Dracula

  I heard her quiet sobs throughout the night and felt a killing madness whip through my bones. I wanted to hurt the thing that had dared to hurt her. But in this case that thing had been me.

  So I’d sat on the other side of the door, hand pressed to it, silently listening to her broken heart and damned myself for all eternity.

  I’d pushed her too far. And had very nearly lost her. Again.

  I’d done the same to Paul.

  When would I bloody learn?

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I bit down on my tongue and forced myself to remain. To listen to her agony, it was my penance. My due for forgetting. For letting my desperate emotions get the better of me.

  When morning finally broke I wasn’t sure whether she’d decide to leave or stay. But I gave her the space to decide that for herself and returned to my room the moment I heard her begin to stir.

  If she would leave me again, I could not watch it happen. Much as it pained me, I forced myself to remain locked in my room for at least a couple of hours. But once it neared nine, I knew I could no longer stay locked up. I’d go mad and pace a hole in the floor.

  Unlike most of my kind daylight did not bother me. I kept normal human hours for the most part, mainly because that was how the world around me operated. And because I knew how fond Evanora had always been of her quiet mornings. She and I had often watched the sunrise together.

  My heart was heavy as I descended the steps to the first floor, sensing she might leave me yet. So I was shocked to hear the rustle and rattle of pans and lids being flung around in the kitchen.

  Cocking my head, I scented the air. And smelled her spice instantly. Evanora had always smelled of her ancestral home, no matter the time or place or what she looked like now, she always smelled the same. Like wild honeysuckle and the dark tang of cloves. It was a scent completely unique only to her.

  I felt Giles come up behind me.

  “She stays?”

  He chuckled low. “The mistress has been struck by a fit of inspiration. She’s been at this an hour now. None has dared entered, she’s a whirling dervish of chaos. But oh the smells coming from within. It truly is Evanora, isn’t it, master? She’s returned to us?”

  My heart clenched and I nodded absentmindedly. “It would appear so, Giles.”

  He murmured appreciatively. “If it’s not too much of an importance I would just like to say, I’ve missed her food most of all, master.”

  I chuckled. Evanora’s skill in the kitchen had been legend through each of her lives. Always she was tied to food in one form or another. And always reaching the pinnacle of success in that chosen profession of hers.

  I’d never much cared for food until I’d fallen in love with hers. Now, I craved its return nearly as much as my butler.

  “Indeed, Giles. We all have.”

  I’d come down the steps with feet that felt heavy as lead, but as I moved toward the arched doorway, they now felt light as feathers. She’d stayed. This was different than the last time.

  Biting onto my lower lip and with a nest of snakes swarming my stomach, I pushed open the door.

  She instantly twirled on her heel, a blush rising to her pale cheeks and making her looking like a flower in bloom. Her ebony hair was down and hanging wild about her trim shoulders. Her flesh was paler than it had been last night, attesting to the fact that she’d gotten as little sleep as I had. She wore a loose flowing day dress covered in dark blue flower prints. The dress was slit to about mid-thigh and she was barefoot.

  She looked like a woman comfortable in her own home. I couldn’t begin to describe the sensations coursing through me. But shock was definitely at the helm of it.

  In her hand she held a
large cast-iron skillet. She’d always preferred them since the moment iron pans had become de rigueur, sometime around the sixteenth century.

  I blinked, quite certain that my brain most have broken and that it was simply my imagination that she’d stayed.

  “Rose?”

  Her tiny nostrils flared and her lips pursed into a thin, tight line. I fought to keep my lips from twitching. I knew that look. She was cross with me. It hadn’t happened often between us, more now than when we’d first been together, and as crazy as it made me sound I missed this. These little moments of normalcy that any couple shared.

  “You’re cross,” I stated the obvious.

  She slung a pan onto the stove with a graceful whip of her wrist. “Oh? Now, why would you get that idea, dark one?”

  My brows lifted. I didn’t know if she was remembering, or if it was just a common affectation for her to use with me, but that had always been my pet name when she was more prone toward hating me.

  I was starting to lose my battle with the blasted grin. Which she noticed, and which caused her dark eyes to practically gleam with quicksilver fury.

  “Do you mock me?” she hissed, as she puttered about the kitchen as though it weren’t her first time, but something she’d done countless times before.

  She opened the fridge door and began pulling out eggs, rich buttery cheeses, and fat strips of pork belly. Chives, onions, tomatoes, and truffles followed suit.

  Leaning against the island behind me, I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head. “Never, my dear. I should hope I’ve sense enough not to poke the sleeping dragon.”

  She rolled her eyes and with a flick of her wand was simultaneously dicing up all the vegetables at once. Invisible hands slicing through them evenly. She was working with the truffles, shaving them down into paper-thin slices.

  A flame popped on beneath the cast iron pan and bowls began to float down from cabinets.

  In some ways I felt like a child as I watched Rose work her hearth’s magick so effortlessly. Awed, even though this type of magick was child’s play for one such as her. For most of our lives she’d only ever been a human.

  “Why do you look at me like that?” she snipped, as she now grated the wedges of three different cheeses to create her own personal blend.

  “Like what?” I asked and she snorted.

  “You know I’m not falling for your innocent act.”

  A lopsided grin stole across the left side of my mouth. “Oh? Indeed. And what if I am an innocent, Rose? What if I have no idea what it is that you are going on about?”

  With a small growl, she twirled on me. In her hand she held two eggs.

  The invisible hands were still whipping up breakfast, the smell of sizzling bacon fat wafted all around me. I had the best cooks money could buy.

  But nothing, literally nothing in all the worlds, smelled like Evanora’s cooking. I didn’t often eat anymore, especially not when I slept, but even in those moments between our lives together when I was cursed to remain awake without her the one thing I almost always missed most was our shared repasts.

  Watching her eat and taking her proffered nibbles had been near to ecstasy for me. It’d been in those quiet, shared moments that much of our relationship had been built and nurtured.

  Brows furrowing, she turned her back to me. Making busy work as she often did. I was lulled into the repetitious sounds of her cracking eggs into the bowl.

  But in that silence I heard her speak. The words so low I might have missed them entirely if I’d not had such excellent hearing.

  “You hurt me last night.”

  My soul literally felt as though it’d just quivered inside me. Pain, sharp and tearing, cut through me and I clutched at my chest.

  “I’m sorry, little one,” I murmured thickly, voice full and pregnant with emotion I didn’t bother to hide.

  With anyone else I was the mask. I was the devil in a suit. Unflappable and unshakeable. But Evanora had long since breached my barriers, I could never be anything but my true self with her.

  Hanging her head she dropped her hands onto the counter. But even so the eggs continued to be beaten to a vibrant golden yellow.

  “Why am I here, Dracula?” she asked, voice shaky but stronger than it had been before.

  “I don’t understand what you’re meaning?” I answered honestly, because there were a hundred different ways I could answer that, except I wasn’t sure any of what I was thinking was what she was thinking.

  Finally she turned and she looked paler than she had when I’d first entered. Her skin was so ashen that her veins looked bright blue and green by comparison. My hands clenched and I wanted to take her into my arms.

  Admit to her that last night had been hell on me too.

  She frowned and shook her head before wrapping her arms around herself and I hoped I hadn’t screwed things up again. But I didn’t know what to do. Paul had been such an unmitigated disaster that I was snake bitten and terrified of choosing wrong again.

  My stomach ached and my heart physically hurt.

  To many in the supernatural community I was almost viewed as a god of sorts. Cold. Powerful. My exploits practically legend. But I was anything but that with Evanora. I was naught but a man. A man with ungodly strength and skills of seduction who became nothing but a mouse terrified of losing the one and only thing I’d ever really loved in all my long lives.

  “I want to fix the menu today, if I can,” she said dispassionately. Already turned back to what she’d been doing. Using a spatula she moved all of the bacon bits off to one corner of the pan, then she poured the egg batter in. There was a sizzle and then steam curled like dragon’s breath through the air.

  My ears felt like they were buzzing and I heard a loud rushing of water, but was really my blood coursing like a raging rapid through my veins. “What?”

  “I can’t cater an event that large. If you want me to set a menu for your party, that’s fine. But I don’t think it’s wise for me to remain on site. It’s quite unusual anyhow, most caterers don’t live on site. That’s why you have a cook.”

  “He’s fired.”

  Air quickly rushed past her lips as she turned to stare at me with humor. “Really? You’d sack the poor sod just like that?”

  I shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  She grinned. And though it didn’t quite reach her eyes, it was one of the loveliest sights I’d seen in ages.

  Rose was so very different from Paul. She seemed more effervescent. Alive. She was snarky and wonderful and soft in all the right places, but fiercely intelligent and gods above I loved her already.

  “That’s cruel, even for the dark one,” she said, but there was a glitter in her eyes that let me know she teased me.

  Was she as drawn to me as I was to her?

  This version of her seemed so different than the last few had been. In some ways I saw the mask she wore around others. I recognized her mannerisms because they were much like my own. Around others she was aloof and even at times quiet, but that didn’t mean she was shy. More like guarded.

  But she practically seemed to blossom around me. I was awed by how easy things felt between us this time. I’d meant to keep her at a distance, not open myself too quickly or completely to her until I was certain she was ready.

  There was a softness in her though that I’d not expected.

  I swallowed. A wave of dizziness swept through me. What if I did open myself up, just a little? What if I did trust that she was actually stronger this time, that my impressions might actually be correct and that it was fear keeping my tongue from revealing the truth of she and I?

  Would I come to regret it near as much as I did the disastrous kiss that’d led Paul directly into the arms of another and out of mine?

  She’d turned back to the stove a bit ago and was a whirling dervish as she cracked pepper from the mill and dusted her omelet with salt. She flourished the chives over the top and then sprinkled a giant mound of
cheese on top.

  I watched her wrap up the preparations before she extracted her wand and murmured a soft incantation beneath her breath. A veil of glittering silver fell over the aromatic breakfast, before vanishing in one final beam of dancing light.

  Sliding the omelet onto a plate, she picked it up and twirled. “Breakfast is ready. And then, Dracula, we really must speak. No more games, no more jokes.”

  I heard it.

  The finality of what she was speaking.

  Evanora had never left my side without first letting me know of what she had planned. Always keeping me apprised of her doings, and not out of a sense of duty, but of love. Because she never wished to cause me concern.

  I followed Rose out the kitchen door and into the small eating alcove. I had a massive dining hall in the manor, which was where I’d planned to host my ball, but she’d never been much for ostentatious fripperies as she’d called it. Evanora had always preferred the intimacy of my company alone.

  The alcove where we’d always eaten our shared meals was down a long hall that wound like a serpent’s coil and then came to a Y. The Y turned left toward our alcove and right toward the dining hall.

  She turned left and I wondered if she’d asked Giles or one of the other kitchen maids for directions. But deep down I doubted it. Rose did not like speaking in the presence of others. Only with me was she free to speak so freely.

  It’d always been thus with us. The curse wasn’t responsible for the malady of her tongue. But her stutter had never bothered me, I’d only ever felt special that she’d been able to speak so with me at all.

  Even had she not though; I’d still have loved her. That was a truth I never doubted.

  She sat the still steaming plate down, the bacon filled side faced me. There were no utensils. Walking over toward the sideboard I pulled open the top drawer and withdrew two forks.

  “Only one is needed,” she said, a note of haughty challenge in there.