A Midsummer Night's Scream (The Dulcie O'Neil Series Book 7) (20 page)

The smug smile he’d formerly worn began to vanish until it was a mere hint on his full lips. He stared at me, without saying anything for a few seconds, just appearing to be very amused. He glanced up at the painting again before sighing audibly. It was a silly thing to do, really, because he couldn’t sigh, or breathe, or burp, or anything else that required a respiratory system; well, one that worked anyway.

“I fear our fate would be as star-crossed lovers, Sweet,” he replied before turning to face me again. “Our romance would be thus immortalized, like Romeo and Juliet, Lancelot and Guinevere, Pyramus and Thisbe, Tristan and Isolde …”

“Shrek and Princess Fiona?”

“We would rewrite the annals of forbidden love,” he continued, obviously ignoring me. “And there would be countless books written about us, and songs composed in our honor.” As a dreamy expression glazed his eyes, he insisted on staring at me, unblinking. “Dulcie and Bram: a love so tragic and pure, doomed for all eternity.”

“Sounds catchy,” I said with a grimace. “Maybe you can sell it to Dreamworks.”

“I agree, Sweet; but fear not, our day will come, or our night, as the case may be,” he finished. I figured there was really no point in me even being present for this conversation considering he was ignoring everything that came out of my mouth. But, like it or not, I still had to sit and tolerate it. That is, if I ever expected to begin the conversation I really wanted to have.

“
We
are an impossibility,” I corrected him.

“Will you deign to explain to me why?” he inquired, his lips constricting.

“It’s obvious, Bram,” I answered, shaking my head because we’d just had a conversation, albeit a very dramatic one, but a conversation on this topic all the same. My patience was quickly thinning.

“Perhaps it is obvious to you, but not to me. It never has been obvious to me,” he responded coldly before crossing his arms over his broad chest. He looked at me with visible displeasure.

“Didn’t you just try to pitch me a movie about it?” I asked. Maybe Bram had lost a few of his marbles during those three hundred years. When he didn’t respond, I sighed and figured I’d have to spell it out for him. “Didn’t we both just agree that our job descriptions automatically preclude us from having any relationship other than a professional one?”

“Pah!” he responded before waving his hand at me and hastily dismissing my point.

“Um, wasn’t that what you were just waxing poetic about?” I asked, now feeling completely lost.

“No!” he said before glaring at me. “You and I would be star-crossed lovers because I am vampire and you are fae,” he explained, shrugging like I should have known all along. “Such an arrangement should never work as I want to devour you as much as I want to …
devour you
,” he said, and his eyes traveled down to my bust before dropping lower to the junction of my thighs.

“Devour me?” I asked with a hiccup of a laugh. “Hey, I’m up here!” I waved at him when his attention stayed on my happy place too long.

Eventually his eyes returned to my face. “I long to lose myself inside you, and become one with you.”

“Okay, Prince Charming, I get it,” I grumbled.

“Our careers in this life, with you as a Regulator and I as the Head of Crossbones, although on opposite ends of the morality spectrum, could never keep us apart,” he replied. “They are trivial obstacles when compared to what could be our unending bliss.”

“Hmm,” I started, shaking my head. “Funny, but I don’t see it that way. At all.”

“Let us cast our caution to the wind! Let us ignore fortuna and the voice of destiny! Let us tempt fate, and see where it will take us!” he heartily suggested, suddenly wide-eyed and hopeful. I was waiting for him to burst into song and dance.

“I kinda think this is our destiny, Bram,” I answered with a shrug.

“What is our destiny?”

“This moment right now.”

“What does that mean?”

I shrugged again, all the while knowing he wasn’t going to like what was about to come out of my mouth. “Maybe we are exactly where we were always meant to be,” I replied, sensing the truth of my words. “Have you ever thought that?”

“I do not believe we are pawns of fate,” he answered immediately, even shaking his head.

“Because you don’t want to believe it,” I scolded him and then added, “And on that note, I believe we have exhausted this conversation.”

Bram narrowed his eyes at me, and a split second later, he was standing right in front of me. He stood so close, I could feel his cold breath on the tip of my nose. His unexpected appearance startled me so much that my breath caught in my throat and it was all I could do to swallow it.

“Confess that you feel nothing for me,” he whispered. I was vaguely aware of his hands when they encircled my upper arms, but I wasn’t sure if the icy temperature of his skin or having such close contact was responsible for the goose bumps that appeared up and down my arms.

I immediately closed my eyes. The last thing I wanted was to fall victim to his power and influence. “I could never allow myself to feel anything for you, Bram,” I admitted almost sadly. “Even though you don’t possess a moral compass, I do.” When he didn’t respond, I swallowed hard but forced myself to continue. “But all of this is a moot because I’m in love with someone else.”

He was quiet for a few seconds, and I wondered what he was thinking. I didn’t dare open my eyes to look and see if I could get a clue, though, because I didn’t trust him.

“You fear my eyes,” he said.

“Yes,” I admitted, continuing to squeeze mine shut tight. “I don’t want an instant replay of the last time we got into this situation.”

“Perhaps that is wise. I doubt seriously if I would have the strength of mind I exhibited then.” He tightened his hold on my arms briefly before releasing them altogether. At the sound of his footsteps, I opened my eyes and noticed he’d retreated a few steps. His back was now to me and he was again facing the painting.

I could finally breathe a little more easily.

“I must admit how I hate this constant combat in my mind where you are concerned,” he said, and his voice was deep and low. “It exhausts and fatigues me. Sometimes, I fear it will be my undoing.”

“I think you’re being a little bit dramatic, Bram,” I interrupted.

“Not in the least,” he replied without bothering to turn around. He was quiet for a few seconds that seemed to drag on because I was at a loss for what to say or do. In general, I wasn’t adept at dealing with emotional situations. And Bram was probably the most emotional man I’d ever encountered. I didn’t know how to speak his language.

“Never have I known such sorrow as what I endured at your father’s library when your life slipped away and I held you in my arms. The heartache, the pain …” he started.

“Yes, well,” I interrupted before clearing my throat. I wasn’t at all comfortable with this conversation. I could feel sweat beginning to bead on my lower back and forehead. “I survived that ordeal, obviously.”

It was actually a miracle that I was even here and having this conversation with Bram because he was right, my life had slipped away in his arms. After thinking I’d killed my father, he’d truly had the last laugh when he shot me in the back. The bullet had been dragon’s blood which entered my bloodstream immediately and killed me within seconds.

I was fully convinced that I’d really died because I’d traveled to a place that existed beyond Earth and the Netherworld. I was sure it had to be the afterlife since I saw my mother there and she’d passed away when I was still a young girl. My mother, who’d told me it wasn’t my time to go, insisted that I fight the poison flowing through me, and fight to live. So I obeyed her and did exactly that. I’d fought harder than I’d ever fought for anything. And I’d been victorious.

I don’t know how or why I managed to defeat death, or how I was able to come back after being struck with a dragon blood bullet. They were notorious for killing Netherworld creatures in seconds …

I just chalked it up to a miracle and left it at that.

“Yes, you did survive,” Bram agreed, turning to face me over his shoulder with a sad, little smile. “However, the memory of that evening still haunts me, and refuses to release my tortured mind from its clutches.”

I was growing increasingly uncomfortable as the seconds and minutes ticked by. I didn’t want to recall my own death, much less the impact it had on Bram. Conversations like those were futile. All they did was frustrate us both, and for very different reasons.

“I never got the chance to thank you for everything you did for me, and for the ANC,” I told him. It was a subtle attempt to change the subject again.

“Every action I have ever taken or not taken has only had one purpose,” he stated as he turned to face me. His eyes were narrowed into an angry and determined expression. “That purpose is to benefit myself at all costs.”

“I don’t believe that,” I replied, shaking my head.

Bram definitely strove to secure his own preservation, no doubt, but I found it hard to believe that every action he ever took was only to benefit himself. Not when he’d had such a huge hand to play in dethroning my father and in helping me, in general. And, truly, Bram had always been there for me. Not just in this most recent situation, but for as long as I’d known him. I’d always been able to count on him.

“Believe what you will,” he announced loftily, “but my reasons remain the same. I am and always have been, purely motivated by my own self-interest.”

“Then how do you justify your feelings for me?” I asked. I really preferred not to return to this touchy subject, but I saw no way around it, if I wanted to prove my point. “How do you rationalize your actions when they were specifically designed to help me?”

He shrugged. “Whatever I did for you is no different. It, too, came from a place of selfishness and self-serving.”

“How so?”

“I wish to possess you,” he announced flatly, and his eyes bored into mine. “Yes, I can think of nothing else but being inside of you, although there is so much more to it than just that. I want to
own
you, to know I can take you whenever and wherever I choose. I want you to
belong
only to me.”

My eyebrows arched of their own accord because I couldn’t say his response pleased me. Not at all. “I am not
that
type of woman. Nobody can or will ever own me,” I said flatly. “I belong to myself. End of story.”

“I fully realize that,” he replied with a deep sigh before his attention fell to the floor. “Perhaps that is the foremost reason I desire you so much as I do.” When he looked up at me again, his fangs were slightly indenting his lower lip. “Very little in this world exists that I have wanted and not taken.”

“Maybe it’s time for you to start getting used to disappointment?” I summed up with a hesitant smile and a quick shrug. I was hoping a little levity might lighten his somber mood.

“I prefer the word
Disappointment
to be absent from my vocabulary,” he retorted with obvious irritation.

“You can’t always get what you want, Bram,” I replied. “Just listen to
The Rolling Stones
‘cause they wrote a song about it.”

“Saying I have possessed anything I have ever wanted is not limited to material assets and wealth,” he continued as he started walking toward me. “Every woman I have ever chosen and wanted has been mine, both in body and soul.”

“And, yet, as soon as you get what you want, I’m sure you grow bored with it just as quickly.”

“Yes,” he admitted immediately, nodding, despite a frown that appeared on his face. “That is the irony of life, do you not agree?”

Wanting to finish this conversation so we could turn to other topics, I decided to try another angle. “Yeah, that’s ironic but maybe you’re looking at this all wrong?”

He stopped approaching me and paused, looking surprised. “How so?”

I shrugged. “I think it’s pretty simple. Your desire for me provides you with a quest, a mission of sorts, something to keep you occupied. And something you find challenging.”

He nodded as he studied me. It seemed as if he were trying to remember every part of my face. “Please, go on.”

“Just imagine if I
did
give in to you,” I proceeded, hoping my words wouldn’t create the opposite response from what I was going for. “Imagine if we consummated our undying love for one another.”

“I have imagined that scenario countless times,” he answered, looking bored.

“But you haven’t thought about it the way I want you to think about it,” I barked at him. “So stop interrupting me!” Taking a deep breath, I only hoped my words would have the effect on him I intended. “What if, after finally getting me, or
possessing
me, or whatever you called it, what if you grew bored with me? Then you no longer would have a quest, or a goal. The challenge would be over and done with. And where would that leave you?”

“I could never grow bored with you,” he protested, shaking his head as if I’d suggested something completely absurd.

“Just think about it for a minute, Bram,” I persisted, since I didn’t believe him for a second. “Everything is handed to you on a silver platter; you said so yourself.”