A Vampire’s Mistress (2 page)

“I haven’t seen you since the funeral.” As always he spoke as little as possible.

Marina blinked. He’d been there. As vulnerable as she’d been, she’d barely been able to stand the sight of him. Seeing him at the funeral had only enlarged the gaping hole in her heart she’d tried to forget. Years ago she’d lost Gabe because Nick had pressed the relationship, the alliance, with her. Seeing Gabe six months ago had only underscored the loss, made it more intense. While vampires had free will, ignoring the preferences of a royal was…unacceptable.

“Better?” He brushed the hair back from her face, his tender touch at odds with the size of him. “It might take a few moments for your strength to return.” His voice was cool, detached, clinical, yet underneath it Marina thought she heard a yearning.

The question in his eyes confirmed her suspicions. She sat up, strength returning rapidly to her limbs as his ichor circulated in her system, reviving her. “What is it that you want to ask me, Gabe?”

“Why?”

She arched a single brow, her eyes boring into his. “You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“Why did you choose
him
instead of me?”

“It wasn’t like that.” Her lips became hard and rigid as she pressed them tightly together, her upper teeth bearing down almost painfully on her lip.

“Was it because he was richer? Because he was a royal?” he insisted.

She balled her hands, frustration warring with anger. The scent of stale sweat mixed with the kick of pepper swirled in the air around her, making her emotions clearly evident. As much as she wanted out of this hellhole, she didn’t trust Gabe. For all she knew, she’d be jumping from the frying pan into an inferno.

“Freeing me won’t get you any closer to uncovering Nick’s business dealings,” Marina told him coolly. “I wasn’t included in that part of his life.”

Gabe grunted. “I didn’t ask you about Nick’s business, I asked you why you made the choice you did. Why him?”

“Are you sure that isn’t why Nick’s business partners sent you?”

His eyes narrowed. “The High Council dispatched me to find and retrieve you. They’re worried you’re going to leak information to your captors about our world that they could use against us.”

“Oh.” It came out softly, a defeated sigh. Marina’s head slumped back down to her bare cot, a mixture of relief and sorrow coursing through her. At least he wasn’t with Nick’s business partners. But being under the watch of the High Council wasn’t much better. She’d be treated like a criminal, possibly even tried and punished for Nick’s crimes against their kind once she returned. The High Council wasn’t the most understanding bunch of vampires in the world.

She knew it hadn’t been a personal mission. Whatever part of Gabe that had once been willing to do anything for her was long gone. If he’d truly been transformed from a mortal
Shyeld
to a vampire under direction of the High Council, she was an objective to him now, nothing more. His loyalty would be to them and them alone. Her chest ached, her throat growing tight.

He glanced down at his watch, then back at her cell door. “Are you strong enough to move?”

She struggled up from the cot into a sitting position, her vision turning dark around the edges. She swayed and he grasped her arm in a gentle firm hold, steadying her. “Walk maybe. Transport or phase, no,” she managed, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Then we’ll have to leave by the door. We don’t have much time.”

His strong arm curved around her waist, drawing her up slowly from the cot until she was supported against his warm firm side. She resisted the urge to cling to him, to be seduced into thinking things could ever go back to the way they’d been before Nick had taken an interest in her.

She tried to walk and found herself pitching forward toward the floor on wobbly legs. Only the iron hold of his arm around her waist kept her from diving face first onto the cold stone floor. The muscles of his chest and back bunched and flexed as he swung her up into his arms in one smooth movement.

Marina panted against the pain still echoing in her body. The combination of being drained of her own ichor and being fed a constant diet of dead man’s blood had kept her body from healing as fast as it normally would. Beneath the sleeve of her shirt her arm was still riddled with dozens of needle marks that hadn’t yet healed.

But for the first time, in a very long time, she felt safe with him holding her.

She stared up at the face of the man for whom she’d once thought she’d have given anything to become mortal again. He’d been mortal, she’d been vampire. He’d been a
Shyeld
, her a minor royal. There’d been no way it could ever have worked. No matter how much they’d both wanted that.

Clearly Gabriel wasn’t mortal anymore, just as he’d claimed the night he’d stolen into her private apartments to convince her to choose him over Nick. Her sensitive nose picked out the telltale vampire pheromones eddying around him. From the scent of male vampire cedar and musk alone she knew he was fully transformed and totally unattached.

The High Council didn’t transform many of the mortals who protected their secrets and sleeping places into vampires. Only the strongest and most highly tested and trusted were transformed from
Shyelds
into fully fledged vamps.

His body was larger, more muscled than she remembered, and his strong jaw was covered in more than a day’s worth of dark stubble making him look more roguish.

Nick had been the dangerous one; Gabe, the stable protective one. But Gabe had also been a
Shyeld
at the time, and Nick a vampire. For a vampiress of one of the oldest families, the choice was a forgone conclusion, no matter what her heart wanted. Even the news that Gabe had gotten himself transformed to be with her came too late to change her maker’s mind. Rihanna had been after an alliance between her house and that of the ruling royal families, and Marina was her golden ticket. There was no way Rihanna would have let her be with a newly transformed
Shyeld
instead of a prince.

Rather than fight for her, and against the obvious preferences of the High Council, Gabe had simply disappeared. But now he was back and she knew that it wasn’t her weakness that had her senses reeling, it was Gabriel.

He settled her back on the cot, like a fragile doll. At one time, she’d been afraid she might harm him, her desire for him dangerous to his mortal state. Ironic really, considering how his leaving had flayed her open emotionally.

“Looks like we need to go to plan B,” he said simply.

“What was plan A?”

“Phase a key and walk out.”

She pushed herself with her forearm to sit upright. “And plan B?”

“Your cell is toward the front of the guards’ hourly check. Mine to the back. If we can dispatch your guards, we’ll take their keys and I can carry you out.”

“Who said I was coming with you?” Just because he wasn’t on Nick’s payroll didn’t mean she trusted the High Council, either. The only way Nick could have gotten away with any of his business was if one or more of the council had turned a blind eye to it and helped him secretly. She didn’t know how far Gabe’s loyalty to the council extended. Was it enough for him to kill her if need be?

Gabe glared at her. “You’d rather serve as an ichor cask for them to tap?”

“No. But if you’re telling me the truth and you’re not working for Nick’s partners, then what advantage do I have in leaving with you? The High Council hasn’t protected me all this time, and there’s no reason to think they would now.”

“Because it’s me.”

Marina gave a derisive snort. “You left me to fend for myself with Nick when I needed you. How do I know you won’t just leave me behind if I can’t keep up?”

Gabe moved so swiftly that she barely had time to blink. He was definitely a fully fledged vampire now. The power rippled in the air around him like a heat mirage as he knelt before her, grasping her arms in his large hands.

“I’m not going anywhere without you.” He crushed his mouth to hers. Marina tried to resist the pressure, the feel of his warm lips on hers. She was determined to keep her defenses against him firmly in place.

He grasped her hand, wrapping it around his neck, holding it there. The woodsy scent of his skin soaked into her, muddling her common sense. His broad chest, a wall of muscle and strength, was too tempting. Her fist slowly released, her fingers brushing the warm hair at his nape. Gods, he felt divine. Like immersing herself in a tub of hot water that never cooled and soaked away every care.

Her mouth softened as did her body, defying her mind’s orders to stop, to pull back. But it had been too long. She needed the clam, steady strength he offered her just as much as the ichor he’d given her.

The ichor.

Marina snapped out of the haze of sensual warmth he’d so easily wrapped around her. It
had
to be the reason she found it so hard to resist him. Nothing else made sense.

“Stay back, Gabe.”

His mouth bent in a crooked smile that made her heart flip, his eyes warm and inviting. “You can only resist what’s meant to be for so long. And I’m like the ocean, sweetheart. I’m infinitely patient. In the end I’ll wear down your defenses.”

“You’re welcome to try once you get me out of here.”

“Deal.” He held out a hand, waiting for her to shake on it.

Marina stared down at his hand. He wouldn’t harm her, unlike those vampire hunters who were only interested in keeping her for ichor production, or Nick, who thought her disposable. And once Gabe got her out she could escape him and the High Council and go somewhere that Nick’s business partners couldn’t find her.

She slipped her hand into his, a long-forgotten but familiar electric spark arcing between them.

Marina gasped. Gabriel had the temerity to grin a heart-stopping smile that could make any true angel jealous as hell. “I didn’t say I played fair.” He pulled her into the unyielding wall of his chest, kissing her again, stealing her ability to think beyond the circle of his arms.

Chapter Two

Gabriel was so wrapped up in the sensation of her pressed against him for real after all this time, that he paid no attention to anything else besides the soft warmth of her orange blossom–scented skin and the temptation of her lips.

A low wolf whistle and the slow clapping of a single pair of hands made both of them turn toward the doors of Marina’s cell. The mortal guards leered at them from the opposite side of the door. The guard who’d been clapping blew a kiss to Marina, while the other pointed a dart gun at her. She shuddered. Gabe stiffened against her, strength coiling inside him waiting to spring.

“Hey, buddy, when you’re done, how about you share?” The ribald laughter that followed flowed slick and oily through Marina’s stomach.

Gabe growled, low and deep. The vibration of it resonated through her. In one instant he was in the cell with her. The next he had fluxed and disappeared into nothingness, only to reappear on the other side of the bars behind the guards. With movements so swift only another vampire could see, he ripped out their throats with his bare hands, causing them to fall to the floor in limp heaps. The dart gun clattered to the stone floor.

He crushed the dart gun with a twist of his heel, then swiped the key ring from the hip of the nearest fallen guard. He wiped the gore off his hands on the man’s uniform and used the key to unlock her cell. The ancient tumblers in the barred door clacked and grated as he opened it and motioned with his hand for her to come to him. The radio on the fallen guard’s belt crackled.

“
Antonio? Antonio, che cosa? Resoconto
.”

The guard broadcasting from the other end waited for an appropriate response. Marina stumbled, her feet far heavier than she remembered. Gabriel caught her, pulling her close into his chest, his arms bands of muscle holding her tight as he lifted her off her feet and ran like hell.

Above them the scuffling of booted feet told them they had company. Ten, perhaps fifteen, guards had been alerted and were on their way from the floor above. Time had run out.

Damn. He’d hoped the ichor would work faster to regenerate her. He could easily carry her, but doing so through the warren of cells and offices at a run was another matter. She was still hurt. More fragile than she realized. He didn’t want to risk hurting her further.

Marina groaned.

“Hang on, sweetheart. We’re almost out of here.” It wasn’t the truth, not by a long shot, but it was the best he had at the moment. The truth was, he wasn’t exactly certain how they were going to get out if he couldn’t phase them.

“I could always tell when you were lying,” she muttered, her words warm against his chest. They pierced through him to the heart. He hadn’t wanted to lie to her. He’d told her he wasn’t interested when he’d walked away because he’d honestly thought she’d chosen Nick over him, and was a good enough man to know when to step away. Making a woman who didn’t want you miserable wasn’t the recipe for a successful relationship. Taking a woman from a royal was a recipe for disaster.

“I’ll get you out of here. That’s not a lie, it’s a promise.”

Marina sighed. “I’ve heard promises before.”

“Not from me.”

The air grew warmer, drier, as they approached a set of stone steps leading upward. Gabe took them four at a time, barely skimming the treads as he raced away from the guards fast on their heels.

“Andiamo!”
The clatter of running feet echoed against the stone walls and floors, then briefly stopped as they came to the downed guards. Then the sound of men running started again, colliding with their loud cursing in fluent Italian.

She flexed in his arms. “Put me down. I think I can run.” He hesitated. While he knew he was capable of outrunning the guards, he wasn’t positive Marina was strong enough. Any lost time at this point was going to get them caught. He couldn’t afford her weakness slowing them down. The High Council would not forgive such an error and would eventually send assassins to behead them both if they were caught.

The air changed, the smell of live mortals growing more pronounced and the thrum of their heartbeats a drumming orchestra. “We’re almost at the barracks,” he said more to himself than to Marina.