A Vampire’s Mistress (4 page)

Gabe’s brown gaze lightened, softened. “I did too. Just proves you never know about people.”

Far out in the harbor, the lights of shipping vessels coming into port were growing larger, making her feel as if they were under a spotlight.

She cleared the lump in her throat lightly to ease the pressure. “I would have chosen you.” It was barely a whisper, caught by the wind and dissipated the instant she murmured the words.

The dark flash in Gabe’s eyes said he’d heard every syllable. His bark of laughter was cold and sarcastic. “We both know that’s a lie.”

She reached out a slender hand, laying it atop of his. “No lie. I would have. I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

Gabe looked down at her hand. “Everyone has a choice. I just made the wrong one to think becoming a vampire would make any difference.”

“You know that royals never befriend their
Shyelds
. But you still thought of Nick as your friend, didn’t you?”

His eyes narrowed, the planes of his face hardening, becoming more intense. An arc of awareness sizzled along her skin everywhere his scorching gaze lingered. He took hold of both her upper arms, pulling her close to his chest so that she was forced to look up into his face. “I wasn’t looking for your friendship, Marina, and you know it.”

“You were looking for something I wasn’t free to give.”

“Because Nick had already claimed your heart?”

She frowned. Good thing vampires didn’t need Botox. Her face would’ve been a road map of wrinkles from the onslaught of emotions she’d wrung out over the last few years. “No. Gods, no.”

“Then why?”

She sighed, the heaviness of it a palpable thing in the air between them. “Because alliances in the vampire world go back centuries. I was a pawn in the game for an alliance with the royal house for my family, and they weren’t about to lose the game just because I wouldn’t play along. I was told in no uncertain terms that I had two options—play nicely and become Nick’s consort, or block his advances and have my head severed from my shoulders.”
And you murdered,
Marina thought bitterly. “You were a
Shyeld
—a mortal. No one would have thought twice about your disappearance. By the time you told me you’d become a vampire it was already too late.”

“So you’re saying you went with Nick to protect me?” The sarcastic male disbelief of his tone only made her angry. He had no idea what she’d suffered for her choice. Was it really so hard to believe that she’d cared for him deeply?

“Don’t thank me all at once.”

He let go of his hold on her. “Guess that makes us even, then. I only accepted the assignment to retrieve you because the council told me it was to get you out or have you beheaded by an assassin. No matter what’s passed between you, me and Nick, I couldn’t see having your pretty little head taken for something you didn’t do.”

“Great. Makes me warm and tingly all over.”

“We’d better get going. Those
Shyelds
will have already started checking all my known locations and eliminating the most obvious places we might have gone.”

Marina’s mouth dropped open. “So soon?”

“
Shyelds
aren’t stupid, honey, just because they’re mortal. That’s the first mistake vampires make. The second is believing that just because vampires can transport, they can escape being found. If I know Nick’s methods, they’ll check out anyplace I’ve been before, then be contacting local vampire hunters here in Seattle to find us long before they hop on a plane.”

His eyes narrowed as he glanced at the street leading up from the waterfront. “We have to get to the Seattle Clan headquarters before sunrise.”

He turned on his heel, his footsteps echoing off the water below the planks as he walked toward the tall buildings, leaving her to follow. Just over the mountains behind the city the sky turned a paler blue with the first rays of the rising sun.

Marina took off after him, jogging to keep up with his longer, purposeful strides as they hit asphalt, crossed a nearly deserted street, then stepped up onto a concrete sidewalk. “How do you even know where we’re going?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “You don’t think I spent all those years just hanging outside the door waiting for you to invite me back in, did you?”

“No.”

He quirked a dark brow, his sensual lips tipping up at one end in a way that made her heart flip. It had been so long since she’d had a true mortal heartbeat, but at that moment the phantom sensation came back and she could feel the steady thrum of awareness pulsing in her ichor.

Gabriel Forrester wasn’t a man, or vampire, easily forgotten. Just his presence made her tighten and ache from head to toe with need. The warm sandalwood and cedar scent of him made her remember how blissful laying her cheek against his bare chest had been once upon a time. And her body responded to the memory, her breasts growing heavy and peaking against her shirt.

His gaze sharpened and he slowed to a stop in the center of the sidewalk. “If you insist on tripping down memory lane, do you think you could wait until I’m not with you?”

“Stop reading my thoughts, damn you.”

He shrugged. “Not by choice, I assure you. I have enough memories of my own.”

A flash of memory, so vivid, so intense that it made Marina gasp, seared across her mind. She saw herself, her dark hair spilled across dove-gray silk sheets that looked like liquid silver beneath her pale skin. Her mouth was swollen and deep pink from his kisses and partially open as if she was moaning, her eyes half shuttered and softly unfocused.

She pressed her fingertips to her temples and closed her eyes tightly, trying to rid herself of the erotic image he held of her. “Well, I have no problem seeing the direction of your thoughts.”

Gabriel’s sinful mouth curved into a sensual smile that melted her resistance. He reached out, his hand gently tracing the curve of her cheek. Her traitorous body responded to his touch, growing damp with want. The warm pad of his thumb rasped lightly over her lips, making them tingle.

“Even after all that’s passed between us, you’re still the most beautiful woman in the world.”

The words struck hot and deep, unfurling in her chest until the warmth of them radiated outward to awaken every cell just as his ichor had. “You still see me that way?”

He didn’t say a word, merely tilted his head down and kissed her with a sweet tenderness bordering on worship. “I gave up my humanity for a chance to be with you,” he whispered against her lips. “There’ll never be anyone for me like you.”

Marina leaned in, craving another kiss, craving more than a kiss, but he pulled away from her.

“Nah-uh, sweetheart. This is neither the time, nor the place. We’ve got to get out of the open and under cover.”

“Our timing never seems to be right, does it?” she said wistfully, walking a little faster to keep up with him.

“I make it a policy never to say never.” He wrapped his large hand around hers in a warm, reassuring grip.

They walked two more city blocks, the
shushing
of car tires on dew-damp pavement the only early morning soundin the chilly air. Gabriel ducked into a parking garage. He led them past rows and rows of empty slots in the low-ceilinged concrete bunker, making a beeline for a nondescript gray metal door near the elevators that blended in seamlessly with the gray of the concrete around it. It looked like the entrance to a service stairwell. He took a key out of his pocket and shoved it into the lock on the doorknob, then shoved open the heavy door.

Marina stepped inside an elevator. Gabriel flipped a card out of his back pocket and slid it through the card reader near the button panel. The small indicator light went from red to green and the doors slid shut.

“So this clan, they’ve accepted you as one of their own?” she asked. If they had, it would be a minor miracle. In Europe the lines between clans were strongly divided, each operating like its own country. Each clan laird reported only to his clan’s council, which in turn reported to the High Council in Rome.

“Yeah, I’d guess you’d say they’ve taken me under their wing. I’ve been training with their
Trejan
.”

That he’d immediately turned to others in charge of security when he’d been a
Shyeld
, didn’t surprise her. What surprised her was that they’d accepted him far more easily than those who had transformed him from mortal to vampire in the first place. In the eyes of the High Council and the royal houses he was meant to serve, never to rule.

She, on the other hand, had been painstakingly selected from her mortal life, raised and tutored since her creation to become the consort to a royal. Their roles in the vampire world were as different as daylight was from dark.

The elevator opened into a soaring atrium built of chrome and translucent glass. The wide-open space, filled with clusters of comfortable white couches and chairs, resonated with the sound of water splashing in a soothing burble down the stones of a wall waterfall. The place was filled with artificial daylight and smelled of lush green vegetation.

“Why did you take us through the parking garage? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to transport here directly?”

Gabriel smiled back at her. “They’ve got charms and protections against direct transport from the outside. Apparently the reivers aren’t just pirating in our part of the world. The Seattle Clan is having problems of their own with ichor being sold illegally, and vampires being created outside the clan’s control.”

Marina shivered. Vane wasn’t just a reiver or a pirate, he was trouble with a capital T. Whatever he’d cooked up with Nick was going to suck her in like a vicious undertow, pulling her and anyone connected to her into the scheme, no matter how she resisted. The outcome wasn’t going to be good, she could feel it deep in her bones. Her stomach curdled at the thought. Marina didn’t want whatever Nick was planning—whatever Nick was doing—to impact Gabe again. He didn’t deserve the pain.

She gazed up at his strong face, wanting to touch the rough shadow of stubble along his jaw, but not daring to. He’d already shared his ichor with her and that was already too much of a bond between them, making her response to him far stronger than it had ever been before. The last thing she needed was to complicate matters by getting physically involved with him again. The kiss had already proven she couldn’t resist him.

Sooner or later she was going to have to pull away from him to keep him from being dragged under with her in Nick’s scheme. Marina licked her lips, unsettled at the warring desire and knowledge within her.

“So what happens now? We can’t hide out here from the horsemen forever.”

“First we get you looked at and see if there’s been any lasting damage from the dead man’s blood they were pumping into you. Then we get you settled in.”

“And how long were you planning on leaving me here?” Irritation laced her tone and scented the air with the acrid stench of smoke.

He didn’t answer her, making her angry, rather than merely annoyed. The smoke-scented air surrounding her changed to the sharp smell of pepper in response. She was tired of being treated like a pawn. If she was going to be part of this game, she wanted to be a player able to determine her fate.

Gabe’s hand pulled away, leaving her feeling his absence even though he was right beside her. He rubbed one hand over the fist of the other, cracking the knuckles. “I’m going to talk to the clan
Trejan
and decide how best to crack a few horsemen skulls.”

She placed her hand on his arm. “But they’re mortals. You’ll kill them.” As much as she feared the presence and menace of Nick’s four horsemen, at her core she believed killing mortals was wrong.

“They should have thought about that before they threatened you.”

“But they only did it on Nick’s orders.”

“Gods, Marina, how can you defend the bastards who left you to be a juice box for those ichor leeches?”

She pulled her hand away and straightened her shoulders, pulling all the training and royal demeanor she’d mastered around her like a protective cloak. “Because I don’t blame the dogs who hunt on their master’s orders. I blame their master.”

One swift curt nod was all the reply she got.

“If you really want to help me,” she said, “then find a way to trap Nick. The problem is, he’s only been allowed to play this far because someone on the High Council is benefiting from this game.”

Gabe leaned in closer, his jaw clenching. “Who?” The word slipped between his teeth.

“If I knew that I could have saved myself by trading my silence for freedom.”

Marina’s words sent a cold wave of dread washing through Gabriel’s system. He couldn’t trust anyone, not even those on the High Council, until he knew precisely what Nick was after. Sure there was money to be made, but what advantage did Nick see in a whole host of new hungry vampires? Somehow Nick and this American reiver were tied to the High Council, in something larger than just illegal ichor trading, which made his every movement critical.

He forced himself to release the hands fisted at his sides, ready and wanting to punch something. “Everything will be fine. Just trust me.” He tried to give her a reassuring smile he didn’t feel, but he could tell she wasn’t buying it.

“You’re asking for—”

“More than you can give?” He cut her off. With an index finger he gently lifted her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his direct gaze. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. I let that stop me once. It’s not going to work this time. You’re mine, Marina, and I fight for what’s mine.”

Her eyes flashed blue fire. “I don’t
belong
to anyone, Gabe. You’d do well to remember that. Whatever we once had was changed the day Nick entered the picture and screwed up everything for both of us.”

He pulled back, but his hard stare told her he didn’t give a damn. He’d already decided she belonged to him, and he was willing to take the risk. Again.

“Let me take care of this, then I’ll—”

But she never got to hear what he planned next. A sucking sensation started at her naval, spreading out until it pulled her nearly inside out like a sweater being taken off. Someone was transporting her away from Gabe, intentionally separating them.