Forever Valentine

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

2932 Ross Clark Circle, #384

Dothan, AL 36301

Forever Valentine

Caught By Cupid Anthology

Copyright © 2007 by Bianca D’Arc

Cover by Anne Cain

ISBN: 1-59998-314-1

www.samhainpublishing.com

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: January 2007

Forever Valentine

Bianca D’Arc

Dedication

To my Mom and Dad. The two most amazing people in the universe.

And to my Australian friends, Megan and Rosemary. Thanks for all your helpful advice and kind support to a newbie. You’re both incredibly special ladies.

Let me not forget my fantastic editor, Jess, and the wonderfully supportive people on my chat group. I couldn’t do any of this without you! St. Valentine’s Day has always been a kind of strange day for me filled with hopes and let-downs alike. I hope this story brings you all a little joy and an escape from the everyday, if just for a little while. Hopefully that will be my gift to you this year. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Chapter One

Jena noted the vampire’s presence in the little bistro almost immediately. It was hard to miss a man as handsome as Ian Sinclair. They’d met at her friend Christy’s wedding. He was an old friend of the groom…a
very
old friend, considering the groom was a vampire with over two centuries under his belt.

Jena had learned about the existence of vampires the night Sebastian, Christy’s new husband, saved her friend’s life by turning her. Christy had been under Jena’s care in the hospital, and they needed her complicity in order to save Christy’s life. Christy’s first husband, Jeff, had finally beat her to death, but Sebastian and his magic blood saved her and not long thereafter, Christy was free of Jeff for good and happily married to Sebastian.

As a doctor, Jena was fascinated by the idea of vampirism, though all of the vampires she now knew refused to let her get close enough to try to figure out what made their blood so different. As a woman, Jena was intrigued by the vampire’s erotic power. Jena hadn’t let Sebastian turn Christy without first receiving some assurance that his bite wouldn’t hurt her more. No, Jena had demanded to be bitten first, so she’d know for herself Christy wouldn’t suffer.

What she’d felt when Sebastian first licked her neck, then bit down and sucked hard, had been unbelievable. An intense orgasm had shuddered through her body, though she still had all her clothes on. Worse, she and Sebastian were in a hospital room full of friends, ancient and newly turned alike, who watched every spasm of her ecstasy with varying degrees of envy and amusement. Jena could have died of embarrassment, if she hadn’t felt so damn good. Just the bite of the vampire, paired with his ability to influence her mind and sexual responses, had her coming for him shamelessly. And she’d only just met the man!

Jena had since learned that vampires fed not only on blood, but also on the psi energy that was strongest at the point of orgasm. Sex was sustenance to them, just as much as blood. They were erotic creatures in every sense of the word and the males who were now mated to her closest friends were sexy in the extreme. They all seemed to exude some kind of animal magnetism that was incredibly hard to resist. It helped to remember that they were married to her best friends and said friends now had sharp teeth of their own.

Then there was Ian.

A single, devastatingly handsome vampire with sad eyes that smoldered. Jena had spotted him across the reception hall at Christy’s lavish wedding and from that moment on, no other man seemed to exist in her world. He was tall, handsome as sin, and just looking at him made her body cream with anticipation. Oh, he had the same sexual pull as the others, but like them, he’d never focused it on her. If he had, she was very much afraid she’d throw herself at him, strip naked in front of all the wedding guests and yank him down onto one of the catering tables to be roundly ravished.

He was just that sexy.

Sebastian had given her the best orgasm of her life—which she knew was pretty pathetic, considering they hadn’t even had sex. And he’d been rushed at the time, worrying over Christy, and a little ticked off at Jena standing in his way. He’d taken her blood quickly, with little finesse, but oh, how fantastic he’d made her feel.

If Sebastian was that good on the run, she wondered what Ian could do if he took his time.

Ian Sinclair was every bit as alluring as Sebastian, and far older. What little she knew about his past came secondhand from Christy, and she’d be damned if she could understand why the man fascinated her so much. Christy told her little tidbits, such as how Ian had once been a knight. Those incredible muscles had been first built by wielding a sword, and he kept a stable of horses at one of his homes on the coast. He lived nearby, but Christy either didn’t know where or wasn’t telling. Jena had also heard he was employed as some kind of enforcer for the vampire organization that her other friend Kelly’s new husband Marc headed.

Simply put, Ian was assigned to watch her. Watching and waiting, ready to end her life should she make any move to reveal the existence of vampires or disseminate her knowledge of their kind. He was like police, judge and executioner for his kind, keeping sacred the most important of their laws, that of secrecy. She had no doubt the man was a cold blooded killer, though the thought of him didn’t send shivers of fear down her spine. Nor revulsion. No, if she shivered it was in a very sexual kind of anticipation.

Since Christy’s wedding, she hadn’t been able to get the man out of her mind. They had shared a dance and conversation that wasn’t quite as light or banal as it should have been between strangers.

They’d started out quite normally, talking about the bride and groom. It was Ian who turned the conversation to a more philosophical discussion about the miraculous existence of love in the world, even for a couple as unlikely as Christy and Sebastian. A battered woman and an English nobleman turned vampire over two centuries before.

Ian’s firm belief that there was someone for everyone touched her heart, as had the warmth in his dark eyes. After that one dance, she’d felt the heat of his gaze on her as the party progressed, and she found herself watching him as well. Not only was he a fine figure of a man, but his manners were impeccable, and he seemed to have genuine affection for his friends. When it came time to toast the bride and groom, Jena was touched by Ian’s eloquent, romantic, and tender salute to the new couple.

He wormed his way into her soft heart that night, and she hadn’t been able to oust him since. Of course, it was nearly impossible to forget the man, since he was watching her every time she turned around. She’d seen him observing her come and go from her small, suburban home almost every night.

Yes, every night when she came home from work he was there, watching her, making his presence known but never speaking. His quiet appearances were probably meant to be menacing, but she found his surveillance oddly comforting. In fact, when she hadn’t seen him tonight, for a moment—just a moment—she’d panicked.

But it was Saint Valentine’s Day and she had a date. Jena had put Ian’s absence from her mind with some difficulty and prepared for her evening out.

She didn’t date much these days, spending most of time at the hospital, but she didn’t want to be alone on this special night. So she’d given in and finally said yes to one of her fellow doctors, Dick Schmidt, a cardiac specialist with a big ego and very expensive car to match. Normally Jena wouldn’t have given such a frivolous man the time of day, but Dick had been asking her out for weeks now, and his persistence had worn her down. Plus, what single woman really wanted to be alone on Valentine’s Day?

She’d agreed to dinner and a few hours later, there she was, sitting in a trendy little bistro with a man she really didn’t like sitting across from her. And a drop dead gorgeous vampire eyeing her from across the room.

They sat on the enclosed patio with tinkling white lights and soft moonlight filtering in through the glass roof. It was chilly outside, but within the heated glass enclosure they had the illusion of sitting outside without the cold February air intruding.

She tried to focus on Dick’s inane conversation but it was hard. For one thing, he kept trying to touch her. The man was like an octopus, though mostly respectful of the fact that they were in public. Still, he was forever reaching across the table and touching her arms, her hands, and anything else he could reach. It was repulsive.

And then there was Ian. Sitting there, his eyes hot as sin. Watching her.

It was comforting in a way, but at the same time, rather annoying. As a vampire, Ian was totally off limits, unless she wanted to be a blood donor. But she wanted more than that from a man. She wanted a home and family, a man to care for who would care for her in return. She was getting to the critical age where she needed to think of those things before she succumbed—like her ancestors before her—to the rare condition that caused her no end of worry about her future.

So she tried to ignore Ian and concentrate on getting to know Dick Schmidt better. Perhaps he really was a nice guy under all the outward flash. He deserved a chance, and heck, he was the only guy who’d asked her out in months now, so beggars couldn’t be choosers. Jena tried to smile at his jokes and put all thoughts of the vampire across the small, dimly lit room out of her mind.

Of course it didn’t help that Ian had a direct view of their table. The way his flashing eyes followed her every move was somewhat unnerving, but when he raised his glass of deep red wine in silent toast to her, Jena found she couldn’t control the rush of blood to her cheeks. She tried to hide behind her water glass, but she knew the vampire’s keen vision had picked up her blush, even in the dim lighting of the restaurant.

Ian didn’t know why he was torturing himself this way. He’d watched the woman for months, and she showed no signs of betraying her friends or their secret. Her obvious loyalty counted for much in his mind. From what he had observed, the female doctor had formed deep friendships with Christy, Kelly and Lissa, the three new vampire mates who had been recently claimed and turned. The women had become fast friends in college and those bonds would not be easily broken. Jena seemed okay with the notion that some of her best friends had been converted by their new mates.

She was curious, of course, since she was a highly trained medical professional, but accepting that her friends and their new husbands were immortal. Ian admired the woman. She was strong, like the women of his clan had been back in the days of endless war with the English and then later in his travels through the Holy Land and along the Silk Road. But Jena was also soft and caring, with a gentle heart. He’d observed her at the hospital when she was on the night shift—though he was careful to mask his presence in such a public place—and he’d seen both her skill and her compassion.