Tor growled and kissed her harder, stoking her need for him until it burned like an inferno inside her.
Someone knocked again.
She shook her head but Tor was already setting her back down on her feet. He broke away from her and she frowned when he didn’t stop moving until he was more than two metres away, beyond her reach, and his eyes turned cold again.
The door opened, revealing the same female servant who had been in the room with her earlier, when the delightful trio had been mocking Tor.
She couldn’t understand why they treated him so poorly because he was a hunter. She was a hunter too. Just like Tor, she was a product of rigorous training and had never led a normal life, not the type of life these entitled vampires led anyway.
She didn’t know what that entailed.
She had watched movies and TV shows, had seen people in the streets, in restaurants and cafes. That slice of life she had witnessed had seemed like the strange one to her. She was used to other things, like hunting vampires, tracking people, living at night and sleeping during the day.
It didn’t make her feel abnormal though. It made her feel that the lives she saw on TV, the world that didn’t believe in vampires and didn’t know werewolves existed, was the abnormal one.
It made her feel the vampires who lived their nights socialising and living an empty existence filled with trivial things, none of them worth anything or of any help to anyone, were abnormal.
She and Tor were the normal ones. They fought for something. They dedicated their lives to protecting people, risking themselves to ensure others were safe. They owned the shadows and rode with death at their side, a constant companion throughout their lonely lives.
Eve went back to him, took his hand and ignored the pointed look he threw down at her. She didn’t care that the servant was present. She didn’t care if the vampires in this hellhole saw her holding his hand.
She only cared that he knew she was here with him, and that these people who had labelled him as and therefore made him feel inferior, as if he didn’t belong in this world, was a sort of darkness and vile creature unworthy of them, were in fact inferior to and unworthy of him.
She didn’t give a damn about them.
But she cared the world about him.
T
or sat at the desk in Eve’s room, poring over a map of Amsterdam and the surrounding area, trying to figure out where the weaklings would have set up their base of operation. The lamp on the walnut desk provided the only light, but his heightened vision allowed him to see as if it was day, making it easy to pick out every detail in the room.
A room in which he had slept with Eve.
She had insisted he share it with her.
That had caused interest in the servant who had brought them to it. The woman had offered to show him to his own quarters and Eve had inquired as to where they were, a sharp edge to her tone that could have cut like a knife. When the servant had mentioned they were in the basement, with the other servants, Eve had practically thrown the woman out of the room and snarled that Tor was staying with her.
The servant had cast a glance at the only bed in the spacious apartment and then hurried away.
No doubt there were rumours about them spreading in the servant ranks.
He didn’t care for his sake, but he cared for Eve’s.
She needed to behave in a way that fitted her position within the family and he had tried to make that clear to her this evening when they had received word that the heads of the household wanted to throw a ball to honour her.
Eve had wanted to refuse their invitation.
Tor had warned her that it would be extremely rude of her to turn them down, especially when tonight was the Creator Day masquerade and they were setting aside their usual ball celebrating that in order to hold one celebrating her. On top of that, they were offering them rooms and blood, and a secure base to call home until the Law Keepers arrived.
She had pressed him to join her. When he had refused, she had snapped that he was being extremely rude now.
She had demanded he come down, but he hadn’t agreed to it. He had simply stated that they had little time in the mansion before the Law Keepers arrived and he needed to plan their next move. It seemed like a reasonable excuse to him.
Apparently, it wasn’t a reasonable excuse in her eyes. She had stomped around the room, complaining under her breath about his behaviour and leaving her out in the cold, making her face the vampires alone. There had been hurt and fear buried deep in her eyes the whole time, pain that had cut him whenever she had looked his way, her dark eyebrows furrowing and soulful brown eyes meeting his.
To avoid giving in to her demands, he had thrown himself into his work, keeping his focus solely on the maps and his notepad in front of him. Well, almost solely. It had kept darting back to her while she dressed, the soft rustle of material firing his imagination, making him envisage her not dressing but stripping for him.
He rubbed a hand over his mouth and shifted on his seat, trying to get more comfortable as his jeans bit into his groin.
He glanced at the clock. Half past midnight. The ball had started thirty minutes ago.
Maybe he should go down.
He didn’t like the thought of her feeling he had cast her away from him. Women had a tendency to behave badly to spite a man when one had hurt them, and she was currently in a room filled with many eligible males of good standing.
Tor perused the map again. He didn’t need to go down. She was where she should be, mixing with the elite. If he went down, he would only give her reason to pull away from them, seeking him instead and upsetting their hosts.
Like the man who had sat on the couch with her, his eyes lingering on her body, possessing it in a way that had made Tor’s blood boil.
Still made it boil.
He stood sharply, toppling the wooden chair, and stormed towards the door. He halted with his hand on the knob and looked himself over.
He didn’t possess the fancy clothes that men at balls wore, but he did own a shirt. He stalked to his duffle bag, pulled out the wrinkled black cotton shirt, and changed into it, dumping his used t-shirt on the desk. He left the top two buttons undone, exited the room and strolled along the corridor, following the sound of the string quartet and Eve’s unique sweet scent.
It led him down the elegant wooden staircase to the ground floor and through a long corridor to a large ballroom. Candles glowed from the chandeliers, bathing the room in warm light that bounced off the gilt work on the inset columns lining the cream walls. A bank of French doors lined the wall off to his right, some of them open to allow the night air to come in.
Tor paused on the threshold, his gaze zeroing in on Eve.
She was beautiful.
Her black ball gown hugged her trim figure, accentuating the sweeping curve of her waist as the corset flared out into a full skirt. Long black gloves reached past her elbows, her fingers clutching a full glass of blood that she hadn’t taken a sip from. He smiled inside. No doubt she had taken it to appease her hosts and had no intention of drinking it.
His hungry gaze roamed over the soft swells of her breasts and up her unmarked throat. Her lack of bite scar always hit him hard. For some reason, he found it alluring and enticing, erotic. It made him hunger to bite her. No one had ever marked her pale flesh. She was untouched by his kind. He wanted to be the one to mark her, to make the world aware that she had given herself to him in a most intimate way, even though he knew she deserved better. He couldn’t be the man she deserved. He wished that he could, but he would never be good enough for her.
All he could do was stand at a distance and watch her bloom, growing in confidence as she came to accept herself and embraced her new life.
All he could do was wish he could be the one who stood beside her, basking in her radiance, worthy of her affection.
Tor forced himself to look at the men around her. There were upwards of a dozen of them, all dressed in fine tailored black suits, all polished to perfection as they smiled and talked, catching her attention. All of them vied for the chance to speak with her, and when they had to wait their turn, they would gaze at her figure, studying her dangerous curves with blatant desire in their eyes.
He despised how they stared at her and found excuses to touch her. Even an innocent tap on her arm fired him up with a possessive need to tear the male away from her.
One of the men’s eyes came to him and he leaned towards her. “Your servant is here. Does he want something?”
Tor bit back a snarl and turned on his heel to leave.
Someone grasped his wrist and he growled over his shoulder at them, warning them to unhand him. Eve frowned at him.
“Stay,” she whispered, her dark eyes pleading him to do as she had asked.
“I would rather not.” He pulled his arm free of her hand and faced her.
She looked down at her feet, over her shoulder at the crowd, and then back up into his eyes. “Would you rather I leave with you?”
Every instinct he possessed screamed at him to say yes. Tor said, “No.”
Eve sighed, her alluring red lips parting with it, stealing his attention for a moment and almost swaying him into saying that he would stay if she kissed him now, here in front of all of these men who wanted her.
“If you leave, then I leave,” she said and he knew she would carry out that threat. She couldn’t leave now, when the ball had only just begun. He didn’t want her gaining a bad reputation within the family for his sake.
He reluctantly nodded. “Very well. I will stay.”
She looked as if she was thinking about taking his hand so he jammed them into his jeans pockets. A sour look flitted across her face before she smiled again and held the glass of blood out to him.
“Save me… they expect me to drink it. I think I might vomit if I try. My act as the good Chosen Daughter has its limits.”
Tor took the glass from her, brushing his fingers across hers at the same time. The feel of her silk gloves made him want to groan. Devil, the things she could do to him while wearing those. He forced his mind out of the gutter and eyed the blood.
“You are not hungry?” he said.
“Oh, I’m hungry… but not for blood from a glass.” Her eyes slipped to his neck and she licked her lips.
Tor necked the blood to stop himself from offering up a vein to her right that moment. He glared at the men still staring after her. What would they think if they knew she had bitten him? Would she be tainted by association? Would they even care?
They would probably want her to bite them to erase his blood in her hot little body.
He set the glass down on a side table and followed Eve as she led the way. He undid another button as she approached the men and tugged his shirt collar open enough to expose the marks on his throat.
Her marks.
Women joined the group, all twittering about Eve, who didn’t look comfortable with their attention. In fact, she looked ready to bolt half the time and kept pressing her hand against her left thigh.
He smiled to himself. The little huntress had come to the party armed and dangerous.
The thought of her wearing a knife strapped to her slender thigh, of pushing up the layers of her dress to find it secured there, sent his mind back to the gutter. He passed a blissful few minutes completely unaware of the world as he imagined stroking her thigh, brushing the knife, taking it off with his teeth before moving upwards. He wanted to spread her thighs and taste her with his tongue, ached with a need to spear her core with it and hear her moan his name.
Her dress brushed his legs, dragging him back to the ballroom, and he found her staring up at him, a dark look in her eyes. Had he done something wrong?
Not him, he realised as he heard the whispered remarks about him that ran through the crowd and caught a few of the disgusted looks. She was upset with the vampires in this household again.
He tried to tune out the vicious comments, but it was hard when Eve was with him and his mind kept bringing up how they couldn’t be further apart. He was viewed as nothing more than a servant, or something even lower than that rank. She was viewed as the elite, holding a position most aspired to achieve.
“I need some air,” Eve said, bringing him out of the mire of his darkening mood. Several men jumped on the chance to help her to the garden, as if she was an invalid and couldn’t walk the short distance without assistance. No doubt the bastards had nefarious agendas that would come into play once they had Eve alone. He wanted to kill every single one of them. She turned to him. “Walk with me?”
Tor nodded and swept his hand towards the open doors. She bustled ahead of him, her dress swishing as she moved. He threw a wicked victorious grin at the men and followed her.
The moment she hit the flagstones of the raised patio, she lifted the skirt of her dress out of her way and began pacing. Tor shook his head at the sight of her boots beneath her dress. The household had probably given her heeled shoes to wear, not realising that Eve wouldn’t put anything on her feet that wasn’t practical. He was surprised she had donned the dress without complaining about it hindering her if a battle broke out.
Then again, she might have. He had done his best to shut her out most of the time she had been dressing. The rest of the time, he had been lost in fantasies about her.
Tor walked to the carved stone balustrade that edged the patio and stared up at the scattered clouds racing across the moon. He had always liked it when there was a full moon and it shone through patches in broken thin clouds, casting a white glow around their edges.
Eve stomped around behind him. “Have I mentioned how much I hate them?”
“Several times. Behaviour most unfitting of a Chosen Daughter,” Tor said with a smile and listened to the night while watching the moon. Insects moved in the rose bushes below him and an owl hooted in the distance.
“Well, I hate them… all of them… and I don’t give a toss if that makes me a bad person.” She huffed and came up behind him. “They have no right to speak about you like that.”