Let the Night Begin (11 page)

“Then pick someone. Someone who has maybe had a little too much to drink, who won't remember in the morning that a beautiful woman nibbled on his neck tonight.”

His words sent a little tremor through her. There was no way he could know that was how she chose her victims. She shouldn't be excited, but she was. Already her skin was tingling as she glanced around the room, looking for someone to taste.

Then she found him. He was young, but not too young, and he was slouched in his chair with a glass of whiskey on the table beside him. “Him.”

Reign bent down slightly, and followed her gaze. He was standing so close she could feel the brush of his lapels against her arm. “The fellow in the corner?”

Olivia nodded.

Sharp stubble brushed her jaw, the side of her neck. She shuddered, tilting her head slightly as her gaze locked on the young man. It was an invitation and she knew it, even as the idea of Reign's teeth puncturing her flesh sent a flutter of fear through her. Fear wasn't the only emotion she felt at that moment. Desire was there as well.

“He looks like me.” Reign's voice was a delicious, velvety rasp, mocking and seductive at the same time. “A little bit, don't you think?”

Her heart hammered against her ribs. “No.” But she was lying and she was certain he knew it.

“Go get him,” he urged. “I won't watch, I promise.”

She felt him slip away, gone after prey of his own, she assumed. What were they doing? This was wrong, she knew it, and yet she was so very hungry and it had been days since she fed from a person and not a bottle. Blood was what kept their kind alive, what gave them peace and comfort, just like hot buttered bread used to when she was a normal woman. She still took comfort in it now, but it wasn't the same.

She wouldn't hurt the young man, and she did need to feed. With that thought in her mind, she fixed a smile on her mouth and put a sway in her hips as she approached.

He didn't look like Reign at all. What was he getting at? This man was nowhere near as tall or rugged. His eyes were blue, not gray. And his hair was brown…bloody hell. He looked like Reign.

That didn't stop her from joining him at his table. She was too hungry, too fixed on the game, on proving something to Reign—although she wasn't certain what she had to prove. The idea of him watching her with this man aroused her, and that was disturbing, but she pushed past it. Reign said he wouldn't watch.

“You're nice,” the man practically sighed at her after a few moments of drunken conversation. “You smell pretty.”

“So do you,” Olivia purred. “Would you like to
come outside with me?” Outside to the alley. She had done this before so many times over the past few years. There was always an alley.

Her companion needed no further encouragement and followed her like a hound out the back of the building. There, outside in the cool air, in the narrow alley that smelled faintly of garbage and urine, she pressed her prize against the wall, skillfully avoiding his clumsy attempt to kiss her. Her fangs slid from the sheath of her gums and she sank them into the warm flesh of his throat, moaning in unison with him as his sweetness filled her mouth. His heart beat against her breast. His hands held tight to her waist as he uttered little sounds of pleasure into the night.

She took only what she needed. Any more and he would be noticeably weakened, and that wasn't right. He had already gone lax in her arms, a combination of sensual pleasure and too much whiskey. She ran her tongue over the holes in his neck, felt them begin to close, and lowered him to the alley floor.

It wasn't until she straightened that she realized she wasn't alone. Reign was there, and from the heat of his gaze she knew he had watched her feed. And she knew from the woman in his arms, that he was about to do the same.

Olivia froze. He said he wouldn't watch, damn him.

Was it a coincidence that he had chosen a woman
with coloring very similar to hers? No, it wasn't. No more than her meal had been. He knew. He knew that she purposefully went looking for men that reminded her of him, and now he was giving a little of that back to her.

The woman had her back to his chest, and was running her hands languidly over every inch of his magnificent body that she could reach. She was drunk—as drunk or drunker than the man on the ground. Her head lolled to the side as her mouth slackened. Reign held her with one arm around her waist. His other hand held her head, kept the hollow of her long, slender throat open and vulnerable.

Olivia's own neck began to tingle. Her nipples tightened and a slow burn built between her thighs. Even as her body reacted, memories of the one time Reign had bitten her came rushing back. The fear. The pain. And yet, she couldn't look away.

His gaze locked with hers as his lips parted, revealing the full distension of his fangs, glistening in the silver light. His head lowered. Olivia swallowed hard. She could see the woman's throat, see it indent slightly in two spots. A tiny trickle of blood ran down the white flesh toward the low neckline of her gown, slipped between the tight cleavage of her breasts.

The woman gasped and moaned, pressing herself against Reign. Her hips undulated, making the skirts of her gown rustle softly. Was Reign hard? Did knowing she was watching arouse him as it
aroused her? There was nothing painful or traumatic about this embrace. The woman loved the gentle pull of his mouth as he drank. She wanted more, wanted him. Soft cooing sounds slipped from the woman's plump lips, her cheeks flushed with pleasure. She moved her hips against Reign in blatant invitation. God help her, Olivia couldn't blame her.

She wanted him too. Wanted him to puncture her flesh and take some of her into himself. She wanted him to make love to her as he fed, make her come as he drew her into himself. And she wanted to bite him back. Oh, sweet Jesus, she wanted to bite him so badly.

He released the woman. Her wound was already healing as he gently set her against the opposite wall. She and the man would wake up soon, or in a bit the inn staff who had seen them leave with her and Reign would come out and take them back inside. They would wake up with little but a fuzzy memory of the strangers who had given them pleasure.

Reign licked his lips as he looked at her, his eyes bright as silver coins. She shuddered, so close to orgasm that it would take little more than a touch to send her over. Never had feeding been such a sexual experience for her.

“Let's go,” he rasped.

Olivia followed readily. When he vaulted into the sky, she went with him. They arrived back at
his house within minutes, and let themselves in through the garden door.

Lifting her skirts, she hurried up the dark stairway behind him, eager to get him naked and inside her, and not the least bit bothered by it. She would have started disrobing on the return flight if it had been at all possible.

She flung open the door to her room and stepped inside. She whirled around, expecting to be swept into his embrace.

But he didn't embrace her. He just stood there, so close she could touch him, and stared at her as though she was a stranger.

“Aren't you coming in?” she asked, and then hated herself for asking.

“I'm tired, Liv.”

“Then come to bed.” She was hot and needy and wanted him inside her so bad she was ready to explode from it. Pride didn't matter. She had no problem admitting that she wanted what he could offer.

“No.” He shook off her hand as she reached for him. “I'm tired of these games we play.”

Olivia stilled, the heat in her blood rapidly turning to ice. “Is that what your little display at the Bucket of Blood was about?”

“Yes.” He wasn't the least bit contrite either, the ass. “You can pick men that look like me, but they're not me.”

“I know that.” Could he hear her heart pound
ing? Why was he doing this now? Why do it at all? Was his pride bruised? Or was this just a way for him to take a swipe at her? “And I don't pick anyone because they look like you.”
Liar, liar.

He didn't believe her either, she could tell from the sardonic twist of his lips. “How did you like my choice?” Bitterness tinged his low tone. “Did you wish she were you?”

“No,” she lied again. Oh yes, she had wanted it. Wanted it so bad she was half sick with it.

It was the wrong thing to say if she hoped to make him give in. “You lie, even when admitting the truth would give us both what we want. And you do it because you don't want me to be right. You want to resent me even as you want me to fuck you.”

She blinked at his coarseness, even though she should be used to it. “That's not true.” But it was. So twisted and perverse, it was.

“I watched you bite that boy. I saw the pleasure on your face, and I know you pretended he was me, just as I let myself believe every strong brunette I bite is you.”

Olivia's eyes widened. “You do?” Good Lord, they really were perverse. Beyond perverse. Deviants.

He rubbed his eyes. Weariness radiated off of him. That was her fault. “I'm tired of hoping you'll smile but expecting a scowl. I'm tired of hoping you'll forgive me. I'm tired of wondering just what the hell you're doing here.”

She was tired of all their conversations seeming to come back to the same spot. She was tired of him treating her as though she was the one who should apologize. She had yet to see any proof of regret from him, and until she did she would keep her forgiveness close. “You know what I'm doing here.” Had he actually asked for her forgiveness? No, but he expected it all the same.

“I meant with me, Liv.” He raked a long hand through his hair. “What you're doing with me.”

“I don't understand.” And in truth, she didn't. Oh, she knew what she had been told to do with him, but that had nothing to do with her feelings or what she wanted. One minute she managed to hold on to her bitterness and the next it slipped away, leaving her vulnerable and so damned needy—for him. Just for him.

“That doesn't surprise me. When you do understand, let me know. Good night.”

He walked away, leaving her frustrated and cold, her body humming with a mixture of need and shame. She should be glad he was walking away, that she didn't have to play the eager wife. It would be good to have some distance between them. Smart. Necessary.

Now if she could just make her heart believe it.

W
hat the hell was he doing?

Reign spent the remaining hours before dawn lying naked on his bed, the sheets a tangled mess around his legs. He was too warm, despite the gentle breeze drifting through the open French doors; and too agitated, despite the relative stillness of the street outside. Both conditions could be blamed on the woman in the room adjoining his more than anything else.

After leaving her he had gone to his room, stripped, and lain down on the bed. Then, not caring if Olivia heard him—in fact hoping she might—he wrapped his hand around his stiff prick and stroked himself to a quick and violent orgasm. At the moment he came he could have sworn he heard a tiny sob of release from Olivia's room as well. The thought of her fingering herself, rubbing her slick, hooded nub, while thinking of him was as mentally satisfying as it was physically frustrating. She deserved to be as horny as he was, but, damn it, if she would just give in,
they could have come together rather than in different rooms.

He had to be mad for letting her draw him into her game. If it were simple attraction he could laugh it off as being ruled by his cock, but while that particular part of him would certainly go wherever Olivia led, that was not the reason he put himself through this torture. In fact, he had walked away from her earlier because he didn't want her to use his desire for her against him anymore. Or use her own desire for him as a convenient distraction to keep from telling him the truth.

And he didn't want to face the guilt of knowing he was to blame for all of it.

He was worried about her. He laughed to himself at the absurdity of it. The lies and the games, those were only part of the problem. There was something other than kidnapping afoot and Olivia either knew what that was, or had an idea. Regardless, she wasn't going to share with him. Either because she didn't trust him, or…Or what? He had absolutely nothing to do with James and hadn't been in Liv's life for three decades. What other reason could she have for not telling him? Fear? Another man? Was her lover involved somehow?

The idea of there being another man in her life—especially when she had agreed to share his bed—made him want to growl and bristle like an old dog.
Idiot
. He hadn't been chaste these long years, he'd be stupid to think she had been.

No, it wasn't the fact that she might have had a lover that bothered him. It was the fact that she might care enough about that lover to come to him for help—something she had vowed never to do.

Christ
. He sat up and threw his legs over the side of the bed. He was not going to lie here and ruminate over this as though he was some unsure, infatuated boy. He was acting like a woman, thinking too much when he should act instead.

The night wasn't over yet. He hadn't checked for news from Clarke, and if that proved fruitless he could always break into Dashbrooke's and see what he could find there. Anything to make him feel as though he had some control.

A dark wine silk brocade robe lay at the foot of his bed and he slipped it on before leaving his room and silently striding downstairs to his study.

Despite being a nocturnal creature, he allowed most of his servants to have evenings off. Only those he trusted with the knowledge of his true nature kept similar hours to his own. In London, one of those few people was Clarke. Here, it was Watson, his butler.

The house was relatively silent. Reign could hear Watson singing to himself below stairs as he readied for bed. In his thirties, Watson had learned all there was about looking after Reign's household from his father, a good man unlike Reign's own, who had retired several years before. Watson would go to bed and sleep until the afternoon when
the rest of the staff arrived. No one questioned a wealthy gentleman keeping such hours—after all, weren't all privileged people lazy and decadent by nature, sleeping half the day away?

These arrangements assured that an unsuspecting servant would not walk in on Reign while he slumbered and risk injury should he wake. A surprised vampire was as volatile as a nest of hornets and a thousand times more deadly. And it ensured that Reign had his privacy should he come home with bloodstains on his shirt—his own or someone else's.

In his office, he turned on the desk lamp and sat down in the softly cushioned chair. The only modern convenience missing in his Edinburgh home was a telephone. There was rarely any need for one in his life. The people he wanted to speak to were usually with him, or didn't have a telephone of their own. And he sure as hell didn't want people thinking they could ring him anytime they wanted.

On the top of the desk was a small pile of correspondence. A couple of envelopes obviously held invitations. He'd look at those later. One was a letter from a business associate in Massachusetts who always sent his letters to Edinburgh to be forwarded to wherever Reign was, and the last two were telegrams from Clarke. One was dated yesterday, the other early that very day.

He opened the earlier one first. It was short and
to the point. Apparently James Burnley had an acute interest in vampire lore and was part of some society that got together for lectures on the occult and supernatural phenomenon. The boy had also been overheard boasting to a friend at Boodle's that he was very much looking forward to his trip to Scotland as he expected it would change his life forever.

Interesting. What had the little snot-nosed git been into?

The second telegram was unrelated, but the news within it was even more of a shock—an awful one at that. One of the girls at Maison Rouge, the brothel he owned in London, had been murdered in a brutal fashion shortly after Reign's departure for Scotland. So soon after that it seemed impossible that it could be a coincidence, but that was just his suspicious nature talking. Anything else was too fantastic to entertain.

He looked up as a familiar scent brushed his nostrils, soft at first then growing stronger as she approached. He took a deep breath and then she was standing at the threshold. “Couldn't sleep?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No.” She looked so beautiful standing there, arms over her chest, with her long hair mussed about the shoulders of her thin cream silk wrapper.

“Good.” Lowering her arms she walked into the room. “It's your own fault, you know.”

Despite his better judgment, and the hollowness in his heart over the news from London, Reign allowed himself a small smile. Obviously that was as close as she was going to come to discussing their mutual “frustration relief.” “I know.”

Sighing, she slowly lowered herself into the chair on the opposite side of his desk. “Any news?”

“One of the girls from Maison Rouge was murdered.”

Olivia pressed the fingers of one hand to her mouth as she gasped, her doe eyes widening in horror. “Dear God.”

That hadn't been his first reaction, but good enough. He was a little numb actually. Couldn't quite believe that something like this had happened to someone under his protection, his care. How
could
it have happened?

He chose his words carefully, watching for any change in her expression as he spoke. “I'm going to compose a telegram for Clarke before bed, but I may have to return to London for a few days.”

Panic flickered in her eyes, followed by…anger, then shame. She didn't like it at all, but even she knew death took precedence when all James's captors seemed to want to do was toy with them. “Of course. When will you know for certain if you are needed?”

“As soon as tomorrow evening I hope.”

She nodded. “Is there anything I can do?”

It was a simple question, one that almost anyone
would have asked under the circumstances, but it pierced his heart all the same. He might have answered, if he had only known where to start. Instead, he shook his head.

Another nod before her gaze flickered downward. “You have two telegrams there.”

“Yes. Another from Clarke. He's been looking into James's recent activity.”

Her chin snapped up, all sympathy erased from her features. “You've had James investigated?”

Such vehemence. Was there something about sweet baby James that she didn't want him to discover? “Of course. Are we not trying to uncover why he was abducted?”

That took some of the starch out of her, but not much. She still looked cagey and coiled like a cobra ready to strike at the slightest twitch. “Well? What has your spy learned?”

Reign propped his elbow on the desk and rested his chin on his palm, tapping his fingers against the side of his face. “What is it, Liv? Does he like boys and someone found him out? Did he kill someone in a fit of passion?”

She scowled at him and he smiled. She had a magnificent scowl that never failed to let him know when he had crawled under her skin. “Of course not. Don't be an arse.”

She could also rival a fishwife when he pushed her too far. But that would have to wait for another time. This was too important and he was still too
shocked by the news from Maison Rouge to engage in petty amusements at his wife's expense.

Reign leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankles as he regarded her carefully, watching for any deception in her expression. “Has James told anyone in his little group that you're a vampire?”

“What group?”

He consulted the telegram once more. “The Friends of the Glorious Unseen.”

“I've never heard of them.” She spoke as though their existence relied on her knowledge.

“He's vice chairman.” Her blank expression continued, so he pressed on. “He's never told you about them?”

“No.” Now she looked miffed. James hadn't told her he was coming to Scotland, hadn't told her about this organization of his. No doubt she was wondering what else the boy hadn't told her, and just what the little wanker had gotten himself into. “What are they?”

“Apparently they have a keen interest in the paranormal, especially vampires.”

The subtle widening of her eyes, the startled catch of her breath could not be false. “Do you think the kidnappers might be part of this group?”

“Possibly.” He shrugged. “If it weren't for the dead priest in St. Martin's, I'd wonder if this was all some elaborate ruse for James to show off his vampire auntie to his cronies.”

Her scowl was back full force. Luckily for her vampires didn't develop frown lines or she'd have ruts to rival a dirt lane after a heavy rain. “James would never do such a thing.”

“No?” He wasn't quite so sure that her nephew was as saintly as she believed. “Has he ever asked you to turn him?”

She didn't have to answer. Her face lost all color and she averted her gaze with a quick jerk of her head. “Yes. The first time when he was fifteen. I don't see what that has to do with this situation whatsoever.”

Fifteen. Just a boy. A child. “When was the last time?”

She pressed her white knuckles to her mouth. “Last month.” Despite her obvious distress, she raised her chin to a defiant angle. “I suppose you think I should turn him.”

Laughter, harsh and sharp rushed from him. “Not in bloody hell! He's too young.”

“That's what I said.” She leaned closer, her fingers gripping the edge of his desk so tightly the heavy wood groaned. “I told him I would never do it. He doesn't know what it means.”

“Please don't break my desk. He knows what it means, Liv—he's been around you his entire life. He probably doesn't even mind the idea of drinking blood. It's the spending eternity looking too young to have hair on his scrot that should give him pause.”

She stared at him as though he was the most stupid and repulsive of men. It was a first, even for him.

At least she had released his poor desk—but not before leaving slight indentations in the polished surface. “You've been a vampire so long you've forgotten what it is to be human.” A faint sneer curved her lips. “That's why you try so hard to appear human in public, and live by human rules, because if you didn't, there'd be no humanity left in you.”

Her words stung, but only because they were partially true. It was a fear he had, losing himself completely to the beast inside, but he had yet to face that fear in over six hundred years.

He kept his face impassive. “Meanwhile you cling to your lost mortality, afraid that if you embraced what you are you just might like it.”

Her lips tightened.
Touché
.

Unfortunately, just as they knew how to wound each other, they also tended to immediately regret the hurt they inflicted. Of course, cutting out their own tongues was preferable to apologizing, so Olivia moved on.

“James thinks only of the strength and keen senses. I would not have him know the fear of those first few moments as the change overcomes him. I would not have him know the horror of drinking too deeply and accidentally becoming a murderer the first time he feeds.”

Horror froze him in place, made his voice deceptively calm. “Is that what happened to you, Olivia?”

Her answering nod was so slight, so stiff, he almost missed it. “I know what you are thinking, that it would never have happened if I had stayed with you instead of running away. I've told myself the same thing a thousand times.”

Christ
. How could he ever make this up to her?

Rising from his chair, Reign came around the desk to kneel before her. He didn't touch her, but he held her gaze firmly with his own. “If I had been patient and allowed you to become comfortable with turning, you wouldn't have had to learn on your own. I should have been a better sire. I should have been a better husband, and for that I am truly sorry.”

The soft tips of Olivia's fingers brushed the ridge of his cheekbone like the brush of a feather. This was when she was the most beautiful to him—when he said something that resonated within her and she let that show on her face. When she let him know that he hadn't ruined everything.