The Coveted (The Unearthly) (11 page)

Andre stared at the wine in front of him, his eyes becoming distant. “As awful as that textbook of yours is, the story is true. My father sold his soul to save my life.” The skin around his eyes pinched. This was the first time he’d ever mentioned his human life to me, and it looked like it took great effort to relive his life. “The devil tricked him, and he tricked me. He saved my life by making me immortal. It’s a tactic he’s used before.”

He looked to me. “I’m not the oldest vampire out there, just the oldest surviving one.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“From the research I and others have done, the devil appears to have made others before me immortal. These lineages grow and eventually die off
—
probably when someone kills the original vampire.”

A shiver coursed through me.

He took my hand, his face pleading. “Two things you need to know about the devil. The first is that he’s always deceptive. He’s the master of twisting language and intention so that he gets what he wants. And he doesn’t lie like a human might.

“That leads me to my second point. The devil doesn’t see things in terms of weeks or years or even centuries. Nor does one lost soul matter to him in and of itself. Every trick he pulls, every visit he makes is all part of a larger strategy.”

“And what’s that strategy?”

Andre’s lips thinned. “Power.”

Chapter 11

I pushed away
my meal.

“You’re no longer hungry?” Andre asked.

“All this devil talk made me lose my appetite.” I eyed the empty table in front of him. “Speaking of appetites . . .” My voice trailed away. I wasn’t really sure what my question for Andre was, but I noticed that I’d never seen him eat, and he still hadn’t taught me anything about drinking blood.

“What is it?” When he saw my meaningful look, Andre raised his eyebrows. “Have you started craving blood?”

I made a face.
Ew
. “No. Just curious how the whole thing works.”

“Ah.” He flagged the waiter down.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He glanced at me. “This isn’t really a topic I want to go into in public.”

“But the devil is?”

One side of his mouth curved up. “This discussion is a bit more . . . interactive.”

Eep.

No more was said on the subject until we arrived back at Bishopcourt.

As soon as Andre’s entourage met us at the car, he exited the car and quietly discussed something with them. After I managed to catapult my butt out of his car’s bucket seat, I caught a few snippets.

“
I’d be happy to do it.
”

“
Me too.
”

“
Of course.
”

Andre and a young man broke away from the group and walked over to me.

“Gabrielle, this is John,” Andre said, indicating to the guy next to him.

“Hi John, nice to meet you. Andre, what are you doing?”

Instead of answering, Andre laid a hand on the small of my back and led me just inside his house. And then I dug my heels in.

“What’s going on?” People
—
and what appeared to be a vampire, judging by her pale skin and the pissed off way she looked at me
—
turned to watch us.

“Nothing you should be worried about.” He discreetly led us down the hall.

“Nothing I should be worried about? I never said I was worried.” Only now I was. Statements like that had two meanings, the literal meaning
—
don’t be worried
—
and the real meaning
—
you better start freaking out
.

Andre ignored me and opened up the door to his study. We filed into the room and Andre closed the door behind us. “John’s here to help demonstrate how vampire’s feed.”

The pasta I’d eaten wasn’t sitting so well in my stomach right about now.

“But not, you know, literally
—
right?” I asked. “You’re not going to actually bite him, are you?”

“It’s not exactly like I’m going to enjoy this. Feeding is a private thing.”

“Ew! You
are
going to bite him!” I pushed away from the two of them. “I’m not okay with this.” I made a beeline for the door.

Andre moved faster than human eyes could follow to block the door. “We have to go over this eventually. We might as well do it right now.”

There were so many more things I’d rather be doing than this, such as getting my wisdom teeth pulled without local anesthetic, streaking through Peel Castle during a school day, going in for a pelvic examination with a male doctor. Yeah, I was
that
uninterested in this demonstration.

“I’m sorry I asked,” I said. “Lesson learned
—
I’ll stop being so inquisitive from now on”
—
yeah right
—
“and we can pretend I never asked.”

“Gabrielle,” Andre said, his voice soothing. “you’ve killed an attacker, been shot twice, and successfully avoided death several times. You can watch this.”

I winced. “But it’s so icky.”

“It’s also going to be your reality in a few years
—
if that.” I knew he had a point, but I’d been clinging to this last shred of normalcy.

I bit the inside of my cheek. My stomach was still mutinous. “Okay, let’s do this.”

“Great
—
”

“But, you’re going to have to drink from me, not John.” I didn’t want John to get bitten on my account, and there was something intensely creepy about the idea of watching that as a third party.

Andre’s eyes widened. “That’s not a good idea.”

I shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”

He could probably tell I’d love nothing more than to scram out of that room, because he conceded. “John, thanks for volunteering, but you can go ahead and leave.”

“No problem,” John said. He nodded to me as he passed. “Nice meeting you.” He exited the room and closed the door on his way out.

Andre studied me for a moment. “I’m going to have to captivate you
—
that’s what will make the experience pleasant rather than painful.”

I curled my lip but nodded. I remembered how good it had felt. And that it wasn’t real.

“Are you ready?”

I fidgeted in place.
No.
“Yeah.”

He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “Okay, I’m going to walk you through this.”

His eyes glittered. There was something dark and illicit about what we were about to do, and my heart rate began to spike. “Are you captivating me yet?” I asked.

He cracked a smile. “Nope. That’s all you.”

Well dang it all.

“But that is the first step. Or, in your case, using glamour.”

My skin felt warm and my abs clenched. Heat collected low in my stomach. “Now I’m using it,” he said, his voice husky.

My breathing became shallow. “I can tell.” I backed up against the nearest wall, just so that something other than my legs could support me.

Our eyes locked, and I watched him move towards me, all coiled power and fluid movement. He invaded my personal space, only stopping once our chests touched.

His hand brushed my neck, and his thumb caressed the artery that lay just below the skin. The look he gave me was so much more than just lust. He gazed at me as though I was his salvation.

This isn’t real. This isn’t real.

He slid a leg between mine and leaned in to nuzzle my neck.

Oh sweet mercy.
I was beyond caring whether this was real or not.

My legs buckled and if Andre hadn’t moved in and wrapped an arm around my waist, I’d have collapsed on the ground. I was going to die of overheating, or start taking off his clothes, whichever happened sooner.

“While you are captivating prey, your fangs will naturally unsheathe.” His breath tickled along the skin of my neck as he spoke.

“Mmm.”

“From there, instinct will take over.”

He kissed my neck where my pulse pounded, his hair tickling the exposed skin of my chest. I felt a prick of pain.

“Oh my God.” I lit up like a Christmas tree. No really, my skin began to glow and I arched my back, pushing myself further into him. My body was hyperaware of itself, every square inch of me tingling. I seriously hoped sex felt as good as this because this felt
ah-mazing
.

A little voice at the back of my mind was telling me it was not normal for people to glow, and that this situation was going to get way out of hand, but I told that little voice to shove it.

I ran my hands over Andre’s back, moving them lower and lower until they found the edge of his shirt. They dipped underneath and my fingertips stroked the dips and rises of Andre’s muscular back.

I tilted my mouth to his ear. “
More
.” I knew that voice was trouble. When it sounded less like words and more like a song, things always escalated further than they should.

His hands began to skim down my torso to the back of my thighs. He lifted me up and I locked my legs around his waist. Every square inch of me was alight with this tingly, euphoric sensation.

I threw my head back and laughed even as the room blurred and my eyesight dimmed. I continued to laugh until I passed out completely.

***

“Gabrielle wake up.”

I could hear Andre’s voice in the darkness.
“Gabrielle, please, you have to wake up.”

My eyes fluttered open. Andre leaned over me, his eyes much too bright. A bloody tear had almost made its way over his cheekbone.

I lifted a finger and wiped it away. “Why are you crying?” It was strange to see a man as badass as Andre look vulnerable.

He gathered me to him, holding me tightly. “I’m so, so sorry,” he whispered. His voice sounded broken.

“For what?” My mind felt fuzzy, like I couldn’t remember what I’d been doing up to this point, so I gazed over his shoulder at my surroundings.

I took in rich furniture, that familiar wall of books, and the plush bed beneath me. We were back in Andre’s room.

Strange, I didn’t remember walking here.

“For taking things too far.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, feeling unusually tired.

Andre, sensing I needed a bit more help piecing together this evening, removed my hand from my face. “I bit you. Only I should’ve stopped much sooner than I did.”

The images of Andre biting me surfaced. I covered my mouth with my hand. “Whoops,” I said, remembering the siren coming out. “I think that might’ve been my fault.”

His eyes hardened and his jaw clenched. “That was
not
your fault. I knew better; I should’ve never agreed to it in the first place.”

I guess that meant we wouldn’t be doing that again. Too bad. That was like tasting chocolate chip cookies for the first time; once you tried them, you’d forever have a craving for them.

I sat up on the bed and heard the crinkle of plastic. Speaking of chocolate chip cookies, Andre had laid out a spread of sweets next to me.

“Just how long was I out?” I asked, wondering how long it would’ve taken Andre to move me from the study
and
lay out a dessert buffet.

Andre pushed away from the bed to pace the room, looking sexy-as-hell in the process. “You weren’t out that long. I keep food around for this sort of situation.”

Ew. I didn’t want to know
—
well I did, but I’d learned my lesson about asking loaded questions.

I picked up a plastic wrapped cookie and tore away the packaging. It appeared to be chalk full of preservatives and things that would give me cancer. Considering I’d be undead before I acquired said cancer, I figured it was safe to eat.

Andre rubbed his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

I bit into the cookie, enjoying the taste of sugar and empty carbs. “Will you stop apologizing?” He’d done it quite a bit of that tonight, and it was freaking me out. “Personally, I thought the whole experience was . . . titillating. Well, other than passing out.”

His lips thinned, but he didn’t say anything.

“Oh-kay. Be all moody and vampy,” I said, polishing off the cookie and moving on to another.

“I’m not being moody and vampy,” he said, folding his arms over his chest.

I shrugged, more interested in the sweets in front of me than arguing semantics with a vampire. I blew through five more cookies before I began to feel perky again.

“I’ve never seen someone eat quite as savagely as you,” Andre commented from where he still stood in the middle of the room, his eyes narrowed. Crumbs were littered across my shirt and pants.

“That’s because most women would be horrified for you to see how they really eat,” I said, crumpling up the wrapper of the last cookie I ate.

“And you’re not?” Andre raised an eyebrow.

“Nope,” I said, licking my fingers. Despite what I said, I discreetly brushed sugar and crumbs off myself and tried to not draw attention to the fact that I’d gotten food all over the place.

It didn’t work. One of Andre’s lips quirked. “You missed a couple spots.” He came over to me and wiped something out of my eyebrow and something from the corner of my lip.

“There.” He didn’t let go of my face. Instead his eyes searched mine.

“What are you doing?” I asked, watching him watching me. I was still tired, but having him this close was waking me up. Quickly.

“I’m trying to remember this moment.” A stray lock of hair fell over one of his eyes.

I reached out and tucked it out of the way. “Why would you want to remember this moment?”

“You’re so . . . you. That goes away with time.” His gaze dropped to my lips.

“How could I ever stop being me?”

But he didn’t answer. Andre tilted my chin up and his lips brushed mine. My eyelids closed and my lungs felt like they were collapsing from all the pain and pleasure. For someone like me, who was used to the lustful looks of men, this kiss touched a part of me that all the passionate kisses and heated gazes couldn’t.

This was true, deep, blind love. And it made me ache for the man in front me.

***

I woke to the sound of a scream.

It took me a moment to place where I was. From the faint moonlight streaming in through the window, I could see my bed and desk.

My room. I was back in my room. The smell of fear and adrenaline skittered past me.

“Ugh, who woke me from my beauty sleep?” Oliver said from the middle of the room. Leanne and I still hadn’t managed to get rid of the mattress, so we hadn’t also managed to get rid of our third roommate.

I could hear the quick palpitations of Leanne’s heart; it sounded as though she had just finished a sprint, not just awoke from sleeping.

I reached over and clicked on a bedside lamp. The light blinded me longer than it rightfully should’ve, probably because my eyes were increasingly sensitive to all light sources.

When my eyesight finally adjusted, I focused on my frightened friend. Leanne was sitting up in bed, curled in a protective ball. She’d pulled her legs up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Sweat had matted her hair to her scalp and neck, and her breaths were shallow.

I watched her body tremble and her lips move. The words she spoke were too low for human ears to understand, but not for mine.

“
Lady of Death, I embrace thee with open arms as my time draws to a close.
”

“Leanne, are you okay?” I asked.

I didn’t know if she even heard me. “
May I gaze upon thy face with courage and know within my dying hour that I shall live on.
”

“Obviously she’s not okay,” Oliver chimed in
—
helpful as always. “The girl’s clearly gone cray-cray.”

“Not the right time, Oliver,” I said. “Not that it ever is.”

“
Let those left behind feel no sorrow but rejoice in my passing. For while the body decays my soul is immortal.
”

“Leanne, what are you talking about? You’re not going to die.” Now it was me who was getting terrified.

“All I wanted was for a certain incubus to visit, but no, that was too much to ask for,” Oliver grumbled.

I ignored Oliver and walked across the room, careful to sidestep him and his atrocious bed. I crouched next to Leanne.

Close up her eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. “
Forgive me my grievances. Cleanse me of my sins. I am ready to die.
”

“Leanne, what is going on?” I asked.

She blinked a few times, focusing on me. Her eyes welled up and a tear spilled over. “I can’t talk about it
—
I won’t.” And I thought I was stubborn.

“That’s alright,” I said. “You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to. Can you at least tell me what that was that you were saying?”

She pinched her eyes shut and another tear slid down her cheek. “Just a prayer.”