Praise for Michele Hauf

“Hauf delivers excitement, danger and romance

in a way only she can.”

—Sherrilyn Kenyon on Her Vampire Husband

“Dark, delicious and sexy.”

—New York Times bestselling author Susan Sizemore on Her Vampire Husband

“Adventure, intrigue, and a voice like no other—

Michele Hauf is a force to be reckoned with!”

—USA Today bestselling author Emma Holly

“Cleverly engrossing dialogue, overwhelming desire and

intriguing paranormal situations are skillfully combined

to make this an irresistible read.”

—Cataromance.com on Moon Kissed

“A novel twist on a vampire tale … Hauf mixes well-

developed characters and sparkling dialogue with a

paranormal tale and comes out with a winner.”

—RT Book Reviews on Kiss Me Deadly

“With dangerous encounters, a myriad of paranormal

beings and even some subtle humor, The Highwayman is an enchanting love story packed with riveting adventures.” —Cataromance.com

“In this action-packed delight, Hauf’s humorous writing

and well-developed characters combine for a realistic

story—in spite of its supernatural basis.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Devil To Pay

Also available from Michele Hauf

HER VAMPIRE HUSBAND

SEDUCING THE VAMPIRE

Forever
Vampire

Michele Hauf

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This story is for YOU.

You, who may have read something I’ve written before, and

decided to check out this book (I hope you like it!). You, who

saw the word “Vampire” in the title and grabbed the book to

add to your growing paranormal collection. You, who doesn’t

really believe in creatures of the night, yet secretly wonders

what it would be like to meet one. You, who does believe, and

yes, you even have the fangs and kick-ass clothing to prove

it. You, who loves vampires in all forms, be they dark, sexy,

brooding, bloody, young, old (really old), menacing, romantic,

a warrior, a lover, scarred, perfect, sparkly, pale, angsting,

powerful—but most of all, someone you can relate to and love.

CHAPTER ONE

LYRIC SANTIAGO STEPPED into a pair of diamond-encrusted Louboutins. They merely twinkled as if they were paste jewels when compared to the fabric hugging her body. A sexy gown shimmered over her skin with her movement. It felt like a summer breeze had wafted through the closed bedroom window. Lyric smiled at the unexpected sensation.

That was about the only thing that could make her smile today.

“Gorgeous,” Charish said.

Charish lingered by her daughter’s bedroom door, observing. The matriarch of the Santiago clan looked as young as Lyric, but had lived as a vampire for over a century. Her blond hair was pinned up in a 1960s beehive hairstyle with a tiny pink bow attached front and center.

No matter how many centuries she lived, Lyric swore she would never get stuck in a fashion decade.

“I’m so glad you decided to try it on before you leave for the exchange,” Charish said.

“How could I resist something that is probably a dream to most?”

Striding before the floor-length mirror framed upon the closet door, Lyric gasped at her first sight of the gown on her body. It dazzled. She could not see her reflection, but the dress conformed to her shape in the eerie manner she’d become accustomed to when viewing clothing on her body.

The gown had been made and was treasured by Faery’s Seelie court. Fashioned from thousands of faery-mined diamonds, each of them no larger than an ant’s head, it had been sewn together with spider silk. The silk was almost invisible, and it looked as though the diamonds that lay upon her skin were droplets of water under the sun, until the skirt swung gracefully about her ankles creating swishy waves of blinding brilliance.

It was rumored to give the wearer unimaginable magic should a faery don the gown. Holes could be torn in the sky to reveal other worlds. Entire faery clans could be leveled. Love (an uncommon sentiment to the fickle sidhe) could be annihilated or made pure.

On Lyric, a vampire, it would grant no such power save the sensual prowess to make men drop their jaws, stumble over their own feet and profess true lust for one promising wink from her.

She turned sideways and looked down her figure. Slender and toned, thanks to her gymnastics hobby, the gown clung to a taut stomach and her lean thigh muscles. The bodice slipped along the sides of her full breasts.

She liked the tease, and yet only wielded it when necessary.

A twist to check her backside showed the gown plunged to just above her derrière. Were the plunge an inch lower it would reveal things even she preferred to keep covered.

The gown, while revealing more than enough, could never keep all her secrets. Tugging her blond hair forward to cover her left ear, she made sure her mother had not been aware of the move.

“You should take it off now,” Charish suggested in her quiet yet demanding tone. “Wouldn’t want to muss it.”

“Of course. It does feel … powerful.”

“That could be the faery dust. Take it off, dear, before you get a contact high. Leo wore gloves when he handled that thing.”

The gown had once belonged to the Seelie court, yet had been stored in a security safe by Hawkes Associates, a firm that represented the paranormal nations and acted as a sort of bank and store-all for their assets.

Priceless, the gown was a huge coup her brother, Leo, had stolen a week ago after her mother had requested he do so. Lyric had been surprised at Leo’s easy submission to the one person he complained stifled his freedom. Yet at the same time, Charish Santiago could squeeze a tear out of the most stalwart warrior: she was master of manipulation.

Fact was, the Santiago clan was nearly bankrupt. Charish needed money. Fast. Pity, the domineering fiancé Charish claimed to love couldn’t provide financial support. Lyric thought him worthless, but her mom did seem to genuinely love him.

If it would help her mother, Lyric was in for the ride tonight, even with the danger it promised.

Another glance in the mirror stirred up the frustration Lyric had thought she’d long pushed aside. She hadn’t seen her reflection in nearly two decades. Sure, she’d seen it until puberty, when bloodborn vampires came into their blood hunger, but her memory was of a towheaded young waif whose love for summer camp and horses diametrically opposed what stood before the mirror.

She teased a strand of hair over her shoulder. Nothing good had come of that final summer before she’d completely transformed. Tonight brought up memories that she must vanquish once and for all. But would she be successful?

“The demon guards are prepared?” she asked her mother.

“Yes, three of them. Don’t worry, Lyric.”

“I’m not.” Yes, she was.

“The guards will accompany you to the handoff site, and have been instructed not to allow the Lord of Midsummer Dark to take the exchange into Faery. You’ll be safe.”

Safe? Lyric sighed. If only.

The handoff site was at a known doorway to Faery. One wrong step and Lyric would never return. But she couldn’t express her worries to her mother. She’d kept it a secret for so long, it was best she continue. If things went tonight as planned, it would be the beginning of the end.

“Give me a bit to get changed.”

“Certainly. The driver isn’t scheduled to leave for another hour, so take your time, dear.”

“You going to wait with Connor?” She couldn’t summon enthusiasm into that question. If the fiancé would show some initiative toward supporting Charish, she could at least bless her mother’s choice.

“I wish you’d give him a chance, Lyric,” Charish said. “He loves me. I need someone to take care of me. It’s been difficult heading the Santiago clan since your father’s death. People rely on me and expect certain rewards and contributions in exchange for an alliance. I can’t do it all.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to, Mother.”

Lyric wished Connor wasn’t so … devious. She suspected he was at the root of the pilfered Santiago fortune—it had literally run empty over the past year—but she couldn’t prove it.

Five decades earlier, Charish had married a thief, and a damned good one. John Santiago had not aligned himself with a vampire tribe, and had instead created a sort of mafioso ring of unaligned vampires across Europe. He had sought power and money, and all the blood a vampire could drink. Lyric wasn’t sure exactly what had brought money into the family, but it did—or rather, had—flowed generously. Her father had died when Lyric was eight, but not before teaching her older brother, Leo, the skills of the trade.

Since Leo had left the family nest two years ago, Charish had faltered, taking on the weight of her deceased husband’s responsibilities as if a blow to her soul. Until this newest opportunity had presented itself.

Maybe she could convince her mother to keep the reward she’d win from the exchange and ditch the fiancé? The exchange tonight was not for cash, but the return payment, if handled correctly, could prove profitable.

Lyric ran a finger along her ear, tucking her hair behind it, which was a habit she’d developed when she was thirteen. Last year of summer camp …

“I’ll see you in a bit, dear.” Charish blew her daughter a kiss—actual physical affection was not in the matriarch’s arsenal—and backed from the room, her high heels clicking on the tiles as she went in search of her lover.

Another sigh could not be helped. Tonight would decide her fate. Running her palm over the diamonds felt as if she had skimmed a cool stream. The gown fascinated her, but much as she adored fashion, Lyric preferred a more subdued look. She didn’t like to stand out in a crowd.

Behind her, a glass-on-glass scraping noise cut through the twilight. The floor-to-ceiling bedroom window, secured at each upper corner by a large rubber suction device, popped inside the room.

Lyric backed toward the mirror, slapping her hands to it as two figures in dark clothing stalked toward her. Just as she was about to scream, one of them punched her across the jaw, knocking her out.

Her body wilted in a glitter of priceless faery diamonds. The intruders opened up a black body bag and stuffed the vampiress inside.

THE GRANITE-COLORED Maserati GranTurismo convertible squealed around a corner in the tenth arrondissement, clipped the bumper of a parked BMW, yet continued onward at twice the speed limit on the narrow, cobbled street. The driver spied a parking space and swerved, hitting the brakes, which swung around the tail of the vehicle and nestled it between two parked cars. Neither car sustained damage, which surprised the hell out of the driver.

He was still mastering the mortal means of transportation.

Killing the ignition abruptly cut off Johnny Cash’s voice from the CD player. Vaillant tugged a pair of dark sunglasses from the rearview mirror and slipped them on. He checked his reflection, still not used to the fact he could not see his reflection in the mortal realm—sunglasses hovering above a coat collar was just wrong.

Snakeskin boots hitting the tarmac (fake—you gotta respect the wildlife), he stretched to his six feet six inches and nodded at a passing mortal woman who pushed a pink baby stroller. Her blush amused him.

It was rare Vaillant walked the streets before noon. He was a late sleeper. The nights were much cooler here in the summertime, which decided his preference, though his bad vampire self could walk in the day, longer than most due to his heritage.

“Heritage? Ch’yeah,” he muttered as he hopped the curb and marched inside the five-story business complex nestled within view of the train station. “Lot of good family blood has served me.”

In truth, such blood had only hindered every step he’d ever taken.

Addicted to the sensory marvel of touch, Vail ran his fingertips along the black marble walls leading up to the elevator bays. The iron rings on his fingers clattered. His boots clomped nastily on the marble floor. The unfastened leather buckles on his right thigh swayed like banners.

Chipped black nail polish from a night he couldn’t remember caught the eye of an elderly security guard. Vail didn’t usually go in for mortal adornments, but he liked the grungy look of the polish and he wasn’t sure how to remove the clingy stuff.

He nodded at the security man, an elderly mortal with a thick crop of gray hair under his official cap. Running fingers through his hair, Vail then stopped before the elevator and punched in the digital code Rhys Hawkes had provided him.

Hawkes Associates was the last place he wanted to visit. He’d been here once, days after arriving in the mortal realm. He’d left with a new bank account, a new car and a new uncle—but no answers.

Now, three months later, he suspected what Hawkes wanted from him. Vail had no intention of working for his pseudostepfather, who was officially his uncle. But Rhys Hawkes—half vampire, half werewolf—was interesting enough for Vail to give him another chance.

He’d swing in, listen to what the centuries-old half-breed had to say, suck down the five-hundred-euro-a-bottle wine Hawkes kept on hand, then breeze off to the Lizard Lounge where he could slake his thirst for faery ichor. It wasn’t FaeryTown, but close enough.

The elevator doors slid open to reveal a lean young man with shoulder-length red hair, freckles and muscles that would intimidate a bouncer at a biker bar. The man nodded his head to the tunes blasting through his earbuds. He took one look at Vail and lunged for him, vising his hands about the vampire’s neck.

Not about to be taken down, and judging his strength equal to his attacker’s, Vail shoved the redhead against the wall. With a glance aside, they were both aware the security guard stood nearby, but the mortal with a pistol secured at his hip belt didn’t make a move. Smart guy.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Trystan Hawkes growled. He released his hold on Vail and tugged out the earbuds. The werewolf sneered, and spit, “Longtooth.”

“I love you, too, brother. Just come from talking to Daddy?”

“He’s not your father.” Tryst set back his shoulders and assumed a modicum of calm, but his adamant sneer told Vail what he wouldn’t say. He had already said it all, so why bother again? “You slumming with the normal folk?”

“Your daddy called me here.” Vail waggled a brow in a malicious tease. “Maybe he likes me better, eh?”

Tryst chuffed. “In your demented sparkly dreams.”

Vail did not sparkle, though the faery ichor he had imbibed had seeped through his pores and left a sheen on his skin. It had freaked out Tryst the first and only time they’d met right here in this building. Things had gone downhill from there.

“Glad to see there’s no love lost,” Vail countered. “Wouldn’t want my werewolf brother to go all mushy on me.”

He wanted to punch the bastard, but a frustrating sliver of need inhabiting his hardened black heart also wanted to pull the creep in for a brotherly hug. What a wib you are, Vail.

“You must be a force, brother,” Vail said. “But wait. You don’t run with a pack. Just a sad little omega wolf—”

The wolf wielded a sneak-attack high kick. Tryst’s hard rubber sole landed on Vail’s jaw and ratcheted back his skull on his spine. He saw stars for a few seconds.

Rubbing his jaw, Vail smirked. “Nice one.”

“You keep her insane,” Tryst said forcefully.

“She’s my mother, too. Like it or not,” Vail said, but he couldn’t get behind the retaliation. Did he keep her insane?

“You.” Tryst stabbed Vail in the chest. The wolf reeked of aggression. “Stay away from our family.”

“Seems your damned family keeps wanting to pull me in.”

“You have no right being here!”

“Yeah?” Vail slammed Tryst against the wall, pushing his anger through his brother’s shoulders. “I paid your father’s damn blood debt! A debt you should have paid.”

Trystan’s pale blue eyes went soft. He blinked and looked aside. Vail felt the tension in his brother’s muscles slacken under his grasp. He stepped away from the werewolf.

He’d spoken the truth. Neither could deny it. Tryst and Rhys Hawkes, and perhaps even his mother, Viviane, owed him more than they could ever give. But Vail knew the blood debt was one bargain for which he’d never know reciprocation.

“Gentlemen?”

The security guard knew they were brothers.

“It’s cool, Harley,” Tryst said to the guard. “All in jest. Brotherly love, and all that crap.”

The guard nodded, but his smile didn’t express amusement.

The lanky wolf nodded once, an odd acknowledgment, which either agreed that, indeed, he should have paid the debt himself, or that he didn’t care what Vail had suffered.

Vail didn’t have to guess at his brother’s meaning.

Tryst curtly waved him off and strode toward the entrance, calling, “Stay out of my life, vampire!”

Vail flipped off the werewolf and jumped inside the elevator as the doors closed. Releasing his breath, he then shook out his fists, working his tense muscles loose.

The surprise of learning, three months earlier, he’d a brother could never top the innate desire to connect with Tryst. Vail didn’t know where that feeling came from, but he’d fight it to the death, if he had to. Tryst hated him without knowing him. Vail had best accept that.

You are unwanted in Faery. You will be unwanted in the mortal realm.

Tough words to hear from his enemy. But not difficult to believe they were true.

Landing at the top floor, he assumed calm as he slicked back his hair and strode into the marble hallway. The place always smelled like leather polish, and that disturbed his respect for nature.

The receptionist, a petite, strawberry blonde with a sexy librarian’s penchant for tight, tailored clothing, adjusted her glasses at the sight of Vail and sat straighter behind her desk, offering a bright red cupid’s bow smile.

Vail winked at her, and she noticeably swooned.

Mortals. They were too easy.

Hawkes was on the phone, and gestured him inside the sparely furnished, large corner office.

Swinging by the bar, Vail nabbed a goblet of the expensive wine and sucked it down. It tasted like fruit warmed by the sun, but could never match any faery vintage.

He walked to the window that wrapped the two corner walls of the office. Spreading out his arms, he felt the sudden daring desire to jump through the glass, to discover the exaltation of flight. Despite growing up in Faery, the closest he’d come to flying was a raging orgasm. Not to be disregarded on the list of adventures one must constantly pursue.

Yet any attempt at flight would result in a vampire smashed on the tarmac—not dead, but aching and damaged for weeks, surely. He’d save it for desperation.

Rhys Hawkes showed his age with sublime protest. Pushing three centuries, Hawkes had told Vail his hair had once been black with a gray streak striping one side. Now it was gray with threads of black here and there. His harsh European bone structure battled for notice but the man’s whiskey eyes were always what garnered observation.

The man was the father of Trystan Hawkes, Vail’s brother. Vail and Tryst had the same mother, Viviane LaMourette. He and his brother had been born on the same day; Vail first, then Trystan not two minutes later.

They were not twins.

Vail’s father was a vampire who had once been Rhys Hawkes’s nemesis—and his brother.

Viviane LaMourette was all vampire—bloodborn in the sixteenth century—but also insane.

What a twisted web woven through this family’s history, Vail thought with a mirthless smirk. Made for interesting coffee table talk, if one owned a coffee table. Well, he did own the coffeemaker.

Mortals and their curious habits.

Vail had never met his father. He would, as soon as he could get Hawkes to cough up information on how to find him. If anyone knew where to find Constantine de Salignac, it had to be his own brother. Yet Rhys had been evasive the first time Vail had begged the information from him.

Vail needed to see the man who had driven his mother insane. To look into his eyes, and to know whether or not his own eyes were the same. And then? Well, then.

Hawkes hung up and gestured for Vail to sit on the other side of the sleek stainless-steel desk before him. The man wore a comfortable gray sweater and dark jeans, and a silver wedding band on his left hand. He looked more Aging Rock Star than Vicious Half-Breed.

“I’m pleased you’ve come. It’s been months, Vaillant. How are you getting on in the mortal realm?”

Vail slouched onto the chair and propped an ankle across his opposite knee. He shrugged fingers through his hair, liking the scrape of the iron rings he wore on most fingers against his scalp. He noted Hawkes zoomed in on the rings.

Cracking a lazy grin, he tilted his head. “I’m assimilating. But it’s got nothing on Faery. So what’s up, Uncle?”

“You feel ready to visit your mother yet?”

Hell, not this scam again. Vail leaned his forearms onto his knees and shook his head.

No, he’d never met his mother. He was too freaked to know she was literally a loony after his father had buried her in a glass coffin under the city of Paris for over two centuries. Rhys had told him the tale when he’d first visited.

What was even freakier? Thanks to a warlock’s spell, Viviane LaMourette had been kept in a stasis for those centuries, alive and aware, yet frozen.

But the freakiest thing yet? She had been pregnant before being buried alive, and the stasis had also affected the embryos in her womb. She’d given birth to Vail and Tryst nine months after Rhys had finally found her in the twenty-first century. Two hundred and twenty-five years after she’d been buried.

Talk about a long gestation period.

He eyed Hawkes. Did the half-breed look hopeful? What was it with the paranormal breeds in this realm? They were all so … emotional.

Vail should have never left Faery. Not that he’d had much choice.

“A visit to my mother is not on my radar.”

Rhys tilted his head, nodding with weary acceptance. Vail could smell the man’s feral nature, and it reminded him of open fields dotted with summer blossoms, edged by verdant forest. And he could see a faint, red, ashy aura surrounding him, which proved there was vampire somewhere inside the man.

“That all you want from me, old man?”

“What’s that stuff?” Rhys pointed to Vail’s eyes. “You go out to a nightclub last night?”

“I do the clubs every night.” Vail smeared a forefinger under his eye, smudging the black ointment he wore. “It’s for the faeries. I need to be able to see them.”

“Hmm.” Hawkes nodded. “I suppose.” But he could never understand why.

When a mortal wanted to see a faery they smeared an herbal ointment around their eyes. When a vampire wanted to see one in the mortal realm, he did the same. The magical, mythical elixir never worked for mortals. It worked for Vail because he’d come from Faery and knew the right ointment to use—the ingredients could only be obtained from a sidhe healer.

“Makes you look like a rock star with a heroine addiction,” Rhys commented.

“I have no addictions,” Vail said, but was ashamed his voice faltered on the word addiction.

“Right.” Rhys leaned back in his chair, assessing Vail to the very marrow. A certain faery, Mistress of Winter’s Edge, had utilized the same assessing gaze on Vail. He had never liked that look, and so openly defied the man by stretching back his shoulders and looking down his nose at him.

“I need you to come to work for me,” Rhys said, repeating the same words he’d spoken the last three times he’d phoned Vail.

“Not this again—”

“This time it’s different,” he rushed out. “No office work. No pickups. This is a recovery mission. Actually, it’s a private investigation thing.”

Vail lifted an eyebrow. He had no such skills. “You lose something?”

He glanced to the wall where a large safe door hung open. The firm stored smaller items here in Rhys’s office, with a massive storage area in the basement of the building, which was entirely owned by Hawkes.

Inside the safe were priceless artifacts, totems, magical objects, currency in all denominations (and from all centuries), and other collectibles. Hawkes Associates was a security house for the paranormal nations, and took in objects of value and stored them for as little as a week or as long as centuries. If you were an immortal, it was a good thing to have a storage facility that would be there as you walked through the centuries. This Paris office was one of about half a dozen locations all over the world.

“As a matter of fact, something was stolen from us about a week ago. But that’s not the assignment. Well, it is, but not.”

“Don’t have time for this, old man, just spit it out.”

“Charish Santiago, kingpin for a splinter group of vampires unaligned with any tribe, wants me to find her daughter. She’s been kidnapped.”

“You want me to track a missing vampiress?” Vail thumbed his chin. “You know I don’t do vampires.”

“Yes, you can’t stand them. And yet you are one. How does that work again?”

“They disgust me.” Vail leaned forward. “They are weak, reek of mortal blood, and are unworthy of regard.”

Rhys sighed heavily and tapped his fingers on the desk. They’d had this conversation before. Vail didn’t need to convince the man of his prejudices. Hell, he knew it was a ridiculous prejudice. But when a vampire was raised in Faery, he developed certain dislikes, and vampires were one of them.

“What if I told you this mission isn’t going to benefit the vampires, but rather Faery?”

“I don’t get it.”

“A valuable Seelie court gown was also taken, along with the vampiress. Her name is Lyric Santiago. Seems she was wearing the gown at the time because she was about to hand it over to the Unseelie prince, or some dark lord—I don’t recall his title.”

“Lord of Midsummer Dark?”

“Yes, that’s him. I believe Zett is his name. You know him?”

The muscles strapping Vail’s jaw tightened. Zett had been his nemesis since childhood. But Vail had had the last laugh before being banished from Faery months earlier. Zett had been outraged. Heh.

“Ever wonder where the title Vail the Unwanted came from?” he tossed out.

Rhys nodded. “I see. So you don’t like the guy.”

Vail blurted out a huffing chuckle. “To put it mildly.”

“More reason to help me recover the gown.”

“And the vampiress?”

“Yes, her, too. But it’s the gown I’m focused on. Up until ten days ago, that gown was in the safe here in the office. We’d taken it in from the Seelie court as a means to cleanse it of some dark sidhe vibes. Something like that. I don’t understand it, only that it needed to be in the mortal realm a fortnight. They intend to reclaim it after that fortnight. Which is marked four days from now. Someone stole it from me, and I’ll give you one guess who that someone was.”

“The Santiago clan?”

Vail had heard the name muttered in the dark nightclubs as a connection to deeds even he could not fathom. The Santiagos were old-school vampire mafia, a self-styled tribe that followed none of the legitimate tribes’ ways. Thieves, cutthroats and murderers populated their ranks.

Vail avoided tribes—he didn’t require any modicum of family, no matter the form—but most especially he avoided the vampires.

“So why steal the thing, then put it on her daughter and hand her off to the Unseelie lord?”

“I’m told she was merely trying it on, and had intended to take it off before the exchange. I’m guessing the gown was leverage for something.”

“Not the daughter? What, is she ugly and has a snaggle-fang?” Vail chuckled to imagine a vampiress with such an affliction.

“She’s known as the ice princess, and I’m told she is stunning. Well, I’ve a picture here.” Rhys thumbed through a row of files in his bottom desk drawer and tossed a photo across the desktop to Vail. “I’m not sure what sort of deal was made between Santiago and the Midsummer darkness—”

“Lord of Midsummer Dark.”

“Yes, whatever. All I know is I need to get that gown back before the Seelie representative returns for it. The sidhe are the last nation on this earth I want to piss off.”

“You are not a wib, old man.”

“I don’t know Faery speak.”

“It means you’re not stupid.”

Vail leaned forward to glance at the photo. He wasn’t about to touch it—that would show too much interest—but then he did. Bright white teeth. Brilliant whites surrounding blue eyes. And long ribbons of white-blond hair. She was a stunner. And he could appreciate a gorgeous woman.

But not a vampire.

“So how is this not helping the vampires?”

“You find the woman and retrieve the gown,” Rhys explained. “We give the woman back to her mother, but—oops, we couldn’t retrieve the gown. The mother is happy to have her daughter back. And I have the gown in hand, ensuring the Seelie court is pleased with my work.”

“And Zett is left empty-handed.”

“Exactly.”

Vail thought about it. Why would a faery lord make a bargain with a vampire? Vampires stayed away from faeries because their ichor was addictive, and faeries generally regarded bloodsuckers as unclean and not worth a glance.

Something didn’t figure.

“You in?” Hawkes prompted.

“No.”

Vail stood and shoved a hand in his pants pocket. The pants were soft and well worn; buckles circling one thigh hung unbuckled here and there (though most of the unbuckling had been done by random women). So he was still wearing last night’s clothes. Sue him.

And yeah, he probably did look like some drug-addicted rocker, but he couldn’t deal with how vamps in this realm tried to appear similar to mortals just to fit in. Had to be exhausting.

“Vail.”

“I know the drill,” he rambled off quickly. “You need to do something with your life, Vaillant. You can’t walk about pissed at the world because you didn’t grow up with a mother and father. When will you claim your rightful power? You’re bloodborn! You could be so powerful in the vampire community! Did I get all that right, Hawkes?”

The man nodded.

“What power?” Vail challenged. “You say both my mother and father are bloodborn? Well, where is he? How am I to win this power without challenging him to what you say is mine?”

“Vail, Constantine is—”

“I know. A vicious old vampire who harmed you irreparably and drove my mother insane. Why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance?”

Hawkes lifted his chin, his lips compressing. After a moment’s heavy silence, he said, “He is my brother.”

“Right. Blood being thicker than water, and all that crap. Tell that to your son, who likes to slam me around every time he sees me. Blood means nothing. I know you think keeping my father’s whereabouts a secret from me is a means to protect me, but it’s not, Rhys.”

“I don’t know where he is!”

“How can you not?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Well, find him. I need to face him. I need to see where I came from.”

“The son is not a product of his father, Vail. You are what you were raised to be.”

“A fucked-up vampire who inhales faery dust like cocaine and wouldn’t touch one of his own kind if you paid him?”

“You still do dust?”

“No, just ichor.” It kept him alive. Mostly. “It is my breath. Without it I die.”

“It keeps you in a haze, Vail. You’ve never taken mortal blood. How do you know you will not like it? It would clear you. Only then will you see what you can become. Only then, can you claim the strength that is yours.”

Vail snorted. “I think I saw that movie. Use the force, Luke!” He shook his head and stomped toward the door. He’d known this visit would result in more of the same bullshit.

“All right!” Rhys called. “If you find the Santiago woman and return the gown safely to Hawkes Associates, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about your father.”

Vail paused before the glass door and pressed the silver toe of his boot against it, testing its strength until he heard the glass creak in the hinges. “All I want is an address,” he said.

“Done,” Rhys offered. “I’ll start looking for him immediately.”

Vail glanced over his shoulder and met the man’s tired gaze. Constantine de Salignac was Rhys Hawkes’s half brother. They too shared the same mother, but different fathers, though Rhys had been born ten years after his vampire brother.

The man had lived what Vail was now enduring. He knew what could hurt, harm and irreparably change Vail. Rhys just wanted to keep him safe.

Screw safety.

Vail wanted one moment with Constantine de Salignac. That was all he required to shove a stake through the bastard’s heart.

“Deal,” Vail said.

CHAPTER TWO

VAIL EXAMINED THE cleanly cut edge of the glass window. Charish Santiago stood behind him at the door, quietly observing. Her presence echoed louder than her voice. The bold red flower in her oddly poufed hair, the bright red nails and lips, and that short flounced white skirt screamed slutty vampire.

Slutty vampire who headed an evil clan of thieves and murderers, Vail corrected his thoughts. He was so not going to give her another glance.

Something more precise than a glass cutter had been used on this window, but he guessed the device had been silent, allowing the woman who had been in the room little time to realize what was happening after the window was pushed inside.

But shouldn’t a vampire have sensed the intrusion? Heartbeats? Breaths? A scent?

He sniffed. Expensive chick perfume tinted the air. And it wasn’t cheap cologne, because he didn’t pick up the note of alcohol, but instead a deep, ripe cherry infused with jasmine petals. If he passed by a woman smelling like this anytime soon, he’d know it was the missing vampiress, Lyric Santiago.

“The meeting was scheduled for six,” Charish explained. “We checked her room at five-fifteen and found her missing. I had talked to her a half an hour earlier.”

No footprints out on the balcony, or on the manicured lawn edged with hawthorn shrubs. Vail had walked the perimeter before coming inside. Whoever had jumped the viciously thorned shrubs had to have bled. Which meant nothing. All sorts of paranormal breeds could lighten their steps, or jump or even fly, depending on what had taken the woman.

Assuming the kidnappers had not been mortal. No, a mortal kidnapping a vampire made little sense. On the other hand, Vail knew little about The Order of the Stake. They were always a possibility.

“What makes you think the Unseelie lord didn’t take her?” he ventured, his attention on the glass, because he didn’t want to look at Santiago’s red highlights.

“The faery? Why would he kidnap my daughter when I was going to hand the gown over freely to him?”

“Maybe he wanted her, too.”

“But we had a—”

Vail swung toward the vampiress, an inquiring expression on his face. A deal. They had a deal. So why hadn’t mommy dearest delivered the gown? Had she been afraid to make the handoff, so had sent her daughter in her stead? What had made her believe her daughter would be in no danger?

“Maybe Zett didn’t like the terms of your deal,” he ventured, “and decided to cut out the middleman, and any reason for him to pay his portion of the deal? Take the girl, get the gown, and extort more money out of the Santiago clan in return for the daughter. Sounds far-fetched,” he examined the idea out loud. “The sidhe have no need for mortal money. What could Zett want beyond the priceless gown?”

The vampiress tightened her jaw. “Nothing. I expected my daughter would return safely.”

Shoving both hands in his pants pockets, Vail strode along the wall where a full-length mirror was hung. The vampiress must have stood here admiring herself in the gown, perhaps while the kidnappers had cut through the window.

No, that couldn’t be right. He doubted the vampiress could see her reflection any more than he could see his. He hated seeing the bodyless clothing in mirrors, so did not keep them in his home, and avoided them, going so far as to take out the side mirrors on the Maserati. A rearview mirror served to see who was behind him. But seriously? Other drivers should watch out for him.

Charish’s bright red toenails were visible when Vail looked down at the floor searching for debris. Man, she stood too close, and her perfume reeked of a more masculine scent that startled his expectations.

“We’ve already gone over the room,” she offered. “There are no clues here.”

“That you can see.” He scanned the carpeting, seeking one small glint of faery dust that would prove his theory correct. Nothing. Not even a twinkle. “There were no faeries here.”

“Exactly.” Santiago pressed her hand high along the door frame. The position boosted her breasts higher and he wondered if she was trying to flirt with him. He hadn’t dialed into vampiress seduction techniques yet, and didn’t want to. “You’re cute and all, but what makes you an expert?” she asked. “How do I know Hawkes sent the right guy for the job?”

“You don’t.”

Vail wasn’t a detective by any definition. But he could wear any mask he was handed, because he never wanted to be doubted by a mere vampire.

He picked up a pillow from the bed and sniffed it. More cherries and jasmine. If he were a werewolf like Tryst he could hop on the scent trail and follow the vampiress to wherever the kidnappers were keeping her. But he was not. And while vampires could recognize by scent, they were lousy trackers. Heartbeats and blood scent were the easiest to follow. But no blood had been spilled in this room.

Why hadn’t Rhys asked his real son to do this job?

No matter. After thinking about it a few hours, Vail had decided doing the job for Rhys would serve as means to repay him for the kindnesses he’d given him. One did not get along in the mortal realm without a car and cash.

“I want her found within forty-eight hours,” Santiago said, exhibiting the sharp edge that must see her respected by her kind. “The Unseelie are pressuring me.”

“What the hell for?” Vail had lived among the Unseelie. He knew Zett. Which is why this incident baffled him. “What, exactly, did the Lord of Midsummer Dark promise you in exchange for the gown?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.” She stroked her red nails down her throat. “Doesn’t matter, because my daughter is gone and neither she nor the Unseelie lord got to make the exchange.”

The woman didn’t care if her daughter was found, dead or alive, Vail decided. This sexpot of an aging vampiress was only concerned about the goods. Whatever those goods may be.

Interesting. Why involve the daughter in a deal with the Unseelie if it had all been about the gown in the first place? If she’d been so concerned for her daughter’s safety, wouldn’t the mother have sent a man or thug to make the exchange?

A cell phone jingled, and Santiago excused herself to take the call. Her sharp voice echoed down the hallway in tandem with the clicks of her high heels until Vail could no longer hear the erratic tune.

He toed out from under the bed the cell phone he’d noticed while Santiago had still been in the room. Snagging it, he clicked it on and scrolled through the call log. The phone had not been used a lot, but one number showed up three times the day of the kidnapping. It didn’t list a name, but Vail didn’t need a name. He pressed Call.

A sleep-laced male voice answered, “Lyric?”

So they knew to expect her from this number. That was helpful.

“No,” Vail replied. “Lyric’s assistant. Just checking in, making sure things went as planned.”

“What assistant? Lyric never mentioned no assistant. You call her and get your story straight before you bug me, man.” Click.

“And how can I call her if she’s been kidnapped?” Vail rubbed the phone along his forearm, working the scenarios. “Unless she wasn’t kidnapped? Had she worked something out with Zett? Possible.”

If her family was into thievery, that made the chances of her being a thief high. Had she stolen the gown? Why? It wasn’t as though she could fence such an odd and valuable item to any in the paranormal nation without someone finding out. Faery, most especially, had a way of knowing when things were missing.

“Has to be Zett,” he muttered. “That’s the only way the gown could still be out there and not draw attention. The two of them must be working together.”

Which didn’t explain a thing. Zett had been about to have the gown handed over on a silver platter shaped like a gorgeous blonde vampire. He didn’t need to steal or kidnap a thing.

Vail could not overlook the huge white elephant sitting in the middle of this bizarre incident—Zett hated vampires. So why kidnap one?

It had been three mortal months since he’d spoken to Zett. Much longer according to Faery time. Vail did not relish seeing the obnoxious Lord of Midsummer Dark anytime soon. Zett would remind him of Kit.

Vail whispered blessings the sweet young kitsune/cat shifter was happy now with her intended husband.

“Her apartment was clean, too,” Santiago said as she reentered the room.

“Apartment? Your daughter kept a place apart from this home?”

“Yes, in the second arrondissement. It was close to a gym where she likes to practice the silks with a coach. My men have gone through it. It’s clean.”

The silks?

“You don’t know everything,” Vail said. “If you did, I wouldn’t be talking to you. Give me the address.” When Santiago balked, Vail provided angrily, “I can see things, find evidence your men couldn’t dream of finding. Now write it down. You want your daughter found? Learn to cooperate.”

HUMMING A JOHNNY CASH TUNE about ghost riders in the sky, Vail strolled the tiny apartment that belonged to Lyric Santiago. His thoughts strayed. What was a ghost rider? Was it an incorporeal being? What did it ride? He’d like to meet one, and go for one of those infamous rides.

“Yippi-i-oo,” he sang the chorus from the song.

The apartment was indeed clean. Too clean. Vail had never seen such a Spartan living space—save his own—and suspected the vampiress could not have used it much. Three pieces of furniture—bed, couch and the requisite coffee table—and a few items in the closet. That was it. No personal touches or monogrammed towels in the bathroom. It looked as though it was a new place that had not yet been staged for sale.

If she had used it because it was close to a gym, it was likely only a stop-off of sorts. Silks? He really should have asked what that was about. Sounded kinky. And he did like some kink.

He stuck around a few hours after casing the apartment. Parked across the street from the building, he listened to the car radio while keeping an eye on the place.

When two vampires approached the building, Vail grabbed his sunglasses and got out and crossed the street. He knew they were vamps because of their ashy-red auras. Something he’d tried countless times to see on himself in a mirror but could not. Did he not have the red aura, or was it just that a man could not see his own aura?

For the love of Herne, he was one fucked-up vampire.

The vampires noticed him striding determinedly toward them and veered from the door of the building and around the side. The streets were tight and this one ended at an inner courtyard shaded with overhanging vines and fragrant honeysuckle.

Fingertips trailing the brick walls, Vail walked right into the center of the courtyard and flipped a nod at the vampires. “Nice day, messieurs. Sun is out. Looks like you got your one thousand SPF sunscreen on.”

One sneered and lunged toward him, exposing fangs. His buddy caught him by the shoulder. “Who the hell are you?”

“Miss Santiago’s assistant. I’m sure I spoke to you earlier.”

“I thought I told you—” The man realized he’d just given up his identity, in a manner.

“What are you looking for?” Vail asked. He put back his shoulders, flaunting his broad frame and imposing height. The faeries had thought him a freak. Vampires tended to take a step back from him. These two wibs did not. “Did Lyric ask you to get something for her at the apartment? It’s been picked over by her mommy’s thugs.”

“Damn it,” the one who had lunged said. “I knew we should have come here right away.”

They were definitely her allies.

“So where is she?” Vail tossed out. “I didn’t get the final destination.”

“In the seventh—”

The bigger one slammed his arm across the smaller’s chest. “You’re not her assistant. That cold bitch ain’t got no friends. He’s working for the old lady.”

The smaller one, unleashed from the bigger one’s restraining hold, rushed toward Vail, fangs down in warning.

Normally, Vail got into mortal combat. It kept his adrenaline flowing, and he liked to do damage to people who pissed him off. But exerting himself over these two was a waste of breath. He had a few tricks up his sleeve.

Vail rubbed his palms together, loosening the faery dust ever embedded in his skin. Tilting his palm flat, he blew dust in the face of the attacker just as he moved within touching distance.

Faery dust penetrated the vampire’s pores, traveling up his nostrils and into his throat, instantly rocketing him to a methlike high. The vampire grinned widely, staggered—and dropped.

“You want a taste?” Vail teased the other, who stood with arms out at his sides in bewilderment.

“What the hell was that? You got some voodoo mojo going on?”

“Ch’yeah. Here’s a taste.” Vail blew another cloud of dust and the thug batted at it, but succumbed as quickly as his cohort.

Standing over the two fallen bloodsuckers, Vail shook his head. “Vampires. They’re so weak.”

He licked his palm and inhaled deeply. Once upon a time he could get just as quick and massive a high. He’d give anything for that high now, but since he’d come to the mortal realm he’d shed the haze he’d once lived in, and was becoming clearer by the day.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

He bent over the vampires. “FaeryTown is in the eighteenth, guys. You’ll find more of what you now crave there. Tell ‘em Vail sent you. They’ll hook you up with a sweet little number.”

He straightened and scanned the area. “The seventh?” Across the river, the quarter boasted the Eiffel Tower and the Invalides museum. “Big area to search, but I’m on it.”

THE TWO MINIONS who’d succumbed to his dust clued him in that something was fishy in Paris. Where would a vampiress who had been kidnapped, or maybe not kidnapped, hide? It had to be someplace close to a food source so when she went out for sustenance she did not risk being seen.

Of course, that could be anywhere in the vast city of Paris. The buildings were close, the streets narrow and labyrinthine. Easy enough for mortal or vampire to move about unseen. Even if her minions had narrowed it down to one particular quarter, it would take Vail hours to cover it all.

One thing he had learned since arriving, the vampire tribes, while they kept to themselves, communicated from tribe to tribe in an amazing network. If you were a tribe member, you were accounted for. But even those unaligned with tribes were known. It was in the tribes’ best interest to keep tabs on everyone. A sexy, blonde ice princess like Lyric Santiago would surely be recognized by at least a few.

He did have a tribal contact, but would give the search a go first. Besides, that’s if anyone knew she was missing. The family was keeping this hush-hush.

He folded the picture of the vampiress and stuffed it in a back pocket. Appealing to any man with a healthy sex drive, certainly, with her high breasts and come-on-let’s-kiss white teeth and flirty, long-lashed eyes. But beyond the surface glamour, he wasn’t interested.

Vampires did not appeal to his palate. Sure, that was like calling the kettle black, but he’d grown up knowing that vampires sustained their lives through the heinous practice of imbibing on mortals. They drank their blood!

Vail would never succumb to such a base appetite. He didn’t need it. Faery ichor sustained him. So why bother succumbing to something that horrified him?

As if you don’t do the same, his conscience screamed. You sink your teeth into faery necks. How is that different than taking a mortal?

“They’re filthy and poisoned by their food,” he muttered, and walked onward.

Thinking of which, he was a bit peckish. It had been over a day since he’d fed. He should have fueled up for what he suspected would be a long night.

Striding the streets in the seventh arrondissement, he didn’t attempt to quiet the clicking beats of his boots. He wanted to be heard, to be seen tracking through the twilight haze.

Let them know what they can’t get away from.

Every so often the street was cobbled, a remnant from Paris’s earlier centuries. Vail liked that. And then he didn’t. He knew his father had been around since the mid-eighteenth century, as had Rhys Hawkes and his mother, Viviane.

Rhys and Viviane had fallen in love a few years before the French Revolution. Had they walked these very streets?

“Don’t care. They didn’t care enough about me. I don’t care about them.”

Jumping and hitting the bottom of a low, rusted tin sign with his knuckles, he set the ancient thing into a creaky swing.

Eyes followed him as he cut through the twilight; he could feel their regard prick at his spine. Some were mortal, peering out from windows as their televisions blared monotonously in the background. What a mind waste technology was.

Yet other eyes were Dark Ones, unwilling to test his strut. And woe to those who did employ the bravado to try him.

“Yippi-i-oo,” he sang lowly. “Where are you?”

A glimmer in the corner of his eye told him a sidhe lurked in the shadows, slithering along, following his steps. Curious, but not threatening. His hunger stirred. He sensed it was a lower imp or perhaps a sprite. Sprites were nasty and he didn’t care to go toe-to-toe with one of them. Their ichor was acrid, and he always ended up spitting it out.

Couldn’t be a sprite. Their iridescent sheen never allowed them to blend completely into the shadows.

As he turned a corner, Vail twisted his head quickly to spy the sidhe before it realized he’d been aware of it. The ointment he wore around his eyes gave him that sight.

He dashed forward, grabbed the thing about its narrow chest, and sank his fangs into its neck. Just a quick bite, something to take the edge off the jitters he’d felt tweaking his muscles. Hot ichor glittered down his throat and soothed his pangs. He dropped the faery in a collapse of pale violet limbs. It wobbled in a giddy daze from his bite. The swoon was good to mortal, vampire and even the sidhe.

Thumbing the corner of his mouth, Vail walked on and thanked his ability to see the sidhe. He hadn’t been well loved in Faery, and suspected if any of his former rivals were in the mortal realm of Paris they would not hesitate to call him out. Zett held the top position on that rivalry list.

“Come and get me,” he muttered—then stopped abruptly.

Ahead, a mortal male moaned. A pleasurable utterance that curled Vail’s smile smartly. Right out here, in the street, and not tucked inside a bedroom. Such moxie!

He didn’t hear a responding female voice, but he did smell cherries and jasmine. “Gotcha.”

Racing forward on the balls of his feet—now he wanted the element of surprise—Vail swung around the corner and into a dark alley cluttered with stacked terra-cotta flowerpots.

The man stood shoulders and back to the wall and the female was running her hands up his thigh and over his obvious hard-on. She wore a black scarf that covered all her hair, but Vail bet what was tucked beneath was long and blond. Clad entirely in black, the only spot of color was the red pointed shoes peeking from beneath the pant hem.

She leaned into the mortal’s neck, fangs glinting—then sighted Vail.

Palming a huge flowerpot to leverage his strides, Vail pushed it aside and behind him. It cracked and clattered on the cobbles.

The mortal man landed against Vail’s chest, groping to stand yet utterly confused about why he’d been pulled from the high of arousal. The scent of sex and cigarettes shrouded him.

Shoving him off, Vail tripped over the man’s legs and plunged forward, landing on the cobblestones. He looked up. The vampiress paused at a turn at the end of the alley. She flashed a defiant smirk at him and took off.

“It’s not going to be that easy to ditch me.”

Charging up from all fours, he performed a racer’s dash and made the corner, careening around it in time to spy the vampiress’s long legs slip into the open maw of a warehouse.

Taking in the building’s structure as he approached, he decided it was abandoned. The missing windows and flat, pebbled roof would provide her an easy escape while he wandered about in the dark trying to sense her. He could see well enough in the dark, but preferred to track her heartbeats.

Sniffing, he noted the jasmine and cherries. “You’re the one I want,” he said. “But I think I’ll let you come to me. Always prefer to be the one in control.”

He turned right and walked along the side of the building, tendering careful footsteps so he would sense any noise from inside. She wouldn’t be so stupid now she knew someone was after her.

At the opening to a main street, Vail got another whiff of jasmine. He eyed the stretch of apartment buildings and walk-ups directly across the street. Older, and likely lower rent, though this area was nothing to sneeze at. But dark. No streetlights to expose anyone’s secrecy.

“Perfect.”

“FUCK.”

Shoulders glued against the corrugated iron warehouse wall, Lyric listened for the stranger’s boot steps.

Why had he run after her? Who was he? And what a way to spoil supper. She hadn’t a chance to sink in her fangs and now she was beyond hungry.

All the adrenaline pumping through her system over the past twenty-four hours had stripped her energy and weakened her. In fact, she breathed heavily and panted. What was with that?

She’d gotten a quick look at him. Hair darker than Himself’s heart, slicked back like some kind of goth Elvis. Dark clothing and dark eyes. Really dark, like he used guyliner and smudged it.

Could be a druggie. Mortals, when high on meth, were strong, and if hurt or wounded, could still function without noticing the pain. That had to be it. He was a junkie who’d stumbled onto the scene of her trying to get the mark off, and decided he’d wanted a piece of her for himself.

Which meant she may get lucky and he’d forget what he’d witnessed and be diverted to a quest for more drugs.

Daring a peek around the doorway, she scanned the alley. The room she was squatting in was down the street. She could make a dash for it if she kept to the left side of the street in the shadows that hugged the walls. So she did.

Taking the back stairs up the side of the building to avoid the lobby, she then had to jump onto a neighbor’s balcony and lean over to slide through the window she’d left open a few inches. Years of training with Leo and her acrobatic skills aided her as Lyric mastered the leap and slipped into the apartment.

A twin bed with a lumpy mattress sat below the window. She landed on it in a roll and came up to sit on the edge of the mattress. The apartment, a recent acquisition, was dark. The full moon had cruised behind nasty gray clouds that promised rain before morning.

Could she do this? Actually pull it off? It wasn’t as though she’d ever spent time away from the family mansion. She possessed some facsimile of a social life, went clubbing and made dates, and hunted. But to live on her own?

Lyric sighed and wondered how long it would be before she dared go out again to look for supper.

“So, this is how the young and the kidnapped live.”

A tall, dark-haired man strolled out from the bathroom, leaned against the kitchen wall and hooked one foot up on the side of the butcher block.

Double fuck.

CHAPTER THREE

CAUGHT.

Eyes wide and mouth gaping. Blond hair tumbled from beneath the black scarf. Unbelieving. Now that was a look Vail would cherish.

“Who are you?” She backed toward the window, but he didn’t think she would bolt, because her body language said I want to listen instead of I’m out of here. “Who sent you?”

“Ah, now that is the question, isn’t it? Who sent me?”

“I just asked that. Got a hearing problem?”

“I found you by sound and smell, sweetie. That perfume is sexy, by the way.”

She rolled her eyes.

“And what’s a pretty little vampiress doing away from her kidnappers like you just were? They give you a long leash? Where are those rascally kidnappers, by the by?”

“Get out of here. This is private property.”

Vail looked toward the front door, where he’d had to break a security lock to get inside. The smell of jasmine wafting out from inside had told him this was the right place. Yet the fact he could enter without a proper invitation told him a lot. Vampires could only freely enter public property. Yet another frustrating hazard of living in the mortal realm.

“It may be private, but it’s not your property. Which makes it vacant, and that falls under the public category. You always come through the window?”

Standing and marching across the room, the vampiress tugged off the scarf and tossed it aside. She was trapped and, like prey, paced in abandon like they always did when seeking an escape. She worked it, though, her long strides swinging her narrow hips, which revealed a peek of sexy skin between waistline and the hem of her shirt.

Vail maintained his position.

“Who are you?” she demanded again in a remarkably authoritative voice, considering her slender physique and those gorgeous cheekbones. And look at all that hair. It wasn’t mussed at all, spilling like ribbons of white gold over her shoulders. “I need a name.”

“Vaillant,” he offered freely. “But you can call me Vail.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“Apparently, it’s the one my mother gave me.”

She pointed at his face and twirled her finger before her. “What’s that stuff beneath your eyes? It sparkles.” She gave him a sideways sneer. “Are you a freakin’ faery?”

“Such vitriol drips from your pretty mouth. What have the sidhe ever done to you?”

“Nothing.” She paced some more. “Everything! Just get out, will you? This is my place. Go find your own hovel.”

Vail leaned his elbows onto the butcher-block counter behind him and smiled as sweetly as he could manage. He didn’t do sweet, but he could get close to amiable if he tried.

“I don’t think so. I’d like to hang around and have you introduce me to your kidnappers.”

“If you know I was kidnapped, my mother must have sent you. Did you come to rescue me? To bring me back to Mommy and lay me before her sacrificial altar?”

Vail tutted. “You have mother issues?” Even saying it cut into his heart. If anyone had issues regarding their mother …

“I’m not telling you anything.” She stopped before the bed, stared at it a few moments as if it might bite her, then plopped onto it and, shoulders high and straight, fixed an innocent gaze on him. “Get out, Vail the faery.”

“I’m not sidhe. I’m vampire.”

She scoffed. “Could have fooled me.”

“Why, thank you. I take that as a compliment.”

He strolled toward her. The efficiency apartment was small and open, so it was but ten strides to stand before the bed. Squatting, he clasped his hands between his bent legs. “Now, about your kidnappers. I assume the introductions are not going to happen, because the guilty party is sitting right here, before me.”

She looked aside. A pale beam from a distant streetlight glimmered through the window and highlighted her long, elegant nose, narrow face and chin. Vail believed the ice princess label; she wore it gorgeously. Her eyes were deep blue, almost—no, not violet. That was a color he had only seen on faeries.

“There are no kidnappers,” he ventured. “Are there?”

“You think you’re so smart?”

“Actually, let me lay it out for you.”

“Oh, please do. I’m all about the faery tales tonight.”

“Then look at me, please.”

He waited, but she tilted her head away from his gaze. Vail slid a palm along her cheek, the light getting trapped in his iron rings, and forced her head up. He gripped her chin firmly, and she flinched, but not out of his grasp.

“We can make this rough,” he warned, “or we can do this nice and sweet. Which do you prefer?”

If she said rough, he’d lose it right here. Vail was not immune to an attractive woman. Very well, so she was sexy. It was those damned white teeth, clear eyes and a touch of impudence. Nothing else. Couldn’t be the soft, panting breaths that indicated she was still winded from her adventure eluding him. And it most certainly was not her scent that seemed to curl into his brain and dally with the smarts he’d claimed to possess.

The fact she was vampire kept him from shoving her onto the mattress and drawing his tongue down her long, slender neck and to the full mounds of her breasts that peeked above the low neckline of her shirt.

“Tell me what you think you know,” she said through a tight jaw. She shoved his hand from her face, and fixed her hard gaze on him. “Vail.”

“I work for Hawkes Associates,” he said. “You know about them?”

She nodded, but stiffly. She wasn’t about to drop the tough-girl act. If she was a thief, like the rest of her family, then she’d probably honed some excellent avoidance tactics.

“Your mother hired us to track down her kidnapped daughter. Seems she—that is, you—had been taken from the Santiago mansion only minutes before you were to meet the Lord of Midsummer Dark for some kind of exchange. Taken, in a valuable faery gown. Mommy wants back her daughter and the dress. You following me so far?”

She jutted up her chin, defiant, but gave a curt nod.

“Seems you, Lyric Santiago—” he liked that she flinched when he recited her name “—were supposed to go along with the Lord of Midsummer Dark, the dress, I assume, being some sort of pseudodowry.”

“Where did you hear that? I was only delivering the thing. There’s no way I’d go near him again …” She shut her mouth.

Again? She had been in Zett’s presence before? A fact to note. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him. And he didn’t want her to do so—it was more interesting this way. He liked watching prey squirm.

“Funny thing, though.” He thumbed his jaw, drawing out the moment and also inhaling her scent, which had deepened with her rising anxiety. Uncomfortable? She may be an ice princess, but he could thaw her out quick enough. “That dress was stolen from Hawkes Associates not ten days ago. Now, who do you think is tops on the suspect list?”

“You think I stole that ugly gown? Ha!”

“Ugly?” He stroked the side of his thumb along her cheek. She did not flinch, but he felt her muscles tense under his touch. Something about this scenario didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t pinpoint what, exactly. “I was told it was fashioned from faery diamonds, the most incredible and dazzling gemstone in the known world. Or unknown world, matters as they are.”

His thumb strayed to her lips, full, pink and soft, worth a kiss— Vail suddenly realized what he was doing.

What the hell was he doing? That had not been a harsh touch, but one of—admiration? Wib.

He stood, shoving his hand in a pocket. “You don’t like diamonds, Lyric?”

“They’re not so spectacular.”

“I imagine so, for one of your profession. You can steal them if you want them, eh?”

“I’m not a thief.”

“That has yet to be proven. What happened to the dress?”

“It’s a gown.”

“Gown. Dress.” Vail leaned over her. A tendril of blond hair swept his hand. It felt like summer. He fisted that hand behind his back to keep from touching her again. “What did you do with it?”

“They took it from me. And left me here.”

“‘They’ being these imaginary kidnappers of yours?”

She nodded. Liar.

“So you didn’t steal it?”

She shook her head.

“Nor did anyone in the notorious Santiago clan steal it?”

More negative head shaking.

“And now someone else has the gown, namely, your kidnappers.”

A positive nod.

Vail shoved her across the bed, pressing her shoulders to the mattress, which reeked of mildew and dust. Pinning a knee across her thighs, he prevented her from the anticipated sneak attack of her knee aiming for his jewels.

“You’re lying,” he growled at her. “There was no sign of force or struggle in your bedroom.”

“Force? The whole damned window was taken out!”

“But you expected that to happen, which is why the rest of your room was pristine. As well, the gown has not been sold because that is something the entire Faery realm would be aware of—”

“If Faery is so aware, why don’t they go right to the ugly thing and get it?”

“It’s not …” Like that.

Faery sensed the thing, but couldn’t pinpoint it. Not without expert trackers, and someone had to actually be wearing the gown to give out the strongest vibrations. And apparently the Seelie court was not currently aware it was anywhere but at Hawkes Associates.

“You plotted your own kidnapping to steal the dress yourself. Admit it!”

“It wasn’t for the gown—it was to get away from Zett!”

Vail pushed from the bed and walked a few steps away. Breathing out and raking his fingers through his hair, he then chuckled. He’d gotten the truth from her much quicker than he’d expected.

But seriously? The chick thought Zett had planned to take her to Faery with him? Vail doubted that very much.

On the other hand, he wasn’t privy to all Zett’s devious kinks. It was possible the bastard wanted Lyric for reasons unknown. And she had intimated they’d met previously.

“I get it,” he said. “You saw an opportunity and took it.”

“You’re not going to take me back to my mother, are you? I need time.”

A touch of measured panic warbled in her voice. She didn’t want to go back, but at the same time, she was not afraid of such an outcome.

“Time for what?”

The vampiress looked aside, giving him her silence again. The streetlight adorned her profile, glistening off fine cheekbones in a tempting tease. It reminded him of the constant glimmer in Faery, and of what made him most comfortable.

“I am going to return you to your mother,” Vail said, forcing away the image of light-kissed skin, “but the deal was you and the gown. Where is it?”

“I fenced it already.”

“Liar.”

“Junkie vampire.”

“Junkie?”

“You sparkle. Around your eyes and at your neck. It’s in your skin. I know what that’s from. You’re a dust freak.”

He laughed again and pointed at his eyes, which were neither bloodshot nor clouded, which is what happened to dust freaks. “You think so?”

She nodded, knowingly. The vampiress could not begin to know him. Ever.

“Think what you wish. The faster I can get this damned assignment wrapped up the sooner I can be rid of you.”

“Just walk away. That’ll take care of your problem, like that.” She snapped her fingers.

Vail leaned over her. “So who’s the fence?” She gave him the side of her face again.

After her false accusation, he had no patience. He gripped her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. He considered enthralling her, but the little he knew regarding vampire-to-vampire relations was that a vamp couldn’t enthrall their own kind. Since arriving in the mortal realm, his power of persuasion had been frustratingly absent. And if he dusted her, she’d be worthless.

“I don’t have a name,” she offered.

“How do you contact him?”

“He calls me.”

Vail swung a surveying look around the small apartment. The place was merely a safe house, he suspected. It was empty, save the bare-mattress bed. Just a place to hide out until … Until? “Where’s your phone?”

“I … lost it.”

He narrowed his brows—then remembered. “I think I can help you with that.” Reaching into his back pocket, he drew something out and slammed the phone on the kitchen counter. “I guess I’m staying the night.”

“No! Where’d you get that?”

“Found it under your bed when I was looking through your room for clues.” He crossed his arms and kicked out a boot to put his weight against the counter. “I’m here until your fence calls, sweetie.”

“I hate you!”

“Not feeling much love for you, either.”

“I hate it all. I hate this place. I hate this awful, smelly bed.” She stood and kicked the bed frame, slamming the entire twin bed into the corner.

“Hey now, that’s no way to treat those pretty red shoes of yours, is it?”

“And I hate you again,” she retorted. “And I’m starving, which, thanks to you, my supper got off but he didn’t get me off.”

“Frustrated?” Vail ran a hand over his crotch.

She understood the signal. Tiny fists formed beside each of her thighs. Her plan had backfired, and now he would drag her home to her mother, kicking her pointy red shoes and screaming hate and damnation to high heaven. He couldn’t wait to do it.

The petulant vampiress stomped into the bathroom.

“Where you going?”

“Where does it look like?” She slammed the door shut.

Vail hiked himself up to sit on the kitchen counter. After a few minutes had passed, he heard the shower turn on. Seemed kind of strange to strip with a stranger so near and to just … get clean.

If she thought to parade out naked in an attempt to seduce him, the ice princess had better rethink that plan. He was not interested. Despite the erection he’d run his hand over moments earlier.

Seriously, Vail? You did not get hard over a vampiress. It was … adrenaline. Yeah, that’s it.

This was going to be a long night. And he did not like the idea of sitting around, waiting for the fence to contact Lyric. She had to know the name of the fence. To assess the mental capacity of her minions, the vampiress was definitely the brains of the operation.

How to get the information from her?

Maybe if he brought the starving vampiress supper? Dangled a tasty mortal before her? Slashed its wrist and dribbled blood into a wineglass?

That would be too much fun. But not practical, and he wasn’t into the horror of mortal blood. And besides, a tough little chick like Lyric Santiago would probably grab the mortal from him and sink in her teeth before he got anything from her.

Subtlety was required. How to appeal to a woman he had no desire to connect with on an intimate level?

Really? You’re going to stick with that attitude?

Vail blew out a breath. So he was attracted to her. Hawkes hadn’t given him any rules on how to gain the prize. So, he’d wing it.

Lyric turned on the shower and put the toilet cover down and sat. The running water provided a white noise barrier between her erratic thoughts and the overwhelming presence of the arrogant vampire who stood on the other side of the door.

She had expected a search party—the demon guards Charish had hired to accompany her to the hand-off site. She hadn’t expected that search party to be only one, and so … efficient. And sexy. So sexy, in fact, that she had sat there on the bed like an idiot, instead of escaping out the window behind her.

She was supposed to have more time. A day or two to get her thoughts in order and then hop a plane to climes unknown. A place to hide, yet exist without the worry that the faery lord would ever find her. And Leo, her brother, was supposed to track down a means to free her completely. She needed to contact him.

Had she been stupid to believe such a plan could work? All she wanted was to live her own life. To not be sent to make an exchange, which would become so much more than Charish could ever imagine.

Because really? The faery lord wouldn’t simply take the gown and bid her adieu; he’d kill her. Lyric knew that as well as she knew the vampire out in the kitchen was not going to leave her alone anytime soon.

She had never thought her life would come to this.

Sure, her dreams as a little girl had been similar to those of other little girls—mortal girls. Until the blood hunger had emerged at puberty. She’d always known she was vampire—had been born that way—and that the hunger for blood was a given. But she hadn’t expected it to erase all those dreams of living happily ever after with the prince in his castle in an enchanted land far, far away.

“You idiot,” she whispered. “The prince doesn’t want to marry you, he wants to kill you.”

She laughed softly at the ridiculousness of it. In a manner, the little girl had been promised to a prince of an enchanted land. However, Charish was unaware of that devastating detail.

“So I guess I can’t deny dreams don’t come true. Does that mean I should accept it?”

No. She wanted to ride away from the castle and forge a new story. Something that didn’t involve faeries.

“You okay in there, sweetie?” the vampire called from the other room.

Sweetie. Ugh. Why did men think it was okay to call women cutesy names when they didn’t even know them? She’d give him sweet.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she called over the patter of the shower. “Keep your pants on.”

“Oh, they’re on. But not for long.”

Lyric caught her forehead against her palm. Did he think she’d allow him to get close enough for some kind of rough play, as he’d implied? He wouldn’t get any information from her by raping her. He didn’t seem the type, though. She’d met rapists. Her family ran with a vicious lot.

Vail was scary looking, but not as mean as he wanted her to think he was. When he’d stroked a palm over his erection she’d caught the subtle quiver of his lower lip. He was not immune to the sensual tease. If she were to put the moves on him, she could wrap him around her little finger and toss him over a shoulder.

Lyric bolted upright. Now there was an idea. But could it work?

This smelly apartment was getting smaller the longer she had to sit in it, with him, and wait for the fence to call. Which would never happen. And she was hungry.

She would seduce a frog if it would help get her out of trouble.

Tugging out a soft jersey pullover dress from the packed duffel she’d planted in the apartment two days earlier, Lyric switched from the dark shirt and pants to the cozy red number that clung nicely to her semimoist skin. The shower had given her a nice steam bath. She put the red high heels on again, because Vail had definitely noticed them.

Slicking on some lip gloss, she pressed her lips together and nodded. The vampiress had a plan.

“And it will work.”

The vampire jumped from the counter and stood, legs spread at a cocky stance as Lyric approached.

He stood well over her six feet two inches, which was impressive, considering she wore heels. And his frame was tight and muscled like an athlete. His clothing was classic black leather pants, his black shirt shot through with silver threads, which dazzled as much as the silver studs and rivets embellishing his jacket in a menacing death-metal kind of look.

She stopped before him, red-pointed toes to steel-toed cowboy boots, and made a blatant show of looking him from his face, down over the tight shirt, which hugged his muscled chest like a lover, and then lower. Leather pants with buckles here and there scuffed down one thigh. No visible hard-on, but she intended to change that.

She guessed the dark appearance and wardrobe were not a fashion choice but a means to keep most at a distance. Though some vampires took the dark lord thing too seriously, a wise vampire blended in with mortals and did not stick out like a goth club kid.

She couldn’t see any faery dust on him now. Had it been a trick of the moonlight when he’d leaned over her earlier? Or maybe it was a fashion choice, and the dude was into glitter?

Clear whites in his eyes, and his deep blue irises held her as if he’d clutched her shoulders. His dark glamour appealed to her careful, pining heart. She’d always been attracted to the bad boy, and Charish and Leo had always been too protective. She’d tended to date family friends.

She wondered what this compelling man’s dark glamour tasted like? She wasn’t above biting fellow vampires. As long as she didn’t share the deep bite and sex at the same time. That was a bonding ritual she would only share with the one vampire she loved. The Prince Charming she counted on finding one of these days.

Vail smirked. A killer move. It tugged his mouth higher on the right, and revealed a sneak of white fang. The bad boy wanted some fun.

He grabbed her by the hips and pulled them hard against his groin where Lyric felt a buckle impress her flesh below her belly button.

“Well.” She skimmed her palms up the silken weave of his shirt, her fingers touching his skin at the base of his neck. He was cool. Most vampires were warm thanks to frequent infusions of blood. They must both be hungry, she figured. “I guess I gave you time to come up with a plan, eh? Seduce the girl and get her to talk?”

Always make them believe they are the ones in control, and the ones with a plan. Seduction 101.

He dipped his head and landed a hard, firm kiss on her mouth. It was so unexpected that Lyric could only accept it, breathing in his breath, tinted with mint. Men did not take a kiss from her. The ice princess always kept them at arm’s length. And she would prove it by …

Well, maybe a little longer. No sense in stopping what felt so good. Bad boys took what they wanted. She was willing to experience what she had always desired.

Too quickly, he broke the unsettling yet sigh-worthy contact. “Seduction tastes pretty good to me.”

“Me, too.”

Without thought, she returned his kiss but remembered she was playing a role. Get smart, Lyric. Or you’ll never ditch this guy. This kiss must be the money play.

Lyric nudged open his mouth with her tongue and traced his clean, white teeth. Strong hands at her hips crushed her against him. His hard-on, thick and long, lay diagonally against her hip. Encouraging his arousal, she rubbed her hip against his erection and ran one hand down his back to press him even closer.

He moved deep within her, tasting her mouth, teeth and tongue, giving her the urgent intensity of contact she gave him. It was as if they were starving and had found sustenance in an enemy masked by desire.

Thinking of satisfying her blood hunger brought down her fangs. Amidst the crush of their mouths, Lyric’s fang pricked her lower lip. She pulled from the kiss, wiped a finger over the blood, and then traced it along the inner side of Vail’s lower lip.

He pushed her away, and she stumbled awkwardly to land against the wall, arms dumbly slapping it. “What the hell?”

Vail sucked at his lip and spit her blood onto the floor. “This isn’t going to work.”

“Seriously?” She followed his pace toward the window. “I get that we were both screwing with each other right now. But you … spit out my blood? I thought you were vampire?”

He spun on her, his overwhelming height shadowing the moon framed in the window. “I am.”

Lyric touched the flesh beside his eye. “No, you’re not. This isn’t club glitter. You said you were familiar with Faery? You really are a dust freak.”

CHAPTER FOUR

FAERY ICHOR TO VAMPIRES was like meth to mortals. And once the vamp got a taste, he needed more, more and more. Lyric knew, because a dust freak had once worked for Charish, and had caused chaos for the few days he’d resided at the Santiago mansion.

“I just … do it to maintain,” Vail said, with a stroke of his thumb across the black stuff smudging his eyes.

“Maintain?” Lyric didn’t hide a shake of her head. “That’s what they all say while they’re lying in some dust den, sucking in the ichor. It’s so obvious now. You have sparkle issues.”

“Is that so? Well, you’re avoiding the real issue. Like the fact there is no fence, and you expect I’m going to wait this out forever. Don’t be stupid, Lyric.”

“I’m not stupid. But neither am I willing to trust a dust freak.”

He gripped her shoulder and spun her about. It hurt, his fingers digging into her skin, but she wasn’t about to let him see her pain. Lyric pulled the ice princess on and stiffened her spine.

“I’m immune to dust,” he said. “I’ve spent a lot of time in Faery. Now that I’m in the mortal realm, I need to take dust every now and then to maintain it in my body—otherwise I’d go through withdrawals.”

“Sounds like an addict to me.” She shoved him away.

A flash of moonlight glinted at the corner of his eye, like a beacon calling her to fix on his dark glamour. It wasn’t worth the risk if he was a dust freak.

“This little dance we’re doing is getting old, Vail. I’m tired, but most of all, I’m hungry.”

“You tell me where to find the gown, and I’ll let you out to scam for some blood.”

“You won’t offer me your own?”

“Would you take it?”

“No. Wouldn’t want to have to maintain because of you.”

If even a trace of faery ichor scurried through his veins, she’d taste it and she’d become addicted like that. Addiction was not something Lyric was willing to risk simply because the blood hunger currently tightened her veins and made her jittery.

“Let’s make a deal,” she said, smoothing a hand over her thigh to distract from the burgeoning shakes. “There’s a club down the street. They play heavy metal and the blood is always hyped with adrenaline. Let’s both go out and have a drink, then I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“You tell me what I want to know, I’ll let you out on a leash.”

“Bastard.”

“Ice princess.”

“Oh, you use that tired old title, too? And here I was beginning to think you weren’t like the rest of the male vampires. I’m going.”

She started for the window, but he beat her to it, sliding across the bed before she could touch it.

“Fine.” Vail parked himself on the windowsill, blocking her escape. He clasped his ringed fingers together and narrowed surprisingly compassionate eyes on her. “I know what it’s like to hunger. You’re not going to give me anything until you’re satiated, relaxed.”

“You got that right.”

“I’m not a complete creep. I’ll let you feed.”

“Thank you.”

“But we’re not going inside the club. I need to keep you close. You try to get away, you’re going to regret it.”

“Ooh, you going to dust me with your sparkle juice?”

“You willing to take that chance?”

She met his steely blue gaze. Faery dust glittered about his eyes and in his hair. It must seep from his very pores. She wondered now if she’d gotten any on her hands, but did not look, because she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her flinch. A little skin contact wasn’t going to make her high—the dust had to enter her veins. She hoped.

“I’m sure we can find a nice mortal couple in the parking lot. One for each of us,” she said.

“I don’t do mortals.”

Comment wasn’t necessary. That was apparent. The guy was fucked up, and that would make her escape a breeze. She just had to play along for a while. “Let’s go.”

HE DIDN’T TRUST HER as far as he could blow dust into the eyes of his enemies. And that was about five, six feet maximum.

After a five-minute walk they stood outside Club Vert. Hard, growling music pounded through the brick walls, and patrons danced outside the back doors, which were curvy and appealing, designed after the Art Nouveau style.

Vail and Lyric sat on the hood of a black Renault Mégane, watching the crowd shift in and out of the club. The interior was decorated in more Art Nouveau and plenty of green, Lyric explained. The club offered absinthe that mortals inhaled through a long straw, à la freebasing, as opposed to drinking. Provided a faster, cleaner high. Vail favored absinthe himself, but not extracted from mortal veins.

“Those two.” Lyric jumped from the car and smoothed palms over her hips and down her backside.

Vail couldn’t help but appreciate the tight curve of her derrière. The soft red dress conformed like skin on skin, emphasizing the slight cleft and the sexy dimples at the base of her spine. Those long legs had to end somewhere in the vicinity of her armpits. Legs like that could wrap around him and hold on for the ride.

Legs like that could also kick him in the jaw, which he entirely anticipated should he put the moves on this wicked vixen.

“Not going to happen,” he muttered, as he watched her approach the mortal pair who, hand in hand, searched for their car. They chatted with Lyric. She pointed over her shoulder at him. Vail offered a nod, hiding his disgust. The woman, a redhead sporting a nose ring and a bare midriff, smiled drunkenly.

He suspected Lyric had done this before. Not getting two mortals to succumb to a vampire foursome, but rather, lying to achieve a goal. She was lying to him about the fence. Had to be. But he could play her game. He must if he was ever to get the answers he needed.

The trio approached, the man’s arm around his girlfriend’s waist, and the other arm draped across Lyric’s shoulders.

“Nice,” Vail said to them as they walked by, leading him toward the end of the parking lot where the streetlight flickered and a dented black van sat parked in the corner.

Chain-link fencing surrounded the parking lot, bent up here and there to admit a person or a stray cat through the overgrown weeds that probably never saw a mower’s blade. Security lights beamed over the entire lot, but here, the van shadowed their encounter.

Lyric was already cozying up to the man by the time Vail rounded the back of the van. The sight of her running her hands up the man’s arms and whispering in his ear increased Vail’s heartbeats. But for the life of Herne, he wasn’t sure if it was arousal or—no, couldn’t be jealousy.

The mortal woman threaded her arms about his shoulders and tugged him around toward the front of the van. She breathed whiskey onto his face. “You’re sexy,” she tried, enunciating carefully as drunks often did when they thought they could conceal their inebriation.

“And I love redheads,” he replied, allowing her to kiss the corner of his mouth sloppily. Mortals. No attraction whatsoever.

Keeping an eye on Lyric, he nudged his nose along the woman’s jaw, following the rapid pulse that did not call to him. It was just a heartbeat.

He bent closer to her skin, drawing in the acrid scent of whiskey, yet beneath that something deeper lingered. Life. It gushed and throbbed. So unique how mortal blood took on the scents and taint of the things they consumed and put on their bodies, which was why it did not attract him. Ichor remained pure, no matter what the sidhe had consumed.

Remembering his captive, Vail glanced aside, pushing curls of red hair away to better see. His ice princess hadn’t bitten her mark yet; she was prolonging the tease, working the mortal to a sexual frenzy. Spiced with adrenaline, it must make the blood hotter, perhaps even tastier.

And yet, it was just a tease. Vail maintained the staunch insistence ichor was the only sustenance for him. And it was. But a weird part of him, something he didn’t want to examine too closely, suddenly tilted his head down to inhale the scent of mortal blood. It didn’t smell awful. Actually, it smelled appealing, whiskey and all.

What was that about?

The woman read his subtle exploration incorrectly, and palmed his cock through his leather pants. That both pissed him off and pushed him over the edge he’d been toeing since kissing Lyric earlier. The vampiress had gotten under his skin, and he had wanted to get under, into and all over her skin—until she’d touched her blood to his mouth.

He’d never take vampire blood.

Moans slipped from Lyric’s mouth now, her mark matching the sensual tones. Scent of jasmine and cherries distracted Vail from the mortal woman’s whiskey perfume. She kissed the edge of his mouth, but he didn’t want her sloppy attempt at intimacy.

“Swoon for me,” he whispered, penetrating her mind with persuasion. You feel so good. Better than you’ve ever felt.

“Kiss me back,” she murmured. “Don’t you want me?”

The persuasion was not working. Why couldn’t he utilize the thrall in the mortal realm? Was it akin to the power Hawkes insisted he claim?

He considered dusting her, but mortals didn’t drop like vamps, they usually went into a swoony kind of reel.

Pressing his fingers along her neck, he found the subclavian nerve below her clavicle and increased pressure. Just a second or two … Sleep took her quickly. She relaxed in his arms.

He dropped the woman noiselessly at his feet. He glanced to the van—the mortal man hugged the rear fender, delirious. Blood ran from his mouth.

The vampiress was gone.

Vail leaped over the sprawled female and tilted the man’s head to the side. “Did she bite you?”

“Bite me? Dude, she punched me. Think she knocked out a tooth. What’s up with that?”

What was up was that the wily vampiress had been waiting for him to drop his guard so she could escape.

“Stone-headed vampire!” he cursed himself.

Trotting along the row of parked cars, he spied a large gap in the chain link. Ducking through, Vail emerged in the pristine parking lot of a car dealer. Hundreds of cars were parked row after militant row. Perfect place for a vampiress to hide.

Vail kicked a tire and swore again. His cell phone rang and he angrily tugged it out from a front pocket and answered. “What?”

It was Rhys Hawkes wanting an update. At one o’clock in the morning. Their kind did keep odd hours.

“I had her. Yes, the Santiago chick. But I lost her.” His eyes scanned the cars, searching for movement. She couldn’t have gotten far. “Yes, I know. I’ll get her back. But she says she fenced the dress.”

“We need that bloody gown,” Rhys muttered. “When you find her, you put the screws to her to get her to talk. Torture her if you have to.”

“With pleasure. I’ll call you tomorrow, Hawkes,” he said, and snapped the phone shut.

Torture, eh? This job was turning into a real riot.

A rail train rumbled by, the horn blaring as it passed a nearby crossing. Ducking and eyeing the cars at hood and trunk level, Vail didn’t spy anything out of place. So, he lay on his back, looking heavenward. He turned his head left. No feet or crouched bodies tucked behind a wheel. And then right. A pair of red heels peeked out from behind a rear tire. “Gotcha.”

LYRIC WOKE AND WRINKLED her nose. Mildew. Smelled like that damned awful bed in the apartment where she’d been squatting.

Her wrists stung and her jaw hurt. Then she remembered looking up at Vail’s kick-ass snakeskin boots. He’d found her crouched behind an SUV. Thanks to a passing train, she hadn’t heard his approach. Asshole.

She worked her jaw back and forth, wincing. When she tried to reach for the painful spot, her hands tugged against something that wouldn’t budge.

She tilted her head back. Her wrists were bound to an old iron headboard with a leather belt. She lay on the bed. Bound.

CHAPTER FIVE

“GET ME OFF HERE!”

“Now, now.” Vail’s teasing grin appeared above Lyric’s face. He must have been sitting right beside the bed the whole time. He stroked her cheek. “We’ve fun stuff to do before I release you. I’m going to make you sing the name of your fence.”

Letting out a frustrated growl, Lyric blurted, “Never happen.”

“We’ll see.”

He produced a knife from inside one of his boots and flicked out the blade. Like that was supposed to scare her? Pressing the tip to the neckline of her dress, he performed a deft move that opened the jersey to reveal her breasts.

“Pretty. And no lacy things to hide them. Bet you like to have them licked, eh?”

“If you touch me …”

“What? You’ll succumb to my command? You’ll cream in the pretty little panties I know you’re not wearing? How easily do you come, Lyric? Just a few licks?”

The arrogance of him!

He leaned down and lashed his tongue across one of her nipples. Despite her anger, Lyric gasped. His slick, wet tongue sent shivers through her breasts and arms. Mercy, that felt good.

She twisted her head away from his keen observation of her every flinch. “Don’t do this.”

“You want me to stop?” Blue eyes sought hers, his mouth but a breath from her wet nipple. “Tell me your fence’s name.”

“Never.”

His tongue lashed slowly about her nipple, taking exquisite time in circling it, and then he sucked it in.

Lyric squeezed her eyelids shut and held back another breathy gasp. Nothing felt better than this. If this was his method of torture, she could get behind it one hundred percent. But the only talking she’d be doing was a bold cry when she came.

His teeth grazed her other nipple. Her chest hummed and the tingle of want shot down to her belly and lower. She tugged against the restraints. This was not fair!

A languorous suckle drew up a moan to her tongue. She arched her back to receive further torture, but when she didn’t feel the next lash of heat, she opened her eyes to find him waiting for her.

“You want it?” he teased.

“Hell, no.” She sank into the bed. Two could play this game. But the air cooling her wet nipples only worked to tighten them more and increase her desire. “Thought you didn’t like vampires?”

“I don’t drink their blood. But I can appreciate a gorgeous woman, vampire or not. And your breasts are—stone me, they are perfection. I guess that makes me a breast man, eh?”

Hallelujah! Oh, Lyric, don’t succumb.

The next lash devastated her stalwart resistance and Lyric lifted her chest to accept his exquisite punishment. Her fingers curled about the leather strap binding her hands, but being bound no longer frightened her—it turned her on.

His tongue was hot and masterful, and he made it soft and then firm to draw it expertly across her flesh. So close to some kind of giddy release, she pressed her legs together but couldn’t quite achieve the squeeze that would make her come.

“Not a tough torturer, if you ask me,” she said on short breaths.

“Torturers, by nature, get off on their jobs. I’m no different. This is really getting you off, isn’t it?”

“Bloody Mary,” she swore.

“Uh-uh. One shouldn’t invoke the name of the dark prince’s girlfriend unless they wish Himself to pay a visit.”

“I’d prefer him over you right now.”

“Oh, I doubt it.”

True. Himself was the devil. No vampire ever invoked his name three times unless they wanted to deal with Hell.

Vail sat back and hooked a finger at the vee in her dress where the cut ended just above her belly button. With a tug, the jersey parted down to the hem. “Doesn’t take much to get you wet, eh?”

Lyric struggled against the belt. She was strong, but so was leather.

She held her thighs tightly together as his fingers trailed the crease formed between each leg and her mons. The soft tickle of his fingers felt—damn, it felt great. And the skim of his cold metal rings stirred her flesh to goose bumps.

Her hard, ruched nipples pleaded for more attention, and he noticed. Vail flicked his thumb over one of them. Much to her horror, Lyric gasped. She couldn’t stop from showing her arousal. Damn her. And damn him.

“I like the taste of your skin,” he said, and lowered his mouth to her breast again.

He suckled her as if he was enjoying a dessert, rolling her nipple between his lips and tonguing it rapidly, then more slowly, then tending her entire breast. He kissed every curve of each of her breasts until she wondered if a woman could come simply from breast stimulation alone. It was beginning to feel possible.

And she didn’t notice she’d relaxed her legs until she felt the soft trace of Vail’s finger mount the apex of her thighs. Testing, teasing, taunting her with his presence, the promise of something more.

She moved her legs together, but a slap of his palm to her thigh stopped her.

“Keep them open,” he said around her nipple. “You want this, Lyric.”

She shook her head. Oh, yes, you do.

A lift of his eyebrow provided the sexiest expression she had ever seen on a man. And the curl at the right side of his mouth was this bad boy’s signature move. Devastating. “Then stop me,” he said.

Stopping him meant giving him the information he wanted. Not as easy as he imagined it could be. Especially if no name existed. But she wasn’t about to reveal that little white one.

Because that would make him stop.

Letting out a moan, Lyric didn’t care if the ice princess mutinied. Desire undermined her resolve and weakened her concern for secrecy. Besides, without a secret name to reveal, she needn’t worry about shouting it out at the brink of climax.

And, oh … there. She sucked in her lower lip as Vail’s finger slowly entered her wet depths, and then moved back out to slick across her clitoris. Softly exploring. A rub back and forth, and a slow but firm slide in the other direction. All sensation hummed at her core, bringing her closer …

He needed to press deeper, to focus on her ultrasensitive apex, yet he merely teased. Around in circles, and along her folds, and returning to her swollen clit to demonstrate what she could have if only …

If only.

“You like this, Lyric?”

“Yes,” she gasped, then closed her eyes and shook her head. She didn’t want to talk. Satisfaction. That’s what she needed. Why wouldn’t he give it to her? “You do, too, Vail.”

“Of course I do. Your body is amazing, your breasts so full.” He kissed each one, following with a lick. “Your nipples are so hard I could suck them for hours, devour them like the cherries of which you smell.”

Please do, she thought. Don’t ever stop. She was still so hungry, having forgone the mortal’s blood. Climax would be a fine replacement for what she craved.

“And you’re so wet. You like it when I put my finger inside you?”

She nodded, breaths coming as rapid whimpers.

“Right here,” he whispered, his lips against her neck now, right over the vein. Still his finger merely circled the spot she wanted him to master. “A little harder?”

“Please,” she chirped.

“Pretty please?”

“Mmm,” she managed. “Vail, please.”

And then his finger was gone. The tingle at her nipple ceased. The heat of his mouth left her skin.

Lyric breathed, waiting. Her body hummed, wanting, desiring, needing.

“Name,” he said sternly.

Fuck. No. She couldn’t. She didn’t have—

She wanted. She needed to get off. Squirming on the bed, she couldn’t manage to bring her hips up to meet his hovering hand. The bastard wouldn’t bring her to the brink like this and then walk away, would he?

So the torturer did know his craft.

If her hands were free, she’d finish herself off and not be the least ashamed. Pressing her thighs together, she mined the sweet hum of orgasm. It remained elusive, demanding Vail’s direct and firm touch.

“Uh-uh.” He nudged her thighs apart. “Not that way, sweetie. You want to come? Name.”

“Vincent Lambert,” she blurted out. Hell, she’d seen the last name on a movie poster recently, and the first name was common enough.

The mattress jiggled as Vail stood and strode to the counter. Grabbing the cell phone, he punched in some numbers.

Lyric crashed, heaving and gasping as if tears would spill free. The high of arousal withered away and her flesh prickled again, not from desire, but from the lack of touch, of expected satisfaction. Her wet nipples cooled and the aching loss of heat softened them. She pressed her legs together.

No. Not worth it now without him directing the fireworks. And she wouldn’t let him witness her weakness. God, how had she managed to get herself into a situation like this? So vulnerable!

She twisted her wrists within the leather strap, to no avail.

Vail asked the operator to give him the address of Vincent Lambert.

Good luck with that.

“Thanks,” he said, and hung up. “You’re in luck. There’s a Vincent Lambert in the fourteenth quarter. Got the address.”

Seriously? Whew.

Vail walked to the bed and loomed over her, hands propped at his hips. “Now, what to do with you?”

SHE’D GIVEN HIM what he’d requested. He should head out for the fourteenth and nab the gown from the fence. Return the damned thing to Hawkes, hand over the girl to Mommy, and then he could finally get the information he wanted from his uncle. One problem.

The naked woman lying on the bed before him writhed and gasped with the need to get off. And he wanted to help her with that. Because those soft, round breasts surely required more licking. And her molten hot body demanded he fill her with the hard-on he’d suffered for the past twenty minutes.

What had become of his hatred for vampires?

You don’t have to bite her.

And there was nothing wrong with a vampire in general, just their nasty blood. Right? He’d never slept with a vampire. Had avoided them since arriving in the mortal realm.

But he didn’t have to bite when he had sex. It was a great accompaniment to the whole shebang, but unnecessary. And besides, who would know if he screwed a vampire this one time?

Vail unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it aside.

She squirmed and tugged against the leather belt strapping her to the headboard. “Too late, you junkie asshole. I don’t need it anymore.”

“Yeah?” He flicked open the button on his pants and tugged down the fly. His heavy erection sprang out. Her eyes widened—and not in anger. “We’ll see about that.”

Retrieving the knife from his back pocket, he sat on the edge of the bed. Knife in his fist, he skimmed his knuckles over her taut stomach, toying with her fear and desire at the same time. He let the hard ivory handle of the knife rub her nipple as he moved higher.

She reacted with vicious struggles. He’d lost her when making the phone call—a necessary delay from the torture—but he could get her back.

“Settle, Lyric, you don’t want me to cut you.”

“You wouldn’t,” she retorted. “Wouldn’t want to get any of my nasty blood on you.”

She was smart. But he could be smarter.

He pressed his other hand over her mons, fingertips lightly brushing the soft wet folds she kept shaved bare, and her body reacted by arching her back. Much as she thought she didn’t want this, her body did. She straddled a tightrope, and one wrong step would send her reeling into the stratosphere or crashing to earth.

He preferred the reel, because that would make it good for him, too.

He slid the blade under the leather belt securing her wrists. This particular blade had been forged in Faery and was sharper than any mortal metal could be honed. Her wrists, unbound, fell to the bed and she grasped for one to ease her fingers about it.

“Sorry, if you lost the feeling in them,” he muttered.

Vail dropped the knife on the floor and placed his fingers between her thighs. He pushed them deep into her while, with his thumb, he found the soft swollen heat he knew controlled her entire body. It was command central, so to speak, and he knew how to operate the controls.

Before she could struggle away, he flicked out a finger and rubbed it over her slick clitoris, sweeping the sensitive bud until he heard a gasp, followed quickly by a surrendering sigh. Her fingers clutched at the tattered old mattress. Her legs opened wider.

“Good girl. Now let me taste how sweet you are.”

Ignoring the aching pulse in his erection, he told himself patience would win him the reward as he slid down to kiss her cherry jasmine skin.

The first lick started a shudder in her thighs. He dipped his tongue around her clitoris and played with the hard bud of it, making his tongue pointed to trace it firmly.

It was the right move because her fingers released hold on the mattress and clutched at air. She moaned, “Yes,” and her fingers found his hair and gripped hanks of it tightly. “Right there.”

Steadily, he played her, stroking and dashing his tongue against softness, then hard, to follow with a firm lick. She smelled like a jasmine garden here, and he was reminded of the faery ritual before the bride walked down the aisle. The bride-to-be would spend the day being pampered and perfumed, at one point squatting over an incense burner to infuse all parts of her skin with heady scent.

Don’t think about that stolen moment. Concentrate. Or you’ll begin to regret.

Kicking the door shut on memory, Vail soared back to the present and into his captive’s lushness. Lyric’s scent dizzied him. It was almost better than a dust high.

The vampiress cried out boldly. Her hips bucked and the fingers in his hair tugged painfully before releasing him.

He had pleased her. The hot spill of her over his fingers thrilled him. He sucked each digit clean, but was jumbled upon the mattress as she sat and reached for him.

She pushed down his pants and gripped his erection. “Now. Inside me. You know you want it, vampire.”

He sucked one last finger clean. “Just waiting for the invitation to cross your threshold.”

“If that’s the way you ask for an invite, you’ll never be turned down.”

Kicking off his boots and slipping down his leather pants, Vail then plunged into her depths and the dull mortal world changed colors. The faery dust highs he was accustomed to grew shallow and insignificant when immersed within Lyric. So tight, she hugged him as he moved in and out of her. Grasping him. Claiming him. It wasn’t going to take long for him to come, but he wanted to prolong the exquisite torture.

She’d turned the tables on him. Apparently, this seductive brand of torture could be sallied back and forth. He didn’t mind. This was all about finding the sweet spot. Mastering the moment.

Winning her trust.

Vail’s muscles clenched and his body trembled above Lyric’s gorgeous limbs. Her skin glowed pale under the moonlight. Her lips, so red from kissing, parted. She was his. He’d challenge any man who claimed differently.

Tensing his jaw, he waited as the orgasm focused in his muscles and segued at his core. He released, ramming himself deep within her to ride the wave.

SUNLIGHT TEASED Lyric awake. She hated the sun. It would burn her if she stood beneath direct rays. Prolonged UV exposure could drive a vampire mad. Even this pale stuff beaming through the dirty window could prove deadly with longer exposure.

She rolled away from the obnoxious light and her body hugged against Vail’s naked form. He lay on his side, facing her, his eyes open. He touched her mouth. A lash of her tongue in the wake of his touch tasted sex and salt and something sweet that she thought might be faery dust.

“You going to track down the fence today?” she asked.

“No reason to bother. It’s a ruse. You made up the name. I knew it before I even made the call.”

“Then why—why can’t you let me go?”

“Told you.” He gripped her around the nape of her neck, but not threateningly. His finger touched her behind the ear, and she cautioned herself against making a fast move. Some secrets were best kept. “I need the gown, Lyric.”

This guy had a one-track mind, and the replay was growing old fast. “If you had the gown would you let me go?”

“Do you have a gown to give me?”

She rolled to her back, wincing at the sunlight. He thumbed her nipple, but she batted his hand away.

“That was the best sex I’ve had. Ever,” he said, sitting and reaching for his pants. “Thanks.”

She closed her eyes. Men were not supposed to thank a woman for having sex. That was wrong on every imaginable level. So much for bad-boy fantasies. He’d used her.

But she had used him, too.

The best ever? Poor guy, didn’t get around much, did he? On the other hand, it had been so freakin’ good. Her best ever? She wouldn’t admit it to herself.

“I suppose if I take a shower, you’ll dodge out the window.”

“You know it,” she answered.

“I need to go home, shower, and change my clothes. After lying on this bed, I feel … crusty. Which means you’ll be coming with me, sweetie.”

“I’m not your sweetie.”

“No, you’re not.” He exhaled and stood.

Lyric gazed at his bare back and ass. The hard muscles that flexed with his movement defined the dimples at the top of his buttocks. Nice. Without warrant, she imagined him inside her again, pumping hard, filling her, his jaw clenched, and bringing her to climax. A shiver traced through her system.

“Yeah, it was as good as you remember,” he commented over his shoulder.

Lyric leaned up on an elbow. “You know you just had sex with a vampire.”

“I know.”

“You ever do that before?”

“Nope.”

Wow. Most vamps socialized with one another, and a lot dated vampires exclusively and used mortals for sex only when biting them.

“Any regrets?” she asked.

Shimmying up his pants and carefully tucking away his semihard penis as he zipped, Vail shrugged. “Actually, no, no regrets.”

“You seem surprised.”

He picked up her dress and tossed it over her breasts, then leaned in and kissed her on the mouth, slow, delving, most definitely not a regretful kiss.

“I am,” he said. Another quick kiss. “You’ve only just met me, but I’m sure you’ve determined a vampire would not be my first choice to bed.”

“Faeries first?”

He shrugged. “Anything but vampires.”

Way to make her feel sexy and appreciated. Not.

“We were just using each other,” she felt the need to say. It was an ingrained response.

No man had ever looked at her and seen Lyric, the girl who wanted to live in a faery-tale castle. The girl who wanted to travel the world, and live on a tropical island where the houses had no walls and the sand was white. The girl who spent her free time tucked away in a quiet gym in the second arrondissement, suspended upside down from silken fabric because joining the circus was also a real dream.

No, suitors had always seen the advantages to aligning themselves to the Santiago clan. Lyric expected others to use her.

“Don’t sweat it,” she offered by rote.

Vail grabbed her hands as she inspected the torn dress. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

His dark eyes were still smudged with black liner this morning and it drew her focus to the gorgeous blue irises. “What we did last night started out as a means to get what I wanted from you,” he said. “But do you seriously believe fucking a woman is the wisest way to conduct an investigation?”

The kiss touched her at the corner of her mouth, sweet yet lingering, as if wanting to imprint his mark for the world to see every time her smile curled.

She’d been imprinted once already. Lyric twisted her head away from Vail’s touch. She didn’t want another imprint, and needed one like a bullet through her brain right now.

“It was good, Lyric. But I don’t think either of us should beat ourselves up trying to figure the whys and hows of it. It happened. We enjoyed it. Now we step back into our roles.”

“You bad guy, me fleeing you?”

“Something like that. Let’s go.”

“Where?” The dress was a loss. She scanned the floor for her shoes. “Oh right, your place. Why do I have to go along?”

“You think your place is so swanky?” he teased. “The bed was … fragrant.”

She slid off the thing, stunned she’d made love on it, and had snuggled next to the man for a good part of the morning. Yuck. Well, it had been a means to hide out. It wasn’t that she’d intended to live here.

“Fine. I’ll go along for the ride. But you’re not going to trick me and drive me home to Mommy, are you?”

“Can’t. You’re staying with me until I can figure out what deal Charish Santiago made with Zett. Unless you want to make it easy and just tell me?”

“Can’t tell you what I don’t know. Why is knowing the deal important?”

“Because I know Zett,” he said, walking into the bathroom to retrieve her duffel. He dug out the shirt and black pants she’d worn last night and tossed them to her. “The Lord of Midsummer Dark has no interest in vampires. Vampires are the lowest of the low to faeries.”

Lyric tugged the shirt on, then bowed her head. Lowest of the low? Tell her about it.

“Which makes me wonder what mommy dearest was supposed to get in return for the dress. I can’t imagine Zett would have been too generous, even for such a valuable dress.”

“Gown.”

“Whatever.”

Lyric was about to explain that her mother had gotten the immunity to step into Faery and take as she pleased, but then she stopped herself. As Vail had mentioned, faery items were of little value in the mortal realm.

Why did the Santiagos need to steal from Faery? True, they were nearly bankrupt, but it wasn’t as though any item taken from the Faery realm could be fenced to any but the sidhe. And sidhe currency had no value among the mortals.

“What’s going on in that pretty skull of yours?” Vail asked.

Lyric turned a discerning gaze to him. “I’m not sure anymore. I think you’re right. My mother is up to more than I can imagine.”

CHAPTER SIX

IT ALL HINGED on Vail gaining Lyric’s trust so she would eventually give him the gown. He knew she had it. An item so valuable as the gown would definitely stir up talk if it should surface with a fence or in the hands of a buyer.

Unless the vampiress had faery contacts? Hmm … he doubted it. Lyric and Zett as allies didn’t jive. And yet, what if they had previously met?

Why she was so tight-lipped about it was not hard to figure. She must view the gown as a bargaining chip or a means to a new start. Hell, from what he knew of the Santiago family, it wasn’t a place for anyone to grow up, let alone survive.

He could relate.

Which meant Vail had an idea how to win Lyric’s trust. Because sex was just that, a means to let off aggression and steam. To get off. It wasn’t going to enamor him to her. And anyone who believed trust was gained by sharing a bed and a few throaty gasps of pleasure was fooling himself.

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