Bite Me (11 page)

Conner pulled me around to his side and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. He led me to the sofa facing Vanessa. We sat and Conner kept his arm resting along the back of the couch behind me. The men that came in with Vanessa remained in the doorway with their hands clasped in front of them. I realized they were her bodyguards. No wonder Conner was treading carefully. She must be important if she rated two body guards.

“Vanessa, this is Donna.” He glanced at me. “Donna, this is Vanessa Santino. She is a…colleague.”

He deliberately paused before calling her his colleague, so I understood immediately that he was trying to tell me that she was a vampire. I squeezed his knee lightly to let him know that I got the message. As soon as I did, Vanessa’s eyes focused on my hand on his leg. Her eyes began to glow, and I realized that she did not like the fact that Conner and I were being so openly affectionate in front of her.

I plastered a polite smile on my face. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Vanessa,” I murmured.

She merely nodded at me before turning her attention back to Conner. “I’ve been trying to reach you for several days, Conner. There are some things we need to discuss.”

“I think we’ve had enough discussion, Vanessa,” Conner countered. “As I recall, I told you I was not interested in your proposal on more than one occasion.”

Vanessa’s expression didn’t change, but I could swear the air around her filled with anger.

“Perhaps we should continue this in private.” Her gaze shifted to me. “Donna, is it? Would you mind giving us a few minutes alone?”

I froze. I really wanted to tell her hell no, especially after I glanced at the Dead-eye Twins, but I was pretty sure that wouldn’t go over well. Thank God Conner came to my rescue.

“No, Vanessa. You have entered my home uninvited and unannounced to continue a conversation that I ended two weeks ago. I gave you my answer to your proposal. Take it with grace.”

Finally, a sliver of emotion escaped the female vamp’s careful façade. Her brows lowered as she scowled at us.

“You refused me for this little human?” She sneered the final word, as though being human were one step up from dog shit. Vanessa rose from the couch and tossed her long dark hair. “We’ll see what the council has to say about this and how long it takes them to rescind your appointment.”

Conner threw his head back and laughed, but it was a humorless sound. When he finished, he stared at her, colder than I had ever seen him. It was disconcerting to see the warm, affectionate man I knew turn into little more than a marble statue.

“I’m afraid you’ll have no luck there, Vanessa. How big of a fool do you want to appear? You pushed for my appointment to the council in hopes that I would ally myself with you. If you begin singing a different tune now, you will look idiotic.”

Gone was the seductive grace Vanessa displayed earlier. She nodded stiffly at him. “You have a point, Conner, but there are other ways for me to convince the council from appointing you, and they do not require my direct involvement.”

Suddenly, Conner was standing less than a foot from her and, from her gasp, I don’t think even Vanessa saw it coming. Her body guards each drew a weapon from beneath their jackets before I blinked, but one word from Conner kept them from taking further action.

Damn, my man was a badass.

I couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying to Vanessa, but I knew she didn’t like it. After a few tense moments, her hazel eyes met mine over his shoulder, and they were so bright it hurt. Still, I refused to look away. She might be stronger than me, but I wasn’t about to back down.

Finally, she turned away from Conner and said something in another language to the two men at the door. A few seconds later they were gone. I didn’t hear them leave, but knew they had left the property when Conner finally relaxed and faced me.

Tremors began in my limbs until I was shaking so hard my teeth chattered. Vaguely I realized that I was reacting to all the adrenaline coursing through my system.

“Wh-what the hell just happened?” I asked.

Conner sat beside me and pulled me into his lap. I hated that I was falling apart, but something about the entire scene made me feel as though I were in danger.

“This is why I kept you away from my home, Donna. There are currently some things happening in vampire society that worry me and involve me directly. I wanted to keep you safe. Now that Vanessa knows about you, my opposition and enemies will know about you too. She will be sure to share every small detail she can with them in an effort to enlist them into doing her dirty work.”

I tucked my head under his chin as the trembling in my limbs lessened. “So I’m not crazy to think that I was in mortal danger a few minutes ago?”

Conner hesitated so long that I lifted my head to stare him in the eye.

“Tell me, Conner.”

He sighed. “No, Donna, you aren’t crazy to think that situation was verging on violence. Vanessa is notorious for finding a way to get what she wants or destroy those who stand in her way.”

I studied his face for a moment. “I get the feeling you aren’t being completely honest with me. What are you leaving out?” I asked.

He cursed under his breath, and I knew I was right.

“Fuck, Conner. Just tell me. Leaving me in the dark will only make it worse.”

Carefully, Conner removed me from his lap and retrieved the wine bottle and our glasses from the table. He came back to the sofa, refilled both of our glasses, and handed one to me.

He took a large sip of his wine before speaking.

“A few weeks ago, just before I met you, Vanessa approached me about joining the Council.”

“What Council?” I asked. I hated to interrupt but I wanted to completely understand what he was telling me.

“In my society, we have laws much like in the human world. They protect us from each other and from exposure. The Council makes the laws, oversees trials of those who break them, and metes out punishment. Currently there are six members of various ages and they are attempting to replace their seventh. She stepped down a month ago. After a century on the Council, she decided that it was time to let another take over her duties.”

I sipped my wine. “So they asked you to replace her?”

He nodded. “It’s a little more complicated than that. The Council has to agree on a candidate and then hold an open forum so that other vampires may speak on my behalf or against my joining. After the forum, the Council votes on my status as a member.”

“That sounds very democratic.”

Conner smirked. “I realize that the media portrays us as tyrannical, evil beings with no souls but in reality we discovered many, many years ago that the best way to run our society would be as a democracy. There is very little infighting but, just like human society, we occasionally have someone who desires power. Vanessa is one of those people.”

“How does she intend to gain power by having you on the Council with her?”

He cleared his throat and took another large drink from his glass. “Vanessa approached me a few weeks ago, before I met you, with the offer of a seat. She also included an attractive proposal of a more personal nature.”

I managed to swallow back the bile that rose in my throat. “You slept with her?”

He cursed and shook his head. “No, that’s not what I meant. Vampire culture isn’t completely like human culture. We do marry, though it is rare because our version of divorce is very difficult to obtain. Much more often, two vampires will enter a contracted relationship with a stipulated time span. If, at the end of that time, they wish to continue their relationship they may renew the contract. Vanessa offered me a contractual relationship for the time period of twenty years along with monetary incentive and a no-monogamy clause.”

I couldn’t stop the look of disgust that crossed my face. “A ‘no-monogamy clause’?”

Conner laughed a little. “I’m sure it’s not much different than a marriage of convenience.”

He had a point but I still rolled my eyes. I thought marriages of convenience were bullshit anyway. Someone was always inconvenienced because their expectations were not in line with what they got.

“Why didn’t you agree?” I asked.

His face grew serious. “I met you.”

“But, if she offered you a no-monogamy clause, why didn’t you accept her offer?”

Conner’s eyebrows lowered. “I’m almost certain that you would never speak to me again if you discovered that, not only am I a vampire, but I was also involved with another woman.”

I nodded.

“That’s why I refused her.”

“But you barely knew me, Conner.”

He sighed and set his wineglass on the coffee table. “The first time I saw you, I was intrigued.” He trailed off.

“And?” I prompted.

“Then the night I saved you from those three men, I tasted your blood, and I knew.”

He didn’t continue and my frustration exploded. It wasn’t like him to be hesitant, and it was freaking me out.

“Dammit, Conner! Just tell me!”

“To me, you taste different from any other human. Better. Sweeter. It’s a phenomenon among vampires. To a vampire, it’s a sign that we are meant to be together. With each taste of you, the less I want of others and I begin to crave only you and your blood. It’s very rare between vampires and humans.”

I raised my hand. “Whoa. Hang on, are you saying that vampires drink human
and
vampire blood?”

With his usual patience, Conner explained. “Blood is blood, Donna. Vampires usually need human blood to replenish their bodies, but we find biting to be an erotic experience. We can, and often do, drink blood from each other. Sometimes it’s part of ritual or legal proceedings, but most of the time it’s part of sex for us. In a situation like ours, I would need only your blood. If we were both vampire, then we could survive mostly on the blood of one another. That’s why it’s very rare and considered a precious bond.”

I shook my head. “If I wasn’t afraid one of your friends would show up and kill me in my sleep, I would write a book correcting all the misinformation that humans believe about vampires.” I didn’t respond to his comment about the taste of my blood. “So now Vanessa knows why you refused her offer?”

He nodded.

“And she’s not happy about it, right?”

Conner just raised an eyebrow at me.

“Ok, that was a stupid question,” I said as I sat back to drain my wineglass. My brain felt overloaded from all the information. I didn’t know what to think. I did know that I hated Vanessa Santino, and I wanted to snatch all that long dark hair out of her head.

It also pissed me off that the night had been ruined. The first night Conner invited me to his home and some snooty vampire had to come in and act bitchy. The fact that she wanted to hump my guy just made it worse. Conner’s hand cupped the back of my neck and distracted me from my unhappy thoughts.

“Are you okay, Donna?”

I just looked at him. I really wasn’t.

He winced. “I guess it was my turn to ask a stupid question.”

I didn’t quite laugh, more like a huge sigh. I put my empty glass on the coffee table and stood.

“I think I should go, Conner.”

He rose to stand next to me. “Why?”

I barely refrained from rolling my eyes. Jesus. Men of all ages, even over three hundred, were the same. Oblivious.

“I just need some time to think.”

“What do you need to think about?” he asked. His accent was noticeably thicker and I knew he was getting angry.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Let’s see…you have some female vampire lusting after you and it’s obvious you think she might be a danger to me, or you wouldn’t have prevented me from being alone with Tweedledee and Tweedledum while you talked to her. Oh, and let’s not forget, you basically said that the taste of my blood is a sign that we’re soul mates.”

I forgot about keeping a defensive posture and threw my hands up in air. “I’m freaked out! I don’t know how to deal with this, and I just need some time to process it all!”

Conner studied me for a moment. “Okay, Donna. I understand. Take all the time you need.”

The subtext of that was that he had all the time in the world to wait. I honestly wasn’t sure if that made me happy or scared the shit out of me.

Three days later, I dragged myself through the door of my apartment at four in the morning. The last couple of nights at work had been insane. I practically ran my feet off and spent another hour and half cleaning up every night. I couldn’t complain too much because my tips were great, but it was still exhausting.

I hadn’t called Conner since I left his house. I knew I wasn’t being fair, but I just couldn’t wrap my brain around the things that I learned. The whole contracted relationship gave me the heebie-jeebies. It was a little too much like a marriage of convenience and most of those did not end well. Maybe vampires who had lived for centuries could deal with it, but most of the human marriages of convenience I knew of ended with at least one party unhappy with the state of their life. Sometimes both spouses were completely miserable, though it was rare.

Then the whole
soul mates
thing was freaking me out. Conner and I hadn’t been together for long. I wouldn’t even say we were dating since we rarely went out in public together. For him to throw out the words soul mate made my skin itch.