Bitten Surrender (3 page)

She swayed. “I think I may have drunk a little bit too much.”

Adrienne needed to go to bed, and he had to take her home before the sun stranded him in the upstairs of some apartment he’d be forced to endure for the duration of daylight.

“Come on. I’ll keep you safe.”

His fated woman shook her head and nearly fell over from the effort. “I don’t know you. For the love of Pete, you might be a serial killer. Slaughtered thousands of people.”

He caught her before she passed out. “As a matter of fact, I have. And you’re stuck with me anyway.”

S
he woke to complete darkness and a mouthful of cotton. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. Somewhere in the distance, a heater hummed. Nothing of what she felt or heard told her a bit about where the hell she was.

Adrienne didn’t particularly think of herself as being prone to panic. Waking in pitch-blackness when the last thing she remembered was chatting with a vampire hottie on the street while way too drunk constituted a reasonable cause to really freak out.

“Hello?” She called and waited to see if anyone would respond. After a second, she concluded either no one had heard her or, if someone did they weren’t answering.

Waving her hands around, she was at least able to ascertain she wasn’t in a coffin. Too much time contemplating vampires did weird stuff to her brain. Of course she wasn’t in a coffin. Why would she be? There were soft sheets beneath her.

Adrienne sat up, and her head started to pound. She winced and made herself sit more slowly. Yes, aside from her panic, the hangover she was sure to have thanks to her poor decision-making in drinking her weight in vodka was going to make her sick for the rest of the day. Wherever she was, she needed water and aspirin, badly.

She swung her feet off the side of the bed and padded out into the darkness with her hands in front of her in case she was about to take a header into a dresser or some torture device. Eventually, she did manage to find a wall.

Somewhere in the room there had to be a door. Unless she was trapped in an exit-less room of hell. Then of course she would never get out. Oh, the places her mind invented were never good.

She whacked her foot on something hard and fell with a thud. Seconds later, the sudden brightness blinded her.
Who turned on the lights?
Her eyes burned while they adjusted from seeing nothing to the dazzle of suddenly having what felt like the blaze of the sun assaulting her corneas. Eventually, she blinked the tears from her eyes.

The generic bedroom contained a single bed made in dark green and blue sheets with a matching quilt. A brown armoire stood in the corner about two feet from the doorway and across from a closed closet door. She’d been right; no one else in the room with her. Adrienne knew exactly where she was. She had been here before, when she’d been brought to the castle to be claimed. This was her bedroom. Hottie had brought her back here after she passed out?

Maybe all vampires were as terrified of the royals as the ones from her hometown. She still wore the clothes she’d been in the night before, so he hadn’t undressed her, which was good. Getting naked and not remembering how would be creepy.

She stood. Vampires other than the royals were never interested in anyone other than the other vampires. He’d discarded her here to wait for her hellish destiny.

She opened the door to the sitting room—there he was...the vamp with the dark hair and piercing gaze from last night.

“Did you fall?”

He stood by the window and didn’t look toward her. The glass seemed to protect him from the rays. She’d seen it before, as the rich vampires always had safety glass installed in their homes. Since all the vamps she knew were loaded, it essentially meant all vampires in existence had their homes protected.

“I did, actually.” She rubbed at her hip. “I can’t see when its pitch black.”

He clapped his hands and the lights in the room she’d come out of flickered on and off. “Sound makes the lights come on. You must have been too quiet.”

“I saw some commercial once where some woman clapped her hands and the lights came on. I’ve never seen such a thing in person before.” What else to say? How embarrassing, knowing he heard her trip. “What if someone talks in their sleep? Do the lights come blaring on?”

“I think it requires more of a bang noise.”

He finally turned to regard her, and she had to keep her breath steady. Was it possible he looked even more attractive in the daytime? Most vampires who rose during daylight hours were pale and wan. The man in front of her gave the word
beautiful
a new definition. She’d never thought beauty was relevant to men.

Men shouldn’t be so strikingly gorgeous. How were women supposed to compete? Tall, well over six feet, with dark brown hair and piercing green eyes. His image would be burned into her brain forever. He’d tied his hair back behind his neck so she wasn’t certain exactly where it would fall when it was let free. His clothes were different as well. Today he had dressed casual, whereas the night before he’d been in all black. She wasn’t certain which look she preferred, dressed darkly or in his jeans and gray t-shirt.

“Who are you?”

Before she took another step in the room. She needed to know why he had stayed. For the past ten years, her life had been spinning out of her control. Yet, standing with a stranger’s gaze on her, she felt almost solid on the ground.

“My name is Hanzi Black.” He waited, as if his words should have some meaning. When she didn’t answer, he spoke again. “I take it you haven’t heard of me.”

“I’m afraid not. Should I have? Are you important? A primo vampire or something?”

He snorted, a big grin crossing his face. Wow, he was handsome.

“No, I suppose not. Although I’m told I’m something of the bogeyman to my own kind.”

“Or maybe you have delusions of grandeur.”

Hanzi shook his head. “You have quite a mouth on you.”

Oh, he had no idea.

“Why did you bring me back here? Afraid of whoever is supposed to be claiming me?”

The side of his mouth quirked to a slant. “He terrifies me. I never know exactly what he’s going to do next.”

His words moved through her brain, exploding into her consciousness. Loudly.

“So, we’re clear.” She wasn’t an idiot. “
You
are the vampire I’m supposed to be doing the crazy joining with?”

“I am he; you are correct.”

She cleared her throat. What was she supposed to say? She’d never gotten to the actual speaking part in her imaginings of the meeting moment.

“Is there coffee? I really need some caffeine.”

“Coffee is poison.”

Adrienne put her hands on her hips. “Actually there are numerous studies showing regular coffee drinking has lots of health benefits. And if it were, as you say, poison, it’s my own body to destroy as I see fit.”

He held his hand in front of him like a police officer ordering traffic to stop. “We’ll order you some.”

With a grace she rarely saw in men his size, and she had tons of burly guys walking through her tattoo parlor, he crossed the room. Hanzi pressed a button and then spoke in a language she didn’t understand.

“Are two pots adequate?”

He turned his green gaze on her, and she had to look at the floor for a second. Their meeting was not going well.

“I need two cups. Pots are way too much.” As an afterthought, she decided to be polite. “Thanks.”

The same foreign language as earlier, or at least she assumed it was, rolled off his tongue. Finally, he let go of the button.

“I also ordered you something to eat.”

Adrienne nodded. “I appreciate your consideration. Listen, let’s lay it all out there. The other women here might be fine with becoming sex slaves to vampires and then dying for their effort, but I am not interested. You seem a reasonable...person. Can’t we come to some sort of arrangement?”

Hanzi stood very still. She wasn’t sure he breathed. “What kind of arrangement did you have in mind?”

“Maybe I could do something for you. Find you a woman who wants to be with a vampire. Surely there must be groupies, women who know what you are and want to hook up with you before dying and being reborn.”

The vampire walked forward so effortlessly, he practically glided. Next to her, he seemed huge. He raised his hand like he wanted to stroke her and then stopped.

“Okay for me to touch you,
kincsem?
”

She didn’t know what that last word meant, but it sounded like it belonged to the language he had used on the phone. Would it be really bad if she said no?

“I won’t harm you. I only wish to show you something.”

She took a deep breath. To say no would be cowardly. “Go right ahead.”

He pulled at her shirtsleeve, and his mouth hung open. She followed his heated gaze. Oh, he was seeing her ink for the first time. She’d known it would be a shock to whoever was supposed to be taking her. The vampires at home always stared and then ran away.

Hanzi ran his hand over her arm with gentle fingers. Every place he touched jumped to life. He raised his eyes finally to meet hers.

“I’m a tattoo artist. You obviously don’t want to be with a woman who is inked. So, we can part ways.”

He furrowed his brow. “How do you keep the color so vibrant?”

“I....” Wow she hadn’t expected that question. “Um. I stay out of the sun. Probably best anyway. Skin cancer and all.” Her mouth had gone dry. Where was the coffee?

“I haven’t seen markings on skin in a long time. Once, on a woman from the east. When I was a young man. Before things happened to change the course of my life. I have been in China for the last decade. Handling a...situation. I’ve not been around people other than our servants in a long time. Is tattooing common? And you say you make these? You do your own artwork?”

She ripped her arm from his grasp. Their conversation had become a little personal. She didn’t want to mate him; therefore she shouldn’t know him or let him learn about her. There had been a point to letting him touch her.

“Why did you want to touch me?”

He took her wrist. “The mark on you, I’m shocked you haven’t had it removed or covered it.”

The stupid strawberry marking had started the whole mess. “I like to look at it. To remember my days are numbered.”

He held out his own hand for her to see. “I have the same mark.”

She looked at his arm and for a second she couldn’t believe what she was actually seeing. His mark was identical to hers, he hadn’t exaggerated—exactly the same, all the way to the tiny swivel of a black outline, which really made it seem a strawberry.

“So we match, what does the sameness mean?”

“It means you’re mine.” He dropped her wrist and took a step back from her. One second later, a knock sounded on the door. Hanzi had already travelled halfway across the room to answer it when the noise came. She’d deliberately spent so little time with vampires over the last years she’d almost forgotten how good their hearing was.

Hanzi swung open the door. “Jerome.”

The older man came into the room pushing a cart loaded with a pot of coffee and a delicious smelling breakfast. Eggs, salmon, bacon, and three different kinds of toast stared back at her.

Her mouth watered. Another thing she had been doing to perversely stick it to Hanzi—before she met him or knew his name—was to have become a vegetarian. Non-meat eaters didn’t taste as good to the vampires.

“Does the food look, okay, miss?” Jerome smiled at her.

“Um. I haven’t eaten meat in years.” Although she wanted to, badly, as she did almost any time she smelled bacon cooking.

“You’ll have to go back to consuming animal product.” Jerome’s eyebrows shot upwards. “I wouldn’t want you to become anemic during the change.”

His words caught her by surprise and she backed away abruptly. The change? No. Take the food back, hell no. She wouldn’t be experiencing any change requiring her to alter anything she ate
ever.

Hanzi said something she couldn’t understand to Jerome, and the older man looked at the floor. He nodded once before heading toward the door.

“Thank you for breakfast,” she called after him, feeling like a tool. Had she somehow gotten the old man in trouble? She knew how hard it was to find employment with the vampires back home. What would happen to him if Hanzi fired him?

Jerome turned to her briefly and smiled. “You’re welcome.” He quietly closed the door behind him.

“Did you have to do whatever you did? He’s a very nice old man. Whatever you said to him in your language, I won’t have him getting in trouble.”

Hanzi walked over to the tray of food. “It has been two centuries since I ate food.”

Adrienne threw her hands in the air. “Are you listening to me at all?”

“Of course.” His eyes met hers. “I’m afraid it is you who aren’t hearing me. We’ll have to do something about your attention, seeing as we will be spending eternity together.”

“I...”She had to say something to rebuff his assumption. “I had no choice except to come here. After what happened to my aunt, I knew better than to run. If you think I want our relationship, if you think I have any interest in you whatsoever, you’re kidding yourself. Know one thing. If you force me to wed you, it’s under duress. I don’t consent to become your bride of Dracula.”

She’d said her piece, but his reaction shocked her. He laughed. Oh, what the hell?

****

B
ride of Dracula?
She amused him to no end. Perhaps he should let her off the hook, explain everything about the witches, curses, and destiny. It might make things better if he shared his own concerns—or at least the ones he’d had until he met her. All those earlier worries had fled. Too bad meeting him didn’t do the same for her.

He should be sleeping. Instead, he was tormenting his human for the joy of watching her color rise. His beautifully inked soon-to-be bride who turned out to be so more interesting than he ever imagined.

“Do you not eat meat because you have are a—what is the word?—animal activist? It bothers you when you think of them killing the poor beasts?”