Elusive Hero: Invitation to Eden (Vampire Queen Series Book 12) (39 page)

If she continued to stand here, he could talk her into it. But though he was an incomparable Master, a male who’d made her feel things she hadn’t felt in so long, he didn’t have a hundred and seventy-five years of seeing what she’d seen.

Earlier, she’d thought if she could have ten days again with Jared, knowing she would lose him afterward, she would still take those ten days. But if she could have him back only as a vampire’s servant, she knew what her answer would be. Servants were property, slaves, subject to the whim of not only their own vampire, but any vampire more powerful than her. There were just too many more powerful than her.

She couldn’t do that to anyone she loved.

He’d given her access to his mind, heart and soul, so there was no way to deny it. She was falling in love with him, and he was falling in love with her. Nothing to hide, but it had to be denied.

There were sacrifices you made when you loved. While those sacrifices might break the heart, what was worse than a broken heart was the poison of regret, of a choice that couldn’t be unmade or forgiven. By the time Garron understood the reality the way she did, there would be no going back. She’d have three hundred years, a servant’s normal lifespan, to see that poison grow in his gaze, and root in her own heart. Or less than five, if Richard’s prediction came true. Best to leave it all here, untouched by any of that.

There was no way he could understand. She had to accept that. The man who was such a hero that he rescued a baby when he was little more than a baby himself, who’d come back from a near death injury that had lost him three close friends, would never believe there was a challenge that could break him beyond bearing.

She drew her hand away from his, stepped back. Closed her mind down to him and lifted her chin. She kept her eyes flat. She imagined she was back in that drawing room with Greg, every decision calculated inside an impenetrable shell. “It was only supposed to be ten days, Garron. It wasn’t supposed to even touch what was going to happen when I left here. What I wanted was a ten day fantasy. Not a gateway back to my reality. There is no gateway there. Not for us.”

She took a breath. “You’ve opened me up to…possibilities. I’m grateful for that. Maybe I can find something like it in my world. But I won’t bring you into it.”

His eyes snapped with temper. “Possibilities? Like a vampire Master, one who can force you into things, overpower you?”

“No. Yes. It’s for me to figure out. No more arguments. Please.” She held an even tone, her blank face.

He studied her. Though it took a visible effort, he reined back his temper. As his attention on her sharpened, she remembered his ability to read auras. She remained still, hurting for them both, but she knew the moment he read her resolve, and truly understood she couldn’t be budged. While his ability to recognize that should have been a blessing, it felt like anything but.

His expression suddenly became as impassive as hers. Not cruel, not unkind, simply neutral. “If you’re any indication, I don’t think all vampires can be classified one way, any more than humans can,” he said, low. “If what you truly desire is a vampire Master, one who won’t use your submission for political gain or a power trip, it’s merely a matter of time and looking.”

It was impossible. Almost as impossible as her finding a human Master in a handful of days at a paradise resort who could break her heart. “I can always hope.” She made herself say the words, suffered through the slight tic under his eye, a masked flinch. “Though it’s not as easy as that.”

“No. Nothing worth having ever is.” He straightened, and she steeled herself not to take a step back. “So this is your decision.”

“It is.” She put out her hand, a gesture she realized was ridiculous. He stared at it, let it hang in the air long enough she was about to draw back, but he closed his fingers over it. Lifted it to his mouth, pressed his lips against it. She closed her eyes, imagining herself as tightly furled as a flower bud, not destined to open until spring. Until the sun came out again. An ironic thought for a vampire.

When she opened her eyes, she saw he was studying her face. He wasn’t one to give up easily, auras or no, but he was also an exceptional Master. One who knew exactly how much or how little to push a submissive and when she’d reached her limit. When she could go no farther.

She was sure he knew she was breaking apart inside. The question was her resolve, and no matter what else she wanted or needed, that was bone deep. He wasn’t going to move her on it. She just wanted to get away, was even now drawing away from him.

When he let her go, she’d rather have been stabbed through the heart with a wooden stake than lose the touch of his hand. He kept those shrewd eyes on her, and though she felt stripped naked, she managed to stay on her feet, keep her chin up. Dignified.

“If you’re taking any advice, my lady,” he said at last, “I’d say look for love first, then a Master. Because if you find love first, it will help pave the way to the other.” There was a slight softening to his mouth, which made her yearn to touch him, but she didn’t. She imagined herself rooted to the ground.

He cleared his throat. “Maybe you needed a few days here to understand that your submission truly needs to be a bigger part of your life, my lady. You need to figure that out before you reach a dangerous breaking point again. The kind that brought you here.”

He was as calm and closed off as she was. Only suddenly she remembered she had access to his mind. He couldn’t close it the way she could. If she could reach out for just a moment, she could figure out what was going on behind that passive countenance, touch his heart, his emotions. She had no right to do that at all, but she couldn’t bear this to be her last impression of him.

Her mind was closed tight as a safe, and yet he proved just how good his intuition was, his ability to read her. An expression crossed his face that was dangerous, dark.

“Don’t,” he said softly, a command that was a threat.

She recoiled, physically stepped back. “I’m sorry. I will…do as you suggest. You showed me…so much. I didn’t intend for any of this to hurt you,” she added desperately. She wanted to say so much more, but she knew she was floundering.

“I know that, my lady. Are you still leaving at dusk tonight?”

“Yes.” Though that word weighed a thousand pounds on her heart as well.

He nodded again, the same wooden gesture. “I’ll make sure those arrangements are made. The phone in your suite will be reactivated so you can call the main desk if you need anything. If you change your mind about staying, you can let them know that as well. We won’t be booking anyone in that suite since you paid for the full ten days. You’ll have access to the club if you wish to join Richard and Tara, or if you desire to play on your own.”

“I won’t,” she said, too quickly. But it was true. Not here, not without him. Maybe no one else, nowhere else, ever again.

He moved, brushing past her to the door. His scent, the heat of his skin, almost made her sway on her feet. She tried to keep her eyes on the wall of books so she didn’t have to watch him leave, but she couldn’t stop the shameful words that came to her lips. “Will I see you before I leave?”

When he said nothing, she turned. He’d stopped at the doorway and his dark eyes had fire in them. Hellfire. “No, my lady. We’re done.”

He said it in that same neutral tone, but she flinched anyway. His jaw eased, though only a fraction. “I have a few more days of vacation. I’ll be spending it elsewhere. I think that’s best for us both, don’t you agree?”

She nodded, her throat too tight to speak. A sigh lifted his massive shoulders and he gave her a different look, one full of so many emotions she couldn’t bear any of them.

“From here forward, I’ll have two girls to pray for. I’ll think of you often, my lady, and hope for your happiness.”

The door closed behind him. Kaela stared at it. Was there anything as wrenching as the symbolism of a closed door, one never to be opened again? The likelihood of her ever finding a Master like him…in her world… The odds were better that she could turn back time for him to go back to that alley, find those abandoned babies earlier so he could save them both.

“Lady Kaela?” She blinked, realized she’d zoned out for about ten minutes. Now a middle-aged woman was standing at the door. Despite the late hour, she was dressed as if for a full day at the office. This was likely one of Vardalos’s admins.

“Is everything all right?”

No. Of course not. What a stupid question. But she answered appropriately. “Yes, thank you.”

He hadn’t touched her again. Just a terse good-bye. She’d known him less than a week. It should hurt like a splinter under a fingernail, sharp but not fatal, something that once removed would ebb off quickly. Instead the splinter was the size of a railroad spike and it was lodged in her heart, making it difficult to breathe. But she didn’t need to breathe. She was a vampire.

The admin hesitated. “Mr. Vardalos said he would refund your trip in full, as a courtesy.”

She shook her head. “No. Tell him he can keep it. I got what I paid for, and more. I have one condition, though. Pay Master Garron. This was no vacation for him.”

Brushing quickly past the bemused woman, she headed for those endless spiral of stairs. She didn’t want the elevator, which would still have Garron’s lingering scent. It was time to go back to her room, to pack. Once she rose at dusk, she could return to reality. The sooner the better.

Everyone knew it was best to rip off a Band-Aid quickly.

§

At dawn, she stripped and laid on the bed. She was tempted to burrow under the covers but she lay on the top, exposed and cold, staring at the ceiling. It was pressed tin that glinted from the candlelight wall sconces. She hadn’t wanted the electric lights. When the dawn came, the waterfall sparkled with the sun’s rays. Turning on her side, she watched.

Jared had said she was a creature of the night, one who embraced the moon more than the sun. “My witch,” he’d called her, on a night when he left their bed to find her sitting on the porch steps in her night rail. She was watching the moon soar across the star-strewn sky. He’d sat down on the step above her, his legs on either side of her body, and stroked her hair. “My red-haired witch.”

Was it eternal, the struggle to know what to do, how to live, how to exist in a way where there was a balance? Was there any place where the weak weren’t preyed upon, and where the strong weren’t always trying to beat them down from weakness into nothingness?

She was one of the strong ones, impossibly strong. She knew she was capable of going on for centuries more, serving Lady Lyssa, protecting those whose care was charged to her, or whose care she assumed. Like Garron with those twin babies. They were so alike in some ways. In many ways. Fighters, killers. Saviors, but not in the grandiose, messianic sense. More like the basic Webster’s definition as one who saved something, someone, because the circumstances allowed it to happen. She supposed it amused the Powers That Be when someone was proclaimed a hero, since They knew it would take only a flick of the dial of Time to make it a second too late. Then the hero was just another face in the crowd, someone too slow to act.

What if Garron hadn’t looked in the trashcan? The second baby would have died while he slept fitfully only a few feet away, his dreams plagued by what tomorrow would hold for a runaway. Or what if he’d had a few more terrible life experiences under his belt, such that when he saw the baby in the trash, he’d thought, “she’s better off dead” and replaced the lid?

Was there anything worse than the death of hope?

Kaela turned away from the water, closed her eyes. She’d get some sleep, get on the plane. She’d have a few days before Fran returned. She’d do paperwork, follow up on several territory matters. Maybe read some books or visit a couple gardens in the area she’d been meaning to check out at night, when she could slip in and dwell there, a shadow among the shadows.

“Garron, I wish…”

She took a breath. She didn’t have her mind closed to him, a final act of respect to her Master, but she’d also respected his demand she stay out of his head. So she spoke to him in her own mind, in the forlorn hope he might be listening.

I want you to know there’s nothing another vampire could do to you that would make me think less of you. As cliché as it sounds, I know this is about me, not you. I don’t know if it’s possible to love someone after only a few days, but I know I think too much of you to ever pull you into my world. I wish I could be with you once more. I know that’s wrong and cruel of me. Selfish, because I know I hurt you. But I miss you so, Master. I feel like if I could be yours, just one more time, I could endure everything else. I don’t want my last memory of you to be in Vardalos’s office.

From his closed expression at that last moment, she was sure he wasn’t listening. This was just her way of comforting herself, rambling on like this. She even hummed a little song, trying to get herself to sleep. Would Garron like her to hum him to sleep? She had a good singing voice and had done that for Jared, wrapping her arm around his waist, resting her cheek on his back, letting the vibration of her voice take him into dreams. She hadn’t had the pleasure of watching Garron sleep yet.

If he had come home with her, she would have wanted to do things for him, the way Fran did things for her. There were too many demands on her as an overlord for her to do all the things that Fran did, but she could make him breakfast, taking tiny samples of the food herself to ensure it was fit for human consumption. It had been so long since she’d cooked… One didn’t tend to cook for one, and a vampire didn’t cook at all. Though sometimes hot chocolate spiced with blood was good…

She was thinking nothing but nonsense. She shut her eyes tighter, hoping, wishing for oblivion.

I didn’t give you permission to sleep, my lady.

Thank God. She shuddered. The reverberation of his voice in her consciousness brought an ache into her throat so strong it choked off word or thought. She wanted to tell him he didn’t have to do this, but she would have lost that fight. She wanted him so much that when his fingers slid along the arch of her foot, she quaked all the way down to her bones. Her small cry cut through her from mind to core.