Eternal Seduction (23 page)

“Don’t mess with Shades, got it. So a computer geek is helping Vouclade get all the papers I left at home or didn’t have?”

“Yes. Truthfully, it will take hours to explain the lines and reasons behind the names. And get this, the Elders and Ancients use different names for each line. It can be a lot to digest. Not to mention going into Werewolves and Paladins and Harbingers and Celestials. There’s a lot more to the world than just vampires. But luckily for you, I’m old and have a good hold on the world around me. Imagine being a Fledgling who’s Sire is only a hundred years old and doesn’t know the history past the age he lives in.”

Logan folded her arms over her chest. Between what Vouclade had said earlier and what Trinity was saying now, it sounded like Fledglings really got the shit end of the deal. “I think I’m starting to feel sorry for younger vampires.”

“Don’t.” She raised a hand and shook her head. “Once I get you trained and send you off on your own for a few days, you’ll understand why I say that. Every now and then there’s a diamond in the rough, but most of the time they think they’re God’s gift to humanity. I don’t expect you to understand right now, but I promise you will in a few weeks.”

Logan smiled. Part of her was actually looking forward to having a reason to be out on the streets, even if it was only to do someone else’s dirty work. Which reminded her, “Will I be back out living on the streets or will I be staying with Kerestyan?”

“Your days of
living
on the streets and picking through the trash are over. I’ll be providing you a fully furnished apartment in Soho. If you choose to spend your nights at Kerestyan’s or vice versa, that’s entirely between the two of you. I won’t get involved there unless it interferes with what I need you to take care of or accomplish.” She smiled wide. “If you’re supposed to be running money and instead you spend the night riding Kerestyan, don’t expect me to be pleased. Besides, he’s still the Lord of New York. He has a lot of things he needs to be doing, too. He has to attend court, monitor his city and his Fledglings, and keep the Veil. Had he not been keeping a personal eye on three of his biggest trouble makers three nights ago, which he doesn’t do often at all, you’d have never met him.”

Wow.
Logan slowly shook her head. It was wild to think if she’d gone another way or been ten minutes earlier or later, she wouldn’t be sitting here right now. She’d be shivering in a wet, dilapidated building or walking the streets scoping out trashcans.

What a difference a few minutes made.

She stood up and stretched out her legs. “It’s weird to think this all happened by chance. I mean, what are the odds I’d be in the same alley as Kerestyan, especially with how many there are in that part of Brooklyn.”

“Yeah,” Trinity laughed. “What are the chances?” Her voice wavered, as if it’d shifted an octave higher.

Logan straightened and stared at her soon to be Master. “Why did you say it like that?”

Trinity looked all around the room. “Say what like what?”

“You said ‘what are the chances’ like you know something.” She glared when Trinity lowered her eyes. “Do you know something, Trinity? Was there more at work than just chance? Did Kerestyan know I’d be in that alley?”

Trinity quickly made eye contact again. “Of course not. Kerestyan wouldn’t do anything like that, it’s not his style. I’m sure he was just as surprised to find you in that alley as you were him. In fact, I’m willing to put money on it.”

Logan leaned back against the window ledge. Something still didn’t sit right, but she chose to let it go for the moment. It wasn’t as though she could force Trinity to talk, at least, not yet. “When are we going to do this
Servio
thing?”

“Tomorrow night. Father asked you be given a night and day to peruse the castle as a human. It’s not something that happens often. I think he’s interested in how you see it. I can’t remember the last time we had a human running around.” She tipped her head to the side. “Actually, I don’t remember ever having a human running around.”

“Really?”

She smiled again. “We’ve had werewolves and ghosts, but not a regular human. I guess you’re a first.” Her smile faded into a snarl as she smacked a hand against her ear. “Okay, you have to leave.” She motioned to the wall and a door appeared. “If Kerestyan screams in my mind one more time, I’m going to kill him.”

Logan opened her mouth to ask, but stopped when she remembered Vouclade mentioning telepathy. “What’s he yelling about?”

“You! He wants me to let you out. He says I’ve kept you to myself long enough and he needs to make sure you’re alive. He needs to see you with his own eyes. Of course, he doesn’t know what Vouclade did to your sexy little ass.” Her covetous grin returned as her eyes moved over Logan’s body. “I bet you a grand he pops a serious hard on as soon as you step through that door. And I bet you ten, he tries to screw you against the wall.”

She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t have any money. Besides, something tells me you have an inside line on this one.”

Trinity stood, and with both arms made a grand sweeping motion towards the door. “Go! Make him scream out loud so he stops bothering me. Consider it your first real test as my
Servio
. Don’t let me down!”

When Logan stepped through the doorway into another torch lit room, she didn’t have a chance to do anything but brace her hands against Kerestyan’s hard chest before he buried his tongue in her mouth. His palms warmed her cheeks as he held her face steady, stealing her breath with every devouring lash, every sensuous slide of his tongue. Her nipples tightened instantly. Hot shivers raced down her spine then burst across her skin, raising goose bumps in their wake.

She hadn’t realized his hands moved until she felt him squeeze her ass and her feet left the floor. A flurry of sensations whipped through her as he pressed her back against the wall and pushed between her thighs. Her body tingled everywhere he touched her, responding to him in a way it hadn’t before. She broke from his mouth and gasped for air as the hard ridge of his cock dug into her belly.

She so owed Trinity a thousand dollars.

He stared down at her through intense blue eyes as she brushed her fingertips over his lips. She wasn’t sure if the healing had affected her sensitivity somehow or if his kiss was just that incredible, but she swore her heart would pound through her ribcage at any moment.

If this was now his standard greeting, she needed to leave and come back more often.

He nipped at her fingers before his lips parted in a lazy, sexy smile. “Hello.” He dipped his head and nuzzled into her neck, his stubble prickling her skin. “You smell different. Sweeter.” His fangs scraped her throat, causing her legs to tremble around him. “More delicious.”

“Vouclade,” she breathed.

His heated lips curved against her skin. “My name is Kerestyan.”

She smiled, still working to catch the breath he’d stolen. As if she’d ever mistake him for Vouclade. “No. Vouclade healed me. My blood’s clean. No more drugs. He fixed my body, too.” She shivered as his warm fingers slid up her lower back, his thumbs grazing her tight nipples as he pushed her shirt over her breasts.

He raised his head and stared at her. The flickering torches cast shadows across his gorgeous face, reflecting golden sparkles in his eyes. His hot breath scorched her lips. “You were just as beautiful before.”

Logan squirmed as her mind struggled to process his comment amid the devastating assault his thumbs waged on her nipples. How could he take her from hot to strangely uncomfortable in such little time?

She squeezed his hips tight between her thighs. “Can I ask a favor?”

He pulled back slightly, blue eyes sharp and thoughtful. “Of course.”

“Can you not say things like that to me?”

His brows furrowed. “You’d prefer I not compliment you?”

“I know it probably sounds stupid, but every time you refer to me or to a part of me as beautiful, it makes me feel weird. I don’t like it. I’m not sure I ever will.”

His enticing lips curved into a slow, devilish smile. “You are so amazingly complicated.”

She smacked a hand over his mouth. Did he not hear her? “I don’t walk around comparing rainbows to how I feel about you, so don’t do it to me. You can tell me you want to fuck me, lick me, taste me, but you’re not allowed to get poetic about it. No beautiful, no amazing, no…whatever else you manage to come up with. That’s my only rule. Got it?”

She barely caught herself when he pushed her legs from his waist and stepped back, dark eyes alight with something between confusion and anger. “No, I don’t get it. You’re asking me to treat you as nothing more than a common whore. I refuse. How could you ask that of me?”

She yanked her shirt down. What was it with this family and their mood swings? “That’s
not
what I’m asking for. And just for the record, you didn’t seem to have any trouble saying those words when we were rolling around on your bathroom floor. What? It’s okay to treat me like a whore when you’re fucking me, but not now? What the hell?”

He couldn’t look any more offended if she’d tried. “You just told me I can’t compliment you unless I’m referring to touching you. That’s the way a man treats a whore, Logan, not a woman he cares for. I can stand across the room and tell you I want to fuck you, but not that I think you’re beautiful?” He turned and stalked over to a large chair near the end of a huge, four poster bed. He sank into the dark blue velvet then glared at her. “I refuse to treat you that way. If you can’t accept that,” he raised a pointed finger, “there’s the door.”

She studied his stern face. Not only did he appear to be very serious, but at the moment he also bore a striking resemblance to Stefan, sitting there brooding in his chosen chair. Only his pale skin and gorgeous features radiated a purely seductive power over her, a sinful, unholy attraction that made her knees weaken.

Look who’s waxing poetic now.
She pushed the sarcastic voice from her mind. There was a difference between reacting to someone because they were hot, and because you genuinely felt something for them. Without a doubt she was attracted to the man, every nerve in her body practically sizzled whenever he touched her…

She just wasn’t sure about the feelings part.

Unfortunately, that thought, combined with the hurt tinge in his eyes, caused a specific question to resurface in her mind. And although the dominant part of her didn’t want to hear his answer, a small part of her needed to know.

She moved to stand in front of his chair. “Do you love me?”

A long, oxygen thieving, heart pounding moment of silence stretched between them before he finally nodded. “In some ways, I do.”

Shock dug icy fingers into her chest and squeezed her heart. That wasn’t the answer she’d been hoping for. “Why?”

He rubbed a hand across his forehead. “It’s difficult to explain.”

She took a step away from him as panic twisted inside her. “Try.”

“I’m ten thousand years old, Logan.” His voice was quiet but strained. “For as much as I enjoy the modern age, I’ve spent a
long
time watching history and humanity repeat itself. Since the inception of the Veil, I’ve personally seen maybe a hundred humans who’ve learned of our existence. Some fought; some begged for mercy at my feet, others committed suicide or drove themselves insane with the knowledge, and four in the last decade have asked me to turn them. But never, until I met you, had one looked at me with such little regard. Never had I been treated as though I was just another commoner, another person among the many on the street. It makes me wonder, why? What have you lived that makes you so different? What triumphs? What tragedies? Why are you the way you are?”

She frowned. “So, it’s just because I’m different?”

He shot up from the chair in a surge of flexing muscle. “No! It’s not
just
because you’re different. It’s because after thousands of years of watching the same events happen over and over again – few humans draw my notice anymore, let alone my curiosity.”

“Don’t yell at me!” She jabbed a finger into the center of his chest. “If you’d just give me a normal answer this would go a lot faster.”

His jaw worked overtime as he glared down at her. “You aren’t like anyone, anything! I don’t know all the answers when I look at you. I don’t know what you’re thinking. I don’t know what you’re feeling. It’s frustrating yet strangely exciting. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve felt excitement?”

She motioned to the obvious and very satisfying bulge straining against the zipper of his black slacks. “You’re excited right now.”

“Because of
you
!” He growled, balled up his fists then splayed his fingers. “I can’t tell you the last time I got an erection from simply touching a woman. But seeing your face, the thought of caressing your bare skin, running my tongue across your lips, your neck…sets me on edge. I don’t think you understand what that means to someone like me.”

She huffed out a breath, trying to disregard the way each body part he mentioned tingled and warmed as if it were voice activated. “Don’t you have sex with the women you eat?”

“Yes, I have sex as a means to cover my feeding so I don’t have to manipulate memories.”

“Well you obviously get excited then, too.”

He narrowed those dark eyes and stalked towards her, fangs clearly visible between his parted lips. “It’s been well over a thousand years since I found a woman, human or other, attractive enough to gain an erection without forcing it upon myself.”

The closer he came to her, even as she tried to back away, the more her heart raced with the same excitement he’d described. “That’s not my fault. I can’t help it you find me attractive for some God forsaken reason. I almost wish you’d have used me as food like your brother wanted.”

He laughed an evil sound when she turned before he could back her into yet another wall. “If it’s my prey you wish to be, allow me to grant your request.” His eyes snapped with blue fire a second before the room plunged into absolute darkness.