Forbidden Blood (Vampire Venators Romance Series) (7 page)

Amber choked, coughing and spluttering, her hand over her mouth. Kearn quickly took the glass from her. She stared at his brother with wide eyes. He didn’t like the question he could see in them. She didn’t need to know what he did.

He touched her shoulder and used the connection between them to give her feelings a slight push. Not too much influence over her thoughts. More of a suggestion than a command. He wouldn’t control her as the other vampire had.

She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “I feel tired.”

“It is late.” Kearn placed the glass down on the square coffee table, feeling Kyran’s glare on him the whole time. “Perhaps you should rest. You have had quite a night. I will stay on the couch. Please, make yourself at home in my room.”

“Really? I couldn’t.” Her beautiful hazel eyes met his, full of warmth and honesty. They backed up the message her blood sent to his. She felt bad for taking his bed.

“I insist.” He took her elbow, bringing her with him when he stood. Kyran was still staring at him. He led Amber past him and to the bedroom, and turned the light on for her. “The bathroom is just through that door. The control for the blinds is on the bedside table, as is the remote control for the television, in case you feel uncomfortable sleeping without background noise tonight. I will be here if you need anything.”

She nodded and he closed the door. The moment it clicked shut, his eyes changed to red and he looked at Kyran. Scarlet eyes stared right back at him.

Without a word, Kearn walked to the door of the apartment and opened it. Kyran stood, stalked across the room, and stopped toe to toe with him.

“That was uncalled for. I was merely making conversation.”

“I did not like the direction your apparently innocent conversation was heading.” Kearn’s red eyes locked with his brother’s ones.

“Do you really believe the lie you are telling yourself when you say she only needs to know as little as possible?”

Kearn frowned.

“It is a lie, brother, and a shallow one. You do not keep her in the dark about your true self because you believe she doesn’t need to know it in order to play the role you have assigned her.” Kyran stepped past him but remained facing him, his back to the hall. “You do so because you are afraid of what she would think of you if she found out what you are… a vampire no different to the one who attacked her… a fiend lusting for her precious blood.”

Kearn curled his fingers into a tight fist at his side and gripped the door hard with his other hand.

Kyran stepped back into the hall.

“She will find out, little brother.”

He was gone.

Kearn growled under his breath at the truth in his brother’s words.

It was only a matter of time before Amber saw past the façade.

For some reason, he didn’t want her to see him for what he was.

He didn’t want her to fear him.

Hate him.

Not even when it felt inevitable.

Kearn cursed and slammed the door.

CHAPTER 5

A
mber woke slowly to an unfamiliar view. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, and could see the edges of the brown walls either side of her and the window behind her that formed another wall. She felt very calm, as though she had slept deeply. It surprised her. After what she had been through last night, she had expected not to sleep at all. She had drifted off waiting for the nightmares but felt as though her dreams had been pleasant, or non-existent.

Perhaps her dreams and reality had swapped places. She was living a nightmare and dreaming her old life now. The fear that had settled in her heart last night hadn’t gone anywhere. It was quieter now, lessened by the steps Kearn had taken to protect her, to make her feel safe, but it wasn’t going away. Deep inside her heart, a voice whispered that she should fear Kearn too, but for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to feel that way, not even when a part of her knew that there was something different about him.

It didn’t matter what he was. He was protecting her and she could help him. They needed each other. In order to swap her dreams and reality back around, she had to be strong and get through his, and she would, with Kearn at her side.

The quiet noise of the flat panel television built into the oak wardrobes opposite the foot of the bed filled the silence along with her breathing. She stretched. Kearn’s bedroom was soothing. She wanted to sleep here forever.

The bed was soft and warm, the room peaceful and quiet, and she felt safe.

Amber rolled onto her side and took a deep breath. The brown pillows smelt like Kearn. She hadn’t noticed it before. It was a warm smell. She smiled. Probably a very expensive warm smell.

There was no doubt in her mind that Kearn’s job paid well. The car, the apartment, and the terribly modern décor that gave it an air of something out of a perfect homes magazine, all pointed towards money.

Another smile touched her lips when she remembered him insisting on her taking his bed. Very chivalrous.

And then there was his brother.

They looked alike in some ways and the very opposite in others. She imagined Kearn with blue eyes and black hair cut short around the sides but longer on top. They would definitely look alike then.

His brother had a different personality though. He was open, playful, and seemed to take great amusement from saying things that Kearn thought weren’t suitable. If they hadn’t told her that Kyran was the older brother, she would have thought him the younger.

Kearn seemed so cold in comparison, and more distant than she had first placed him. His behaviour around his brother, the flashes of anger swiftly chased by sorrow that had crossed his face at times, and the way he had ended the night so abruptly, all of them increased her feeling that Kearn was hiding something. What did he want to conceal?

Kyran had said that he knew vampires and he knew what his brother did to them. What did Kearn do to them? She had been about to ask him when she had felt incredibly sleepy. The tension in the apartment had risen the moment Kearn had closed the bedroom door on her and then the front door had slammed. Had they argued? Because of her?

Amber sat up on the double bed and pulled the brown duvet to her chest, covering her bare breasts with it.

Why would they argue because of her?

Because Kyran had been too friendly or because he had said something he shouldn’t have?

Amber looked over at the bedside table.

And why were her clothes gone?

She scrambled across the double bed and peered down at the floor in case they had fallen off. They were gone. Her shoes were too. Only her black handbag remained.

Had Kearn taken them?

She blushed from head to toe at the thought of him coming into the room while she had been sleeping in his bed wearing only her knickers.

Her eyes widened.

He had even taken her bra.

Her cheeks burned now.

Amber wrapped herself in the brown duvet and shuffled carefully to the bedroom door. She opened it a crack and looked out into the main room. She couldn’t see Kearn. The television in the white dividing wall above the low rectangular open fireplace was off. The apartment was silent save the noise of the television behind her.

Kearn was gone.

She hitched her duvet toga up and went back into the bedroom, crossing it to the bathroom. There was a white bathrobe on the back of the door. She dropped the duvet and put on the robe. It was too big for her but it was better than walking around Kearn’s apartment in only her knickers.

She made the bed, turned off the television and then returned to the bedroom door and opened it.

There was no sign of her clothes in the living area, or in the kitchen in the right hand corner opposite it. The glasses and bowl were on the drainer, and Kearn’s bloodied shirt was gone. She picked up one of the glasses, filled it with water and drank it down in one go. Her stomach growled. Food. She hadn’t eaten in almost a day.

Amber checked the pale wooden cupboards. The first two being bare didn’t bother her, but after the fifth, she started to find it strange. When she had checked every cupboard and found only a few glasses and some other kitchenware, but not cutlery or plates, she was disconcerted. She approached the large white refrigerator with caution, fearing what she would find in it. Vampires drank blood. What if the fridge was full of bits of people or blood bags stolen from the local hospital?

She grabbed the refrigerator door and yanked it open.

A blank white space greeted her.

Her heart pounded against her ribs.

She was going crazy.

She had to stop being so suspicious.

Vampires killed people. Maybe he didn’t keep his food in the house. Maybe he ate street food of the vampire kind.

Amber shut the fridge door. She really was being stupid now.

Kearn hunted vampires.

Maybe he ate out all the time. There were people who did that. She had seen television programs where famous people had never used the expensive stove in their oversized kitchen. Kearn could be just like them.

Or he could eat blood.

She walked out of the kitchen, trying to distance herself from her thoughts as easily as she could distance herself from the refrigerator.

She stopped at the black front door of the apartment.

There was a note stuck to it, written in neat cursive script.

Do not even consider leaving. I shall return by the time you have showered and shall bring you breakfast. Kearn.

She tried the handle anyway. Locked. Some of the locks she could open from the inside, but one of them needed a key.

Well, that was considerate of him. He stole her clothes and locked her in his apartment, and then offered her a shower and said he would bring her breakfast. He was confusing her more every minute that she knew him.

Breakfast?

Amber glanced to her left, through the small study area to the bank of windows that formed the wall there. The sun was heading towards the horizon, casting a golden glow over the rooftops of London. He had a strange concept of meal times, but then he hunted vampires. It was probably a job he could only do at night.

She perused the books in the beech bookcase that lined the wall of the study opposite the open fireplace, her fingers tripping from spine to spine. There were many novels on the side nearest the front door, but closer to the wooden desk in front of the window, the books were all factual, and some of them were definitely not available in stores. Books on demons, vampires, werewolves and other creatures. All of them old and large, and leather-bound. None of them had authors or publishing houses on the spine. She took a thick, heavy tome on vampires, placed it down on the desk and opened it carefully to somewhere near the middle. Her gaze scanned the neatly hand written paragraphs on the yellowing page and stopped on a name she recognised.

She had to read it three times to make sure she wasn’t imagining it.

Earl Huntingdon.

She cast a quick glance around the apartment, her heart starting to race and tremble at the thought of being caught snooping in Kearn’s things, and then read the passage about the earl.

A vampire.

Kyran knew vampires. Was that why Kearn didn’t like Earl Huntingdon? Perhaps there were good vampires after all and that was why Kyran was friends with him.

Or perhaps not.

Amber read the page, enthralled by the things it said about the earl and his bloodthirsty ways. He sounded dangerous, the sort of vampire that people had written tales about centuries ago, like Vlad the Impaler. He sounded like the sort that Kearn should kill.

She went to turn the page and read on but stopped herself. Reading about the horrible things vampires did to people and to other vampires would only frighten her. She closed the book and placed it back on the shelf. She was better off not knowing. They said ignorance was bliss after all. When Kearn had caught the vampire, she would be going back to her life. Kearn wouldn’t be there to protect her from the scary vampires. She would be alone again and she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life afraid, fearing that someone like Earl Huntingdon would somehow find her. She wanted to live life.

Dragging herself away from the study, she walked around the wide white dividing wall of the modern double-sided fireplace and stopped dead when she saw a black jacket and Kearn’s gun on the end of the long black couch against the bedroom wall. The setting sun glinted off the silver gun, luring her to it.

She stopped at the window-end of the couch beside the gun and stared hard at it, memorising the weapon’s exact position on the jacket so she knew where to place it so Kearn wouldn’t know what she had done. With her heart in her throat, she reached a trembling hand out to the gun and closed the fingers of her left hand around the grip. Her whole arm shook as she lifted it. It was heavier than expected and felt cold against her fingers. She kept it pointed away from her, afraid it would go off, and studied it. It looked like a gun from a movie, sleek and modern, and dangerous.

What kind of bullets did it take? They had to be special to kill vampires.

Amber tried to figure out how to open it, turning it one way and then the other, and even looking closely at the bottom of the grip. In the movies, people changed the clip so quickly she never saw how they got it out. She lifted her other hand, tempted to pull the top part of the gun back and then stopped herself. She didn’t know what would happen if she did that. If she blew out a window or made a hole in the white wall, Kearn would know that she had been messing around with his gun. Afraid of the consequences if that happened, Amber placed the gun back down in the precise spot and position she had found it, and stepped back from it. She didn’t like it.

Turning away, she walked back to Kearn’s bedroom and through it to the bathroom. Take a shower. Kearn had said he would be back when she had showered. She looked at the large white cubicle to her left. Take a shower she would.

She stripped off the bathrobe and her knickers, and closed the bathroom door. The clear shower door squeaked when she slid it open. She turned the water on and stepped under the jet, showering quickly and holding her hair up so it didn’t get too wet. It would frizz if it did and she didn’t want to look like a prize poodle around Kearn.