Twice Tempted (16 page)

He caught me, lifting me several inches off the ground. At this height, we were eye level, and the look on his face would’ve made me take a step backward if I could.

“Don’t,” he said, the word falling like a hammer. “You’re the only one who’s struck me without retaliation, but you’re not my lover anymore so I won’t be as lenient again.”

I hadn’t intended to hit him. True, I’d wanted to shake him until his fangs rattled for letting me believe my best friend was dead—and wait until I got ahold of Marty!—but that urge drained away as I stared into his eyes. His expression was so thunderous I should have been afraid, but something other than fear began to fill me. Unable to help myself, I glanced at his mouth. It looked hard, but if I leaned forward a few inches, I knew it wouldn’t feel that way . . .

Suddenly his mouth was on mine, proving that I was wrong. It
did
feel hard. The stubble on his face felt rougher, too, plus I’d have bruises from how forcefully he yanked me down to him.

And nothing had ever felt better. Rapture burst forth, scorching everything else in its path. I kissed him back so fiercely that I tore my lip on his fangs, yet the sting didn’t register. All I knew was his taste, like spiced wine mulled with the darkest of fantasies. How his arms crushed me closer while his heat seared through my clothing. The sensually brutal way his tongue twined with mine, and the overwhelming urge I had to touch him as fast as my hands could race over his body. I needed him as much as the jagged breaths I snuck in between kisses, but another emotion proved stronger, giving me the strength to push him away despite every cell in my body howling in protest.

“What are you doing?” I managed.

His expression was nothing short of ferocious, and if his gaze grew any hotter, I’d burn beneath it.

“You’ve never had angry sex. I’m about to show you what you’ve been missing.”

At those words, the throbbing between my legs became painfully intense. In spite of that, I stopped him when he swooped down to kiss me again.

“You said you’d never take an ex-lover back.”

His mouth descended to my neck with devastating effect. “You’ve proven to be the exception to my rules.”

Those burning lips made the cool pressure of his fangs feel that much more erotic. Still, a deep-seated hurt overrode the passion slamming into me.

“Not
all
of your rules.”

Vlad made a sound too harsh to be a growl. “You won’t be satisfied until you’ve brought me to my knees, is that it?”

“Why not?” It shot out of me with all the recklessness of my still-broken heart. “You brought me to mine.”

He released me so abruptly I had to use the couch to steady myself. Without his body against mine, I felt cold despite the pleasant warmth of the room.

“I told you that you can’t have it both ways, and that’s true for us as well.”

Did I miss something? “What are you talking about?”

“I’m Vlad the Impaler,” he said, biting off each word. “I’ve survived for over five hundred years because if someone crosses me, I kill him, and if I am betrayed, I exact my revenge. I told you this when we met, yet you’re still upset when I act on it.”

“Oh, you don’t have to remind me how merciless you are,” I said, bitterness leaping to the surface.

“Obviously I do,” he replied. Then he cupped my face with hands so heated they felt like brands.

“You claim to love me, but the man you love doesn’t exist. That man wouldn’t have survived years of beatings and rape as a boy because sheer hatred kept him from breaking. That man wouldn’t have impaled twenty thousand prisoners to terrorize a larger advancing army because fear was the only tactical advantage he had, and that man wouldn’t have imprisoned one of his closest friends for lying to him over a woman he was enamored with. I am not that man.”

His hands dropped and he stepped back, his expression still frighteningly intense.

“You see, you don’t want
me
to love you. You want the version you’ve made up. The knight, even though I’m the dragon and I always will be.”

Then he left. This time, despite my calling out, he didn’t stop. In the seconds it took me to get to the hallway, he was gone, the two open windows at the far end still vibrating from his exit through them.

Chapter 22

I
went down to the second floor, so upset over Vlad’s accusations, I walked right by my family without seeing them.

“Leila,” Gretchen snapped, jerking my attention to the sitting room I’d just passed. “What is your problem?”

“What’s my problem?” Hysterical laughter bubbled, but I choked it back. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

My father’s gaze swept over me, taking in my mussed hair, swollen mouth, and sparking right hand.

“Gretchen, I want to have a word with your sister.”

She shrugged. “Go ahead, I’m not stopping you.”

“He means leave,” I said wearily.

This was the last thing I needed, but I’d put him through hell recently, and everyone knew how paybacks worked.

She got up, muttering, “You’re lucky Vlad covered my expenses for the year,” under her breath.

“What?”

“Gretchen, go,” my dad ordered.

She did, leaving me alone with my father. I plopped onto the couch opposite his, noting the differences between this sitting room and the one I’d left. The colors were lighter and there were no weapons or barbaric shields over the fireplace. All at once, I hated the apricot and cream decor and the white hearth with the insipid oil landscape above it. This room lacked complexity, fierceness, passion . . .

It lacked everything that Vlad was.

“So he’s covering Gretchen’s expenses for the year.” Of course he hadn’t told me that. Vlad seldom mentioned his thoughtful deeds. “That’s very generous of him.”

My dad glanced around pointedly. “He can afford it.”

“He can also mesmerize her into forgetting she ever met him and drop her back at her apartment without a cent,” I said in a crisp tone. “Come on, Dad. Give credit where it’s due.”

That salt-and-pepper head snapped up. “I do. He promised to bring you back safely and he did. He promised to let us return to our lives when the danger had passed and I believe him. But he refused to promise to leave you alone, and from how you look now, he’s made good on his intentions not to.”

I was a grown woman, but I didn’t think I would ever feel comfortable discussing my sex life with my dad. In this case, though, he had nothing to worry about.

“It’s not what you think. We’re not back together.”

“You’re still in love with him,” he said flatly.

Not according to Vlad!
my inner voice mocked.
He thinks I’m in love with a version of him that doesn’t exist
.

I drew in a deep breath. If I could pull that voice out, I’d send it to the moon with all the currents I’d shoot into it. But thinking that way made me one step up from Gollum in
The Lord of the Rings
. Soon I’d be arguing with my own reflection.

“When does love solve anything?” was what I replied.

My father grunted. “You’re too young to be so jaded.”

I held up my right hand with a short laugh. “You remember what I see with this, right? Everyone’s worst sins, so I might only be twenty-five, but I haven’t been
young
for a long time.”

He was silent for several moments. At last, he nodded.

“I suppose you haven’t.”

Then he leaned forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. “But, baby, you’ve got to stay away from Vlad. In my decades in the military, I’ve met all types of hardened men, yet I’ve never looked into any of their eyes and felt afraid. When I look into
his
, it’s like someone just walked over my grave.”

A rational reaction considering Vlad wasn’t your average soldier, mercenary, warlord, or anything else my dad could compare him to. In many ways, he was a slice of history’s untamed past among us, yet I had only one response. While it was the last thing my father wanted to hear, it was also the truth.

“I don’t feel that way when I look at him.”

Then I rose, filled with renewed determination. Vlad thought I loved a faux version of him because I couldn’t handle the full Dracula? I’d prove to him—and my hated inner voice—that he was wrong.

“Good night, Dad. There’s something I need to do.”

I
made sure to mentally sing the most annoying song I could think of in case Vlad had come back. What I was about to do might be risky, but when was my life
not
risky? Besides, the last two times I’d used my powers, I’d only gotten a nosebleed. I’d also had Vlad’s blood today, so that further decreased the danger. In short, it was now or never.

Once on the first floor, I bypassed the dining room, library, and conservatory for a room I usually avoided. The Weapons Room, as I called it.

This room was second only to the dungeon in bloody mementos. It was filled with chain mail, suits of armor, swords, long curving knives, mallets, shields, spears, crossbows, and spikes, most bearing dents, stains, and other evidence of use. Even being close to them made my right hand tingle, as if the essences in those objects were reaching out to me.

The last time I’d been here, I kept my right hand glued to my side because I hadn’t wanted to know the grisly stories these objects contained. This time, I stretched it out, seeking the events that had made Vlad into the man he thought I couldn’t love. The first thing I touched was a long spear.

I hoisted my spear with a shout that was echoed by thousands of soldiers behind me. Outnumbered or no, we would rather die than allow Wallachia to be conquered. Then I urged my horse down the steep hill, hearing the thunder of hooves as my men followed me . . .

That image faded and I went for the shield next, touching the dragon emblem hammered into the metal.

A cloud of arrows blackened the sky. I raised my shield and braced, waiting to see if I lived or died. Once my shield stopped shuddering, I rose, slicing the arrows sticking from it with a rough swipe of my sword. Then I grinned despite the blood streaming from my forehead. Not dead yet . . .

My heart had begun to race from those battle echoes, but I wasn’t about to stop. I stroked a wicked-looking mallet next.

I sat on my throne, showing no sign of the rage coursing through me. Mehmed thought to cow me by choosing three of my former jailers to accompany his envoy. He was mistaken.

“Your piety prevents you from removing your turbans in my presence?” I repeated. Then I smiled at my boyhood torturers. “Let me assist you in ensuring they stay on. Hold them.”

My guards seized the officials while I fetched a mallet and several long spikes. Then, my rage turning to cold resolve, I nailed their turbans onto their heads. After the third one fell lifeless to the floor, I flung the bloody mallet at the horrified envoy.

“Here is my response to the sultan’s terms.”

I fell out of that memory into another one faster than I registered what I touched next. My vision swam as more images from the past overtook the present. Once I glimpsed a woman with luxuriant brown hair, but when I tried to see her face, it blurred. Then she was gone as I touched something else in my determination to see everything Vlad thought I couldn’t handle. Phantom pains and emotions blasted into me with each new object, coming so fast and violently that I began to lose focus on what was real. I was no longer a woman seeking validation about her feelings for her ex-lover.

I was Vladislav Basarab Dracul, bartered by my father into hellish political imprisonment as a boy, then as a young man, fighting war after war to keep my country free, only to be betrayed by my nobles, the church, and even my own brother. Then I was abandoned by the vampire who sired me, widowed by a woman who’d shunned me for my deeds, and imprisoned again by Mihaly Szilagyi, a vampire who sought to rule Wallachia through me. Betrayal, pain, and death were my constant companions, yet I would not let them break me. I would use them to break my enemies instead.

“Leila!”

As if from a long way off, I heard Vlad’s voice. Felt him grab me, but I couldn’t see him. My vision had been replaced with red.

Vlad called my name again, but his voice became fainter. Soon I couldn’t hear or feel him. Good. Couldn’t he see that I was trying to sleep?

Something poured down my throat and consciousness returned. Through a red haze, I saw Vlad’s face. Felt his strong arms around me while his wrist pressed to my mouth.

“Leila, can you hear me?” he asked, moving his wrist to allow me to answer.

I blinked, but the red didn’t leave my vision. Then I handed him the object that was still clutched in my hand, dimly noting that it was an ancient-looking crown.

“You’re wrong,” I whispered. “I do love the real you.”

If Vlad responded, I didn’t hear it. A surge of dizziness followed by a blinding pain tore across my mind, and then I felt nothing at all.

Chapter 23

E
ver been awake enough to hear snippets of what was going on around you, but too groggy to react to any of it? For what seemed like the next several hours, I remained in that strange, semiconscious state, hearing fragments of Gretchen’s voice, my father’s, Vlad’s, and even Marty’s. At one point, they got into a shouting match, but right when things became intelligible, I fell into oblivion again.

When I climbed back out, I was acutely aware of two things: the scent of blood and the sound of drums. Between the smell and the annoying
buh-boom
,
buh-boom
s, there was no way I could sleep, which sucked because I was
really
tired. With great reluctance, I opened my eyes, seeing a bright, fuzzy whiteness with silver branches above me.

“Stop . . . drumming,” I rasped.

Something dark filled my vision. It took several blinks before I realized it was Vlad’s face. His stubble was thicker and his hair clumpy and stiff in places. I’d seen that same unkempt look on people after a night drinking, but it surprised me to see Vlad looking like he’d been on the losing end of a bout with tequila. And—
sniff
—HE was the one who smelled like blood? What had happened?