The woman smiled. “If you sever the neck here . . .” She drew a finger across the front of her own throat. “It’s satisfying, but the blood spills too quickly. If you want them to linger, you must cut here.” She indicated the side of her throat. “They will still die, but it will be slow, and they will know every moment of their death.”
Aden stared silently. He didn’t know this woman, had never seen her before in this house. She wasn’t veiled and didn’t seem bothered by it, or by the fact that she was facing a strange, armed and half-naked male. She also didn’t seem overly troubled that he’d just murdered his mistress in front of her.
“Aden, isn’t it?” she said, taking a step closer.
He thought about using the knife on her before she could run screaming to report his crime. But something stopped him. She hadn’t done so yet, and besides, what did it matter if this woman reported him? He couldn’t remain here anyway, and he’d be long gone before anyone arrived.
She stretched out a hand, stroking it down his arm, the look in her eyes one he’d seen often enough to recognize it. Women found him attractive, beautiful even. They admired his face, his size, and the strength of his body.
“Sweet child,” she whispered, urging him to turn around. “Let me see.”
He turned, letting her see the ruin of his back, even as he scowled at his own complacency, his obedience. He was hardly the child she’d called him, but it was as if her voice was inside his head, replacing his own thoughts, telling his body what to do.
“She’s nearly ruined you, hasn’t she?” He felt cool fingers gliding over the lumpy scar tissue. “What a waste,” she murmured. “But we can fix that,” she added, speaking normally. “Look at me, child.”
He did, wondering again why she was calling him child when they were surely very near the same age.
“Would you like to go with me, Aden? To leave this place, this life, forever?”
He stared at her in confusion. “I don’t—” he started, his voice a croak of sound. “I don’t understand,” he said, trying again. “Where would we go?”
“Anywhere we want,” she said, with a mysterious smile. “I can give you freedom you’ve only dreamed of. We can go anywhere, do anything.”
“How?”
Her smile broadened, until it was a slash of white against her olive skin. He watched in amazement as some of her teeth began to grow, until they became . . . fangs. Like a serpent’s. Two smooth, sharp fangs that split her upper gums and pressed against the lush fullness of her lower lip.
Somewhere in the back of his brain a voice was mewling in terror, urging him to run away from this monstrous female. But the rest of him felt . . . content. As if after twenty-seven years of wandering, he’d finally found the one place he truly belonged. He lifted his hand, wanting to stroke the woman’s cheek which would be smooth and soft, to touch the diamond hardness of her fangs. But the blood of his mistress still dripped from his fingers, and it made him hesitate. The woman saw his hesitation and smiled, and then she did something that shocked him to his core. Taking his hand in hers, she kissed it, her tongue lapping out to taste the blood.
Aden’s eyes grew wide. “Vampire,” he whispered. He’d heard tales of such things, but had thought them only that, children’s stories meant to frighten.
The woman smiled up at him, proudly, as if he’d done something clever, something marvelous.
“I am Vampire,” she agreed. “And it is wondrous. I would share it with you, Aden, if you will have it.”
“What would it mean?”
“You and I would go far away. We would want for nothing.”
Aden looked around the opulence of his dead mistress’s rooms, the silk and gold, the fine porcelain dishes. And he thought of his own tiny room, with its cheap wooden box hiding his few treasures, the dim light concealing the threadbare state of his linens, the gaudy gifts his women brought him as if he was an animal to be blinded by their shiny surface and too stupid to know their true value.
He thought of little Sana and the others. He would miss them. He would have given his life to protect them. But he discovered he would not sacrifice this future for them.
“What is your name, mistress?” he asked.
The woman’s smile grew. “I am Leticia.”
Aden repeated the strange syllables silently, tasting them on his tongue. “Leticia,” he said out loud. “I will go with you.”
Chicago, IL, present day
“WHAT HAPPENED after that?”
Sidonie’s voice jerked Aden back to the present, to the elegant rooms of his Chicago headquarters and the warm woman lying naked next to him and smelling of sex. He rolled her beneath him, savoring her easy surrender, the way she spread her legs to accommodate him, her silky thighs cradling his hips.
“We traveled the world,” he said, answering her question.
“Did you . . . I mean . . . were you a couple?”
Aden raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “You mean did we have sex?”
Sidonie scowled up at him, and he leaned down to kiss her soft lips, smoothing away the frown.
“Of course we did. She was my Mistress. She made me a vampire. We were lovers for half a century.”
“Why’d you stop?”
He shrugged one shoulder dismissively. “One night I saved her life, and she released me.”
“Did you . . .” Sidonie drew a deep breath, as if gathering her courage. “Did you love her?”
He stroked his fingers gently over her forehead, along her cheekbones, memorizing her face. “A vampire always loves the one who turns him,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s as if our blood cells recognize where we came from, who created us.” He held her gaze, wanting her to understand. “But I never loved her the way you mean. She was a willing lover and an intelligent woman. I enjoyed her.”
“But why would she send you away when you’d saved her life?”
“She had other vampire children by that time, and I’d grown too powerful. She was afraid of me. She called it a gift when she released me, but really, she was just sending me away. I was alone for half a century after that. I had no one until I found Bastien and made him my own.”
“But how could you be lovers if she was afraid of you?”
“Sex between us had grown infrequent by then. She said I was cold. That while I knew where to touch, where to put my tongue, how to deliver pleasure, there was no passion in my lovemaking. When she released me, she kissed me good-bye and said she hoped I’d find my passion someday.”
“And did you?”
Aden looked down at Sidonie, at her crystal blue eyes gazing up at him with such honesty, at the wild copper curls tangled on the pillow beneath her. He brushed a length of hair away from her bruised cheek, marveling at the contrast between them—his hands seeming so big and rough next to her delicate features, so dark against her pale skin.
“You tell me, Sidonie. Am I cold?”
She blinked up at him for a puzzled instant, then her arms looped around his neck, and her fingers stroked his nape. “No,” she whispered. “You’re the sapphire heart of the hottest flame. When I’m with you, I feel like the sexiest woman in the whole world. I feel cherished and safe.” She swallowed. “I feel loved.”
Aden froze. Did he love Sidonie? Had more than two and half centuries of life brought him to this place and time so that he could finally know what it meant to love someone? To love this woman? He kissed her again, a tender brush of his lips that became a lingering kiss, a seduction of her mouth. Sidonie met his kiss with eager passion, her mouth opening beneath his, her tongue darting out to taste him, to weave around his until he felt the hunger rising in him, the need to possess her again, to claim her as his own.