Stalking to the window where she’d stood only moments before, he said, “That’s not really a question.”
No, it wasn’t. “You bastard,” she said, throwing everything onto the coffee table, the edge of pleasure she’d taken in his presence eradicated by the ice of his voice, an unforgiving reminder that he was not human, that he had no conscience as she knew it. “What right do you have to invade my privacy?”
“I wanted the images they took,” he said without turning.
Her stomach roiled. “I knew you liked pain, but I didn’t realize you got off on torture.”
A glance over his shoulder. “Of the bite marks, Honor.” Her name sounded like the most decadent of temptations, touched by a sensuality that was as natural to the male in her apartment as breathing . . . even when he was coated in the ice of what she belatedly recognized was rage, tempered and deadly.
Bite marks.
Her own anger chilled by the cold of his, she picked up the stack of paper and photos, flipped until she came to the pages that listed the bites on her body, with associated images. “There’s nothing you can learn from this.” At the end, they’d torn at her as if she was a hunk of meat, shredding and ripping.
“You’d be surprised.” Shifting on his heel, he shrugged out of the coat, throwing it over the back of one of her sofas to reveal muscled arms free of weapons . . . but for the long, thin blade angled in a sheath across his back. Somehow it didn’t surprise her that he was a blade man, though from the gun she was certain he had in an ankle sheath, she knew he didn’t have a problem with modern weaponry either.
She stood her ground when he came to stand next to her, though the force of her clenched jaw sent pain shooting down the bone. No more fear, she vowed, even knowing it couldn’t be as simple as that, the primal core of her brain scrabbling at her to run—or to fight, shooting and cutting and kicking.
The heat of his body insistent against her skin, Dmitri pointed out a set of three bites that were small and evenly spaced. They’d survived the violence later because of their location—the only mercy was that they had healed without leaving scars, so she wasn’t constantly reminded of how they’d come to be. “Back of my left thigh—”
“—a few inches up from the knee,” Dmitri completed.
Small, fine-boned hands on her body, delicate fangs sinking again and again into that one area. “Blood Ruby,” she whispered. “The vampire always smelled of Blood Ruby.” The fashionable perfume had been an opulent cage around her senses, and it brought up her gorge still—a stranger on the street, in a store, it didn’t matter. She caught a whiff of it and bile coated her throat as a cold sweat broke out over her body. “I used to dream of slitting her throat and watching her flop about at my feet while I drowned her in that stuff.”
Dmitri’s eyes—dark, so, so dark—met hers. “Would you like to pay her a visit?”
9
Silence. In her mind. In her soul. An endless stillness. “You’ve seen her feed before.” The words shattered the quiet, had her dropping the papers in her hand. They floated to the carpet with a strange, serene grace.
“She’s five hundred years old—peculiar habits tend to get around. Feeding from the femoral artery in the thigh isn’t unusual.” A dangerous pause. “Not between lovers,” he corrected, and it made her wonder if that was how he preferred to drink. “But from the back? It’s muscle.”
“It hurts,” Honor said, not knowing why she admitted that. “That’s why she does it. It always hurts.” Looking down at the gun somehow in her hand again, she said, “Will you stop me if I shoot her?”
“No.” Not even the slightest hesitation. “But you might want to wait until after I finish questioning her—it’d be a bitch to wait for the bullet wound to heal.”
Part of her wasn’t sure if he was joking, but she read the cutting anger in his eyes well enough. She knew it had nothing to do with her. No, what had him ready to mete out the most brutal punishment was the fact that an old vampire he likely trusted to maintain order had been playing some very nasty games. Honor didn’t much care about his motivations if it got her to within killing distance of one of the creatures who had turned her into their own personal “blood pet” for two interminable months.
They pulled up to the gates of an estate in Englewood Cliffs just as dawn was streaking the sky in watercolors of peach, pink, and golden blue. Dmitri had stored her laptop in the trunk of his Ferrari and put down the top. She found a welcome freedom in the crisp whip of the wind, using the time to gather her defenses, to ready herself for the thick, nauseating scent of Blood Ruby.
The gates, tall and ornate and covered with dark green ivy, swung open with stately grace the instant the guard saw the car. The drive was dappled in sun and shadow from the oak trees that lined it, and the house, when it came into view, spoke of another century—a heavy and ostentatious one. “Not a vampire who believes in moving with the times.”
“No.” Dmitri brought the car to a halt in front of the shallow steps that led up to the entrance. “In certain periods, it was the done thing to keep your ‘cattle’ within easy reach. Valeria continues to hold to that practice, though it’s come to be considered an archaic one by most of her contemporaries.”
Valeria.
Her hands wanted to grab the huge hunting knife in the sheath at her ankle and rush through the door, gut the vampire, but she forced herself to wait though her pulse beat only a single word—vengeance. “Did the cattle volunteer?”
“There are always those who volunteer.” He pushed open his door and stood to strip off his coat, revealing the soft black cotton of his T-shirt.
She thought of Carmen, how the blonde had debased herself before Dmitri, until Honor had been humiliated for her. “You’ve never had any trouble.”
Dmitri didn’t answer until they met in front of the car. “There are different kinds of trouble.”
She saw something unexpected in him at that moment, a quiet, dark thing as raw and painful as that which lived within her. “Dmitri,” she began, just as the door of the house opened to reveal a maid in a crisp black and white uniform.
“It’s time.”
Her entire body going hot then cold at his words, she walked up the three wide steps with him. The maid stepped aside as they neared. “The mistress is in the morning room, sir.”
Honor had no idea what a morning room was, but Dmitri gave a clipped nod. “We won’t need you. Take the day off. The Tower will contact you tomorrow.”
The maid paled, but said only, “Yes, sir. The cook is also here.”
“Tell her she doesn’t need to be. Valeria’s cattle?”
“In the guesthouse.”
“Get them out. You have five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” Bobbing her head, the maid bolted down the hall.
That was when Honor realized she’d caught a glimpse of fang. “She was a vampire.” Yet Honor felt no fear; the other woman was obviously so much weaker than her, regardless of her vampirism.
“Young,” Dmitri answered, shutting the door with a quiet snick. “Serving out her Contract. I’d say first decade.”
“No wonder she seemed so human.”
“Some of the weak ones never lose that core of humanity.” With that, Dmitri led her down the corridor—it was lined with carpet of deep burgundy, the walls covered with the most exquisite cream paper embossed with a subtle motif. Near-immortality did give the Made longer to gain wealth, but Honor had known vamps hundreds of years old who’d never reached this level of affluence. So either Valeria had begun with wealth or she’d created it through a combination of power, will, and ruthless determination.
Dmitri entered a doorway to the right, a shadow in black.
“Dmitri, darling,” came a smoky voice that made Honor’s body fill with cold terror. Then she caught the dark, musky scent of Blood Ruby. Freezing with her back to the wall beside the doorway, she tried to get the tremors to stop, to control the nausea that threatened to bring up the tea that was all she’d had for breakfast.