Masquerade (Vampires Realm Romance Series Book 10) (22 page)

Lord Hyperion stood off to one side, an amused smile on his face as he watched the fight.

Vivek turned and ran into the fray, searching for Sophis. He found her in the middle of the battle, her supply of knives exhausted and her claws out. She fought valiantly despite the odds, slashing at the hunters who dared to come within her reach. Claws weren’t weapon enough against hunters though. Movement out of the corner of his eye caught Vivek’s attention and he roared when he saw a hunter had broken away from the fight and was raising a crossbow, aiming it directly at Sophis. Vivek shifted course, heading for the hunter, and focused. His eyes switched, his fangs extended, and he shot through the snapping werewolves, snarling vampires and desperate hunters towards the man. His first swipe of his sword shattered the crossbow. The second decapitated the man.

His head dropped to the ground with a thud. His body followed it, slumping down to its knees and then rolling to one side to land on the grass.

Sophis seemed oblivious to the danger she had been in, just as he had been earlier when she had saved him. She fought on, growling and snarling, her eyes ice-blue and fangs on show as she battled the remaining few hunters with the rest of the guards.

Vivek remained at the perimeter of the fight, keeping an eye on her, ready to intervene if she ended up in danger again. It was over and he hadn’t sensed Aleksis or Izabella, or any hunter that was worthy of fear.

Was this a real attack or just a test of their defences?

Sophis was a mess by the time she walked back across the blood-soaked grass towards him. Crimson covered her shoulders and splattered across her chest, and her lips were darker than before. A line of blood crept down from the corner of them, tempting him. Her beautiful dress was a wreck, torn at the hem and split up the side to reveal her knee and a sliver of creamy thigh with each step forward she took. Her feet were bare. Had she left her heels behind in the maze?

There were thin lacerations across her upper arms that had bled.

She wasn’t the only one injured.

Vivek could feel the blood sliding down from the wound on his arm, and the cuts she had made on his chest too. His gaze drifted to her throat when she reached him and her eyes widened, her hand came up and she covered the bite mark.

His bite mark.

Just the memory of the taste of her had him hardening in his trousers.

He dragged his gaze away, intending to look her in the eye and see if the fact he had noticed the mark embarrassed her, but it caught on her mouth. Her dark kiss-swollen lips brought everything flooding back. He ached to kiss her again, physically ached with the need to step up to her, pull her back into his arms and taste her lips. The intensity of his need overwhelmed him and he stepped forwards, desperate to touch her again and watch her surrender to the pleasure as they made love. The sound of her moans, the way she had kissed him with such desperation and hunger, was still driving him crazy. The heat of battle had done nothing to quench the flames of his desire for her.

“Has the cat got your tongue?” she said in a small voice and looked away the second his eyes met hers. “There must be something wrong with you... you’re not picking on me the moment you saw me.”

Vivek gathered himself and then reached out to brush her hand away from her neck. She frowned at him and dipped her shoulder out of the path of his hand. Unwilling to let her hide his marks, he shot his hand forwards, grasped her wrist, and tugged her hand away, revealing them.

Sophis lowered her gaze and turned her head away from him, exposing the marks on her skin. Her arm trembled in his hand and he stood there in silence, taking in the sight of his bite mark on her beautiful throat and her reaction to him seeing it. Her shy air added to her beauty, stealing his voice and leaving him unable to say anything snide even when he knew that she was expecting to hear it.

She closed her eyes and pulled her arm free of his grip, but didn’t cover his marks again.

“Were you disobeying orders and forgetting your duty when you were supposed to be undercover guarding our family and important members of the bloodlines?” The moment the first word left his lips, she was glaring at him, and with each one that followed the fire in her eyes grew hotter until he felt as though her look alone could set him aflame like sunlight.

“I was doing my duty. It was just one dance!”

He smirked. “You were doing someone alright... and it looks as though it was more than just a dance.”

Sophis stormed past him but he didn’t let her escape. He followed, keeping stride with her as she headed back towards the mansion, waiting for her to say something else. Curiosity wouldn’t allow him to let her go. He wanted to know what she thought about what they had done. The dance was nothing compared with everything that had come after and he couldn’t get it out of his mind. He needed to hear her speak about it, needed to know if she had truly enjoyed it and whether she had any notion that he was the one she had slept with in the middle of the maze where anyone might have seen them.

“It was just one moment... nothing more,” she said and it wasn’t enough.

Vivek realised that he didn’t just want her opinion. He wanted his ego rubbing. What was wrong with him? He would do better to confess that the marks on her throat belonged to him and let her unleash Hell on him rather than goad her into talking about what she had done on the off chance that she might say something complimentary.

He kept pace with her.

She stopped, faced him, and said with an air of victory laced with malice, “He wasn’t another bloodline either. He was a Venia.”

Vivek feigned shock. “Do you know who it was?”

She hesitated. “No, but I’ll find out.”

“Maybe I could help.”

Her eyebrows knitted into a tight frown. “Maybe you could go to Hell.”

Vivek caught her arm, offended by her words for once and the venom in them. She stared up into his eyes and he struggled against his desire to kiss her and lift the veil of deception. If he kissed her, he was sure that she would realise that he and the man were one and the same.

“What if the man was a servant or a guard who had stolen a mask and dressed up for the night?” he said and her eyes went wide before narrowing with her scowl.

“He was a man... a strong, powerful man...” She stepped up to him, as though trying to intimidate him with her posture and words, and he smiled at her attempt. She could never scare him, not by trying. The only time she scared him was when she recklessly threw herself into the path of vampire hunters with little regard for her safety. At those times, she had the power to crush and break him. “He wasn’t a servant. He was something else... something more than that. He was... special... different. Gorgeous.”

Vivek grinned now, satisfied. “How do you know he was handsome? Weren’t you both wearing your masks?”

Sophis hesitated again and toyed with the slim black mask she held, twirling the ribbon around her fingers. “I just know that he is.”

“I am a Venia and I was at the ball, so what if it was me?”

Her laughter stabbed his heart and burned it to ashes in his chest. “I said gorgeous. He was more of a man than you could ever be, Vivek. Whatever I might have thought about you... well... you changed all that. You’re nothing but a cruel, nasty little man.”

“You want me to show you how cruel you can make me? I could tell Commander Tynan.” He silently cursed himself the moment he finished his sentence and her expression turned to one of horror, her signature radiating anger and hurt.

“You wouldn’t.” She hit his chest and he flinched, the scratches from her claws throbbing.

Sophis stared at his chest, her mouth open and eyes round. She raised her hand and frowned as she went to touch the spots of blood seeping through the white material. Vivek beat her there, covering the marks.

“I picked up some wounds when you were in recovery and they have been slow to heal. The fight tonight reopened a few of them.” It was a reasonable excuse and she wouldn’t call him on it because she probably hadn’t been interested enough in him to ask Commander Tynan what had happened during her absence.

After all, she despised him.

He was a cruel, nasty little man.

Why did he feel as though she had sealed his fate with those words and doomed him to a miserable future without her?

He couldn’t face such a thing, not after he had tasted how sweet she was and had drank from her delicious lips and drowned in her.

He trembled on the brink of confessing everything, desperate with the desire to hear her say that she didn’t really think he was callous and a bastard and that he could fix her poor opinion of him and bring things back to how they used to be between them. He needed her to know that he was sorry and needed to hear her tell him that all was forgiven. It meant the world to him. It was all he wanted now.

He needed her.

He didn’t want her to leave him.

Couldn’t she see that now? Couldn’t she just look in his eyes and see that he had changed again and that she didn’t need to despise him because he despised himself for the way he had treated her and had hurt her?

Couldn’t she just tell him that everything would be alright?

His heart ached, fracturing as he looked into her eyes, waiting, hoping that she might say something to give him a reason to stay and make him believe that all wasn’t lost.

When she said nothing, Vivek turned away from her and muttered, “I will leave you alone now.”

He strode across the grass, feeling her eyes boring into his back, sensing her jumbled feelings. He couldn’t stay. She could make him fear her after all. He feared that if he stayed even a second longer that she would turn to him and tell him that she knew she had slept with him and that it disgusted her.

It hurt.

He pressed his hand to his chest, dug his fingers in, and grasped his shirt in his fist. His heart burned with the intensity of a thousand suns, incinerating him from the inside out, destroying him. He dragged in a breath and then another, fighting back the pain that threatened to consume him.

It was pointless.

She had said it herself.

Whatever she had once felt about him, it was dead, killed by his relentless pursuit of having her demoted to a civilian.

She wasn’t the reason his heart was breaking in his chest. He was. He had destroyed it himself.

“Vivek,” she called across the grass to him but he didn’t slow. Couldn’t.

If she saw him now, she would see all of him. He wouldn’t be able to hide anything from her. He had to keep walking away, couldn’t face her until he had found his strength again.

“Vivek,” she said, closer now, and he realised she was coming after him.

He scrubbed the heels of his hands across his eyes, shut his feelings down, and waited. She caught up with him at the gravel path but didn’t say anything. Her eyes locked on his profile, her senses touching his, and he still waited. Could she feel how much he was hurting? Was it as much as she hurt whenever he did something to upset her?

Her steps slowed on the gravel path and his eyes slid to her. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she winced with each one, and then stopped in the middle of the path. Sophis surprised him by stopping too. Without thinking, he unbuckled and removed his riding boots, knelt and reached for her skirt.

She leapt backwards. “What in the Devil’s good name are you doing?”

“You were hurting your feet.” He looked up at her and realised what he had done.

Her wide eyes didn’t grow any smaller as she blinked at him. He cleared his throat.

“Forget it.” He shook his head and went to stand but she stepped towards him and looked at his boots.

She lifted the bell shaped skirt of her ruined scarlet dress, revealing her dirty white stockings, and slipped her feet into his boots. She stared down at them when she was done.

“They’re warm,” she whispered and when she looked at him, her smile was genuine. “Thank you.”

Vivek knelt before her, unsure what to say. Nothing would bring her back to him. Even if he could right the wrongs he had done to her and convince her to forgive him, the moment she realised he was the one she had slept with, she would hate him all over again.

He had to find a way to tell her but he couldn’t right now, not when she was angry with him and not when so many of the bloodlines’ lords and ladies were gathered on the patio barely fifty metres from them. It was humiliating enough to hear her low opinion of him and harsh words when they were alone together. He couldn’t bear to have her cut him down in front of an audience.

“What happened to you, Vivek?” Her voice was so low that he almost missed the tremble in it but he couldn’t miss the hurt that laced it or the confusion that shone in her dark eyes.

Without a word, he rose to his feet, took one last look at her and then walked away.

S
ophis stared at Vivek’s back, her mind racing and chest tight with her colliding feelings. What had gotten into him? She touched the puncture wounds on her throat. She couldn’t bring herself to believe that he might be jealous but he was clearly upset about something. He hadn’t been his usual self just now. He hadn’t belittled her as she had expected or picked a fight, or said anything horrible about what she had done. He had teased her but his heart hadn’t been in it, and he had been distant and cautious. She might have even sworn he was hurting. Why?

And then he had walked away from her as though he couldn’t bear to be in her presence for another second, only to end up slowing his pace to match hers when she had caught up with him.

Then, he had done something that had made her think about how things had once been between them and she hadn’t known what to say to him. It had instantly alleviated the ache in her heart and replaced it with confusion.

She looked down at her legs and his boots. They were warm inside and strangely comforting, as though this thoughtful act by him had revealed everything to her and restored her faith in him. Underneath the surface, Vivek was still the man she had once known. He was still kind and considerate, and was still taking care of her.