Once Burned: A Night Prince Novel (6 page)

Chapter 10

S
everal covered dishes were on a tray in the sitting area when I came out of the bathroom. Good thing I’d closed the door or I’d have given whoever brought it a free show. I flipped the lids off to find a four-course meal spread before me. I glanced around, almost expecting people to pop out of woodwork and join me.
I have ample food
, Vlad had said. No shit. If his blood donors ate like this at every meal, they must weigh three hundred pounds each.

My stomach yowled, a warning to stop staring and start eating. I sat down and dug in without bothering to get dressed.

By the time I was finished, I was so full that all I wanted to do was nap, but Vlad had said he’d send Marty up after I’d showered and eaten. The antique wardrobe turned out to be filled with clothes that were new or rarely worn from the pristine look of them. They were all my size, too, as were the shoes at the bottom of the solid wood piece. I began opening drawers in the nearby dresser and found more of the same. Even the cup size on the bras was correct. Either Vlad had been staring
real
hard at me while I slept, or he had a lot of experience guessing women’s sizes—and a lot of chick’s clothes stockpiled at his house.

The latter was no doubt true, but the thought of him checking out my breasts made things stir in me that I normally kept locked down. Then I reminded myself that Vlad might as well have a “Hazardous to Your Health!” label stamped on him and chose a sweater, slacks, and thick socks. The fireplace was lit, making this room cozily warm, but the rest of the mansion might not be as comfortable. As soon as I was dressed, I tugged on the tassel. Less than a minute later, a knock sounded at the door. I opened it to reveal Maximus in the hallway. I wondered if his speed meant he was a vampire, or just extremely attentive.

“Do you know where my friend Marty is?”

“Yes. Shall I bring him up?”

Relief filled me. Vlad was now four for four on his promises. “I can go to him,” I told Maximus. I still felt a little drained, but I wasn’t nearly as woozy as I’d been before.

“I will bring him to you,” he stated. “Wait here.”

Then he was gone in a blur of motion. All right, that answered whether or not Maximus was a vampire. I waited, sitting on the bed after ten minutes standing in front of the empty doorway. Ten minutes into waiting in there, I was starting to get nervous. What was taking so long? Maximus had produced a gourmet meal faster than this!

After thirty minutes, I raced down the staircase to the first floor, trying to remember which direction Vlad had headed off in. The huge hall with its multiple adjoining rooms that had so impressed me before seemed like a maze designed to confound me now. I didn’t see a single soul, either. What had happened to all the bowing guys? Where the hell
was
everyone?

“Maximus!” I shouted, a hard knot forming in my stomach. Something was wrong. I just knew it. “Where’s Marty? I know you’re a vampire, so don’t pretend you can’t hear me!”

“I’m here, Frankie.”

The words came from directly behind me. I whirled and almost smacked into Maximus, but what filled me with relief was seeing my friend. Marty stood next to the blond vampire, a small, tired smile on his face.

“Glad you’re okay, kid—”

He didn’t finish the rest of his sentence because I grabbed him, crouching down so I could hug him. A shudder wracked him as my previous fear sent a current into him, but he tightened his arms and didn’t let me pull away. I might be almost twice Marty’s size, but he had ten times my strength.

“You really okay, Frankie?” Marty whispered against my ear.

“Fine,” I whispered back, surprised at the strain in his voice. “Didn’t you hear? I arrived at least two hours ago.”

He let me go, glancing up at Maximus. “I was busy.”

The edginess in his tone made me take a good at him. Marty wasn’t in the same charred clothes he’d worn the last time I saw him, but his new outfit didn’t look much better. Both his shirt and pants were splotched with suspicious dark stains, not to mention his shirt had a big, ragged hole in the middle of it . . .

I darted behind him before Marty could guess what I intended. By the time he spun around, I’d already seen the matching hole on the back of his shirt. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what had caused the bloody entry and exit hole.

“What. The. Hell!” I spat.

Marty grabbed my arms. “Calm down. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” I shot back, waving at him as much as his grip would allow. “You’ve been stuck through the torso with a huge frigging pole! Where is Vlad? Did he know about this?”

Marty glanced at Maximus again, and fresh fury shot through me as the other vampire’s countenance became stony.

“He ordered it, didn’t he? Son of a bitch, he had you impaled! Why? To act out one of his crazy Dracula fantasies?”

“Shhh, he’ll hear you!” Marty gasped. His face paled, too, something I’d never seen before.

I was too pissed to worry about Vlad’s feelings. “I don’t care. It’s one thing to pretend with the name and the big Romanian castle, but this is
insane
—”

“For the love of God, shut up!” Marty interrupted.

“Good advice,” Maximus muttered.

I couldn’t believe Marty was more upset about me calling out Vlad for his sick role-playing than being speared like a fish. Maybe Vlad reacted violently to anyone questioning his fantasy. If so, he wasn’t just a little deluded, he was a madman—

“I can’t listen to this anymore,” an annoyed voice stated.

Marty’s face managed to drain of more color. Even if I hadn’t recognized Vlad’s voice, that alone would’ve told me who had come up behind me.

“Don’t hurt her, she didn’t mean anything by it,” Marty said at once, moving to stand between me and Vlad.

I wasn’t about to let him take more abuse, especially on my behalf, so I tried to angle myself in front of Marty. He kept sidestepping me with that damn vampiric speed until it looked like we were engaged in some sort of strange dance.

“Fine, I’ll talk to you like this,” I snapped to Vlad, Marty still in between us. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt him, but you had him
impaled
. Tell me why I shouldn’t break our deal right now, and threatening me with death isn’t good enough. Been there, done
that
a thousand times, remember?” My lip curled. “Besides, you need me and we both know it.”

Vlad smiled with luxuriant coldness, coming closer. “Calling me a name I detest and accusing me of madness and lying. I’ve killed people for less, but you’re right. I do need you. So let’s settle the first two issues.”

Marty was suddenly gone. Vlad had thrown him aside before I’d even seen him move. A thud by the stone staircase told me where he’d ended up, but when I started to go to him, Vlad grasped my arm, his coppery green gaze boring into mine. My heart skipped a beat, but I didn’t flinch. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“What now?” I asked with open challenge.

His brow arched. “This,” he replied, and shoved a small, hard object into my right hand.

Chapter 11

I
mages exploded across my mind, but unlike most impressions, they weren’t through the perspective of just one person. They came from multiple people.

First, I relived the memory of an older man being cornered by soldiers. They held him down, jeering, as one of them cut away all the skin on the man’s face before slitting his throat. The next memory was even more brutal—a burning hot coal used to put out a young man’s eyes before he was buried alive. The third was of an even younger man who bore a striking resemblance to Vlad being ambushed and then stabbed to death inside a church. The last was that young man’s murderer, pleading to no avail, as a dirty and blood-streaked Vlad shoved a long wooden pole through his midsection, then hoisted him aloft and sat watching the entire two days it took the man to die.

When reality at last replaced those grisly images, I found myself backed into a wall, Vlad’s grip on my arms the only thing holding me upright. His gaze was hooded, lean face utterly expressionless as he looked at me. Phantom pains still lingered in various parts of my body, but they faded until only a dull ache from clutching whatever Vlad had given me remained.

I opened my hand, glancing down to see a thick gold ring with a dragon emblazoned across the wide, flat stone—the same ring each of those men had been wearing when they were killed. It was so filled with the essences from its former owners’ murders that I half expected it to start dripping blood.

The deaths I’d been forced to relive had conveyed more than the horror of knowing what it felt like to have my face cut off, which had been a new one even for me. I’d also gotten a glimpse into the murdered men themselves. From that, I knew all but the last of them had been members of Vlad’s family, and now I also knew exactly who held me against the smooth stone wall.

Shock made my voice come out hoarse. “You’re Vladislav Basarab Dracul, former
voivode
of Wallachia, but over five hundred years ago, they used to call you Tepesh. The Impaler.”

Vlad didn’t blink. “They still do,” he replied in a caressingly lethal voice, and then released me.

I was glad my legs managed to hold me so I didn’t slump to the ground. Falling before Vlad’s feet would be cliché in the extreme, even if he was the
real
Vlad.

I glanced at Marty. He was still by the staircase, but he seemed okay. Maximus was there, too. From the other vampire’s grip on his shoulder, he’d been keeping Marty from interfering.

“Could you hear what I experienced from touching that ring?” I asked, unable to contain a shiver at the memory.

“Yes and no.” His lips twisted into a humorless smile. “When you utilize your power, your mind is locked behind an impenetrable wall. But when you’re finished, you think about what you saw, and I hear that.”

I tried to chase away any remaining thoughts of those murders, which was easier to do when I focused on Marty.

“Okay, now I know you’re not suffering under a delusion from too much role-playing.” The last of that trembling left my limbs and I took a step toward him, my voice sharpening. “It doesn’t excuse you from breaking your word not to harm Marty.”

Vlad folded his arms across his chest, drawing my attention to the dark stains on his shirt that smelled like one of Marty’s foul-tasting shakes.

“No, I promised not to harm
you
,” he countered. “I only promised to keep him alive, which I have. But though it never occurred to you that Marty might have been in collusion with the vampires who kidnapped you, the thought did occur to me.”

My mouth dropped. “No. Marty wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“Thanks, kid,” he muttered from across the room.

“I believe that now,” Vlad said, glancing at Marty without the slightest hint of remorse, “but I wasn’t about to take a stranger at his word.”

His expression hardened even more. “I come from a line of princes who all have one thing in common: They were murdered. I’ve been surrounded by death, betrayal, and power coups for hundreds of years, yet I’ve survived and kept my people safe by being smarter and more ruthless than my enemies. What I did may disgust you, but only the naive or the foolish would have trusted Marty on his word alone, and I am neither.”

He came toward me, and once again, I fought the urge to back away. Vlad might have kept his promise in the strictest sense of the word, but torturing Marty on the mere chance that he might have been involved with my kidnapping also proved that Vlad was one of coldest people I’d ever met.

Then again, after the glimpses I’d seen of his past, not to mention what I’d seen of him since we met,
I
was the naive fool for expecting anything different.

He stopped when he was only inches away, still nailing me with that hard, copper-colored stare. Then he held out his hand.

“My ring.”

I put it in his palm, forgetting to switch it to my left hand before touching him. A current sizzled into him with the contact, which I expected, but I didn’t expect what came next.

The gothic hall vanished, replaced by the hazy cocoon of midnight-green drapes encircling the bed I was on. I wound my hand into the thick fabric while a moan left my lips, sharpening into a cry at the incredible pleasure shooting through me. My grip on the drapes tightened as I writhed under the erotic combination of wet, deep strokes and lightly chafing stubble against my most sensitive flesh.

“Please,” I gasped.

Vlad lifted his head, his hair like dark silk against my thighs and his gaze lit up with emerald.

“No,” he said throatily. “More.” And he lowered his mouth again.

Vlad’s face crystallized in front of me, but instead of green drapes all around us, we were back in the hall and he was staring down at me, frowning.

“I know you caught a glimpse of something when you touched me. Your mind went silent. Tell me what it was.”

My cheeks flamed with heat. At the same time, disbelief washed over me, covering the remains of pleasure more intense than I’d ever experienced while masturbating. That hadn’t been a vision of him with another woman, yet still, denial screeched across my mind.

No. Not me and Vlad like . . . like
that
!

His frown cleared, replaced by a brow going up.
Damn
his mind reading.
Think of something else!
I mentally screamed, avoiding his stare.
ANYthing else!

I no longer looked at Vlad, but I could almost feel his gaze roving over me, noting my newly tight nipples, accelerated heartbeat, and probably picking up on that damn lingering throb between my legs, too.

“Not surprising,” he said at last, his voice thicker with things I didn’t want to name. “I predicted the same thing myself.”

My cheeks continued to heat until I expected them to burst into flames like his hands. I brushed past Vlad and headed for the staircase, not daring to look at Marty, either. How could I? I’d just gotten a glimpse into a future where I was in bed with the man who’d tortured him.

“Nothing’s set in stone. I’ve changed my premonitions before,” I muttered, both to Vlad and myself. Still, I took the stairs two at a time.