Praise for Lisa Childs

“When Damien Gray comes into contact with the ghost of his wife…he realizes she’s dead and trying to communicate with him. In Childs’s gripping tale, Damien’s grief and Olivia’s anger are convincingly depicted, and there are some surprising twists.”

—RT Book Reviews on Immortal Bride

LISA CHILDS

has been writing since she could first form sentences. A Halloween birthday predestined a life of writing for the Nocturne line. She enjoys the mix of suspense and romance. Readers can write to Lisa at P.O. Box 139, Marne, MI 49435 or visit her at her Web site, www.lisachilds.com.

NOTHING SAYS CHRISTMAS LIKE A VAMPIRE

LISA CHILDS

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Dear Reader,

I am thrilled to be included in the Holiday with a Vampire III anthology!

This is such a hectic time of year that it’s important to be able to take a break from all the shopping and baking and, here in Michigan, snow-shoveling. The way that I take a break is to lose myself in a really good story. I hope you’ll find “Nothing Says Christmas Like a Vampire” to be a compelling read.

Sienna Briggs is having a horrible holiday as she has to say goodbye to her beloved grandmother. But then she meets a handsome, mysterious stranger who introduces her to a world she’d be safer not knowing about…because the Secret Vampire Society is a secret mortals can’t learn about and still live. Julian Vossimer wants to protect Sienna, but he winds up putting her in more danger. Fortunately the holidays are a time for miracles and for stories of love that defy all odds.

Happy holidays and happy reading!

Lisa Childs

Chapter 1

S ienna Briggs stood alone beside her grandmother’s casket. Twinkling lights, wound around pine boughs, reflected back from the shiny surface. Her hands trembled against the lid as she closed it, hiding her grandmother’s beautiful face. “Goodbye,” she whispered into the silence, the funeral home empty but for her. “Tell Gramps Merry Christmas.”

The elderly couple had loved the holidays, and each other, so much. They would be so happy to be together again. Sienna blinked back tears, refusing to feel sorry for herself over being alone. Nana had made Sienna promise to celebrate Christmas. Of course, at the end, her grandmother had said a lot of things that hadn’t made much sense. Had to have been the drugs talking….

Maybe the painkillers had been the reason she’d insisted Sienna keep the ring. She stared down at her right hand, and the finger onto which Nana had slid her engagement ring the day that she had died. The diamond twinkled more brightly than the Christmas lights. Sienna had wanted to bury it with Nana, but the older woman had been adamant that Sienna wear it—on her right hand until she met the man who would slide it onto her left hand.

“You will meet him,” Nana had promised. “You’ll meet the man who loves you with all his heart.”

“Yeah, right…” The last thing Sienna expected to find under her tree this Christmas was a man. A pile of bills, an eviction notice, probably, but not a man. Chuckling to herself over Nana’s romantic notions, she turned away from the casket, and collided with a tall, hard figure. Her hands trembled as she lifted them to his chest to brace herself. The heat of his body penetrated his black silk shirt, warming her palms and making her skin tingle.

He lifted his hands to cup her shoulders. His deep voice was a low rumble as he warned her, “Careful…”

“I thought everyone had left,” she said. Even the funeral director had gone, with instructions to pull the door shut behind her and it would lock. The holidays were fast approaching, so he had probably wanted to get home to his family.

So this strange man wasn’t an employee of the mortician, and he was too young to have been a friend of Nana’s. Yet something about him was eerily familiar. The deep-set dark eyes, the finely chiseled features and the black hair that hung just past his broad shoulders—all of it struck a chord in her memory. Especially the small diamond-shaped scar near the cleft in his chin.

Her heart hammered against her ribs, and fear cracked her voice as she asked, “Who are you?”

“I think you know,” he challenged her.

Beneath her palm, his heart pounded hard. Realizing she still touched him, she curled her fingers and pulled away her hands.

“I’m sorry.” She shook her head, her mind muddled with confusion and exhaustion—and his distracting nearness. “I don’t know you.”

But a thought, buried in the dark recesses of her mind, tugged at her. Sienna refused to recall the dark memories though; monsters lurked with those memories, threatening to hurt her. Again. That was why, even at twenty-seven, she still slept with the lights on.

He didn’t release her, his fingers holding tight to her shoulders. “Don’t be sorry,” he said as if it didn’t matter, yet something about his tone suggested that it did. “It was a long time ago.”

She jerked from his grasp, suddenly very aware that they were all alone…except for the dead. “Don’t pretend to know me when you don’t.”

“Sienna…”

She shivered. He knew her name. But he could have learned it from reading her grandmother’s obituary. “Who are you?” she asked again. “Or should I ask what are you?”

He sucked in a ragged breath. “What do you mean?”

“I know you’re a con man.”

A muscle twitched just above the line of his tightly clenched jaw as anger and pride flashed through his dark eyes. “Sienna—”

“Don’t waste your time with me,” she advised him, “I have nothing for you to con me out of.” Only the ring.

He caught her hand in his, but instead of reaching for the diamond, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist where her pulse leaped with a rush of heat and adrenaline from his touch. “I am not a con man.”

“I don’t expect you to admit that you are,” she said with a short laugh. “You won’t even tell me your name and how you know me.”

“I don’t have time to explain,” he said with a glance over his shoulder.

Sienna couldn’t see what he was looking at; he was so much taller than her, his shoulders so broad, that she could see nothing but him—his handsome face, his muscular chest straining the buttons of his silk shirt. Over the shirt and jeans, he wore a long wool jacket—open, as if the cold outside didn’t affect him at all.

“You’re going to have to trust me.” He stroked his thumb across the leaping pulse point in her wrist.

She swallowed hard, but her throat remained dry with nerves and a sudden rush of desire. How could she be attracted to a man she just met and who frightened her so much?

In protest of her attraction as much as his command, she murmured, “No…” She tried to tug free of him again, but he held her with his dark-eyed gaze and his grasp.

Then he pulled her closer so that her breasts pushed against the hard wall of his chest. “Once I get you out of here, I will tell you everything.”

She shook her head, trying to break the connection between them. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Let me go!”

He tightened his hold and slid an arm around her back, so she couldn’t escape him. “I can’t. I came here for you, Sienna. I’m going to save you.”

I’m going to save you…

The words reverberated inside her mind. And she flashed back to big hands reaching out of the darkness for her, pulling her from the twisted metal that was all that was left of her parents’ vehicle. Staring deep into those compelling dark eyes of his, she remembered now where she had seen him before—when she was seven and had become an orphan.

She grimaced as the old memories pummeled her; the screech of metal as the car struck the guardrail, sparks flying. Then the crunch as the rail broke, and the car tumbled down the hillside, end over end. The screaming—her mother’s screams and hers…echoed inside her head.

She shook her head, trying to wake herself from the nightmare. The pain, the fear, the darkness…it was all too much. She clutched at him, pleading, “Make it stop…”

He leaned forward, his mouth nearing hers as if he intended to kiss her. But before his lips touched hers, it stopped. Everything stopped.

Julian Vossimer caught her, as her body went limp against his, and he lifted her in his arms, holding her close to his madly pounding heart. Her head settled into the crook of his shoulder and neck, her breath warm and whisper-soft against his skin.

His blood pounded in his veins, not just over the imminent danger she was in—but because of the danger she had put him in. The danger of falling for her.

She had become such a beautiful woman. Her hair, the same honey-tone as her skin, bore shimmery streaks of sunshine. Her eyes, although closed now, were a bright blue that had glistened with the tears she’d fought as she told her grandmother goodbye. Those tears had been the only hint of her grief, of mourning. The visitation room for her grandmother was decorated with red and white poinsettias, lights, pine boughs and a Christmas tree. Instead of traditional black, Sienna wore a red dress in soft velvet that hugged every curve of her tempting body. But he didn’t intend to seduce her; his only intention was to protect her. Yet had he actually hurt her? Or had she fainted just from fear?

If she was this afraid now, what would she be when she learned what he really was?

“She’s fine,” he assured himself. For now. But if he couldn’t get her to listen to him, she wouldn’t be fine. She would be as dead as her grandmother.

Balancing her slight body in one arm, he grabbed up her purse and jacket from a chair in front of the casket. He found her keys then draped her coat over her before slipping out a back door to the parking lot. He couldn’t have witnesses who could identify him as the man with whom Sienna Briggs had disappeared.

And she had to disappear, in order to save her life.

Her breath escaped in white puffs into the night air, and snow drifted down, falling in wispy flakes onto her beautiful face. The flakes melted and slid down her skin like tears. He suspected she had shed a lot of tears in her life. She had lost so many people she loved.

Because of Julian. Guilt twisted his gut. If only…

But he could not change the past. He could only affect the future. And he had to make sure she had one. He wouldn’t be responsible for taking that away from her, too.

Julian pushed the button on her keys, so that the lights on a small SUV flashed on and off while the locks opened with an audible click. He had to take her car, too, so no one would realize from where she’d gone missing. But would anyone realize she was missing?

Few people had showed up tonight to pay their respects to her grandmother, or offer their support to Sienna. She seemed so alone now, as if she had less than when he’d pulled her from that wreckage almost twenty years ago. Regret joined his guilt.

“I’m sorry…” he murmured as he pulled open the passenger’s door and settled her limp body onto the seat.

He should have warmed up the car; her skin chilled, the snowflakes no longer melted on her face, but clung to her lashes. Suddenly light flashed, momentarily blinding Julian as fire sprang up around the vehicle. He hadn’t moved fast enough to protect her.

“No!” he shouted. “Leave her alone!” But he didn’t want her alone, he wanted her with him.

A woman stepped out of the smoke, her eyes burning as brightly as the flames—with hatred and madness. “Vossimer, step back…”

Ignoring her order, Julian reached through the flames and gathered Sienna back into his arms. Clutching her close, he wrapped his coat around them both. “I’m not going to let you kill her…”

“She has to die,” Ingrid Montgomery argued. “I was there. I heard her grandmother tell her the secret.”

“The woman was terminally ill.” As Ingrid knew since she had posed as a hospice nurse. “Sienna won’t believe what she heard.”

“If she’d seen this, she would.” Ingrid pulled a picture from the pocket of her cloak. Across the space separating them, Julian recognized a young version of Sienna’s grandmother and himself. “She’d realize you aren’t human.”

“You don’t know that,” he insisted. “Burn the picture, not her. She won’t repeat what her grandmother said.”

“Like her grandmother wouldn’t repeat the secret? You can’t trust humans,” the woman said, the pitch of her voice rising to the level of a hysterical scream. “You can’t trust them. You know what happens…”

Not as painfully as she knew. “Ingrid—”

“If we don’t kill her,” the woman persisted, “more of us will die.”

Julian shook his head. “She’s already suffered enough. I won’t hurt her.”

“I figured you were too attached to her,” Ingrid said, “so I brought reinforcements.”

Her reinforcements stepped from the shadows, but the darkness remained part of them, buried deep in whatever was left of their souls. He glanced at the three men, all big and burly and more than willing to do Ingrid’s bidding.

Anger coursed through him, vibrating in his voice as he shouted, “Stay back!”

“Let her go and you won’t get hurt,” Ingrid negotiated. “I’ll clean up your mess for you.”

“She’s not my mess—”

“She’s too much to you,” Ingrid said with a snort of disgust, “and she’s too dangerous for the rest of us. You know the rule—no human can learn the secret of our existence and live. She must die, Julian. Now.”

“She’s not a threat—” he turned to the men who inched closer to him “—to any one of us.”

“That’s not what your grandfather says—that’s not what he sees,” Ingrid reminded him.

Julian’s heart clenched with dread. “My grandfather…” That was why Ingrid had posed as the hospice worker, to make sure Carolina Briggs died. Orson Vossimer had threatened to order her death long ago—not because of what he suspected but hadn’t been able to prove she knew—but to reclaim their family honor. “He’s behind all of this?”

Julian wasn’t surprised; he was sickened. How long could the old man hold a grudge?

“Your grandfather’s worried about you,” Ingrid said. “He believes you’ve lost your objectivity, that your pity for the little girl she once was has clouded your judgment. All grown-up, she is a threat to you, but you can’t see it.”

He could see—and feel—that Sienna Briggs was all grown-up now. But a threat? Probably. He would admit that only to himself, though. He shook his head again. “I’m not going to let you kill her.”

Ingrid’s reinforcements eased closer to him and the flames that still lapped around the burning vehicle.

“You’re going to have to kill me first,” Julian threatened, “and I don’t think that would make my grandfather very happy.”

Ingrid gasped, as if shocked by his ultimatum, and her men halted their approach, uncertain how to proceed.

Julian took advantage of their indecision. Clutching Sienna more tightly in his arms, he leaped and launched them into the sky. The falling snow, cold and hard, struck his face as he propelled them higher.

The flames rose, licking at the sky and nipping at Julian’s heels. But he flew, cutting through the thick black air. Even though the reinforcements, spurred on by Ingrid’s shouts, chased him, he was too fast and too motivated. He outdistanced them with ease until not even a wisp of smoke reached him.

Sienna shifted in his arms and murmured, as if she was regaining consciousness. She had already been out so long. Perhaps exhaustion, more than fear, had caused her to collapse. He tightened his grip, so that she wouldn’t slip from his hold. He had to get her to safety—had to return her to land before she awakened. She had been frightened of him before—he couldn’t risk her awakening during flight. If she fought him…

If she fell…

Instead of saving her, he might wind up being the one responsible for her death…as he was responsible for other deaths.

Chapter 2

S ienna’s eyes opened—to total blackness. Panic pressed against her chest, and a scream burned in her throat, escaping in a mere gasp of breath.

“Shh,” a deep voice murmured. “You’re all right. Everything’s fine.” Flames flickered as he lit candles. The soft light illuminated the room.

The bedroom. Sienna lay on a soft mattress, a brown suede bedspread pulled to her chin. The drapes, drawn across the windows, were also brown and so thick that they blocked any hint of moonlight or streetlamps. The candlelight didn’t dispel her panic as her fear increased. “Wh-where am I? Where did you take me?”

“Home.”

She glanced around at the plaster walls that stretched ten feet to a coffered ceiling. An ornate chandelier hung from the center, but only the reflection of the candlelight shimmered in the crystal and leaded glass.

She shook her head. “This isn’t my home.”

“This is my home.”

“Your bed?”

He nodded, his black hair skimming across his broad shoulders. He’d ditched his jacket and wore only the black silk shirt now, pulled free of the waist of his dark pants. Several shirt buttons had been opened, revealing the sculpted muscles of his chest.

Sienna shivered.

“You’re still cold?”

Her fingers trembling, she lifted the blanket and peered beneath. She still wore her clothes, but the red velvet dress had twisted, the hem tangled around her hips. “You—you didn’t undress me…”

“Did you want me to?” he asked as he settled onto the bed next to her, his hip pressed against hers.

“I—Of course not,” she replied. And she tried to shift away, but he stretched his arm across her and planted his palm atop the blanket on the other side of her, trapping her in the bed—her face just inches from his. She tried to ignore his closeness and tried not to stammer as she demanded, “I want to know why—how—when you brought me here.”

He opened his mouth, as if he intended to answer at least one of those questions. But Sienna needed to know something else first, so she put a finger across his lips. “Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Julian Vossimer.”

The name meant nothing to her. But the man did—if he really was the one she remembered from that old nightmare. Yet everyone had told her that that had been just a dream, her mind playing tricks on her…like Nana’s had been playing tricks on her at the end.

“I don’t understand,” she said, “why I’m here.”

“We need to talk, Sienna,” he said, his deep voice lowered to a soft whisper. “I have some things to tell you, some things you need to hear.”

“I remember.”

“What?” He tensed. “What do you remember?”

The memories didn’t surge back like they had, violently, at the funeral home. They were just there now—like she was just here with him. It hadn’t been a dream or a trick of her mind, no matter what anyone had tried to convince her.

“I remember that night,” she said, “that you were the one who pulled me from the wreckage.” He hadn’t just pulled her, though. He’d had to manipulate the twisted metal, wrenching it apart before he’d been able to get her free. Maybe she had dreamed that part because no man was capable of such strength. Since he had saved her once, she shouldn’t fear him now. “I guess I owe you…my life…”

A muscle flinched in the deep crease of his lean cheek. His face was all sculpted planes and hard lines that tempted her finger to trace and touch. Did it matter what else he was, or why he’d brought her here?

“You’re my hero…”

The muscle jerked again as he shook his head. “I’m no hero.”

“Did you bring me here to hurt me?” she asked, but she already knew that he hadn’t. If she’d felt she was in real danger from him, she would have started fighting to escape him. It wouldn’t make sense for him to have saved her all those years ago to hurt her now.

“No,” he answered her, his dark eyes serious and sincere. “I brought you here to protect you.”

“See, you’re my hero,” she said. Maybe it was his eyes—those deep-set dark eyes that pulled her into his soul. Maybe it was the attraction, quivering inside her, that she’d never felt as intensely for another man. But she leaned forward and lifted her face to his. Her lips skimmed across that diamond-shaped scar on his chin before she kissed him.

His mouth moved against hers as he took possession of her. His lips parted hers, and his tongue slipped inside, tasting her. He eased her back onto the pillow and followed her down.

Sienna had never been kissed as thoroughly. She slid her hands into his hair, tangling her fingers in the silky black strands as she clutched his nape. But he pulled away, breathing so heavily that his chest pushed against her breasts.

“I’m not cold anymore,” she murmured. But then reality intruded, reminding her that she didn’t know this man. Not really. She had only a child’s exaggerated memory of the man who’d saved her life. This same man, who appeared not even a day older, although nearly twenty years had passed. She shivered again.

“You’re not?”

“I’m scared,” she admitted. Scared of the feelings he drew out of her—feelings she’d promised herself she would never risk experiencing. She’d already lost too many people she cared about; it was easier to stop caring.

He said nothing, just continued to stare at her with that molten dark gaze.

“This is where you’re supposed to tell me that I have nothing to fear,” she prodded him.

“I can’t.”

“No, because then you wouldn’t need to protect me.” She reached up and traced the line of his jaw to the scar on his chin. “Why do you need to protect me?”

Did he know about the mounting debts? Did he pity her for having no one and nothing left?

He stared down at her, his conflict apparent in his dark eyes. “I thought I needed to protect you from…from something else…but now I think I need to protect you from me.”

A smile twitched at her lips. “I don’t need protecting from anyone,” she assured him. “I can take care of myself. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long while.” Except for that night, when he’d pulled her from the twisted metal of what had once been the family sedan.

“For a long while, you’ve been taking care of everyone else,” he said. “Your grandfather. Your grandmother.”

How did he know so much about her? How did he know that she had cared for both her grandparents through long illnesses? Both had died from cancer. “Have you been watching me?”

All these years…

“I know you,” he claimed, “I know that you haven’t taken care of yourself.”

“I said that I had—That I can…”

He shook his head. “You were so focused on your family that you didn’t take care of yourself. I don’t think you know how.”

“Of course I know how.”

“When have you ever done something for yourself?” he asked. “Something just for you?”

She slid her fingers back into his hair. “This. You. This is the first time in…” Forever that she remembered thinking only of herself, thinking only of her pleasure. Not her pain. And she had no idea why. Remembering who he was had brought all that pain crashing back, the force of it so strong that it had rendered her unconscious. But now, in his bed, in his arms, desire held that pain at bay.

She knew it would come crashing back again with the reality of all that she had lost and with how alone she was. But in his bed, in his arms, she wasn’t alone. And she wanted that feeling to last. She wanted nothing to do with reality for the rest of the night.

She pulled his head down to hers and kissed him with all the passion burning inside her. His mouth opened as he sighed her name, and Sienna slid her tongue across his bottom lip. And across the line of his teeth which was even but for the point—the sharp point of an incisor. Yet it was longer than a mere incisor and sharper.

Like a fang.

And she realized why he had not aged a day since he’d rescued her. The man was immortal. The man was not a man. He was a vampire.

She knew.

The minute her tongue had brushed across the tip, his fang had distended. Usually he could control it—usually he could control his passion. But not with her.

Not with Sienna kissing him, her fingers running through his hair, clutching at it to hold his mouth to hers. But then she pulled back and shoved her trembling hands against his chest, pushing him away.

Her eyes, wide with horror, stared up at him, and she stammered, “You’re—You’re a…”

She couldn’t speak the word aloud, but then neither could he, for so many reasons.

“Sienna, you’re upset—exhausted. You’re not thinking clearly,” he tried to convince her. “You need to rest.”

“I need to leave,” she said, her voice steady now and her hands stronger as she pushed at his chest.

He wouldn’t budge, refusing to ease up. Instead he lowered his body more heavily onto hers, holding her down. She wriggled beneath him, her hips grinding against his erection as her breasts pushed against his chest. He groaned and closed his eyes until she stilled. Her breath, ragged with fear and exertion, blew hot against his throat.

“Let me go,” she pleaded.

He shook his head. “I can’t let you go.”

“Yes, you can,” she implored, “you saved me once. No one else would have found the car. I would have died—if you hadn’t come along when you had…”

Guilt wound around his heart, clenching it. He’d seen the car crash, but light had been breaking through the night sky, the sun rising. And he hadn’t been able to get to her then—not without risking his own life. He’d had to wait until darkness fell again. He’d had to leave her alone, for hours, with her dead parents—scared, possibly hurt. He would never forgive himself. And if she knew, neither would she.

“I’m saving you now,” he insisted, “by keeping you here. If I let you go, you won’t survive.” As she had survived all those hours alone in the tangled car wreck. She was in infinitely more danger now than she’d been then.

“I told you I can take care of myself,” she reminded him. “I don’t need you…”

He was afraid that he needed her; his body ached and throbbed with desire for her. A desire more powerful than he’d ever felt before…for any other woman.

Her slender throat moved as she swallowed and added, “…to protect me.”

“You have no idea of the danger you’re in.”

She stared up at him, fear still widening her eyes. “I think I do…”

“You can trust me. I would never hurt you.” Intentionally. But inadvertently he already had. He lifted his hand to her face, cupping her cheek in his palm. Then he skimmed his thumb along the curve of her delicate jaw. Her skin was so silky. He lowered his head, his lips just brushing her throat as he breathed deeply, inhaling the sweet scent of vanilla and the sweeter scent of her blood.

Hunger burned inside him, hunger to taste her.

She shuddered, as if able to read his mind. And maybe she could. Her grandmother had certainly had that gift. She’d known things he hadn’t told her, things he hadn’t admitted even to himself. He hadn’t loved her; he’d only wanted her for her beauty. She’d been right to deny him. Sienna was even more beautiful than her grandmother and probably just as smart if not smarter. No doubt she would deny him, too.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said again, as he stared into her eyes, willing her to believe him. Willing her to trust him even though he wasn’t entirely certain he could trust himself—with her.

Her eyes dilated, the pupils eclipsing the glittery blue. “This seems like a dream,” she murmured. “I must be just dreaming…”

“What do you dream of?” he wondered.

“You…” Her breath caught, quivering in her chest. “I dream of arms reaching out, pulling me to safety, holding me close. I dream of you…”

“Sienna…” He didn’t deserve the gratitude he glimpsed in her eyes. He was no hero.

“I didn’t think you were real,” she admitted. “Everyone told me that I must have made you up, but they had no explanation for how I’d gotten free. No human could have twisted apart that metal. But nobody was around when they found me by the side of the road. So I began to believe them, to believe that I’d only imagined you.” She lifted her hands to his face, her fingers trembling as she traced his jaw. “But here you are, and I’m still not sure you’re real.”

“I’m real…” And desire had driven him beyond his guilt and regrets. He caught her hands in his and turned his face, nuzzling her wrist. Her pulse leaped beneath his lips, racing.

“But you’re a…” She shook her head. “I didn’t think Nana was lucid when she told me about…” She swallowed hard, the creamy skin of her throat rippling. “I thought it had just been the drugs making her talk crazy…”

So Ingrid hadn’t been lying. Sienna knew…things…no mortal could know and live.

“Hell,” she scoffed, “maybe I’m the one who’s crazy. Before I woke up—here—I had the strangest sensation as if I was flying…” She released a shaky sigh. “Or floating…”

“You’re not crazy, Sienna,” he assured her. But he was for thinking he could save her. Because now, knowing for certain that she’d learned about the Underground Society, there was only one way he could do that…

“Yes, I am,” she insisted, “because even knowing what you are, I want…” She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, as if willing the words back, or herself somewhere else.

“What, Sienna?” he asked, his heart pounding hard and fast. Maybe he wasn’t so crazy after all. “What do you want?”

She opened her eyes, and along with her fear, he glimpsed the fascination. And desire?

Her voice whisper-soft, she admitted, “You.”

Chapter 3

P assion burned in his eyes—brighter than the flickering candles. And Sienna wished she could take back her admission, scared of his reaction and hers. This…man…had some kind of unnatural hold on her. His dark gaze drew her in, hypnotizing her into forgetting what he was…and the danger he posed to her.

She shook her head, her hair rustling against the satin pillowcase. “I didn’t mean it…”

“You didn’t mean to say it,” he astutely surmised. “But you meant it. I can see it in your eyes, in the flush on your skin. You want me.”

Even knowing it was too late, that she was in too deep, she shook her head again and hotly denied, “No!”

“Liar,” he accused, his low voice vibrating with a sexy chuckle.

Julian Vossimer with his long, silky hair and hard muscled body epitomized sexy. And Sienna was powerless to resist her attraction to him. As he had accused her earlier, it had been a long time—too long for her to remember—the last time she’d done something just for herself. But making love to him…

Did she dare?

Taking the choice from her, he rolled off her and left the bed. She must have imagined the passion in his eyes. While she wanted him, he didn’t want her.

Standing beside the bed, he stared down at her—his dark eyes still aglow. And his fingers went to the buttons on his shirt. First he undid the cuffs then the rest of the buttons down the front, parting the silk to reveal the sculpted muscles of his chest.

Sienna swallowed. His masculine beauty as the candlelight bathed his skin made her lose her breath. She found her voice, although raspy and weak, to ask, “What are you doing?”

His lips curved into a slight, wicked grin, and he reached for his belt, unclasping and pulling it free of his dark jeans. “I’m coming to bed…”

Then the jeans, and his boxers along with them, dropped to the floor. And Sienna’s jaw dropped, too. Her mouth fell open and she gasped. His erection jutted from lean hips and heavily muscled thighs—so thick and long. When once she’d been so cold, now her skin heated—burning—but before she could push back the blanket, he jerked it off her.

He reached for her next, his hands shaking slightly, as he wrapped them around her upper arms and lifted her to her knees on the soft mattress. “Try to tell me you don’t want me now,” he challenged her.

The lie caught in her throat, choked with desire. She couldn’t…resist him. She slid her hands over his chest, and his heart pounded against her palm—in perfect rhythm with the frantic beat of hers.

“You’re so arrogant,” she admonished him. But not without damn good reason.

Could any woman resist him?

The glow dimmed in his eyes for a moment, as if he’d taken insult at her comment.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“You’re not the one who has cause to be sorry,” he told her.

Not yet. But would she if they made love? Would she live to regret what she’d done? Would she live at all?

He must have glimpsed the fear in her eyes, for he stroked his thumb along her jaw again. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, “I won’t hurt you.”

She already hurt, aching for his touch—for his kiss. For the possession of his body. She stared into his handsome face, mesmerized by his dark gaze. “Julian…”

He leaned over her, lowering his mouth until just a breath separated their lips. “Do you want me?” he asked.

She slid her hands up his chest, muscles rippling beneath her palms, and tunneled her fingers through his thick, silky hair to grasp his nape. “You know I do…” She pulled his head down so that their lips met.

The kiss was feather-soft and nearly innocent. Then she opened her mouth, and his tongue slid across her lower lip, stroking the sensitive flesh before dipping inside to taste her. Innocence fled as he made love to her mouth, his tongue driving in and out, sliding over hers.

His fingers knotted in the fabric of her dress. Then he dragged it up—their lips parting as he pulled the velvet over her head then dropped it to the floor. His breath shuddered out as his gaze traveled over her body, over the bits of scarlet lace covering her breasts and the curve of her hips.

“You’re beautiful,” he praised, the words a raspy groan of appreciation. “So beautiful…”

It wasn’t the first time she’d been told, but it was the first time a compliment had affected her so that her nipples hardened, pushing against the thin lace, and heat rushed through her, burning between her thighs. She swallowed down a whimper that tickled the back of her throat.

But then he touched her, with just his fingertips, gliding them over her shoulders, along the ridge of her collarbone to the curve of her breasts. And the whimper slipped free even before those clever fingers reached the aching points of her nipples. When he touched them, sliding his fingers back and forth over the lace, she moaned and arched her neck.

Fear flickered to life. What if he took that gesture as an invitation to bite her?

“I won’t hurt you,” he repeated, his voice raspy with passion, as if he’d read her mind. His hands moved, sliding around her back to the clasp of her bra, which he undid. Then he pushed the straps down her arms so that the bit of lace fell away—leaving her breasts naked to his touch.

He cupped the mounds. And he kissed her lips again, deeply, as he gently massaged her sensitive flesh. Her nipples pushed against his palms, and she arched again—needing more from him than kisses.

His mouth broke from hers, and she panted for breath as his lips slid down her throat, his tongue flicking over her leaping pulse before moving lower. He traced the curve of each breast before closing his lips around one aching point. His tongue flicked across the sensitive tip.

She cried out and shuddered, a mini-orgasm rippling through her, dampening her panties. “Julian,” she panted his name now, aching for more pleasure. Her hands moved, sliding down the rippling muscles of his back to the curve of his buttocks. She raked her nails over the taut skin. And now she pleaded, “Julian…”

He shook his head, his lips tugging at her nipple. Then he lifted his head. “Not yet…”

“Now,” she begged, “please…”

He pushed her back then knelt on the mattress, between her legs. His hand shaking slightly, he tore the lace from her hips then lifted her thighs to his shoulders. He skimmed his mouth along the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, making her quiver, before kissing her intimately. His tongue stroked over her cleft before slipping inside and tasting. A moan of pleasure slipped from his throat.

Tears stung Sienna’s eyes at the exquisite torture. Pressure built inside her, more intense and painful than she’d ever experienced. “You’re hurting me,” she murmured. “I’m hurting…”

But his fangs only pressed lightly against her swollen mound as his tongue dipped deeper inside her. His hands moved—one to a breast, which he molded, the other to the most sensitive part of her. His thumb pushed against the nub, breaking the pressure free inside her as an orgasm slammed through her.

She screamed, the pleasure tearing her apart. But then he moved, his mouth sliding over her navel, up her ribs to the tip of a breast. His lips tugged at the nipple as the tip of his erection pushed through her wet curls.

She wrapped her legs around his lean waist, her fingers sliding down to his butt again to clutch him to her. She stretched, trying to accept him, as the pressure built again. He was so big—so thick—that her skin burned. Then he slid so deep, he touched her where she’d never been touched. Pleasure exploded, so intense, that she fought to retain consciousness. “Julian!”

“Sienna!” he shouted her name, as if he, too, were shocked by the power of their passion. He thrust, driving deeper and deeper.

She clung to him, matching his frantic rhythm. The pressure wound tight inside her then exploded again, shattering her as she came even more powerfully than before.

He tensed, every muscle rippling, his skin slick with passion. He threw back his head, the tendons in his neck jutting out, as he uttered a guttural groan. Then he pumped his orgasm inside her, filling her as he came. His body shuddered, as finally spent, he clutched her in his arms and rolled to his side.

Sienna stroked her hands across his broad shoulders and through his hair, as if trying to soothe him, even as her own heart beat madly from an exertion that was not just physical. What the hell was she doing? Had she not only made love with a vampire, but fallen in love with him, too?

“Julian…”

The voice called to him out of the darkness. Not Sienna’s voice. She slept in his arms, her head on his chest—almost as if she trusted him. But he didn’t deserve her trust.

“Julian!” Impatience sharpened the masculine tone. And he recognized his telepathic caller.

“Grandfather,” he answered the summons, speaking the words only inside his head.

“You foolish boy,” Orson Vossimer berated him. “You think you can hide her from me?”

Boy. No matter the centuries Julian had existed, to his grandfather he would always be a boy. Never a man.

“You don’t know where we are,” he called the old man’s bluff. He’d been careful to let no thought of their whereabouts pass through his mind—the mind his grandfather had always been too easily able to read.

“I will,” Orson vowed. “Soon. You better fix this before we find you. I’m tired of cleaning up your messes, boy.”

Julian winced. “You’re overreacting. Just like before…”

“And just like before, you’re too arrogant,” his grandfather reprimanded him, “and too careless. You’re not just endangering yourself, but everyone else in the Underground Society.”

“She’s no threat and you know it,” Julian challenged him. “Just like her grandmother was no threat.”

“And her father?”

Julian sucked in a breath. “You didn’t need to—”

“Save the Underground from an inevitable massacre?”

“You nearly killed a little girl,” Julian said, his arms contracting around Sienna’s sleeping body. His fingers tunneled through her silky blond tresses.

“If she had died, it would have saved you from making another mess,” Orson said with none of the regret and guilt that haunted Julian. “Like you’re making now.”

“She’s not a mess.”

“You’re the mess, boy,” Orson said, “and I can’t keep bailing you out. You’re a liability the Underground can’t afford.”

“None of this is about the Underground,” Julian surmised. “This is about the Vossimer name.”

“You’ve dishonored the family,” Orson admitted. “And by hiding her away, you’ve done nothing to restore the honor.”

“So I’m a liability to the Vossimers, as well as the Underground?”

“A liability neither can afford.”

Julian shuddered. He’d always known the old man barely tolerated him. But hate him? “Are you threatening me?”

“I’m cautioning you to do the right thing.”

“Your definition of right and mine are completely different.”

“We’ve been at odds for years,” Orson admitted. “That’s your problem. You won’t listen. Maybe it’s time you stop being a problem.”

Julian had no doubt now. Not only would Sienna lose her life if they were discovered, he would lose his, too. There was no changing his grandfather’s mind.

“You have one option, Julian.”

Orson Vossimer giving him an escape? “So what is this option?”

“You have to kill her.”

“That’s not an option. As long as I live, Sienna won’t die,” he vowed.

“Then make her one of us,” Orson advised. “One of the undead.”

“It’s not that easy.” To make her undead, she would have to risk death. She would have to trust him completely, and he’d never turned a human before. Even though he’d already determined it was his only way to save her, he didn’t trust himself to not accidentally kill her. And if he couldn’t trust himself, he couldn’t expect her to trust him, either.

“It’s quite simple, son,” Orson insisted. “Turn her or you’ll both die.”

“She still may die,” Julian pointed out. And he’d be the one who’d personally killed her. Was that what his grandfather counted on?

He received no reply. Orson had severed their telepathic connection. And Julian would have to work to block his grandfather’s return to his mind. He couldn’t be found yet—not until he had time to earn Sienna’s trust. His heart clenched as he admitted to himself he wanted more than her trust. He wanted her love.

He muffled a snort of self-derision. He was the fool his grandfather thought him if he actually believed he could earn anyone’s love. His own parents hadn’t wanted him and Orson had only taken him out of family obligation and honor. And while many women had wanted Julian over the centuries he’d lived, none of them had actually loved him—not enough to want to spend eternity with him.

He focused on Sienna, studying her beautiful face as she slept. She turned, arching her neck against the pillow. He leaned forward and nuzzled the delicate skin of her throat, breathing in the sweet fragrance that was her very spirit.

If he were smart, he would forget about her trust and her love, and he’d take her now. He’d take the choice away from her and turn her into what he was. Undead. But if he failed, she’d die….

Chapter 4

A scream burned Sienna’s throat when she opened her eyes to blackness. As memories rushed back, panic pressed down on her chest, making it hard for her to breathe. She had been trapped under twisted metal, shut in darkness even during the day, for hours before Julian had pulled her from the wreckage. Ever since then, she’d suffered an anxiety attack any time she was in the dark again.

She forced herself to take slow, deep breaths, and steadied her racing pulse. As she calmed down, she noticed the blackness was not complete. Flames, from candles burned low, flickered faintly—dispelling tiny circles of night.

She didn’t need light to know that she was alone. Julian was gone. She lifted a hand to her neck. Running her fingertips around her throat, she noted no puncture marks—no sticky blood clung to her skin. He’d kept his word; he hadn’t hurt her. Yet. Could she trust him?

She lifted the blanket, and cool air rushed over her bare skin. She was naked. Despite the room’s low temperature, heat suffused her body—with embarrassment and vestiges of the passion he’d drawn from her—from her soul. She’d never responded to any man the way she had to him.

But he wasn’t a man—at least not just a man. He was so much more. More than she could handle.

Hands shaking, she jerked the sheet from the bed and wrapped it toga style around her. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness now, she searched the hardwood floor around the bed but could not find her dress. So she opened the doors of the antique wardrobe, but only a few men’s shirts hung from the rod. She dropped the sheet in favor of one of the shirts, thrusting her arms into the long sleeves and doing up the buttons. The tails reached nearly to her knees, and she had to roll back the cuffs several folds in order to see her hands.

She continued her search through the drawers of an antique bureau, finding only a few boxer shorts and socks. From the sparse furnishings, she would guess this was not his primary residence. Where had he brought her?

Fumbling around in the faint candlelight, she found some thick drapes, but when she drew them back, she revealed only more aged brick wall. No window. No escape but for the door. Before she rattled the knob she knew it would not turn. A lock held it closed, trapping her inside. And him out?

Could she believe him? Was he only intent on protecting her? Or seducing her? Since he’d already done that, he didn’t need to keep her. Unless his body, like hers, ached for more….

Her knees weak, she returned to the bed and sank to the edge of the mattress. He hadn’t caused her reaction; it wasn’t desire for him making her weak and vulnerable. It had to be hunger. He wasn’t wrong—she hadn’t been taking care of herself much lately.

Actually, she hadn’t taken care of herself at all. If she had, she might not have fainted in his arms and wound up trapped in a dungeon—albeit an elegant, romantic one. The darkness spurred her panic again, but she fought it back, refusing to let fear control her. She couldn’t let him—and her desire for him—control her, either.

She had to find a way out. Noticing the bedside table she had yet to search, she yanked open a drawer. Despite the candle burning atop the table, she didn’t have enough light to see inside so she had to fumble through the contents. She pulled out a phone charger but could find no phone, only some papers she held near the candle to read. Take-out menus for restaurants in the downtown Zantrax area. The city in Michigan, which was even larger than Detroit, was hours from the suburban town where Sienna had lived with her grandparents.

How long had she been out that he’d had time to bring her here? Had he drugged her? Was that why she, who was always so cautious with men and especially with her heart, had made love with him so soon after meeting him?

Yet it wasn’t soon. She’d known him a long time. And despite what he was, he was still her hero. Or he had been. She wasn’t sure what he was now, nearly twenty years after pulling her from the wreckage. A photograph slipped from between the menus and fell picture-side up on the tabletop. Faces peered up at her from the yellowed snapshot. Familiar faces. Julian’s handsome face and one that was eerily similar to hers, but the picture was aged. The embracing couples’ vintage clothing and the antique car behind them, that was at least sixty years old, dated the photo.

Her grandmother and Julian had had a relationship? The thought churned in her empty stomach, and she pressed a hand over her mouth. Her palm held in the gasp that escaped when the door rattled open. She caught just a brief glimpse of the hall before he closed the door with his back, his hands busy with the tray he carried.

“You’re awake,” he said, his voice rough with a trace of disappointment. He’d pulled on just his pants, leaving his heavily muscled chest and arms bare.

“Yes…” She swallowed hard, fighting down the instant desire that he inspired in her. “I—I’m awake.”

“And unharmed,” he told her, his lips curving into that wicked grin again. “I told you I wouldn’t hurt you.”

She nodded, agreeing that he’d said the words, but she still wasn’t convinced he would honor his claim. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked. “To seduce me?”

“I’m not sure who seduced whom,” he teased her as he settled the tray onto the mattress. Fresh fruit overflowed a bowl; frothy whipped cream filled another. Champagne bubbled in flutes.

She gestured toward what he’d brought her. “I think it’s pretty clear…” That he wanted to seduce her again. She crossed her legs, trying to fight the pressure that was already building inside her.

He shook his head. “No, it isn’t…” He leaned forward and skimmed his fingers along her jaw. His voice low with awe, he murmured, “You are so beautiful…”

She lifted the photo she’d found and held it next to her face. “I look like my grandmother.”

He didn’t even glance at the picture, his mesmerizing gaze intent on her face. “You’re even more beautiful.”

Nana had always claimed the same thing; Sienna couldn’t see it, as she studied the old photograph again. She only saw Julian’s arm wrapped possessively around her grandmother’s slender shoulders.

“Were you…” she choked on the word, but finally managed to utter it “…lovers?”

“No,” he said, his voice firm with sincerity. “She was already engaged to your grandfather when we met. She would not betray him—no matter what I offered her.”

“Immortality,” she said, remembering the rambling story Nana had told on her deathbed. “I thought it was just the drugs talking…”

“If only it had been,” he remarked, “if only I hadn’t been so arrogant…”

He had every reason for arrogance. He was more handsome than any man she’d seen before—even on movie screens. “So you did…offer her immortality?” she asked.

“I never actually said the words…”

“But Nana knew,” Sienna realized. “She just knew things. Grandpa said she had a gift.” A gift Sienna wished she’d inherited so that she might be able to reveal Julian’s true intentions.

“I wish my grandfather had believed that.” He pushed a hand through his long hair, tangling the glossy strands. “But he didn’t believe mortals have gifts.”

“So he’s a…?”

His mouth lifted, again, in that wicked grin. “You still can’t say the word.”

She still struggled to accept that she was awake, that she wasn’t dreaming the whole thing…especially making love with him. The intensity of passion and pleasure…that had to have been a dream. But even now, the attraction simmered between them, causing her skin to tingle and her pulse to quicken. And he hadn’t touched her again except with that dark gaze of his. “Everything seems so unreal,” she admitted. Especially him and her attraction to him.

“I’m real,” he assured her, as if he’d read her mind. “And to answer your question, yes, all Vossimers are.”

Vampires.

Despite all the trouble his arrogance had caused, Julian had to know, “Is that why your grandmother turned me down?”

Sienna’s blue eyes sparkled with amusement. “Her rejection stung?”

Regrettably that was all it had done. At least if he’d loved her, all the tragedy that had followed wouldn’t have been so senseless.

But Julian had never loved anyone. Maybe he wasn’t capable—none of the Vossimers he knew had been. His parents had abandoned him to his grandfather when he was just a child. And Orson Vossimer hardly oozed affection. The man had always considered Julian a burden. Maybe Julian’s problem was that he just wasn’t lovable himself.

Sienna must have picked up on his thoughts for she leaned forward, her hand on his forearm. “Did you love her?”

He shook his head.

“That’s what she chose over you,” she explained. “Love.”

“Over immortality?”

“She didn’t regret her decision, not even at the last.” Her face paled as if she was about to faint again as she added, “Not even when she was suffering so much…” Her skin cancer had metastasized, spreading to all her organs.

“I’m sorry,” Julian said, covering her hand with his. “I’m sorry she had to suffer.” His grandfather, who could not only telepathically communicate, could also sometimes predict the future. Julian suspected that was why Orson had let Carolina Briggs live as long as she had—because he’d “seen” her suffering. “That must have been horrible for her…and you.”

She nodded as tears shimmered in her beautiful eyes.

“Here,” he said, gesturing toward the tray, “I brought you something to eat.”

The tears dried, and the amusement returned. “And champagne. Are you trying to get me drunk?”

He’d brought the champagne to celebrate…when she agreed to become his bride. But for once his arrogance deserted him. While her grandmother’s rejection had only stung his pride, he worried that Sienna’s might hurt more. He couldn’t ask her yet—not until he was certain of her answer.

And her love.

While he wasn’t convinced he could love, he was confident that…if he had time…he could make her think she loved him. Then, by the time she realized like everyone else had, that she didn’t really love him, it would be too late.

If only Orson and the rest of the Underground would give him the time….

“I’m not trying to get you drunk,” he assured her. “I’m trying to take care of you.”

“And I told you I can take care of myself.”

From the dark circles beneath her eyes and the thinness of her slight body, he doubted it. So he reached for the tray and held up a strawberry to her lips.

Instead of continuing to argue her self-sufficiency with him, she opened her mouth and sank her straight, white teeth into the ripe berry. Juice squirted out and trailed over her chin, down her throat.

His heart slammed against his ribs as his hunger overwhelmed him. He had never wanted to taste anyone with the urgency he wanted—needed—to taste her. He pulled the berry away and replaced the fruit with his lips, pressing them to the sweetness of hers. Her mouth opened again, her tongue sliding across his lip to touch his. The kiss wasn’t enough to satisfy his hunger. He slid his mouth over her chin and down her throat.

Her fingers clenched in his hair, and she shivered. “Please…don’t hurt me…”

“Never,” he promised, even though he feared it was a vow he would eventually have to break. His fingers shook as he fought the buttons free on the shirt she wore—his shirt. Possessiveness gripped him, filling him with satisfaction. She was his. He parted the shirt then pushed it from her shoulders. His breath left his lungs in a ragged sigh. “You are so beautiful…”

Despite her thinness, she had generous curves. Full breasts, dark pink nipples tilting up from the honey-hued mounds. Soft hips sloped from a tiny waist. He skimmed his fingers down her sides, over her silky skin. She shivered again.

“You’re cold,” he said, cursing the fact he’d had to hide her here—underground. Even if he wasn’t hiding her, he’d have to stay here…as the sun was bound to rise soon. Consignment to life in the dark, that was the curse of his existence. Could he ask her to share it?

She shook her head. “I’m not cold.”

But he lifted the tray from the mattress, setting it atop the bedside table where she’d dropped her grandmother’s picture. He hadn’t kept it all these years to remember Carolina Briggs; he’d kept it to remember his own foolishness in asking anyone to become his bride.

When he reached for the blankets to pull them over her naked body, she caught his wrist, her nails nipping at his skin. “I’m not cold,” she repeated, “I’m hungry.”

Before he could retrieve the tray, she reached for the snap of his pants. A laugh rumbled first in his chest, then his throat. The vibration eased his urgency, calming his anxiety over their predicament. He hadn’t laughed in so long.

Then she planted a palm against his chest and pushed him back on the mattress, and his laughter ceased, the tension and urgency returning to his body with painful intensity. But it wasn’t fear driving him; it was passion.

“Who’s the seducer now?” he asked, his words turning to a groan as she unzipped his fly and released his straining erection.

First she slid her fingertips down the length of him. Then she leaned over and ran her tongue over his engorged flesh. He tangled a hand in her hair, holding her to him as she closed her lips around the aching tip of his penis.

“Sienna!” Her passion surprised him. But her generosity should not have; she’d obviously grown used to putting others’ needs over her own.

He couldn’t take advantage of her. So he pushed her back, refusing to take the pleasure she offered with her mouth. And he made love to her body, kissing every inch of sweet skin. When his fangs scraped across a sensitive point, like the tip of her breast, or the dip of her navel, she moaned. If he bit her, he knew she’d enjoy it, but he didn’t want to scare her. Her eyes, staring down at him, were wide with fear, but also excitement.

He kissed her like he had before, intimately, sliding his tongue into the heat of her desire. His own body ached and throbbed, demanding release. But he waited until she came, her hands clutching in his hair as she screamed his name. Then he pulled her to the edge of the high mattress. And he thrust inside her—again and again. She met him, rising off the bed, her legs wrapped around his waist, her hands in his hair then gripping his shoulders. She nipped the straining muscles in his neck as she came again, shuddering as her orgasm bubbled hot and sticky over him. Her inner muscles clutched his erection, squeezing and squeezing until he could control his need no longer.

Passion exploded with one last nearly violent thrust, and he came. “Sienna!”

They collapsed onto the bed, his face buried in the sweet temptation of her neck. He slid his mouth along her throat then parted his lips so his fangs scraped across her skin. “Sienna, let me turn you.”

“What?” She tensed beneath him.

“Become a Vossimer,” he urged her. “Become my wife.”

Chapter 5

S ienna’s heart clenched with excitement then dread as she remembered, “All Vossimers are vampires.” She’d finally said the word, but she could never become one. “Why, Julian? Why do you want me to marry you?”

“It’s the only way I can protect you.”

She should have been relieved he hadn’t professed love, because it was too soon and would have proved him a liar, yet disappointment squeezed her heart. She sucked in a shaky breath and asked, “Who are you protecting me from?”

His arms tightened around her, holding her closer as if he was using his body to shield her. “People who will hurt you.”

“They’ll do more than hurt me,” she realized. “They intend to kill me. Why?”

“Because of what you know.”

“About you?” She’d said it once, but she could not manage to utter the word again around the lump of emotion choking her. “About what you are?”

He nodded. “I’m not the only one.”

“You told me that all Vossimers are,” she recalled. “So you have family?”

A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Yes. Relatively speaking.”

“You’re not close then?”

“Not at all,” he admitted. “But there are more than Vossimers. There’s a whole Underground Society.”

“I had no idea…” she murmured, stunned. “I would have never imagined…” Not only his existence, but his passion.

“You’re not supposed to know. No mortal is.”

She shivered as understanding dawned. “And that’s why I’m in danger.”

He sighed. “Any time a human has learned about our existence, bad things happen. The undead are destroyed.”

The thought of him dead knocked the air from her lungs, filling her with a sense of loss even greater than she’d already known. “But…how…?”

“There are ways.”

He might have wanted to spare her the image, but she closed her eyes and it was there—in her mind: Julian lying on the ground, a stake through his heart. She shuddered. “No…”

“When humans learn of our existence, they react with fear. They think we pose a danger. So they try to eliminate that threat.”

“You keep telling me that I’m in danger,” she said, “that’s why you brought me here.” Why he’d proposed.

“Because you know. Because of what happened when other people found out, the Underground Society made a rule—for our protection.”

“How many people have found out?” she asked, having to know how many mortals were killed—and how many Julian had personally killed.

Had she made love, not just with a vampire, but a cold-blooded killer? Goose bumps lifted her skin as dread chilled her to the bone.

“It was believed that your grandmother knew our secret,” he said.

“But she died from a horrible disease,” she said, flashing back to Nana’s suffering. “No one killed her.”

“No. There was actually no proof she knew…until the end.”

“Until she told me.”

He nodded then grimaced and admitted, “There was someone else who knew, who planned to write an exposé on the Secret Vampire Society. He was going to reveal our whereabouts and order our deaths.”

Sienna’s breath caught. “And this man? He was killed?”

Julian nodded. “Him and his wife.”

“Was I alive when the murders took place?” she asked, wondering if she’d read about them. If the man had been a famous reporter or writer, his death could have been sensationalized, like her father’s had been.

“You were seven,” Julian answered, his deep voice raspy with emotion, “and in the backseat.”

Her breath hissed out. “My father? How had he found out?”

“I don’t believe your grandmother ever told him, but he inherited her gift. He knew things…he would have been better off never knowing. Then he investigated until he discovered other things—things you would have been better off that he never learned.”

Grief pressed heavy on her heart. “I guess it’s good that I didn’t inherit that family gift—that I took after my grandfather instead.”

“He was a simple man,” Julian said.

“A good man,” Sienna defended him as she twisted on her finger the engagement ring that her grandfather had put on her grandmother’s.

“You’re wearing that ring,” Julian observed.

She nodded. “Nana gave it to me, wanted the man I marry to put it on my left hand.”

“Marry me,” he urged her again.

She shook her head, tears burning her eyes. “I can’t…”

“Because you can’t forgive my part in the accident?”

“What was your part?” she had to know, her stomach churning with revulsion. Had she made love with—not once but twice—the man responsible for her parents’ deaths?

“I didn’t stop it.” He dragged in a ragged breath. “I tried…but I was too late. Too late to save them. And too much of a coward to save you.”

“But you did,” she reminded him. “You saved my life.” She wished he could have saved her parents, too, but she believed he’d tried.

“I got lucky—that you weren’t more seriously hurt,” he said, “because I couldn’t get to you right away.”

“I know—the crash was horrible. The car was so far down in the ravine that it was a wonder you found me at all.”

“I saw the car go over,” he admitted. “But the sun was coming up. I couldn’t get to you…not without risking my own life.”

Sienna tensed, shocked.

“So much for being your hero, huh?” he said, and he lifted his arm and let her slide away from him. “I’m sorry. But I can’t be out in the sun…and live…”

“So much for being undead,” she murmured.

“Is that why you won’t marry me?” he asked. “Because of what I am?”

She wasn’t certain if he was referring to his being a vampire or his not being the hero she’d believed him to be for the past twenty years. “No. I made my grandmother a promise on her deathbed.”

“To wear this ring?” He ran a fingertip over the diamond then over the scar on his chin.

“She did that? My grandmother?”

His lips curved into that wickedly sexy grin. “She didn’t like what I said about your grandfather.”

“She was feisty.” Sienna wished she possessed her grandmother’s spirit, as well as her face.

“She was stubborn,” Julian said. “You can’t be stubborn. The rest of the Underground will find us. I won’t be able to save you this time.”

“Unless I become your bride…” She glanced down at the diamond. Could she let this man—this one whose interest in her grandmother had caused her family so much pain—switch the ring to her left hand? She shook her head. “I can’t…”

“You’re exhausted,” Julian said, brushing his fingertip under her eyes, over the dark circles she hadn’t been able to hide with makeup. “Sleep on it.”

She nodded and lowered her lids. But no matter how much rest she got, she wouldn’t change her mind. She had made her grandmother a promise. Like Carolina Briggs, Sienna would only marry for love. She couldn’t marry a man who offered just protection or even immortality. She could only marry the man who offered her his heart.

She couldn’t marry Julian Vossimer…even if that decision killed her.

She was gone. Julian didn’t need to open his eyes to confirm Sienna’s absence. After what he’d revealed, he wasn’t surprised that she would have slipped away while he slept. He should have locked the door behind himself, but he’d been juggling the tray of food that sat beside the bed, mostly untouched. The champagne still filled the glasses, but no bubbles rushed to the rim. It had gone flat.

“Sienna?” he called out. Maybe she could hear him the way that Orson could. Maybe she had her grandmother’s gift, but had been unaware until now, as she’d been unaware of the kind of man he really was.

She must hate him—so much that even if she had the gift, she’d block him from her mind. And from her heart.

“Sienna!” His voice cracked with urgency. He had to find her. Yet even though the bedroom was dark, all the candles burned out, he knew it was day. Because he had to fight for the energy to leave the bed.

Even if she wouldn’t accept his proposal, he had to find a way to save her. He couldn’t let the others kill her…because that would kill him as surely as his leaving the darkness.

Moments later, he climbed the stairs to street level. Light penetrated low-hanging gray clouds and the shower of falling snow. He lifted the collar of his trench coat and slid dark glasses onto his nose. But those precautions were ineffectual as the daylight seeped through his clothes, through his skin and weakened his spirit—draining his soul.

“Sienna…”

His eyes already squinted against the light. He closed them fully and blanked his mind…until she appeared. First as she’d been in his bed—naked and passionate. And then he found her—in the present. In her house, sobbing softly….

She didn’t cry for him; he was sure of it, convinced that she hated him now that she knew everything about him. As Orson had said, he was too much trouble. He’d brought Sienna nothing but pain.

And now pain filled him, burning him alive—zapping his strength. But he couldn’t turn back. Because he could see more than Sienna; he could see what she had yet to realize—that she was not alone.

♥ Uploaded by Coral ♥

Chapter 6

T ears streaked down Sienna’s face while sobs burned her throat. She’d already broken her promise to her grandmother. She wasn’t supposed to cry. But these tears weren’t just over missing Nana; she missed him.

“That’s another promise I broke,” she admitted miserably as she twisted the ring on the finger of her right hand. “I love a man who doesn’t love me.”

While she hadn’t been able to keep all the promises she’d made Nana, she would keep at least one of them. She glanced toward the tree, which stood before the bay window in the front parlor. Its finely needled branches were bare of lights and ornaments. Sienna had barely found the time to buy the tree; she hadn’t been able to decorate it before Nana had passed.

But she’d promised that she would, that she’d deck the halls and celebrate the holiday. She wouldn’t let another loss, however devastating, destroy her. She was stronger than that—stronger even than the threat of which Julian had warned. Dashing her tears away with the backs of her hands, Sienna dragged her weary body from the chair. The last thing she felt like doing, after taking the train from Zantrax, was decorating. But this, at least, was one promise she could keep.

Clad in the red velvet dress she’d found in the bathroom of Julian’s apartment, Sienna hesitated at the door to the cellar stairs. Jeans and a sweatshirt would be more appropriate attire for digging through cobwebs and dusty boxes. But Nana had loved the velvet dress. And from the desire in his eyes as he’d stripped it from her, so had Julian.

Every thought returned to Julian, like Sienna ached to return to him. Maybe she could get back before dark, before he awakened and noticed that she’d gone. But could she, who feared the dark, turn into a creature who dwelt only in darkness? Even now, panic pressed on her chest as she opened the door to basement. Shadows fell across the steep steps that led to the rough concrete floor.

She’d always hated the cellar, but something more than panic assailed her. A sense of foreboding joined her usual fear, and her legs shook as she descended the rickety stairwell. “Hello?” she called out, as goose bumps lifted on the skin on her arms and the nape of her neck. Instinctively, she knew she was not alone. “Hello?”

Had Julian braved the daylight to come to her? No, she would have known the minute he was near; her body would have reacted, with heat and anticipation, to the closeness of his. But she was not alone. “Who’s there?”

“Maybe you do have your grandmother’s gift,” someone mused from the shadows. The voice was feminine and familiar.

“Ingrid?” The hospice nurse had helped out with Nana at night, so that Sienna had been able to get some rest. She had helped only at night, coming by just after the sun had gone down. Was she one of them? Of the Secret Vampire Society? “What are you doing here?”

“I think you know,” the beautiful woman said, her dark eyes glowing eerily in the shadows.

Fear pounded in Sienna’s veins. Julian had told her the truth; she was in danger. Maybe she could convince the vampiress that she had no knowledge of their society. “No. I expected to see you at the funeral home—not here.”

“I was there,” Ingrid said. “At the funeral home and when your grandmother told you about us.”

Sienna shook her head and infused confusion in her voice as she asked, “About us? I don’t understand.”

Ingrid’s lips, either naturally or painted a deep red, curved into a slight smile. “About Julian Vossimer. She told you about Julian.”

“She never said his name,” Sienna maintained. “Not that I paid much attention to anything she was saying at the end. She wasn’t making any sense.” A twinge of pain struck her heart as she remembered, “She was out of her mind with pain.”

“She was completely lucid, right until the end,” Ingrid said, with a trace of respect for Carolina Briggs. “She got you to make some big promises.”

“To celebrate Christmas.”

“That’s how I knew you’d come down here,” the nurse explained.

“To get the decorations.” She suspected Ingrid had actually come down to the cellar in order to get away from the sunshine streaming in through the upstairs windows. “The tree looks so naked…”

The image flitting through her mind wasn’t of tree branches, though. She imagined Julian instead, how he’d looked—sculpted muscles rippling beneath taut skin, as he had moved over her—then inside her. Despite the dampness of the basement, heat suffused Sienna, spreading throughout her body. She had never been satisfied—pleasured—as thoroughly by any other man, and she wanted him again.

Would she even get to see him one last time—now that she’d been found?

“You look like her, you know,” Ingrid remarked from where she lurked yet in the shadows.

“My grandmother?”

“This angel.” The vampiress held up an ethereal blond doll. “I can understand why he fell for you.”

Sienna’s heart kicked against her ribs. “Who?”

The slight smile flashed again, but still those dark eyes glowed eerily—with madness and an anguish that struck a chord within Sienna. “You’re beautiful,” Ingrid said, “not stupid. You know Julian has fallen for you.”

“If I believed that, I wouldn’t be here,” Sienna pointed out. “I’d still be with him.” In his bed, in his arms—her head against his chest, his heart beating steadily beneath her cheek. Why had she left him? Then she remembered. “He doesn’t love me.”

“I can understand your doubts,” Ingrid admitted and continued as if they were friends commiserating about men. “Julian wouldn’t have professed his love. He probably doesn’t even realize he loves you yet. Men can be so dense.” Now the anguish thickened her voice. “They sometimes deny their feelings until it’s too late….”

“Was it too late for you?” Sienna asked.

Ingrid released a shuddery breath. “I heard the words. Despite the stake buried in his heart, he managed to tell me he loved me. It was the last thing he ever said.”

“I’m sorry….”

“You should be,” Ingrid said, rage chasing the sadness from her voice and eyes. “Your father is the one who drove in the stake.”

Sienna gasped as another one of her idols fell. “My dad? You’re talking about his exposé? I thought he died before it was published.”

“Julian told you about the exposé?”

She nodded.

“But he didn’t tell you what your father did,” Ingrid said. “He wanted to spare you the truth.”

“What is the truth?” Sienna had to know.

“My…Michael…was your father’s source for the article. Michael was so trusting. He didn’t understand that he was putting us all in danger—until it was too late, until your father murdered him. He didn’t just write the article. He killed Michael. My lover’s blood was on your father’s hands.”

“You got your revenge,” Sienna said, suspecting her father’s blood was on Ingrid’s hands. That the vampiress was the one who was responsible for Sienna’s parents’ deaths. “You don’t need to hurt me.”

“You’re human. You can’t be trusted,” Ingrid insisted.

“You were around me for months,” Sienna reminded her. “You know me…you know I would never hurt anyone.”

“You’ve already hurt Julian,” Ingrid said.

Sienna shook her head. “No…” He was the last person she wanted to hurt.

“You rejected him.”

“H-how do you know?”

“Because you’re here, and he isn’t,” Ingrid pointed out.

“That’s because he doesn’t love me…” That was why she’d turned him down, she realized. Not because she wasn’t certain she could become what he was…but because she couldn’t even consider changing without his love.

Ingrid shook her head, as if disgusted. “The guy gave up his life for you. What more does he have to give up to prove his love?”

Shock and pain staggered Sienna so that she had to grip the stair railing or tumble down the last few steps to the concrete floor. “No! He’s not dead.”

“Not yet. But Orson Vossimer warned him. If he didn’t kill you, he would be killed.”

“Orson Vossimer? He’s related to Julian. How could he kill him?”

“Orson Vossimer is Julian’s grandfather. And he gave Julian another option besides death. He could turn you.”

And Sienna had refused. “I didn’t know…”

“It’s too late now,” Ingrid said. “You’re both going to die.”

And Sienna would never have the chance to tell Julian that she loved him.

Light blind, Julian staggered through the house. Every muscle ached in protest of his movements, but he forced himself to continue, feeling his way along the walls. “Sienna!”

“Julian?”

Her voice, quavering with fear and shock, drew him toward an open door. He stumbled, nearly falling down the stairs.

“Julian!” An arm slid around his waist, a warm body wedging against his side to support his weight. “Oh, my God…what happened to you?”

“You,” Ingrid said with blatant disgust. “You happened to him.” Then the vampiress turned toward him. “Saving Orson the trouble of killing you?”

The only one he wanted to save was Sienna, but he could barely stand or talk. He didn’t have to be a nurse, like Ingrid, to know that he was dying. But with his last ounce of strength, he would fight to protect the woman he loved. “Leave…her…be…” he murmured.

“You’re in no condition to be issuing orders,” Ingrid said with a vicious laugh.

“Julian, you have to leave,” Sienna whispered urgently. “Just leave…” Her small hands pushed at his chest, trying to shove him up the stairs.

He swayed and stumbled back a step. But other hands were there, not to catch him, but to hold him. He didn’t need to turn around to know that Ingrid had summoned her reinforcements. He lowered his head, focusing on Sienna. She stared up at him, her blue eyes wide with fear and glistening with unshed tears. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She shook her head. “You have no reason to be sorry. It’s my fault. I should have listened to you.”

“I didn’t tell you what you needed to hear,” he said. But he couldn’t say it now—he couldn’t say in front of all these people the words he should have given her when they were alone and in each other’s arms. He knew now what it would have taken for her to accept his proposal. His love.

“I’m sorry I’m not your hero….”

Chapter 7

S ienna’s heart pounded a frantic rhythm. And she couldn’t stop trembling—not just with fear, but from the cold. After night had fallen, they’d left the cellar, and they’d flown…to wherever they were now. But they hadn’t used a plane, or a helicopter or any other type of machine. They’d just…flown. They hadn’t flapped their arms or kicked their legs, but somehow they’d moved through the frigid night air.

Sienna was surprised they hadn’t killed her then. The man who’d carried her would have had only to drop her. The fall would have killed her, leaving her body broken beyond recognition.

But Ingrid had ordered them delivered here—to another underground dwelling even more opulent than the apartment to which Julian had brought her. He lay now, unconscious, on a hard marble floor. Sienna knelt at his side, stroking her fingers over the chiseled angle of his cheekbone and jaw. “Wake up. Please wake up…”

He wasn’t just sleeping. She wasn’t even sure he was breathing anymore. So she moved her hand to his throat and felt for a pulse. But her fingers were numb and his skin so cold, she could find no reassuring beat.

“Julian,” she whispered.

The men who’d flown them here stood around, glaring at her as she’d already been warned to keep quiet. They were beyond big, beyond her ability to fight. If only Julian were awake…

“He’s dying,” Ingrid said, her heels clicking against the marble as she walked back into the room from wherever she’d been.

And it’s all my fault. Guilt clutched at Sienna. If she’d listened to him, if she’d believed him—they’d both be safe now.

“It is all your fault, girl,” a man’s deep voice spoke to her thoughts.

Tearing her gaze from Julian’s pale face, she glanced up and then gasped. “You…” He looked so much like his “grandson”—even approximately the same age.

“We don’t age, girl,” he explained. “But we can die.” He knelt near Julian and brushed a trembling hand through his grandson’s hair. “That’s why it’s too risky for humans to learn of our existence. It makes us vulnerable.”

“I won’t hurt anyone,” Sienna promised.

“Too late,” the man snapped, as he rose to his feet and stared down at her. “You’ve already hurt my family.”

“Your honor.”

“Twice now,” he said. “Vossimers are Underground royalty. Royalty does not offer marriage to commoners only to have those commoners reject them.”

If Vossimers were Underground royalty, Julian was their prince and this man considered himself king. Regrettably, so did the burly men who hung on his every word as if he were issuing royal decrees.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured demurely. “I was wrong to turn Julian down. Help him, please…”

“It’s too late for my grandson,” Orson said, whatever affection he’d betrayed when he’d petted Julian’s hair was gone now. “He has brought dishonor to our family too many times. And he’s brought danger to the rest of the Underground.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Sienna defended him. “He never said anything to my grandmother. She had a gift. She knew things. Ask Ingrid.”

The older Vossimer turned toward the beautiful vampiress. “Is this true?”

After a slight hesitation, she nodded. “But it doesn’t change what happened. She knows our secret. She cannot live.”

Pride lifted Sienna to her feet. “I don’t care what you do to me. Just save him. Save Julian.”

Orson Vossimer narrowed his eyes and studied her. “You act as though you care about my grandson.”

“I love him,” she admitted.

The older man laughed. “You think me a fool. That I will believe your lies?”

“I love him,” Sienna insisted. “I’m not lying.”

“Then you’re the fool, girl,” Vossimer said.

“He’s a good man,” she defended her lover again. “He’s my hero.” No matter what he believed; she knew the truth now.

“Then why would you turn him down when he offered you marriage, when he offered you a way to keep your life…for eternity?”

She sucked in a shaky breath. “Fear.” Not just of the dark, but of the risk of giving her heart to a man who wouldn’t give his in return.

“You are a fool, girl.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I should have said yes. If I could go back…” She glanced down at Julian’s lifeless body and remembered the passion with which he’d made love to her. “Please, help him…”

“It’s too late, girl,” Orson said, emotion turning his voice into a rough rasp. “It’s too late…”

“Ingrid,” she turned to the other woman. “You’re a nurse. You must know what to do…how to save him…”

“His life is ebbing away,” Ingrid said with a weary sigh of her own.

“But he’s not dead yet.” She refused to believe that, refused to let him go. “Please, help him,” she beseeched the other woman. “You can help him.”

Ingrid shook her head. “No, I can’t. But you might be able to…”

“How?”

“Let him take your life.”

“He can have it,” Sienna offered. If not for him, she wouldn’t have lived as long as she had. No one would have ever found the wreckage of her family’s car. She wouldn’t have survived without him. “I owe him…my life.”

“Is this a trick, girl?” Orson asked.

“This is love.” Love was selfless, like Julian endangering himself to find her and try to rescue her. It was her turn to rescue him—even if it killed her.

They’re going to kill her. The horrific thought chased the blackness of unconsciousness from Julian’s mind. He fought the heaviness of his lids to blink open his eyes, gritty with fatigue.

“Sienna!” He tried to shout her name, but it escaped as a weak rasp. “Sienna!”

A soft hand brushed hair back from his face. “I’m here,” she assured him, with a sigh of relief. “And so are you…”

She blurred before his weary eyes, and he blinked again until he could clearly see her. Even tense and pale with concern and fear, her face was beautiful. Then his gaze moved beyond her to register their surroundings—the marble floors and walls. “We’re at my grandfather’s.”

She nodded. “He had us brought here…to this bedroom…”

“My bedroom,” Julian said, with a surge of hope. “Are we alone?”

A laugh, high-pitched with a hint of hysteria, slipped from her lips. “You can’t want to…”

“I will always want you,” he said.

“But you’re so sick.”

If that was all he was, he could rally the strength to help her. But his situation was worse than that. Her situation didn’t have to be the same. “I can tell you how to get out of here,” he said.

She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you!”

“There’s a bathroom behind that door…” He tried to lift his arm to gesture, but his limb was too heavy, his muscles too weak to move. His lungs ached as he struggled for breath with ragged pants. “There’s a vent in the ceiling. If you climb on the vanity, you’ll be able to reach it.”

She pressed her fingers across his lips. “Shh…save your strength.”

What strength? If he had any left, he could carry her into the bathroom, lift her to the vent and help her get away from the Underground. But once again, he was too weak to be her true hero.

“I’m not leaving you,” she said, her voice firm and her statement implacable.

He managed to curl his fingers into the curve of her hip. “You have to…” He pushed her. “You have to go. Now.”

“There’s no time,” she said.

“There’s time,” he argued, “for you to get away.” But how long could she stay hidden from Ingrid and Orson?

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“I can’t move,” he admitted with frustration and stinging pride.

“You don’t have to do anything,” she said as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “But bite me…”

He tensed; maybe he was so weak that he’d imagined what she’d said. “What?”

“Turn me, Julian.”

He moved his head, to shake it, but she’d put her neck there so that his lips brushed across the silky skin of her throat. “No…it’s too great a risk.”

“They’re going to kill us both if you don’t,” she reminded him.

“But I might kill you,” he said, dread twisting his stomach in knots. “I’ve never turned anyone before.” And fatigue had stolen his usual cocky assurance, so that he wasn’t convinced, even if he wasn’t so weak, that he’d know how to turn her without killing her.

“You’re going to die if you don’t,” she said. “Ingrid told me that this is your only chance—to use my life to save yours.”

He shook his head. “I can’t…”

“Julian, you’re dying now. This is your one chance. I’m your one chance.”

“No…”

“I love you, Julian.”

Her words suffused him with heat and passion. “You love me?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“But you left me.” Pain, more emotional than physical, staggered him as he remembered waking alone and finding her gone. “I thought you couldn’t accept my part in your parents’ tragic deaths. I thought you hated me…”

“I had to get away to think,” she explained, “to consider the life you offered me.”

“The life you rejected when you rejected me.”

“I rejected the life—not you,” she insisted. “We made love…twice…” She entwined her fingers in his hair. “I love you.”

He wanted to believe her, but nobody had ever said those words to him let alone meant them. Did she? Or was she only trying to help him because she was used to taking care of people?

“I only take care of people I care about,” she said.

“What?” Shocked, he met her gaze, her blue eyes wide with awe.

“I can hear your thoughts,” she told him, as shocked as he was.

“You have your grandmother’s gift.”

She nodded. “I just realized that now. I wish I would have realized it sooner. If I could have heard your thoughts earlier, maybe I wouldn’t have left you and then you wouldn’t have had to risk your life in the daylight. It’s my fault, Julian, that you’re dying. You have to use me to save you.”

“Sienna…”

“If you don’t, we’re both going to die anyway,” she said, “because I’m not leaving you.”

“C’mon, Sienna, you can go out the vent,” he urged her. “You can save yourself.”

“For the moment. You think they won’t track me down again? Where am I supposed to go? I have no place else to go—no one I want to be with but you.” She kissed him, her lips pressing against his until he opened his mouth. Then she dipped her tongue between his lips, sliding it across the sharp tips of his fangs.

Hunger stirred within Julian, but it was nothing in comparison to the power of his love for her. “Sienna, if this doesn’t work—”

“If it does, we can be together forever,” she pointed out. “Unless that isn’t what you want…?”

His heart contracted at the image she painted—the image of the two of them, in each other’s arms, for eternity. Making love, making each other laugh—making each other happy. “It’s what I want—more than anything else in this world, more than my own life. I can’t…”

“You have to,” she begged him. “Before it’s too late for us. You have to—” And she kissed him again, first his lips. Then she slid her mouth over his chin and along the line of his clenched jaw.

He wanted her so badly. Not just now, but forever. “Are you sure, Sienna?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” she assured him. Her fingers in his hair, she tugged up his head until his lips brushed across her throat. A moan slipped from between her lips. “Please…turn me…”

His heart, which had been beating weakly, kicked against his ribs—with anticipation and fear. “This might hurt.”

“Just do it,” she urged. “Just…bite me…”

He rubbed his lips back and forth across her throat, lifting goose bumps on her skin. She shivered. “Julian…”

He curled back his lips and pressed his fangs against her skin. And pressed harder until her skin broke.

She gasped, her breath hissing out between her teeth. But when he moved to pull back, she tightened her fingers in his hair and clutched him to her. “Turn me…”

He couldn’t argue, not with her sweet taste sliding over his tongue. Heat and passion and love filled him as he drank. Too much or too little? The line was fine. One way would kill her; the other would leave her human and in danger of the Underground Society killing her.

Reenergized with her spirit, he pulled away from her. Her body had gone limp against him. He rolled her onto her back on the mattress and leaned over her. Her eyes had closed, her thick lashes lying against her pale skin. His hand shaking, he stroked his fingers over her cheek. “Sienna!”

Her skin had paled to a porcelain so clear her veins shone beneath the thin surface. Her pulse barely moved in her throat. Had he killed her?

“Sienna!”

The bedroom door squeaked open on rusty hinges. “Julian,” his grandfather called his name. “You’re all right?”

He shook his head, his eyes burning as he studied Sienna’s beautiful face. “No, I’m not all right.”

Strong fingers squeezed his shoulder. “You’re alive. She’s not—that’s what needed to happen.”

“She’s not dead!” Not yet. Although faintly, her heart beat beneath the palm he pressed to her chest. “She can’t die! She can’t…”

She’d promised him eternity.

“If it’s meant to be—if you’re meant to be—she’ll come back to you,” Orson assured him.

“We’re meant to be,” Julian insisted as he stroked her hair back from her face. “We’re meant to be.”

“You have to prepare yourself,” his grandfather warned him. “In case she doesn’t make it.”

Finally Julian tore his gaze from her and focused on the man who’d raised him in the ways of the Underground. “If she doesn’t make it, neither will I.”

“You say that now, but you’ll get over her…like you got over her grandmother.”

“I won’t. I love Sienna.” And yet he’d never given her the words. He’d never proved his love—like she had proved hers. For him she’d given up her life.

Chapter 8

L ight flickered, glowing through Sienna’s closed lids—calling her back from the darkness. Her body ached in protest as she shifted under the blankets pulled to her chin, her muscles weak and cramped. But the pain was good; the pain convinced her she wasn’t dead.

Unless this was hell.

She dragged her eyes open to a room bathed in candlelight, as it had been the first time he’d brought her here. Plaster walls rose to that ornate coffered ceiling with the chandelier hanging low and dark above the bed. This wasn’t hell; this was where she’d found heaven in Julian’s arms.

Julian! Had it worked—had he’d drunk enough of her spirit to revive his dying body? “Julian!”

“Shh…” a deep voice murmured, then strong arms closed around her, pulling her tight against a muscular chest. “I’m here.”

“You’re alive!”

“And so are you…” His breath escaped in a shuddery sigh of relief. Lips skimmed across her cheek then brushed over her mouth. “You’re alive!”

She blinked again, unable to believe that they were together. Free. “He let us go?” she asked, confusion muddling her weary mind.

“Yes.”

Because Julian had done what his grandfather had wanted. He’d taken the only option the old man had given him besides her death. She glanced down at herself, her arms bare as she pulled them from beneath the blankets. Her throat dry, she swallowed hard and managed only, “Am I…?”

“You’re back to not being able to say it?” he teased, his lips curving into that wicked grin.

“I could accept your being one,” she said. “But me…” How could she have become what she didn’t understand?

“You didn’t think it through,” he said, worry furrowing his brow.

“I thought only of you, of saving you,” she admitted. “I didn’t care about myself.”

“That’s why I love you,” he said, “so much.”

“I know you love me,” she assured him. “Going out in the sunlight, you risked your life for me. You proved it.”

“That last time I had,” he agreed, but guilt haunted his dark eyes, “but I could have saved you from the wreck earlier and I waited…”

She reached up, pressing her fingers across his lips. “Shh…if you’d come out in daylight then, you would have died. And I would have died, too. To get me out, you had to pull apart that twisted metal—no human could have managed that. You wouldn’t have had the strength to do that if you’d come out during the day.” She narrowed her eyes, as she noticed her fingers—her ringless fingers on her right hand.

Julian lifted her left hand from the comforter. “The ring is here. I moved it.”

“To my left hand?” She stared at the ring, which glinted in the faint candlelight. “But I turned you down.”

“Because you didn’t think I loved you,” he guessed. Correctly.

“How do you know me so well?” she asked.

“We have a connection.”

“Because you have my blood?”

“We had a connection even before that,” he insisted. “We’ve had a connection for years. That was why I asked you to marry me—because I couldn’t lose that connection. I couldn’t lose you.”

He had loved her—even before he’d realized it, as Ingrid had suggested.

“So why didn’t you ask me again? At your grandfather’s house?”

“I didn’t know if I’d make it. I didn’t know if either of us would make it. And I didn’t know what I had to offer you,” he explained. “And every minute you’ve been unconscious, I regretted not asking, not moving this ring to your left hand when you were awake and could answer me.”

“So ask me again,” she suggested although, from how she ached with exhaustion, she still wasn’t convinced that she could survive the turning. Or hadn’t she been turned at all? But before she could open her mouth to take back her advice, Julian slid off the bed and dropped to his knees beside it.

His hand grasping her left one, where the diamond twinkled, he asked, “Will you become my bride, Sienna Briggs?”

She focused first on the ring, then on his face, where the diamond-shaped scar marred the masculine perfection of his cleft chin. “Are you sure?”

“Sienna!” he exclaimed, his face paling with shock. “I’m so sure. I love you so much.”

The words warmed her heart and curved her lips into a smile. But…

“That wasn’t what I was referring to—I mean, the ring? Are you sure this is the ring you want me to wear…as your fiancée, as your bride?”

He stared down at the ring, too, now. “Oh, my God, I didn’t think…Did you want me to buy you a new ring? One that I picked out?”

She shook her head, tears stinging her eyes, as she remembered her grandmother, using the last bit of her fading strength, to slide the ring onto her finger. “No.” If she had believed she would be strong enough to risk her heart again, she would have wanted to wear this ring. “This is the one I want. It symbolizes the greatest love I’d ever known…”

“Until now,” he said, “until ours.”

Her heart warmed more as it filled with the love of which he spoke. Their love. The greatest love she would ever know.

“But this ring doesn’t mean the same thing to you that it does to me,” she said. She managed to raise her hand to touch her fingertip to the scar on his chin. “To you it means rejection. To your grandfather it means dishonor.”

“Your grandmother and I—we weren’t meant to be,” he said. “I think I even knew that then. I was just being an arrogant jerk. She had every right to hit me.”

“Yes, she did. You insulted my grandfather—the man she loved more than life itself.”

“More than the eternal life I offered her.”

“It wasn’t enough. You didn’t love her.”

“I didn’t know that I could love,” he said. “I didn’t think I was capable until I met you. This ring—” he slid his thumb over the sharp points of it “—means something to me, too. It reminds me how much I changed—how much you changed me. It represents our love, too.”

Tears blurred the ring, and his handsome face, from Sienna’s gaze. “Yes, it does.” And her grandmother’s gift had been accurate again—that the right man would come along someday and slide it onto Sienna’s real ring finger.

“That’s the right answer,” Julian said, “but to the wrong question.”

She blinked back the tears. “What?”

“You haven’t answered my first question,” he reminded her. “Please, woman, put me out of my misery and respond to my proposal. Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” She tried to lift up from the pillow, but her body was limp, her muscles weak. “If only I were stronger, I would marry you now. Right this minute.”

Because she wanted to be part of him…for the eternity he’d promised her. Fear tempered her happiness; she doubted that the “turning” had worked. Instead of eternal life, she would have to leave him…like her grandparents and parents had left her—to death.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. She’d taught him how to love, only to leave him—only to leave him to the anguish she’d had to endure when she’d lost the ones she’d loved. “I’m sorry…”

Panic pressed on Julian’s lungs, so that he struggled for breath. Like Sienna struggled for breath. He could not lose her now. “You have no reason to be sorry,” he assured her. He was the one who’d messed up—as usual.

“I’d hoped it would work…that we could be together…forever,” she said. “But I’m so tired…” Her thick lashes brushed against the dark circles beneath her eyes as her lids closed.

He couldn’t let her slip into unconsciousness again. He couldn’t lose her again. He cupped her cheek in his palm. “Come on, Sienna, stay with me.”

She blinked her eyes open, giving him hope. She hadn’t slipped away yet.

And he wouldn’t let her. He would do anything to keep her with him. “I know how you can get stronger,” he said. “Use me.” Like she had insisted he use her.

“What do you mean?” she asked, her blue eyes still dim with fatigue.

She wasn’t dead yet. But he’d hurt her. His stomach clenched with dread and regret.

“I want you to do the same thing to me,” he explained, with sensitivity to her unease about the vampire lifestyle, “that you had me do to you.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I can. I’m going to have to find another way…to live…”

“There are other ways,” he assured her. “We don’t feast off people for sustenance. But I’m not talking about sustenance. I’m talking about survival—and about the connection between your soul and mine. It can only be complete when the same blood flows through us.”

“It does.”

“No, I have yours,” he clarified, “but you don’t have mine. Take mine.”

“Julian…” She sighed. “I don’t even know how. I don’t have—”

He kissed her, deeply, sliding his tongue through her parted lips, stroking it over hers before tracing the line of her teeth. Her tongue followed the path of his then she tensed. So he pulled back.

“I have them,” she murmured, in shock. “I have fangs…”

“It worked.” He hadn’t been entirely convinced himself until now. He had actually turned her. But she was still so pale—so weak. He could still lose her…if she didn’t do as he asked.

“You’re as surprised as I am.”

He tensed, startled that she’d read him so easily. “What?”

Her lips curved into that faint smile. “I can hear you—your thoughts. Remember?”

Their connection was complete already. But it had to last. “Then you should remember what happened the last time you didn’t do as I asked.”

A grimace momentarily twisted her delicate features. “I almost got us both killed.”

“So obey me, woman.”

“Obey?” she asked as she lifted a blond brow. “That won’t be part of our vows.”

“We won’t be able to exchange those vows if you don’t get stronger,” he reminded her. “Use me to regain your strength.”

“Julian…”

He did as she had, just the day before, he leaned forward and pressed his neck against her lips. “Bite me…”

Her lips parted, the heat of her faint breath warm against his skin. His body tensed again, with desire, with desperate need of hers. He wanted her completely—body and soul and her indomitable spirit. “Come on, Sienna.”

“I can’t…”

“You have to…for us,” he urged her then groaned as her teeth nipped his skin.

She stopped and moved her mouth away. “I hurt you.”

“No,” he assured as he joined her on the bed, pressing his lower body into her hips so that she could feel his arousal. “You only hurt me by stopping. Don’t stop this time.”

She lifted her arms, wrapping them around his shoulders, and pulled him fully down on her. Then she sank her new fangs through his skin, into his throat, and she drank him in the way he’d drunk her.

Instead of feeling drained by her possession, Julian felt energized—completely invigorated. He vibrated with passion for her. “Sienna…”

She pulled her teeth from his skin and licked the small wound she’d created. “I feel…”

“What?” he asked, rolling them both to their sides so he could see her face. Her skin, once so pale, was now flushed, and her blue eyes sparkled.

“I feel alive.”

And for the first time since he’d tried to turn her, she looked alive. Vibrantly alive.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, his hand shaking as he palmed her cheek. “So beautiful…”

“You’re beautiful,” she said, her steady fingers clawing at the buttons of his shirt to open it. “You’re perfect. And you’re mine.”

“All yours,” he assured her with a chuckle as she shoved his shirt from her shoulders. He reached between them and dragged the blankets off her, baring her to his sight…and touch. He’d taken off her dress, so that she wore only those tantalizing scraps of lace. For the moment.

He intended to take them off her soon. But first he rose from the bed. Or tried to. Sienna clutched his shoulders, then his waist and murmured in protest.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she told him.

He shook his head as he unclasped his belt and dropped his jeans and boxers. “I’m not going anywhere—not without you. We’re spending eternity together, my love.”

“I wonder if that’ll be long enough,” she teased with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

“Long enough?”

“To do everything I want to do to you.” She reached for him, her hands sliding over the muscles of chest then his hips to his straining erection. First she stroked her fingers down his length, then she closed her lips around him and sucked him deep in her mouth. Her fangs scraped over the sensitive flesh.

He groaned, as passion like he’d never known surged through him. “Sienna!” He tried to pull away so he could reach for her.

But she was strong now, stronger than she’d been. And she grasped his butt, holding him to her—as she tortured him with her lips and tongue and the tips of her new fangs. He tangled his fingers in her hair and pulled, but it was too late. As her lips slipped down the length of him, he came, his legs shaking, his body shuddering as his orgasm spilled into the warmth of her mouth.

She licked her lips and lay back on the bed, as if she were satisfied. But he shook his head. She’d no idea the satisfaction he intended to give her.

“Promises, promises,” she teased, speaking to his thoughts.

He joined her on the bed, pushing her into the mattress with his body—tense again already with desire for his fiancée. And he kissed her, tasting his own desire on her lips and tongue. Their teeth clinked, scraping across each other’s—raising the hair on the nape of his neck. “Just when I thought I couldn’t love you more…”

“You love me more,” she said, scraping her nails down the rippling muscles of his back.

He dipped his head, nuzzled her neck.

“Bite me,” she invited him.

He shook his head. “I want to taste you another way.” He skimmed his lips down her throat to the slopes of her breasts. With just the tip of his tongue, he teased each pebbled point. Then he suckled the nipple deep into his mouth, his fangs nipping lightly into the soft flesh of her breast.

She moaned and shifted beneath him, pressing her hips into his—rubbing her damp curls against the erection that strained again to possess her.

But he denied himself the pleasure of burying himself inside her. Instead he moved again, sliding down her body until he could taste her desire for him. He pushed his tongue through her folds, dipping inside the moist heat. She arched again and clutched her fingers at his head, clasping his mouth to her so tightly that his fangs pressed against her mound.

She moaned and shifted and came, pouring honey into his mouth. Burning with desire for her, he rose up and thrust himself inside her.

She arched so abruptly she nearly bucked him off, then she turned them—so that he lay flat on his back and she straddled him. He sank deeper than he’d gone before. And his hands, shaking slightly, grabbed her hips.

She rocked back and forth then lifted her hips, sliding his erection in and out of her wet folds. “Julian!” she said, desperation in her raspy voice and dilated eyes.

He moved his fingers to her butt, clasping her soft skin with one hand while he raised his other hand to her breast and massaged the swollen flesh. She lifted her hands to his shoulders, digging her nails in as she rode him.

Her mouth had taken the edge off his urgency, so that he could take his time now, teasing her to the brink of release only to pull out again. Her muscles clutched at him, pulling him deeper. And she knocked his hands aside to cup her breasts and roll her nipples between her thumbs and forefingers. Julian sat up and flicked his tongue across the tips she teased herself. Then he reached between them, sliding his thumb across the most sensitive part of her.

And she came, screaming his name—pouring her passion over him. He dug his fingers into her butt, lifting her up and down, until another orgasm slammed through him—this more violently than the last. “It’s a good thing we can’t die,” he murmured between desperate pants for breath, “or you’d kill me for sure.”

She collapsed against his chest, pressing her lips to where his heart pounded hard in rhythm with hers. “I will never hurt you,” she promised him.

He smoothed his hands over the perspiration-slick skin of her bare back and asked, “So are you ready to make an honest man of me now?”

Her lips curved against his skin, into a smile. “Honest man?”

“When are you going to marry me?” he asked, urgency rushing through him despite being completely sexually satiated. He couldn’t wait for her to become his bride.

“Now too soon?”

“Now is perfect—as perfect as you are.” As perfect as their life together promised to be.

Chapter 9

S tars glittered in the night sky as brightly as the lights wound round the boughs of the pine trees lining the park path. Big snowflakes drifted softly out of the darkness, sparkling as they hit the lights and the path. The flakes dropped onto Sienna’s face and slid down her cheeks like the tears she fought from falling.

She would not cry. Not when everything was so perfect…and Julian awaited her, standing next to an Underground minister beneath the tallest pine in the park. Clutching tight to Orson Vossimer’s arm, Sienna started down the aisle toward her groom. But the elder Vossimer’s steps slowed, and he turned to her.

Had he changed his mind? Was she not good enough to be a Vossimer bride?

“No,” he answered aloud her unspoken thoughts. “You’re perfect. The perfect bride for my grandson—the perfect princess for the Vossimer prince.”

“Because he turned me?” She had to know.

The older man shook his head. “Because you love him as he’s always deserved to be loved—completely and unselfishly.”

“The same way he loves me.”

“I see that now,” Orson admitted. “I’m sorry…”

“For trying to kill me?”

The older man’s handsome face, so eerily similar to Julian’s, lifted in the wicked grin his grandson had evidently inherited from him. “Honey, if I’d actually tried, you would be dead. Not undead.” He covered her hand with his and squeezed. “I may not be the nicest man, but I’m not a killer.”

“But you threatened Julian,” she reminded him, unwilling to let the man rewrite history. “You told him—”

“I warned him. I suspected how he felt about you. Ever since he’d pulled you from that crash, he’d had an attachment to you. I wanted to test that attachment.”

“So it’s not a rule that no human can learn of the Underground?”

He sighed. “It’s a rule that fortunately hasn’t had to be enforced too often.”

Just with her parents. She winced, reliving the accident—reliving her loss. But she wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore. Or of loving with her whole heart—the way she loved Julian.

“You wanted him to turn me,” she realized. “You wanted us to be together?”

“I wanted my grandson to be happy,” he said as he turned toward where Julian waited beneath the lit pine tree. “You make him happy.”

“And he makes me happy.”

The old man nodded, then added with satisfaction, “And your gift would have been wasted on a human.”

“Gift?”

“Telepathy, like your grandmother had,” he said and admitted, “and I have.”

“I don’t have telepathy.”

“But you know what Julian’s thinking.”

Right now she knew he was getting impatient, waiting for his grandfather to bring him his bride. Her lips curved into a reassuring smile she hoped he could see. Or at least feel. “Only Julian,” she said. “We have a connection.”

“Because of your gift,” Orson said.

She shook her head. “Because of our love.”

“Love…” Orson sighed. “I guess I might actually have to try it for myself.”

They started forward on the path, which wound through chairs that had been set up in the park. Members of the Underground, friends of Julian’s who had already accepted Sienna, occupied the chairs. One of those was Ingrid.

“Just be careful,” she advised the Vossimer king. “Not all love stories end like Julian’s and mine.”

Happily ever after. She hadn’t thought it existed—despite seeing her grandparents’ love for each other. And she never would have believed a man such as Julian existed.

“I’m real,” he assured her as he took her hand from his grandfather’s arm. “And our love is real.”

“And eternal.”

“You two are skipping ahead on the vows,” the Underground minister teased.

“I guess we didn’t need you after all,” Julian shot back with a wink.

We didn’t, Sienna silently agreed. They’d already forever joined their souls.

Julian winked at her, as if he’d read her mind, which he no doubt had. The two of them were one; they didn’t need to repeat the minister’s vows to seal their union. But they exchanged their promises and rings, a plain gold band for Julian and Nana’s diamond for Sienna, so that they could celebrate their love with their friends and family, those dead and those undead.

Breaking away from the passionate kiss that punctuated their wedding ceremony, Sienna smiled and laughed.

“Happy?” Julian asked, his handsome face beaming with his own joy.

“Yes.” And so was Nana. Despite her grandmother being dead, Sienna felt her approval shining down upon her as clearly as the stars and the twinkling Christmas lights.

Reading her thoughts again, Julian nodded. “Even Orson’s happy for us.”

“He loves you,” she said and repeated when she felt her new husband’s doubts. “He loves you. He just doesn’t know how to express it.”

“He doesn’t know how to feel it,” Julian scoffed.

“He wants to try,” she defended her new relative.

Julian gestured toward where his grandfather stood near the dark-haired vampiress. “I hope he’s not going to try with her.”

“I don’t think so.” Orson was too clever to waste his time with someone who couldn’t return his feelings. She sighed and admitted, “I feel sorry for Ingrid.”

“Why? If she’d had her way, you’d be dead now,” Julian reminded her.

Sienna shook her head. “No, if she had her way, she’d be with the man she loves.” A twinge of guilt tempered her happiness. “I’m so lucky that I am…”

“We’re so lucky,” he said, “to have each other.”

Music began to play, softly, from a string quartet set up near the Christmas tree. Julian took her hand in his as he wrapped his other arm around her waist and drew her against his body. Then he began to move in time to each sweet chord.

“We are lucky,” she agreed.

“And brave,” he said.

They had been brave to open up their damaged hearts to love. “Yes,” she agreed.

“You were brave to trust me to turn you,” he clarified his compliment, “and not kill you.”

“Trust had nothing to do with it,” she said. “It was love…”

With them, it would always be love.

For all eternity.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-4484-3

HOLIDAY WITH A VAMPIRE III

Copyright © 2009 by Harlequin Books S.A.

The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

NOTHING SAYS CHRISTMAS LIKE A VAMPIRE
Copyright © 2009 by Lisa Childs-Theeuwes

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