Lothaire

He stared after her. Cream-jeans? Lazy horse?

Unbidden, his lips curled into a grin.

* * *

After washing off and changing into the most modest of the sleepwear choices—a long, white silk nightgown—Ellie crossed to her bed.

When she eased into it, she sighed at the softness that greeted her.

Never knew sheets could feel like this. Here she lay, clad in silk, nestled in the finest linens she’d ever imagined, basking in the sizable bed—even though it lay on the floor.

She was being kept in a paradise of a prison, by a red-eyed jailer who doubled as a walking sexual fantasy.

A jailer who’d awakened something in her tonight, something Ellie instinctively feared she wouldn’t experience with others.

Just as she began fretting, wondering how she was going to live without the ecstasy she’d discovered with Lothaire, she remembered she likely wasn’t going to live at all.

Rubber-band snap. Snap. SNAP!

Finally, she calmed, her whirring mind slowing. Just as she was dozing off, a dizzying sense of vertigo hit her; when she opened her eyes, she was standing in his room. Traced me again?

“Entertain me,” he commanded, taking a seat at his desk. He was shirtless, barefooted. His damp hair hung carelessly over his forehead. So gorgeous, too gorgeous.

“Entertain.” She rubbed her eyes. “That wasn’t part of the job description.”

“I believe the job description was for you to do whatever I command. Besides, you’re clearly dressing for the job you want and not the job you have, and my Bride will entertain me after we spend.”

“Dance, monkey, dance. That it? Lothaire, I’m exhausted.”

“Do pizdy. Don’t fucking care. Sit. Speak with me.”

She hesitated to return to that settee, but eventually sank down with a huff.

“I find I have questions about you. Amazing, considering it’s . . . you. But I can’t control my curiosity.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Why are you still a virgin?”

She didn’t want to tell him the real reason, that she’d feared getting pregnant with some high school boy, feared having to abandon her long-held dreams—of a fulfilling career, a doting husband, and lastly, when she was ready for them, kids.

So instead, she said, “I guess Saroya somehow resisted your charms all those times you went off killing together.”

“I’ve never gone off killing with her.”

“She just went out by herself and murdered? Why?”

He shrugged. “She used to take sustenance from the act. Now I guess it’s habit.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Suppose you no longer needed to eat to live, but you could eat. Wouldn’t you miss the taste of food, the ritual of meals?”

He had a point. Ellie loved to eat.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “Did no prison guard try to deflower you?”

“Most of them were decent.”

“But not all? Did any of them . . . touch you?” His expression darkened, his fangs seeming to grow.

He’s going round the bend again. And when his eyes grew vacant, her senses went on red alert.

“Slow your fucking heart!”

She cried, “Maybe I could slow my fucking heart if you’d stop fucking yelling at me!”

“I hold your fate in my hands, yet you show me disrespect at every turn.”

“You haven’t earned my respect.”

“It could be today that I dream of the ring. Then you’ll be gone forever.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “You love holding that sword over my neck. Are you trying to make me go crazy like you? Make me check out mentally before I do physically?”

“Is it a possibility?” he asked in all seriousness. At least he’d calmed down a fraction.

“How much more do you think I can take?”

“You’ll take whatever I give you—”

“And I’ll like it?” She rolled her eyes. “Do you torture everyone like this?”

He grew still as a statue, his voice dripping with menace as he said, “You don’t know the meaning of torture.”

“You do? Have you only dished it out or been on the receiving end?”

“Both.”

She wished she wasn’t curious about him. But . . . “How were you tortured?”

“Take the worst agony you can possibly imagine, multiply it by a thousand, then suffer that every second for six hundred years. And that was merely one among many times.”

“Six centuries?” He’s exaggerating. He has to be. “Is that why you’re crazy?”

“Partly. Also because of the memories.”

“Did you see mine when you slept last?”

“So far, no recollections of coal dust, leaking roofs, or the pungent aroma of myriad critters sizzling in old cooking lard.”

He made it sound so awful—but what she wouldn’t give to be back there right now! “You watched me more than you’d let on.”

“I had to learn about you, investigating your belongings, spying on your shuddersome family.”

She gasped. “You were in my home?”

“I have a home. You lived in a conveyance.”

“It’s bought and paid for. No one can ever make us leave.” Unlike the land it was parked on.

The Va-Co representative Saroya had killed had been sniffing around Peirce Mountain for a reason. Deep down, it was laden with coal. Va-Co had begun putting pressure on the family to sell. When that hadn’t worked, they’d gone after the mortgage bank.

Though Ruth and Ephraim and the rest of the family had been cobbling together payments, it was only a matter of time before they defaulted on their loan.

“You are so proud,” Lothaire murmured, his tone perplexed. “And I cannot comprehend why.”

She choked back a retort. Cool it, Ellie. Get information. “Tell me what Saroya’s like.”

“Vicious, contemptuous, fearless. She’s a queen whom other queens would bow down to.”

Ellie quirked a brow. “A vicious female who doesn’t mind you spending so much time alone with the beautiful Hag?”

“The fey and I are not involved.”

“Saroya’s agreeable to having all those heirs you want?”

“She will give me as many as I desire,” he said coolly.

Deflection? “Don’t you want to get started on little vampire princes?”

“I can’t claim her until she’s in an undying body, else harm her with my strength. Remember? Pop.”

“So that’s the delay.” Or was there more? Saroya could still satisfy the vampire. Perhaps the goddess didn’t enjoy sexual situations? “I have a hard time imagining that kind of strength.”

“There are four things that make a vampire more powerful than his brethren. Bloodlust, a beating heart, Dacian blood, and age. I’m a vampire gone red-eyed with bloodlust, a Dacian with a beating heart. I’ve lived for millennia, growing stronger over the endless days of my life.”

Great. She’d been nabbed by the Hulk of vampires. Then she glanced up. “You’re a real Dacian?”

“Ah, that’s right—you’ve been reading after school. My mother was Ivana Daciano, heir to their throne. I am