Her lips thinned. This card game wasn't working out as she'd planned. She'd hoped to find out about his past and how he'd gone a lifetime without sex—not to get interrogated.
'Twenty-one the hard way. I win again. If your mother didn't remarry, how did the two of you live?'
'She worked.'
'That's not a thorough answer.'
'She was a burlesque dancer. I grew up in lodgings above the club.'
He raised his brows. 'This explains much about you, and your lack of modesty. But with your looks'—his gaze dropped to her breasts, then swiftly back up—'why didn't you follow in her footsteps?'
She gave him a bland smile. 'Who says I didn't?'
He looked aghast. 'But you were a ballet dancer!'
'Not always,' she murmured.
'You can't leave it at that.'
'Then win this hand.' Twenty to her and seventeen to him. I win.' Finally. And if he was going to dig into her past, then... 'Why aren't you more loyal to your family?'
He narrowed his eyes. 'You're going to question my sense of loyalty?'
'Oui. Actually, I just did.'
'I was in the Kapsliga for eighteen years. Then they turned on me. I fought side by side with my brothers for over a decade—they made me a monster.'
'Why do you feel like you're a monster? I wish you didn't view vampires the way you do. You're growing on me'—I'm infatuated with you—'and I think your brothers are honorable men. The fact that you are all vampires is incidental.'
'Incidental. My beliefs boiled down to one word.' He fingered the edges of a card. 'If you saw me in the midst of bloodlust, you'd think me a monster. Now deal. I'm keen to get to my questions.'
She dealt. 'Ha! I win. Why are your three brothers... different from you? Why did they never drink from the vein?'
'Sebastian prevented himself by becoming a hermit, staying away from any temptation. The oldest two joined an order, an army called the Forbearers. Their first law is never to take blood straight from the flesh. Though now I've heard they're allowed to drink from their immortal Brides.'
'The Forbearers are King Kristoff's army, n'est-ce pas?' When he nodded, she said, 'Why didn't you just join up with your brothers?'
'Kristoff's a bloody Russian!' he snapped, his broad shoulders tensing. 'I fought those bastards for over a decade, in near daily battles, and then I was killed by Russian steel. I wake up, and I've got one's blood running in my veins, my brothers pledging my goddamned eternal fealty to him—a Russian and a vampire. There could be no combination I despised more.'
'If these Forbearers fight tirelessly against evil vampires—'
'Kristoff has turned thousands of humans. The Lore balances itself, but not when he's creating vampires like that.' Visibly making an attempt to calm himself, he said, 'Deal.'
'And the tide of twenty-one is turning,' she said when she got vingt-et-un. 'Tell me about your family.'
He impatiently said, 'My parents were a love match. My mother died giving birth to the last of four much younger sisters. My father was considerably older and never recovered from the loss.'
'Three brothers and four sisters? You had seven siblings? I always wished for even one brother or sister.'
'My sisters didn't live long—they died of the sickness. The oldest was only thirteen.'
'I'm sorry, Conrad.'
'I wasn't as close to them as I could have been. As I should have been. I'd already been fighting for the Kapsliga for years by the time the first one was born. They were closest to Sebastian.'
'Why were you the son who was chosen for the Kapsliga?'
'Nikolai was the heir, Sebastian the scholar. Murdoch was the lover. As I had no pronounced interest, I became the killer.'
'Why wouldn't you think of yourself as a protector? You saved human life. You protected them from horrible fates.'
'And then later I meted out horrible fates. Now deal.'
'Merde,' she muttered again when she lost by one. 'Posez votre question.'
'You actually took off your clothes in front of crowds of strange men?'
'Yes, I did. My mother had just died unexpectedly. My choices were to dance in the club at night and continue my ballet during the day, or go to the paper factory to work for the rest of my life.' She'd had no marriage proposals in sight then. After all, she'd only been in her midteens.
He narrowed his eyes. 'You said your mother died when you were sixteen.'
'So?'
His lips parted, exposing those fangs that were somehow becoming very attractive to her. 'But sixteen?'
'Et alors. I'm not going to apologize for it. Times were different then, and I actually enjoyed it for the most part. I kept that chapter of my life secret, not because I was ashamed, but because I knew people would have the same reaction as you—and do close your jaw, vampire.'
'You weren't a virgin, were you?'
She blinked at him. 'Non, je suis Capricorne.'
Ignoring her comment, he said, 'And you weren't married?' When she shook her head, he gave her a look that said, Ah-ha, one of those women.
'Yes, Conrad, I am one of those women.' She smiled as she dealt. 'And I'm not ashamed about that part of my life either.'
He hurried through the hand and won again. But when he hesitated with his question, she knew he was about to ask how many men she'd known—and Néomi didn't think he'd like the answer...
17
'How many men had you been with?' he finally asked.
'Do you really want to know?'
Conrad nodded, though he wasn't entirely sure. He was still grinding his teeth over her stripping off her clothes for crowds of men in the twenties.
'Less than a score and more than a single,' she answered.
'Truthfully and completely,' he reminded her.
'Very well. I'd had four lovers b the time I was twenty-six.'
'That many?' He scowled, bristling about the fact that four men had known her body and he hadn't.
'Alas, that few.' Though I would have had a legion more if birth control had been more reliable.' She was so open about this subject, even seeming proud of her experience.
At least she has some, he thought darkly. His own was nonexistent. And worse—Néomi knew it.
He'd been a young thirteen when he'd made the vow to the Kapsliga, long before he'd been able to understand exactly what it would mean to him.
Unfortunately, he had other men's memories of sex. Not one among them was what he wanted to see, to experience—some made his skin crawl. He worked to block them out as soon as they arose... . 'Is that why you broke it off with your fiancé? Because you didn't only want one lover?'
She shook her head. 'I was tediously monogamous.'
'Then why?'
'He hadn't done one thing specifically. But I always had a sense of disquiet about him. Regrettably, the only thing stronger than that was my need to have the very best. If there was another way to aim—except for the best, the most enviable—I didn't know of it. And Louis was the most eligible bachelor in the parish. He was extremely handsome, and the man had money—oil money.'
