CHAPTER I
Lord Dracula
I can’t get enough of this picture. Rux lying in our bed, asleep, her naked body wrapped in the satin sheets, her shiny black hair spread over the pillow. Moonlight shines through the gothic window, caressing the full shape of her breasts and hips. I can’t keep my hands from doing the same under the satin, her thighs filling my palms.
I bend over her, kissing her lips gently, but I have to pull back fast. The scent of her blood, her pulsing jugular, it’s harder to resist every day.
I throw off the satin cover and flash naked to the window, pushing it open, and breathing in the spring night air, trying to still my thirst.
“Lover,” Rux whispers behind me. I close my eyes tightly—I still love the sound of that word from her mouth, even two years after our wedding. But I don’t trust myself to surrender to passion in this state, I might hurt her.
“Go back to sleep, Rux.”
“Not without my husband by my side.”
“Please.” I glance at her over my shoulder, forcing a smile. “You need to rest, I don’t. Just relax, I’ll be back with you soon.”
But she gets out of bed, the wooden floor creaking lightly under her feet as she walks over. The spring breeze flares the white curtains. I’d love to turn around and see what the touch of cool air is doing to her snow-white skin, but I hold back. The sight of her would be too hard to bear right now, the need for blood paired with the yearning for her body could overwhelm me, making me lose my head. I white knuckle the lower part of the window frame, leaning a bit outside, looking down the tower into the inner courtyard.
Rux’s small hand touches the scars on my back, making me stiffen.
“You’ve been aloof for weeks,” she says, her voice sweet. “Is it something I’ve done?”
“No. No, it’s just....” Damn it. I’m so happy with her, why can’t it be enough? Why does this damn thirst have to fuck with me like this?
Her hand slips downward, caressing my hip, and sliding to my already hard manhood, wrapping around it. She sighs, her breath touching my back, sending thrills through my skin. But it also intensifies the red hotness in my throat.
“Rux, no.” My voice comes out thick as I push her hand away and move to the vanity table, picking up my pants from the back of her chair.
“What is happening Vlad?” she demands, her palms slapping her thighs. I look at her again, a vision of femininity in the moonlight. Saliva pools in my mouth when my eyes fall to those large breasts, contrasting with her small waist and wide hips. My jaw clenches as I pull my pants on, struggling with the need to devour her right now.
“Is it—” She pauses and looks down with her hands on her hips, her hair falling in black spirals down to her waist. “Is it another woman?”
“Another woman,” I breathe in shock. “Another woman? Ruxandra, I hadn’t wanted a woman in ages until I met you, what makes you think it would happen now, after I became your husband?”
“I don’t know, Vlad, probably the fact that you’re not fucking me anymore? I mean—” Her cheeks turn red with repressed fury. “It happens so rarely. Look at you.” She motions to my manhood, which is obviously engorged, even through my pants. “You want to, but you keep away, almost as if you’re saving yourself for someone else.”
I’m trying to save you from me, I snarl inside my head, but I swallow down the words.
“It’s the thirst, Rux,” I say low, approaching her, with only my pants on and my torso naked. She eyes me like she could eat me alive, which is understandable, considering the little amount of sex we’ve had these past few months. We were like sex addicts before the thirst became unbearable.
“It’s worse by the day,” I admit, taking her hands in mine. “You know that sensation when you have a craving for something, but you don’t know for what, and you can’t stop the craving because of that?”
She looks up into my face with those big, ink-black eyes that give most humans the chills, but I find so sexy.
“That’s how I’ve been feeling lately, and it’s not getting any better. I’m afraid if we make love, I’ll lose my mind and bite you.”
“Then do it,” she whispers, rising on the tips of her toes and inviting me for a kiss. I can’t resist and bend my head, but the moment my mouth touches hers my entire body flexes with need, both good and bad. I want her like crazy, her body as much as her blood.
“Rux, please.” I pull away, turning my back to her and heading to the wardrobe. “I wouldn’t be able to stop, and it can still kill you.”
“You did it once, and look at me—I’m still alive.”
“That was different, and you know it. Much different.”
“I don’t understand,” she says after a pause, trying to hide the annoyance in her voice. “You pay private clinics all over the world for blood, people sell it to you, you’re not starving. Why is this happening?”
“Sold blood isn’t exactly nutritious for me. I crave the blood of the powerful, the daring, even the supernatural, and often the vicious. Before, I had warriors and killers for sustenance, I used to hunt them down and subdue them. Now, it’s like living on a fucking diet.” There’s more repressed violence in that confession than I’d been meaning to show.
Rux doesn’t reply, but what could she say? She can’t possibly want to send me out to hunt people just so we can regain our passionate nights.
After a moment I hear her sigh and start to speak, but a hard knock on the door interrupts her.
“Milord,” Tristan’s muffled voice reaches us.
“A moment.”
Rux hurries to grab her satin nightgown from the bed, glancing at the clock. “Heaven’s sakes, it’s three in the morning.”
When Rux is done tying the cordon around her waist, I open the door to an agitated Tristan. His usually rock hard, white face is livid, his blond eyebrows knitted together, his electric blue eyes intense.
“Milord, you need to see this.”
Lord Dracula
WE WATCH FOOTAGE FROM the surveillance cameras at the university in Bucharest, where Rux is to speak at a conference tomorrow evening. I usually have the places where she gets invited to speak monitored ahead of the events, for obvious reasons—she’s Dracula’s wife, and there are those who would use that to their advantage. Which seems to be the case right now.
“This guy here.” Tristan points to a hooded figure moving to the pulpit in the lecture hall where she’s scheduled to speak, working on it like some kind of secret agent in the night.
“This is stupid,” the vampire Irina says, voicing my own thoughts. “There are ways to trick the cameras. Not to mention the university swarms with people during the day, so many students walking in and out of the lecture halls, why would someone plant something—or do whatever that guy is doing—in such an obvious manner?”
Tristan nods. “I think whoever this person is, he wanted to be discovered on the footage. He wanted to draw attention.”
I narrow my eyes at the hooded figure moving around the pulpit, thoughts connecting fast in my head.