CHAPTER I
Irina
Lazarus and I sit at a pub, watching the brothel across the street. We know the place is bustling inside, but this is Berlin, Germany, which means that not even the slightest sound makes it out the heavy metal door under the Pleasure Haven sign. Prostitution is legal here, but turning up the volume could totally get the cops to your door.
We’ve been focused on that door for an hour now, during which time Lazarus didn’t look at me even once. He keeps his eyebrows furrowed over his intelligent blue eyes, his long fingers tapping the stem of his wine glass as he waits for our target Herald Gruff to emerge. I imagine those fingers trickling down my body. It’s impossible not to think of Lazarus Raica that way.
He’s a vampire with the air of a handsome young scholar. Those rich locks of dark hair and sinewy arms with tribal tattoos that emerge from under the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt add to his special sexiness, and with the good looks specific to vampires you get a Molotov cocktail that can send female hormones into overdrive.
Problem is, Lazarus hates me with all he’s got. To him, I’m the blonde vamp who can sexually enslave men through the power of her pheromones, and the one who turned him into a vampire decades ago. He despises everything I represent.
“The easiest way to get to Herald Gruff would be infiltrating me in there,” I break the silence, nodding my head in the brothel’s direction.
“Shouldn’t be hard,” he replies. “Someone like you would totally fit in.”
“You mean someone with natural whore material.”
“It’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant.”
“Listen, Irina.” He faces me in full for the first time in the twenty-four hours since we started on this mission. The table tilts to his side as he puts his weight on his elbows. “I can see that you’re trying to mend things between us, but that’s never going to work. I don’t like you, I never will, and I’m sorry if that offends you.”
“It doesn’t offend me. It hurts me.”
He puffs as if I just said the most preposterous thing. “Irina Motovilova, the great vampire seductress and Dracula’s best spy, emotionally vulnerable to me? I’m honored.”
It’s what happens when you’re falling for a guy, is what I want to tell him, but I refrain. He’d glare at me full of hatred, recounting how I basically tore him apart and feasted on his blood two decades ago. There’s nothing I can do to change the past, nothing I can say to change his feelings about me, and it hurts more with every minute that I look at him, aching for his touch.
“Listen, I don’t need you to like me,” I lie. “However, for this mission it’s important that you trust me.”
“I do trust you. We’ve been on the same side, the side of Dracula, for years. But I still can’t look at you without my stomach turning.”
I bite my lip to keep the tears back, but the heavy metal door to the brothel opens, and a big bouncer with a boxer’s nose lets out a completely drunk Herald Gruff. The muscles in my back tense as I focus my attention on him. This would be a great opportunity to move in, but two drunken girls emerge giggling after him, one with tousled hair and the other carrying her pumps in her hand. They’re both leaning on him, but he can barely keep himself on his feet.
“Come on,” Lazarus says. “You can take’em.”
His words hurt, but he’s right. I stand a good chance of getting Herald Gruff to pick me over them, if only because of my vampire attractiveness and the power of my pheromones, none of which I can take credit for. They are powers that came with the territory when I became a vampire, but I did earn my other skills, and I promise that I’ll prove them to Lazarus by the time this is over.
“Still, we need a plan before we do anything,” I say, my eyes out the window at Herald Gruff’s greyed head disappearing with the girls on the back seat of a red Porsche that his driver then pulls away from the curb. “What we want is to use him and get to the person he’s working with, the one with whom the Old Priest shared the secret of human immortality.”
“Would you sleep with him for the mission?” comes the abrupt question. My eyes fly to Lazarus, finding his on me, contempt behind his blue irises.
“You’re just asking that to satisfy your own curiosity, not because of the mission,” I bite. I repent for what I put him through twenty years ago, but I let his boots walk all over me long enough.
I stand and grab my purse. “Now pay and let’s see where he’s taking the girls.”
Lazarus
HERALD GRUFF TOOK THE hookers to an expensive hotel. More room for play, more people to serve him. Luckily there’s another hotel just across the street, where Irina and I checked in, and now I’m watching his window. My vampire senses allow me to see across the distance, peer through the darkness, and get a clear picture of what’s happening inside that hotel room, but it’s repulsive, and I’m not sure how useful it is for the mission. I turn around to find Irina rolling black pantyhose up to her mid-thighs.
She’s striking with her silky tan skin and straight, shiny blonde hair. The fine small nose, plump lips and catlike eyes could make even a dead man’s cock stand to attention. Hell, even my shaft reacts, and I thought I despised her enough to remain immune to her charms.
I clench my teeth as I imagine fucking her from behind, my fist in her hair, driving my cock into her. Making her clutch the sheets and scream. I’d make hate to her. I’d treat her like a whore, subjecting her to my darkest pleasures, punishing her for what she did to me. She’s a beautiful monster that deserves to be used—Fuck, this isn’t me, thinking these things, growing horny as I think them. Wait a minute, is she using her pheromones on me, is that what’s turning me into a beast?
“What the hell are you doing?” I say through my teeth, grabbing my cock to make it back down.
“Relax,” she says, her hair tumbling down her back after she takes off her shirt. The fine muscles in her back stretch beautifully as she bends forward to grab a bra, and my cock strains. “This isn’t for you. I’ll never try to seduce you, so you might as well stop worrying about it. I’m going to the brothel, try to work my way in. You keep an eye on Gruff, and make sure he goes back to the brothel tomorrow night.”
I swallow the dryness in my throat. She’s not manipulating my senses. Her presence arouses the monster in me, a version of me that wants to fuck her senseless, but it’s not her fault. I’m the owner of these filthy desires, and I can’t blame them on anyone but myself.
I take a step back just as Irina turns around, now dressed in a very short red dress, the black lace upper part of her pantyhose visible on her toned thighs. She drops on the bed, reaching down to slip her stilettos on her feet.
“I know you don’t enjoy watching what’s going down in that room.” She creases her nose. “But we can’t afford to miss anything. We need to know him intimately, what he likes, what he hates.” She pulls a pair of tiny earbuds from her purse and holds them up for me to see. “I’ll be wearing these tomorrow night. I’m leaving a pair for you here on the bed. You wear them tomorrow, and we’ll be able to communicate. Watch him tonight, learn what he likes, so you can tell me what to do.”