Ashes of Midnight
Page 13

The house in Newport was still held in trust for her, cared for by a private staff who looked after the grounds and the basic maintenance of the place, but it had been nearly two decades since Claire had been back. She missed it suddenly, missed the feeling of truly being home. Danika released her after a moment and attempted a lighter topic. "So, which of your goals did you end up pursuing?" "Neither, in fact," Claire admitted. "Not long after I arrived in Germany, I had my first run-in with one of the Breed. He was very young--a teenager at most. It was late at night, I was walking home from a concert by myself. I thought he wanted to steal my purse, but he was actually after something else. He was about to bite me when another Breed male stopped him." "Andreas?" Danika guessed, smiling. Claire shook her head. "No, not him. It was someone ... else. Someone very important in Hamburg, although I didn't know it at the time. He caught the scent of my blood when the other male knocked me to the ground and I skinned my knees.
He realized right away that I was a Breedmate, so he drove the other vampire off and took me in as his ward. I didn't meet Andreas until later." And, like her parents' doomed relationship, she and Andre also fell instantly, impossibly, in love. She'd spent the past thirty years trying to forget him. Trying to convince herself that she wasn't still in love with him after all this time. "Such a long time to be kept apart. I know how difficult it is, being denied of the thing your heart craves the most," Danika murmured somewhat absently Claire swung an astonished look at her. "What... how did you know--" The other Breedmate sucked in her breath. "Forgive me. I didn't mean to intrude on your thoughts." She brought her index finger up to her temple. "My talent, I'm afraid. I don't like to read thoughts, and to tell you the truth, most of the time I hate that I can. Unfortunately, since Conlan has been gone my talent is becoming unmanageable. I haven't taken another mate, nor do I intend to, and without the regular intake of Conlan's blood, my ability seems to turn on and off at its own whim. I'm sorry, Claire. It was very rude of me." "It's all right." "I don't know that it will bring you any comfort, but you are not suffering alone.
Andreas feels it, as well, you know. He feels the same regret that you carry inside." Danika smiled gently. "His thoughts were just as plain to me in the other room as yours are now. He is torn and broken from rage, but he's hurting in another way, too." Claire stared at her, unable to speak. Barely able to breathe. "Life is precious," Danika continued. "And it is so very short, even for those like us. Four hundred and two years with Conlan wasn't nearly enough time. We don't often get second chances, not in life or in love. If I had just one more minute with my Conlan, I wouldn't waste a second of it on regret. Let Andreas know how you truly feel." "But he isn't mine," Claire murmured softly. "Not anymore." "Try to tell that to your heart." Danika gave Claire's hand a light squeeze. "Try to tell that to his."
Reichen avoided going upstairs for hours after Danika had returned to collect her son. She and Connor had gone to find their own rest for the day, leaving Reichen to prowl the quiet farmhouse, killing time and trying not to think about the fact that Claire was in bed somewhere above him. In bed all alone, her sweet body relaxed and languid. Her buttery light brown skin like velvet to the touch, every exquisite inch of her clean and soft and warm ... Good Christ. Since the moment she asked about taking a bath, she'd doomed him to imagining her undressed and fragrant from a long, hot soak. He'd been tempted almost beyond reason to vault up the stairs behind her when she left with Danika, a feeling that had yet to pass. There was nothing he wanted more than to be with her right now, to comfort her and let her know that she was protected from Roth and his cronies.
To assure her that no matter what evil was at work around them, he would keep her safe at any cost. Things he'd failed to provide his kin or Helene. Spending time around Danika and her young son had brought his attention back to that reality with scathing focus. He wasn't here to smooth over Claire's fears, any more than he was here to slake his own longings for her or to answer the primal call of the blood bond that would draw him to her always. A blood bond he'd imposed on her, he was quick to remind himself. No. He was here now for one purpose: vengeance. Everything else--his wants and desires, his future, his right to claim even the thinnest moment of selfish joy--had burned away in the fire that devoured his Darkhaven home. Longer ago than that, he thought grimly, reflecting back on the night he'd last seen Claire. It had been a night of stupidity and violence that had left him beaten and bloodied, baking in an open field under a harsh morning sun. Until that moment, he'd known nothing of the power he'd been cursed with at birth--a power passed down to him by a Breedmate mother he'd never met, who hadn't lived long enough to warn him of what his fury could do. He'd learned that lesson in a brutally vivid moment that awful morning outside Hamburg, and the horror of what he'd done had never left him. So many innocent lives had crumbled to ash around him. His own life was heading swiftly in that same direction, but he still had time to see justice met, at least for those lives that had been lost at Wilhelm Roth's command. He had no doubt that his anger and hatred were only strengthening the fire living inside him. It would destroy him sooner than later, but he'd be damned if he went down without taking Roth with him. He only prayed that his resolve was firm enough to keep Claire far away from him as he moved ever closer to that inevitable end.
It was the depth of that conviction that finally gave him the strength to climb the stairs and find the room that Danika had given them. He also didn't know if the couple who shared the farmhouse was aware of him and Claire, and he wasn't about to put Danika in the position of having to lie to cover for him should the other residents happen to come down and find a stranger in their midst. Reichen paused in front of the closed bedroom at the far end of hallway. His pulse kicked with a visceral awareness of Claire on the other side of that painted white door. He prayed she was asleep, figured she had to be after the hours he'd stalled downstairs. As quietly as he could, he turned the worn porcelain knob and peered inside. "Hello," she said, barely above a whisper. She was sitting up on one side of the king-size bed, wearing a thin baby blue T-shirt that didn't quite conceal the dark buds of her nipples or the shapely swell of her breasts. A small lamp glowed on the nightstand beside her, golden light playing in her ebony hair and across her lovely face.
He scowled and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him without a sound. "You should be sleeping." She lifted her shoulder. "I thought the bath would relax me, but I can't seem to close my eyes." He had to work damn hard to ignore the bolt of lust that shot through him with the renewed image of Claire sitting naked in a tub full of steaming water and silky white bubbles. "Nightfall will come early," he grumbled. "We've got to be ready to catch our ride back to the States at sundown. You'd better douse that lamp and try to get some rest." She moved on the bed, but only to reach over and gesture to the empty side. "I took one of the softer pillows, but if you'd rather have it you can." He glowered at her, more from the discomfort of his growing erection than her offer of his choice of pillow. Her shift on the mattress had stretched her T-shirt into a second skin. And with the dislodging of the quilt coverlet as she moved, his burning gaze fixated on the tiny scrap of her panties. Crimson red panties, for the love of God. He froze where he stood, every nerve ending in his body going nuclear with arousal. "You might remember that I'm a very sound sleeper," she said, but he was hardly hearing what she was saying. "Don't worry about waking me up if you still toss and turn and hog the covers over there. I probably won't even notice." He shook himself back to consciousness when he realized she expected him to sleep in the bed with her.
Right beside her, when the only thing preventing him from acting on his unholy desire for her was a paltry slip of cotton and a minuscule triangle of red satin. "The bed is yours," he said, his voice a rough scrape in his throat. "This isn't a slumber party, for fuck's sake. You can't actually expect me to sleep with you, Claire." Her expression faltered. "I didn't mean..." "Jesus Christ," he muttered. His skin prickled with a sudden wash of heat and hunger that made his desire stoke even hotter. "Getting in bed with you is the bloody last thing I need to do right now." He must have sounded even more harsh than he realized, based on how quickly she glanced away from him. She shook her head, then exhaled a sigh. "The bed is big enough for both of us. That's all I was trying to say." He stared at her for a long moment, his muscles twitching with the urge to move, to propel him over to where she was on the mattress and ease her down beneath him. He wanted that so badly it was all he could see. All he could taste as the points of his emerging fangs pressed into the flesh of his tongue. "Get some sleep, Claire." He tore himself away from the sight of her and took his own place on the floor nearby. The hand-loomed rug that covered the old wood planks was lumpy and smelled vaguely of lemon wax. He tossed onto his side on the hard floor, the only position that didn't make him painfully aware of the hard-on that was jutting between his thighs like a column of stone. Had he actually tried to caution her a few minutes ago that nightfall would come early? Like hell. It was going to be a long fucking wait till sundown.
Chapter Twelve
Claire lay on the huge bed, wide awake, staring into the shuttered darkness of the room. She hadn't moved since Andreas took himself to the floor. Time dragged, and for quite a while she was certain he'd been just as awake and alert as she was--and just as determined to lie there in silence and pretend he didn't notice. But somewhere around an hour ago, his breathing had changed from the controlled inhaling and exhaling she could barely discern, to the deep, rhythmic soughing of sleep. Claire listened to the slow sounds of his slumber, while Danika's words about the rarity of second chances and not wasting precious time on regrets were playing over and over in her mind like a song she couldn't get out of her head. There was so much she wanted to say to Andreas. Things she needed him to hear. Not that he would listen. He didn't seem inclined to let her get close enough to reach him at all. And she needed to be close to him now, if only to feel his strength beside her when everything she thought she knew about her world was crumbling at her feet.
She'd felt a wall come up between them tonight. It seemed to grow taller and less scalable the longer they were at the farmhouse Darkhaven. Claire wasn't sure what she'd done to upset him, or maybe it was simply the fact that he'd been forced to look after her now that Wilhelm was likely gunning for them both. For a moment she wished she'd been gifted with Danika's talent so that Andreas's mind, and his cryptic emotions, wouldn't be such a mystery to her right now. Her own ability could help her there, too. Everyone was more accessible in the dream realm. Not everything said or seen was truth, of course, but the surreal nature of dreams had a way of peeling back inhibitions. Claire ventured a look over the expanse of the wide bed to the large bulk of Andreas's body where he slept on the floor. She tucked her arm under her head and curled up on her side, watching him. Wondering where his dreams had taken him. She closed her eyes and thought about him as she let her body relax, willing her mind to calm and prepare for sleep. She let her talent stretch, tendrils of awareness reaching... searching. It usually took incredible focus to find the dreamer, but with Andreas, she'd no sooner slipped under the veil of consciousness and slumber than there he was.
It had always been like that with him, as if their connection had been there from the instant they first met and had never weakened. There had been times, long after Andreas was gone from her life, that Claire had been tempted to seek him out, if only in the dream realm. But she'd been too afraid of facing more of his rejection, and too ashamed of herself that, try as she might, she could not find for Wilhelm anything close to the love she had been unable to purge for Andreas. After all that had happened the past couple of nights, what she felt now for Wilhelm and the blood bond that shackled her to him was a cold and biting mistrust. Contempt, if everything she was learning about him was true. After all she'd been through with Andreas in these harrowing, intense long hours together, she had to admit to some measure of fear for the lethal inpidual he was now. But along with that fear had come a rush of emotion that terrified her even more for how strongly she still felt for him. For how deeply she still wanted him, needed him. How easily she could see herself falling back in love with him ... if she'd ever truly stopped. As she walked into his dream now, her breath caught to find him under the starlight of a clear evening, seated shirtless and barefoot in the crisp, cool grass of the parkland sanctuary she had designed for his vacant Darkhaven property. All the details were just as she had them on the architect's model, down to the very last bench and flower bed. Good lord. He had memorized the entire plan. "It's beautiful," he said, his deep voice a vibration she felt all the way into her bones. "You knew exactly what needed to be here. Somehow, you knew." He didn't turn to face her as she cautiously approached him at the edge of his dream, where the land he was imagining in his sleep hugged the glittering lake beyond.
Andreas's golden skin was luminescent in the moonlight, made all the more striking by the flourish of twisting, twining glyphs that rode his muscular back like the masterwork of an artist's paintbrush. Claire remembered tracing those beautiful marks with her tongue; if she closed her eyes, she could still picture every unique arc and flourish that tracked over his smooth, firm skin. "You know you shouldn't be here," he said once her feet stopped moving and she was standing beside him. Now he did look at her, and his expression wasn't what she considered friendly. His irises were throwing off piercing amber light. When he curled his lip back to speak, the tips of his fangs gleamed stark white and razor sharp. "You don't belong here, Claire. Not with me. Not like this. You shouldn't have come in here when you weren't invited." "I had to find you." "What for?" "I needed to see you. I wanted... to talk..." "Talk." He spat the word on a huffed exhalation. Before Claire knew what he was doing, he was up on his feet, towering over her. His eyes were blazing, so hot it was a wonder her T-shirt and panties didn't melt away as his intense gaze roamed over her from the top of her head to her bare toes. "What do you want to talk about, Frau Roth?" "Don't do that," she said, wincing at his biting tone. "Don't use him to drive a wedge between us." "He is the wedge between us, Claire. We both put him there, didn't we? If you're only regretting it now, that's not my problem." She frowned at him, not wanting to feel the scrape of his words when she came there out of affection for him, as his friend. "Why are you doing this, Andre?" "What am I doing?" "Pushing me away.