Blood Born: Cora's Choice #2 (4 page)

Madam,
it read,
Please avail yourself of this basic wardrobe, which was assembled at Mr. Thorne’s request. Do not consider yourself constrained by my selections in any way, and you may choose to set aside those that do not please you to be returned. Sincerely, Jane Worth.

Oh-
kay. That totally wasn’t completely inappropriate. My own clothes sat on a waist-high island, cleaned and, yes, ironed. I opted to put them on instead, and I discovered that they were already slightly less loose. I ran my hands down my ribs and was convinced that they were just a little bit less prominent than before.

T
here was a door between the dressing room and the bathroom I’d glimpsed from the bedroom, and I splashed cold water across my face, regarding my reflection as I patted it dry. I looked...better. Some of the gauntness was gone from my cheeks, and the dark circles under my eyes were much lighter.

A silver-handled brush and comb set sat on a mirrored tray.
New, I decided after some inspection, and tamed my hair into some semblance of order. Even better, there was a fresh tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush still in its wrapper. I made quick use of them.

Hesitantly, I pulled down the edge of my turtleneck, slightly frightened of what evidence I would find there.
But there were only a few faintly silvery lines against the unbroken skin where Dorian had drunk from me.

The wounds
—I shivered at the memory of them—they must have healed like the needle-mark in the back of my hand after Dorian Thorne had kissed it. Because I wasn’t quite human anymore—or maybe because he wasn’t human at all. I wasn’t sure which, but I knew it was impossible for such an injury to have disappeared so quickly through natural means.

Was I really believing
all this? This inanity about blood-bonds and vampires? I frowned at my reflection. I didn’t consider myself to be a gullible sort of person. Wasn’t it much more logical that I was the victim of an elaborate hoax? That would make far more sense than everything I knew about how the world worked being wrong.

Well, there was one way to check, if I had the means and the nerve to do it.

I pulled open the vanity drawers. Manicure tools, lotions, bath oils, cotton balls, bobby pins—and safety pins. There. I pulled one out and unbent it. Taking a deep breath, I chose a shallow vein on my arm and pushed it in.

Crap.
I jerked back. Well that didn’t hurt any less than I’d expected it to! I watched as several drops of blood welled up. It certainly wasn’t healing as fast as the mark on the back of my hand. But when I grabbed a cotton ball and wiped away the blood, I couldn’t see the puncture wound beneath—it had sealed without a trace. And I realized that it wasn’t actually hurting anymore, either.

The change was as real as it was impossible.
And if it was real, then everything was. He had saved me. Dorian had saved me, but to what end? For his pleasure? For his hunger?

Suddenly, it was too much to take in, too much to believe
—and even if I believed it, far too much to accept. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. I was being buried alive. My head pounded with panic, swallowing everything.

I had to escape.

The cotton ball fell from my suddenly nerveless fingers, and I ran. I ran without thinking where I was going—just away, out of this place. I hit the bedroom door and charged through.

I was going so fast that I nearly slammed into the iron
balustrade opposite the door. I grabbed it with both hands to stop myself, my hips catching against the rail. My head swirled as I looked over the drop into the room below. Scarlet and gold…. I realized that I was on the mezzanine above the enormous, hotel-lobby-like room I had seen the day I arrived. Which meant the exit was...
that way.

“
Madam!”

I spun at the word.
The slim, gray-clad woman stood next to the door, between me and the stairs. I lunged past her, but she made no move to stop me.

“
Be careful, madam!” she cried after me.

I ran.
There at the end of the mezzanine was the upper flight of the grand staircase I had used when I arrived. I took the stairs without slowing, my feet clattering down them as fast as I could force my sluggish, wasted muscles to respond.

I made it down the first flight to the lobby level, a stitch in my side and my breath whistling painfully in my lungs.
A door opened off the lobby, and I knew whose silhouette filled the doorway without looking. The force of his presence reached me across the distance that separated us. I pushed harder—if he got too close, it would all be over, my will crushed in his own.

T
he great double doors, unguarded, were only one more flight of stairs away. I flung myself down them, willing my feet to move faster.

I saw the fatal step, just six stairs from the bottom, t
ried to fling my leg out to catch me, but it was just too slow. My body arched out over the stairs, and I braced for the impact of the hard stone—

But it never came.
I only saw him for an instant, out of the corner of my eye, and then faster than was humanly possible, he was there, under me, scooping me from the air even as I fell.

And then he had me in his arms.

Dorian Thorne. The vampire.

“L
et go!” I said as soon as I could breathe again. I could feel my body betraying me, the excruciating awareness of him overpowering my senses, filling my brain with the smell of him, the strength of him, my nerves jangling with unwelcome, uncontrollable attraction.

To my shock, that wa
s exactly what he did, setting me gently on my feet and stepping back three steps to the base of the staircase.

I sucked air, trying to clear my head.
I stood in the foyer just inside the front doors. Dorian had caught me as I had fallen the rest of the way down the stairs.

There was nothing, I realized, between me and freedom.
Nothing except a vampire who could move with superhuman speed....

I edged back slowly toward the doors, watching him warily.
He stood there, unnaturally still, his suit unruffled from my rescue, silent and handsome as sin. I didn’t dare look away.

After an agonizing minute of inching backwards, my hands touched the brass doorknob, and I grasped it, almost sobbing with relief.

“Go ahead.”

I jumped at his voice and froze.

“You may leave, Cora,” he said. “I have already told you that you are not my prisoner.”

“
You also said I belong to you now,” I said, even as I berated myself. He was giving me what I wanted. Why was I arguing with him?

“
You do,” he said simply. “You’re mine. In this house, at your university, in class, in bed. A mere change of scenery cannot alter that.”

I tried to say something, anything, but the force of his influence came over me again, and it was all I could do to wrench open the door and turn to run into the clean morning light
—

But I stumbled on my first step out of the door and
yelped as the sunlight struck me like a physical blow. I was beaten back into the relative dimness of the house, slamming the door behind me and leaning against it. Gasping as my heart hammered against my ribcage, I blinked my streaming eyes to clear them.

“
I recommend good sunglasses,” Dorian said. “And a hat.”

“
What have you done to me?” I cried.

He stepped forward, and my hand tightened on the knob again, but I did not twist it.

“I saved you, Cora,” he said. He tilted his head to the side, and it reminded me of the curious motion of a cat before it devoured its prey. “I will be happy to provide you with sun protection, and if you wait for my chauffeur to come around, he will take you wherever you want to go. It wasn’t a trick when I said you could leave.”

He paused.
“Or, if you want to know more, you could have breakfast with me, as I first suggested.”

“
It was more of an order,” I said. The engraved pattern of the doorknob was imprinting itself on my fingers. I had to tell myself to keep holding on because I wanted too badly to let go, to go to him.

He paused, and I had the feeling that he was reviewing our conversation in his mind.
“Ah, and so it was. How remiss of me. Would you care to join me, then? For breakfast?”

Just breakfast?
I almost asked. But I didn’t.

The force of him almost seemed to pull me toward him
, tattering my resistance. I didn’t trust him—and I couldn’t trust myself. My stomach took that moment to protest its emptiness loudly, and it was all too easy to give in.

“
Fine,” I said, knowing I shouldn’t but unable to stop myself. “But then I’m going home.”

“
Of course,” he agreed easily—too easily. “Follow me.”

He turned and started up the stairs without bothering to give a backward glance to see if I was actually following.
I frowned at his straight back, hesitating for a moment longer, and then I shook my head and went after him, not sure if I had passed a test or made a terrible mistake.

“
The breakfast room is just beyond the grand salon.”

I didn’t answer, unsure if Dorian was trying to reassure me with small talk.
If so, it wasn’t working. But at least I had the proper name for the vast hotel-like room in the center of the house: The salon.

He still had not even cast a look over his shoulder as he stalked along the arcade around the perimeter of the great room.
I chafed against his confidence that I would follow. But perhaps it wasn’t arrogance. Perhaps he could feel my presence as I sensed his. It was an unsettling thought.

He opened a door that looked much like any other and stepped through.
I hesitated on the threshold. Along the opposite wall of the room, behind the gleaming table, light streamed through a broad bank of windows that overlooked a formal garden.

“
Why doesn’t this sunlight seem too bright?” I asked, frowning.

“
To an ordinary human, it is quite dim. There is a filtering film on all the windows in the house,” Dorian said. “It is one of the luxuries of the modern age that we can dispense with curtains and shades.”

I stepped into the room, ignoring the word
we
. “What would happen if I stayed out too long? Is sunlight...deadly?” I had a horrifying thought of spending the rest of my life shut away from the day so that I wouldn’t light on fire, like something out of a horror film.

“
Not at all, but you would get a spectacular sunburn.” Dorian crossed to a buffet, where an extravagant range of foods was arranged under silver covers and in china tureens, and began heaping various delicacies onto a bone china plate. “We aren’t magic, Cora. We won’t turn into dust and blow away.”

He certainly seemed like magic to me so far.
What else could explain the hold he had over me? But I said nothing.

“
Take this.” He pressed the laden plate into my hands, and reflexively, I accepted it. “Sit. Eat. My medical staff plumped you up on a feeding tube until you began to come out of your coma, but you will feel better with some real food in you.”

I doubted it, an
d it occurred to me belatedly that I should be offended that he had chosen the food for me. But I said nothing, instead picking one of the two place settings laid out in front of an array of water-beaded goblets.

Dorian took a second plate and began to fill it
—for himself, I realized.

“
You ate dinner at the restaurant, too,” I observed tentatively.

He closed a chafing dish with a clang.
“We need to eat less than humans, as our metabolism is much slower and our resulting body temperature considerably lower, but we are like all creatures—if we don’t eat and drink, we will die.”

“
Right. Not undead,” I muttered, feeling a little stupid. He was so much like a man and yet so inhuman that it was difficult to know how to react to him. I couldn’t imagine the dissonance it must create for those who worked for him. “Does your staff know?”

“
About my nature? Of course. They have been with me for a very long time and are completely loyal,” he said, tossing off the statement as if it were painfully self-evident.

“
Because of what you are,” I said, not bothering to hide my disapproval. “Because they don’t have a choice.”

“
That is a part of it,” he acknowledged, adding an elegantly loaded slice of bruschetta to his plate.

I shuddered.
“Don’t you have any shame? People aren’t your toys to manipulate into doing your bidding.”

He turned on me then, so swiftly that I jerked back in my chair
. His plate was on the table, and he was standing over me without seeming to have moved through the space between us. The edges of his presence bled into the air around him, pushing through his veneer of humanity.