Phoenix Rising (2 page)

The beauty just hurt more now.

She had several Whistlers, which she knew he favored. And two Van Goghs, which she knew he didn’t. Miles had an almost pathological hatred of the Dutch painter. Nevertheless, it was a Van Gogh he stopped in front of,
Undergrowth With Two Figures.

“Why don’t you like him?” Kelsey asked, the old curiosity leaping up. “You didn’t...
know
him, did you?” Miles had known a great many famous people, as most very old vampires did.

Miles continued to study the painting.

“Know him? No, Kels. But I am surprised you never guessed where my dislike comes from.” He turned, a look on his face that made her heart clench.

“His paintings dance with light, they dazzle with it. To be so close to the warmth of sunshine…. So close I can almost feel it on my skin, nearly taste it and smell it.” He breathed deeply, then sighed. “How can I not hate him just a little for that? Since I will never walk in the sunlight again?”

Kelsey caught her breath, and for a moment the silence in the room was deafening.

While he could be incredibly ruthless, Miles wa
s—
by and large
—a kind man. A generous and even gentle one. She had seen that many, many times for herself.

But he was far from open. Even in Paris, he had rarely allowed her to see him so intimately. That he would do so now, after everything that had happened between them stunned her.

His hands clenched into fists as they stared at each other.

Five minutes in her company and here he was giving her bits of his lost soul—again! How stupid could this woman make him?

Putain de merde!

Miles closed the distance to her desk in one long, fluid stride. His blue eyes locked on her face, his lean, rangy body taut as he watched Kelsey tense at his approach.

“These vampires will
never
walk again at all, and I want to know why. If I didn’t think you were the
only
one who could find out, I would have never come here!” His hand slapped the top of her desk with careless anger, splintering the wood with an almighty crack that made her jump and the floor shake.

“Will you help me, Kelsey? Do you think I can trust you for that? Because I do
not.”
He reached out with the hand that had cracked her desk, his fingers cupping her jaw and forcing it up. He leaned over so that they were almost nose to nose.

“And I don’t trust myself either. Not when it comes to you. I thought about killing you so many times. Were you afraid of tha
t
—of mecoming for yo
u
?
Did you have nightmares about me, Kels Bells?”

Kelsey made a strangled sound of acquiescence that not only pleased him in a dark, cruel way, it also made the low hum of desire that had been throbbing in his gut since she’d walked in the room ratchet up to a scream. He wanted to bury his hands in the black satin of her hair and bend her back over the wreck of her desk and just
take her
; body and blood and mind.

His power leapt through the room like a caged beast, wanting so badly to settle on her. But of course, she was immune. He couldn’t bend her to his will that way, but there were other ways.

So many other ways.

Miles smiled in a way that made chills run down her spine. God, yes, Kelsey'd had nightmares about him.

His hand on her was a threat, pure and simple, even though his grip was firm, not cruel. Her reaction, though, was nothing so simple as fear. Just as her dreams about him had never been simply nightmares.

His mouth was so close, those perfectly sculpted lips that had known every inch of her body, the rough shadow on his jaw that had stung her skin so deliciously so many times. His essence enveloped her, sex and champagne and dark chocolate….

She breathed deep, unable to pull away, even when his next words cut her like ice.

“I rather hoped you would
.
I know I did. So many dreams of you." The look in his eyes made her heart leap to her throat.

"Except for me they weren’t really nightmares
, ma bichette
. I dreamed of ripping out your throat, Kels,” his fingers danced down the line of her chin, his voice both seductive and bitter. “Did you know
that
? That I dreamed of tasting your heart’s blood while I was deep inside you?”

His hand slipped around to the back of her neck, strong and cool under the heavy fall of her hair, fingers tightening as he stared at her.

With an easy jerk, he yanked her half way across the ruined desk, her chair flying out from under her. Kelsey couldn’t breathe to scream as his mouth found its way to her ear. His breath warm and soft, everything he was so very
not
at the moment.

“Do you know how close I came?
To rape and murder?!
Do you have any fucking idea what you
did
to me, Kelsey?” His fangs scored her skin lightly, the burn flaring even as her eyes filled with tears and her heart stuttered in her chest. She hadn’t.

She'd imagined rage enough, true.

But not this underlying pain that leeched out of him like poison. She thought that had been hers exclusively.

“Kelsey! Kelsey, what the hell is going on in there?!’ Jules’ voice rang from the hall, rough and panicked. Kelsey might be immune to the lash of a vampire’s power, but others were not. The entire room shook as nearly 300 pounds of terrified human hit the door with a crash that hurt the ears.

Miles’ head lifted. His eyes found hers and narrowed at whatever he saw there.

‘It’s… alright.” Her croaked whisper would never carry through the door. She forced her voice to clear and strengthen. “It’s alright, Jules! We’re almost done.”

There was silence, followed by an unconvinced snort and the sound of footsteps moving reluctantly down the hall. Though not very far from the sound.

Miles flung her away from him and straightened. Kels met the empty space where her chair had been and sank to the floor with trembling legs.

“We
are
done.” He gestured between them in obvious frustration. “I cannot do this.
Merde
. I thought I could, but…. Obviously I was wrong.” He looked down as she grasped the edge of the desk and got shakily to her feet. His nostrils flared.

“You’re bleeding.”

Kelsey looked down and saw several thin scratches beading scarlet just below her collarbone, where the splinters from the desk had caught her skin. Unthinkingly, she touched the blood, watching it stain her fingers as the sting began to register.

Miles grabbed the folder, his face an unreadable mask as he moved toward the door. “Bill me for the desk. It was a mistake to come here.”

“I’ll do it.” Kelsey’s voice was barely more than a thought, but Miles heard her.

He slowed, but didn’t turn. “No.”

The word had the sound of a shudder.

‘If you had any other options, Miles, you wouldn’t have come here. I
can
help you. And I will.” Her voice shook, but she knew she had to do this. She had to help him. Some things could never be made right. Kelsey knew that. But she also knew you had to try.

“I will probably kill you first.” There was no threat in his voice now, only a kind of dull certainty.

“Maybe I deserve it.”

He turned around and faster than thought was right in front of her. Her blood-stained hand was still half-raised in the air between them, and his gaze dropped to it, then back to her face. His pupils were blown wide, night almost swallowing that gorgeous summer blue. His fingers curled around her wrist again, lifting her hand to his face so he could breathe in the scent of her blood. For one second, Kelsey thought he would draw her fingers into his mouth and she trembled.

“Maybe,
Kels?”

Then he was gone.

But he'd left the folder on her desk.

‘Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.’ ~Ouida

Miles prowled the streets of Chicago like an exotic tiger trapped in an exhibit at a zoo. Craving a kill in the worst way.

Look at all the delicious people staring, if one of them moves just a little closer…. SNAP! 

Bloodlust pinked his vision and made strangers skitter past him in instinctive fear.

The control was there, though. It was always there. He’d never let it slip. There was no chance at all of him—of Miles Rousseau—going on a mindless killing spree. But the
desire
was there.
Mon dieu,
was it ever there! He hadn’t felt like this in centuries.

Or perhaps a decade?

Miles laughed bitterly. Yes, he supposed a decade was just about right.

Kelsey. Kelsey Daeger. What were the chances?

Of course, it wasn’t chance. Oh, he could tell himself it was. That his hand had been forced by the odd, gruesome murders. Especially when they had recently hit so close to home. Alain. His friend, his
très bon ami
.

How very angry Alain would be to know his death had brought Miles back to Kelsey. Alain had always been a bit of an ass where Kels was concerned, but in the end, his friend had been right.

Miles closed his eyes then and leaned against the wall of an alley, suddenly,
incredibly
weary of lying to himself.

Chance was not to blame. To pretend so only insulted Alain and himself.

He had known exactly how idiotic it was to contact her. To risk dredging this all back up. But it was necessary.
It was.

Who else could understand the stealth, the powers—the beguiling
skill
needed for a human to deceive a vampire?

After all, she had fooled the best.

She had fooled him. Ten years ago, Kelsey had blindsided him.

She was supposed to be an art student, an underpaid assistant to the man compiling a computer index of all the art in Miles’ home. His security had checked her out and truthfully, Miles hadn’t given her a thought. The idea of humans planting a spy in his home, even the psychotic dregs of humanity that were the Cleaners...

It hadn’t even crossed his mind. Such a thing would be suicidal in the extreme.

She was nothing. That was what he’d thought at first. Beautiful, to be sure.

But there were many beautiful women.

He'd first seen her in the hall outside his room. She had been standing hip-cocked in absurd black leather pants and an even more absurd white top emblazoned with the words ‘I’m Too Sexy For My Shirt.’
Americans
, he had thought at the time.

Spare me.

She was staring at the Degas a few steps from his bedroom door. Just staring, a tiny vertical line between the strong dark wings of her eyebrows. He glanced from her to the painting. It was of a nude redhead toweling her hair.

The title eluded him, but he’d always liked it. Miles cleared his throat. She didn’t jump, but simply turned her head, her dark hair curving into a bell framing her face as it hit her shoulder. Her eyes were stunning, the deep gold of wild honey accentuated by a thick fringe of inky lashes. He blinked.

So did she. Miles was well aware of his effect on women, particularly human women, whom he found absurdly weak.

She surprised him, though.

“Oh, you’re the Marquis.” Her voice was girlish and soft, but she didn’t seem the least bit nervous.

Or impressed. She turned back to the painting immediately.

Miles almost smiled, but caught himself as he started to walk past her. For some reason—a momentary curiosity that would change his whole life—he hesitated.

“Don’t you like it?”

The line between her eyebrows deepened. “I do.”

“Then why the frown?”

“If Degas could do
this
, why did he waste his time with ballerinas?”

Miles couldn’t help but smile at that. “I doubt there are many who would consider his ballerinas a waste.”

She huffed and gave him a side-long look out of those arresting eyes. “Do you own any of those pieces?”

“Ahh…,” Miles smiled wider and shook his head. “But that hardly means anything, I don’t own every worthwhile painting on the planet.”

“Sure—the Louvre had to keep a few.”

He was intrigued. Not unduly so, but enough to spend an hour walking the halls with her; watching her smile over Melendez’s pumpkins, squash and corn and her lips press together at Turner’s ragged storms. She loved art as he did, without regard to critique or style (though she was clearly on her way to becoming an expert on both) but purely by what moved her heart.

It took Miles a long time to admit to himself he had begun falling for her that first hour. Bit by bit. Kelsey had drawn him in so effortlessly, so unselfconsciously he still had trouble acknowledging it had been an act.

But it had been. A very deliberate one.

Finding out what she had been and who she worked for, it had undone him.

Miles had
tried
telling himself many times that was an exaggeration. That he was being melodramatic.

After all,
he
was certainly not one of those tragic heroes of ridiculous gothic vampire novels,
he
had not been aching with loneliness, pining away for companionship.

Far from it.

He had his work, which he loved, and many dear friends. Not to mention as many women as a man—immortal or otherwise—could want. A good life, a rich one, albeit with a powerful dark side he had resigned himself to quite long ago. He hadn’t needed anyone.

Until quite suddenly and terribly he
did
.

All the control he had built over the years; the reserve, the balance required to counteract the beast within....

Smashed. He’d put himself back together, but the fault lines were there. And they would never go away.

Miles despised such weakness in himself.

And how he hated her for putting it there.

He wished hating her meant he didn't desire her anymore, but no. That attraction, that magnetic pull he felt for her was as strong as ever. It had nearly brought him to his knees; being in that room with her, the feel of her skin beneath his hands, the smell of her...

He hadn’t known whether to blood her or take her right there on the floor under that damn Van Gogh.

Or both.

 
C’est des conneries!
He needed to kill something. Surely there was some place in Chicago where he could get a bite, but Miles knew there was only one thing that would satisfy this craving. One woman in the entire world.

He left the wall with a snarl and vanished into the city night.

Kelsey sighed as she stripped off her sweater and unzipped her skirt, slipping into her workout gear behind the locked door of her office. Along with a fuming Jules and an unflappable Sammy, Miles had long since departed, but she could still feel him in the air. That tingly champagne essence that was all Miles. That scent that she had followed like a damn bloodhound when she'd been ordered to by the Cleaners. Well, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Or rather, the
only
idea.

Miles was considered by many in power to be the strongest threat to humankind in existence.  Those in power are often stupid and paranoid. At twenty-two, Kelsey hadn't fully realized that.

Miles may have been a powerful vampire in an unprecedented position, he may have been giving sanctuary to persecuted vampires, lycans, morphs, weres and other shades in record numbers, but he was no threat to civilized society as she had been taught.

As she had been indoctrinated, trained and threatened into believing. Or at least pretending to believe. Because what choice had she had?

What choice had any of them had? The children abducted by the Cleaners had been raised with one mantra a constant…

As paras, you are humanity’s last hope of besting the monsters, the evil shades! These creatures have no souls, no shred of decency. They must be eradicated. You will stop them at any cost.

And if you refuse us, we will hurt you, and your families.

That last had never been said in so many words, but it had framed every piece of their existence with those bastards.

Kelsey leaned against the edge of her desk to pull on her sneakers, her hands trembling slightly. To her credit, she'd always suspected that mantra of being a blatant lie. Not that she'd ever believed most of their nonsense anyway.

Kelsey, with her psychic abilities, knew she had so much more in common with the cursed shades than ‘civilized’ society. When she'd decided to object to her mission in Paris—to try and get
out
once and for all—she'd not been shocked to find out how easily her superiors lumped her in with those whom she tracked. As usual, they'd threatened her life, her family…and when she still refused to carry out the kill order….

They'd simply betrayed her to Miles, assuming he would do their dirty work for them. What he did in the end was worse.

He left.

Without giving her a chance to explain or beg. His most trusted servant had carried her kicking and screaming to the gates and dropped her on the other side like a bag of trash to be hauled away.

Alain Baptiste had never cared for her, and his disdain had been palpable on that day, though he had spoken not a word after delivering the message that the master wished her to go—and never,
ever
return.

She had cried. She had
screamed
. Alain only walked away with that disdainful smile she'd loathed. Kelsey had wandered the streets of outer Paris in a haze of heartbreak and pain. The desolation so bad she'd wanted to die. But of course, she hadn't.

What she had done was drag herself back home. One step at a time. And too late.

Much too late.

Kelsey fought the urge to look at the photograph of her mother on her cracked desk and lost.

Bright and grinning, sitting on the wide, welcoming steps of the porch of their Indiana farmhouse on a sunny day when Kelsey had been allowed a rare visit, Angelina Daeger glowed with happiness. Her dark hair scattered over an open face that had always loved so easily and completely. Nevertheless, Kelsey was able to find accusation in those golden eyes so like her own. She sighed and turned away.

Kelsey had been deeply in love with Miles by the time the Cleaners betrayed her identity to him. The man who had been more myth to her than anything had indeed proven to be larger than life.

Yet so very real, too. She had watched him with the shades he protected; at the safe houses that granted haven and in his hospital,
Pour Les Autres,
o
n the wards that treated those who were untreatable by human hands.
He was so gentle with the sick and the persecuted, and utterly ruthless with those who wielded threats.

Miles had shown her Paris in a way that she could have never imagined, its dark side illuminated
to a beauty bone-deep and blood-red. Part of her mission was to get close to him, but the Cleaners hadn’t dreamed how close that would be. They had been delighted when he had seduced her and Kelsey had been rocked to her very core.

That night had been magic personified.

On a whim, he had taken her to an art gallery opening, for an artist that had been both trite and dazzling, then they had shared a fabulous dinner in the night air off the Canal St. Martin. Laughing and walking along the water after, the lights of the city glowing in the canal like liquid stained glass, before Miles had allowed his driver to bring them home.

The air had been heavy with the scent of cabbage roses as they had stepped through the wrought-iron gate to his home. Both of them still a bit drunk and silly, she had laughed out loud at something Miles said.

He had pushed her against the crimson door of his home and captured her laughing mouth with his own. Hot and needy, his hands pulling her into his body, trapping her between the lean muscular length of him and the cool wooden door. She hadn’t been able to think, to breathe….

Sometimes Kelsey felt like she hadn’t caught her breath since that night.

What had happened in Paris had
shattered
her. Falling in love with the man she had been ordered to kill. Trying to decide who to trust and how to protect those she loved—and knowing in the end no matter what she did the outcome would probably lead to murder.

Knowing that the man she loved would never forgive her for lying to him.

Trust isn’t just the most important thing we have, Kels, it’s the
only
thing. Without trust, nothing else matters.