Seduce (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series #3) (11 page)

“You tell her that. I am her mate and her sire, and I cannot convince her to keep away from him. I can guarantee that if you visit him tomorrow night, you will see the difference it makes. He is often much calmer and more in control the night after Lilah has sung him to sleep.”

Incredible. His brother was not only a beast but a baby too. The Devil, Antoine prayed he never succumbed to bloodlust. He didn’t want Sera singing him to sleep like a babe each morning just to have him sane the next night when he awoke.

Antoine paused.

How had she got under his skin so quickly? Hadn’t he decided to end this? Now he was thinking in terms of years down the line and he remembered all too well what had happened the last time he had started doing that.

Nothing but endless pain and misery.

A century of happiness gone in a heartbeat.

“Thank her for me,” Antoine said and Javier looked as though he had just kneed him in the groin. His brown eyes were wide and his eyebrows were pinned high up his forehead.

Antoine huffed and closed the door in his face. Even he said thank you when someone had done something worthy of it.

“Antoine?” Sera’s voice coming from his left rather than his right caused him to frown.

He turned and found her sitting on the edge of his bed, one bare leg bent at the knee and resting on the red silk covers, the ankle of it tucked under her other leg where it draped over the edge.

Temptation.

Which Sera was sitting before him now? She must have snuck across the room whilst he had been talking to Javier and seated herself on his bed, so when he finished and turned away from the door he would find her there, beautifully arranged and waiting for him.

Challenging him.

The vixen.

The flash of wickedness in her green eyes gave her away.

It seemed his vixen wasn’t going to heed any of his warnings. Stubborn minx. Had Elizabeth warned her about him too? He knew her sire well, and her sire knew him. There was no doubt in his mind that Elizabeth had recounted various reasons for her to snuff out her desire for him before it really got burning, but he found himself wanting to hear her admit it.

“You do not take warnings to heart, do you?” he said and she just shrugged and then leaned back on his bed, propping herself up on her hands. She drew her foot out from under her thigh, dangling both of her legs over the edge of the bed and swinging them back at forth at opposite times.

Antoine stalked around her, keeping his distance, observing her and battling the temptation to surrender to her once again.

“No doubt Elizabeth told you not to involve yourself with me?”

She nodded. “Not so much involve. She told me not to even try. Said you were... as frigid as a nun and as cold as ice.”

That one actually stung. Elizabeth had said that about him after everything he had done for her?

“Don’t be angry with her. She doesn’t seem to know you... the real you.” Sera swung her legs forwards and propelled herself onto her feet. She stalked across the room towards him, hips swaying and her eyes on his, like a true predator. When she reached him, she trailed her fingers down his chest, her touch heating him to boiling point even with his silver-grey shirt dampening the feel of it. Sera tiptoed and brought her mouth to his ear. She whispered into it, “I know you now... I won’t break, Antoine, and I won’t hurt you... not unless you ask nicely.”

Antoine growled. It rumbled up his throat, a possessive hungry snarl. He wanted to deny what she had said, wanted to tell her that she was wrong and she didn’t know him, and that he could so easily break her. He had seen the danger of the strength that flowed in his veins. Had witnessed it unleashed on those he loved.

And on himself.

The scars on his body burned, throbbing deeply, and he stepped backwards on instinct. Sera faltered, the confidence draining from her eyes. She thought he was distancing himself from her, that he was going to deny what she had said. He knew that he should.

He rubbed the scars on his chest through his shirt.

He couldn’t bring himself to do it though.

Sera had offered him comfort and he was too weak to deny his need for it, and for her.

“What dark secrets do you have in your heart?” Sera slipped her hand over his and curled her fingers around so they pressed into his palm, stopping him from rubbing his chest. She drew their joined hands away and frowned. He did too. He had been smearing his own blood across his shirt and he had been so lost in his pain and the dark secrets she spoke of that he hadn’t noticed. Sera sighed and pressed a kiss to the cuts on his palm. “You don’t have to tell me. Not if you don’t want to.”

“I loved her for a century.”

Sera went rigid, her lips frozen against his palm. It probably wasn’t something a woman wanted to hear about but she had to suspect that another had hurt him, so it couldn’t be unexpected. She should have been prepared to hear it. Maybe she had been, but she hadn’t anticipated the length of the relationship he’d had with the woman who had broken his heart.

“She was an aristocrat,” he said and Sera released his hand and turned her back on him.

“Oh.” It was a small sound, one laced with defeat.

Antoine couldn’t quite believe what he was going to say.

“I do not care that you are an elite, Sera.”

Her shoulders tensed beneath her blue t-shirt. If she didn’t believe him, she didn’t say it. She turned towards him and blinked very slowly, her gaze assessing him. Searching for the truth.

“I mean it. Javier and Callum, even my brother, would probably pass out if they heard me say it... but I mean it. I thought it mattered. My family had always lectured me about the elite and our bloodline, and how we had to maintain the purity of it. I believed them once. But what good did it do us?”

His voice cracked on that last handful of words. What good had it done them indeed?

If they had bred with humans and muddied their blood, they probably wouldn’t have awoken the dark hunger that lay dormant in all members of their species. Years of selective breeding, of mating with only other aristocrat families, had kept their blood pure but the price for such purity had been a weakness none of them could have predicted.

His and Snow’s generation were the first to experience bloodlust.

His family had paid dearly for their pride.

Very dearly.

Antoine slumped onto the bed and collapsed backwards onto the mattress, splaying his arms out across the cool crimson covers. He stared at the black canopy.

The bed depressed to his left and Sera’s hand slipped under his. She was gentle as she inspected it and it touched him that she was still concerned about cuts that were nothing more than grazes compared with the open wounds on his heart.

“Anya was her name. We met and fell in love at a ball. One night of madness followed by a century of...”

“You don’t have to go into details.” Sera’s grip on his hand tightened. He flinched as his cuts reopened. Evidently, it wasn’t wise to anger her by speaking of other women. She had asked to know his secrets. She would have to live with the truth of them.

“I loved her for a century and then three more.”

“You love her even though she left you?” She dropped his hand.

He had deserved that. It had sounded as though he had just confessed his undying love for another woman.

“She left me without a word. I spent years, one hundred of them, looking for her at every ball and social gathering. I haunted the places we had stayed or visited frequently.”

“Why did you stop searching for her if you love her so much?”

Antoine sighed and placed his hand on his chest. “Something happened that demanded my attention and deserved it more than a woman who had walked out on me.”

“Your brother’s bloodlust.”

If only it were that simple.

“Snow had been suffering on and off with his bloodlust for many centuries. The symptoms had been minimal, inconsequential, so we thought it would remain that way. Doctors said that with regular, higher, intake of blood he would be fine.” Antoine closed his eyes and cursed the name of those doctors for what felt like the millionth time. “I was so caught up in Anya that I just presumed Snow was doing well. I stopped checking on him and let him get on with his life. He never told me that the symptoms were getting worse and the attacks more frequent. I probably wouldn’t have listened even if he had.”

“You would have. It isn’t your fault that he kept it secret from you.”

“It is, Sera. I should have been there for him.” He was sure that if he had been there for Snow, had continued to speak to him about his bloodlust and ensure that he was doing well that he could have averted the disaster that had befallen them. He should have been there for his beloved brother and it haunted him, filled his mind with images of how different things might have been.

“You can’t spend your whole life focused on your brother’s needs and his needs alone. He has a sickness, a disease, and that isn’t your fault. You can’t blame yourself for what happened.”

“I didn’t blame myself. I blamed my parents. I cursed my family for breeding this illness into us both. I knew that eventually I would walk the same dark path as my brother trod, and that, like him, I would be too proud to admit that the demon was seizing more and more control over me each night.” Antoine sat up and dug his fingers through his brown hair. He stared into Sera’s green eyes, the deep colour of them soothing away his agitation and coaxing him into continuing. Speaking to her felt so easy, as though she had come into this world for the sole purpose of hearing his woes and easing his pain. “When Anya left me, Snow found me drinking half the blood in the cold store and stopped me. He confessed that by drinking more blood, he had only quickened the awakening of his bloodlust and strengthened the hold it had on him.”

“He wanted to save you from going through it too.”

Antoine nodded. “So I owe him, not just for the warning that has helped me keep the bloodlust at bay for far longer than he was able... but because of what came after.”

His throat closed, emotions squeezing it as memories bombarded him. He shut his eyes and frowned, struggling against them as they swept over him, crashing through his mind. Pain tore at his heart, until it felt as though it was going to kill him. He gritted his teeth and curled over. He couldn’t do this. He had been wrong. He still couldn’t talk about what had happened.

Sera frowned and cupped his cheek, her palm warm against his face. Her steady heart sounded in his ears, soothing and calming him, giving him something to focus on as he battled his pain. She stroked his face, fingers soft against him, tender, conveying her concern. Her other arm settled across his back, hand curling around his shoulder. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to the shoulder closest to her and he wished he could feel her lips on his flesh, not his shirt.

“What happened?” Her hand fell from his face to his chest. He slowly opened his eyes and looked across at her. She stared down at her hand on his chest, her heart beating wildly now, as though she could see through his bloodstained shirt to his scarred flesh and was piecing things together for herself. “Did it have something to do with what happened to you? Did someone hurt you and make Snow lose control?”

Antoine laughed scornfully. “No.”

He stood and paced across the room, needing the space.

“I was so busy looking for Anya that I didn’t see the warning signs. Snow had confessed the depth of what he was going through. He had confided in me and I should have dropped everything so I could help him. Instead I was chasing after a ghost.”

He reached out with his senses, across the corridor and into Snow’s room. His brother was peaceful, at rest, and the depth of it surprised him. There was something in Lilah’s lullabies after all.

“Snow had a bad night.”

“How bad?” That question was cautious, wary, and conveyed that Sera knew just how badly he meant but she needed to hear him say it.

There was no way she could imagine the carnage he had witnessed.

Antoine turned towards her, weak from the grip that memories of that night had on his heart and his mind.

“A waking nightmare.” Those two words fit the scenes playing out in his head so perfectly.

Sera reached out to him and he went to her, slipping his hand into hers and allowing her to lure him down to sit on the edge of the bed. She placed her arms around him and he didn’t shirk her, just soaked up the comfort she offered and wondered what heavenly being had placed her on this Earth and brought her into his life. It felt as though she had been made for him.

“I have never told anyone this. Not even Snow knows the full story... although I suspect he remembers more than he admits.”

She didn’t tense. She started a slow motion of her hand over his back, stroking and soothing, calming his pain so he could speak.

Why did it feel so right to confide all of this in her? He had held it inside him for so long now. Everyone knew he and Snow had no other family but no one had ever questioned why. No one but he and his brother knew what had happened that night at their family mansion.

“What you saw tonight... that is Snow on a good day.” He rested his head on her slender shoulder, seeking more comfort and warmth from her. He felt cold. He could still feel the icy blast of snow that had cut him to the bone that wintry night. He could still see the freshly fallen powder stained dark with blood. The place that had been such a core part of his life, full of happiness and security, love and warmth, had become a terrible vision of horror that had tainted his memories of his time there. Both his future and his past had been destroyed that night. “I came home late. It was barely a few hours before dawn. It was snowing heavily and the grounds seemed strangely quiet... the sort of quiet that sends the hairs on the back of your neck standing on their ends and triggers your senses to high alert.”

“God, Antoine... Snow didn’t—” She cut herself off, as though voicing her conclusion was too horrific, let alone hearing him confirm that it was right.

“There was no sign of the carnage from the front of the house but on entering it I found a bloodbath. My family, from my cousins’ children to my aunts and uncles, all savaged to the point where I could no longer recognise any of them. I had thought it was hunters, but the attack was too brutal. Werewolves crossed my mind next. I heard a noise outside, coming from the back of the house. Every room I passed through to reach it was... I do not think I need to say.” Antoine closed his eyes against the pain and focused on the soothing motion of Sera’s hand across his back. She was so warm and compassionate, taking away his hurt with her touch as though she was absorbing it into herself so he didn’t have to suffer. What strange magic had she worked on him to bring him to his knees so quickly? It was too late now to turn back. He would confess all, would confide these terrible things in her so she could witness the full brutality of his past and would know of what he too was capable. “I found Snow trampling through the roses, drenched in blood, dragging our mother’s corpse behind him. He was looking for something. I wasn’t sure what it was until he turned and spotted me. Then I knew with chilling certainty that he was seeking more blood.”