Seduce (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series #3) (2 page)

“Antoine,” Elizabeth called and he paused and swung back to face her.

Sera’s heart almost stopped when his deep crimson gaze briefly flickered to her before returning to her sire.

Her nerves rose as he strolled up the incline to meet Elizabeth and Sera slowed, the gap between her and Elizabeth growing larger by the second. What was she doing? It had taken months for her to convince her sire to do this for her and now that she had finally agreed, her nerve was going to fail? She wanted this man’s eyes on her, wanted to be alone with him, and the only way to get what she wanted was to get a job at the theatre.

If she made it past the interview, then Antoine would have to meet with her. Elizabeth had said that he spoke with each new performer to ensure they were suitable for the theatre. Sera just had to get the interview out of the way and then she would have the chance she wanted. Once they were alone in his office, she would take a shot at convincing Antoine that she was the woman for him. Whatever the outcome of that meeting was, she would quit her role as a performer. She didn’t intend to perform at the theatre. Hell, no. She didn’t have the right sort of personality for that. She wanted to blush whenever she chanced a glance at the black and red stage set and saw what the couples on it were doing. If it weren’t for Antoine’s presence in the theatre and her sire’s insistence that they have a little fun, she would never come to such a place.

“Callum,” a deep male voice called out, sharp with authority, and Sera stopped dead. Sweet mercy, Antoine had a voice that could tame even the wildest of angels. That voice was a drug. It went straight into her heart and raced through her veins, the effect sweeter than any amount of blood.

Sera turned towards her sire and Antoine, only to see that he was walking away, leaving her sire with another dark-haired man. He was handsome, full of smiles as he spoke to Elizabeth, far warmer and more amiable than Antoine was but nowhere near as alluring. Elizabeth signalled her to join them and she did, moving past the vampires now spilling out of the stalls and watching Antoine leave at the same time. She’d had a chance to meet him and she had blown it. If she had only kept up with her sire, she would have been close to him, maybe would have caught his attention this time and had his eyes on her at last.

“Is this her?” the vampire called Callum said and ran a glance over her. Sera kept still, feeling as though she was for sale as he moved around her, his eyes on her body, inspecting and scrutinising every inch. He came back to stand before her and looked at Elizabeth. “The summer season will end soon so we’ll have time to train her before the winter one begins but we need someone with natural talent. Does she have what it takes?”

Sera opened her mouth to speak but Elizabeth beat her to it.

“Absolutely. She’s my child, Cal. It’s all in the blood.” Elizabeth smiled broadly at him, red lips curving perfectly. Her deep brown eyes shone with warmth and she swept her dark red hair over her shoulders, exposing their bare curves. “You know I am one of your best ever performers.”

Callum nodded and the longer lengths of his cropped black hair fell down over one emerald green eye. He frowned and raked it back, and then ran a hand around the nape of his neck, drawing Sera’s eyes to a set of dark marks on it. A bite mark. It looked deep and fresh too, no more than a night or two old. Did he have a lover?

He looked at her again and Sera’s gaze leapt to his. She swallowed the desire to confess that her sire was lying and she had no natural talent for the sort of thing that he was talking about. She smiled instead, trying to look every bit as seductive as her sire. Elizabeth had been Vampirerotique’s star female performer until she had decided to quit her job and return to her family instead. They had met shortly after that, and Elizabeth had turned her into a vampire. That was thirty years ago now. It had taken Sera most of those years to become accustomed to life as a vampire.

“Come by tomorrow night when we’re closed,” Callum said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Thank you,” Sera said and he smiled at her, nodded, and then disappeared into the crowd.

Their excited chatter filled the theatre, the people passing her by discussing the show and the finale. Other elite vampires were still in their seats, enjoying the lingering scent of blood and sharing an intimate moment of their own with their partners. Sometimes the kissing that happened post-performance in the stalls was more erotic than what occurred on stage. Sera dragged her gaze away from one couple near the front who were going at it with wild abandon. They looked as though they wouldn’t make it out of the theatre before they succumbed to their desire and took things a step further.

She glanced out of the corner of her eye at Elizabeth. “Does Callum have a lover?”

“I thought you had set your sights on Antoine?” Elizabeth laughed when she blushed and then her expression darkened. “A wife... and I’ve heard rumours that she’s a werewolf.”

A werewolf? Sera had expected the owners of an erotic theatre to be quite liberal and wild, but marrying a werewolf? She definitely hadn’t expected that one.

“You’re serious?” She never could tell with her sire. The woman enjoyed a joke more than was natural. Sera supposed that you needed to have an easygoing attitude when you chose to spend fifty years participating in an on-stage orgy with people you hardly knew.

Her stomach turned.

Thank the Devil she wouldn’t have to do such a thing to get her chance to speak with Antoine. Just an interview that she would ace thanks to her sire’s tuition and then she would be in his office, alone with him. Just the thought stirred heat in her veins. Since her sire had agreed to help her, she had spent every night trying to figure out how to win Antoine. It wasn’t going to be easy. She knew that much. She’d had lovers in her human life and even in her vampire one, but she had never pursued a man before, not as she intended to with Antoine.

Elizabeth had laughed when she had confessed that and had told her that she should probably start with easier prey and work her way up to someone like Antoine. That gave her the feeling that she was going to fail. What sort of woman would he desire? He ran an erotic theatre and watched the beautiful women performing on his stage without the barest hint of desire in his expression. If they couldn’t arouse him, what hope did she have?

Maybe he wasn’t interested in women who worked at his theatre. If that was the case, was she only shooting down what slim chance she had with him by interviewing for a position as a performer?

“I need a drink, and you look as though you could use one too.” Elizabeth grasped her wrist and tugged her towards the exit at the back of the theatre. “Come along, my pupil. You have a lot to learn before tomorrow night if you’re going to have a snowball’s chance in Hell of impressing that man.”

Sera trudged along behind her sire, weaving through the lingering crowd. Elizabeth’s warnings rang in her ears, one louder than the rest. She glanced up at the three storeys of elegant boxes that lined the theatre. The gold on the carvings decorating the curved cream low walls that edged the private boxes reflected the warm lights that illuminated the heavy red velvet curtain now closed across the stage. Matching curtains hung at the back of the boxes, some of them open now that the performance had ended. Many of the boxes were empty but beautifully dressed ladies and gentlemen still occupied the others.

She spotted Antoine amongst a group in one of the boxes on the first tier. He was smiling. She had never seen him smile. It looked forced to her. Hollow. Even among his own kind, he was still distant, his eyes devoid of emotion as he put on a grand performance of his own.

Sera wasn’t going to overcome the challenge of winning Antoine’s heart just by meeting the man.

First, she had to break through a barrier that was beginning to look impenetrable.

He was an aristocrat, and an old one at that. Although he looked barely a day over thirty-five, he was in fact over a thousand years old. His brother, Snow, was almost twice his age.

Sera was an elite.

To an aristocrat, she was some sort of filth they scraped off their shoes and nothing made that clearer than the theatres. The aristocrats sat in their boxes, looking down on the elite gathered in the stalls, separated and distant from those they saw as commoners and mongrels.

That disdain for her kind was the reason why Antoine looked so glacial whenever he had to greet the more important members of the elite, and why he had failed to hear her when she had tried to speak with him. He wanted nothing to do with the elite vampires outside the small circle that were part of the theatre. He would certainly want nothing to do with her. Not only was she an elite, but she was a turned human. She was the bottom rung of the social ladder and he was the top. The elite that he deemed worthy of a moment of his time, that he greeted with gritted teeth in order to maintain good relations with her kind, were all born as vampires into families that had turned humans within their ranks. None of them were turned humans themselves.

Even Elizabeth was born of a vampire father and turned mother.

If Sera wanted to shatter Antoine’s armour, she would have to convince him to see beyond the fact that she was a turned human.

Elizabeth had taught her a few things, weapons that she hadn’t held in her arsenal before, but she wasn’t sure if she was brave enough to risk using them on Antoine.

Could she do what Elizabeth had said it would take to shatter his defences?

Could she really seduce such a powerful man?

Sera curled her fingers into tight fists and stared at him. He paused in the middle of saying something to the aristocrat vampires in the box with him, slowly turned towards her and then lowered his eyes. They locked on her. He had felt her watching him. Her heart beat harder, thumping against her chest as her blood heated, but she held his gaze across the theatre stalls, refusing to back down.

The next time she saw him, she would be alone with him.

And she would seduce him.

S
era paced in front of the black stage in the empty theatre. She had arrived a full thirty minutes early for her appointment. An appointment she hadn’t realised she’d had. Callum hadn’t specified a time for her interview. He had just said to come by whenever as the theatre was closed. So she had.

The woman who had shown her into the theatre had been very kind. One of the staff based on her short black dress that revealed far too much leg and bosom. Sera reminded herself that she couldn’t really judge the woman by the clothes she wore. After all, it was her uniform and Sera herself was trying out for a position as some sort of on-stage whore. What on Earth must the woman have thought of her? Perhaps Sera should have asked to interview for a position as one of the staff. Cleaning seemed infinitely more appealing, and possible for her, than being a performer in the shows. Antoine still would have met with her so they could sign her employment contracts. Was it too late to change her mind?

She continued her pacing, her eyes roaming over the deep red velvet curtain that closed off most of the stage, leaving only a strip of painted black boards around three metres deep exposed, and twirled her long blonde hair around her fingers. It was so quiet in the theatre that even her breathing sounded loud in her ears. How much longer did she have to wait?

And why were they interviewing her in the theatre itself?

Elizabeth had said they would take her to one of the meeting rooms or the offices to interview her. That was what she had gone through to get her position at the theatre decades ago. Sera shook her hands at her sides and blew out a sigh, trying to expel her nerves. Maybe the offices weren’t vacant tonight or they wanted to give her a tour before the interview began. That seemed plausible.

One of the sets of double doors at the back opened and a bright beam of light cut down the length of the dimly lit theatre to her. She shielded her sensitive eyes with her hand and squinted so she could make out if someone was there.

Her heart stopped.

The doors closed.

Antoine strode down the aisle, long legs carrying him easily at a brisk pace, as handsome as ever in his silver-grey tailored shirt that emphasised his build and clung just right to his muscles, hinting at how delicious his body would look if he were naked and stirring her imagination into a frenzy. His black tie, crisp black trousers and polished leather shoes perfected his image of a businessman but made him look decadent and alluring at the same time.

Behind him walked the immense male vampire that she knew from the performances. Victor. His normally thick dark hair was gone, shaved to his scalp to reveal thin scar lines in places, giving him a menacing air as he followed Antoine, dressed in a tight black t-shirt and jeans.

Were they just passing through?

Her heart started again at a pace.

Please, God, say they were just passing through.

Antoine shoved his fingers through his deep brown hair, the action screaming of irritation as much as his scent on her senses. He was annoyed about something. Was he angry with Victor for some reason?

Sera moved aside, keeping her back to the stage so they could easily pass her and go about their business. She tried to keep her eyes downcast but they refused to do as she ordered and snuck to Antoine, meeting his icy gaze. The warm lights from the stage lit his face, chasing the shadows away, and she had her first real glimpse of him. He was so handsome regardless of the darkness he emanated and the coldness in his eyes. He looked like an aristocrat, princely with his straight nose, defined jaw and perfect bone structure. Did he resemble his brother, Snow? She couldn’t imagine the devastating effect the two together would have on the female aristocrats at social gatherings.

Her heart did a flip in her chest.

Antoine alone had a devastating effect on her. She could be strong, had taken to life as a vampire with surprising ease according to her sire, and had a flair for luring male prey that she still couldn’t quite believe. She wanted to be that confident, sexy, attractive woman around this man, but whenever she set eyes on him, her heart trembled like a timid thing in her throat, her palms turned clammy, and she wanted to bolt. It was only the deep pounding need he stirred in her, the intense inferno of arousal that flooded her veins like liquid fire whenever she was near him, that kept her feet in place. She wanted this man.