SeduceMe (7 page)

Jane said, “You simply don’t see what others see. Not just
when it comes to how they view you, but you don’t see what’s around you
either.”

“I—” She gave Jane a perplexed look, as though unsure of
Jane’s meaning. Or perhaps she got it and didn’t know how to respond. Drake
watched the exchange with great interest, no longer on high alert. He knew
where Jane was going with this and he suspected it just might be therapeutic
for both women.

“You voluntarily hide,” Jane said. “You chose to be alone,
with only a few select friends. You’re wonderful at expressing your feelings
with your written words and your music, but do you ever express yourself
verbally? Do you ever
say
what you’re feeling or
seek
what you
want or need?”

“It’s all very superficial,” Shana suddenly said, her voice
hard and flat—a direct contradiction to the pain that flashed in her eyes. “I
mean, all I ever wanted was to fit in. To look like the girls and the women I
was surrounded by. To not be different. And I know that’s selfish, because I
had a gift they wanted. But I would have gladly traded—”

She shook her head sharply and turned away, yanking her
hands from Jane’s loose grip in the process.

“I was blessed with a beautiful gift,” she continued as she
returned to the desk and picked up her handbag, clearly on her way out the door
again. “But it didn’t feel like a gift when I was forced to play six hours a
day and spend the rest of the time learning five different languages and
studying with tutors. I was whisked away from my home in Mexico when I was just
a child, and catapulted into European culture where I had no friends and there
was no one else…like me. Not even in Italy. I always seemed so out of place.”

She looked back at them and said, “There was never any
question, until I was of legal age, that I would play and I would tour. From
the moment I held a violin in my hands—when I was just four years old—my fate
was determined for me, by people who didn’t even know me. My parents willingly
turned me over to a world-renowned maestro and a nanny he hired to care for me,
and I rarely ever saw them after that. My entire existence revolved around
playing, traveling and being tutored. It was…horrifically lonely.”

Drake fought the urge to go to her and comfort her because
he could see the sheer agony in her eyes. He suspected Jane resisted as well.

Shana said, “I know it sounds like I’m ungrateful. I’m not.
I just…I never wanted any of it. I didn’t want to be famous. I wanted to be
normal and have a normal life. I didn’t want to sleep in bedrooms that were the
size of most people’s apartments. When I was old enough to no longer need a
constant chaperone, I was all alone in hotel suites that rivaled small
mansions. I didn’t want that isolation, but at the same time, I didn’t really
know how to make friends.”

She seemed to consider her next words before she admitted,
“Nor did I want to be the one girl fashion designers looked at—after designing
gowns for all the other females in the orchestra—and murmured, ‘what am I going
to do with her’? I was five-foot-ten at the age of sixteen. Can you imagine how
monstrous I felt?”

Jane stared at her for several quiet moments before she
turned away. “Sure I can.”

She passed Drake and sat on the sofa, clasping her hands in
her lap.

Drake was the only one to see the pain on Jane’s usually
composed face. It caught him off guard, doubling the angst he felt. Shana’s
admission was a disconcerting one unto itself. Jane’s repressed agony was
equally troubling.

He said, “You two are so similar.” And that’s when he
understood the full impact of what Jane had seen or felt when she’d searched
Shana’s soul.

Surprisingly, Shana deposited her purse once again and
joined Jane on the sofa. “I’m sorry,” she said as she covered one of Jane’s
hands with her own. “I didn’t realize… I mean, it didn’t occur to me. You can’t
live a normal life either.”

“I did once,” Jane told her. “For twenty-six years. I liked
being human, but I chose to become a vampire for…someone.”

“Drake?”

Jane let out a soft laugh. “No. We only met a few decades
ago. I became a vampire not quite fifty years ago. A lover from Dublin, who was
the most brilliant man I’d met—at that point of my life anyway.” She shot an
appreciative look toward Drake before she continued her story. “We had a
beautiful affair and when I found out he was a vampire, I wanted to live the
rest of eternity with him. He felt the same. It was perfect.”

Shana’s brows knitted together. “Then what happened?”

“He was murdered. Stake through the heart. It truly does
work.”

“Oh.”

Shana looked over at Drake. He said, “I didn’t know. It’s
not something she’s shared with me before.”

“It’s rather bizarre,” Jane added, “but I never realized
until tonight, when we met you downstairs, how much I miss being human. Not so
much for the sake of being human, mind you. But…the warmth of it. The actual
physical warmth.” She twined her pale-skinned fingers with Shana’s darker ones
and lifted their hands to her chest, pressing them between the valley of her
small breasts. With a genuine smile, she said, “There’s comfort in the human
touch, along with a vibrancy I’d long since forgotten. It’s…electrifying.”

Chapter Five

Pleasure and pain walked hand in hand, no matter who you
were. No existence, be it mortal or immortal, natural or supernatural, could
escape the latter and revel purely in the former.

Shana could see that as clear as day as she gazed into
Jane’s eyes and saw the torment she suffered from being “different” from humans
and missing their warmth.

But more than that, she saw the relief of acceptance, which
Shana easily recognized. It was something she’d sought her entire life, after
all. She also saw the flicker of desire for that one thing Jane didn’t have
access to—the human touch.

Again, Shana could not only easily recognize this…she could
empathize with it.

“Your lover was human when you were first with him, wasn’t
he?” she asked Jane.

“Yes. For several weeks. And then he went away for a while
and when he came back…” She shrugged her shoulders. “I knew something was
different about him, though I didn’t understand it. Yet we were still so in
love that when he finally told me the truth, I wasn’t repulsed. I didn’t run
away. I wasn’t scared.”

“Because you knew he wouldn’t hurt you.”

She nodded. “I could see it wasn’t easy for him. He had to
fight the natural compulsion to drink my blood. But somehow he overcame that
tendency by allowing other feelings and desires to overpower his bloodlust.”

Jane let out a long breath of air, as though she were
expelling demons long imprisoned inside her. “I loved him with all my heart,
please don’t get me wrong. I loved him so much that I begged him to make me a
vampire, so that we’d never be apart. But I always missed his warmth. That
special touch of a human that no vampire can replicate.”

Shana shook her head. “You’re wrong. I mean, not so much
wrong, but…” She tried to find the words to explain how electrifying a vampire
touch could truly be. “Drake has strength in his hands and virility that’s
thrilling. And you,” she said to Jane, “you have a quiet strength. You look so
delicate, but you’re powerful and that’s magnetic.”

Jane stared at her for several moments before saying,
“You’re turning all of this upside down.”

“Jane.”

Drake’s deep voice made Shana’s gaze shift to him. “What am
I turning upside down?”

“She sensed something about you that, quite clearly, resonates
within her,” he said. “Something similar you both share, although I don’t think
she knew it at first. She wanted to help you. But she can’t do that until she
admits she needs help too.”

Shana stared curiously at him. “You mean she has to accept her
need for a human’s touch?”

“After fifty years of being a vampire,” he said, “yes.”

“Oh.” Shana understood intuitively, though it was
realistically
not
understandable, why she’d felt a significant and
meaningful connection with Jane earlier. It was an indescribable yet palpable
bond.

Jane tried to pull her hand away, as though she felt
inferior now that her vulnerability had been exposed. But Shana knew all about
vulnerabilities and she held fast to Jane’s hand, keeping their entwined
fingers pressed to Jane’s chest.

“It’s not a weakness,” Shana told her, “to need something
beyond your grasp.”

“Really?” Drake countered.

Shana bristled, because she had a feeling he’d gotten a good
glimpse of her vulnerabilities when she’d turned tail and almost run after encountering
a sexual display she’d never imagined. One she’d never fathomed in her
sheltered existence. One that had made her think of a lot of possibilities
she’d never considered because she was too self-conscious to put herself in any
position that would expose her physical flaws.

Still staring at Jane, she said, “You could have taken a
bite out of me at any point. You didn’t. And clearly you don’t want to. You can
control it. So what makes you think you can’t have regular human contact?”

“I’d never forgive myself if I slipped,” Jane said. “It’s as
simple as that.”

Finally, Shana’s eyes lifted and she pinned Drake with a
pointed look, surprising herself. “And what do you fear?”

“That someone I want to believe in me can’t, because it’s
not…natural.”

In an instant, her rebuff of vampires flashed in her mind.
She said, “Please forgive me. It’s not a common thing, encountering a vampire.
It’s not like meeting a lawyer or a doctor, you know? Well, maybe it’s a little
like meeting a lawyer.”

He actually grinned at her. It seemed to take him by
surprise, but the corner of his mouth lifted in a half-assed way that told her
he found her amusing.

Heat seeped through every inch of her, especially along her
inner thighs. The coolness of Jane’s fingers, tangled with hers as their palms
pressed together, was a welcome relief to the fiery sensations consuming her,
particularly the sudden, unfamiliar feeling of something akin to flickering
flames against her clit.

Her reaction to Drake, however, did not overshadow the
connection she felt with Jane. She turned back to the blonde vampire. “You said
we’ve not met before. Is that true?”

Jane’s gaze flitted to Drake, a somewhat quiet observer of
their exchange, though Shana could see in his dark eyes that he was not having
an easy time staying put over there in his chair while Shana and Jane sat so
closely together. Also, she could see there were things he wanted to say,
perhaps more admissions he wanted to make. She read him well, with the hard set
of his jaw and the rigidity of his posture.

He watched them intently, silently, but there were questions
he wanted to ask and reconciliations he needed to make. She could practically
see right through him all of a sudden. As though discovering his true identity
had somehow unlocked a door to who the man really was—and he didn’t refrain
from inviting her inside.

But he gave Jane the floor, sitting back and listening more
than participating.

In a soft voice, Jane said, “I have a gift that’s not
necessarily a welcomed one either. I connect with other’s souls. I can feel
what’s inside them. What elates them. What troubles them. Sometimes
it’s…painful.” Her pale green eyes locked with Shana’s, making her point quite
clear.

“I’m sorry.” Humiliation instantly welled within her.

How utterly embarrassing for someone else to know her
internal misery. It stemmed from so many different avenues, like never having
the opportunity to embrace her own heritage or make her own decisions. She’d
gone along with the tutelage because she’d loved to play before it had all
turned so serious and the demands on her had escalated. When she’d reached the
point where she was old enough and meticulously trained, she’d joined the
orchestra. She’d understood the money she made helped her parents back in
Mexico, who’d had several more children after she’d left, all of whom Shana had
never met.

She hadn’t had a connection with her family, nor had she
ever had a friend before Yvette. And she’d certainly never taken a lover…had
never even been kissed before. She longed for intimate human contact as much as
Jane did, but couldn’t overcome her self-doubt to allow it to happen, the way
Jane couldn’t overcome her fear of breaking her cardinal rule and hurting
someone.

Jane had seen
all
of that?

Mortification gripped her.

“I don’t mean to thrust my personal woes on anyone else.”
She started to pull away, but this time it was Jane who kept their hands
clasped.

“No, it’s not like that,” she said. “It’s painful, yes. I
can feel what
you
feel, deep down. Yet…there’s also relief in hearing
you say why you’ve suffered. You’ve always felt out of place and that explains
why you hurt inside. Why you feel so alone. Why you doubt yourself.”

Shana considered this for a moment as Drake leaned forward,
pulling all the pieces together right along with Shana.

She said to Jane, “You relate to it. You relate to me.”

“I feel a bond with you, yes. I desperately wanted to meet
you once it happened.”

Shana couldn’t deny she felt the same.

She glanced over at Drake, finding it interesting how he
seemed to mentally catalog everything about her as he studied her. Her
mannerisms, her features, her words. He seemed to absorb it all, missing
nothing.

Begging the question, “Why did
you
want to meet me?”

Again, his grin was a slow, sexy one. It cut some of the
tension in the room and melted his edgy appearance. “As you’ve already
discovered for yourself, Jane is impossible to say no to. It was her idea to
invite you backstage. I was hesitant because, quite frankly, I wasn’t sure I
could resist you.”