Rogue
Midnight Playground: International Series
Eden Bradley
Rogue
Copyright 2013 Eden Bradley
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Chapter One
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Madrid, 2069
He prowled like a shadow around the perimeter of the compound that had once been Retiro Park. He
was used to being a shadow. Invisible. Without a name other than the one he had given himself after his
Turning. Rogue.
Rebel.
Vampire.
Vampire—yes. But he didn’t subscribe to their ways. Their rules. Except for the edict to never take an
unwilling victim.
Only once…
No. Don’t think of it. Don’t remember.
But the images came flooding into his mind like a movie he couldn’t turn away from, burned into a
hundred years of memory.
Her hair like red silk in his hands, and he so newly reborn he couldn’t yet read through his enhanced
senses to smell the drugs in her blood. All he’d smelled was blood. All he’d tasted was his driving need
and the flavor of life in his mouth.
She was beautiful, like a flame in the foggy London night. A lovely face. He’d been as drawn to that as
much as he was by the heady scent of human flesh. He hadn’t noticed until it was over that her skin held
the sick pall of an addict—a morphie they called them now, although he had some vague memory that they
were once called junkies. He hadn’t noticed until the breath was gone from her body that her red hair was
matted, the skin on her arms torn where she’d scratched at it. He hadn’t seen any of it until the girl was
dead in his arms, her blood still tangy and warm on his tongue.
He’d waited for days afterward in a dank, abandoned apartment building in King’s Cross, consumed
by the thirst but unable to believe that he wanted to drink human blood. He’d fought it. But there had been
nothing to hold him back. No one to teach him. His attack on the red-headed girl had been savage,
inexcusably vicious and cruel. Neither one of them had understood what was happening. And in taking her
blood he had read her—even through the haze of blood lust—and everything he’d seen had been fear and
pain and grief.
Awful.
It was only later, when he was nearly dying of the thirst, that some wandering group of vampires had
come upon him trying to hunt in the alleys of London and had shown him how to feed properly.
He shook his head, tried to shake the memories away. Focused once more on the night around him, the
pungent scent of blood discernible from behind the high wall. The tops of the cypress trees making a stark
black silhouette against the sky. The moon hanging above like a lantern against the sheet of stars.
The blood.
Deer blood—one of them injured.
He’d heard the vampires who ran Madrid’s Midnight Playground club, housed here in the Park in the
enormous greenhouse-like structure that was called the Palacio de Crista–the Crystal Palace—kept a herd
of deer on the grounds. That their immortal guests were invited to hunt them down and drink their blood
for sport.
He was not invited. But he would hunt tonight.
He attuned his hearing, searching for any sign of activity behind the wall. He heard only the crickets
chirping, the occasional snap of a twig as some creature walked among the trees. No humans. No
vampires that he could detect. Of course, a being who was older than his mere single century could mask
themselves from him. But that was part of the game, wasn’t it? As a vampire he could walk through the
front doors of any of Europe’s Midnight Playground clubs, which were there to serve the needs and
desires of the world’s vampires, whether to satisfy their thirst for blood or for sex. But he was too used to
being a loner. He gloried in it now.
He laid a hand on the towering concrete wall, felt the lingering warmth of the day against his palm, his
fingertips picking up every tiny crevice in its surface. He closed his eyes and listened.
Being at the furthest point from the Palace itself, he could hear voices only if he concentrated very
closely. But it was the park that interested him. It appeared to be clear.
He took a few steps back, gathered himself and sprung to the top of the wall. He knelt there, paused,
searching the grass and the trees, looking for the scent that had drawn him.
They were maybe a hundred yards in, hidden among the trees. He wouldn’t go for the injured animal—
that would be far too easy. But the rest… His hands itched to feel their downy pelts. His legs itched for
the chase. His entire being itched to feel their innocent struggle beneath his hands.
He drew in a breath, and leapt.
He was running before they caught his scent—he could sense their wariness. He made it to the stand of
trees and ducked in. As he moved closer he could feel them, hear the beating of their hearts. Maybe two
dozen of them. It would be a fine chase.
He slowed when he saw the herd between the trees, their ears twitching. When they bolted he dashed
after them.
The run itself was glorious. The hunt would be even sweeter for it. His legs pumping effortlessly, he
darted between the trunks of the giant cypress—and fell like a stone as he was captured.
Arms clamped around his body, pinning his arms to his sides, pinning him to the ground.
He inhaled. Vampire. Like ancient stone and earth. Impossibly strong.
He struggled, but it was useless. He kept at it, anyway.
“Quiet down now,” came the voice in English with a distinct British accent. “You know damn well
you’re not going anywhere.”
He was pulled to his feet by the old vampire, a male of pale, ethereal beauty. If they’d been human he
would have easily taken this man down, but they were no longer men, either of them. Another vampire
was with him, a female with long black hair in a braid down her back. Lovely, of course, as they all were.
“What’s your name, little beauty?” he asked her, giving her a wink.
The male holding him wrapped a fist in his long hair and yanked hard. “Being caught poaching on the
Midnight Playground lands without invitation is nothing to scoff at, rogue. There will be consequences.”
He gave another sharp yank. “You’d do well to mind your manners.”
“I’d do even better to fuck her. Or you.”
The female laughed. “Ramsey is going to love this one,” she said in a soft Castilian accent.
“There is nothing funny about this, Adriana,” the male muttered, “Or about this young scoundrel and his
poorly used wit.”
She reached out to stroke Rogue’s chin, and he caught her dark, long-lashed gaze with his, making her
smile. “He is pretty, though, isn’t he Julian? Like some tender teenager.”
“I don’t find him so,” Julian growled. “Come along now. We’re taking him to Ramsey.”
They marched him off through the woods, and he was more distraught about having his hunt ruined than
he was about any repercussions. He was frankly furious that his fun had been interrupted.
The Palace itself came into view, and it was everything it was reputed to be—an exquisite structure of
glass and wrought iron in the Romanesque style, with vaulting, arched roofs and glass-paned wings, built
in the 1880’s as a greenhouse to nurture exotic plants, he’d heard. It was lit with amber lights, making it
appear as if a flame burned within. He supposed it did—the flame of the vampire’s hunger. The burning
heat of desire—both vampire and human.
They drew closer and moved up the marble steps to a pair of iron doors. The sigil of the Midnight
Playground clubs, a pair of dragon’s heads with long, snaking tongues, stood in detailed relief on each
one. A pair of human guards—both nearly seven feet tall with shaved heads and dressed in black leather
—stood on either side.
“Where do you get your bogymen?” he asked.
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” the male vampire scolded. “Don’t think for a moment Ramsey will put up with
it.”
“I don’t assume anyone will put up with it. I’m compelled nonetheless.”
The older vampire squeezed his shoulder painfully, but it only made Rogue smile.
The doors were opened and they went inside. They passed through a short hallway and into a sort of
ballroom. The scent of human blood was everywhere. He saw right away that the rumors were true—the
humans allowed into the clubs were the most beautiful to be found anywhere, both male and female.
Shining eyes, flawless complexions. They mingled with the vampires as if it were a perfectly normal thing
to do. Except that he heard their pulses racing, felt the heat of their wanting. He was starving and they’d
brought him to a fucking feast. Except it was obvious he would get none of it.
“Is this the first time you’ve been in one of our clubs?” the Spanish beauty at his side asked softly.
“Your surprise gives you away, though you shouldn’t find it so strange. You can smell how they desire us
—we vampires are beyond enticing to them. It is why they come here, why they volunteer their blood to
the Seeking Kiss. Why so many yearn for the eternal gift that is the Turning Kiss.”
“It’s no gift,” Rogue muttered.
She chuckled, a low purr in her throat. “Ah, you are one of those—the bitter ones. Why is it I find that
so charming?”
He let out a sharp laugh. “The darker the bitterness, the sweeter the blood, little beauty. Or is that how
the quote goes? But damn right I’m bitter.”
They’d reached the back of the ballroom and he was ushered through a smaller version of the
enormous iron doors outside and into some sort of luxuriously furnished, dimly lit office.
The surly Julian shoved him roughly to his knees on the white marble floor. “You will kneel for
Ramsey.”
Rogue turned to glare at him but a new voice distracted him.
“No need to be so harsh, Julian.”
Unable to place the accent which was somewhere between Spanish and French with some other
element mixed in, he peered into the shadows before him.
A man—a vampire—seemed to materialize out of the darkness as if he were a ghost. That silent. That
utterly graceful.
He was the most gorgeous creature Rogue had ever seen.
Still on his knees, held in place by Julian’s ruthless grip on his neck, he couldn’t move for several
moments. Couldn’t breathe. Something inside him knew he would go down on his knees voluntarily for
this one whose aura of power he sensed like the heaviness of a coming storm.
Time disappeared as he studied skin the color of polished caramel, dark dreadlocks that fell in narrow
twists of satiny black around his broad shoulders. But it was this vampire’s eyes that pierced him down to
his bones, a brilliant mossy green as sharp and pure as glass.
His cock pulsed. He felt like hunting again.
The exquisite vampire nodded his beautifully molded chin, command in every gesture. “Julian, release
him.”
“Yes, Ramsey.”
The male vampire eased his grip with obvious reluctance before letting go. Rogue was only marginally
aware of him and the lovely female—this Ramsey took up all of his focus.
Those green eyes were watching him carefully beneath dark, perfectly arching brows.
“Why do you break into the Midnight Playground?” he demanded. “When you could have come in
through the front doors at any time and been treated like a king?”
“Because he is a rogue with no manners,” Julian ground out, “as these poor excuses for our kind
always are.”
Ramsey raised a hand and Rogue felt the other vampire step back.
“I think it is because he knows no better,” the female said quietly.
“Perhaps you are right, Adriana,” Ramsey said.
“Oh, I knew better,” he couldn’t prevent himself from saying. “I always know better. Wouldn’t be half
the fun if I didn’t.”
Ramsey smiled, his sharp eyeteeth glinting in the light of the moon and the stars coming through the
endless windows. “I will question him myself. You may leave us.”
“Ramsey…” Julian started.
He kept his gaze on Rogue’s. “Do you think I can’t handle him?”
“Of course not.”
“Then I trust you will close the doors behind you.”
Julian seemed to pause, then Rogue heard his retreating footsteps along with Adriana’s.
Ramsey extended a hand. His fingers were long and graceful—the hands of a musician.
“You may rise.”
Rogue got to his feet, intrigued. Wary. If this vampire were toying with him, if he planned to kill him, it
could easily be done. Rogue sensed his age, and although he was perhaps a few hundred years old, he
wasn’t one of the ancient ones. Still, he could crush Rogue easily enough. Yet all he could think of was
pressing his lips to Ramsey’s. Pressing his own hardening cock between them.
Yes.
Ramsey narrowed his eyes. “Tell me your name, rogue.”
“You already seem to know it. It is Rogue.”
Ramsey frowned, and even his frown was beautiful beyond belief. He reached out and laced one hand
behind Rogue’s neck, squeezing until his grip drew a gasp.
“Do not make a joke of this. Tell me your name.”
“I did,” Rogue said again from between clenched teeth, the anger that was his habit suffusing him.
“If you think to distract me with this ridiculous—”
“My name is Rogue, damn it. I have no other. I have never known any other. If I did I don’t…
remember.”
He had never said those words aloud. Something twisted in his chest—something he’d been trying to
ignore for a hundred years.
Ramsey released him, dropped his hand to his side. “Tell me what you mean.”
Why did he feel as if he wanted to tell this beautiful vampire? Needed to. It was more than his beauty.
More than the air of authority he wore like a fine coat of armor, steely yet enticing.
Rogue shrugged, trying to disguise his need, his acquiescence. “Only that I have no memory of my life
before I was Turned. No memory of having a name to call my own.”
“None? Do you not know who you were? Where you came from?”
He shook his head. “I know nothing. My first memories are only of the thirst.”
“But how did you learn to feed?” the older vampire demanded.
Rogue clenched his jaw. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t escape Ramsey’s piercing gaze. He
had to swallow the taste of death beneath his tongue, the lock of red hair slipping across the edge of his
vision.
“I didn’t, at first,” was all he could say. All he would say.
Ramsey stared at him for endless moments, his arms crossed over his broad chest. It was then Rogue
noticed his crisp white linen shirt and finely tailored slacks. He was dressed as only the wealthy dressed,
as Rogue would expect the head of one of the vampire clubs to dress. A member of the Vampire Council
whose rules he rejected. He should reject this vampire, as well—this unutterably gorgeous vampire who
was a marshal of their law. And yet…
“I am sorry,” Ramsey said, his tone gentle. “No one should be born into this life with no one to guide
them. To have to live without a name, without a history. With no identity.”
Rogue shook his head. “How could you possibly understand?”
“Because it was something I once wished for.”
“To lose your memories? Your life?”
“Yes,” Ramsey said simply.
Rogue could read the pain in his tone, in the torn expression on his dark, beautiful face.
They were both silent for several moments, watching each other, then Ramsey said, “Come, drink some
wine with me. Tell me of your vampiric life, if you can remember nothing else.”
He turned and led the way to a plush sofa in red diamond-tucked velvet which sat before one of the
long banks of windows looking out over a small lake. Rogue followed and sat beside him when Ramsey
gestured. He watched as the older vampire poured a dark garnet-colored wine from a decanter into two
crystal glasses and handed him one.
Accepting it curiously, he lifted the glass and took in the sweet scent.
“Do you have no memory of wine?” Ramsey asked.
“None. Although it seems familiar, somehow.”
“Tell me when you were made.”
“1969.”
“A hundred years,” Ramsey murmured.
“Yes.”
“And in that whole century you have not drunk wine?”
“No.”
“What else have you been denied? Or denied yourself? What kind of life must you have led?”
“A life of freedom,” he said, the words coming out more harshly than he’d intended, the old anger
burning.
Ramsey sipped from his glass, and Rogue couldn’t help but watch the movement of his throat as he
swallowed—something so purely sensual the rage in his system died and was replaced by a lust that
burned even more brightly.
“Do you think it is freedom to live outside the company of other vampires?” Ramsey asked. “Were you
never lonely?”
“Always,” he answered, unable to stop himself. What was it about this alluring Ramsey that made him
want to share so much?
“Then perhaps it is fate that has brought you here.”
“What brought me here was curiosity and the challenge of penetrating your walls. You still believe in
fate? How can that be so?”
“Yes, more now than I ever did as a human.” Ramsey looked out over the still lake. “I no longer
believe that our actions alone determine the course of our lives, as I did as a mortal. How can I when I am
so irrevocably…this?”
“You think it was fated that you were Turned?” Rogue scoffed.
“Perhaps.”
He wasn’t sure what Ramsey was doing, where this conversation was leading. Was he merely toying
with him before meting out punishment for attempting to take what wasn’t his? Was he actually showing
pity? Mercy? That was something Rogue was unused to.
“Not that I mind the wine or the philosophical discussion, but why? Why would you bother with me?”
“Why would I not?”
“Because I am, as you have made so clear, a rogue vampire. One of those who wanders the world by
my own rules rather than yours or those of your dear Council. Because rogues don’t mingle with other
vampires. And because I have always been…no one.”
Ramsey turned back to him, his expression radiating a kindness Rogue could barely comprehend.
“Having no name is not the same thing as being no one, Rogue. You exist. You need. You breathe and
drink and feel, whether you will admit that to me or not. I would give you a name if you would have one.”
Rogue shook his head. “I appreciate your generous offer, but I’ve grown accustomed to this one.”
“Rogue it is, then.” Ramsey licked his lips, which were full. Beautiful. “Try your wine.”
He sipped, and the liquid—the only other he’d ever drunk aside from blood—was light and lovely and
sweet.
“Good?” Ramsey asked.
“Yes.”
“You can have more, if you like.” He paused, watched as Rogue licked the wine from his lips.
Ramsey’s expression shifted, so subtly it took several moments to recognize that it was lust gleaming in
his gaze, making the pupils widen until his eyes were nearly black. “Or I can have you.”
In a flash the older vampire was kneeling over him on the couch, pressing him down into the cushions.
Ramsey’s gaze glittered with danger and desire. Rogue’s body went molten hot, his cock hardening in an
instant.
Oh yes, Ramsey could have him—could do almost anything to him. And Rogue was certain he would.
Whatever punishment might be in store for him, this would certainly be worth it.
Chapter Two
Ramsey used one fingertip to press Rogue down, using a pressure point in the center of his beautifully
molded chest. The young vampire watched him with his lovely turquoise eyes. Oh he was pretty. The eyes
with their long golden lashes, and the lush, angry mouth—the only feature on his face that prevented him
from being too pretty. But oh, how pretty he was...
He reached out and stroked a hand over Rogue’s dark blond hair that flowed in shining waves to his
shoulders. It was as soft and silky as any vampire’s would be, but there was something luxurious in the
length of it that he frankly loved. He wrapped a lock in his fist.
Rogue started to shake his head, to shake his hand off, maybe, but Ramsey silenced him with a warning
look. Rogue bit his lip, releasing the plump flesh moment by moment, a small rage burning in his eyes, in
the hard set of his mouth. Ramsey’s cock went hard, then harder. And as much because it was mind fuck
as it was his own desire to do it, he raised Rogue’s wrist to his lips, bared his teeth and bit.
His vampiric blood was lovely, intoxicating. Even better that he struggled against Ramsey’s superior
strength, but it only made Ramsey draw more deeply. It only made his cock twitch with a need that burned
like a raging fire in his veins. And with the primal sexuality of the blood came the images of his life—this
young vampire who had no name but Rogue.
Fear was the first thing he felt, then a slowly clearing darkness. A narrow hallway, the linoleum
peeling beneath piles of rotting and crumpled newspapers. A bare light bulb hung above, but it didn’t
work. Nothing did. The place had emptied out a long time ago—all except for the lost, like him—those
who had no place else to go. Who didn’t care.
How could he care when he didn’t know? Who he was, or where or why. All he knew was the
strangeness of his own body—he knew something was horribly, brilliantly wrong—and this aching,
stinging need to drink…blood.
And God in heaven, he’d drained that girl of life the other day—how many days? He didn’t know. It
felt endless. No sleep. No rest from the haunting image of her dying in his arms.
His fault.
He was a murderer.
He’d needed.
What’s worse, he still did. More. Worse. Harder.
Fuck.
Was he dying? Maybe he already had, and this was the hell he’d been condemned to. He certainly
deserved it. He’d killed the girl. Killed her! Didn’t matter that she’d been well on her way to dying,
anyway. Not his choice to make. Not his choice. He wasn’t God. He didn’t know what the hell he was.
Something different.
Something awful.
He would vomit out his anger and grief and regret had there been anything in his stomach. Instead he
began to keen, then to yell, until it turned into a long scream that echoed in his own ears…
Ramsey yanked Rogue’s wrist from his lips. “Enough!”
He couldn’t bear to see any more, to feel any more.
Rogue looked up at him, the blood lust on his lovely face—a face that would have been almost
effeminate if he hadn’t been so full of rage, he was that beautiful. No more than nineteen or twenty when
Turned.
Barely a man.
Ramsey stroked a hand over Rogue’s jaw, and the young vampire turned his face into his palm and bit
him.
A small, searing pain—enough to make his cock jump, to remind him that despite this fledgling’s pain
he had lived a hundred years. He was a man. A vampire. And they both wanted.
But he would not let him drink.“No!”
With a roar Ramsey threw him to the hard marble floor and in moments Rogue’s clothes were in
shreds. Mon Dieu, but his body was beautiful to behold—all long limbs and gorgeously polished pale
skin, his cock a shaft of pure, hard ivory. He reached out to touch the tip, to stroke with his fingertips, and
felt Rogue’s silent shudder. He pressed his fingers to one dark pink nipple, plump and luscious against the
fair, fair skin. He pinched, hard. Rogue moaned, began to struggle but Ramsey held him down with one
hand flat against the center of his smooth chest.
“You like the pain, do you Rogue?”
“I do,” he answered, a little fire in his tone. A small challenge.
“Then you should like this.”
He tore the front of his slacks to get to his own stiff cock, shoved Rogue’s thighs apart and plunged into
his ass.
He felt the skin tear, heard Rogue’s howl of pain, of pleasure. Felt those desperate hands scratching at
his hips, his thighs. None of that mattered—only fucking him hard and fast and merciless, as cruelly as this
luscious young Rogue clearly needed it.
He was filling up with pleasure, driving hard into the younger vampire, knowing had he fucked a
human in this way they would have been dead almost instantly. That made it even better for him—to know
that he pushed those boundaries even with vampire flesh.
When Rogue reached for his shoulders Ramsey grabbed his wrists in one hand, held them over his
head. Fucked him harder, his hips slamming into him. And oh, the exquisite feel of Rogue’s young ass,
like a velvet sheath around his pounding cock.
The young vampire kicked at him, his feet finding his ribcage, pounding on the back of his thighs.
Ramsey didn’t know if it were any kind of true struggle or simply the primal need to fight, the more primal
need to open his ass to him even more, or the lost animal struggle of sex and power, the blood and the
driving, screeching lust.
“You’re fucking tearing me apart,” Rogue gasped, bucking and kicking, but whether to try to throw him
off him or draw him deeper into his youthful body, Ramsey wouldn’t have known had Rogue’s cock not
been pulsing so hard.
He grasped the heavy shaft in his hand, squeezed the head with his fingertips.
“Yes, mon cher. And you love it.”
In answer Rogue only closed his eyes, muttered, “Fuck you.”
Ramsey felt the gleeful grin on his face as his climax approached. He held it back as he continued to
pump, hovering at that edge, his body undulating with the first waves of orgasm, his vision blurring, hazed
with the blood lust. His grin turned into a teeth-baring howl—pleasure and pain and a touch of fury
rushing through him like some intoxication liqueur. He plunged to sink his fangs in to Rogue’s sweet
young neck.
Christ, he was coming so damn hard he thought he might die, if he could. It fucking hurt, it felt so damn
good—Ramsey’s thick cock piercing him again and again, a hard, savage fucking the likes of which he’d
never had, and realized at that moment he’d always craved. That gorgeous mouth latched onto his neck,
sucking and sucking.
“Ah…damn it. Fuck you,” he said again.
“No, my darling,” Ramsey panted against his throat, still coming, shivering with it. “Fuck you.”
He arched his hips, ramming into him once more, so hard he swore he could feel the head of his cock
in his belly.
God, the pleasure…And the smell of blood was everywhere in the air—that earthy, metallic scent that
was particular to the vampires, as if tainted with silver and gold, mercury and the press of endless
centuries.
Ramsey’s teeth pierced his throat, sucking, drinking.
He turned his head and went for the older vampire’s arm, his teeth sinking in.
“No!” Ramsey tore his arm away. “You will not have my blood.”
But he was too lost in the spiraling ecstasy of climax to care as Ramsey fucked him, milking his cock
with his strong hand. He closed his eyes and let the last shimmering waves tremble through him.
Finally Ramsey released his cock, and got up to pace before the windows, gloriously naked. Rogue
rested on one elbow, watching him.
“Why will you not share your blood with me?” he asked. “Is this some power play?”
Ramsey kept his back to him. “I have no need of such things when it comes to the blood. When it is
power play you will know it—you did know it. I am older than you, stronger. And this place is mine. Why
would I need to prove anything?”
“You tell me.”
Ramsey turned back to him, his eyes gleaming dangerously. “Do not think because I’ve fucked you that
I will be lenient with you, young one, or that I will accept disrespect. I owe you nothing.”
“And whatever I owe you for trespassing you took out in rather enjoyable trade, which I believe evens
the playing field, does it not?”
Ramsey chuckled, breaking the tension. “Oh, you are full of yourself.”
Rogue grinned at him, letting his fangs show. “Ah, you discover my evil secret. And I was working so
industriously to conceal it.”
“Not so secret, trust me.” Ramsey nodded at him. “Now get up and let’s finish our wine.”
“As the king commands.”
“I would happily make you pay for that remark, Rogue. In fact, you should know you will be made to
pay for your poaching on my herds either way.”
“Again?” Rogue sat up, bracing his arms around his bent knees. “I hope that’s a promise.”
Ramsey advanced on him and Rogue’s cock twitched as he was yanked to his feet.
“Wine now, more fucking later,” he growled.
“As you wish.”
He kept to his normal cocky tone, but this vampire’s touch burned into him, desire heating his blood,
his skin. And naked as he was, he knew Ramsey saw it in his hardening flesh. But he saw, as well—and
the older vampire’s dark cock was a beautiful thing, long and thick.
Wine first.
Damn it.
Ramsey sat on the velvet sofa, all stark, raw male beauty, a contrast against the elegant delicacy of the
furniture. Not that Ramsey himself wasn’t elegant—he was as elegant as he was primal. It was a
combination that made Rogue’s blood heat in a way it never had before.
He commanded his cock to calm as he followed Ramsey’s imperial gesture and sat down next to him.
Ramsey refilled their glasses from the decanter and drank deeply. Rogue sipped, the liquid still strange on
his tongue.
Finally he asked, “So, is it your habit to drink your wine in silence? Or was there something you
wanted to talk with me about?”
“I want to know more about you, Rogue.”
“Such as…?”
“Such as where you come from.”
“All over.”
Ramsey’s hand shot out and gripped the back of Rogue’s neck, squeezing just hard enough to hurt. To
command. He hated that he felt commanded by his touch. But it was undeniable. Undeniable and arousing.
He loved it.
“Do not play with me, Rogue. You will answer my questions.”
He shrugged. “Fine. Ask.”
“Tell me where you came from,” Ramsey repeated. “You are obviously English. Where were you
made?”
He nodded. That at least he could answer. “London.”
Ramsey let his hand slip away. “And after your Turning?”
“I’ve been traveling for years. France, Berlin, Prague, Rome.”
Ramsey’s piercing green gaze narrowed. “All of the cities you’ve named hold a Midnight Playground
club.”
Rogue nodded carefully. “Yes, though I haven’t made it to Amsterdam.”
“Is there some reason why?”
“It was to be next on my list.”
“Which you tell me without hesitation.”
“Why shouldn’t I? You’ve caught me. You know I am not here as a member of your club. I don’t belong
to any of the clubs.”
“And why not? It seems you gravitate to them with suspicious frequency.”
Rogue shrugged one shoulder carelessly. “I don’t like authority.”
“Don’t you?” Ramsey asked, heat burning in his gaze. “You liked it well enough as I held you down
and shoved my cock in your ass.”
He laughed. “Sex is another matter entirely, isn’t it? Being overpowered…that’s the novelty for our
kind. So novel it’s liberating. Don’t tell me you don’t love it when an older vampire takes you, Ramsey,
owner of this place or not. We are vampires. We do not discriminate when it comes to sex, other than that
our lovers be beautiful.”
“True enough. But if you had any ideas about fucking me—”
“Of course not. Not unless you chose to allow it.” He smiled slowly, his fangs nicking his bottom lip.
“You might at some point, you know. It’s happened before.” He leaned toward the older vampire, his
elbows resting on his bare knees, lowering his voice. “I’ve fucked older, more powerful vampires than
you, Ramsey. They have gone down on their knees or spread their legs to have me ravage them, males and
females alike.” He sat back. “I’m told I have my charms.”
Ramsey rose to his feet, standing before him, his long, hard cock inches from Rogue’s mouth. “Show
me your charms now, young one,” he commanded, grabbing a fistful of Rogue’s hair.
Rogue licked his lips, eyeing the gorgeous shaft of flesh. “Gladly.”
He would have said more but Ramsey shoved his cock between his lips.
Rogue moaned as his mouth was filled with succulent cock. He let his tongue circle the head before
swallowing the entire length of the shaft.
“Suck,” Ramsey demanded.
He obliged, sucking hard, the head of Ramsey’s thick cock hitting the back of his throat. He wrapped
his hand around the base, using it to try to control the surging in and out, but Ramsey’s hand fisted tightly
in his hair as he began to fuck his mouth in vicious strokes, only slowing when Rogue’s fangs tore at his
flesh.
“Don’t you dare bite me.”
But he wouldn’t have tried. He didn’t want to ruin this—the older vampire’s gorgeous, succulent cock
between his lips…oh, it was too good. And he knew perfectly well Ramsey was twice as strong as he
was. He gloried in that idea as he sucked him, as Ramsey began to groan with pleasure.
Rogue’s own cock was hard as steel, pulsing with need. He reached down and began to stroke himself,
his hips moving in rhythm with the punishing pace the older vampire had set. Pleasure was a tight coil in
his belly, in his balls.
Oh, yes…
Ramsey plunged, faster and faster, his hand holding Rogue’s head in place. He was choking, barely
able to breathe. He loved every moment of it—the act of handing himself over to this kind of power, even
as Ramsey grew weaker with pleasure as his climax neared. And Rogue was working his own cock with
his hand, arching into his fist.
He felt Ramsey’s cock pulse against his tongue before the vampire bucked his hips, crying out as he
came. He drank it down, that lovely vampire come tinged with the metallic taste of blood—all he would
get from him for now. That earthy flavor had his own cock pulsing into his palm, pleasure white hot
against his cool, preternatural hand.
Ramsey’s cock was still choking him. He groaned around it, the groan turning into a growl as his
orgasm ripped through him.
He was still shivering with it as he licked the older vampire’s shaft clean, pausing to swirl his tongue
at the head.
Ramsey released his head with a rough shove and stepped back so abruptly it took Rogue a moment to
get his bearings.
“I’m going to my office now.” He turned his back to Rogue and strode toward a pair of doors on one
side of the chamber. He lifted one arm high in the air, making a graceful gesture with his hand, the muscles
in his elegant back rippling. He called out, “Julian! Take him away. And call the Council.”
In a moment Julian—whom he had already come to dislike rather fervently—grabbed his arm with a
hurting grip around his biceps and pulled him to his feet, walking him back through the doors of Ramsey’s
sitting room. Or perhaps it was a throne room of sorts, simply minus an actual throne. It may as well have
been. Beautiful, bossy bastard.
He kept his grumbling thoughts to himself as Julian led him down a mirror-filled corridor. It soothed
his own pique that Ramsey’s guard dog seemed unhappy with his current assignment. He couldn’t help but
taunt the dour vampire.
“You seem a bit pissed off, Julian,” Rogue said. He couldn’t help but taunt the dour vampire.
Julian glowered at him. “Why are you talking?”
“Just curious. Don’t know many henchmen. Not a very high position in the all-important vampire
hierarchy, is it?”
Julian gripped his arm tighter, and it hurt like hell but he wasn’t about to say so. “What do you know
about it? You’re a rogue. You know nothing of the workings of our society, our hierarchy. After the things
you’ve done this could be your first brush with civilization, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Is that what you call it? It seems to me to be a totalitarian government like any ever seen in human
history. Or a monarchy, perhaps. Call me uncivilized, but I prefer it to that.”
“The Council is a ruling body, not a monarchy. You can’t have true civilization without someone
making the rules,” Julian said, his jaw clenched. “Or didn’t your maker teach you that when he decided to
waste his blood on you?
“Ouch. That hurt. Speaking of which, if you’re not careful you’re going to crack those pretty fangs.”
Julian growled. “I’m not about to have a philosophical discussion about politics with a criminal. Shut
up and move.”
“I’m simply making conversation,” he said, which of course wasn’t true.
They’d reached a pair of high steel doors flanked by another pair of leather-clad guards—but these
two were vampires. They opened the doors at Julian’s nod and Rogue was taken down a wide stone
staircase.
“What is this? Some sort of medieval dungeon?”
He could hear the smirk in Julian’s tone. “Exactly where the uncivilized belong.”
Rogue tried to pull away, but he couldn’t fight against Julian’s superior strength, which irked him.
He was more than irked when they reached a row of cells, the steel bars—or pillars, really—a good
foot wide each—impenetrable for a vampire of his age and he knew it.
Fuck.
“I’m not staying down here in the fucking ground while some council I never elected makes decisions
about me,” Rogue protested. “Don’t I deserve representation?”
“No.” Julian shoved him hard into one of the cells and Rogue landed on his knees on the cement floor.
The door clanged shut while he regained his footing.
“Are you bloody fucking joking? This is…ridiculous! It was an animal I was after, not your precious
Ramsey’s throat!”
Julian peered at him from narrowed eyes. “An animal that didn’t belong to you. You are a thief. This is
what happens to thieves.”
“I didn’t steal anything.”
“You intended to. Intent is guilt, punishable by our laws. We are vampires, lest you forget, rogue.
There are no trials, no representation. There is only the decision of the Council. This is where you will
await your verdict. Personally, I’ll be praying they aren’t in a firgiving mood.”
“So your boss fucks me, then throws me down here, naked and vulnerable to the whims of his powerful
friends? Is he always so mercurial?”
Julian smiled. It looked as if it made his face hurt. “Yes.”
He turned and Rogue had to watch helplessly as he walked away, as he heard his footsteps echoing on
the stairs.
“God damn it!”
He banged on the heavy bars with his fists, but they held solid.
He began to pace.
“Fuck…fuck. Fuck!” Why had he done it? Why hadn’t he have resisted temptation and walked away?
When had he ever resisted temptation?
He pushed his hands through his hair—the hair Ramsey had held fisted in his hand only minutes ago.
He had loved it—the older vampire fucking him, holding him down, commanding him. That aura of
power he wore so naturally that had little to do with his title as a Council member. It was simply him.
Ramsey.
Gorgeous skin like coffee and caramel, soft and hard at the same time as only a vampire’s could be, as
if there were solid stone beneath the flawless, silky flesh.
His naked cock was hardening again simply thinking about him.
He leaned back into a wall made of stone, pressing himself into the hard, textured surface, trying to
absorb the coolness of it. But it did nothing to calm his need.
Ramsey.
He took his hard shaft in his hand and began to stroke.
He had the most beautiful mouth, his lips unbelievably plush. He wanted that mouth on him—on his
cock, sucking and licking. Drawing his nipples into his mouth. Biting him. Desire shivered through him, a
small shock coursing through his veins.
Oh yes, he wanted to be bitten, to have him drink from him again, to feel that lustful frenzy that came
with the exchange of blood.
Except that it would never be an exchange.
No. He would convince him. If only he had the opportunity to be with him again.
But for now, he could imagine what it would feel like.
Oh, yes…
He pulled hard on his cock, squeezing the sensitive head until it hurt, scraping the sensitive skin with
his nails, letting them bite into his flesh.
That’s how Ramsey would handle him-how he had. Pain and pleasure mixed until it all blended
together. It was more than the usual rough sex play between vampires. It was more pure, done with
intention to hurt. And he reveled in it.
He arched into his fist, pumping his cock. He sighed as pleasure built, thickening his cock even more,
making it as hard as the stone wall at his back.
His hips thrust, his eyes squeezed shut, and he envisioned Ramsey’s beautifully masculine face. His
strong hands—hands he knew could be merciless.
Yes.
He wanted it. Wanted him. Wanted the pain and the exquisite pleasure he could bring. The scent of him
that filled his nostrils as his cock had filled his mouth, his throat.
“God…yes, fuck me, Ramsey. Fuck me!”
He bucked hard. Come spurted between his fingers. A roaring growl tore his throat as he howled his
pleasure.
He looked down at his come-filled hand, tinged with the blood that ran through his body.
He hungered. For blood. For Ramsey.
He would have neither while he was stuck down here. If he even made it out intact.
“God fucking damn it.”
He raised his hand and licked it clean, tasting the earthy come and the metallic blood run with the
flavors of brass and silver, the slightest hint of the last human he’d fucked. What had been her name? And
did it even matter? Now that he’d been with Ramsey he could think of nothing else.
He was damned.
He was trapped.
He was fucked.
Chapter Three
Ramsey stood in front of the enormous mirror framed with scrolling gilt-work in his bedroom. He
adjusted the collar of his white linen shirt, smoothed a hand over his long dreadlocks, pausing to twist one
end between his fingers.
It had been nearly twenty-four hours and he hadn’t been able to forget about the vampire held in the
basement prison.
Rogue.
Last night he’d gone on a rage of blood-drinking—he’d had at least six different humans. He’d
followed that indulgence with a regular fuck-fest, first two human women, then a male vampire—a rare
American, and one of his usual favorites. But nothing had satisfied. Nothing would but Rogue.
He clenched his fists at his sides.
This was insane. He had important matters to consider—one of them what to do with Rogue himself.
And the Council waited in the next room.
He shook his head at his own reflection.
“Oh, you should know better, Lucien Ramsey Dédé -Albarran. You are being a fool.”
There was a quiet knock at his door. “Ramsey.” It was Adriana’s soft voice. “They are ready for you.”
When he didn’t answer she pushed open the door and asked, “Ramsey? Is everything alright?”
“What? Yes, of course.”
“Yes?” she asked again tentatively.
He turned and smiled at her. “You know me too well.”
She returned his smile. “I do.”
“I am…a bit distraught at having to bring this matter to the Council.”
She moved into the room. “I understand. He is something, is he not, this Rogue?”
He nodded. “I do not quite know what it is.”
“But he has captured your attention.”
“Yes.”
They watched each other for several moments and he let his mind relax, to wander, to remember those
many moments they had shared in the years she had worked with him at the Midnight Playground. The
moments when they had shared their bodies.
Oh, she was lovely. A particularly sensual lover, for a vampire. Sex with her always took hours,
sometimes days. And he loved her. Yet it had never come to pair-bonding.
Was that something he even wanted? That answer had always been ‘no’.
“I find that I cannot stop thinking of him…”
“What will you do?” she asked.
“About the fact that he is so much on my mind? Or in light of the crimes he has committed? I have no
answer for either question. One is largely up to the Council. The other…” He shook his head.
She moved closer and laid a hand on his arm. “If you need me later, do not hesitate to call.”
He smiled once more. “As always.”
“Yes. As always, Ramsey.”
He patted her cheek, turned with a sigh and slipped through the doors and through the antechamber that
led to his sitting room.
They were all there—nearly all of them. He’d received a message that Laurent and Xavier from the
Paris club were unable to make it. And he saw only his old friend Aleron from the London club, as tall
and strong and beautiful as ever with his short, spiky platinum hair and piercing blue eyes shining in the
lamp light, all of him as flawless as polished stone.
Aleron was the first to rise to his feet, taking Ramsey in a warm embrace, his voice a lyrical French
accent. “So good to see you, my friend, if under such…unpleasant circumstances.”
“And you,” Ramsey answered, truly pleased. Perhaps Aleron could help him to find a way out of this
fascination with the young rogue vampire.
“Our friend Ever sends his regrets, with me in his place. He is still in the honeymoon phase with
Mercy and Deo. And he believes it is too soon for Mercy to return here.”
Ramsey nodded. “Of course.”
He turned to greet his other visitors.
“Bastien, thank you for making the trip from Berlin.” Ramsey clapped him on the shoulder.
The German vampire shrugged, as beautiful as Aleron in his own way, with his shaved head and his
dark, expressive brows framing his always-calm gray gaze. It was clear he wondered why they’d been
summoned, but was prepared to wait. “You called. That is all I need to know.”
“And I, as well,” Dane agreed, stepping forward to clasp Ramsey’s hand. The owner of the
Amsterdam club was the youngest of them at a mere two hundred years, but had proven himself to be
responsible and levelheaded. Like Ever, the ancient creator of the Midnight Playground clubs, he wore
his long, pale hair tied back from a face almost as pretty as Rogue’s
Don’t think of him now.
“Ramsey.”
He turned to find Storm, the owner of the club in Prague. He was the most mysterious of vampires,
with his sharply chiseled features, his long, silken black hair and eyes that looked as if they’d been cut
from milky jade. The milkiness was reputed to be a sign of great age, which they all suspected of Storm.
No one was certain of his beginnings but it was thought he was one of the oldest, that his human roots
were in the people of the Bavarii, who emerged late in Teutonic tribal times. But if he had ever spoken of
it to anyone, it hadn’t been anyone in this room.
Ramsey approached him carefully. The ancient vampire radiated power and at times his mood could
be unpredictable. “Thank you for coming, Storm.”
“I find the subject at hand to be very interesting. A rogue vampire who dares to poach at one of our
clubs? Unthinkable. And arrogant.”
“He is that,” Ramsey agreed. “Have you all been served wine? Yes? Very good. Shall we begin?”
The doors at the end of the room opened and he smelled her floral perfume along with her natural scent
—that of a cat in heat—before Chiara entered the room, a pair of albino alligators snapping and snarling
at the end of long golden chains.
Ramsey sighed. “Chiara. Did you have to bring them?”
“But my poor babies don’t like to be left alone,” she crooned, her Italian accent as heavy as her dark,
shining hair. She bent to pet one of the strange creature’s heads. “You see, my darling Avorio? I would
not leave you behind.” The creature made a low growl in its throat. “And Nevos, my pet.” She extended
her delicate fingers, the long nails tipped in scarlet. The alligator snapped at her, and she caught its jaws
easily in one diminutive hand. “No, no, my sweet.”
Ramsey shook his head. The petite but powerful vampire who ran the club in Rome was not to be
trifled with. Her demeanor was every bit as vicious as her prized pets’.
“Why don’t you let Julian take your beauties off to feed while we discuss the matter at hand?” he
suggested.
“Certainly. If he thinks he can handle them.”
Julian stepped out of the shadows and reached for the leashes.
“Ah, ah,” Chiara scolded, danger in her dark eyes as she held the leashes away from him. “Be most
careful with them. They do not care for strangers.”
“Of course,” Julian agreed, for once keeping his sharp tongue to himself. Chiara’s reputation always
preceded her, and this was not the first time Julian had met her. He knew what she was capable of.
She gave up the leashes and strolled across the room in her high red stilettos, settling next to Dane, a
longtime favorite partner. She kissed his cheek, making him smile. Ramsey was relieved. Dane always
provided a good distraction for Chiara’s temper.
Ramsey took a seat by Aleron. “I’m sure you all know from my message that I have an unusual situation
here.”
“A poacher!” Chiara spit out. “How dare he? And for what reason? Our rules are sacrosanct. An
example must be made. No good can come of this behavior.”
“I agree,” Storm said quietly, his cold eyes glittering.
“And I,” Bastien put in.
“Perhaps we’d better have the details,” Aleron suggested, the voice of reason, as always.
Ramsey nodded. “He is a strange creature. Turned against his will, I think, when he was quite young,
sometime around 1969. The strange part is that he has no memory of anything before his Turning. He calls
himself Rogue because he knows no other name. I have never heard of such a thing.”
“Curious. I have never known of any vampire with such a condition,” Storm said, which made it so,
being the oldest in the room and perhaps anywhere.
“Or he is lying for some reason known only to him,” Chiara said. “Suspicious more than curious,
Storm.”
“I think not,” Ramsey said. “I made it a point to drink from him. I have seen glimpses of the time just
after his Turning. It was quite traumatic. And with no memory of his human existence there is nothing with
which to temper his vampiric urges. With no one to mentor him, how can he know to live by our rules?
How could he possibly understand their importance?”
Chiara pursed her lips, crossing her arms beneath her spectacular breasts, which were spilling out of
her red silk blouse. “All the more reason why he could be a danger. He is a savage. He has lived for a
century—it is inexcusable that he has not sought out our circle of civilization. He has been either
unwilling or unable to adapt. He is a true rogue, Ramsey, even if his crimes are not the most common—
needlessly murdering humans or Turning another and leaving them to fend for themselves.”
“As happened to him,” Ramsey said.
Chiara stood abruptly and leaned over him, her perfume enveloping him. “He jumped the walls of this
club and attempted to hunt your deer without going through the usual channels. And you admit yourself he
is unstable.” She planted her hands on her hips. “Dangerous, I say. Cazzo di rogue!”
Dane rose, took her hand and pulled her down next to him again. He leaned over and whispered
something in her ear, making her tight mouth relax as she snuggled into him.
“I think not,” Ramsey insisted. Why was he defending him? A crime had been committed—there was
no doubt about that fact. And yet he was unable to help himself. “He is only a hundred years old—not
strong enough to pose a real threat, Chiara, to any of us.”
She shrugged. “Not yet.”
“Regardless,” Bastien said, “there must be consequences for his actions. He has trespassed on the
grounds of this club, breached your security. And for what reason? Did you find out, Ramsey?”
“I…” He had to pause. The reason would sound unfathomable to the Council. “I do know—he admitted
to me that he did it purely for the thrill.”
“Our laws must be upheld. There is no legitimate excuse for his of behavior. He must be punished,”
Storm said. “Are we all in accordance?”
“Drown him in the sea,” Chiara suggested. “It is the only appropriate sentence.”
“Do you not think that is a bit harsh?” Ramsey asked, his chest tightening. He couldn’t stand to imagine
the beautiful young vampire dead at the bottom of the ocean. He licked his lips, his pulse racing.
He must have spent too many years on the planet in this half-life, because his mind was not working
properly. Perhaps he was beginning to lose his lucidity, as sometimes happened to the older vampires,
even though at just under three hundred years he was not nearly old enough. That was the only explanation
he had for the way Rogue enthralled him. Obsessed him. He hadn’t felt this way—thought this way—
about another vampire ever before. For anyone, vampire or human, since he’d lost his dear Benjamin.
That loss had been the last one, he had sworn it. Attachment was loss, was it not? He would not risk that
again—and certainly not over some intractable dissident. Yes, there must be something very wrong with
him.
“Ramsey?” Aleron raised a pale brow at him.
“Yes? Ah, my apologies.”
“I was saying I agree he must be punished,” Aleron said. “Do you not think it is so?”
“Yes, of course. But the question remains to what degree?”
“I believe we must take into account his youth,” Aleron went on. “The fact that although there appears
to have been intent, no crime was actually carried out other than climbing the wall, rather than registering
at the door. He is perhaps a bit immature and oddly motivated. But these things do not make him a danger
to us. Few things are.”
“Few things,” Storm agreed. “But we must consider Aleron’s wise council. What is to be our
decision?”
“Drown the scoundrel,” Chiara said, her lips in a dark red pout.
“That is out of the question!” Ramsey insisted.
“Why? Because you have fucked him?” Chiara’s dark brows were a perfect arch of scorn over her
gleaming dark eyes. “That is beneath you, Ramsey, a member of this Council. And do not attempt to deny
it—I can smell him on you. I am certain we all can.”
“You would have yourself, had you seen him, Chiara,” Ramsey grumbled.
“He’s a pretty one, then?” Bastien asked.
“Beyond pretty,” he answered, the words sticking in his throat. If any of them thought to get their hands
on him… “This is my club. I do not choose to drown him for his crimes against me.”
“A sentence,” Strom demanded. “We have more important matters to discuss. Chiara, drowning is off
the table. I agree with Aleron’s assessment, and Ramsey’s, as well—the terms do not fit the crime.”
She folded her arms once more and pouted.
“Do you have another suggestion you’d like to offer, Chiara, my dear?” Aleron offered, ever the
mediator.
“What about the Capture Gardens?”
“The Gardens?” Ramsey let out a short laugh. “The Capture Gardens are for sport with human prey.
We have never run a vampire in the Gardens”
“And therefore the ultimate in humiliation.” A wicked smile spread over Chiara’s lovely face. “The
perfect penance to teach this young instigator some respect for the Council’s laws. If we cannot drown
him that is the next best thing. Better, perhaps.”
“Oh, I do love that,” Dane put in. “And if it will entertain our Chiara…”
He stroked a hand under her chin and Ramsey could almost hear the deep purr in the back of her throat.
Not many could match Dane’s talent for soothing raw nerves.
Aleron looked at Ramsey. “This could be an excellent solution.”
Ramsey looked to Bastien.
“I like it. Entertainment for us, reparation for him. Perfect.”
Lord, to see him run in the Gardens, the vampires chasing him, taking him down… No, it would have
to be him who took Rogue down.
Had to be, damn it.
“We are in agreement,” Ramsey said. “Julian, have Adriana bring our guest to us in the morning.”
Rogue had been allowed to feed last night—one of the club’s human supplicants, a gorgeous female,
but he had no interest in her other than her blood. No, his mind—his body—kept going back to Ramsey’s
beautiful dark skin, the rough touch of his hands, the command in every gesture, in the way he took him
with his cock.
He groaned, hard again in an instant.
He pressed a hand to his erection through the leather trousers the sour Julian had brought him along
with the human offering. But at least he’d fed, which had improved his mood considerably. That, and
seeing how miserable it made Julian to have to be the one to wait on him.
He had a distinct dislike for that vampire.
He heard footsteps and moved his hand from his cock. But the moment he caught Adriana’s scent he
moved it back, lounging with one foot propped against the wall behind him, smiling at her.
“Join me, my beauty?”
She laughed and shook her head, aware as he was that his flirting—at present—was harmless.
“Are you certain I can’t tempt you? Ever had sex in a prison cell?”
“I have not. And I’m certain I don’t need to. Behave yourself, Rogue.”
“You have no idea what you’re missing.” He stroked the hard ridge of his cock through the leather.
“Truly, you have no idea. And I’m not terribly good at behaving myself, but I believe you already know
that.”
Her lips quirked. “I do.”
He pushed away from the wall and stepped closer to the heavy iron bars, lowering his tone. “I think
you like that about me.”
“I think you’re right. Though I am also as certain you use this ruse on everyone. The tempting rogue
who never met a taboo he didn’t embrace.”
He shrugged, tilting his head to study the insightful beauty. “You’re lovely. Can you blame me for
trying?”
“You’re pretty enough yourself that I might be insulted if you didn’t. Sadly, I am not here to flirt with
you, nor you with me. A decision has been reached.”
He steeled himself. He’d heard stories of the harsh punishments the Council set down to
their own kind, how strictly they enforced their laws—which had always made slinking around their
grand clubs all the more exciting. He’d been angry and resentful his entire life as a vampire—lonely,
even, if he were being honest with himself. But had he ever really wanted to die? Had he ever been
forced to actually face the question?
His throat was closing, but he forced himself to maintain his usual playful expression. “Are they to kill
me? If so, you must provide me with my dying wish.”
“Which is what?” she asked, her fingers twirling in the end of her long braid.
“If I am to die, then give me one last fuck to send me to the true eternity with.”
She laughed once more. “Oh, how I would love to, young one, but I have my instructions.” She
unlocked the cell and drew back the heavy gate. “Come along with me.”
“Where are we going, beauty?” he asked, following her up the stairs.
“To the Council. They await you in the Capture Gardens.”
He’d heard of the famous Gardens. Everyone had. It was made for vampires to hunt humans. To
indulge in sex and blood and sport—to indulge in their predatory natures. “Why would they take me
there?”
She spoke softly, somberly, and he swore he heard a faint trace of pity. “Tonight you will be the
hunted, Rogue.”
“What?” He stopped at the top step and grabbed her arm, rage beginning to burn in his stomach. “They
can’t fucking hunt me. I’m a vampire. I cannot be run with humans.” He ground his jaw until it hurt. To be
put on display with humans! “I will not.”
“Oh, you will be run alone.”
Did that make it better or worse? “I don’t understand.”
Except that he did understand suddenly in a blinding, mind-fucking flash. No vampire was run in the
Capture Gardens. None ever had been. This was being done to humiliate him. To make him understand—
crushingly—his low place in their hierarchy.
Had this been Ramsey’s idea? He didn’t want to believe it.
Well, he may be a ‘young one’, but he was not going down without one hell of a fight—the likes of
which had never been seen in their precious fucking Gardens.
Adriana laid a hand on his arm. Her dark gaze was earnest. “Rogue, I can see your anger, but do not let
it stop you from heeding my warning. There is a woman on the Council—the head of the Midnight
Playground club in Rome—she is old and very strong, and her appetites are more violent and cruel than
most. You must be certain not to let Chiara catch you. Any of the others are fine. But she…she is vicious.
She would happily tear you apart simply to amuse herself.”
“If she is so strong how will I avoid her?”
“In the first half of the Gardens they may all give chase, depending upon their mood. The rule is that
they can catch you, bite you, perhaps drink from you. It may be that several of them do so. They are all
old, some ancient. They are very strong, Rogue. Do whatever you can not to let them drink so much from
you that you are unable to run in the second half of the Gardens. They rarely do so with a human, but with
you…this will be a different game to them. They cannot take you down to ground until the second half,
which you will know once you have left the sculpture garden and passed the second gate. At that point I
am certain at least several of them will be vying for the opportunity. Be very careful about who takes you
down.”
They would drink from him…take him down.
Ramsey…
“Are you suggesting I can avoid her initially by allowing one of the others to catch me first?”
Would Ramsey give chase?
Adriana nodded. “I am telling you that you must. I understand she called for your death and she hates
being thwarted. There are ways we can be killed without drowning or suffocation, Rogue.”
Fuck. Then he would most certainly die tonight after all.
“I understand.” He watched her for several moments. “I don’t know why you’re doing this. But thank
you.”
She smiled. “You are welcome. I would prefer to see you live another day, young one. And I do not
believe I am alone in that desire.”
He reached out and stroked a hand over her the curve of her flawless cheek. “You’re very kind. I…
don’t believe I’ve encountered that before.”
She pressed her cheek into his palm, her skin cool and silky. “Perhaps because you have never
allowed anyone to be kind to you.”
“Or you simply have a soft spot for pretty young deviants.” He smiled absently, unwilling to
acknowledge her words. He had more important matters to think of. Like survival. “How many can
capture me in the first half of the course?”
She shrugged, studying him. “As many as are able and want to. They will let you up, of course—that’s
the sport in it, to take you down over and over.”
He couldn’t help the grin on his face. “That sounds as if it could be interesting.”
“As long as it is not Chiara. You must take me seriously, young one.”
“Oh, I do. Trust me. But in avoiding her I could make for an interesting challenge for the Council, and I
must admit the idea appeals to me.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “You really are a rogue. And far too confident. You will not have time
to charm them all while you run for your life.”
“And you really are a beauty, but one that underrates my unique skill at and desire for self-
preservation.” He moved closer, until his lips were right next to the shell of her ear. Until he could hear
the way her breath sped up as he pressed closer. He said quietly, “Perhaps if I get through this punishment
alive you would consider me. I have a very dexterous tongue, you know.”
He flicked it at her ear, catching the velvety lobe and curling the tip of his tongue around it.
“Mmm, I do hope you survive the course. But for now, go. And heed what I’ve told you.” She gave him
a push on the chest, her superior strength rocking him back on his bare heels. “Through that gate and into
the holding pen.”
“Holding pen? Oh, they really must be joking.”
But he went, the gravel path uneven beneath his feet.
The holding pen was exactly that—a large square cage of sorts, with evenly-spaced iron bars that
stood a good twenty feet high. It was open at the top, shafts of sunlight making a pattern of shadows on the
concrete floor. It reminded him of the gladiator cages in old Rome, so much so that he could almost expect
a lion to spring out, jaws wide, fangs glistening in the bright sunlight.
He looked up to see that all around the pen were terraces made of gleaming white marble with large
cornerstone pots spilling with flowers, every detail unutterably luxurious. Such a contrast to the world he
lived in—the streets of all the big cities in Europe. The dirt and the gunfire. The bombings and fear. The
scent of death everywhere.
The scent of death was here…or perhaps it was only in the uneven jackhammer rhythm of his heart that
told him with every beat today was his day to die.
He shook his head. He would remember what Adriana had told him, search for any opening, any
moment of distraction on the part of the old vampires. He would find ways to create it. It was his only
hope. That and perhaps Ramsey.
Was it his imagination that the vampire who ran this place had some feeling for him? Was he being a
fool?
Focus.
He searched the view once more. Behind the marble terraces he could see more of them in various
levels marching up a hillside that was gorgeously landscaped, all of which he took in with a quickly
darting assessment. It was a lovely and threatening place. But what interested him more were the members
of the Council, who were scattered over the terraces singly or in pairs. They were all beautiful, exotic
even to him in their stunning beauty. He could sense the age of them, could almost smell the earthy scent of
a truly ancient one among them. Several of the males were dressed in leather, as many vampires were
prone to—leather pants and flowing white linen shirts. The black and white reminded him of the stories of
the Ascot races, with everyone gorgeously dressed in formal black and white attire on opening day.
This would be a race. But one far more dangerous than the old horse races at Ascot, and the prey who
ran here would earn no prize but death.
He caught Ramsey’s gaze—he was staring hard at him. He was even more impossibly beautiful in the
light of day, the sun glinting in his black hair, touching his skin with gold. He was unblinking, his
expression was shuttered, unreadable.
Perhaps he had been making up something about Ramsey feeling something…
All right. If he was going to play this game with them—and it seemed he would—then he was going to
give them the chase of their long and wicked lives.
He sauntered to the gate, which led to the path lined with marble statues and fountains. Everything was
lit from below with gold and amber lights, casting shadows onto the gravel path even in the daylight. The
tiered fountains spilled with music into their mossy bowls, and close-cut grass lined the gravel path. The
statues were all of nudes, many embracing couples. Upon closer inspection he saw that some had fangs
bared, about to bite into their stone lovers’ necks. Exquisite. And no surprise in this place of utter
decadence. A pretty place to die, but he intended to do his best not to.
Don’t let them see your fear.
Story of his life. Perhaps more important now than it had ever been.
Leaning against the gate, he crossed his ankles, set his hands on his hips. “I’m ready any time you are.”
“Ha! You will be ready when we are ready,” the tiny, beautiful Chiara told him.
He made a small bow in her direction. “As you wish, my Italian queen.”
“I am not your queen. I am not your anything,” she fumed.
“Not yet.” He winked at her and she growled audibly.
“Rogue,” Ramsey called, “I shall introduce you to the Council—a courtesy to them, not you. You have
already met Chiara. Next to her is Dane. Across from me are Storm and Bastien. And at my side is
Aleron. I assume you have heard enough in your travels to know who they are.”
“I know exactly who they are, all of them. They are all infamous even in my lowly circles. And I know
who you are, Ramsey.”
“Careful, young one. Save your energies for what awaits you.”
Rogue held out his arms as if to embrace them all. “My stamina may surprise you. Well, perhaps not
you, Ramsey.” He gave him a wink, which made Ramsey frown. “I am simply passing the time with
pleasant conversation until we begin.”
Chiara leaned over the balconied edge of the terrace, every muscle in her body tense as a wire,
practically shouting her impatience. “We begin now. Run, young one! Run!”
Chapter Four
The gate slid open and he turned to spring out of it as Chiara pounced. His heart hammered as he ran,
recalling Adriana’s warning and knowing his behavior had done nothing to ease the viper’s temper.
But it was Storm who took him down first.
He felt the uncountable years of the ancient vampire before he even reached him—incalculable age that
left him breathless. This one could kill him with a snap of his fingers. Then Storm was on him, his hands
gripping him like iron stocks. He couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to. But this part of the hunt intrigued
him—being hunted in itself, which raised such a fury in him he could barely contain it. But along with the
rage was excitement. That they hunted him, as he had hunted the deer…
They would drink from him…take him down…
Storm whispered in his ear, “I am sure you will be delicious, our young Rogue.”
His teeth sank into Rogue’s throat, and he felt the sweet and vicious bliss of that Seeking Kiss. Pain
and surrender—oh, yes, surrender to this being of enormous power. It was an aphrodisiac like none he
had ever encountered. That and the idea of being toyed with in this way. Oh, yes, his cock was hard as
steel and ready, needing.
Storm bit deeper, tearing at his flesh, and he moaned in pain and pleasure. The older vampire pulled
back, a grin on his sharp-featured yet exquisite face, Rogue’s blood staining his lips.
“You are a prime piece, I’ll give you that, Rogue. Under other circumstances…”
“Yet here we are, in this…particular situation. It’s almost comical.”
“Your cock isn’t laughing.”
Storm’s hand smoothed over the bulging front of Rogue’s leather pants. Rogue began to smile, then
gasped in surprise as Storm squeezed painfully and gave him a hard shove that landed him on his hands
and knees.
“Ah! I hope you are not choosing to end this so soon, Storm. Those other circumstances beckon,” he
said, dusting the gravel from his palms. “I’d promise to be singularly amusing.”
“Of that I have no doubt. But your punishment has just begun and the others are eager for your blood.
Run, Rogue! Run as if your very life depended on it! It might, you know.”
Rogue looked over his shoulder as he got to his feet and found that Chiara and Dane had leapt onto the
path together. They were coming at him at great speed—there was no way he could outrun them. But he
could try.
His legs pumping, he ran over the path, heedless of the stones on his bare feet, the beautiful lines of the
statues he passed on either side: mortals and vampires, angels and dryads, centaurs and fauns, some
embracing, some caressing themselves, some with great erections, all done in the most exquisite detail.
But he forced his mind to focus only on the running, on the hard beating of his heart, the motion of his legs.
The sensation of no longer being the hunter, but the hunted.
He caught the very faint scent of a herd of deer nearby, and felt more acutely his role in this game the
Vampire Council played with him.
Fucking played with him!
Yet some part of him gloried in it.
His cock was still hard even as he ran for his life from the one creature who wished him dead, and
whom he knew would happily defy the rules to tear him to pieces.
He smelled her perfume—right behind him.
He was tackled, a hand grabbing his arm and spinning him around so fast his head swam. But it was the
elegant blond Aleron who held him.
“Aleron! He was mine!” Chiara raged.
Her hand snaked out and grasped Rogue’s shoulder, her scarlet nails digging in. He welcomed the pain
even as he wondered if this would be his final moments.
He focused on Aleron’s enchanting blue eyes, like pieces of the afternoon sky.
“He is mine now, Chiara,” Aleron said, his tone patient and low, but simmering with threat. His lips
pulled back, his fangs bared.
She yanked her hand back, taking a little of Rogue’s flesh with it. He groaned. Aleron reached out and
stroked a finger over the blood seeping from the small wounds. He wiped at the blood, brought his hand
to his mouth and licked his fingertip.
Rogue’s cock stirred. Desire hot and pure roared through his system. Aleron’s eyes gleamed, and he
saw his own desire mirrored there.
“I should fuck you now, Rogue. Right here, for all to see.”
“Yes,” he murmured. “Do it. Fuck me. That would put me in my place.”
Aleron’s hand shot out and grabbed the back of his hair, pulling his head back until his throat was
exposed. Then further, until he had to bend, to arch his back.
“This is exactly why I refuse to. You are far too cocky, young vampire. Let me teach you a lesson.”
His fangs sank into Rogue’s chest, just over his heart. He hadn’t expected it, and the sensation was
awful and lovely all at the same time as Aleron drank, twisted his fangs painfully and drank some more.
Rogue felt his body weakening—not a lot, but enough that he understood what Aleron was trying to tell
him—that he was indeed the prey here. That his place was somewhere below these powerful creatures.
That simply because of that he owed them respect.
The rage was back, roiling in his chest. But with it was also some understanding.
“God fucking damn it!” he yelled as Aleron tore his mouth away, tearing his flesh as he did so. Blood
trickled down his chest. He looked down, a little unsteady on his feet, the Kiss making him dizzy with lost
blood and desire that burned as brightly as ever.
Oh, to fuck one of them, right there on the garden path where humans had fallen before him. Just let
them take him to his knees, take his ass…let them tear him apart if they wanted to…
“Focus, Rogue. You must run,” Aleron demanded. “Run and give us chase. And know your place in
this as you do.”
He gave him a shove that had him moving once more. The high iron gate that marked the end of the first
half of the Capture Gardens path—and the rules that went with it—was right in front of him. He passed
through, the lingering weakness from his last encounter forcing a prayer to some forgotten god from his
lips as he ran.
Through the gate and onto a wider path. Marble fountains and planters holding small trees and dark
green ivy were in the in the middle of the path, leading him in a more complicated pattern as he dodged
around them. He heard footsteps behind him—several pairs of heavier male treads, and the delicate patter
of small, feminine feet. Chiara.
Hellfire.
Run.
He didn’t have time to do more than gasp when her tiny hands wrapped around his throat from behind
as she tackled him and forced him down. The gravel bit into his knees, his palms, as he hit the ground. Her
nails bit into his flesh as she raked them down his bare back. With a savage cry of victory she flipped him
over, straddling him, and those sharp nails held his arms down at his sides.
“Did you think to escape me? Yes? You are even more foolish than I thought. You will be made to pay,
thief. Made to pay at my hands. For my exquisite pleasure.” She scraped one nail down the underside of
his forearm and he smelled the sharp scent of his own blood, felt it drip onto the small, smooth stones
beneath him.
His heart hammered wildly. If only he could see Ramsey once more before this wild creature killed
him.
Ramsey.
Chiara leaned down and breathed him in, her body making a small undulation. She was gorgeous, this
vicious vampire. His cock went hard once more.
“Ah, you want me,” she purred, her Italian accent strong on her tongue. “But I shall have you. I shall
have you in my teeth, your thieving flesh beneath my nails. I will rend you apart until your blood soaks the
ground. And your traitorous cock will be hard as I do it. And I…” she paused, her eyes glittering, her
fangs glinting in the sunlight, “…I will love every moment of your pain and despair.”
He looked up into her golden eyes and was momentarily mesmerized by her incomparable beauty.
“Yes…” he murmured.
She smiled, her lovely lips impossibly lush and full of cruelty. He breathed in her perfume as her hips
ground against his erection. He arched up against her, but she let out a growl and slashed his chest. It
fucking hurt. It made him even harder.
“Do not dare move. You will lie here and die if that is what I desire.”
He knew it was true. He could not deny her power.
Her hand went to his jaw and she bent his head back, exposing his neck, and a moment later he felt the
points of her fangs drag down over his throat.
He groaned. At least there would be pleasure in his death.
Her teeth continued to make their bloody trail over his chest, his abdomen, while his cock strained
with need.
She bit into him and he cried out as she ripped at his skin with her teeth, her clawed hands joining in.
He tried to struggle but the pain was terrible.
Terrible.
Perfect.
“Fuckkkkkkkk! Ahhh!”
“No more! No more, Chiara! He belongs to me.”
Suddenly her small body was lifted from his and she let out a feline scream of rage. She was kicking,
cursing in Italian as Ramsey held her.
“He is mine, I said.” Rogue had never heard him sound more dangerous.
“No! No, no, no! I have him, Ramsey! I took him down! Bastardo!”
Ramsey had her on her feet, holding her arms behind her back. He said very quietly from between
clenched teeth, “Damn the rules of the Gardens. And damn you if you will not respect that this is my
domain. I will be the final word here, Chiara.”
“Dio dannazione, Ramsey! You’ve ruined my fun. No one ruins my fun.” She jerked out of his hold, a
pout on her lovely face. She looked at the torn elbow of her silk blouse. “And I have ruined a perfectly
good blusa for no reason.”
“Have your seamstress send me the bill,” Ramsey answered, his emerald gaze locked onto Rogue’s
face, his expression closed.
Rogue watched the exchange, pain wracking his torn body, the scent of his blood everywhere. He was
weak with blood loss—it would be several days before his body could repair itself completely, he
guessed. He had never been injured this badly before. That was, if Ramsey let him live.
Ramsey.
Perhaps the vampire that had enraptured him would be the last thing he would see, after all.
Ramsey’s brows came together as his gaze swept Rogue’s body.
“Julian!” he roared.
He appeared at Ramsey’s side.
“Give him your blood.”
If Rogue could have caught his breath he would have laughed aloud at the astonishment on the
henchman’s face. “What?”
“He needs strength or he will…not be capable of a fight. It is the fight which amuses me,” Ramsey
said.
“Ramsey, I—”
“Do as I say, Julian, or I swear you will be next vampire to be run in the Gardens.”
“Yes. Of course, Ramsey,” Julian said, swallowing.
He knelt next to Rogue, scowling as he tore his own wrist with his teeth, then held it over Rogue’s
mouth. “Drink.”
“And I would so have loved to see you run,” Rogue taunted him shakily, but he took the offered wrist
and latched onto the gash with his mouth.
He would have expected Julian’s blood to be as sour as his expression, but it was sweet, as another
vampire’s blood always was. He kept his gaze on Ramsey’s face as he drank, fighting off the images that
threatened to flood his mind—he had no desire to see into Julian.
His desire was only for Ramsey.
He felt the blood like a trickle of warm rain in his veins as he drank, felt his wounds begin to close.
And Ramsey watched him closely, anger and desire both stark on his lush features, his eyes glittering like
emeralds in the morning light. He was indescribably beautiful, his face etching deeper into Rogue’s mind
with each swallow, as if it were his blood he drank.
If only he would allow it.
“That will be all,” Ramsey commanded.
Julian pulled his arm away with a grimace, rolled down the sleeve of his shirt and stepped back. But it
was Ramsey Rogue watched, wondering what he would do now.
He began to sit up, but Ramsey’s booted foot pushed him back down onto the gravel and held him
there.
He grinned up at him. “Oh, things are about to get interesting.”
“Silence,” Ramsey ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
Ramsey’s chin tilted. “I like the sound of that. You will call me ‘Sir’.”
“I will do so happily. Sir.”
He caught the beautiful vampire’s gaze and held it, trying to convey to him the need raging through his
body, making his cock so damn hard it hurt. He didn’t care if Ramsey did tear him to pieces. He could
only hope he would take him first. That he would know the extent of this vampire’s command—a
command that made his body melt in a way he’d never felt before.
Ramsey placed one heavily booted foot on either side of his prone body, standing over him.
“Kiss it.”
“What?”
One boot came to press hard against his erect cock. Ramsey raised an eyebrow.
Rogue wanted to struggle, but the utter command in Ramsey’s tone, his look, the boot pressing
painfully between his thighs was doing something to his head. He wanted him. Needed him.
He would do whatever Ramsey wanted. And Ramsey knew it.
Rogue smiled at him, but Ramsey didn’t like the cockiness he saw there, even now. Or rather, he did
like it, but he couldn’t allow it to go unpunished.
In fact, Rogue’s attitude of challenge intrigued him as much as the younger vampire’s stunning looks.
But he knew exactly how to deal with a challenge.
“A little assistance?” he asked his fellow Council members. “Who would like to hold this miscreant
down while I fuck him into the ground?”
Storm stepped forward. “I would be happy to assist.”
“And I,” Bastien said, already pressing the erection straining against his tight leather trousers with one
hand.
Ramsey smiled, lust pumping through his veins, hot and heavy in his cock.
He removed his foot from Rogue’s chest, enjoying the doubt that flittered across his fine features.
“You will kneel down before me,” he commanded. When Rogue moved too slowly for his satisfaction
he barked out, “Strip him.”
Bastien got to him first, but only because Storm held back, grinning as he watched. In moments Rogue
was beautifully naked, scraps of leather strewn on the path.
His body was too beautiful to be believed—long, lean limbs, the shoulders and chest a little too broad
for his frame, but every muscle perfection. His porcelain cock was hard and ready.
Ramsey licked his lips, breathing in the heady scent of the lovely young vampire’s arousal. His blood
burned even hotter watching Bastien holding his arms behind him, watching Rogue trying to struggle in
that iron grip.
“Come on, Ramsey,” Rogue dared. “This is too easy for you. Come at me with your own hands.”
“Oh, I intend to. You will know my hands, young one. You will know my cock. You will know my
teeth at your throat. And you will never forget.”
His own cock pulsed as he spoke the words.
Oh, yes.
“Hold him down.”
Storm stepped in and shoved Rogue onto his hands and knees, then his heavy booted heel was on the
back of his neck, pressing his forehead to the ground. Rogue fought him, but it was useless, of course.
Ramsey nodded and Bastien kicked the young vampire’s knees apart.
“Is this it?” Rogue ground out. “You’re going to take my ass while these ancient thugs have me trapped
against their impossible strength?”
“That is exactly what I am going to do.” He moved in behind him and bent to take a fistful of the
glorious blond hair. He leaned in and said very quietly, “In case you had any doubt, young one, about my
intentions…I plan to hurt you. Badly. I may even kill you.”
He knew even as he said it that it wasn’t true. He wanted him alive. He fucking wanted him with a
raging desire he could barely keep in check. And he frankly loved the fight in him.
He yanked on his hair before letting it go.
Rogue groaned.
Ramsey pulled his raging erection from his linen trousers, squeezed the dark, swollen tip. With a
growl he was on him, pushing inside him. The beautiful Rogue was all sleek, clenching velvet inside. He
gasped as pleasure swarmed his body and he began to fuck him in long, even strokes, then harder, faster,
raking his nails down his spine until he drew blood.
Control.
But it was too damn good—the sheer beauty of this young vampire, fucking him while Storm held his
boot pressed to the graceful neck, while Bastien laughed and stroked himself. Rogue’s pale skin gleamed,
his dark red blood seeping from the wounds his nails had left.
Oh, yes…
Ramsey bucked into him, gloried in Rogue’s moans, in the hard, driving lust that threatened to overtake
him. He shivered with it, had to force himself to hold back.
Control.
“Ramsey,” Rogue panted. “Do it. Fuck me. Hurt me….kill me. Only fuck me harder.”
“Vous me toez,” Ramsey gasped as the words scalded him with need.
Fuck me. Hurt me. Kill me.
He let out an animal growl and dug his fingers into Rogue’s shoulders, threw his head back and
rammed into him, his cock nearly bursting, he was so fucking hard.
The young vampire was arching up, taking his cock deeper into his ass, moaning, gasping. Blood ran
from beneath Ramsey’s fingers, down Rogue’s shoulders.
He bent to lick at the blood, hot on his tongue. Bit into the muscled flesh of his back, howled his
pleasure, bit again. Then Bastien was on him, biting into Rogue’s shoulder, his biceps. Storm roared as he
plunged his fangs into Rogue’s side. They drank from him together, ripped at his flesh. And lust spiraled
to impossible heights in his cock, his tightening balls, as he took Rogue’s ass with a fury that shocked him.
As his blood sang with the echo of Rogue’s pain. With the power play at work in that moment.
Rogue went down flat on the ground, unable to hold himself up against the assault. Ramsey plunged
into him, over and over.
“Ah…yes…” Rogue muttered. “Fuck me, Ramsey…fuck me…”
He felt the young vampire’s ass spasm as he came onto the graveled path, and it shot a fierce pleasure
through him, stabbing into him like lightning heat.
“Yes…fucking you…fucking you…Ah!”
He came in a shivering torrent, his blood singing, trembling in his veins.
He collapsed on top of Rogue’s beautiful, bleeding body. It was several moments before he noticed
that Storm was fucking Bastien, the dark, German vampire bent over the edge of a graceful marble
fountain while Storm plowed into him from behind.
But they took only a moment of his attention. The exquisite young vampire beneath him drew him even
now, when his limbs were momentarily weak with the force of his orgasm.
He felt every stone-hard rise and valley of the young one’s muscled back. His cheek rested on one of
those sculpted shoulders, a little of the blond hair caught against it.
He could smell him—his blood, his come, his skin. And the very scent of him was sending post-climax
shocks through him, like tiny jolts of electric current.
Just the scent of him!
He pushed himself up onto his knees. Rogue remained still, weak from blood loss, probably—there
was blood everywhere. On the gravel path, all over Rogue’s body, running in dark rivulets over his arms,
his sides. But it was more than the blood and the weakness in his body, so close to death. He recognized
in Rogue’s attitude his submission, had felt that moment when he’d given himself over to him.
He bent and licked up the length of Rogue’s spine, tasting the rich, metallic blood that seeped from his
many wounds. It was like rain and liquid silver on his tongue.
Rogue moaned softly.
Ramsey’s cock twitched and he smiled to himself.
He wrapped an arm around Rogue’s neck, pulling him up to his knees, pressing his body against his
chest. He murmured into his hair, “What have you learned, young one?”
“That I will do almost anything for you, as long as you fuck me like that,” Rogue slurred.
He laughed. “So very near death and yet still you defy me.”
“I told you I have my charms.”
Ramsey laughed again as he released him. Rogue fell to the ground, barely catching himself.
“Julian, take him to my quarters.”
He obviously needed another lesson in manners, and he would be only too glad to teach him. But he
knew it was more than that. Much more. Rogue had indeed charmed him.
Is that what he was going to call this falling sensation—as if his heart had been hurled off a cliff?
He grimaced, wiped the young vampire’s blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
Not liking it wouldn’t make it any less the truth.
Chapter Five
Rogue fell onto the big, round bed covered in dark red velvet as Julian released him. He rolled onto
his back with a groan, every quickly-healing bite mark feeling the velvet as if it were sandpaper against
his skin.
Julian had hosed him down in an enormous white marble shower stall that was part of the Gardens’
holding pen before toweling him down and dragging him here.
His head was spinning. What an experience that had been, fury and desire an incandescent
conflagration in his system. He’d nearly died. He’d hated it. He’d loved it. If he were completely honest
with himself, a small part of him had known he would.
Ramsey.
Yes, because it was him. It was at his command that he’d run in the Capture Gardens. It was at his
command that the other vampires had given chase—or had given way, as Chiara had. As she’d had to.
Had he ever come upon such a creature as Ramsey in his hundred years?
Of course, the other members of the Council all held a great air of command, but something about the
exquisite Ramsey made him shiver all over, as if some current ran beneath his skin, like a river dragging
him helplessly into its depths. And he could sink like a stone—or swim with that lovely, damned current.
Ramsey entered through the pair of heavy, ornate double doors bearing the club’s dragon sigil at one
end of the large room. His shirt was still stained with Rogue’s own blood, his dark lips beautifully full.
Rogue found himself wanting to kiss those lips. To taste them, to bite them.
His cock stirred in his damaged body. He sighed.
Ramsey unbuttoned his shirt as he sauntered toward the bed, then pulled it off, revealing his strong
arms, his tightly-muscled abdomen, his dark skin gleaming like polished wood.
Beautiful.
Had he ever seen a man—a vampire—more gorgeously made?
Ramsey dropped down into a plush velvet high-backed chair, the same deep red as the bed cover. He
turned to pour himself a glass of wine from a decanter on the small table next to his chair. He took a sip,
settled back into the chair, all impossibly cool elegance.
“Tell me, young one. What is it that makes you fight so hard?”
Rogue tried to shrug but he didn’t have enough strength yet. “My anger is always with me.”
“Not always.”
“No. Not always,” he agreed.
“There was that moment when you turned yourself over to me.” Ramsey was watching him closely as
he swept his long, silky dreadlocks over his shoulder. “Would you really have let me kill you?”
“Could I have done anything else?”
“No. But would you have done so with a will?”
“I do everything with a will. Death could not force me to obey any more than your Council could.”
Ramsey laughed. “So much confidence.”
His laugh…there was an edge of vulnerability to it, as if that was one of the few moments when he was
entirely himself. Why did it make Rogue’s pulse race?
“So tell me,” Ramsey insisted.
“What? Why I’m angry? I thought we discussed this when we first met.”
“That you are bitter about being Turned and left with no human memories?” Ramsey shook his head
slowly, pursing his plush lips. “I don’t believe that’s everything.”
Rogue struggled to sit up, made it up onto his elbows. His head swam, but the anger was there, lending
him strength. “You want to know everything? You can see it if you drink from me. You can see every
detail. You can force it from me.”
“This is one thing I don’t want to force from you. I want you to give me your truth of your own accord.”
“Why?” he demanded.
The older vampire was quiet for several moments, his brows drawn. “I don’t know. I don’t know why
I want to talk with you. Know about you. The fact that you violated the grounds of my club should be
enough—that you violated the rules of the Council. That you be appropriately punished, then sent on your
way. And yet…” He shook his head once more and said again, “I don’t know. I only know that you…draw
me.”
Rogue locked onto his gaze. “As you do me.”
“We are a strange pair.”
“We are,” Rogue agreed. “The king of this castle—a standing member of your Council, of the
community of vampires—and a thieving outsider with no place in the world.”
“Is that how you see yourself?” Ramsey asked, his features softening.
It was those small glimpses of tenderness that got to him. But why should it? He didn’t understand.
Or perhaps he did.
“You are the first creature—human or vampire—who has truly ever shown me any kindness ,” he
admitted. “I know you had Adriana warn me about Chiara, Ramsey.”
The older vampire stood and approached the bed. He reached out and laid a hand on Rogue’s cheek.
“Say my name again,” he told him quietly.
Told him.
Rogue blinked, his chest pulling tight. But he whispered, “Ramsey.”
Ramsey climbed onto the bed with him, leaned in and brushed his lips with his. Oh, his were all soft,
sweet velvet. He could taste a trace of his own blood on that lush mouth.
Lovely.
Ramsey kissed him again, pressing his lips more firmly this time, but still gently. He pulled back an
inch, and they both held perfectly still, inhaling each other’s breath for several long moments before
Rogue tilted his chin to be kissed again.
It was every bit as lovely as he had imagined, as he had yearned for. He felt the heady power of the
older vampire—his age, the pure force of who he was. And he felt something else, an opening up as
Ramsey allowed himself to be vulnerable with him. It was something entirely new—anyone being
vulnerable with him, other than those he played these power games with, when he was the Top. New and
intoxicating.
When Ramsey pulled back and sat on the bed, staring at him, Rogue asked, “What about you? What
makes you so angry?”
“Me? I am not angry.”
“You are…hard.”
He swore he saw Ramsey’s expression fall for a moment before he pulled himself back together.
He nodded. “I suppose I am.”
“Hardness is always a defense, I believe,” Rogue suggested.
Why did he feel this need to know?
Ramsey nodded. “Yes.”
“And?”
Ramsey went quiet, his eyes on the velvet coverlet, his fingers twisting the end of one of his
dreadlocks. He stayed that way for so long Rogue began to think he wouldn’t answer. Finally he said, “I
have my pain, as we all do. Mine is… My pain runs too deep. Too deep to speak of it.”
“Which is why you won’t allow me to drink from you?”
Ramsey’s tone harshened. “I don’t allow any to drink from me other than my oldest friends. Aleron.
Ever. And even they do not know everything.”
“You want no one to see. I understand.”
Ramsey pushed himself off the bed, his hands fisting at his sides. “How can you when you have no
memory of what it is to be human? To be that fragile? To love within the fragility of human existence?
How can you truly know pain when you have no knowledge of being vulnerable in the only way that truly
matters?”
Rogue winced a little. “Perhaps I don’t. But you can tell me of yours, share it with me, and then
perhaps I’ll know that much.”
“No.”
Ramsey turned his back to him and began to pace. He strode toward the wall of windows that seemed
to be present in every room of this glass palace, sweeping a lamp from a table with his hand. The
shattering glass echoed on the marble floors.
Rogue struggled, but he managed to get up, and found a little of his strength returning as he went to
stand beside him. The sky was shrouded in clouds, what had been the sunny morning now obscured,
cloaked in gray. He didn’t know why but he laid a hand on Ramsey’s shoulder. The vampire flinched, but
Rogue didn’t remove his hand.
“I am very good at keeping secrets,” he said. “Who would I have to tell? Who would listen to a
nobody like me?”
“That is…not the point. I don’t tell anyone. I never speak of this. Never.”
Rogue moved in closer, until he could feel the fabric of Ramsey’s trousers against his naked skin. He
whispered against his cheek, “But you want to. I can feel it. You have the same desires as I do, you feel
the same inexplicable connection. More than desire. I know you do.”
Ramsey turned to him. He saw the confusion in his startling green eyes. Ramsey’s hand shot out and he
grabbed a handful of Rogue’s hair, pulled him in closer, whispered, “Yes.”
“And you don’t like it any more than I do,” Rogue suggested quietly, “which is part of why you handle
me so roughly now. Yet, here we are. Wanting each other. Wanting to know things we shouldn’t care
about, but do. I don’t understand it. Do you?” He paused, searching the older vampire’s face. “Tell me.
Make me understand. Make me, Ramsey.”
That did it—his asking to be made to. He saw the command harden Ramsey’s features, then he
softened, nodded as he released his hair. He took Rogue by the shoulder and led him back to the bed.
“Sit,” he told him.
Rogue did so, loving the authority in his tone, but also not wanting to ruin the moment, to disrupt even
the air around them lest Ramsey change his mind.
Need to know. Everything about him. Need to be inside his head as much as I need him inside my
body.
He let that thought be. Inexplicable, as he’d said to Ramsey only moments ago.
Ramsey began to pace, his booted heels making an echoing thud on the pristine marble floors.
“It was a very long time ago. I was Turned in the year 1790. I was thirty-one years old—a man with a
family. Three children—a boy and two girls. They were so young. And my wife…I loved her,” he said
harshly, his accent thickening as he spoke.” I loved them. You have no idea how fiercely one can love a
child. They were my bébés.” He swept his long dreadlocks from his face, held them back. “I could not go
back to them after I was Turned. How could I? I would have frightened them to death. I was a monster.”
“You think we’re monsters?” Rogue asked, curious. It was something he had long thought himself.
“Monsters. And gods. But in those days, before our kind revealed themselves to the world, how could
we have appeared any other way?”
“Did you drink human blood? Or were you one of those that survived on the shallow blood of
animals?”
“Oh, I drank from humans. I was most savage. New Orleans was the perfect city to hunt in. There were
always the docks—the thieves, the whores, the drunkards. People no one would have missed. And there
was no one to stop me. You see, I was myself Turned by a rogue vampire.”
“And your family?” Rogue asked quietly. “What happened to them?”
Ramsey shook his head, stopped to brace one arm high on a window-frame. He bent his head and
remained quiet for several moments. Rogue could hear his strangled breath as he fought to get some
emotion under control, and it made his heart surge in his chest. He wanted to go to him, but he didn’t dare.
Finally Ramsey said, “She was pregnant when I was Turned. I kept watch from a distance, but that
night I heard her screams. I watched through a window as she gave birth to another fine, strong son in a
pool of her own blood. I had to leave—the draw of the blood was too strong to resist. But not before I
watched her die.”
He pressed his head against his arm, so hard Rogue expected to hear bone crack.
“Do you see, young one?” His voice was thick with unshed grief as he turned back to face him, his
eyes blazing, gold a flame against the green, a sheen of blood over the irises. “Do you see why I cannot
speak of this? It breaks me. I lived broken for so many years. Too many, watching generation after
generation live and die. I had to leave, but I didn’t know how. And then I met Benjamin.”
Suddenly Ramsey was at his side, grabbing his wrist in a tight, hurting grip, yanking him to his feet.
“See me, Rogue.” His voice was a harsh whisper. “You know this much. Know it all. Know me.”
“You want me to…?”
Ramsey pulled him in tight, and his bare chest pressed against the gorgeously fine, dark skin of
Ramsey’s chest. His cock came to life, hardening between his thighs. But his heart was beating with as
much emotion as lust. And his blood was singing—something that happened only when vampires shared
in pain play. But this was no kink. The pain he felt was in the older vampire’s heart, so keen and sharp
that his blood couldn’t help but respond.
He laid a hand on Ramsey’s chest, iron-hard with ancient vampiric muscle. His heart was like thunder
beneath his palm. Ramsey’s hand snaked around the back of his neck, pulling him in, forcing his lips to his
throat.
“Do it,” he murmured. “Do it before I change my mind and rip you to shreds so that no one will know
my secrets.”
Rogue quickly closed his lips over the smooth flesh. And bit. Tasted the centuries in Ramsey’s sweet,
sweet blood.
Centuries…
His head spun as together they sank onto the floor and images filled his mind, as he saw Ramsey’s past
through his eyes.
He could feel the pulling rhythm of the sea even though they were still docked in New Orleans. His
heart was heavy, yet he knew this was right. He couldn’t bear it any longer, to watch them live and die.
How many generations of his children, grandchildren?
Pain like an ever-present virus in his heart. How could he leave his family? But how could he stand to
do anything else?
He inhaled, pulling in the salt air along with the other smells of the dock: fish and the human stench of
unwashed bodies. The nervous energy of the thieves. Stale ale and rum.
“Are you so sad, love?” Benjamin asked from behind him, and he felt his gentle hand on his arm.
But he could only shake his head.
“Come. Come to the cabin with me. Drink from me.” After his silence, more gently, “Ramsey. You
will feel better if you feed. Let me soothe you.”
Benjamin’s palm slid under his high collar and around the back of his neck, his warm human hand soft
against his skin, making him shiver. He turned to smile at his lover. He could see Benjamin’s hazel eyes
gleaming in the moonlight, the heavy fringe of dark lashes, the smooth velvet of his coffee-colored skin.
He reached out to stroke his cheek.
“It is so difficult, leaving this place. Everything I know. Them. My heart is breaking. I do not know
how to bid farewell to them. They are my family, even if they have no knowledge of me now—of me as
anything more than a lost ancestor. Am I mad to even consider that I might stay here and…? I don’t even
know what I’m thinking.”
“You are grieving.”
“Yes. I feel as if I am betraying them, somehow, my lost family. Even though they cannot know me in
this form.”
“It is too hard for you here. It will be better in Europe,” Benjamin said quietly. “And we will be
together.”
He brushed his fingertips over Benjamin’s jaw. “Forever. I will Turn you once we arrive in France
and I have no need for your blood, my love, as promised. You are the only reason…you lend me strength I
would not have without you.”
Benjamin smiled. So beautiful. And yet…
He turned back to stare over the railing at the city he had always known as home. Grief was a searing
heat he would never forget.
“I will never forget them,” he murmured, more for his own ears than anything else, a pledge he made to
his own shattered heart. “Never.”
His vision blurred…Time spun…Pain ground into him like a relentlessly pounding hammer.
“Benjamin…no!”
Hot tears poured down his cheeks, tears of blood he could taste as they ran into his mouth. How could
this have happened? They knew of the fever on the ship. They had kept apart from the other passengers.
They had been so careful. How…?
In a panic he pressed his cheek to his lover’s limp body, listening for any sign of life, but he remained
utterly still.
He rocked him in his arms as the ship creaked, rocking on the ocean, utterly powerless.
He shook his head. “No…no, no, no…No!”
“No!” Rogue’s throat burned, his chest wrenching at what he’d seen, what he’d felt. He pushed hard on
Ramsey’s chest and the older vampire pulled back.
“Rogue…”
“I’ve never felt such pain in anyone,” Rogue said, shock still coursing through him like some physical
sensation. He could barely breathe. “I didn’t know.”
Ramsey shook his head as he got to his feet, wiping at the small trickle of blood on his neck.
Rogue watched him. How did one survive the centuries with such a burden? His own bitterness, his
anger, was already burden enough.
“Maybe it’s better I remember nothing of my life,” he said
Ramsey turned to him, his form silhouetted against the night sky. “Yes. Perhaps it is. This is what I was
trying to say to you earlier.”
Rogue ran a hand through his hair, letting his fingers tangle there. “I didn’t understand.”
“Of course not. How could you? There are frailties known only to humans. Have you ever loved a
human, Rogue? I never asked—I only assumed.”
“I have loved no one.”
And yet…something warm and unfamiliar was stirring in his chest as he watched this utterly beautiful
creature struggle with his pain.
Ramsey stared at him for several long moments. “I don’t know which of us is the sadder—me for
living with this grief, or you for never having any reason to feel it.”
“If that’s what being mortal is...” He got to his feet and went to stand with Ramsey by the windows
overlooking the lake. He lifted his hand, smoothed it over the older vampire’s flawlessly formed back,
trying to prevent it from trembling as emotion flooded him. “If that’s what loving a human is, then are we
not better off simply loving each other?”
Ramsey’s turned to stare at him.
“You do not love me,” he said. It was a statement, but Rogue took it as the question it was meant to be.
“I…I admit I don’t know. How can I when it’s nothing I have experienced? But there is something
here. Between us. You feel it. You have some understanding of it. Explain it to me. Tell me what it is.”
“I cannot. All I know is this desire to have you. To command you completely. To let you in—
something I have not done for more years than I care to think of. Years of lovers, but never anything more.
I don’t know how to have more.”
Something in Rogue’s chest—in his being—shifted. He dropped his defiance, his manufactured charm,
and allowed himself to simply be for the first time in his memory. Allowed Ramsey to see the pure
longing in his eyes. “Then command me. I will call you ‘sir’ if you ask, but I would rather call you by
name. Be my lover, Ramsey. Let me be yours.”
Ramsey grabbed his wrist, his iron grip biting into the bone. All Rogue could see was his green eyes,
the expression that was all for him—that fierceness, that emotion, that desire. It was a powerful thing. He
couldn’t resist. He didn’t want to.
“Yes,” Ramsey whispered as he pushed him down on the cold, hard floor.
Chapter Six
He could not get over the texture of Rogue’s skin. He’d been with a hundred vampires or more—all of
them as perfect as vampires always were. Yet this young one’s beauty went beyond the flawless sheen of
preternatural life. His skin…so perfectly pale, as if he were carved entirely from ivory. Except for his
pink lips, his pink nipples, the head of his hardening cock, which was as thick and heavy as his own.
He pressed on Rogue’s chest, letting him know by his hard touch that he was still the one in command.
He couldn’t allow him to ever doubt it or his own control would be gone completely.
Rogue licked his lips, and it made his cock twitch with need.
“Stay,” Ramsey ordered.
God, he needed to fuck him, to suck that marble-hard shaft, tasting his sweet come on his tongue. But
the control…it was everything. If it happened right here, right now, he would lose it altogether. His pulse
was racing, his breath coming in shallow bursts. His heart…
He shook his head.
He had to pull in a deep breath, turn away from the beautiful porcelain body spread out on the floor,
the spectacular fight in the young vampire finally surrendered, given to him in submission. It was too
much.
He strode to the doors of his suite, flung them open.
“Julian!”
His attendant vampire was there in a flash.
“Yes, Ramsey?”
“Take him to the dungeon. Chain him to a cross. A post. Whatever you find…intriguing. I turn him over
to your hands until I get there.”
He heard Rogue’s shocked gasp behind him—and sensed the trill of excitement in his veins, as well.
Rogue’s blood was nearly singing already, that vampiric response to pain play that was the odd echo of
the endorphins humans were often flooded with during kink play.
His own blood had started that quivering vibration, as well, as if his body knew what was to come.
“And Julian…prepare a human for me to play. Choose carefully. I want a male—one with superb
stamina. You know what I like. I’ll be down in a few hours.”
“What?” Rogue burst out. “Ramsey, after this…a few hours?”
Ramsey only smiled at him.
“A few hours…it is nothing to those of us who are nearly immortal. And I have tasks to attend to. Take
him, Julian.”
“Of course, Ramsey,” Julian said.
He watched as Julian pulled the naked Rogue from the room—he was glowering gorgeously, his dark
blond brows furrowed over his luminescent turquoise eyes, which rather amused the sadist in Ramsey. He
lingered, drinking the rest of his wine. It was a good vintage, French, of course. It was his favorite.
Excellent really.
Having Rogue watch while he played some willing victim would be beyond exquis.
Oh, yes…
Perhaps it was himself who should be chained. Restrained. Because if he didn’t get a firm grip on this
dangerous elixir that was simmering in his system…
No.
But first he would make sure his guests—the members of the Council—were all comfortable in the
Palace and provided with entertainment. He called for Adriana. She really was the loveliest of vampires.
Her warmth and sweet nature was the perfect foil for Julian’s dour façade—her being close by his side
was often the only thing that made Julian’s presence bearable.
“Adriana!” he called again, impatient to get on with the business at hand. To get out of his own head.
He was thinking too much about Rogue. It was lust, amplified because they were vampires, creatures who
felt everything more profoundly. He was thinking too much about everything.
Adriana slipped through the doors. “My apologies. I was engaged elsewhere.”
“Your business is to attend to me. To be available to me at any moment,” he said more harshly than he
meant to.
She approached him tentatively. “Ramsey,” she said softly. “Is all well with you? Is there anything I
can do to help?”
No one can help me.
God, he hated self-pity.
He gestured to her with a shake of his head. “I did not mean to be hard with you, Adriana. I am fine.”
She paused before smiling at him. “Do not worry yourself. I believe I understand.”
He nodded. “It is good one of us does.”
Adriana’s slender brows raised over her dark, luminous eyes. “Rogue?”
He let his tight shoulders fall the tiniest bit. “Rogue,” he admitted.
“Where is he now?”
“I’ve had Julian take him to the dungeon to wait for me.”
“That must have pleased them both no end,” she said, trying to hide the smirk playing at the corners of
her mouth.
That made him smile a little. “Julian is, no doubt, pleased that he is the one to chain up the irascible
Rogue.”
“And I have confidence Julian understands he is not to touch him otherwise, something Rogue is likely
unaware of, yes? And which I am also certain you planned.”
“Of course.”
Ramsey could almost feel his poor Rogue squirming. The idea made him grin. And his amusement
helped him to calm down, to regain that sense of control—at times the only thing that had held him
together through the long centuries.
Control. Why was it so damn difficult to hang onto with Rogue? But he would do it.
Agitated again, he moved to the windows, as he was wont to do when he needed to think. The sun was
going down, the sky a blaze of pale amber behind a spiral of black smoke coming from somewhere in the
city.
“Oh, yes, I will take my pleasure with Rogue tonight,” he muttered. “And with whatever human Julian
has picked out for me. I will do so as the Dominant, my command unsullied, even if the incorrigible
Rogue challenges it—and he will.”
Adriana came up behind him, lacing her arms around his waist and leaning her cheek against his
shoulder.
“Ramsey, can you not find a way to worry less about this? It will be what it will be.”
“It will be what I allow it to be.”
“Yes. That is exactly my point. What do you want to allow it to be? What do you want, Ramsey?”
They stood together in silence for a good hour while he turned the question over in his mind, the loyal
Adriana staying with him, as she always had when he needed her. He didn’t need to talk anything more
through, but her quiet presence was a comfort while he gathered his strength. Until he made a decision—
the only one he thought he could manage to live with. Until he was confident his emotions were safely
locked down once more.
“I can have Rogue,” he said finally. “My desire for him is undeniable. But I will have him, then let him
go, which is as it should be. It is the only way I can go on.”
“Ramsey, are you certain?”
He laid his palm on the cool glass, letting the cold, hard surface soothe him. “I am. Adriana, I…I had a
glimpse of my own history through Rogue. That was more than anyone should have to bear in any single
lifetime, and I am not having it. I am not having it. Never again.”
“Ah, Ramsey. I am sorry.” She laid a soft kiss on his shoulder.
Never. Again.
Not even for the most beautiful, the most fascinating vampire he’d ever come upon. Whose beauty and
mystery pulled at him…
No.
He ground his jaw tight.
He turned and patted her hand, his heart and his mind shutting down. “Come. We shall see to our
guests.”
The dungeon in the basement of the Palace was a primal place, with high walls of old stone and bare
concrete floors. There were pillars and racks, benches and crosses. Chains hung from pulleys in the
ceiling, some with steel cuffs or spreader bars suspended from them. Some with humans suspended in
gorgeously complicated rope work. Music pulsed, lights swarmed in patterns of gold and red, giving
everything a dreamlike quality.
Seeing Rogue in chains as thick around as his own forearm, bound to a heavy metal post, his arms held
tightly behind him, was like every kinky dream Ramsey had ever had. The unearthly beauty of him, his
anger as he struggled and seethed, especially in this antediluvian place that was designed to bring out the
animal in all who played there…oh yes. Perfect. And it hit him like a shock, most of the walls he’d just
spent an hour building up crumbling in ruins at the sight of him.
He felt that flutter of need in his groin—a flutter that wanted to turn into a pounding hammer—but he
rolled his shoulders, breathing in the scents of leather and metal. Human sweat. Blood and desire. This
was his place. And his body responded with the sense of absolute calm he always felt there.
As long as he didn’t watch Rogue too carefully, bound in shining chains and rage.
He turned to find Julian adjusting the leather cuffs on the wrists of the human male he’d asked for. He
was cuffed to an iron bar hung from the ceiling on chains. His ankles were shackled to steel bolts set into
the floor, his legs spread wide.
Ramsey approached him and looked him over.
Julian had known to choose a prime specimen for the master of this place, and he was truly
spectacular. Tall and broad and heavily muscled, his golden-brown skin tattooed, his nipples pierced. A
beast of a man with a handsome face and a wicked-looking goatee. His ears were pierced with large
gauge plugs of jet. Ramsey inhaled, taking in the memory of the hurt as the man’s ears had been pierced,
then stretched. He took in the scent of the big man’s desire, his yearning to be taken over by the only
creatures that possibly could. He would be only too happy to oblige.
As tempting a morsel as this human was, Ramsey was still keenly aware of Rogue watching from a few
feet away.
Focus.
“What is your name?” he demanded of his voluntary victim.
“I am Amon.” The voice was deep, rumbling in his chest. He spoke English with an odd accent.
“Amon…is that not an Egyptian name?”
“It is,” the enormous man agreed.
“I am Ramsey, the owner of this place. But you will call me ‘Sir’.”
“Yes, Sir.” The man bowed his shaved head.
Ramsey reached out to stroke a hand over the broad chest, the musculature a wonder, impossibly hard
for a human.
“Your body feels almost as solid as vampiric flesh,” he murmured.
Amon only grunted.
“Julian, you did well,” he said. “I am pleased.”
He saw Julian nod from the corner of his eye, then he retreated into the shadows of the dungeon.
Ramsey turned his attention back to the hulking creature before him. He was naked, his cock already going
hard. Even at half-mast it was as enormous as the rest of him, a gorgeous brown a few shades darker than
the rest of his body.
“Look at me,” he ordered. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine, Sir.”
“Ah, one of our last chance members.” No one over the age of thirty was ever accepted into the
Midnight Playground clubs. “You are a new member of the club? I don’t believe I’ve seen you here
before.”
“Yes, Sir. I was accepted only yesterday.”
“Hmm.” He dragged his fingertips over the strong collarbone, up the side of Amon’s thick, tempting
neck, where his blood danced a steady cadence beneath the skin. “You are a most amazing specimen.
Almost a shame to rip your fine flesh. Yet I may need to tonight. I find myself restless.”
Because of Rogue. More than flesh. More than lust. More than a mere physical obsession, perhaps.
No. Never again.
“This is what I signed up for when I joined the club, Sir. I know the dangers in being with your kind. I
can assure you this is what I crave. What I need.”
“That is the answer I needed. Because even though all humans who enter the club have been informed
of the dangers here, have signed the contracts, I always prefer to hear the words myself. And I will tell
you, your unique physical power, your obvious strength, makes you even more desirable, and this evening
therefore more dangerous for you.”
He saw the need stark in Amon’s hazel eyes, sensed it coming off him in palpable waves.
“I will trust you to challenge me in whatever way you see fit, Sir.”
Ramsey nodded. “You understand there are no safe words here in this dungeon, as there may be at the
places mortals frequent? That you are entirely at my mercy—if I have any. And if not, as well.”
“I understand.”
Ramsey raised an eyebrow.
“Sir,” Amon added.
“Are you two done negotiating?” came Rogue’s voice from behind him. “Because if you’re going to
keep me chained here, helpless to participate, the least you can do is provide me with a good show.”
Ramsey turned to him.
“I will do so in my own time, Rogue. My time. And you will watch. You will suffer. Because you will
love it. You will wish it were you under my hands. You will wish it was your hands on him. Won’t you?”
Rogue groaned. “Yes,” he answered, his voice harsh. “You know I will. You really are a sadist,
Ramsey.”
“You know me already.”
Ramsey laughed, but that was a bit too close to the truth—a truth he didn’t want to face, didn’t want to
begin to believe. That somehow the young vampire did know him. That he struck some long-dead chord in
him.
Impossible.
He distracted himself by pulling a black dragon’s tail whip from the selection of toys Julian had lined
up on a leather table next to the cross on which Amon was mounted. He moved around behind him, ran a
hand over the taut flesh of his bare back, over the heavy tribal designs tattooed there. He moved the flat of
his palm up his spine, tuning in on his breathing. The big man didn’t even flinch when he wrapped a hand
around the back of his neck and squeezed hard enough to hurt.
Oh, he was going to be a pleasure to play. Easy enough to focus on this monster of a man, all gleaming
muscle and the eagerness to be hurt.
He moved in behind him until his own shirtless body was pressed up against Amon. He’d always
loved the feel of human skin, so very different from his own, from that of the other immortals. There was
texture there, especially with someone as heavily inked as Amon—he could feel every stroke the needle
had left in his flesh.
Lovely.
He inhaled, found a faint trace of fear beneath the stark desire. His cock twitched. Oh yes, fear was
always intoxicating to him. He stepped away, pulled his arm back and struck.
Amon hissed out a breath as the whip hit his upper back, leaving an angry red welt among the black
ink.
Ramsey moved back in, wrapped an arm around his waist and squeezed the rest of the breath from
Amon’s big body, leaving him gasping.
He whispered against his ear, “I’m going to hurt you rather badly.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Ask for it, Amon. Let me know your desires.”
“I want it, Sir. I want you to beat me. Until I beg. Until I bleed for you. This is something I need. Need.
Please.”
“I can sense how much. There is some story behind this need, I think.”
Amon swallowed. “Yes, Sir.”
“I love stories. But we will save yours for another time. Until I drink your blood, perhaps. For now I
will do my best to sate your desires, and mine.”
Amon moaned softly.
“Ah, yes, you were made for this,” Ramsey said, pleased.
He moved back and struck, the whip make a hissing sound in the air. Amon didn’t move.
“I know very well this is a high pain toy,” he said, “and yet you remain unmoved. I will have to do my
worst. That will make you happy, will it not, Amon?”
“Yes…”
He looked at Rogue. His eyes were blazing.
“It will make you happy, as well.”
“Ah, you’re speaking to me again, are you?’
“I will do more than speak to you,” he threatened. “I know perfectly well it would take more than a
beating to put you in your place, young one.”
“Fucking show me, then, Ramsey. Show me your strength, your wickedness. Make me hard for you
once more. I dare you.”
Ramsey let a small smile quirk one corner of his mouth before turning back to Amon. It took some
effort to turn away from Rogue, but it satisfied him after that remark to give the bold young vampire his
back.
“Brace yourself,” he told Amon.
He began to really work him with the whip. No warm-up, just a full-force whipping that had him
writhing in moments—full force for a human. Soon blood seeped from the deep welts on his back and
Ramsey leaned in to lick his lovely brown skin clean.
“You taste like honey,” he told him, but Amon, lost in the pain, could only moan.
His cock was rock hard, standing proudly. Deliciously.
Ramsey moved around to the front of him, leaned in and placed a soft kiss at the base of his throat.
“You are taking it well. You will take more. And then I will drink from you. I will feast upon your blood
and your beautiful flesh.”
He heard a groan and turned to see that Rogue was as erect as Amon, his lovely cock nearly tempting
him from the human.
“And you, Rogue…you shall be next.”
“Promises,” Rogue taunted, straining against the chains that held him.
But Ramsey was hard as iron himself simply looking at the beautiful vampire, as if the human were not
enough. Lust speared deep into his gut.
The human first. And then the beautiful Rogue.
He put the whip down and picked up a narrow bamboo cane, smaller around than his little finger, and
yet he knew its flexible length stung like a lash and bit even deeper. He began right away to strike Amon’s
big body with it, choosing his targets carefully: the front of his thighs, his taut stomach, his chest. The cane
was leaving a criss-cross pattern of dark red welts on his skin, but Amon only cried out when he lashed
his nipples.
“Ah, Gods, Sir!”
“Yes,” Rogue murmured behind him, making Ramsey’s cock pulse, his balls pull tight with need for
him—to know he watched. To know he loved it.
No. Focus.
Amon’s eyes were shut tight, his head back. Ramsey tuned into him, heard his heart racing, his breath
catching in his throat as he tried to ride out the pain. Lovely, the way he took it—what would have made
most other humans lose consciousness by now.
He struck once more, harder this time, opening up the flesh just over his heart. He moved in fast and
sank his fangs into the same spot.
Amon howled.
Rogue groaned.
He drank, opening himself to the flashes of Amon’s past.
He recognized the black garb of the post-monarchy military, the London street filled with smoke, the
sound of gunfire.
Sniper somewhere. He ducked behind what was left of an apartment building. Where the hell was the
rest of his unit? Too smoky to see. But Lord, his mother had lived on this very street. He thanked God she
was already gone, that she hadn’t lived to see this.
Bullets whizzed past his helmet. He moved out, firing his weapon to cover himself. And felt the
searing pain as a bullet hit his left arm.
He did a quick visual of the area, searching for the damn sniper—and spied him at a second floor
window of the next building over, nothing more than a shadow, but he had his aim. He fired, heard the
shatter of glass as he hit his mark. The man fell to the street.
He ran to make sure he was dead, and to relieve him of his weapon before another rebel grabbed it.
He waved the smoke away as he approached the body, which was twisted, broken. But it was no man.
It was a boy, no older than fifteen or sixteen.
His gut twisted.
His brother’s face flashed before his eyes—his brother who had been fifteen when he died in a
bombing.
No.
He fell to his knees, searching desperately for a pulse at the boy’s neck. But there was nothing but
blood and smoke. Broken glass. His broken body.
Fuck.
No!
What a damn useless world this was. Damn useless…
Ramsey pulled back hard. This was not what he wanted. He ran a hand over Amon’s face, held tightly
onto his jaw. The man was panting. Lost in the moment, he wasn’t even aware of those memories buried
beneath the pain and desire.
Ramsey needed to shift his energy.
He ran a hand down the front of Amon’s body, stopping to smooth his fingertips over his nipples. They
went hard instantly, the succulent flesh darkening. Ah, nice. He pinched, and Amon moaned.
“Come on, Ramsey,” Rogue interrupted. “Surely you can do better than that.”
“Too much from you and it will be days before you find out,” he answered over his shoulder.
He went back to the gorgeous human flesh before him, bent to take one of the hard, flat nipples in his
mouth and sucked.
“Ah…that’s good, Sir.”
He let his sharp eyeteeth graze the tight flesh, his body beginning that lovely, shimmering bloodsong
that told him Rogue was tuned into the human’s pain—the bloodsong which only happened between
vampires.
God, he couldn’t get to Rogue soon enough. But he would not tell him so.
He continued his assault on Amon’s nipples—first one, then the other, licking, sucking, biting, until the
man was squirming in his cuffs, his enormous cock iron-hard. When Ramsey saw how the head began to
pulse, he stepped back and picked up a second cane, and started in on him once more with both hands.
The cane whizzed through the air, lashing the skin open on his broad chest, on his stomach and thighs.
He played them over his sides, making Amon cry out when he flayed the flesh along his ribs. The blood
began to pour, and Ramsey leaned in to lap at it between strikes.
His body was beginning to fill with the heady blood frenzy—his own blood pulsing in his veins, filling
his cock until it hurt. But he loved it all, loved that sweet pain. And behind him Rogue was practically
bursting from his chains, fighting to get out, to get to the blood and the sport and the flesh he was forced to
watch.
Desire kicked hard in Ramsey’s gut, but he refused to look at him. It would be his undoing.
He reached down and fisted Amon’s big cock in his hand.
“Yes, please, Sir…Yes…”
“Ramsey,” came Rogue’s breathless voice. His chains rattled. “Come on. Be done with the human.
Take me. I’m waiting for you. You win. This is torture. Watching you is… Isn’t that why you did this?
What more do you want from me?”
God, he needed to fuck. He needed Rogue. He simply needed, damn it.
With a roar he tore at Amon’s flesh, didn’t stop when Amon screamed. He bit into him over and over,
taking blood and skin between his teeth.
Too much. Too far.
With a groan he shoved himself away from Amon’s limp body. Julian came to take the human down
from the cross, but all Ramsey could think of was this driving need. A need that could be quenched only
by Rogue.
He should have known better than to tempt himself this way. To test his resolve. It had been Rogue all
along. And he was far too worked up, their blood singing in harmony, to have any damn shred of control
left. He could barely form the word in his mind.
He strode to the pillar that held the young vampire, tore the chains from his body so hard it cut his
palms open. He didn’t care. He had to have him. Now.
Chapter Seven
Ramsey grabbed him by the neck and turned him in his arms so fast he barely had time to understand
what was happening. But when the older vampire pressed up behind him, an arm snaking around his waist
as he kicked his thighs apart and plowed into him, he was ready—so damn ready his cock was about to
burst.
“Don’t you dare come yet,” Ramsey ordered roughly.
“Ah, you really do torture me,” Rogue sighed, barely able to get the words out, he was so
overwhelmed by sensation. By the mere idea of Ramsey buried to the hilt in his ass.
Ramsey wrapped an arm around his neck in a chokehold and began to move inside him, hard strokes
that felt so damn good Rogue could barely stand it, pleasure spiraling as that strong arm against his throat
cut off his air.
“Yes, fuck me hard, my beautiful monster,” he gasped.
Ramsey plowed into him, his hip bones jabbing against his buttocks. Rogue loved every sensation,
every tiny point of contact between their bodies—Ramsey’s cool vampiric flesh, hard and smooth as the
concrete floors of the dungeon. Even the sensation of his wool trousers, the sharp cut of the metal zipper
biting into his skin.
He tried to take his swollen cock in his hand, but Ramsey slapped it away.
“Your cock is for me, young one,” he growled in his ear. “Do you understand?”
“Yes. Yes.”
Ramsey shifted and pulled his arms up. “Clasp your hands behind your neck.”
“What? I—”
“Now, Rogue,” he said, a dangerous edge to the words.
He did as he was told—only because it was him. Only because his entire being ached for him, because
even Ramsey fucking him, his heavy flesh filling him over and over, wasn’t enough.
He didn’t realize Ramsey held anything in his hand until the narrow metal cane came down on the front
of his thighs.
“Ah, God!”
The older vampire struck over and over, keeping in time with his plunging cock, and Rogue’s blood
sang the tremulous song of pain. He was torn between exquisite pain and intense pleasure. He squirmed in
Ramsey’s grip, but the vampire wouldn’t let him move other than to arch his ass into his hips, opening up
to his thick, ramming cock.
“Let me come, Ramsey! Just do it! I can’t…”
He groaned as the cane hit his rigid shaft—a short, snapping bite against his flesh.
“Fucking God damn it!”
“Don’t you dare try to order me, Rogue.”
He hit his cock again to drive the point home. Pain seared him, biting deep into his system, and he
knew on some deeper level Ramsey’s absolute authority over him. But despite the way his body loved it,
even his mind, his spirit could not accept it entirely—not from anyone.
With his last breath he whispered, “You can do better than that. Fuck me. Cane me. What else have you
got, lover?”
Ramsey roared, and with the lightning speed of a three hundred year old vampire, he rammed into him
so hard they both fell to their knees, the impossibly fast bucking of his hips driving them both several feet
forward on the concrete floor. It tore at his knees as Ramsey’s hammering cock tore at his ass. He howled
his pain, keened his pleasure.
“Do. Not. Come,” Ramsey ordered.
But he was losing it. No control. Only pleasure. Only pain.
Only Ramsey.
His body gave itself over to the vampire completely as the bloodsong filled his ears, as Ramsey bit
savagely into his shoulder, adding another layer of exquisite sensation.
“Ramsey,” he panted. “Please…let me come…”
“Now, Rogue.”
The command was all he needed—that and Ramsey’s arm pulling tight against his throat, choking the
breath from him as he came in a torrent of needle-sharp pleasure. His cock pulsed with the force of it,
sensation cutting as deep as a blade.
He heard Ramsey’s distant yell as he felt his hot seed spill into his clenching ass, the older vampire’s
blood singing in symphony with his own, both of them lost in sensation.
Small currents of his orgasm still shivered through him when Ramsey stood with Rogue’s body in his
arms and carried him from the dungeon.
The club was a blur of glass and moonlight as Ramsey took him quickly through a series of hallways
and into his private quarters. He laid him roughly on the big, red bed.
Rogue didn’t understand—Ramsey had taken him to his bed, then thrown him down there and stood
staring down at him, rage on his face. Wasn’t he going to fuck him again? Why else had he brought him
there? And he understood maybe even less the way he felt—something far more than submission to the
vampire’s superior strength of both body and will. None of it made sense. All he knew was the pounding
of his heart and Ramsey’s green gaze glowing in the moonlight streaming through the windows and
crossing the bed with dark streaks of light and shadow. There was such a mix of emotion there he couldn’t
begin to sort it out.
“Damn you!” Ramsey exploded, then he turned and began to pace in front of the windows.
“Damn me?” Rogue remained still. He said quietly, “I am damned already.”
“And so am I! Damned by what I…” Ramsey stopped, bracing a hand against the lovely ironwork of
one of the window frames, his back to the bed. When he went on the words were ground out from between
clenched teeth. “I cannot bear this. I cannot bear that I…feel for you.”
Rogue’s heart pounded in his chest. He refused to recognized the sensation as hope. “I don’t
understand. Why would you?”
Ramsey whirled on him. ‘Do you not know your own beauty, Rogue?”
“I know what I look like. I am a vampire. We are all beautiful.”
“No. Not like you.” Then more quietly, “Not to me.”
Rogue blinked, part of him unable to believe what he heard. His pulse was racing, and it was almost
like the bloodsong, yet entirely different. Just as sweet. Just as powerful. He whispered warily, “As you
are to me.”
Ramsey was at his side in a flash, kneeling on the bed. He whispered urgently, “I have not allowed this
to happen, and yet something in you has broken through. This is exactly how it feels to me—as though
something has been broken down, broken through. I do not want it.”
“Do you think I want it? I have always been on my own. I can’t even conceive what this is. How to
handle it. I hate that I…that it feels as if I need you. That instead of running I’m afraid you’ll send me
away.”
“I hate it, as well.”
Ramsey’s eyes were full of green fire flecked with gold and resentment—the same resentment he felt
himself. And yet…
“I have never given myself to another the way I do with you,” Rogue admitted. “The way you make
me…It’s the making…” He stopped, shook his head. “No, that’s not quite right.”
Ramsey let out a bitter laugh. “None of this is quite right, young one.”
“Ramsey, surely you have dominated dozens of vampires.”
“And surely you have been dominated by others,” he said. “I do not know why this is different.”
“But it is,” Rogue agreed.
Ramsey laid his palm in the center of Rogue’s chest. He’d done so before. But this time Rogue felt as
if something in him reached back as the older vampire’s expression shifted, softened, as if he were giving
himself over. It was a different kind of giving over than Rogue had done in the power exchange, the kink
—it was as if Ramsey had suddenly stopped struggling so hard against what was happening in this strange
moment.
He licked his full lips and Rogue saw the tips of his fangs, glinting in the lamplight. Ramsey said in a
hushed tone, “There are times when a connection is made between vampires. When the meeting of our
strange flesh binds us without a word being spoken.”
“But this is me, Ramsey. I have never felt for anyone before. Not anything more than lust. Happiness at
their company. Or pity. Or anger.”
“Perhaps you have.”
“No.”
“I want to find out. But this is not something I can do if you fight me, Rogue. Your past is buried too
deeply. You have to allow me in or I will see nothing more than the small flashes I have seen already,
none of which makes sense other than the trauma of being Turned. I believe there is a key tangled up in
there somewhere. In your blood. In your mind.”
“I am used to being closed off.”
“So am I.”
They stared at each other. The tight knot in Rogue’s chest—the one he realized he had always lived
with—unfurled the slightest bit. He nodded.
“Drink from me, then. I will try to open myself. For you. See what you will.”
Why did that feel as punitive as it did freeing?
Ramsey kept his gaze on him as he moved in closer. He didn’t say a word as he wrapped a hand
around the back of Rogue’s neck, pulling him in to his strong body. He held him tight, and Rogue tangled
his fingers in the long, silken dreads as Ramsey’s fangs pierced his throat.
There was that moment of brilliant, burning pain, then he let himself sink into the sensation of the
beautifully dark vampire’s mouth drawing on his blood. The power play between them allowed him to let
go some of the tight control he’d always held when another vampire drank from him—something he’d
never thought of until now.
Yes, give it over to him.
Ramsey.
Only because it’s him. Only him.
He opened his mind’s eye and allowed himself to see along with Ramsey.
A London flat with dingy walls. There was music playing, the smoke of burning incense—sandalwood.
Blankets were piled, making a soft palett in the middle of the room. His head was pillowed on the softer
belly of a woman.
“Come on, how can you not love Janis Joplin?” came the soft, feminine tone. “She’s part of the
revolution, love. Women and rock and roll music are as much a part of what’s happening as the marches
and the pot.” She laughed.
He knew that laugh…
No.
His mind shifted away, to a future less distant.
A small underground vampire club in Moscow—one made just for rogues like him, those who existed
outside the society of the Midnight Playground clubs and their governing Council.
A girl was there—the beautiful dark-haired vampire vixen who smelled of one freshly made, and yet
she was impossibly strong—he could tell that much before he even touched her. She had the longest
lashes over her dark, dark eyes, and a doll’s body that made her seem innocent. He’d gone hard for her
the instant he saw her. He wanted to fuck her, and he would—she’d been flirting with him for an hour. He
had his hands on her ass as they danced, and she ground her hips into his.
When she pulled away from him suddenly, he asked, “What is it?”
“The sun…” she said in her halting English.
“What? It’s almost evening. We can wait until the sun sets to find a place if you want, little beauty. But
I’ll happily fuck you right here.”
She shook her head, a strange expression settling over her delicate features.
He laughed. “You can’t fuck in the evening? Is this some Russian rule or something?”
She took a step back, shook her head once more, then turned and ran from the club.
Confused and curious, he followed her, hunted her silently as she ran through the darkening streets and
disappeared down an alley. He watched as she paused there, furtively looking around her. Her gaze
caught his and she looked panicked.
“Please,” she whispered before she lifted a heavy metal grate in the ground, and slipped in, pulling the
grate over her.
“Fuck me,” he whispered, realizing with a shock that the rumors were true. “She’s a damn
Daywalker.”
Ramsey tore his mouth from Rogue. The young vampire blinked, looking dazed. He’d taken too much
blood, but he’d been stunned by the images. He held Rogue’s jaw in his hand. “Rogue, look at me. Talk to
me. This is important”
“Ah, you saw it, then.”
“You didn’t want me to. Why?”
“They are rebels. Like me. Who am I to betray their existence?”
“They are nothing like you, Rogue, if what little we know of them is true. Do you understand what this
means? How this can impact our entire race?” Rogue shrugged, and Ramsey almost envied him his youth,
his apparent ignorance. “Of course you don’t. But you will. I still cannot get over that you have actually
seen a Daywalker.”
“Maybe. They’ve been nothing more than myth, from what little I’ve gathered. Maybe that wasn’t what
I saw at all.”
“You were in Moscow.”
“Yes. I’ve traveled all over—I told you that, Ramsey.”
“But Moscow. You know the rumor. The whispers that the first Daywalkers were created when
Chernobyl melted down in 1986. That they are mutations, vampires of a new race.”
“Yes, but humans had strange rumors about Chernobyl, too, about things like five-headed dogs. I never
thought any of it actually meant anything. And mutant vampires? Aren’t we already mutations?”
“You express doubt and yet you knew what she was. I felt it when you recognized her. I heard you say
the words. Wherever they came from, you know they exist.” Ramsey shook his head. “You realize this is
the first spotting of one I’ve been able to verify—that any Council member has been able to verify. And
you of all vampires are the one to confirm this.” He pushed off the bed and got to his feet. “Tell me what
you know, Rogue. Everything. The Daywalkers are thought to be stronger than us. You sensed that.”
“She was. Stronger than I am despite being newly Turned.”
“How much so?” Ramsey demanded.
“As strong as a vampire ten times her age.”
This was not good. Not good. The idea of so much power in hands not under their control. The
question was who, then, was controlling them? If anyone, which was perhaps an even more terrifying
idea.
“So it is true. I must go talk to the Council immediately.”
“But Ramsey—”
He couldn’t consider his own feelings right now, nor what he’d started with Rogue. He had to think
about his responsibilities.
“You are to stay here, Rogue.”
“But I—”
Ramsey grasped his face between his palms. “Look at me. I know what I’ve done, delving into your
blood, that I may have opened some doors. If you can just…hang onto it until I get back, I promise you we
will work this through together. I mean it—wait here for me.”
Inexplicably—even to himself—he bent down and quickly kissed Rogue’s lovely mouth before pulling
back and moving toward the doors.
Julian!” he called, “gather the Council.”
By the time he reached his sitting room all the Council members in residence were there. Chiara wore
her usual gorgeous scarlet pout. The rest simply waited to see why they had been summoned.
Ramsey sat in one of the high-backed chairs. He nodded to Adriana, who poured wine for him. He
accepted the cup from her before dismissing her.
“I have important news.”
“What could possibly be important enough to have pulled me away from my evening with Dane and a
certain lovely pair of human males?” Chiara asked impatiently.
“Shh, darling,” Dane murmured, stroking her dark hair. “They’re still chained in the dungeon waiting
for us.”
“I understand there are times when nothing seems more important than our pleasure—”
“That’s all the time for our dear Chiara, mistress of unending appetites” Bastien joked.
“As if you have not taken your pleasure with me, Bastien,” she shot back.
“Council,” Ramsey said in such a way that they all immediately turned to him. “I have news. A
Daywalker has been spotted.”
“More rumors?” Storm murmured, unconcerned. “We have heard them before.”
“An actual sighting. Rogue saw her.”
“Your precious young Rogue? The rebel? The thief?” Chiara scoffed. “He would tell you anything to
curry your favor. He owes you his life, after all.”
“He would not bother to curry anyone’s favor,” Ramsey corrected her. “I saw it myself in his blood.”
Aleron leaned forward in his chair, placing a hand on Ramsey’s arm. “You saw it? Tell us, my friend.”
“A female. She was afraid of the setting of the sun. Newly Turned and yet she was impossibly strong.
He followed her until she went underground before nightfall. It seemed she begged him for his silence.”
“And he kept his silence,” Chiara said sharply. “This is what rebels do. I told you we should have
drowned him.”
“Silence, Chiara,” Ramsey demanded. “You are a guest under my roof, and Rogue is mine. My lover,
as I am sure you all realize by now. I will not hear another word about drowning him. You wonder why
such knowledge would be kept from us if this is our response? He had no reason to trust us.”
Chiara lifted her chin and settled back against Dane, knowing better than to defy him.
Bastien waved a hand. “This is neither here nor there at this point. The important thing is that there has
been a witness, and you yourself have seen the truth. Where did this happen?”
“Moscow.”
The others were silent as they took in his words.
“We must contact Konstantine and Luka,” Aleron said. “There is no Midnight Playground in Moscow
—they are the closest connection we have. Does anyone know if they have returned from America?”
Storm said, “I will find them. My club in Prague is the closest to Moscow.”
Ramsey thanked him with a glance. “Aleron, please alert Ever in London. I will contact Xavier and
Laurent in Paris. We must all make an effort to discover what we can. Where there is one there will be
more. This is no longer merely rumor. They exist. We must know more.”
Chiara’s feline gaze narrowed. “If they are as strong as we have heard…”
Ramsey nodded. “Then they are a threat to us, yes. We do not know what their intentions are, if they
are organized, how many there might be.”
“But they hide from the night,” Storm put in, “helpless as they sleep. We do not sleep at all. Surely that
must give us an advantage if that part of the rumor is true. That and our sheer numbers, the weapons we
have at our disposal. They may be abominations but I see no threat to us.”
Storm was too old to believe anything could pose mush of a threat, but Ramsey could feel it like
something tangible in the air. He could see the others did, as well.
“If they have been living underground all these years,” Ramsey said, “who knows how they might have
multiplied? Even if their kind began in Chernobyl they could have spread across the continent in more
than eighty years. We have no idea how quickly they can multiply, or if the way they Turn a human is any
different than it is for us. What Rogue did verify is that she had the strength of a hundred years when
newly Turned. How strong might a fifty-year-old Daywalker be? An eighty-year old? ”
“There is far too much we do not know,” Storm conceded. “I…will admit to curiosity.”
“I will admit to curiosity, as well.” Chiara sneered. ‘What I want to know is what it will take to kill
therm.”
“Perhaps they mean us no harm at all,” Dane suggested. “Perhaps they simply want to be left alone.”
“That is a possibility,” Ramsey said. “But we know almost nothing about them and surely they know
everything about us since we have become common knowledge in the world. A distinct disadvantage. We
must all alert our most trusted contacts in each region. And we must be careful that this information does
not get out. We do not want to cause a panic, among humans or among our own kind.”
Storm stroked his chin. “No, the last thing we need is panic.”
Dane stepped forward, his usual relaxed demeanor and focus on easing Chiara’s fits of temper
surprisingly absent. “Ramsey, will you please have your assistants unchain the lovely males Chiara and I
left in your dungeon?” Dane asked. “I believe we should all leave as quickly as possible to return to our
own regions and begin an information search immediately.”
Once his guests had gone Ramsey made his way back to his rooms—and Rogue. He tried to convince
himself he wasn’t hurrying. But as he opened the doors to his bedroom suite he couldn’t help the racing of
his heart, or the long-forgotten sensation of eagerness to see someone that went beyond mere desire.
Rogue.
“Rogue!”
He lay on the white marble floor that was nearly as pale as his flawless skin, his golden hair spread
around his face, his eyes closed. His beauty remained unmarred even in this condition—the condition
Ramsey recognized right away as the trance state that sometimes came over a vampire who had been
through trauma. He could lie there for a day, a week. Or for a century.
But what could possibly have happened to him while he was away?
He knelt on the floor, laid his hand on Rogue’s cool cheek.
“Wake up,” he told him—told him without it being an order. It was more a plea than he cared to admit.
He shook him, then shook his head at the lack of response. “Rogue,” he whispered, “come back to me.”
Still nothing.
He lifted the young vampire’s palm to his mouth and bit into the sleek flesh, but there was no response.
He had never felt so helpless. Not since…
No.
He was not Benjamin. He was not human—he would not die of this. Still, he needed to do something.
He couldn’t bear to look at his lover like this—and yes, Rogue was his lover, he had admitted that much
to the members of the Council, and in doing so, himself. He could not stand this. Another loss. Not again.
Never again.
He picked him up and laid him gently on the bed, bent and bit into his hand once more, hoping to bring
him out of it. When Rogue continued to lie there still as a statue, he bit him again, then again—his arm, his
wrist. Finally he drank.
The flavor of Rogue’s blood melted on his tongue— iron and silver, grief and regret. The flavors
dissolved into images. He saw a worn London flat, a flash of red hair. Felt a searing pain that wanted to
come howling out from the very center of his being.
Yes. This was it. This was where Rogue was caught, somewhere in the shrouded web of his past.
He must go in and find him. Into his memories. Into his mind. Somehow…
Chapter Eight
A London flat with dingy walls. There was music playing, a raspy, female voice full of pain. Incense
burned somewhere, sandalwood drifting in the air. Blankets were piled making a soft palett in the middle
of the room. His head was pillowed on the softer belly of a woman.
“Come on, how can you not love Janis Joplin?” came the soft, feminine tone. “She’s part of the
revolution, love. Women and rock and roll music are as much a part of what’s happening as the marches
and the pot.” She laughed.
“She’s too sad for me, Violet. If you’re going to listen to her I’m going out.”
“Stay here with me and be happy, love.” She pushed him off her and rolled to her knees, her long red
hair sweeping nearly to her waist as she reached to pull a wooden box with brass hinges from a table next
to the palett.
“Violet. You do too much of that stuff.”
“But it makes me feel good. So good.” She blinked at him with her enormous, round green eyes. Even
now, with her about to do a hit of smack, her pixie face looked utterly innocent. Sweet. “Come feel good
with me.”
He grabbed her and pulled her down into his lap. “I’ll make you feel good, babe.”
She laughed as he pulled her gauze shirt over her head. His gaze swept from her eyes down to her
lovely, smiling mouth, then to the small, perfectly made breasts.
“Do a good job and maybe I’ll lay off the dope for a bit,” she taunted him.
If only.
He pushed her onto her back on the blankets and smoothed his hands over her thighs, pushing the hem
of her long skirt up until it was bunched around her waist.
He smiled down at her. God, he loved her so damn much. She was so beautiful, even now, with her red
hair tangled, the swell of needle marks and scratches on her arms.
If he just looked into her eyes he could ignore the rest…
He bent and kissed her breasts, smiled as she sighed, then moved lower, kissing her belly.
“Oh, that’s good.”
Her hands went into his hair.
There was a knock at the door.
He looked up.
“Don’t answer it,” she said, pulling his head back down.
“Fuck. I have to, babe. I told them I’d go to that march.”
She sat up with a huff, pushing him away, and reached for her box. “You and your causes. Always
ready to fight authority. That group of blokes doesn’t even know what they’re marching against half the
time. But whatever. You do your thing. And I’ll do mine. I’ll be here, getting happy without you.”
He paused, wanting to ask her not to get high. But he knew it was useless.
“I’ll be back in a few hours.”
She shrugged.
He bent to kiss her lips, and she let go of the box to wrap her arms around his neck. He pulled back
and told her, “I love you, Violet.”
“Love you, too, babe. Don’t do anything too stupid. Don’t get busted.”
Don’t do anything too stupid, Violet.
But he couldn’t say it. It only made it worse.
The march had turned out to be more of a small gathering of restless youth—only a dozen or so. They’d
smoked some weed together, bitched about the American government and their own, then they’d split up.
Violet had been right. But he felt he had to do something about this fucked-up world.
The streets were dark as he made his way home. He was hungry—hopefully there was some food in
the flat. If not, maybe he would get a little high with Violet after all and drift off in her arms. He didn’t do
it often, but when she was high it was a way to be with her.
Lucy in the Sky with Violet. Only the heroin messed her up so much.
He walked faster, eager to get home to her. Worried. Simply wanting to see her.
He was on the ground before he knew what had hit him, his heel scraping the pavement as someone
dragged him into an alley.
“What the fuck?”
He kicked, but caught nothing but air. Strong hands pulled him up, slammed him into a wall, and the
breath was knocked from his body.
I’m going to fucking die.
Violet.
He tried to kick again at the dark male figure he could barely make out.
How could anyone be so damn strong?
The figure lifted him until his feet dangled helplessly. He felt the man’s cold breath whisper past his
cheek before something razor sharp—teeth!—pierced his throat.
He didn’t know how much time had passed when he sat up. The man was gone. He’d done such
hideous things to him he could hardly believe it. He’d bitten him, torn at his body until he thought he was
dying—until he’d wanted to. Had he? But then the man had forced his own bleeding wrist into his mouth,
and made him drink. His blood!
Jesus, he was losing his mind.
He’d been dying—he’d felt it—and then…
He staggered to his feet, clutching his head.
Have to get back to Violet. Have to get home.
He made it there, somehow. She was right where he’d left her, her eyes heavy with the dope.
“Love, where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you.”
He fell to his knees next to her.
“What…? Oh my God. There’s blood all over you! What happened, babe? What happened to you?”
“I don’t know. Just…help me get cleaned up.”
She helped him to the bathroom and ran the water in the tub. He climbed in with his clothes still on.
Violet knelt next to the tub washing his hair, singing softly—some half-remembered lullaby. He’d always
loved when she washed his hair, but now it felt different. Even the water felt different—almost sharp on
his skin.
“Violet… I feel…odd. Everything is cold. Fucking freezing.”
She helped him from the tub, peeled the wet clothes from his shivering body and took him to their bed
on the floor, twined her body around his, but he couldn’t stop shivering.
“Babe, let’s make you feel better.”
“No. I don’t want it.”
“Come on. Get happy with me. Please, babe. I don’t know how else to make you better.”
He didn’t want to. But he couldn’t stand the strange things happening in his body—an aching, yearning
weirdness he couldn’t explain. It was as if his skin were too tight for him. As if he could feel everything
so keenly the air against his flesh was painful. And yet he craved the warmth of Violet’s body against him.
And if it would make him forget what had happened to him…
“Alright. But don’t set up too big a hit. I’m not used to it the way you are.”
“I know that, love. Don’t worry. Mama Violet will take good care of you.”
She sat up and hummed as she cooked the dope in an old silver spoon. The acrid scent in the air nearly
made him gag. She placed a small cotton ball in the spoon, pulled the dope up through the cotton with the
needle.
“Hurry, Violet. My skin is crawling. Fucking unbearable.”
“I’m doing it, love. Try not to shake. Here, I’ll tie you off. You’ll feel better in a few moments, I
promise.”
The needle sinking into his arm felt almost good, as though his body knew it would bring relief. And it
did. With his head cradled in Violet’s arms, he drifted off.
The sun was up when he woke. He was thirsty. Thirsty in a way he had never been in his life. Just
awful. His head was pounding, and the sunlight coming through the beaded curtains at the windows was
like daggers piercing his eyes, like the worst hangover he’d ever had. Even the blanket on his naked body
felt…like too much, as if he could feel every single thread against his skin—skin that felt as if he’d been
sanded all over, down to the raw flesh. Down to the bone.
And the damn thirst. Like a blinding fury in his veins.
What the hell was this?
He held his head in his hands, pressed hard against his skull, trying to make it go away. But it only got
worse.
“Violet,” he whispered. “Help me.”
The rest became a blur then—the thirst burning him alive, until he truly was blind with it. Thirst as
sharp as a knife at his throat, cutting into the jugular, and blood everywhere. Pooling on the floor, in his
hands, in his mouth as he drank and drank and he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop!
He didn’t stop until it was all gone and she lay lifeless in his arms.
His eyes refocused, focused on her face. So lovely. So still. So dead.
He dropped her body on the floor as he scrambled away, her long red hair getting caught in his fingers.
He tore his hand away so fast a fistful of it came away, long strands drifting in the air.
“Ahhh, fucking Jesus God!”
He crouched on the floor, unbelieving. But there was his Violet and she was dead, dead, dead. Blood
all over the place, her flesh torn as if by an animal.
By him.
“Nooooooo!”
He howled at the empty room for what felt like hours. Finally he stopped, crawled over to Violet’s
body. He pulled her into his lap, began to rock her, to sing to her the lullaby she always sang to him. Her
skin had gone so cold. So cold.
His beautiful Violet.
His love.
He rocked and rocked while the sun set once more, then rose again. And finally he forgot. Everything.
Ramsey had to choke down a sob as he pulled away from Rogue, the blood tears pouring over his
cheeks and splashing on his lover’s face. The pain of what he’d seen was truly unbearable—he felt as if
his heart had been ripped from his chest, never to be repaired again.
It was no wonder Rogue had no memory of his human life, no clear memory of what had happened
right after his Turning. It was no wonder he had never allowed himself to love in his century-long
existence—his psyche knew what his conscious mind did not.
He had killed the woman he loved, torn her apart with the vicious thirst of a newborn vampire,
unguided and out of control. Terrible beyond imagining.
But it hadn’t been his fault, his poor love—for he realized now, now that he knew his pain—that he did
love him. He had to tell him. That he loved him. That Violet’s death was not his fault. If only he would
wake.
It had been three weeks since Ramsey had found Rogue on the floor. He’d kept him on his bed, lain
next to him the entire time, getting up only to feed, to hear the sparse reports from the Council.
He’d refused to see anyone but Adriana—she understood, and he couldn’t bear Julian’s sour
disposition and disapproving looks right now—and he’d had a brief visit from Aleron. His friend had
advised him to simply wait it out, but it was getting more and more difficult. He wondered if the trauma
that had blacked out Rogue’s memory—the first such instance he had ever heard of—might keep him in
this trance forever.
No.
He stroked Rogue’s face, trailed his fingers over his neck, his collarbone. His poor love.
What an irony that the only vampire he had ever loved was in trance, and might remain there, for all he
knew.
But he had no time to feel sorry for himself. No, his sorrow was all for Rogue. His sorrow. His
yearning. His frustration at how powerless he was to do anything for him.
He rolled onto his back on the bed with Rogue resting in his arms, his body as still as only a vampire’s
could be. Ramsey stared through the vaulting windows surrounded by exquisite ironwork at the moonlit
sky. The night was cloudy, but the moon shone through, outlining the clouds in silver. A few stars fought
through the clouds, their starshine muted.
But they fought.
He sat up, taking Rogue with him. He had to fight, as well, and perhaps there was a way.
“Adriana! I need you.”
She was at his side in a moment—she was never far from him these days, always ready to do whatever
he asked of her. He thought she cared for Rogue, as well, which was why he’d called her now.
“Yes, Ramsey?”
“Adriana, I need you to do something for me.”
“Of course. Anything.”
“I’m going back in.”
Her brows furrowed in confusion. “In?”
“My apologies. I am too eager and failed to explain. My own head is spinning with the possibilities.
What if I went into Rogue’s memories?” he demanded. “Through the blood. Do you see what I mean?”
“I’m not certain I do, Ramsey. Forgive my lack of understanding. We do enter into each other’s
memories whenever blood is shared.”
He nodded. “A part of our consciousness enters each other’s memories when we drink. It is as though
a movie reel were playing, which you already know, of course. And we become a part of it, if from some
distance. That is how we are able to see. Or that is my theory. We do it to humans, as well, but it is
always more powerful between vampires, yes?”
She nodded. “So you believe you can…what?”
“That I can become a part of his memories as they play through is head. Not only watch them, but enter
them. That I can communicate with him in this way, talk to him from the inside. I know it sounds crazy, but
we are connected, he and I. We have been from the moment I first saw him. I knew he was mine.”
She smiled. “I knew it, too.”
“Then you think this might be possible?”
“I have no idea, Ramsey. But aren’t we ourselves impossible? Creatures who drink human blood, who
are so much stronger than our mortal frames should be capable of… Are we not creatures of magic?”
He smiled at her whimsical description. He called himself a monster. A god. If there was any true
magic inside him, he needed it now. “Then you will help me.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“Only stay with me. We have exchanged blood, you and I. That always establishes a connection that
can never be broken. If I am lost in him for too long, call me out of it. Give me no more than two days. I
do not know how time functions in the blood memories. I do not know if I can reach that plane. But I must
try.”
“I will be here.”
She sat in a chair close to the bed, and settled into a state of utter stillness—a lovely vampire statue,
his guardian angel, and Rogue’s.
Ramsey cradled his lover in his arms—his love—and bent to sink his fangs into his neck.
At first there was nothing more than the lovely, silvery flavor of Rogue’s blood. He was so lost
wherever he was that Ramsey got nothing more. Then the flashes began.
The glorious red of her hair, faded and matted. Her pale, pale pink lips. Lovely.
He focused, called to Rogue in his mind over and over.
He got more flashing impressions: the old London flat, the scent of incense, the more bitter scent of
heroin cooking in the silver spoon, the sound of Violet’s laughter, Janis Joplin singing about a piece of her
heart.
Sadness. A yawning chasm of sadness and despair that threatened to overwhelm. This was where he
would find Rogue.
Focus.
The thirst like a blinding fury.
Violet.
The thirst burning him alive. Thirst as sharp as a knife. Blood everywhere. He couldn’t stop!
Her long red hair caught in his fingers.
“Ah, fucking Jesus God!”
She was dead. Dead, dead, dead. Blood all over the place, her flesh torn.
By him.
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…
His beautiful Violet.
His love.
Love.
That was what he needed to find Rogue, buried beneath a century of unbearable grief.
He called to him once more.
“Rogue!”
He felt the wooden boards of the old floor under his feet. Smelled again the incense. The blood.
“Come to me, Rogue. I will take you away from here.”
He moved closer, deeper. Saw Violet’s still body on the floor, her pink and blue flowered skirt torn
into ghostly shreds. Even now, she was beautiful.
“Rogue,” he called again. “Let me help you.”
“There is no help for me,” came the answer.
He was crouched in a dark corner.
Ramsey stepped closer, relief flooding him at having made the connection. “I have figured it out.”
A bitter laugh from him. He looked so miserable Ramsey’s heart broke for him, for all he’d lost, for
the terrible burden he carried.
“There is nothing to figure out. No redemption for me. There is nothing but…this.”
“Not true.” Ramsey held his hand out. “There is love.”
“I loved her.” Rogue’s voice broke on a sob. “I loved her and look what I’ve done to her. I wanted to
save her from herself…but I couldn’t save her from me.”
“This was not your fault.”
“Then tell me someone else did these horrible things to her. You can’t. I did this. To the woman I
loved. Have you ever heard of anything so terrible? I am a criminal beyond any atonement. A monster.”
“It is not true. I swear I know it not to be true.”
“How can you know what I don’t?” Rogue asked, his tone laden with doubt.
“I know because I saw what happened. I saw it all. You’d been given heroin— she gave it to you
without knowing the effect it would have. I do not judge her. But do you know what the drug does to a
vampire? The effect it has if we even drink from a morphie? It challenges the sanity of the very strongest
of us, the oldest. And for a newly Turned one such as you were? One who was never taught to feed, what
to expect, what you even were? I cannot begin to imagine what it must have done to your mind.”
Rogue shook his head, but Ramsey saw the tension in his shoulders let go the tiniest bit.
Ramsey took another step nearer to the still-wary Rogue.
“I know another truth, Rogue.”
“What do you know?”
His heart was a hammering beat in his chest, but it was a warm rhythm he hadn’t felt in centuries. “I
know that I love you.”
“You cannot.” The words sounded as if they caught in his throat.
“I do. I love you,” he insisted. “As impossible as it seems for me, given the circumstances of my life.
Given that I swore I would never love again. Given your irrepressible, impossible personality—or
perhaps because of it—you are my love.”
Rogue’s turquoise eyes filled with the blood tears, but he would not shed them.
“Ramsey…I am…unlovable. Unworthy. Impossible.”
“And yet I love you. And the impossible is possible again. Anything is. Everything. Love makes it so.
Love allowed me to follow you here, to find you when you were lost.”
He was standing over him now. The room began to fade away as he drew him to his feet and into his
arms. He smiled as he held him, back on the big round red bed in the Palacio de Crista that was the home
of his Midnight Playground club. His home. Their home. If only Rogue would stay with him.
Rogue’s beautiful face was red with the blood tears, white with shock.
“Violet,” he whispered, clutching his head. “Jesus. What have I done?”
“It’s alright. It’s long over.”
“I murdered her. I hurt her…ah, God.”
Ramsey pulled him into his embrace, held him tight enough to crush bone had he been human while
Rogue keened his grief, while he shivered with it, his body bowing.
He could hardly stand to see it, his jaw clenched against the incredible pain and fury palpable in the
air, in every taut muscle in Rogue’s body, yet he would not release him until he was done.
It was several hours later, the sun rising on the distant horizon when Rogue finally relaxed in his arms.
Adriana had left them alone as soon as she saw Rogue was awake, slipping out quietly, a smile on her
lovely lips.
“You stayed with me,” Rogue said quietly.
“You are my love, Rogue. I told you. I have seen your pain and I love you all the more for it. And now
you remember. You know who you are. It has been experienced, it has been witnessed, and you can put it
aside now. Other memories will follow. Good memories of your past. And we will make our own
together. But you must let this one go. I cannot allow it to poison you any longer. I cannot bear to see it.”
“I cannot believe you would love me, Ramsey. After all you’ve seen.”
“Do you doubt my word?”
“No, of course not. And I can feel it. I see it in your eyes. I don’t understand it, yet I know it’s there.”
“Do you love me, Rogue?” he asked, the words unfamiliar on his tongue, words so long gone
unspoken. He needed to know—needed to know so badly it hurt.
He gazed into those turquoise eyes, relief flooding him. Rogue was back. But he hadn’t answered the
question.
What if he were wrong? What if Rogue was too much the rebel to love? Too unable to ever work past
his grief? What if his gypsy ways pulled him away from him, from this place, so he could wander the
world once more?
Could he live without him?
He didn’t know.
Chapter Nine
Rogue found Ramsey’s gaze, locked his own there. “I do.” He paused, blinked, emotion an unfamiliar
flood, warming him like the light of the sun. “For coming to find me. For unraveling the mystery that was
my life. For wanting to. And for redeeming me, as much as I can be redeemed. I still believe I am a
monster—”
“You are no more monster than I. And perhaps Adriana is right, and there is magic inside us. Perhaps
we aren’t all bad.”
“Aren’t we all, Ramsey?” he had to ask. “All of us who live on human blood? We had this
conversation when we first met, you and I. You were the first to say it, but I understand your theory—and
you’re right. Brilliantly so. What I did…it was monstrous in a way most humans cannot comprehend. In a
way I could not. Perhaps I never will entirely.”
“But that comprehension in itself—that proves you are redeemable. You care, Rogue, and because you
care you can control your urges. ”
Rogue hung his head and stared into his lap for a long while. “Perhaps.” He looked up, searching for
the love in Ramsey’s expression, found it there. Fierce. Powerful beyond imagining. “But it is you,
Ramsey, you who redeem me. Not the fact that I was twisted up in the heroin or the blood lust of a
newborn vampire. But that you could…love me.”
Impossible. And yet it was so. Ramsey loved him. He loved in return. After all these years alone.
Ramsey reached for him in silence and pulled him close, his strong arms holding him in a way he had
never been held in his life—not this vampiric existence or the human life that was trickling back to him in
bits and pieces.
“I’m remembering,” he whispered.
“Tell me,” Ramsey said.
“My mother had blond hair, like me. And my eyes…they were hers, I think. She died when I was
young. I lived in London always, but in different homes. I can see them all as if I’m looking at photographs
one at a time, but quickly. It’s…strange. None of them were much finer than that place I lived with Violet.
God, Violet…” he sighed.
“Shh, my Rogue.” Ramsey stroked his hair, and he trembled under the touch of his hand. “Do you
remember what your name was?”
“No. No. There’s nothing there but these flickering images of my life. But it doesn’t matter, does it?
None of it matters any longer. This is who I am now. Rogue. Your lover. Yours, Ramsey, if you truly want
me.”
“Yes, mine. Absolutely and completely.”
“I still don’t understand it.”
“I will tell you what I am feeling, Rogue. I will try to explain. Something about you makes me feel as if
you are beginning to open up something inside me I have kept shut down since Benjamin died. For more
than one hundred sixty years, Rogue. It is as if our blood knows each other. As if I need to know nothing
else but the feel of your body against mine. But it is far more than physical, my love. You touch me in a
way I have not felt before. No, not even with my dear lost Benjamin. It is so deep. So fervent. So fine, as
if every fiber and detail of this emotion is perfect. Exquisite.”
Rogue pulled back to look at him. His heart was squeezing, unclenching, over and over, until he felt a
new level of opening up, a sliding sensation inside his chest.
He pulled Ramsey’s head down and kissed him, hard, using his tongue to open those gorgeously plush
lips. Ah, his tongue was sweet, soft as silk. And Ramsey’s hands on his waist were so strong, signaling
his command even in this moment in which their emotion floated on the air, invading every pore of his
being—and he knew his lover was experiencing these things in exactly the same way.
Ramsey pushed him down on the bed with the smallest pressure points on his shoulder, his chest. Yet
Rogue felt his authority in every small gesture, every tiny touch. And he gloried in it. In the love behind it,
which was still a wonder to him, and perhaps always would be.
He pushed against Ramsey’s mouth, sucking his tongue until Ramsey groaned his pleasure. In moments
Ramsey had stripped them both of their clothes, and it was naked flesh to naked flesh, their cool skin
heating with desire between them. The older vampire took his hand and guided it to his thick cock, which
was as hard and heavy as he’d ever felt it.
Rogue moaned as he wrapped his fingers around the rigid shaft.
“Stroke me,” Ramsey murmured against his lips.
He ran his fingers from base to tip, the lightest of touches, enjoying the velvety skin, fluttering his
fingertips over the swollen head that was already damp with pre-come.
He bit into Ramsey’s lower lip, felt him smile against his mouth.
Ramsey whispered, “You really are a rogue. But I will always love that about you. You are no
subservient minion, even as you accept my power.”
“I do accept it, Ramsey. And I accept this,” he said, squeezing Ramsey’s hard cock.
“Ah…”
Ramsey took Rogue’s other hand and held it over his head, held it hard against the bed, and he was as
restrained as if he’d been chained down. His body shivered with pleasure.
He looked up into the face of his lover, who had become even more beautiful to him. His green eyes
glistened, his mouth so lush and full he could barely manage not to kiss him again.
“Do what you will to me, Ramsey.”
“Tell me,” Ramsey demanded, his voice a harsh whisper. “Tell me, Rogue.”
“That I love you? I do, I love you. I love you. I need you…”
Ramsey pushed his knees up and tore his erection from Rogue’s hand. In a flash he had both of his
wrists pinned over his head, and Rogue spread his thighs, welcoming his lover.
Ramsey kept his gaze on his and Rogue panted as he pushed in slowly, the pleasure like liquid fire—
that silken, that hot.
Ramsey bit into his own lip, one of his sharp eyeteeth drawing blood, and Rogue leaned up to lick it
off.
Oh, his blood and his flesh heavy inside him…intoxicating.
With a grunt Ramsey pushed in deep, making Rogue gasp. Pleasure and pleasure and pain and
pleasure, like nothing he’d ever felt before.
“Ramsey, is this…is this what love is? What it means? That everything is…more, somehow? That I
feel you in a whole new way?”
Ramsey leaned back on his bent knees until he was sitting upright, still buried deep inside him. He
pulled both of Rogue’s hands to his chest.
“Do you feel it, Rogue? How my heart beats for you? This is love. This is what drives the rest.”
He understood in a moment of brilliant, blinding clarity.
“Love you, Ramsey,” he whispered, his throat too tight to get the words out any more loudly. “You are
my love. You are.”
Ramsey smiled, tilted his hips, pressing into him. Rogue raised his hips to meet him, their flesh joined.
Their hearts joined.
“Forever,” Ramsey vowed.
Rogue reached for one of his lover’s hands, their fingers twining together. “Forever.”
Ramsey set a long, sliding, stroking rhythm, and pleasure was like music in Rogue’s veins, something
that slipped and swam between them. Like water. Like honey.
He pulled Ramsey’s wrist to his mouth, turned his head and bit. Drank. And saw.
Only himself—the moments they had spent together. There was nothing more at that moment in
Ramsey’s mind. Miraculous. Beautiful.
When Ramsey took Rogues arm and bit into that tender crook of his elbow, Rogue smiled, loving the
soft pull as his love drank from him. Fucked him—it was no less loving because it was fucking. They
were vampires, after all.
They moved together, Ramsey’s hand on his cock, drawing pleasure from him until he cried out, came.
And Ramsey kept his gaze on his as he climaxed, groaning, biting his gorgeous lips as his hips bucked and
swayed.
Afterward they lay together on the bed, like any other lovers, bodies twined together. And for the first
time in his existence as either vampire or human Rogue felt as if he had finally come home.
Ramsey turned to Rogue, kissed his lovely, wicked mouth. Lord, how he loved him.
How he would love to love him again.
His cock stirred.
“Rogue.”
“Sir?” Rogue actually batted his long golden lashes at him.
“You don’t have to call me that any longer. I won’t ask it of you again.”
“I might like it if you did.”
He laughed. “Still cheeky as ever, I see.”
“Always. Would you like another go between my cheeks, love? I can see you’re ready. Or between my
lips? I would love to taste you.”
“Such decisions—decisions one should never have to make.”
“Then let me decide for you,” Rogue said, getting up on his knees and bending over him.
There was a knock at the door to his rooms. Their rooms now.
If he would stay.
A sharp twist in his chest.
“What is it?” he called out.
“Ramsey, there is news—urgent news,” came Aleron’s familiar voice, and he knew at once it was a
serious matter.
“Enter, my friend,” he said, sitting up.
He glanced at Rogue, but he only looked at Aleron curiously as he entered the room.
“What have you learned?” Ramsey asked.
Aleron didn’t even pause at Rogue’s presence during Council business, which was exactly as it should
be. If Rogue agreed he would announce him as his partner—in life, in his seat on the Council.
“There has been another Daywalker sighting. Or, I should say several.”
“Several? They have been so sparse as to be unverified until I saw the one in Rogue’s blood memory.
And now you tell me several? Can this be confirmed?”
Aleron stepped closer. “It was Storm himself who saw them.”
“How many?”
“Many. Hundreds. Even thousands, perhaps.” Aleron ran a hand through his hair, his expression hard
with concern. “He went below ground and found their enclave. And if what Storm thought he heard is
accurate, it appears they are readying for a war.”
Ramsey reached for Rogue’s hand. Not now. Not when he had found some happiness in this difficult
world. But Rogue also gave him something to fight for.
“If these creatures want a war, then they shall have one.”
With a growl he rose to his feet.
“Julian!” he called. “Gather the Council!”
“They have already been called,” Aleron told him.
Rogue was at his side in a flash. “Ramsey,” he said, his tone harsh. Then, when Ramsey didn’t turn to
him quickly enough Rogue grasped his face in his hands. “I am with you. With you. Do you understand?”
He saw the love there, shining in his brilliant eyes. The fierce protectiveness. And loved him even
more for it.
Aleron laid a hand on each of their shoulders. “We stand together.”
There was to be battle ahead. None of them knew what to expect. Perhaps this was to be the true battle,
the one that ended the world. But at least he’d had this much. A loyal friend. An unexpected love. A love
that would transcend any war.
He pulled them both in close.
“Together,” he declared, the word an oath on his lips.
About Eden Bradley
Best-selling and award-winning author Eden Bradley, who also writes as Eve Berlin, has published a
number of novels and novellas, both print and e-books, with Bantam, Berkley Heat, Harlequin Spice &
HQN, Samhain Publishing and Black Lace, as well as several self-published novellas. Several of her
books have been translated into German, French, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Czech.
Her BDSM novel THE DARK GARDEN will appear as a graphic novel in Japan in 2013, and her novel
FORBIDDEN FRUIT was profiled in Cosmopolitan magazine. Eden appears regularly on Playboy Radio
and conducts workshops on writing craft and writing about sex. A psychology major, she's fascinated with
how the human mind responds to intimacy, especially when sex and romance collide.
When not writing, you can find her wandering museums, buying shoes, and reading everything she can
get her hands on.
Visit her websites:
or her group blog
Other Titles from Eden Bradley
Now Available from Samhain Publishing:
Midnight Playground Series
Celestial Seductions Series
Wasteland Continuity Series
Now Available from Bantam/Delta:
Exotica: Seven Days of Kama Sutra, Nine Days of Arabian Nights
Now Available from Harlequin Spice:
***
Written as Eve Berlin
Now Available from Berkley Heat:
***
Also From Eden Bradley
From The Smutketeers - A Kinky Christmas Carol
Bonus Excerpt: THE SEEKING KISS
Two vampires, one woman, an eternity of love and desire…if only she’s strong enough…
Midnight Playground, Book One
London 2069
For as long as Nissa has known about Midnight Playground, the most exclusive of a world-wide
network of vampire sex clubs, she has yearned to gain entrance—and to become one of them.
Orphaned and alone from a young age, she has nothing to lose and nothing to stop her from indulging
in her darkest fantasies.
Hex and his maker, Aleron, have enjoyed many play partners at the club and have often shared in the
euphoria of the Seeking Kiss, that sensual blood exchange between vampires and their lovers. But
Nissa’s beauty, intelligence and strength is a siren call he can’t resist.. His desire for her and her
willingness to let herself be drawn by their mental pull compels Hex to consider offering to her
something he’s never given another mortal– the treasured Turning Kiss.
The beautiful vampire pair entice Nissa into an intimate sexual realm beyond her wildest dreams—
and she revels in it. But when she finds herself falling for one of the powerful duo, it could mean the
end of her deepest fantasies. Or a new beginning she never dared to imagine…
EXCERPT:
When she found another parted curtain she knew this was where she was meant to stop. What did that
mean? But she didn’t have time to think about it. She could hear quiet moans coming from inside, making
her shiver all over. And as she approached the doorway, the scent that came to her was earthy, dark. Pure
sex. When she looked in, her heart stuttered.
Two males, vampires both, twined together, standing naked in the small room. One tall, well over six
feet, with short spiky hair in such a pale shade of platinum blond it appeared almost white. His skin was
as milky as the marble panels on the walls and looked just as hard and smooth. He had long, lean muscles,
his thighs strong, the curve of his buttocks and back a flawless flow of lines. His mouth was on the throat
of his partner, working, sucking, one hand on the other male’s back, holding him close, the other hand
behind his dark head.
And the dark one…
He was the one she’d seen downstairs in the main room, that midnight stare that went right through her.
She could only see his profile, his full lips parted in ecstasy, but she knew it was him.
He was all hard-packed muscle beneath naked skin, gold and gleaming and so incredibly beautiful just
looking at him made her breath catch in her throat. His hand was between the taller man’s thighs, his
fingers stroking his partner’s long, hard cock.
Oh God…
Desire lanced into her body, a hard shock of it like lightning, like fire. She was shaking. The tall one
drew his mouth from the dark one’s throat, leaving a small smear of blood that ran in a tiny rivulet over
his collarbone and down his broad chest, bright scarlet against that golden skin. Nissa licked her lips.
Yes, to have my own mouth there. To have them do those things to me…
The tall one turned the other in his arms and pulled his muscular body in close, broad bronzed back to
his angular, pale chest. With one hand he stroked slowly down his back, then using his sharp nails, he
punctured the skin at the edge of one shoulder blade. Nissa heard a sharp hiss from the dark one, but she
knew it was in pleasure, not pain. The blond leaned in and licked at the droplets of blood, and they both
moaned, a low hum in the back of their throats. Her body was weak with desire, warm, her pussy soaking
wet and aching. She squeezed her thighs together, but it didn’t help. And she was held there, enraptured,
unable to turn away.
The tall one slid his palm over that lovely golden skin, down and down, until he reached the smooth
curve of his buttocks. He slipped a hand in between them and the dark one tensed for a moment, then his
hips surged back, angling so that Nissa could see his hard golden cock, not as long as the tall blonde’s,
but thick, the head dark purple. She licked her lips.
Have to touch him, to take him in my mouth. Yes…
As she watched, enthralled, the blond lifted his head, his gaze meeting hers. His eyes were a piercing,
shocking blue, with large black pupils, and she saw in them the depth and knowledge of centuries. It was
as much a shock as the keen desire knifing into her system. And as she stared, fascinated, he parted the
younger vampire’s buttocks and thrust his cock in.
The dark one cried out, his head thrown back, his neck corded. And Nissa felt it as though her own
body had been impaled. She was shivering with pleasure, the pulsebeat between her damp thighs nearly
unbearable, and the tall one watched her still, his blue gaze unwavering on her face. When he began to
pump his hips, the dark beauty pushing back against him, she swore she felt a stirring deep in her body, a
ghost of sensation, too powerful to deny. With a shock, she felt that long, marble pale cock pushing into
her pussy, feeding her desire. Stronger and stronger as she watched them together, watched them fucking
in some beautiful and purely animal way. She grasped the edge of the doorway next to her, her fingers
twisting in the heavy curtain.
Their bodies were perfect, unbelievable. And as pale flesh came down upon golden muscle, she began
to shake, desire rising in one hot wave after another. She watched them both, but even with the blond
one’s gaze on hers, she silently prayed for the dark one to turn to her.
See me…
He lifted his head then, one hand reaching back to grasp the tall one’s thigh. His head angled and his
dark gaze landed on her face.
Another shock, pure pleasure, like a wall coming down on her. And all at once she could feel that
lovely cock thrusting into her pussy and ass at the same time, and she realized they were inside her head
somehow, that they were feeding her sensation in some inexplicable way, and sharing with her their own.
The blond one held out his hand.
“We’ve been waiting for you, Nissa.”
Excerpted from The Seeking Kiss by Eden Bradley Copyright © 2010 by Eden Bradley. Excerpted by
permission of Samhain Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or
reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Bonus Excerpt: BLOODSONG
An ancient vampire, an ancient grief…a love that makes his blood sing…
Midnight Playground, Book Two
London, 2069
Aleron is ancient, powerful, immortal…a vampire who idles away his time playing at his favorite
haunt, Midnight Playground. His favorite toys: beautiful young men. His game: BDSM, experiencing
through the minds of his partners the sensations he can no longer quite feel himself.
The one thing he has vowed to avoid at all costs is love, especially for a woman. In a hundred years he
has never been tempted to break that vow—until a lovely mortal woman enters his dungeon to watch
him play. And his blood hums the ancient song of long-forgotten desire.
Raised in the Indian slums of London, exotic dancer Meeraj enters Midnight Playground a woman
with nothing left to lose, numb to all but the most extreme forms of stimulation. As she watches
Aleron’s blood play, she knows only his razor-sharp skills will satisfy. And she catches an odd mental
glimpse of the grief that shadows his heart.
From their first touch, they are caught up in a whirlwind of exquisite agony that releases their
emotions from the weight of the past. Exposing them to risks they’ve both fought to avoid. Love…and
loss.
EXCERPT:
Aleron stood, looking at her. She was stunning, this woman. This mortal woman who had somehow
managed to get inside his head without him inviting her. Who had managed, in all her mortal simplicity, to
make his blood sing.
It shouldn’t be possible. The Bloodsong that was the vampiric response to pain play only ever
happened between vampires. Never in his three hundred years had this happened to him. Not with a
human. And he knew it was her, not Calam, who had caused it. It was her response, the intensity of their
mental connection, made the instant he’d seen her, that had his blood humming in his veins.
He looked over his shoulder, making certain the two young slave girls were caring for Calam properly.
They were pretty enough. They would never be here if they weren’t. But he only had eyes for her.
She watched him, her lovely face wary now. He liked that, that she was a bit off balance, this strong
woman. He liked the scent of her nerves skittering over her sweet skin.
He didn’t like that she made him feel the same way. Yet it intrigued him. He hadn’t felt like this over a
woman, over anyone, in a long, long time.
Not since…but no, he wouldn’t think of that now.
Emeline.
No.
He focused on her once more, on those shining eyes that were a glowing, metallic bronze, the luster of
her golden skin, the high, rounded curve of her cheekbones. Her blood beating at her temples, at that
tender spot at the base of her long throat. He drew in her scent. Flowers again. Desire. Female come
between her hot thighs.
Yes…
He stepped closer, held out his hand. “I am Aleron.”
She took it in hers, her mortal warmth seeping into his hard, cool flesh.
“Meeraj.”
“A beautiful name.”
She simply nodded her head, as if his compliment were her due. So calm in the face of all that had
happened already. On the outside, anyway. He knew better.
“Your first time at Midnight Playground?” he asked.
“Yes. I only received my invitation a few nights ago.”
“And who is your sponsor?”
“Her name is Nissa.”
“Ah, I know her well. Quite well. I’m surprised she didn’t mention you to me.”
“Why would she have?” Meeraj asked, again, coolly. As if being in the presence of a vampire didn’t
intimidate her at all.
“Nissa would know you would appeal to me.”
“And?”
“And you do.”
She smiled then, her teeth a row of flawless white. He could see in his head those teeth bared in
ecstasy, her head thrown back, her eyes closed. He could see his own teeth bared to drink from her…
offering her The Seeking Kiss…
She waited, watching him. A small ripple of nerves ran up his spine.
Unusual.
Yes, but he wouldn’t allow that to throw him. Perhaps it had simply been too long since he’d had a
woman. It had been months since he had given Hex over to Nissa, and she was the last woman he had
taken. Men were always easier, in every way. Easier to obtain. Easier to dispose of when he was finished
with them, without any drama on either part. Women were emotional creatures and he was…not. It had
been a very long time since he had allowed himself to be anything more than fond of his female partners.
A hundred years.
Why was he thinking of this now? With this superb creature before him.
He reached out, stroked one finger down her bare arm. Skin as silky smooth as it looked, and a small,
lovely shiver from her.
Perfect.
“Meeraj, would you like a drink?”
“No, thank you. I don’t drink.”
“Tell me what you are here for.”
“I am here for the unique experience of sex with a vampire. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for, we
humans who come here?”
“Yes, of course. What else?”
He had to know if there was more to it for her. Other than her scent, she was difficult to read. She was
strong, so strong he had no idea of the extent of her submissive tendencies. And submission was
something he would never force or trick anyone into.
“I am here to see if any of your kind finds me fit for The Seeking Kiss. I want that, to experience that
bliss. To experience all that I can. To become closer to your kind.”
“And the Turning Kiss?” He was challenging her. The Turning Kiss, that long, long drink which would
transform a human into one of his kind, was not a requirement of those who came to Midnight Playground,
and was rarely offered. He was testing her, perhaps.
“I understand that for many it’s the ultimate desire. But it’s not as important for me. Maybe I don’t
know what I might be missing.”
“You don’t seem at all afraid, of any of it.”
Meeraj lowered her long, black lashes. They brushed against the faint pink flush on her cheeks, the first
outward sign that she was truly affected by being there.
“I’ve been accused before of being…contained.”
He laughed. “So have I.”
She raised her eyes to his once more, the gold burning through him.
“Which is one reason why I hoped to be invited to play in the dungeons here. It helps me to let go.” He
saw her jaw tighten, her fingers unconsciously clench. “It’s the only time I can.”
He watched her closely, saw the pulse beating in her throat. Yes, she was more worked up than he’d
originally thought. Why hadn’t he noticed? He was too distracted by her beauty. Her rigid strength.
If this woman were a vampire, she would be one to rival my own power…
But he was getting ahead of himself.
And she was talking about the dungeons, about his favorite sexual arena—BDSM. That exchange of
power, of pain, soaring sensation that opened the doorway into a person’s soul. Intense when played
between humans and vampires. An almost dangerous force when played between vampire and vampire.
The Bloodsong overwhelming…and why had it happened with this woman watching? He had to find out.
He had to find out how much more intense it would be when he played her. And he intended to.
Excerpted from Bloodsong by Eden Bradley Copyright © 2010 by Eden Bradley. Excerpted by
permission of Samhain Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or
reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Bonus Excerpt: SANCTUARY
From the Author of The Dark Garden comes another scorching BDSM romance.
San Francisco Dom Series, Book One
When her best friend takes her to a BDSM club in San Francisco Devin Delaney meets the beautiful,
mysterious and commanding Shaye Vincent. The wealthy, enigmatic man takes her on a journey into
the darker side of sex, and it’s addictive. He’s addictive.
At Sanctuary Devin’s kinkiest fantasies—and her emotions—shift into overdrive. But she’ll have to
face old demons in order to give up control, and Shaye will have to walk through his own darkness.
Can pain and desire bring them together? Or will it tear them apart?
Sensual, seductive and deeply moving—If you liked the Fifty Shades trilogy, you’ll fall in love with
Sanctuary.
EXCERPT:
“I appreciate you coming on such short notice,” he said.
“Well, you asked me to come. I thought…”
“What did you think?” he asked as he took her coat.
“That I…should.”
He hung her coat carefully in the foyer closet, then turned to face her. He looked beautiful and as
wicked as ever in the low lighting coming from the living room.
He took her hand once more and pulled her in close enough that she could feel the hard planes of his
body pressed against her breasts. She wanted to groan aloud, but bit it back.
He said quietly, so that she could feel his breath against her cheek, “We have no contract, Devin. You
don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. We’ve negotiated some of your limits, but you never have
to be here if you don’t want to.”
“Oh, I want to be here. I was just trying to tell you that I feel when you ask something of me, it
becomes…exactly what I want.”
He surged against her, his arms going around her and holding her close.
“Ah, you are perfect, my girl.”
She smiled, a shiver running through her. At the small term of endearment. At knowing she’d pleased
him.
“I’m going to strip you down now,” he whispered to her. “I’m going to spank you with a small leather
strap until your gorgeous ass is pink, until you can’t take anymore. And then I’m going to fuck you.”
“Oh, yes…” she breathed, not entirely certain she’d actually said the words aloud until she heard his
small, pleased chuckle.
In a flash he’d turned her around and had her naked, his own shirtless body pressing up behind her.
“Shaye, I—”
“Sh, now. Just follow my lead.”
Her head was spinning, sinking down and down, into that floating place where there was nothing but
pleasure, despite the pain he might give her. She wanted it. Needed it.
She let him walk her into the living room, where he bent her over the end of the sofa.
“Rest your elbows on the arm of the couch to steady yourself,” he instructed. “Yes, good. You have the
most delectable ass I’ve ever seen.”
He smacked her once, hard, making her jump, making her laugh.
“Oh, do you think that’s funny?”
“I…no…”
He smacked her again and another giggle came out of her.
“Shaye, I…it’s just nerves or something.”
“Yes, I know. I’m not worried. I have my ways. Head down now, little Devin, and stay here quietly
until I get back. Quiet and imagining what I might do to you in a few minutes.”
“Oh…”
“Sh, quiet,” he said, a harder edge to his voice this time that made her limbs go warm, her mind
buzzing.
She heard him walk away, the sweep of his bare feet. He’d left her shoes on, and she shifted from one
foot to the other, heard the small squeak they made on the wood floors and tried to still herself. There was
a momentary struggle to keep still, to do as he said. But she reminded herself that he had asked this of her
—demanded it—and that was all it took for her body to calm of its own accord in a way that was almost
meditative.
He was back in a few moments later, his hand resting at the small of her back, steadying her. Making
her feel owned, somehow.
“You look so naked bent over like this,” he murmured. “I can just see the lovely seam of your pussy.
Makes me want to touch you there. Like this.”
His fingertips stroked the sensitive flesh between her thighs and she went wet instantly.
“Spread a little for me. Yes, good.”
She felt wide open. Wanton. She loved it.
He grasped one hip in his big hand, pressed up against her, his erection against her buttock.
God, he was going to fuck her tonight. She could hardly wait. Her sex clenched at the thought.
His fingers found her wet slit once more, and he pushed one inside.
“Oh…”
Stay quiet, Devin. Try to be quiet, to hold still, no matter what I’m doing to you. Do you understand?
You can answer me.”
“Yes.”
“Say my name.”
“I understand, Shaye.”
When he pushed a second finger inside her, causing pleasure to spill into her system like liquid heat,
she had to bite her lip.
He began a slow pumping rhythm, fucking her with his hand, and at the same time he began to spank
her.
It didn’t hurt at first—she was too full of pure pleasure from what he was doing to her needy pussy.
But soon he began to smack harder, and it became more difficult to keep quiet. But she would do it. For
him.
He kept up the spanking, raining blows over her ass, her thighs, and all the time fucking her with his
thrusting fingers. She was lost in pleasure—even the pain was pleasure. Lovely.
And then he hit her with something.
She smelled the leather even as she felt the wide strap across her bottom. She was too shocked to cry
out.
He hit her again with the strap, and this time she did yelp.
“Come on, Devin. You can take it.”
And she could. She felt a certain pride well within her as he smacked her ass over and over with the
leather strap, as she felt the welts rising on her skin. She knew she could handle the pain. And somewhere
between the hurting strap and the lovely sensation of his fingers plunging inside her, the line began to blur.
Sensation became one thing—pleasure and pain—and her service to him, that she was doing this to please
him, but as she’d said, it was what she craved most now, as well.
It went on and on, until she felt her pussy swell with need, felt her climax trembling in her body,
waiting, waiting.
Shaye must have felt it, too.
“Hold it back,” he ordered. “Don’t come until I tell you to.”
“Yes…”
He began to fuck her harder with his hand, really slamming into her. At the same time he kept smacking
her sore and stinging skin with the strap. Something about the sharp scent of the leather was driving her
crazy. Needing to come was driving her crazy. Her legs began to shake.
“Oh, baby, this is beautiful,” he told her, his voice a little breathless. “You can do it. Hold it back for
me.”
He hit her harder, and pleasure surged, making her pussy ache, her clitoris hardening until she could
barely stand it.
“Shaye…I can’t.”
“You can. And you will. Because I need to be inside you when come, baby. I need you to come all
over me.”
She groaned as he slipped his fingers from her—at the los of sensation. At the knowledge that he
would fuck her now.
In moments he was behind her once more, and she felt his strong, naked thighs against hers, the slight
tickle of the fine hair there. Then his sheathed cock was poised at her entrance. She surged back against
him, trying to take him in.
A low, rough chuckle from him. “Little Devin, you are not the one running this show, are you?”
“No, Shaye.”
“I like that—the way you say my name. I want you to ask for it.” His voice was rough with desire.
“Ask me by name, Devin.”
“Please, Shaye.”
He pressed his thick cock against her, the tip just slipping inside. She could feel the cool metal of his
piercing even through the condom. “Please, what?”
She groaned. “Please fuck me.”
“Say it again. The right way.”
“Oh…please fuck me, Shaye.”
Excerpted from Sanctuary by Eden Bradley Copyright © 2012 by Eden Bradley. Excerpted by
permission of Eden Bradley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted
without permission in writing from the publisher.
