“That was wrong, Vlad. What you did last night, making me stay asleep, and trying to convince me it was just a dream? It was wrong. You violated me.”
To get to me! And he will again and again and again, and you’ll have no say in the matter.
“Shut up, Beta!”
She felt no response from Vlad, swallowed hard and lowered her head. She’d loved every second of it. But that didn’t make it all right. He hadn’t asked. He’d only taken.
Given, actually. But still… She wondered briefly if she was truly angry that he’d touched her without asking, or was it more that he had denied her seeing him again when she’d longed for nothing else for all this time? He’d kept her asleep, used his power over her to keep her from waking up. She wanted to see him. She wanted to throw her arms around him and weep for joy. She wanted to tell him how much she’d missed him.
“Right. The man has come to murder me. Get over it, Stormy.”
Because it was true. He hadn’t come for her. He’d come for the ring, and for Elisabeta.
“Don’t let it happen again,” she whispered. And on some level, she was sure he was out there, somewhere, listening. “Just don’t.”
She went back inside, locked the French doors and crawled back into the bed, determined to get another hour or two of sleep before it was time to get up and face the day. He wouldn’t come back again tonight, she told herself. It was too close to dawn for that.
She only wished she could be as certain about Elisabeta. The sleeping intruder had awoken, strong and ready for a fight. It wasn’t one to which Stormy was looking forward.
She rolled over, punched her pillow and closed her eyes. And she did get the sleep she’d been so determined to get. But it was far from restful, and filled with more pieces of her missing memories.
Vlad built a fire in the giant hearth and yanked the dusty sheets from the furniture, making a place for them to be comfortable on the ancient but still sturdy chairs. He located food, canned stew with gravy, certainly not cuisine, but she declared it edible and proved it by devouring every bit. She was starved. The castle’s caretakers, he told her, only came in one weekend a month, and though he’d phoned ahead to tell them to prepare a room for her, the supplies they’d left in the pantry were meager at best.
“I’m not the original Vlad Dracula,” he told her at length.
Stormy looked at him quickly. “You’re not?”
“No. I am…far older. But that’s unimportant right now. I was centuries old, already, when my travels took me to Romania. I cannot help but think it was fate that led me there. To her.”
“Elisabeta?”
“Yes.”
He was intense, his eyes focused on the dancing fire that painted his face in light and shadow, giving him an even more frightening appearance. And even more beautiful.
“The prince, the real son of the king, had been killed in battle before he was out of his teens, his body left to rot, unidentified and unclaimed. His father never knew what had become of him, and by the time I arrived, he had been mourning his lost son for some years. I knew the young prince’s fate. I’d heard it directly from the enemy who’d slain him. That man panicked when he realized he’d killed the prince, knowing the vengeance the king would wreak should he learn of it. So he stripped the prince of his clothes, obliterated his face and dragged his body into a stand of brush, never to be found.” He lowered his head. “When I arrived, the king mistook me for his long-lost son. I didn’t have the heart to kill the joy in the old man’s eyes. I saw no harm in playing the role.”
“I see.” She didn’t, not entirely, but she was eager to hear more of his story. About Elisabeta, the woman who terrified her, seeming to possess her at times.
“I’d been living as Prince Vlad for nearly five years when I met her. We married a day later.”
She shot him a quick, searching look. “That’s it? You met her and married her a day later? That’s all you’re going to say about your…courtship?”
Vlad lifted his brows, spearing her with his steady gaze. “What else is there to say?”
“I don’t know. How you met her. Where. What made you fall in love with her. It must have been…intense, if you married her so quickly.”
“Intense.” He turned his eyes toward the fire, stared into the snapping flames. “That describes it as well as anything. The details…the details are unimportant.”
“The details are the only thing that’s important.”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, and she knew he wasn’t going to share his private hell with her. Not now. And maybe not ever. “The outcome is the same, with or without my most intimate memories being spilled at your feet, Tempest. I was called into battle on our wedding night. Enemies had crossed our borders. I led our soldiers to meet them, but we were severely outnumbered. It was ugly. Bloody. Many died. I was struck down, but one of my men dragged me into shelter and left me there, safe from the sun.”
She sighed, disappointed that he’d refused to go into detail about his time with Elisabeta. She sensed that he didn’t trust her with that kind of power.
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