Naughty Temptations

Chapter Three-2

“Three hundred dollars!”

He shook his head. “You got rooked.”

“Damn it! Okay, you’ve proven your point. Now, can I stop hopping like the Easter Bunny on acid?”

"In a minute." His arrested gaze stayed fixed on her jiggling t**s. “So you'll consort with shady wiccans, but you have a thing against hard-working, well-intentioned, bazillionaire vampires?”

“Wiccans only bleed me for my money,” she panted.

“Point taken,” he conceded, apparently hypnotized by the up and down motion of her cleavage.

“Uh, Chase? I’m so ready to stop hopping. Now.”

“Say pretty please.”

“Pretty. Please,” she gritted through clenched teeth.

“Stop.”

Abruptly, she was able to control her own limbs again.

“Let’s hope you’ve learned your lesson about trusting wiccans over vampires.” His eyes burned briefly before pulling out a chair invitingly. “Dinner is served.”

With a toss of her head she settled primly into her chair.

He took the seat opposite her. Instantly, a butler type appeared at her side with inhuman speed, startling her.

“Good evening, madam. Would you care for some wine?” The somber, pale gentleman inquired, holding up a bottle of primo vino.

“Uh… sure.”

He poured a healthy amount of fine cabernet into her Waterford wine glass. From a different bottle he poured a dose of ruby liquid into Caden’s glass.

“Reedus wasn’t certain what you would like to eat. And neither was I. So he had the kitchen make up an assorted menu from which you can choose.”

Caden glanced at her with an imploring look. It was the weirdest sensation but she suddenly sensed he wanted her to be kind to Reedus. Was he putting that thought into her head? Once again this was not at all like mind thrall. This was more of an appeal than an order. She had complete freedom of choice whether to be rude or gracious to the vampire butler.

“That was…very considerate of you, Reedus.” She picked up the gilt-edged card with hand-calligraphy that rested on her plate and glanced over the list of dishes on it. “I’ll have the shrimp scampi starter. Extra garlic, please. The garlicky chicken with garlic mashed potatoes. And the garlic bread,” she added pertly.

“Would you like a nice, tall glass of iced holy water with that?” Caden suggested with heavy irony.

“Sounds refreshing.” She smiled sweetly up at Reedus, handing him the card. “But whatever you have on tap is fine.”

“I'll have what the lady is having, Reedus. Triple garlic on mine.”

Reedus bowed. “As you wish, sir. Madam.” He zipped off.

“You have a lot of toys in your bag of Jedi mind tricks, don’t you?” she asked warily.

“It’s a gift.” He shrugged.

“And that goop the wiccan gave me really doesn’t work. You can control me?” She asked pensively. “And there’s nothing I can do to stop you?”

“No. But consider, I could have enthralled your mind, had my wicked way with you, and made you forget it ten times by now,” he admitted, shaking his starched, white napkin into his lap with aplomb.

Her eyes widened as she watched him intently. “Have you?”

He looked her directly in the eye. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Call me old-fashioned, but I don't see the romance in getting a woman that way. And I do want you, Serena Bliss. Make no mistake. Since the moment you walked into Chase Industries, I’ve wanted you. A lot.” His tone was blunt.

She caught her breath at his stark admission and the clear lust in his eyes. “Why me?”

He pondered that for a moment. “Maybe I’m lonely.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. I’ve searched a long time, Serena. And frankly, there is no one remotely like you on eVampharmony.com.” His tone was lightly self-deprecating but his eyes shimmered seductively in the candlelight with naked need that made her clit twitch under her skirt in primal response. “And furthermore, I know you want me, too,” he challenged.

“How could you possibly know that? Can you read minds, too?”

Holy hell, he better not be able to read her mind, or he’d know exactly how she’d fantasized every day at the office about his taking her bent over his desk. Her desk. In the elevator. And in the parking garage. She felt her cheeks flame. He was too observant to miss her discomfiture.

“I’m not psychic. Not in the strictest sense.”

“But you have planted suggestions in my head, right? Both outside when you were reassuring me you can control yourself. And again just now. You didn’t want me to be rude to Reedus because he’s a vampire.”

“Power of suggestion is not mind thrall,” he defended. “I was establishing a simple thought link with you. It’s harmless, and you have free choice whether to let me in your head or not. I can’t read your thoughts telepathically. That’s a higher level of intimacy reserved for bonded couples in my world.”

“The fact is, I don’t need to have access to your thoughts to know you want me as much as I want you. I can tell by your rapid pulse and the scent of s****l cream in your panties whenever you are in my presence that you desire me to be between your thighs and deep inside you as much as I do. Please don’t try to deny it.”

She was no prude but heat filled her at his candor, and she breathed deeply trying to knock down her pulse that was in overdrive at that moment. She squeezed her legs together under the table in a vain effort to stem a fresh rush of desire from coating her panties that were already wet for him. It would help if everything about him weren’t such a turn on.

“I—I just wanted your assistance for my cousin’ sake.”

“And you’re getting it,” he said.

“Why? You’ve already proven I can’t make you do anything. Quite the opposite. So what’s in it for you?”

“Maybe I want to be your safety call, instead of i***t Barry, whoever he is. Maybe I want to be your vampire in shining armor. So you’ll turn only to me in bad times. As well as in good.

“In other words, you’re the one blackmailing me,” she accused. “If I don’t say yes to whatever you want, then you won’t help me get Zoe away from Garoul.”

“You seem to delight in thinking the worst of me. Actually, the rescue operation to extract your cousin from Garoul’s home is already underway.” He took a swallow of his drink, watching her reaction over the glass rim.

Her fork clattered to her plate. “Wait, what?! How?”

“Garoul is throwing himself a bachelor party tonight at his place in Bel Air. Most of L.A. vampire society is invited. I sent Vanessa, Henrick, and Bryan there undercover as guests. They’ll find Zoe tucked away somewhere on his property, most likely in a stupor from her ‘fiancé’s’ mind thrall. They’ll have to use their own mesmerizing abilities to break that brain lock to get her to leave with them quietly to a safe location we have made ready until she decides where she wants to go next. They have instructions to check in with me as soon as they have her.”

“Get out. Are you serious?”

He raised his glass in mock toast. “Very. We can’t have you wandering around L.A. trying to blackmail every vampire you meet into helping you, now can we?”

Relief for her cousin washed over her. For a moment she was speechless. “Thank you, Caden. And please thank Vanessa, Henrick, and Bryan for me, too. It’s so kind of them to help.”

His eyes twinkled at her happy smile as if he took genuine pleasure from it. “I told you, they like you. They wanted to help. Now that that is out of the way, any other questions? Or can we resume our regularly scheduled date?”

“I have one question,” she admitted, suddenly all fifth grade shy. “Y—you never said anything about wanting me all the time I was working in your office,” she reminded him.

“You’re a professional, Serena. I didn’t think you’d like the boss hitting on you at work, and I didn’t want you to feel pressured to say yes to me just because you were in my employ. I was waiting until your contract was up today to ask you out. It hasn’t been easy for me to wait for you,” he growled in frustration. “But then you preempted my invitation today with your little bombshell in my office.”

She winced at that. The pale green of his eyes held her pinned to her chair. She felt as though he could see through her to her inner most desires, all of which included him at the moment. She shook herself. Zoe was going through hell right now. With a vampire. They simply were not suitable boyfriends, from what she could tell.

She gave him the courtesy of honesty. “I’m grateful for your help, Caden. And I like you. But I’m just not sure I trust you yet.”

“I know,” he said with gentle urgency. “But you can. Not all vampires are like Drake Garoul. The last thing I want is to hurt you. I’m willing to take things as slowly as you need to, but I’d like you to give a relationship with me a chance.”

“Do you promise on your sacred word as, um, a creature of the night or whatever that you will never use mind thrall on me again?”

“Yes.”

“Swear it.”

He solemnly raised one hand, palm facing her, fingers spread between the fourth and middle digits. "Vampire's honor."

She looked at his upraised hand and rolled her eyes. “That's the Vulcan sign for ‘Live long and prosper.’”

“I can’t get anything by you, can I?” He lowered his hand, all teasing gone. “I vow to you. I'll use no more machinations than any other man would while trying to get you into bed.”

“But you're not a man.”

Her comment wiped the indulgent look from his eyes.

“No,” he agreed coldly, “as you love to point out, I am not a man. But I am very much a male. Try not to forget that, Serena. Any male when pushed too far can behave unpredictably.”

She realized she’d stepped over some invisible line. She could almost believe she’d hurt his feeling with her quip. She took a fortifying swallow of the excellent wine. “I’ll try to remember.”

Reedus returned with their meal and began serving them. Both Caden and Serena went silent until he was finished.

“Everything looks wonderful,” Serena smiled warmly up at the butler, sensing his need for her approval. She took a bite of food. “It’s heavenly!” And she wasn’t lying.

Reedus seemed to read her genuine delight with the meal. He inclined his head in acknowledgement, seemingly gratified by her praise. “Thank you, Miss.”

“That will be all, Reedus. You and the rest of the staff, please take the rest of the evening off.”

“Very good, sir.” The vampire butler disappeared as swiftly and silently as he had appeared.

“Thank you for being kind to him. The transition from children of the night to the humankind mainstream hasn’t been easy for some of us. The more vamps in the shadows receive courtesy an affirmation from humans, the easier and more successful will be their assimilation into the daylight world.”

“That goal is very important to you, isn’t it? Easing vampires into society as painlessly as possible.” She watched him lift a fork and dig into his triple garlicky mashed potatoes and down them with ease.

“Yes. Finding ways to co-exist together harmoniously in spite of our very different natures has never been more of a necessity.”

“You’re exploding any number of vampire myths for me today. Garlic and human food?” She gestured curiously to his pungent plate of normal looking eats.

“My dinner is a synthetic blood product formulated to look like human cuisine. The ‘wine’ in my glass is also comprised of a blood concoction. My system could never process what you’re eating. And vice versa.”

She looked closely at their two meals. His food appeared to be identical compared to what was on her plate. Amazing.

“Let me guess. Your meal came compliments of Chase Industries’ culinary lab?”

“Exactly. The same way a high-end vegetarian restaurant can make their menu approximate chicken or beef right down to appearance, texture, smell, and flavor, my labs have created many types of food products that look like human meals but that vampires can digest. Our studies show that humans find vampires’ traditional feeding habits distasteful.”

“Why go to these lengths just so you won’t gross out some humans when you dine with them?”

“To make you feel more comfortable around us,” he answered simply. “So you’ll stick around for dessert and not run screaming from the dinner table.”

“I still don’t understand why that’s so important to you.”

“It’s a highly classified matter. Can you try to be open-minded about what I’m about to tell you?”

“Yes, of course.”

He paused for a long beat before he spoke again. “Over the past century, we’ve discovered some rare, interesting blood mutations inside a small, select group of the human population. These mutations offer our kind a hitherto unprecedented, highly sought after opportunity to… breed with humans.”

He ignored the sound of her fork clattering against her plate as she dropped it in shock.

“Breed with us?”

“You said you’d try to be open-minded,” he reminded her in a disappointed tone.

“I am open-minded. But not so open-minded that my brains fall out.”

His face went stony, but he continued with the explanation she had requested. “We call humans who can create progeny with us ‘Blood Mates’. They are prized among our kind since vampires cannot procreate together, nor with just any human. We are long-lived, some say even immortal. But our numbers have been dwindling for centuries as mankind grew better at hunting us, driven by fear and superstition. The vampire line will die out eventually unless we can find a way to make this new opportunity to create offspring with human mates work to the benefit of both parties involved.”

“What you’re saying is impossible. Vampires aren’t even alive,” she snapped.

“We must have a life force of some kind that animates us, Serena,” he pointed out. “Or we could not walk, talk, eat, and have s*x. Frequently,” he added giving her a pointed stare that lingered in the vicinity of her cleavage. “What makes us tick is not the same as what makes you tick. But just because we don’t require a pulse to be animate does not mean we aren’t alive in every true sense of the word.”

“But… what about the offspring of such a union? What kind of… cross-breed would they be?”

He lifted his head proudly. “You’re looking at one right now. You tell me.”

She sat stunned. “You? You’re a…a…?”

“The word you’re searching for is ‘vampire,’” he offered helpfully. “The vampire gene is completely dominant as far as we can tell. I have no hybrid factors, no human biological traits. I am fully vampire. Yet I was born of a vampire father and a human mother.”

“How is that even possible?”

“Once a vampire drinks directly from a compatible Blood Mate and feeds her his blood in return, the Blood Change occurs. They are bonded and she’s altered forever.”

“As what? Vampira? Elvira?” She struggled to keep up with his shocking information.

“No, of course not. Try to put your Gothic novel prejudices aside. A Blood Mate still retains a human physiognomy, but she becomes enhanced to a superhuman degree. Once she experiences the Blood Change, she’ll take on attributes of her vampire mate’s speed, strength, and life longevity in order to prepare her to carry, bear, and raise a very powerful vampire child.”

“Stop it! This is not what I came here to discuss,” she hissed, frightened not of his admission he desired her, and not of his stunning claim that vampires and human could procreate. Rather she was terrified because the sudden, vivid vision of her holding Caden’s dark-haired child in her arms was so appealing it made her knees weak and heart beat faster in joy for some reason she couldn’t begin to understand on a first date.

“Actually, this topic is exactly why you risked blackmailing a vampire today,” he intoned ruthlessly. “I believe it’s why Garoul is holding your cousin and trying to force a wedding. He’s most likely discovered she’s a potential Blood Mate. And springtime is when the hunt for a Blood Mate is at its zenith.”

“What?” She shook her head in denial but, as impossible as it seemed, she sensed he was right about everything.

“Like salmon swimming upstream during spawning season, our nature compels us to find the one with whom we can mate if she is anywhere in our vicinity. The problem is, Blood Mates are almost as rare as unicorns. There aren’t enough to go around for all who desire one. If I’m right, Garoul is not going to let Zoe go easily, even if my team smuggles her out of his lair tonight. No vampire would. Drinking from a Blood Mate is the most arousing event in a vampire’s existence. Tell me, is her blood type AB negative by any chance?”

Serena shrugged. “How would I know?”

He casually reached out to the silver Vampire Bloom in the bud vase at the center of the table. He swiped a long finger over the thorn that had pricked Serena’s finger earlier and showed her a small dot of her blood on the pad of his digit.

“So far the randomly occurring, mutated enzyme needed for a person to be a potential Blood Mate has only been found in a few people with the AB negative blood type. We still don’t know enough about how it all works, but we do know blood types are inherited and can run in families. There would be little other reason for a vampire to wed a human. And one does not have a mere fling with a Blood Mate.”

He slowly twirled the flower’s stem around in his fingers. The spinning bloom mesmerized her as much as the rasp of his melodic voice. “I’ve never been with a potential Blood Mate, and I haven’t tasted you yet, but I can scent a blood type from a mile away. And you, my dear, are most definitely AB negative. Ergo, it makes sense your cousin likely is, too. Garoul is probably holding on to her so tightly because her blood contains the enzyme we crave most in a consort.”

He held his finger up, closely inspecting the small smear of her blood on it. Experimentally, he parted lips and cleaned the speck of blood from it with a light touch of his tongue as if he couldn’t stop himself.

His body stiffened in the chair. Suddenly, his eyes glowed too brightly with an unnatural, feral light as though profound realization had dawned. His voice dropped to a deeper, thicker, more animalistic tone than she’d ever heard him use before.

“Like yours…”

She watched in horror and shrank back as his incisors elongated into full fang mode. He rose to his feet, towering over her, never taking his eyes off his quarry.

With a guttural growl of desire, he swept the table between them aside with a crash. Serena screamed.