Beauty's Beasts (3 page)

Since she was about thirteen or so, she had been aware that she was what the world considered “a beauty” and that most men would do almost anything in their power to have her. But “having” her meant only taking her sexually. Men never thought beyond that, and they didn’t care what she thought about the idea. Usually, they had no permanent plans beyond the initial one of fucking her. It was enough to get their cock inside her.

If she had been as dumb as a box of rocks, they would have liked it better, she suspected. It would have made their job so much easier. Fact was, though, Riley had a brain. In the thirteen years or so that she had been—euphemistically speaking—trying to date men, not a single man had noticed or taken an interest in the fact that Riley was actually intelligent. They saw only her beauty and were caught up in the determination to fuck her so that they could say they’d had her. It was like a fever, and she had learned to spot it in their eyes and faces.

Neither Damian nor Nicholas had even so much as glanced at her that way. Damian had spoken of Nicholas wanting her, but in a tone that implied she was simply a desirable human. There was nothing of the fevered determination that drove so many men to the lying, the beatings, the schemes, the semi-rapes that she had suffered through in the past.

Damian’s implication also answered another question she’d had. Clearly vampires could and did have sex with humans, and both Damian and Nicholas were bisexual…if such distinctions were even a consideration in their world.

Their almost-indifference to her was a goad. She was “merely” human, barely intelligent and only the daughter of the great Natalia Connor, not Tally herself. They were going through these motions only because they swore an oath to her mother, otherwise it appeared they could barely stand to be in the same room with each other. It made her want them with a power that she’d never felt before. After a lifetime of having men begging at her feet, the novelty of wanting someone—two someones—who seemed disinterested made her squirm on the seat.

“If it would help you relax and sleep, Damian or I could crawl back there and…help out,” Nicholas said.

Riley grew very still, even holding her breath. Her heart accelerated.

“Why do you say that?” Damian said softly.

“She’s aroused. Powerfully so.”

Riley heard Damian take a breath, sniffing. Her cheeks heated. She turned her face into the arm of her coat, humiliated beyond reason.

“Ah, yes,” Damian agreed.

Riley scrunched her face up inside the protecting crook of her arm and blew out the breath she had been holding. She kept very still for another few minutes, but when neither of them made a move, she relaxed again.

Somewhere around Somerset her sleep grew genuine. She woke to find her head pillowed on a smooth shoulder and chest, her face pressed against a strong neck and her whole body resting against a firm torso. There was a cocked knee behind her back and a hand soothing her temple.

She tried to sit up.

“We are ninety minutes from New York. Relax.” Damian’s voice. In her ear. Rumbling against her shoulder.

Her heart was pistoning. She was lying on top of Damian and he wanted her to relax?

The hand stroking her temple dropped to her hip. “You have unpleasant nightmares.”

“I do?”

“You were not aware of this?”

“I know I don’t sleep well,” she muttered. Then she frowned. “I’ve been asleep for four hours?”

“More like six, actually,” Nicholas said, from the front seat. “I had to stop for petrol once and there was road work near Allentown. It’s sunrise in about thirty minutes.”

She tried to sit up again and this time Damian let her. “You let me sleep on you for
six hours
?”

“You were not sleeping well,” he said, sitting up. He’d taken off his coat and the rounded caps of muscles of his shoulders gleamed in the low light of the car. “Your dreams were not being kind to you. We thought the touch of another might help you.”

She bit her lip, frowning.

Damian lifted a brow. She could just see the movement in the growing light. “What?”

“I’ve never slept for six hours straight.”

“You’ve never slept with a man before, have you?” Nicholas asked.

Riley could feel her cheeks burning again. “I’m not a virgin,” she said stiffly.

“In this day and age, I would be astonished if you were. That’s not what I’m asking.” His blue eyes caught her gaze in the mirror. “I mean you’ve never had a man stay the night in your bed. You’ve literally never slept with a man in your bed.”

Riley shook her head.

“Therefore, you’ve never had anyone around to point out your nightmares to you,” Nicholas finished.

She rubbed her arms, suddenly cold. “I’ve never remembered them, either. I just figured I was one of those people who don’t sleep.”

Damian lifted her chin with his long finger and turned her face to look at him. “Apparently you’re one of those people who sleeps better
with
someone.” His smile showed even white teeth. “That is something we can arrange.”

Her whole body rippled with the warm promise in his voice.

“Now who’s getting distracted?” Nicholas said, his voice a low warning rumble.

Damian glared at the back of Nicholas’ head. Then he smiled at Riley. “Have you been to New York before, that you remember?”

She shook her head. “Although, I guess, I must have been at some time.”

“You were born there,” Damian confirmed. He waved toward the empty front passenger seat. “Why don’t you sit up front? Enjoy the view. Let Nicholas prove he’s above petty distractions.”

Riley hesitated. She didn’t want to get between these two. But Damian gently pushed her between the seats, so Riley settled herself into the luxurious passenger seat and buckled the seat belt.

Nicholas glanced at her. “You look refreshed, at least.”

She felt it. She would never have thought sleeping in a moving car could have been so relaxing, especially a car driven by a predatory creature designed to hunt humans for sustenance, while she slept soundly on top of another of them.

“Did you glamour me or something, back in the apartment, Nicholas?”

“More fiction.” He shook his head.

“You engender trust, you and Damian. I don’t hop into cars for interstate adventures with just anyone.”

“You don’t trust anyone enough to spend the night with them even after sex,” Nicholas replied. “I know exactly how much trust you have placed in us. You want to know about your parents. We dangled powerful carrots.”

“You dangled carrots that no one could possibly know about unless they had been there. For all you pretend humans are just sheep you herd for food, I saw the look on your faces when you spoke about my mother. Both of you loved her in different ways. I don’t care who did what, or what happened back then. You loved her. Deal with it, Nicholas.”

He stared straight ahead through the screen. “Emotions are useless, grit in the grease. Look at where they got Damian.”

“Fuck you, Nicholas.” The bitterness in Damian’s voice was deep.

Nicholas shook his head. “Vampires have no need of emotions. They just get in the way. They’re a hangover from a human psychology we no longer have, a habit that can be discarded.”

“Who are you trying to convince, Nick?” Riley asked. “Because it seems to me that after centuries of being a vampire, you still haven’t kicked the habit.”

Damian pushed his head between the seats. “I like this one,” he told Nicholas. “If she keeps slapping you around like this, I’m going to keep her.”

Nicholas’ apartment was a penthouse at the top of an apartment block in Soho. Near the fire museum, Damian told her. It was a studio apartment and spacious. Because the building was one of the tallest around and Nick’s apartment took the whole top floor, privacy was almost total. Sun filtered through the sash windows as Damian lifted a sealed box out of his duffle bag and put it on the table.

“I had incredible trouble bringing this through customs. I had to declare it as a museum piece, of course, and produce all the papers to prove it. It was part of the reason I was late.” He glared at Nicholas as he put the long, pale wooden box on the table reverently. It was about four feet long, by six inches wide, by ten inches deep, and opened across the long length, the lid folding back.

“You insisted on taking it,” Nicholas said mildly, his arms crossed.

Damian broke the heavy plastic seals on the sides of the box by simply twisting them with his fingers. Then he released the hinges and folded the top back.

The inside of the box was lined in red velvet, and resting on tailor-made mountings was a Japanese sword with a white handle and delicate filigree guard, with a graceful curve to the blade, which ran for about two and a half feet. It seemed to be very short, for a sword. The handle seemed to be quite long, too.

“Your mother’s modified katana,” Damian explained. “She went to Japan herself and had it made to order by one of the last surviving old masters.”

“It looks too short to be a sword,” Riley said.

“It almost is,” Nicholas said. He picked it up, and gripped it in both hands. “The katana is a two-handed sword, which suits human women, who don’t have the upper body strength to face large opponents. With a short blade like this, you can also stab and that makes this a superior weapon. It can be concealed more easily when it is this shorter length, too, and that was another reason for the modification.” He held it out to her. “Try it.”

She bit her lip. “Maybe later.”

Damian picked up her wrist. “There is no later. This is not a game. People have died and will die again tonight. You might be one of them if you do not pick up this sword.”

Her fingers convulsively curled around the grip at Damian’s electrifying words. She looked at him. He guided her other hand to the base of the sword’s handle. “Why would I be one to die?”

“You think your entry into New York with us has not been noticed? You think the whole demon world is not buzzing with the news that Natalia Connors’ daughter lives?”

“They will test you as soon as they can find you,” Nicholas added. “They will think that you are young and therefore weak and inexperienced and now is the time to deal with you while you are vulnerable.” He straightened up the blade of the sword so that it was completely vertical and looked her in the eye. “And they will be right,” he added.

* * * * *

Nicholas was a brutal training master. He gave her no respite and no mercy when they sparred. Using heavy bamboo poles instead of real swords to begin, he beat her, bruised her and pummeled her.

Damian watched, encouraged and gave suggestions. He never once suggested Nicholas take it easy on her. He handed her water bottles and towels to mop her sweat and pulled her up off the floor when Nicholas dropped her on it.

At noon, after over four hours of Nicholas’s pounding her, Damian handed her the katana.

She hefted it. The difference was night and day. The sword was light and seemed to sing in her hands after the heavy, cumbersome pole.

From behind the back of the sofa Damian was sprawled upon, Nicholas lifted another sword, this one far longer. She straightened from her fighting crouch, blinking, astonished.

“No time to think before the fight begins!” he snapped and came at her, the sword blade whirling.

Longer blade, longer reach
. She could feel all the calculations and strategies shifting in her head to compensate.
Heavier blade, slower reactions
. She parried almost without thinking, as she considered this new weapon.
He can still jab
. But only if she was down very low or up very high, or farther out…
so
get closer to him!
She ducked the whirling blade and jumped two-footed closer to him. She saw his eyes widen fractionally. She had surprised him. She brought the point of the katana up against the soft underside of his chin, just touching. Enough to draw blood.

His fangs extended, as he hissed.

Damian began to laugh. “She got you! Oh, she got you good!” He fell back on the sofa, his head back, holding his stomach.

Nicholas let his sword drop and it thudded on the floor. The look he sent Damian could have liquefied metal.

Riley wasn’t sure what happened next. She felt a sharp, hard tug on her hair, pulling her head back. A yank on her arm, something hard between her legs and over her shoulder.

Suddenly she was flat on the floor, her breath knocked out of her, her sword arm flung out, and the sword plucked from her fingers. Nicholas had her pinned to the floor with his body, his hand hard against her arm, the blade of the katana across her throat. His eyes blazed as he stared at her. His fangs were out.

Before she could even draw a breath in shock, Nicholas’ head was drawn back and the blade of his own sword was scraped under his chin. Damian brought his lips to within an inch of Nicholas’ cheek. “Remember she does not heal as fast as we do.” They were mild words, intended to disarm Nicholas.

To bring him down.

They stayed frozen in that tableau for what seemed to be a century or two and Riley knew that some terrible balance was being fought for, one that she barely understood, except in gray, shadowy and fearsome outlines.

Finally, Nicholas’ fangs retracted, and his eyes closed. “Let me go,” he said quietly. Calmly.

Damian relaxed back on his heels, letting go of Nicholas’ hair. He put the sword back on the floor behind him.

Nicholas flipped the katana over Riley’s head and she heard it roll across the floor behind her. His weight shifted against her as he looked down at her.

She realized his hips were pushing into hers, and that the thin black sweats he was wearing and the yoga pants she was wearing were barely any barrier against her feeling every inch of him against her.

He was aroused. His cock was hard and thick and pressing against her pelvis. She could feel his testicles, too—heavy soft sacs pushing between her legs.

Her breath hitched. She couldn’t help it, even though she knew both of them would be able to read that tiny sound for exactly what it was, an open invitation. But even knowing they could read her arousal, that they could smell it, seemed to catch fire in her mind and make her nerves burn even more with need for them.