Blood Oath (2 page)

She added two scoops of the leaves to a
small ceramic pot. Anca measured water from the metal pot on the warmer and
added it to the teapot decorated with roses and ribbons. While it steeped, she
added matching teacups and saucers to a silver tray. When they were arranged
aesthetically, she put the small steeping pot on the tray and carried it over
to her customer.

He had chosen the sofa, and he was leaning
back against the cushions. There was an aura of grace about his movements as he
shifted to sit up straight. “What’s the tea for?” He eyed the pot as though it
contained something less innocuous than tea.

Anca smiled at him as she lifted a cup and
saucer to pour the brew. “It aids in relaxation. The more open you are, the
more I’ll be able to pick up.”

He lifted a brow as he took the cup she had
filled.

She watched with amusement as he sniffed the
contents before sipping it. He frowned, but didn’t thrust it away. She poured a
cup for herself and took the chair closest to him. “May I ask why you want a
reading, sir? What do you hope to learn today?”

Anca sipped her tea, waiting to hear the
standard questions:
When will I be promoted? Will I get married? Should we
have children? Are my wife and I drifting apart?
Her eyes sought out his
left hand and saw the ring finger lacked a gold band, but that didn’t mean
anything.

His gaze was forthright
when he met hers. “I want to see if you’re who I think you are.”

She swallowed without thought, not expecting
such an answer, and unable to form a coherent reply. The hot tea burned her
tongue, and she gasped. Who did he think she was?

“Are you all right, Miss Draganescu?”

Anca waved her hand before setting the cup
on the tray. “I’m fine. Shall we begin, Mr.…?” The sooner they finished, the
sooner she could get him out of her shop. Once upstairs in her apartment, her
unease would fade away, she assured herself.

“Demi Golina.” He didn’t offer his hand to
shake.

“May I see your hand, Mr. Golina?”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you a palm reader,
Miss Draganescu?” His tone bordered on scathing.

She shook her head. “No. I simply find touch
the easiest way to read someone.”

He extended his hand.

Anca folded it between hers, careful not to
rake his flesh with her long nails. She cried out as soon as they touched.
Visions raced through her mind in a dizzying array of colors and sound, with
little form. She had never experienced anything like it before.

She tried to jerk away, but only succeeded
in freeing one hand. He tightened his grip on the other. She cried out again,
begging him with a jumble of incoherent sounds to release her.

“Tell me what you see, Anca,” he purred. He
looked intense, but there wasn’t a trace of cruelty on his face. He didn’t seem
to receive any pleasure from prolonging the contact or causing her fear.

“A-a ch-chalice,” she stuttered. “Gold,
antique, with a ruby in its handle…” She shook her head as the cup left her
mind, replaced by a vision that had color sweeping up her neck.

Mr. Golina had her bent backwards over a
table, and she moaned as he sucked on her nipple. From the waist up, they were
both nude. Pressed together, they struggled to get even closer. Anca heard a
moan escape her lips, and it held the same passion as in her vision.

“What is it?”

She shook her head, unable to describe the
scene. When she met his eyes, she saw a half-smile curved his lips, and his
eyes had darkened. Was he experiencing the same vision? She had never shared
one with another person before. She had only relayed what she saw in the past.

She broke eye contact and closed her eyes.
Anca shook her head, struggling to dispel the vision. She counted slowly to
ten, which was usually enough to break her concentration if a vision became too
vivid. This time, it only increased in clarity. As he continued to suckle at
her breast, his hand slid down her stomach, into the waistband of her pants,
and over her panties.

Anca jerked in the chair as he stroked her
pussy in the vision. She grew wet in real life, and she was already dripping
with need in the vision. Her pussy spasmed with yearning as his fingers
explored her.

The experience was disconcerting enough to
cause her eyes to fly open. Anca tore her hand from his. “No more, please. I
don’t see anything at all.”

He chuckled. “Didn’t your mother raise you
not to fib, Anca?”

“You must go now, Mr. Golina. No charge for
the reading.” Anca bounded from the seat and began stacking the cups
haphazardly on the tray. She stiffened when he touched her arm, but the visions
didn’t return. She breathed a small sigh of relief.

“I can’t just yet.”

“Why not?” A flash of the vision returned to
her, along with a quiver of fear. Did this man plan to rape her? Anca frowned,
remembering how aroused she was in the vision. It didn’t fit.

“My purpose in coming here wasn’t for a
reading. I was sent to find you, Anca.”

Her eyes widened. “By who?”

He took a deep breath. “Your father.”

Anca dropped the tray she had just lifted,
and it fell with a small clatter onto the wooden table. “That’s a lie. My
father is dead.”

Mr. Golina shook his head. “No. He lives,
and he’s anxious to meet you. He’s waited so long.”

Her mouth fell open, and she struggled to
speak. “That’s another lie. I’ve been here in New York the past twenty-six
years. He could have found me.”

He ran a hand through his short, blond hair.
“He’s dying, Anca. He needs to see you now.”

She shook her head. “He’s dead. My mother
told me he died before I was born.”

“Katrine was trying to protect you.”

Suspicion clouded her eyes. “My mother’s
name is Kathryn, and you’ve just blown your entire scam. Get out of here before
I call the police.”

He sighed heavily. “It is no confidence game
that brings me here, I assure you. I’m acting as the emissary of your father,
whose dying wish is to meet his daughter. Will you deny him?”

She tilted her chin. “I don’t believe you.”

“You wear a ruby pendant around your neck,”
he said softly. “You never take it off.”

Anca frowned at his knowledge, but she
bluffed her way through. “That’s no big secret. Last year, one of my clients tried
to buy it from me. When I wouldn’t sell it, she hired someone to steal it. It
was in the papers.”

His brow furrowed, and he muttered something
that sounded like a name under his breath. “Yes, I’m sure it was her,” he said
more loudly. He looked thoughtful, but then he blinked, and his expression
returned to one of earnestness as he dismissed the topic of the attempted
theft. “At different times of the year, the pendant seems to glow with an
internal light. It warms to the touch.”

“I…” Anca broke off, unable to reply. She
hadn’t told anyone about that, fearing they would think she had gone nuts.

“You’ve always had the pendant.”

She nodded, not able to remember a time when
she didn’t wear it.

“Your mother took it with her when she fled
the castle and Corsova. Katrine knew what it represented, and she knew it was
your birthright.”

“What are you talking about? My mother is an
immigrant from the Ukraine.”

Mr. Golina shook his head emphatically. “No,
she was born in the Corsovan village of Rij, at the starting point of the
Bulgain Mountains. Romania and Moldova border our country, as does the Ukraine,
but she never visited that country, to my knowledge. Katrine spent her whole
life in her village, until she married your father when she was seventeen. She
ran away after they had been married four years. That was the first time she
left the borders of Corsova.”

Anca clapped her hands over her ears. “That
isn’t true. I know my mother.”

He grasped her wrists and pried away her
arms. “She left your father, who had much affection for her. He worries about
her even to this day. She loved him deeply, but she took you from him, to
protect you.”

“What kind of monster is my father then,
that I would have to be protected?” she asked stridently.

“Valdemeer is a good man. She fled
from…others who would do his heir harm.”

Anca wilted and slumped forward. He still
held her wrists, and she was inches from touching him. “I don’t want to know
any of this.”

His expression didn’t hold a shred of pity.
“You must know the truth. You have to come back with me to meet your father,
before it’s too late. Time grows short, Anca. We have less than a month.” He
released her wrists.

Anca sank into the chair she had vacated.
Automatically, her hand went to the pendant under her shirt. She lifted it by
the chain, until the stone rested against her hand. It was warm to the touch,
and it glowed softly. Specks of gold illuminated the stone, and she frowned. It
had never done that before.

Mr. Golina knelt beside her chair. “Will you
come? I have us booked on a midnight flight.”

Anca bit her lip, torn between the chance to
meet a man she had thought was dead and the opportunity to hurt him as he had
hurt her, by rejecting his dying wish. She sighed, knowing there would be
little satisfaction in denying him. Her pride would be cold comfort after his
death, when it was too late to meet him if she changed her mind.

She nodded slowly. “I’ll come.”

A small smile lifted his lips. “Excellent,
Anca.”

She frowned at him. “What’s he like, Mr.
Golina?”

He shrugged. “Valdemeer is a difficult man
to describe. You will see for yourself soon enough.” He rose to a standing
position and offered her a hand.

Anca took it reluctantly, preparing herself
for an onslaught of visions. Nothing happened. She stood up, but when she tried
to loosen his hold, he grasped her hand more firmly. She stared up at him with
confusion.

“We will be good friends, Anca. I would very
much like it if you called me Demi.”

She nodded, grateful she didn’t blurt out
what she was thinking. If the revelation were true, they would be more than
friends. A lot more, indeed.

Chapter 2

Demi waited without speaking as Anca went
through the nightly procedures to close the store. Once she had washed the tea
items and put the deposit in a night drop bag, she walked to the front of the
store to double check the lock he’d said he clicked. It was secure, and when
she turned around, she found him standing too close for comfort. Her heart rate
sped up.

“You didn’t believe me?” The question might
have been irritating, if his attitude hadn’t indicated he didn’t care if she
believed him.

Anca shrugged. “This is my livelihood,
Mr.—Demi. It’s not a matter of trust.”

He inclined his head. “I understand.”

“My mother and I live above the store.” She
gestured he should follow her as she made her way into the backroom. They
passed through the mini-kitchen/lounge with the foldout sofa and walked to the
staircase. “I’ll need to speak with her.”

She could feel him following her up the
stairs, just a hair’s breadth away. Anca bit her lip, concentrating on the worn
carpet and stepping onto each stair. His cologne smelled of the outdoors, and
she had the impulse to turn around and bury her nose in the hollow of his throat.

Anca blinked the thought away as they
stepped onto the second-floor landing. He brushed against her back, and she
caught her breath. A surge of emotion followed the light contact, and she
cleared her throat to regain her focus.

She turned to face him before they entered
the living room cordoned off by a thick curtain. “My mother is fragile. I would
appreciate it if you don’t upset her.”

Demi’s brow arched. “Won’t your news upset
her?”

Anca shook her head. “I won’t tell her where
I’m going.”

He frowned. “She is your mother. Surely, she
should know.”

She sighed. “Please, trust me. She had a
bypass earlier this year and doesn’t need the stress.”

He hesitated before nodding once. She took
it for a yes, slid open the curtain, and entered the confines of the small
living room.

The TV was on, but the lights were off.
Kathryn was curled on the couch, clutching a tissue to her breast as tears
rolled down her cheeks.

Anca glanced at the TV and saw a
black-and-white movie playing. Her mother was sentimental about such things.
She felt for the light switch and flipped it. Dim light from the forty-watt
bulb illuminated the room. “Mother, we have a visitor.”

Kathryn’s head whipped up, and she crushed
the tissue in a tighter hold. Her thin face was almost as pale as the white
Kleenex, except for the purple bags under her eyes. She frowned at Demi. “Who’s
he?”

Anca realized her mother and Demi had the
same accent, though Kathryn’s had softened during the time she had lived in
America. “This is Mr. Golina.”