Kissed by a Dark Prince (Volume 1) (19 page)

Unless the two scars on her arm weren’t related. What other terrible things had Olivia endured in her short life?

He pushed aside his curiosity about the other scar and focused on the one she seemed willing to talk about.

“What happened to your brother?” Loren said, keeping his tone soft and gentle, hoping to soothe the hurt he could feel building within her. “Is he the reason you joined Archangel?”

Olivia nodded and toyed with Loren’s fingers, her focus fixed on them.

“I went through med school before joining a local hospital in London. I used to see my brother all the time, even when I was really busy with studying.” She ran her fingertip along the length of his index finger and pressed it against the tip. A distraction. Not just for her from her dark memories, but for him. If she kept toying with his fingers, he was going to have trouble focusing on her and shutting out the desire she stirred with each caress.

“It sounds as though you have always worked yourself too hard,” Loren said and she shrugged.

“He would come by and force me to take a break, dragging me out to dinner somewhere close to the hospital.” She glanced up at him. “It seems you both have a tendency to interrupt my work.”

Loren didn’t like her comparing him to her brother, who had attacked her, but he let it go, knowing she didn’t mean it in a bad way. “You were sleeping, not working.”

She shrugged again, released his hand and unbuttoned her white coat. She slipped her arms out of it and let it pool behind her on the bed. Her dark blue t-shirt hugged her breasts, another distraction he didn’t need. He tried not to stare at them, because his body was already getting the wrong idea, and it was impossible to conceal the effect she had on him when he was wearing his armour. If she noticed, she was liable to demand he leave and then he wouldn’t know what had happened with her brother.

Olivia turned her right arm around and held it out to him, so he could see the scars.

“Daniel didn’t contact me for weeks and I was worried about him, so I went to see him. I found him in his flat, sitting in a corner, rocking. I thought it was a medical problem... drugs or something. He looked so gaunt and pale. Sick.”

“Starving.” Loren had seen enough starving vampires to know what they looked like when their bodies began to fade away and they lost their mind to their hunger.

She nodded. “I tried to help him... and he...”

“He bit you.” Loren curled his fingers around her wrist and brushed his thumb over the scars. “Savagely.”

She swallowed and lowered her head again, as if she couldn’t bring herself to look at him or the scars. Loren’s heart went out to her when tears raced down her cheeks and he realised he was wrong. She was trying to hide her tears from him. She didn’t want him to see her crying.

Loren moved next to her and gathered her into his arms, holding her with her cheek against his chest but giving her space so she didn’t feel stifled. She leaned into him, one hot palm pressing against his left pectoral. He focused and sent his armour away from his chest, partly because he wanted her to be comfortable and resting against cold metal scales was not going to achieve that, and partly because he wanted to feel her against him, skin-to-skin.

He stroked her hair, keeping his caress light and slow, not wanting to startle her.

“I thought he was going to kill me. He almost did.” Her voice was hoarse, quiet, and he could feel her struggling with her emotions, battling to gain control of them and stop the tears from coming.

“What happened?” He leaned down, closed his eyes, and pressed his lips to her hair. Her soft fragrance filled his lungs, warming his heart. His female. He would make her feel better if she would only let him. He would give up everything to have her.

“Archangel.” She rubbed her eyes, her voice gaining strength now. “They burst into the flat and pulled me away from him. They thought I was a victim.”

“You were.”

“No,” she snapped and he expected her to shove away from him, but she remained in his arms, leaning against his chest. “I was his sister. I tried to stop them but I couldn’t... I told them he was just sick and he wasn’t a threat. I thought they were police or some government drug squad. They refused to listen to me and dragged me from the room, and then they—”

“Shh,” Loren whispered and stroked her hair, keeping his breathing and emotions level, giving her an anchor of calm to hold on to if she needed it. She curled against him, burying her face against his bare chest, her tears hot against his skin. She didn’t need to tell him what had happened. He could fill in the blanks.

Archangel had killed her brother.

Olivia was silent for long minutes, her uneven breathing loud in the quiet room. Loren held her, keeping up the motion of his fingers against her hair, giving her time to collect herself and refusing to rush her to satisfy his curiosity.

He focused on the motion of his hand and the feel of her in his arms. He had never comforted someone before, had never even considered doing it or what it would feel like, or even how one went about it. It seemed to come naturally to him where Olivia was concerned. He knew to hold her like this, to keep her close but give her space, room to breathe. He knew not to rush her, and to let her set her own pace. If she needed it, he would sit like this with her all night, never moving and never speaking, just giving her comfort and expecting nothing in return.

It fascinated him.

Olivia sighed and shifted, resting her cheek against his chest again. “Archangel questioned me about Daniel. I didn’t understand any of what had happened until they explained what he had become, and even then it had been difficult for me to believe.”

Understandable. She was a scientist. A doctor. She had sought a medical explanation for her brother’s behaviour and Archangel had given her one that must have sounded crazy to her.

“What made you believe?” He looked down at her and she frowned and brushed her fingers over the scars on her wrist.

“They had a vampire in captivity. They showed her to me and I saw her fangs and her red eyes with their strange elliptical pupils, and... she looked like Daniel had.” She paused and closed her eyes. “After that, Archangel told me that there were other creatures out there, and that they needed more staff to research them. They told me I could help.”

She drew out of his arms and looked up into his eyes, her dark ones lined with tears.

“I signed up because I wanted to promote a better relationship between the fae and demons and mankind.” She wiped the last of her tears away.

“You are very noble, Olivia.” He brushed his knuckles across her flushed cheek, staring deep into her eyes. “There are few humans in this world who could live through what you have and still seek to help the demon and fae species. I admire your compassion.”

She had been through a lot though, not just what had happened with her brother but what had happened to cause the other scar on her arm and the deeper one on her heart. An event that had made her heart fragile and made her fiercely protect it. He could see now that she would never give it to him, even when he had begun to desire it.

“Loren?” Her eyes flickered with nerves that he could feel in her, but there was determination and other emotions flowing through the connection between them too. What was it she desired to ask, but feared he wouldn’t answer?

“Yes, Olivia?”

She glanced down at her hands, frowned, and then raised her gaze back to his. “You mentioned that elves were a forefather of vampires… did you mean… did vampires stem from elves?”

He nodded. “Long ago, our species divided. A faction of elves had turned dark, losing all good and becoming tainted.”

“How?” She snuggled closer and her breasts pressed against his chest.

He bit back a groan and commanded his body not to respond. His cock twitched regardless, ignoring his order. He ground his teeth and focused on what Olivia was asking, using the distasteful topic of conversation to extinguish his desire.

“Elves can survive on blood alone for extended periods, but—”

“You mean you can eat too?” Olivia jerked back, her eyes wide and filled with fascination that he could feel in her.

Loren felt fascinated too. He had never had a female interrupt him as often as Olivia did. In his world, she would have been punished severely several times already. He smiled to himself. The council weren’t going to know what to make of her and her treatment of him, her disregard for his position as a prince and ruler of a kingdom, when they met her.

His smile dropped from his face. They would never meet her. He had to stop thinking that there was a future for them, that this would somehow end in the way he wanted it to, with her forever in his arms as she was now.

He nodded. “Elves require food for sustenance. We eat mostly fruits and vegetables though, nourishing foods. Blood gives us strength and the energy we need to boost our abilities, such as healing and our psychic capabilities.”

“Wow. I figured you were like vampires and just survived on blood.”

He smiled at the twinkle in her eye, the one that told him she was cataloguing everything he said, filing it away in her mind. He had no doubt that she would be writing it down later. The council would be angry with him if they discovered he was giving knowledge on their species to a female aligned with demon hunters, but she had asked him a question and he could see in her eyes and feel in her heart that she needed to know the answers. She needed to know how vampires came to be, and how his species now differed from them.

“Elves can survive on blood for extended periods if absolutely necessary, but it is dangerous. It is very easy for us to feel the pull of darkness if we rely on blood too much. We only use it sparingly now, and it is because of the vampires.” Loren stroked her cheek, using the soft feel of it beneath his fingers to ground himself and calm his emotions. He didn’t want her to feel the anger and disgust he felt because of vampires, not when her brother had been one of the unfortunate ones, left to fend for himself and driven mad by what he had become. “Many millennia ago, some elves began to drink too deeply, killing hosts and surviving on blood-only diets. It changed them and we tried to find a way to undo what had happened because of their excess consumption of blood, but found we could not. As more and more of my people succumbed to this sort of bloodlust, I withdrew the untainted from the world of mortals, severing ties with those infected by darkness.”

He paused and stared deep into Olivia’s eyes, feeling her compassion and softer emotions flowing through the link between them. She felt sorry for him. She could feel his pain even though he had locked it deep within his heart, hoping to hide it from her and the world.

“Vampires became a separate species and with each generation, the dark took more of their talents and gave them terrible new ones. They gained the power to spread their wretched blood, poisoning mortals and turning them. But they lost many of their psychic powers, and the ability to eat food and walk in the sun.”

“So elves can’t make other elves?” Olivia said and he shook his head and then smiled.

“Only through procreation. Vampires can procreate with other vampires, but not with any other species, not to my knowledge at least.”

“And vampires can turn mortals, and procreate with those?”

He nodded.

“Can elves only procreate with other elves?” Her voice trembled the tiniest amount, betraying the nerves he could sense in her.

She knew he would think in terms of them and whether they could make children together. Was she thinking the same way, wondering if she could bear his child? The thought that she might be gave him the courage to dare hope that he could break down her defences and make her his.

“While elves can love other species, they can only produce offspring with other elves or with their mate after the bond has been completed and their mate has become immortal.”

A touch of colour climbed her cheeks and she looked down at their laps.

Loren’s heart thumped against his chest. She had been thinking in terms of them.

Olivia cleared her throat. “You don’t seem to like vampires.”

“No, but the feeling is mutual. Vampires do not like elves, either. We view them as tainted and evil, and they harbour deep resentment towards us because they don’t have the powers of their ancestors. Us.”

“Understandable.” She fiddled with the bandage around his broken fingers and then glanced up into his eyes again, and quietly said, “Could there have been hope for Daniel?”

Loren didn’t want to pain her by answering that question truthfully but he couldn’t lie to her either. He captured her hand, holding it gently in his, forging a connection between them that ran deeper than ever so she would know he was there for her and she didn’t have to face her pain alone.

“Your brother was a rare case. I have no love for the vampires but they have integrated into mortal society and do not normally turn humans against their will. It was likely that a rogue vampire, one who flouts their society’s rules, turned your brother. They are the worst kind of vampire, despised by their own species. Most vampires live in a civilised society, divided into classes—” he started but she interrupted again.

“I know that,” she whispered and frowned down at their joined hands. “I’ve studied the data Archangel has collected and I know the vampire who turned my brother was considered rogue by vampire society… and that made Archangel and the vampires consider him as rogue too. It wasn’t fair. If they had only given him a chance, he could have… I know I could have… if Archangel hadn’t…”

He couldn’t bear her pain. It burned like acid in his blood, destroying him. He clutched her hand, trying to give her the comfort she needed.

“You were not able to save your brother, but there are others you can save—”

“Have saved,” she corrected and toyed with his fingers again. “It’s the only reason I joined Archangel. I saw that female vampire and I wanted to help her. I wanted to find a way to… I don’t know what.”

“You didn’t want others who could live in harmony with humans to suffer the same fate as your brother. It is a noble cause you have taken up. It speaks of your compassion. You could have turned against all fae and demon species, desiring to eradicate the vampires as an act of vengeance, embracing all that Archangel stood for… but you did not. You chose the better path… desiring to enlighten the hunters and change how Archangel operated so the many fae and demons sharing your world who mean it no harm could continue their lives in peace.”