Unleash (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series Book 6) (16 page)

Here was one who had long ago given up and whose spirit had died but whose body had lived on, an empty husk, a pitiful existence that he longed to leave behind.

It pained her greatly.

Aurora tried to focus on her mission. Her thoughts swam, flickering over the things she had seen Snow do, both the good and the bad, and the pain she knew he carried within him as a constant reminder of his terrible deeds.

She grew aware of Snow beside her, only a black sheet separating her body and his.

The sun was close to setting.

Aurora leaned over him and studied each strand of snow-white hair that caressed his brow, his sculpted cheek, and even drifted down to softly stroke his wicked mouth.

His lips called to her, slightly parted in sleep, his lower one fuller than the top.

She wanted to kiss him and it was hard to resist that urge.

Instead, she peered closer and saw his canines. They were blunt but they had been sharp when he had bitten her. A tingling began in her wrist and spread up her arm, heat following in its wake. She licked her lips, told herself not to, and then lightly stroked the seam of his mouth with the tip of her left index finger.

His lips parted further and his cool breath caressed her finger, causing hers to hitch.

Vivid colours followed the path of her caress, bright in the darkness, a sign that she was experiencing strong emotions.

Strong was the understatement of the century.

They consumed and overwhelmed her.

How could one so rough, so fallen and lost, feel so soft and warm, so very alluring?

It fascinated her.

She wanted him.

She wanted to feel his lips on hers at last.

Aurora leaned forwards to press her lips to his and then cursed internally and stopped herself. She couldn’t do it.

For his sake, she had to resist.

Snow’s eyes flicked open.

A
urora scooted away from him and off the bed. Snow sat up and tried to catch her arm before she could distance herself any further, wanting to finish what she had started even when he knew he shouldn’t.

She stared at him, her eyes wild with the panic he could feel in her emotions and the frantic beat of her heart, overshadowing the lingering trace of her desire, and then bolted for the door. She was out of it before he could get the covers off him.

Snow growled, hit the floor running, and gave chase. The lights were on in the black-walled corridor. His gaze sought her, his head whipping to his left. She had already reached the end of the hallway. Rather than heading down the staircase, she went up another one further back in the corridor. The roof. She intended to fly away from him.

He damned well wouldn’t let her.

He refused to let her run from her feelings any longer.

He sprinted after her, bare feet landing heavily with each long stride, and took the stairs two at a time, following them upwards.

“Aurora,” he called out but she didn’t slow. She kept running into the darkness ahead of him, her small feet making no sound on the steps. Her wings hadn’t made an appearance yet. Was that a good sign?

Snow couldn’t take comfort from it. She was still running from him after all. She intended to leave him again and he feared he would never see her again if he let her get away.

She hit the storage level at the very top of the theatre and kept going.

“Aurora.” Snow tried again, hoping she would listen to him this time. “Do not run from me.”

Not only because he wanted her to stay.

If she kept running, he was going to lose his temper and then his head. His bloodlust was liable to make a poorly timed appearance because the thought of her leaving was cleaving his heart into two.

“I have to go.” She didn’t look back. The scent of panic and fear swamped her feminine smell of lilies and snow, turning it acrid. “It was wrong of me to come to you. I should have stayed away.”

Because she was an angel? Guilt lanced him again, running his chest through. He had forgotten her and committed so many sins that her wings had turned entirely black. He hated that she had seen him all those times, and had probably seen him with women, witnessed the debauched things he had done and the destruction he had caused, ending countless lives.

She had seen him at his worst and he wasn’t sure that he had a best to show her to prove there was good in him, something to make him worthy of her notice.

Aurora broke out onto the flat roof of Vampirerotique and slowed to a halt, breathing hard.

Snow felt confusion breaking through her other emotions. Her feelings were clearer than ever now that he had become more attuned to her.

The desire he could sense and smell on her was the reason he bravely edged towards the door and the evening beyond.

She had been close to kissing him. Her touch had awoken him and he had remained still, feigning sleep in order to see what she would do. Her breath had been hot and moist against his lips, and he had come close to taking the lead and kissing her.

If he kissed her, would he taint her?

He stared at her where she stood on the rooftop with her back to him, a breeze tousling her fall of black hair and the layers of her pristine white dress.

He wasn’t worthy of this beautiful creature. Not after everything he had put her through and everything he had done. He was wretched.

Clouds hung heavily in the sky, blocking out the final light of the sun that was now below the horizon.

Snow cautiously edged out onto the roof, not because of the danger sunlight posed to him, but because of the fact he was stepping beyond the walls of Vampirerotique for the first time in over a century.

He blinked hard, unaccustomed to even the dim light, and braced himself as a million scents assaulted him and his senses sharpened. He tensed as the breeze caressed his bare flesh, unused to the feel of it now.

Unfamiliar sounds buzzed in his ears, making him twitchy and cranking up his tension until he feared the slightest thing would trigger his bloodlust.

A shrill noise came from overhead and Snow hunkered down, glaring up at the sky. A jet. He had seen pictures. Antoine took great pleasure in keeping him up to date about the world. Snow saw it as a sign of his brother’s unwavering faith in him and his need to cling to the hope that Snow would recover and gain enough control over his bloodlust to be allowed out into the world again.

Snow did not like aircraft. He decided it as he watched it lazily move into the distance. They didn’t seem to move quickly enough to maintain flight and the noise they made ground in his ears.

He glanced behind him at the dark stairwell, tempted to go back inside where the walls blocked out most of the noise and he didn’t feel so on edge.

He couldn’t. If he did, Aurora would leave.

He steeled himself and took another step forwards. The black tar was warm beneath his bare feet. He hadn’t felt the lingering heat of the sun in a very long time, even before his incarceration at Vampirerotique.

Aurora whirled to face him, fear in her eyes. “Go back!”

She was scared of him.

Snow halted, her words cutting him to his bones and lashing at his heart.

She hesitated, looking as though she was going to run again. Perhaps not. He had the craziest notion that she wasn’t intending to run, but was rather torn between standing still and stepping towards him.

Her eyes swam with panic, their striking green-to-blue colour bright in the evening. “I don’t want the sun to harm you. Please, Snow… go back.”

Not fear of him. She feared for him. He was glad that she was speaking to him again and concerned about him too. It was more than he could have hoped for and gave him the courage to take another step in her direction.

“I am old enough to withstand it.” He continued slowly moving towards her so he didn’t startle her into running again.

He drew in a deep breath and paused, savouring it. He hadn’t breathed fresh air in long decades, and although he could hardly call the grimy London air fresh, it was certainly better than the air inside the theatre.

Snow ran his hand over his hair when another aircraft cut across the sky directly above. He hoped that they couldn’t see him from that height, standing on a roof in only his underwear. It wasn’t how he had pictured himself dressed in his first foray into the world in over a century.

The light began to fade, the clouds darkening, and the scent of rain drifted on the breeze. The weather was about to turn abysmal.

He hadn’t missed that.

“Aurora,” he started and then wasn’t sure what to say. He had to do something to make her stay. The thought of her leaving hurt him, making his chest ache, and he would rather lay his heart on the line than let her go without a fight. “Do not leave me… I know I do not deserve you… and you probably think me a wretched monster that deserves only death.”

She tensed at that, her shoulders going rigid, but said nothing.

“Please, Aurora.” When was the last time he had pleaded with a woman? Probably around the time he had decided to give up desiring females too. Aurora had changed all that.

He thought of her constantly, never able to get her out of his head, even in sleep. His dreams always went back to the night she had saved him, and then forwards to her arrival at Vampirerotique. He couldn’t think straight around her and couldn’t picture his life without her in it now.

His hands shook so he curled them into fists, clenching them. He had never felt weak and vulnerable like this, uncertain, not in all his centuries of life, not even when faced with his bloodlust or chained to his bed.

“Do not leave, Aurora. Come back to my room… stay with me… and I will find a way to show you that I am… I do not know what I am… but I know I don’t want you to leave.”

“I am in trouble with my master again,” she whispered in a low voice laced with hurt and a touch of fear.

“Because of me?” His shoulders sagged and his hands fell open, his hope draining away.

She nodded and her eyes filled with sorrow. “Because of you.”

He knew what she wouldn’t say. Her master, the man who had broken almost every bone in his body the night he had first met Aurora, despised him and thought him unworthy of her.

Snow looked at her, forcing himself to recognise that she was an angel, and he was a devil.

Her whole life had been ruined because she had chosen to save him.

“You should have let me die,” he muttered and wished she would leave now. He wanted this over with already. She was going to leave him in the end, driven away by the darkness within him, and he would taint her if he touched her. It was pointless.

Aurora’s eyes blazed. “You were an innocent! You didn’t deserve to die like that.”

She still believed that?

Snow heaved a sigh. “If I had died, my parents would be alive… Antoine wouldn’t bear physical and emotional scars that haunt him, and countless other souls would not have suffered at my hands or my fangs.”

She moved a step closer, her anger washing over him, far more intense than he had anticipated. Her beautiful eyes were dark with it, her lips compressing into a mulish line. She squared her shoulders and narrowed her gaze.

“And what of you?” she snapped. “Have you not suffered because of
my
actions? I saved you that night and set in motion a series of terrible events. I condemned you to a life of pain and misery… you have suffered endless agony because of me. By your reasoning, I should die for the things I have done.”

Snow stepped back, unable to stop himself as the force of her words struck him like physical blows.

“You never deserved to suffer because you took pity on a child.” He kept his voice soft, hoping to calm her. “It was an angelic thing to do.”

She glared at him. “Even if my master had wanted me to watch you die that night?”

He had? Snow didn’t like that. The bastard had tried to make her watch a little boy die. Why?

Before he could say anything, she continued. “He desired to test me. I failed. I couldn’t stand by and watch as an innocent boy, a child like me, drowned in an icy lake. I saw only a child without a blemish on his soul.”

“You couldn’t have known what you would unleash on the world,” Snow countered, wanting to alleviate the guilt he could feel in her. He drew in another deep breath to steady himself and the scent of rain grew stronger. In the distance, thunder growled through the clouds.

“No. I didn’t. I saved you and then you asked me to stay with you, and I foolishly wanted that so much because I knew my master would punish me for what I had done… and this time it would be more severe than any I had endured before.” Tears lined her eyes and she dashed them away, her actions speaking of irritation that he sensed in her. She hated revealing any sign of weakness to him. She wanted him to see her as strong.

It was there in the upward tilt of her chin and her battle to hide her emotions. All he could see was a woman who was breaking inside, the weight of all his sins crushing her soul to ashes.

A female torn between duty and desire.

“I accepted my punishment… and I dared to hope you would remember what had happened and what my master had said… and you would remember me.”

“I am sorry, Aurora.” Snow stepped towards her and the first drops of rain fell, dark spots on the black tar roof. Aurora stared at him, fighting to hold back her tears, and he ached to comfort her.

She wrapped her arms around herself and turned her face away from him.

“I should not have forgotten you…” He curled his fingers into fists to stop himself from reaching out, smoothing his palm across her cheek, and lifting her head so she was looking at him again. She would bolt if he touched her. Tainted her. “I had truly wanted you to live with me too, away from the mean angels who had upset you. You are here now. You do not have to leave. You could stay with me.”

He didn’t dare hope that she would.

God knew he deserved to have her throw everything in his face, his feelings included, and leave him forever.

She shook her head.

His heart broke. He actually felt the snap and the rip.