Blood Possession (14 page)

Her tears rolled silently down her cheeks, her head rested on his shoulder, and she leaned against him, whimpering softly, as if seeking his comfort.

“How long did he spend in prison, Brooke?” Napolean asked. He had not retrieved that memory, not wanting to take more than she had broadcast, but the knowledge of what she had been through cut him like a knife. “How long?”

She shook her head, rubbing her nose against his arm. “Let’s just say, it wasn’t worth it—the trial. There was no justice.”

“How long?”

She looked up then and met his eyes. “Two and a half years.”

Napolean stood deathly still, allowing her words to sink in before drawing her tightly against him and holding her in a firm, unyielding embrace. And then he whispered in her ear, low and lethal, “I am justice, Brooke. For you, there will always be justice.”

She froze against him. “What did you say?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

She let out a deep sigh. “Yes, it does. What did that mean?” The words were mumbled into his chest. “What are you saying, Napolean?”

“I am saying that the one who harmed you no longer walks among the living.”

She gasped but didn’t speak, and he knew that she was finally listening…

“Hear me, Brooke,” he purred, his voice a sultry promise of his commitment to their union. “You must understand who—and what—you are destined to mate. I am the sovereign king of an ancient race, begotten of gods and man.
I—am—justice.
”

Brooke Adams felt the reverberation of Napolean’s words deep in her soul, and the power of his revelation somehow awakened another memory.

A vision?

A dream?

A make-believe childhood friend conjured up by a little girl in a time of desperation.

“Oh my God!” Brooke suddenly gasped, pushing back against Napolean’s chest so she could look at him.

“What?” Napolean asked, sounding all at once concerned. “What is it?”

She shook her head in disbelief. “You. It was you!” She looked up into his eyes and stared at him, really stared at him, as if for the first time, wanting—no needing—to take in every microscopic detail of his handsome face. Unwittingly, she reached up and touched his hair. She rubbed it lightly between her thumb and forefinger to test the texture, and then she gently let it go. “Were you there with me?”

Napolean shook his head. “I’m sorry…I honestly don’t know what you’re referring to.”

Brooke looked off into the distance, yet she remained oblivious to the scenery before her: What she saw was not in the canyon but somewhere much, much farther away—a memory from the past.

“When I was a child”—she swallowed hard—“in the cabin with my stepfather, I imagined so many things…whatever I had to in order to get through it. Survive.”

Napolean reached for her hand and held it firmly in his own, and for the first time, his touch didn’t startle her.

She didn’t pull away.

She heard a hollow sound as if from a distance, a miserable croon like the murmur of a child, and realized that it had come from her own throat. She steadied herself, needing to get through this. “Sometimes, late at night, he would corner me. You know, want to touch me…” She struggled to maintain her focus, and his eyes dimmed as if he were struggling, too—desperate to contain some deeply primal emotion.

“And?” He spoke through gritted teeth.

She swallowed. “And I would imagine that I was someone else—someone really strong that he could never hurt. A boy. No, that’s not true. A man.” She looked down at the ground, feeling that familiar ache of shame. “I was less vulnerable that way…at least in my mind.”

Napolean nodded. “Of course.” The kindness in his eyes was unfathomable.

She whispered then, knowing it was the only way to get out what she needed to tell him: “My name was…
Napoleon
.” Her eyes filled with tears, but her voice became stronger. “Like the two-time emperor of France—you know, the military commander. We had just learned about him in my first-grade social studies class, and in my imagination, he was this formidable personality.” She blinked rapidly, sending several wayward drops down her cheeks. “I can’t believe I forgot…all these years. It was such a big part of how I made it through.”

For the first time since she had met him, the king of the vampire appeared speechless. In fact, he stood as still as a statue, his eyes boring into hers as if he were viewing her very soul, and in that frozen moment, he appeared every bit a Greek god, the full embodiment of power and strength—of absolute, unequivocal dignity—as if he were a figure in a museum preserved from antiquity. And his magnificence was alarming.

Brooke glanced at the strong hand gripping her own with such compassion and intensity and felt suddenly self-conscious, like she couldn’t bear his touch. She gently tugged against him, forcing him to let go. “In my head”—she tapped her forefinger against her temple—“I carried this mighty sword—the Sword of Andromeda—and I would imagine myself stabbing my stepfather through the heart over and over, cutting off his hands, and—”

“What did you say?” Napolean’s voice was barely audible, and his eyes were practically burning with intensity, the center of his pupils reflecting a deep, crimson red, that she was oddly drawn to despite their feral appearance. “Your
make-believe
sword—what did you call it?” he repeated.

She cleared her throat, trying to concentrate. “Andromeda.”

His eyes were positively luminescent now; and if she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn that the temperature around them rose a couple degrees, as if the universe had turned on an invisible heater. The leaves in the trees began to slowly rustle around them, and nearby birds left their perches in swaying branches. Not knowing if this was good or bad, she softened her voice. “Maybe I should stop—”

“No,” he argued, “please…tell me.” His voice played like a lyrical instrument over her ears. “You called your sword
Andromeda…
” His tone urged her to continue.

She nodded. “Yes…Andromeda…and you know what was the craziest thing?”

He shook his head. “No, what?”

She started to answer but suddenly lost her train of thought. For some inexplicable reason, she just couldn’t stop staring at those eyes.

“What was the craziest thing?”

God, he truly was magnificent.

“Brooke?”

Her heart raced in her chest as she continued to stare at Napolean. This man—no, this
vampire
—had kidnapped her, thrown her into a world so frightening and bizarre that her mind still failed to grasp the breadth of it, and refused to let her go. Every survival instinct she had insisted that she resist him—implored her to somehow, someway, escape him, and she was biding her time until she could do just that—but right here and now, in this pregnant moment, he was the strongest and the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. It was as if he had unwittingly cast a spell over her.

“Brooke!”

His dark, haunting eyes were like two piercing lasers—adorned with thick, dark lashes, softly rounded in the subtle shape of almonds. Why hadn’t she noticed this before?

“
Draga mea,
can you hear me?”

His perfect, angular jaw was harsh with iron determination yet softened by an unnaturally smooth complexion. Heaven help her, he was…
breathtaking
.

“Where did you go?”

His wizened brow was faintly creased, yet the lines only enhanced an already strikingly handsome face. Like catching an unexpected vision of the sun setting over the horizon in a purple sky, her eyes simply could not turn away.

“
Brooke…
”

She heard her name as if from a great distance and forced herself back into the moment. The conversation? What had she been saying? O
h yeah…the crazy thing was…
“The crazy thing was, he would stop.”

Napolean blinked, and his dark brows rose in a subtle question. “Your stepfather?”

She clenched her eyes shut and nodded. “Yes. I would imagine swinging that powerful sword over and over in my mind until it felt like there was a blaze of fire around us, and he would slowly back away—almost like he was afraid—until he was no longer…touching me.”

Napolean swallowed hard, and his jaw unclenched. “Then he never actually—”

“No.” She shook her head adamantly. “But it wasn’t for a lack of trying.”

He reached out ever so tenderly and cupped her face in his hands. All at once, it felt as if the same warm breeze wafted over her, and her skin, beneath the pads of his fingers, tingled with electric energy. He smiled at her, and the adoration—the conviction—in those hypnotic eyes was unmistakable: In his mind, he believed she was already his. He pulled his hands away from her face, leaving her feeling momentarily bereft, and then he took her forearm in his left hand and quietly traced the lines etched into her wrist with his right forefinger. “Do you see these markings?” he asked.

She looked at the odd
tattoo
, for lack of a better word, the strange configuration of lines and patterns that had appeared on her wrist the night Napolean had taken her…the night the moon had turned the color of blood. It was a distinct engraving of a woman facing head down at an angle with her left arm outstretched and her right arm bent about ninety degrees. She appeared to be floating in the sky.

Brooke nodded. “Yes, I see them.” Then she remembered what Napolean had told her: It was a sign from the gods—the same image that had appeared in the stars when he had found her. “It represents a vampire’s…ruling constellation,” she murmured, remembering the numerous histories she had read in his library.

He smiled then. “Yes, Brooke. Your grasp of so much information—so quickly—is amazing. But this”—he pointed at the unique image stamped in her arm—“is so much more.”

She shook her head, not understanding.

Napolean rubbed his thumb reverently over the outline of the woman. “This is the goddess
Andromeda
. She is
my
reigning constellation, and it is under her protection and her Blood Moon that our souls have been brought together. She is the one who chose you…for me.”

Brooke tilted her head slightly to the side, her mind working hard to process what Napolean was saying.

“And the Sword of Andromeda is not an imaginary thing,” he continued. “It is the only family heirloom I possess that was handed down from one generation to the next, taken by me after the death of my father. Do you understand what I am saying, Brooke?”

Brooke stared at him intently, measuring every subtle line in his face, following every nuanced fluctuation in his voice. She did not fully understand…yet, but she wanted to. “Help me to understand,” she whispered.

His smile was positively radiant. “It was not a coincidence that your stepfather yielded to your imaginary sword’s power—to Andromeda’s power. The goddess was with you, Brooke. All those years ago. Protecting you for me. You and I were destined, even before your birth.”

Now
she
was speechless.

His radiant smile softened into a warm glow of pure, unconditional affection. “Will you not even entertain the possibility that this”—he held out his arms, gesturing to encompass himself and all that was around them—“is not only real…
but right
?”

Her breath escaped on a sigh.

Napolean.

His name was a whisper in her mind.

A biological imperative in her cellular memory.

Napolean Mondragon
: keeper of the Sword of Andromeda.

She blinked up at him, and her heart filled with wonder. This couldn’t be real. He couldn’t be real. How could an entire world exist outside of her knowledge—an entire species separate from the human race—prospering outside of the knowledge of most of the world’s population? She looked once again at her wrist…

It seemed very real.

And that fateful night—the night of the Blood Moon—it had been real, too.

So had the stars in the sky…Andromeda.

Her imaginary sword.

She slowly shook her head as the full realization sank in: God knew, her week in that cabin with her stepfather had been real…and all of the years she had lived alone without a family since.

She felt Napolean’s scrutinizing gaze and met it head-on, trying to discern the truth from his eyes. “I don’t know what to believe,” she whispered truthfully. “It all seems so impossible.” Her eyes watered, and she started to shiver. “I’m so…afraid.” There. She had said it out loud. “Of you,” she continued, gathering her courage. “Of the world you come from—of all of this.” Her breath came in short gasps. “I feel like I’ve been capitulated back in time—like I’m at the lake again—locked in a cabin against my will, and I—I…” She choked on a sob. “I promised myself that I would never be in that situation again. I don’t know what to do.”

Napolean released a slow, steady breath and held out his hand. “
Ingerul meu
—my angel—come to me. Brooke…listen to your heart…and let me take this fear from you, forever.” He opened both arms and held her gaze. “Just one step forward.”

Brooke looked at the enormous male standing before her with his arms stretched wide. He was an ancient predator, more powerful than anything she had ever encountered and twice as deadly, yet he looked so…gentle…vulnerable…welcoming.