Lothaire (10 page)

The scratch on her neck drew her attention. Would that scar? Would it heal before she was made into a vampire? Once this body became immortal, it would be frozen forever—its appearance fixed.

Lothaire traced to stand behind her. “You’ve suffered no ill from your time in prison, have only grown more beautiful.”

She scrutinized her figure. Had Elizabeth lost weight? Saroya had resigned herself to her new short frame—mere inches over five feet—but she couldn’t accept this leanness. “The body’s too slim.”

She recalled one of the few times she’d risen in that fetid jail. She’d read Elizabeth’s journal, noting that the mortal “worked out” every day in her cell. Unfortunately, it showed.

How Saroya missed her own features! Her eyes had once been large and feline yellow, slit down the center with a thin black iris. Her lips had been bloodred, her skin pale like the moon. She’d been almost six feet tall and voluptuous to an obscene degree.

Whenever she’d descended from her godplane to earth, men had been awestruck just to behold her. Once she beckoned for them, they’d offered themselves to her insidious brand of death. . . .

She ran her hands over this new lean figure, groping for softness.
How much flesh can the body gain before Lothaire finds the ring?

At least Elizabeth’s bust had grown to a decent size. When Saroya cupped herself with relief, Lothaire’s eyes grew hooded.

Saroya abruptly dropped her hands. In a brisk tone, she said, “This face is the most lovely of my temples’.”

Though this present guise couldn’t compare to hers when she’d been a cat-eyed enchantress, Saroya had enjoyed some success luring victims. Males wanted to protect the vulnerable-looking girl and pluck her innocence. Instead, Saroya had plucked their hearts, eyes, and testes.

Unlike her twin sister, Lamia, a goddess of life and fertility, Saroya was a virgin deity and forever would be, defending her chastity to the death. . . .

To others’ deaths.

Yet Lothaire believed she was a sexual creature, believed she’d never taken a lover into Elizabeth’s body out of faithfulness to him. . . .

“Indeed lovely.” His voice had grown huskier. “Who came before this human?”

“I possessed a middle-aged professor of Americana. I had much to learn from him, kept him alive for most of the nineties. After him came a shovel-toothed hunchback of a woman. I leapt off a building to be rid of her.” She frowned. “That transfer hadn’t proved as instantaneous as I’d hoped.”

“How are these temples chosen for you?”

“It could be based on a bloodline. Only the one who cursed me can say.”
Lamia, damn you to the Ether!
“All I know is that I will do anything to remain in Elizabeth—and you would do well to help me. I promise you, the next form for your Bride cannot possibly be better,
if
you could even find me. I might possess a male, or a baby, or an octogenarian. Not a young and fair innocent.”

Yet another reason this body was a seamless fit. Elizabeth was a virgin, much to Lothaire’s fascination.

He reached for her waist, turning her to face him. She stiffened but allowed it. “I’m quite content with your host as well. How long can you hold her off?”

“She’ll rise this very night. She is exceedingly strong-willed. Lothaire, I want her gone.”

He brushed a lock of hair from her forehead, his red eyes following the movement of his hand. “And you shall have everything you wish once I reclaim the ring. For now, I will make her fear ever to rise again.”

“You think you can make one like her go dormant? How? When you can’t harm the body to torture her into submission?”

His lips drew back from his fangs, not a smile. “Let me worry about our pathetic little mortal.”

“Such vitriol.” One thing she’d learned about Lothaire? He despised humans even more than she did.

“Elizabeth just attempted to destroy herself, thinking that would kill
my Bride. Yet I can’t punish her for her transgression!” he grated. “Be assured that the next time she rises
will be her last
.”

Saroya had never met a man so certain of himself. But then he was powerful, brilliant, calculating, and, above all things, perfectly fashioned.

Lothaire was as compelling as a virility god.

The night of their first meeting, she’d allowed him to lick her prey’s blood from her skin as he’d stroked his own organ to release. Though she’d been repelled by his animalistic needs, even she had been reluctantly entranced by the sight. And she was above such urges.

Saroya despised all things sexual. Blood and death were all she revered—certainly not an act designed to
create life
.

In fact, she loathed males—those reckless carriers of seed—entirely.

Now this one was cupping her nape, his gaze locked on her lips, no doubt intent on claiming her. How to put him off once more? “As I told you years ago, Lothaire, I won’t yield this body until it’s fully mine to give you.”

He straightened, meeting her eyes. “And as I told you, Saroya, I can’t take you until you’re immortal, else risk killing you with my strength. But there are other ways to pleasure each other.”

Disgusting primate.

“Despite ample opportunity, I haven’t been with another since my blooding.”

Yes, he
would
have ample opportunity. “I suppose females throw themselves at you wherever you go.”

“To a tedious degree.” He studied her expression. “Jealous to think of me with another?”

“Not at all.” She no more cared whom he mated with than she would about an ant on the sidewalk.

His grip on her neck tightened, a clear threat. “I’m not a selfless male—when I give, I expect to get. Today I gave you freedom.”

Though it appalled her, she knew she’d have to manipulate him. “Vampire, I reek of prison, poverty, and fear. Look at my appearance, my
atrocious garments. I want to feel beautiful, to be desirable. I need clothes, jewels, cosmetics. My hair must be shorn, my skin bathed.”

She thought he might press the issue. Instead, he released her, offering his hand. “Then welcome to New York.” He drew back a curtain, revealing a balcony that overlooked a green park and a vast city. He ushered her forward into the sunlight as he drew back into the shadows. “Whatever you need, we’ll find it here.”

Did he expect her to be impressed by this view? She was confused.
Impressive
would be this vast city enslaved to her will. . . .

 7

H
is penthouse had been turned into a female’s sartorial dream.

Blue velvet draped the dining room table, dotted with gemstones the size of his Bride’s fist. Racks of costly garments lined the walls in the living area. Designer shoes littered the floor. Cosmetics were laid out in the dressing room.

And in the kitchen, a chef prepared a meal fit for a queen.

After Lothaire had cleaned himself, he’d made a few select calls. Within the hour, his home had been filled with the city’s most exclusive stylists, beauticians, and shopkeepers, all peddling their wares and services.

At least, the most exclusive
mortal
proprietors.

Normally he would have purchased through Lore vendors, but gossip about the Enemy of Old’s new woman would be impossible to suppress unless he killed all the witnesses.

Which he was hesitant to do; he enjoyed their luxurious wares himself. Even if he wasn’t yet a king, he would dress as one. . . .

So humans it would be. He adjusted the sunglasses he was forced to wear in front of them.

For the last several hours, Saroya had been closeted in her suite of
rooms with aestheticians and a “wax specialist”—whatever that was—spending the afternoon doing gods-only-knew-what in the bathroom.

To pass the time, he was tempted to tackle a new mechanical puzzle he’d acquired—a polyhedral assembly, solvable in sixty-five moves—but his concentration suffered on most days as it was.

And now the sound of his Bride’s voice teased him. Her scent kept his body strung tight. As ever, madness threatened.

Lothaire knew one thing that would relax him. He traced into the closet of his suite, opening a safe within. There lay his most treasured possession: a weighty account ledger.

He didn’t use it to track monetary expenditures and incomes. Instead, he recorded blood debts, chronicling all the immortals who had sworn to do whatever he demanded of them.

Like a miser palming his gold, Lothaire would review his debtors, reverently brushing his fingers over the ledger pages—

He froze, sensing something that couldn’t be right. A presence from long, long ago. He shoved the book back into the safe, slamming it shut, then traced to the shadow’s edge of the balcony.

The setting sun was veiled by misty clouds, but he still had to shade his sensitive eyes as he gazed out over the city.

Was he being stalked?

How to anticipate a threat when he could scarcely untangle reality from reverie? Waiting . . . watching . . .

Once night fell, the presence disappeared. Or had he imagined it?

Unsettled, he returned to the living room. Saroya emerged shortly after. At the sight of her, he shrugged off his disquiet.

The wait had been worth it.

A floor-length gown of black silk molded over her every curve. The front was a deep V cutting down all the way to her waist. Thin leather ties crisscrossed over her chest, holding the material in place over her full breasts.

Want to see them. For the first time.
Lothaire had never gazed upon her naked form.

His eyes were riveted to her movements in that ingenious garment—one created to make males fantasize about slowly unlacing those ties to free her bound flesh.

She sauntered across the room, her stilettos giving her the illusion of height. Her damp hair smelled of scented shampoo and hung heavily down her back.

Her makeup had been applied liberally. Bold blush strokes over her cheeks and heavy foundation nearly blunted the nuances of her finely boned features. Her eyes were made up with sweeping shades of brown, black, and silver. Her lipstick was scarlet.

She had lips like a sexpot, a pouting bow.

And her wicked nails looked as if blood dripped from each fingertip.
Very nice touch, Saroya.

Overall, the effect was flagrantly sexual.

By all the gods, she was a lovely piece, and soon he’d claim her. At the thought, his shaft swelled. He shifted uncomfortably, adjusting the long jacket that disguised his reaction to her. The growing pressure . . .

Lothaire had been thirty-three when he’d last had a woman beneath him, the night before his heart had stopped its beating and he’d frozen into his immortal form. Until that age, he’d enjoyed females from all factions in the Lore, had taken a new one every night.

Now he was to suffer the urges and drives of his youth all over again?

Between his dwindling sanity and this inconvenient erection, he found it impossible to concentrate on his Endgame.

He began to pace, having to remind himself not to teleport in front of the mortals.

I can’t lose focus.
At long last, he was on the cusp of seizing the Horde throne. He’d completed the most challenging task—slaying Stefanovich—ages ago.

Though not before the old king had lashed out against his bastard with incomprehensible malice.
The earth grinding over me . . .

No, focus on the Endgame!
On the ring. It would enable Lothaire to
destroy Elizabeth and transform Saroya into a vampire—a vital measure
of protection for his Bride, and the key to securing the Horde throne
for him.

And the ring would give him the power to find and annihilate the Daci. To locate Serghei at last.

One ring equaled Lothaire’s eternal mate, two kingdoms, and the vengeance he’d hungered for since his mother’s murder. . . .

Saroya began to finalize her purchases, her demeanor bored. She pointed out every rack of clothing, ordering, “Put them in my wardrobe.” Her bedroom, the one adjoining his own, had an oversize closet; he doubted everything would fit into even that cavernous space.

With an aggrieved air, she perused the jeweler’s offerings. “I will take all the baubles.”

Eight figures’ worth of
baubles
. Lothaire sighed.
Welcome to matrimony.

All eyes fell on him. With a negligent wave of his hand, he approved the expenditures. If possible, the humans groveled even more, which increased his irritation.

When Saroya returned to her suite and settled into a chair to have her hair trimmed, he followed her.

“Am I to have no privacy?” she asked.

“No,” he said simply. No longer. He owned the body as much as she did. He’d be there for any alterations. “And after this, I want to see you in the garments I’ve bought for you.” He leaned down to say at her ear, “See you in the lingerie.” His gaze dipped, greedily taking in the swells of her breasts.

One tug of a leather tie . . . golden flesh spilling out.

“Of course, lover,” she said, too smoothly.

He pinched her chin, turning her to face him. “Saroya, I don’t buy you these things for your benefit.” Never would he give a gift with no thought of a return on his investment. “I buy them for
both of us
to enjoy. Just as we will this new body.”