Surrendering: A Regent Vampire Lords Novel, Book #1 (17 page)

“I…I am? I mean, of course I am.” She looked so disappointed it broke his heart. He was right on calling her bullshit earlier. He needed to take fear out of the equation so she would give them a chance. So she would surrender to him, fall in love with him. So she would want to bond with him, as much as he wanted to with her.

“Yes, sleeping together after sex does complicate casual.”

She looked embarrassed, but tried to play it off. “Right. It does. So, ah…I guess I’ll see you in the morning then.”

She tried lifting off his lap, but he clamped the hands around her hips even tighter. She wasn’t going anywhere.

“Oh, you’ll be seeing me in the morning, all right. After I spend the night making love to you and
sleeping
in your bed.” He kissed her long and deep. “After I wake you up in the middle of the night with my cock buried deep inside you.”

He peppered kisses at the corners of her mouth.

“You’re anything but casual, Kate. I want you and I always get what I want.”

He lay back down, assuming their earlier position with her draped over his body. His arm wrapped around her possessively, tightly, letting her know in no uncertain terms, he was not letting her go. Not tonight.
Not ever.

He kissed the top of her head gently. “Now, go to sleep, my love.”

She gifted him with a small smile and obediently snuggled into his side, quickly drifting off. He might have won this round, but he had no doubt the battle to win Kate’s heart was far from over.

Damn stubborn woman.

C
hapter 26

Dev

Dev extricated himself from Kate’s limbs as quietly as he could. He didn’t want to leave her, but the other Lords were arriving within the half hour. His plan was a fast strategy session, returning to her as quickly as possible. He was serious about being buried balls deep in her hot, wet pussy in the middle of the night. And she
would
wake up in his arms.

He needed this meeting over with quickly before she woke. If that happened and she found he wasn’t there, he knew her mind would immediately think the worst and he’d have much more ground to make up. She was going to make him earn every inch of it too. For some reason, she thought herself unworthy of him and if anything it was completely the opposite. He in no way deserved someone like her. She was sweet, innocent, loving. Everything he was not. He genuinely feared once she learned of his true nature, he would lose her forever. He simply couldn’t let that happen.

As he rose from the bed she moaned and turned over but remained asleep. He returned to his room, showered, dressed quickly and made his way to his office to gather a few things.

“
Leo, gather everyone in the boardroom downstairs
.
Ten minutes
.
Usher our guests there when they arrive.”

“
Yes, sire.”

There was a whole command center in the lower levels of his home. He’d conveniently left that out of Kate’s tour. He would show her eventually, but he’d have some explaining to do if she stumbled upon it and he wasn’t quite sure how to do that without being honest with her. He had to do that and very, very soon. How to reveal his true self had been weighing heavily on his soul. He’d figure it out tonight, while he held her in his arms.

Dev grabbed his laptop and papers and headed to the boardroom. When he arrived, Ren and Giselle were already there. “Where are the others?”

“On their way,” Giselle answered. “Dickhead and Rom will be here any minute.”

Dev glared at Giselle. “Let it go, Elle. Please.” That got her attention. He never asked anything of anyone. He certainly didn’t say
please
. He
demanded
.

“O-Okay. For you, my lord.”

“Thank you.” She simply gaped at him. Yeah, Dev didn’t say ‘thank you’ much either.

Manny and Thane breezed in.

“You guys feed?”

“And then some,” quipped Manny, his eyebrows wagging up and down. Thane simply nodded. Man of a thousand words.

“
Your guests have arrived, sire. I’ll show them down.”

A couple minutes later Damian, Romaric and several others strode into the room.

“Gentlemen, thanks for coming.” Dev said. As usual, Giselle was the only female in the room. And she avoided Damian like the plague. Giselle would never tell Dev what happened between them, but it’d caused some pretty bad blood between the two. Well, mostly on her part, it appeared.

Dev whistled to quiet them down. “All right, let’s get down to business. Here’s what we know so far. We have a total of twenty eight—”

“Twenty-nine,” piped up Damian. “Another went missing in the Philly area yesterday.”

“Fuck. Okay, twenty-
nine
girls missing in the last three weeks between our Regents. What I didn’t tell you about Kate, other than she’s my Moira, is that she’s a dreamwalker.”

It was so quiet in the room you could hear a pin drop.

“She hasn’t seen Xavier specifically, but she’s described an evil presence. I know it’s him; I feel it in every cell of my body. She said others are being held as well.” He described Kate’s latest dream and the session earlier today with Olivia. “Hopefully next time she dreams about Sarah she can discern Xavier’s location, but we can’t wait for her to have another dream. As you know, dreamwalkers can’t control them. We know Thatcher was going to interrogate the professor who last saw Sarah Hill. Do we know what went down with that yet?”

“I have a call into him,” growled Ren. “Asshole hasn’t called me back yet.”

Romaric spoke up. “You’d all do well to build a cooperative relationship with the local police versus an adversarial one. It’s worked well in my Regent.”

“Why, thank you for that observation, Romaric. I hadn’t thought of that myself.” Ren’s comment dripped with sarcasm.

Dev spoke up. “Thatcher has his reasons.” He needed to get this meeting back on track. “I think we need to call Esmeralda.” That quieted down the room.

Damian pushed off the wall that he’d been leaning against. “Fuck, no. That’s a supremely bad idea, Dev.” Damian had some strange aversion to witches of any kind.

“What choice do we have, Damian? I’m open to other ideas here, but we clearly need some help because we’re making no progress. You heard Kate’s last dream.”

Damian took a few steps toward Dev. “Dev, listen. I know this is personal for you man, but we all want Xavier dead just as much as you do. He’s a threat to our entire race, to our way of life. We all agree something needs to be done, but to involve a witch,
that
one in particular, is the worst possible idea. She can’t be trusted. You know that.”

He knew involving Esmeralda was a bad idea, but he was desperate. As long as Xavier lived, there was always a chance he could find Kate. That absolutely terrified him.

“What other ideas you got?”

“I have all of my ears to the ground, as does Romaric, and I know you do as well. From what we’ve been able to piece together so far, we think that Xavier’s new HQ may be out of your Regent, Dev. Fucker is probably right under our noses. Let’s wait ’til dusk tomorrow. If we know nothing new from the cop, your woman, or from any of our contacts, we revisit the witch discussion.”

Everyone agreed that was the best approach. The idea of those girls spending another minute in Xavier’s clutches made Dev physically ill, but patience was required when hunting. He normally excelled at patience, but it seemed he’d left it on the floor of the observation room at the police station the moment he first laid eyes on Kate.

C
hapter 27

Kate

She woke to a cold, empty bed. It took her a second to get her bearings. She was in Dev’s house. And Dev wasn’t in her bed, where he said he would be. The sheets on his side were cold, so she knew he’d been gone for some time now, which meant he wasn’t just using the bathroom. She should feel relieved that he’d decided to leave after all, but somehow she just felt…
sad
.

She’d foolishly believed him when he’d told her he’d wanted more than just sex. That he’d wanted
her
. She’d fallen asleep dreaming of what life would be like as Mrs. Devon Fallinsworth someday. She was the worst kind of fool.

She’d told him to go, but he’d convinced her there was no place he’d rather be than with her. He made her feel like a completely different person, like she was somehow becoming the woman she always knew lurked deep inside of her. She didn’t feel comfortable around most people, but with Dev…with Dev, it was like she was
home
, wrapped in a fluffy robe with matching fuzzy slippers, in front of a fireplace, sipping champagne. She was content for the first time in her life.

She sighed heavily. She needed to get out of here before she fell completely in love with this man. Since it wasn’t safe to go home, maybe she could stay with Erin? It was probably for the best. She didn’t know if she could stomach seeing Dev again without throwing herself at him, begging him to return the feelings she’d grown for him. Begging him to make love to her again.

God, Kate. Have more respect for yourself than that.
She wouldn’t beg any man for anything. Ever. She was leaving in the morning for sure. If she had her own car here, she’d leave now. She knew Dev would fight her on it, but she didn’t care. She simply had to get out of this house and away from him for good. Get back to her boring, lonely life and work on eliminating him from her head, and heart.

Sleep was elusive, so she decided to head to the kitchen for a glass of water. Or better yet, a shot of tequila if she could find some. She threw on pajama shorts and tank and headed downstairs.

When she reached the first level, the house was blazing with lights, but there was no one to be found. Strange. Why would all of the lights be on in the middle of the night?

Glancing out the front door, she saw several new vehicles that weren’t there earlier. At least she didn’t think they were. She filled her glass with water in the kitchen. Unfortunately, there was no tequila to be found. She strained to hear any noises in the house. Nothing.

She decided to check out the office. No one was there either, but as luck would have it, a mini bar was tucked in the corner, with an unopened bottle of Patron calling her name.
Hello, darling
.

Trying to convince herself it wasn’t because she was drowning her sorrows, she helped herself to a couple of shots to help her sleep—
hopefully dreamless
. While she let the tequila take its effect, she wandered the empty house, ending up in the game room. She’d hoped to get lucky and run into Ren or Manny, but the game room was empty too.

All of a sudden she heard a strange noise, like whooshing. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Rhythmic. Soothing. It sounded almost like blood pounding in her ears when she’d been in the handstand yoga pose for four or five minutes. She frantically looked around to see if anyone was here. Nope. Nada.

What. The. Hell. Was. Going. On?

She left the game room to search the rest of the house, everywhere except the bedrooms at this late hour, but it was empty. And now she couldn’t stop hearing that damn whooshing noise, even outside of the game room, but it intensified the most when she was there. Every instinct told her the sound was coming from downstairs, but Dev said this was the lowest level of the house. She searched all over again for an entrance to a basement and finding nothing, returned to the game room.

There
had
to be something here leading to another level. She didn’t know why she had such an overwhelming need to figure this mystery out.

She began inspecting walls, pulling books out of shelves, turning off and on light switches.
What the hell did she think she was doing?
Starring in an Agatha Christie novel?
Frustrated, she sat in one of the leather chairs by the pool table.

Staring in the direction of the pool rack, she noticed a very slight crack, spanning floor to ceiling on the right side of the rack. It looked out of place but not glaringly so. She walked to the rack and tried fiddling with everything and anything, feeling around for a hidden button. Ready to give up, she leaned on one of the pool sticks and voila! The wall holding the pool rack cracked open and a stairway leading into the dark was in front of her.

With the door open, the noise was clearly louder. As she stood there, staring into the black abyss, she’d transitioned from an
Agatha Christie
novel to
Stephen King
movie and the audience was screaming, “DON’T GO INTO THE BASEMENT, YOU IDIOT!”

Even though her brain screamed this was a moronic, reckless idea, some unknown force she couldn’t resist was pulling her down the stairs. She faltered. Maybe she should stop and wait until she found Dev. No. No…that was a bad idea for many reasons.

Down she went…slowly, stair after stair. Her heart raced. The light from the game room only spilled so far down the stairwell and soon she was enveloped entirely in blackness. But strangely enough, she could see much better than she thought she’d be able to. Her eyes must have adjusted quickly.

As she reached the bottom, the noise intensified and compelled her forward.

She was getting more freaked out by the minute, and not because she was waiting for Freddy or Jason to jump out and go all slasher on her. No. She was freaked out because of the bizarre things that had been happening to her since she’d arrived at this house.