The Nightlife: Paris (The Nightlife Series) (4 page)

She looked back and forth between him and Michelle with
incredulity.  “
Fiche moi le
paix fils de salop!
”  He may not have understood her word for word,
but he caught the gist.  He’d been told off in no uncertain terms.  “
Stupide américain!
”  She spit
it out in his face with venom.

She looked so adorable in her anger, pouty lips spewing all
that musical filth.  He wanted to snatch her up and kiss her.  She tried to
push him away, but she encountered his rock solid chest, pushed herself back,
and stomped off.  He wanted to chase her down, but what would he say? 
I want
to make you my next bloodslave, no worries
.  It was a lost cause, thanks to
Michelle.  He felt cheated, robbed of an opportunity.  He’d lost his cute
little Cécile, courtesy of his master.

He scowled at Michelle and growled.  “What the fuck do you
think you’re doing?”  He advanced on her, his sharp claws at the ready.

Michelle shied back in fear, a look of apology in her eyes. 
He realized what he was doing just before he reached out to snatch up her scrawny
little blonde ass with all his strength and fury.  He’d never come at her in
anger before.  He recognized the Predator skating the surface of his mind, its
primal urges coloring his thoughts.  He turned on his heel and walked away
before he did something foolish, like striking his master for the first time
ever.

“What the hell was I thinking?” he murmured as he surveyed
the dance floor from afar, cooling off.  He had no reason to turn on Michelle. 
She’d been doing the right thing.  He had no business taking on a new
bloodslave.  “I need to get my head straight.”

Scanning the masses for another target to feed, he briefly
encountered something unusual.  A mind nearby was impervious to his probe.  Man
or woman, he couldn’t tell, but whoever it was had been observing him.  There a
couple seconds, and then gone.  He scanned over and over, looking every which
way, but the blank one had disappeared.  It had seemed like a dream, a fleeting
brush of contact and then nothing.  He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was
being watched. 

* * * *

Chapter 4

Michelle stood with Aaron at her side in the plaza looking
up at the sweeping majesty of the Eiffel Tower.  It looked so much more ethereal
since they installed the new lighting, especially with the fog floating across
the lights.  She loved the tower.  It seemed an affirmation of French culture. 
A glorious three hundred and twenty-four meter celebration of the phallus. 
Nous avons le plus grand pénis
. 
We have the largest penis
.  It was once the tallest structure in the
world until the Chrysler building came along to trump its height by seven
meters.

Americans, always it is the Americans
.

She glanced at Aaron, feeling his turmoil, his embarrassment,
his grief, his unspoken apology.  He still brooded about the woman, his boiling
emotions locked behind a wall of privacy, but his angst was obvious to her. 
She read him all too easily.  Sometimes it seemed she knew him better than she
knew herself.

Instead of chastising him for his mistakes, his arrogance
and callous disregard for human life, she kept quiet.  It must have been a
mistake.  He had spent too long with the girl and she became fixated on him. 
She knew all too well how quickly they became obsessed.  She collected admirers
constantly.  She wore the rose-colored shades to avoid snatching men
accidentally.  Now she stood next to the man she loved, and he wouldn’t look at
her.

She broke the awkward silence.  “It’s okay.  I forgive you. 
Do not worry over these things.  We will always have each other.”  He hugged
her tight, his love and apology washing over her.  He needed her absolution
badly.

“I love you so much.  But it’s difficult.  I keep thinking
we could have done more for Anastasia.  And why can’t we have …”  Another one.

He didn’t say it, but it flitted across his mind.  He wanted
another pet.

“
Je t’aime
Aaron.  But our life is not for them.  It cannot be.”

She lived by carefully constructed rules of comportment.  No
bites in excess of one-two minutes, move on immediately after feeding, and no
relationships with the food.  Attorneys, bankers, business people, She handled
these matters with discretion, professional distance.  She lived to plug in and
out of the masses, anonymous, slipping between the cracks in the overcrowded
metropolitan areas.  She rarely returned to the same place more than once every
few months.

A chill crept down her spine as a disquieting thought occurred
to her.  What if Aaron began to blame her for this forced disconnect from
humanity?

She recalled how she felt about her former master.  A
maliciously repulsive character, although not ugly on the outside, she hated
him for the things he did.  She had blamed him for so much, placed
responsibility for her actions on his head.  Long after he was gone she
continued to blame him for the things she did, for her condition.  It took
years of soul searching to come to terms with herself, to accept
accountability.

Would Aaron face the same cycle of denial?  Would he grow to
resent her for this life?

So young, and he had changed so much in the two months since
she took him in.  Would he outgrow his love for her?

They walked through the plaza towards the brightly lit Eiffel
Tower, and she watched him, searching his features for answers to her worries. 
His dark brown eyes reflected the knowledge and experience of a man twice his
age.  He had loved and lost.  He had experienced the harsh realities of
enslavement, yet loved his captor.  He was one of the most formidable examples
of masculinity and strength, near angelic in his abilities, yet he would never
be a free man.  He was a massive complexity in her life, her first real relationship
since those terrible nights so many decades ago.

She bottled her dark thoughts tightly within her mental
vault.  She vowed to be there for him, to treat him with all the love and
respect he deserved.  She hoped he would feel as safe as she did, knowing that
they always had each other.  She hoped she alone would be enough for him.

* * * *

Gazing at the massive structure of the tower arcing up into
the night sky, Aaron sensed it again.  They were definitely being watched.  He
encountered that same non-descript presence as he reached out to identify the
watcher.  It touched him, and then it was gone.  The instinctive awareness of
the Predator recognized the elusive apparition.  Since the club, someone or
something followed and spied on them.  Aaron shifted his focus from the tower
to a scan of the area, reaching as far and wide as he could.  He had a bad
feeling – someone knew of their true nature, their supernatural existence.

“Do you feel that?  That feeling like someone’s looking over
your shoulder?”

She shook her head, but that meant little.  Michelle didn’t
have his sensitivity.  Her psychic connections ended with Aaron.  Michelle’s
particular gift was of sight – she perceived a certain spectrum of light, the
aura each person emanates.  She discerned moods and character traits from an
aura, but she did not read minds.

He turned around in a complete circle twice over, trying to
catch something, anything.  Whoever it was had moved far beyond his range.  He
dropped the subject with one last glance over his shoulder.

“Come, you’re too tense.  Let me help you relax.”  She took
his arm and guided him away.

They returned to the Hilton around three in the morning,
still early, but he knew his sex goddess had plans.  Michelle intended a short
marathon before sunrise, and he probably needed it.  A healthy, non-violent
release of frustrations.

“Tomorrow I will show you my home.  I think you will like
it.”  She had a strange faraway look in her eyes.  A woman with secrets.

She smiled seductively and slipped her hands over his chest,
undoing his shirt.  He could never deny her.  He loved her too much to push her
away.

She kissed away his melancholy.  Her loving hands, soft
lips, and perfumed scents were an addiction for which he had no cure.  He could
lose himself in her for eons without knowing the passage of time.  Who could
complain of spending their life with Michelle?  Men would give fortunes to be
with this woman.  Why couldn’t he just be happy with her?  Who could expect
more?

Her touch felt so right, yet there remained something
unsettled under the surface.  Anastasia.  He couldn’t think the name without seeing
his black-haired Snow White in one of her new cocktail dresses, twirling as she
modeled for him.  He had it all in Las Vegas.  Two of the world’s most
beautiful and loving women a man could ask for.  He still had it better than
most.

“I want all of you.  I don’t care if it hurts.  Burn it out,
Aaron.  We have all the time in the world to burn it out.”  She had removed all
his clothes as he stood there quietly, basking in her intoxicating attentions. 
“Give it all to me.”  She growled in his ear as she gripped his length in hand.

“As you wish.”

He snatched her up with all his immense strength and flung
her down on the bed to tear through her designer gown, tossing aside the shreds. 
They bit down on each other in perfect sync as their minds combined together in
the most intimate form of love.  Bodies and souls meshed, intertwined, pleasure
overlapping until neither could tell whose ecstasy was whose.

He found her warm, and wet, and he stretched her open wide
as he buried his cock.

“
Mon dieu!
” 
She squirmed as he worked in deep.

He pinned her beneath him and gave her every last ounce of
his love, frustration, anger, and grief, burying it in her over and over and
over.  She clawed the bed, his back, his ass, he kept on going.  He dug into
her limit and beyond, pushing so hard she gave him sweet little grunts of pain.

He shared her pain, as she shared his.  Their emotions
blended into a wild frenzy, driving him like a madman.  He nailed her again and
again.  She growled and thrashed beneath him.  They were perfect for each other. 
She could handle all his ferocity, all his pummeling passions.  He had to
exercise the utmost caution with the humans, but not Michelle.  She took it all
and screamed for more.

He rammed her, pounded her, pinned her down and fucked her
with deep, hard, grinding strokes.  She uttered a feline purr, a low growl with
little squeaks and squeals as his thrusts hit home.  He lost all sense of
self.  He became Michelle as she became Aaron, together one and the same.

Her love and affections washed over him, her acceptance. 
She’d never had it so good.  No man could give her what he did.  The rapture of
their synchronous bites and furious sex brought her heavenly bliss for hours. 
If it wasn’t for the need to feed she’d never let him out of her bed.  He was
her conqueror, the one and only man who could.  And yet she owned him.  And
that was just the way she liked it.

They lasted for a time, burning out their passions for one
another, until he collapsed exhausted.   She lay under him convulsing and
squirming, chanting her love for him repeatedly.  “
Je t’aime, je t’aime, je t’aime
…”

He read her sublime happiness.  How could he ever ask for
more than this woman in his arms, happy?  She might have the ability to command
his obedience, but he held her heart in his hands.

* * * *

Chapter 5

Aaron stood outside Michelle’s “home” – slack-jawed in awe.  He
had imagined many possibilities, but the reality of the house staggered him.  
This
isn’t a home
. 
It’s a fucking mansion straight out of ‘Lifestyles of the
Rich and Famous.’
  She had deliberately taken her sweet-ass time feeding at
another nightclub, putting this off.

Michelle, you got some ‘splaining to do.

Turn of the century, or perhaps older, the three story
mansion looked early 1900’s.  Smooth white stone and red brick, the kind of
construction that stands the test of time.  There had to be a caretaker – the
place was too well preserved.  He marveled at the creamy limestone larger-than-life
lions guarding the gate.  Newly applied lacquer gleamed on the hardwood double-doored
entry.

He looked sharply at Michelle. 
Did you do all this for
me?
 Hiding inside her mental vault, he couldn’t read her, a sure sign of
her distress.  He hated when she shut him out.  His irritation grew.  What the
hell did she have to hide?  Hell, she never let him into her mind when it
mattered.

“So what is this monster worth?  Two, three, four million? 
This isn’t a home, it’s a damn hotel.”

“
Oui
. 
It was once a hotel.”  She wouldn’t look at him.  “The last I knew, it was
worth five million euros …”

“What the fuck?”  Five million euros converted to something
like eight million dollars.  That must have been a few years ago, too.

She’s played me for a fool
.  Guilt tore through him. 
If he hadn’t abused his abilities at the poker table, thinking he needed to pay
their way in Vegas, Ana might still be alive.  And here was millions in wealth,
just sitting here vacant.

“Aaron,
non
.” 
She reached out to take his hand.

He shied away from her seductive, manipulating touch.

Her somber, sad eyes assessed him quietly.  “Come.  I will
explain.”  She walked past her guardian lions.

This better be damn good
.  Shaking his head yet
again, he followed.

He’d wondered if Michelle had money squirreled away.  She
never seemed concerned about paying the bills.  Her only “work” was to play the
role of high paid escort.  Like the night he met her, she’d been propositioning
those two cops.  Nothing with Michelle was ever what it seemed.

She suckered me into her little escort game.
 New
York had plenty of wealthy cougars who’d pay a fee for a few minutes with him. 
He brought home a nice wad of cash on the few dates he attended. 
That was
pointless.  She’s fuckin’ loaded
.

He glared at Michelle’s backside as she punched in a numerical
code on a small keypad at the front gate.

She wouldn’t look at him.  “Please be patient with me.  All
will be explained.”

“You’re damn right it will.”  He followed her up the stairs
to the landing.

Her composure slipped and with it the privacy block on her
mind.  He caught a glimpse of her emotional climate.  Anxiety.  Determination. 
Doubt.  Fear.  It all blended together with soul-churning, gut-ripping guilt.

Shit.  What did she do?

She sighed in resignation and reached out to him, all but
begging for his acceptance.

He stared at her hand like something on the bottom of his
shoe. 
She’s playing me
.  He felt her anxiety bump up a notch as he
stood there refusing her.

Fuck it
.

He took her peace offering and stepped through the front
door into her world.

The interior entry opened into a semicircular shape ringed
by massive columns of more smooth white stone contrasting with a dark
green-black marble tiled floor.  The ceiling reached high into a glass-paned
dome, faint twinkles of the starlit sky almost visible through the frosted
glass.

“This looks like a museum, Michelle.  I can’t believe you
own this place.”  He looked through doorways leading off in several directions
from the entry, each room a study in early 1900’s high class décor.  “This puts
the Hilton to shame, we should be staying here.”

“We cannot stay here.  I cannot stay here.”

A barb of her painful sadness hooked into his mind.  She
hated this house. 
What on earth happened here?

They moved forward into an open courtyard with quaint patio furniture
and an unobstructed view of the sky.  He looked up at the three-story edifice
opposite the courtyard.  He pictured how it had looked as a hotel, with couples
and families drinking tea on those quaint little cast-iron bistro tables.

“Why don’t you run it as a hotel?  I bet you could charge
seven to eight hundred a night in a place like this.”

She looked at him with those damn entrancing eyes, a well of
pain lurking in their depths.  “Come.”

He followed her across the courtyard through frosted glass
double doors that opened into a grand room.  The ceiling soared, at least two
stories high.  A fabulous crystal chandelier hung suspended on a heavy iron
chain in the center of the room.  He craned his neck gawking at the fifteen
foot diameter of sparkling quartz and guilt bronze with flame-shaped light
bulbs.  Michelle retrieved a remote control from the wall and dimmed the lights.

The grandeur of the hangar-sized room was completed by a
fireplace hearth large enough to cremate an entire family standing upright.  He
stood there for a time looking back and forth from the massive chandelier to
the fireplace to the antique hardwood furnishings.  He felt like an uncultured
swine
.  I am sooo out of my league
.

He opened his mouth to speak and then shut it.  The words
wouldn’t come.  With a shake of his head, he followed her up a grand staircase,
twisting and turning till they reached a long hallway on the third floor.  She
led him down past several doors and into a study that could rival a small town
library.  The room stretched off into the distance, flanked by shelves
overflowing with volumes bound in calfskin.  There had to be collector items on
those shelves, books worth hundreds or thousands of dollars.

“This was my father’s study.”  She stared at a spot on the
floor.  “I can still remember him in this place.”

Aaron walked around the room in stunned silence, drinking in
all the rich hardwood panels, flooring, shelves, and desks.  She began tracing
the shelves with her fingertips as though seeking something specific, or
perhaps remembering events from another lifetime.  A massive oak desk held
stacks of envelopes addressed to Michelle de Mornac or some variation thereof
like Madam Mornac or Michelle Mornac.  He picked up an envelope from HSBC Bank,
June 2006.  Why would she leave this mail, years old, lying around in this
empty mansion?

He pulled out the papers inside, an account statement with a
balance of $3,262,422.31 dollars.  The correspondence included a brochure for
an investment opportunity offered to Michelle.  Obviously, it hadn’t interested
her.

Who the hell is this woman I’m living with?
  Everything
he thought he knew about her was a lie, a cleverly contrived façade.  She could
have dukes and earls and princes at her command.  Why sell herself as an escort? 
Why tie herself to him? 
She could do so much better than a naive punk like me.
 What can I possibly be to her?  A boy toy at her beck and call?
  Nothing
else made sense.

The ramifications crashed down around him.  Like a surfer
caught in the undertow, his world turned upside down and inside out, all sense
of direction lost.  He stood in this mansion fit for royalty with a glamorous,
millionaire.

I don’t know this woman at all
.

“
Merde!
” 
She grabbed his face and pulled him down to look her in the eyes, sending a
strong surge of assurance through their psychic bond.  “
Non
Aaron! 
Non!
  You must trust me as
you did before.  Please let me explain!”

She stepped up close, intimate, willing him to be calm
through her touch.

“
Je t’aime Aaron.  Mon amour pour toi est éternel.
”  
She held him to her face, nose to nose, using her gaze to
break through. “
Toi et moi – ça
ne changera pas
.” 
Things will never change between you and me.

He pulled away from her seductive touch.  He didn’t want her
overpowering influence to affect his judgment.  He no longer trusted her. 
Lies.  All of it.  His life with her was nothing but lies.

“I wish you never saw this.  This place is not who I am.  Is
like a graveyard to me.  I can never live here.  Is nothing more than
property.”

He snarled, lips peeled back to expose razor sharp fangs.  “Stop
with the excuses.  Tell me the truth for once.  What the hell is going on
here?  Who the hell are you?  Why did you trap me into your life?”

Her eyes slid away from his vicious stare.  She grabbed his
hand and led him out and down the hallway to an expansive master bedroom.  He
studied the ten-foot high windows elaborately curtained in heavy linen drapes,
and the monster four-poster cherry wood bed that would have dominated a normal
sized room. 
Shit.  Kyle’s entire New York apartment would fit in here, and
Kyle and I thought we were living grand.

He felt a momentary pang for his best friend.  His former
life, pre-Michelle, had been so much simpler.  Fresh resentment flared into
flames of anger.

She led him to a plush, red velvet sofa, and drew him down
beside her.  She wouldn’t let go of his hand.  Fear, desolation, grief, and
raging anger overflowed her tight mental control.  He recoiled.  Bam!  Her
mental shielding slammed back in place.  Too late, his mind reeled from the almost
physical assault of her tumultuous emotions.

“I don’t know where to begin.”  Her whole body hunched in
anxiety.

“I want it all.  The whole story, no more secrets.  You owe
me the truth.  At the very least you can give me the truth.”

She glanced at him sharply.  Her mental vault was closed,
but her eyes showed a window to her fear.  A ball of guilt resided at the core
of her emotional mess.  She dreaded his condemnation.

“I need to know, Michelle.”

She sighed in resignation.  “
Oui
.  It is time.”

* * * *