Undeniable (6 page)

The man rose and swung his fist at Diana’s lower back.
Sebastian blocked the punch and tossed the man out of the alcove before Diana
even felt the rush of air from the approaching fist. She spoke and for a moment
he thought she spoke to him, but when he turned around, he found Diana hadn’t
moved.

“What the hell am I supposed to do? Let some guy maul me
just so the bar doesn’t get a bad rep? Damn!”

He longed to caress her bruised breast and replace her pain
with pleasure, nearly took a step closer to do just that, but a commotion in
the club brought him up short.

“The bitch broke my nose!”

Hearing the reply of one of the bouncers as they approached,
Sebastian positioned himself behind Diana and concealed her in the black shadow
he’d maintained since entering the alcove.

The bouncer entered first. “Look, buddy, I don’t see anyone.
You sure you aren’t on something?”

“And broke my own nose? She kicked me in the fucking balls,
man. I bet she’s hiding in the bathroom.”

When he heard Diana’s breath hitch, Sebastian wondered if
she realized her life had once again entered another realm.

They didn’t see her. How could they not see her? Diana
opened her eyes. She peeked over her shoulder. A dark shadow like the one in
her dreams swept down and captured her mouth. Imprisoned against the wall,
unable to move as the kiss stole her breath and all thoughts of screaming, she
closed her eyes.

Why not? She’d obviously clonked her head like she had at
the lake, obviously passed out. Either that or she was just as crazy as her
father.

Diana’s mind and body gave in to the hot, wanton need that
engulfed her whenever her phantom lover appeared. Years of restraint, practiced
and perfected, could not protect her. She felt helpless yet safe in his arms.
She acted too different from the woman she had become to believe he was
anything more than a lover her mind had created, a lover she had manifested
because her true love had yet to appear. Because her own body stalked her and
demanded she finally give in to her desires.

With a tenderness that belied the strength of the muscles
rippling over the chest pressed against her back and the arms wrapped around
her waist, lips skimmed over hers, left them with a nip, then meandered along
her jaw to her neck. Her heart raced and pulsed beneath his lips. She tilted
her head, offering more of her sensitive skin up to her phantom lover. Her legs
nearly buckled when sharp teeth grazed her skin and sent ripples of pleasure
through her body.

Needing more, she turned around and pressed herself into
whatever dwelt in the darkness enveloping her. When she felt the shift that
signaled another kiss, she tilted her head back and rose up onto her toes. His
hand crept under her shirt and over her wounded breast. While his lips crushed
hers and his tongue caressed every sensitive inch of her mouth, his fingers
stroked her flesh until the pain from her bruised nipple vanished and a new,
more demanding ache took its place.

Arching her back, she pressed her breast into his palm. Her
phantom shuddered. Diana reveled in the knowledge that she affected him as
strongly as he affected her.

When she heard the drunk and the bouncer returning from
their search of the restroom, the kiss ended and a finger pressed against her
lips. Diana nodded, feeling safe wrapped in this familiar cocoon. Her feet left
the floor as a strange tingling sensation skipped over her scalp. Shaking her
head, she wrapped her hands around her phantom’s neck and tried to ignore the
deep, insistent voice in her mind telling her…insisting…

“What’ll it be, Diana?”

Diana blinked.

The bartender flung the white washcloth over his shoulder
and stared expectantly into her eyes. Glancing up at him, she opened her mouth,
shut it, then mutely stared at the twenty dollar bill in her outstretched hand.
She remembered checking her hair in the Ladies Room and turning to leave.
Then…then…nothing.

She didn’t feel drunk. Damn, she only had two beers.
Scanning the club, she frowned. Twice her gaze returned to a dark corner
directly below a floodlight. Her hand instinctively grabbed hold of her
mother’s locket.

Someone tapped her shoulder. Grabbing onto the bar for
support, she peeked over her shoulder and, finding Terry grinning at her
smugly, let out a relieved sigh.

“Got another, I hear,” Terry said, winking.

Diana frowned. “Another what?”

Terry nodded over her shoulder. “Perv.”

Leaning to the side, she looked in the direction Terry had
nodded. Surrounded by fawning women, a man held an icepack to his nose.

Diana emphatically shook her head. “I did not do that one.”

“Di, his blood is on your forehead,” Terry said, giggling.
She reached over and grabbed a napkin from the bar. After dunking a corner in
her cosmopolitan, she rubbed Diana’s forehead. “See?”

Diana stared at the slight red smudge. Her head spun as she
tried to remember the man. After a few moments, her gaze shifted back to the
shadowed corner.

“Di?”

“Shh.” She squeezed her eyes shut and delved into her mind.
“Think dammit. Think.”

Bit by bit the events in the alcove unfurled. Heat rushed to
her cheeks as she recalled how she’d rubbed herself against the shadow like a
cat, how she’d clutched onto it when it had tried to release her, how she’d
then followed some internal order to go to the bar and flag down the bartender
with the twenty the shadow had pressed into her hand.

Catching the bartender’s eye, she asked in a voice that
sounded more like a little girl’s than her own, “Give me a double of Jack
Daniels, please.”

When the bartender slid the glass across the bar, she downed
it in one gulp, then slammed the glass down. The slow burn of the liquor
sliding down her throat calmed the hysteria that demanded she run screaming out
of the bar.

“Another.”

“Another?” Terry grabbed Diana’s thigh and spun her around
until their knees bumped. “What’s up, Di?”

Diana opened her mouth to explain, but what could she say?
Even Terry would think she lost it. She retrieved two tens from her purse and
tossed them onto the bar.

“Di, you already have a twenty in your hand. Are you all
right?”

“This isn’t mine.” Diana gulped down half of her second
drink, then clutched the tumbler to her chest and hopped off the barstool. “You
hooked up with a hypnotist here the other night, didn’t you?”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say we hooked—”

“I’ll be right back.”

Pushing her way through the crowd, Diana stopped before the
shadowed corner and flung the twenty down. When the twenty disappeared before
it hit the floor, she gasped, then whispered through lips that barely moved.
“Look, thanks for your help, but go play your hypnosis games on someone else,
pal. You hear me? Leave. Me. Alone.”

Spinning on her heels, she tried to appear unruffled as she
walked on rubbery legs to the dance floor and worked her way deep into the
security of the writhing crowd. Surrounded by people, far from the eerie shadow,
her memory of the events in the alcove seemed ridiculous. No hypnotist was that
good. One too many drinks, a bump on the head and she sees tall, dark,
invisible men. Her gaze wandered back to the corner.

“One too many drinks,” she snapped, startling the man
dancing beside her.

* * * * *

That morning, before he drifted off to sleep, Sebastian
wondered if the qualities he found so intriguing in Diana could also be proof
of her guilt.

Over the past few nights, he’d witnessed how the town dealt
with Frank Nostrum. Some heaped their pity upon Diana’s rigid shoulders while
others flung their ridicule at her receding back. And Diana? From what he
heard, she knew her father believed he was a vampire hunter, knew the
townspeople believed he was crazy.

But did Diana believe in vampires? Did she know her father
destroyed them? Had destroyed Marek?

Sebastian slid his arm under his head and pondered Diana’s
innocence.

Could she be the ultimate weapon Frank Nostrum used to
ensnare his victims and lure them to their death? She drew men to her like
moths to a flame and had the strength and power to take them down before they
knew what was coming. The possibility that he might be her next willing victim
haunted him, but did not cool the blistering lust surging through his veins,
did not stop him from seeking her out the moment the sun set.

The remainder of the week passed too swiftly as far as
Sebastian was concerned. Diana usually ended each night with a trip to the
lake. Voyeurism didn’t suit him, went against every moral he possessed and
every vow he had taken as a Champion, but he felt compelled to watch.

Every night he ground his teeth against the urge to reveal
himself when she floated on her back and offered up her glistening breasts to
the stars. Every night his control slipped free when she stepped onto the
shore, a thin sheet of water caressing her supple flesh. How could he possibly
contain it when she wiped the moisture from her skin, her hands lingering on
the very spots he imagined a hundred times covering with his mouth?

Each and every night he surrendered to the need to touch and
whirled around her, inhaling her enticing scent, caressing every precious inch
of skin the water had caressed. He believed she felt nothing more than a summer
breeze.

On the night the elders had chosen for Diana’s
transformation, Sebastian entered the minds of her friends and sent them on
meaningless errands. He needed these last few hours alone with her. Sebastian
had run out of time, something he found he couldn’t get enough of with Diana.

Taking longer than usual to undress, Diana hesitated with
each piece of clothing she dropped on the ground. When her gaze darted to the
hemlocks bordering the yard, he darkened the shadow engulfing him. Riddled with
guilt over what he intended to do when she returned home, he went over the past
week for the tenth time, searching for something, anything that might delay the
hunter’s sentence and possibly save Diana.

From what he’d seen, Diana didn’t believe vampires even
existed, much less that her father killed them. Watching her when she was home
had revealed nothing. Most nights she and her father ate dinner together, but
Frank, peering out the window as if he expected to find someone lurking there,
barely spoke.

Fearing the hunter may have psychic abilities that ensnare
his victims, the elders had banned entering his mind. Sebastian had no choice
but to watch and listen. He didn’t have to delve into Diana’s mind. Her
loneliness shimmered in her eyes every time she glanced at her father.

Following her when she left her house had only raised more
doubts. Too often, her eyes would stray in his direction. Too often, she
clutched that locket as if it held some power. But she embraced the night with
a fearlessness he doubted could dwell in one who believed in vampires, much
less lured them.

Her possible innocence haunted him.

Diana walked into the water until the shimmering ripples
splashed against her nipples. His cock, hard since the moment he awoke and set
out to see her, twitched with need. Although he had made a habit of stealing
caresses by turning into mist, he held back. Tonight he had to keep his lust
for Diana under control. His need to throw her to the ground and claim her by
fucking her senseless made him feel too much like the teen his mother had
created.

Diana had become more and more like the helpless, innocent
virgins he’d defiled in his youth. The guilt of what he’d done in the past kept
him from diving into the water and Diana.

When she finally emerged from the lake and raised her arms
up to the stars, he delved into her mind and searched one last time for any
knowledge of her father’s crimes, for any reason to bring the hunter’s sentence
to a halt.

Shock, denial and a strange sense of longing filled him when
he uncovered a vision of his hands emerging from a gray mist swirling around
her body. Her need, her yearning for his touch was so powerful that he imagined
he heard her voice in his mind calling to him, her phantom lover.

Filled with despair, Sebastian took to the air and returned
to Mina’s Cove.

Later, as he walked down Main Street in Mina’s Cove, he
wished he could tell the vampires strolling past him that he refused to harm
the hunter’s daughter, that he would kill anyone who tried, but he saw hope in
their eyes, hope that tomorrow they would no longer have to fear Frank Nostrum
and his pen. They had every right to believe their Champion would protect them,
every right to believe Marek’s stepbrother would avenge his death.

As he waited at a light, he caught sight of his cousin Tomas
and Tomas’ friend Diego standing in front of the Town Hall. Tomas waved
eagerly. How many times had Marek stood waving on their porch as a child,
jumping up and down whenever Sebastian came home?

Sebastian’s heart ached. Marek had been the only vampire he
could talk to, the only one who made him laugh, smile, forget that he would
forever walk in darkness. Marek had been Sebastian’s light. He had no choice.
He had to ensure no other vampire lost
his
light in the dark. It was
time, way past time for Diana Nostrum to join the creatures of the night.

Chapter Three

“Sebastian, you greedy bastard!”

Diego’s lust-filled voice boomed in the silent room and
grated on Sebastian’s already frayed nerves. He’d warned the vamp before and
twice after entering Diana’s bedroom that they would only talk telepathically.
Diego!

Diego pressed his palm down the length of the hard ridge
straining against his jeans. You’ve been coming here and watching her every
night this week and you never invited us?

Sebastian clenched his fists when Diego took a step closer
to Diana’s bed.
I think you should wait outside, Diego. You’re making a fool
of yourself.