Vampire Mistress Read Online Free PDF Page A

back into the vases he hadn’t broken.
    What started as grudging compliance to her wish to move one piece of furniture became a tense, almost obsessed need to change what he’d done, even though he couldn’t undo or erase it. But as he continued to be alone, he knew he was avoiding doing the one thing that might bring her back.
    He turned toward the prayer bench. It was innocuous looking, polished wood with spaced depressions on the inclined floor piece, intended for placement of the shins. Adjustable wooden pieces were at the end, providing a place to brace the foot, so the kneeler wouldn’t slide back during his devotions. The riser in front of the bench, and the upper rail, would prevent the knees or body from sliding forward, no matter what force they were experiencing from behind.
    She hadn’t said to undress, though he had a curious desire to be stripped bare. Still, it was hard enough to walk to that bench, and force himself to his knees, fitting his shins in the places provided and adjusting the brace pieces for his longer legs. It wasn’t too uncomfortable, but he expected that, after a while, the knees would start to ache. There was no padding, after all. Two hand-sized holes in the upper riser led through to wrought-iron handles, obviously intended for gripping. None of it seemed to be mechanized, nothing that would suddenly engage and hold him fast, but again, he knew this room wasn’t about that. In here, bondage was a state of mind, either embraced or rejected. He’d rejected it three times. But this fourth time . . . He remembered his analogy of the enchanted castle, and thought of sirens and sorceresses, of men turned to pigs.
    He clenched his jaw. “Fuck it.” Threading his hands through those two holes, he took a good grip on the iron handles. He stared at that stained glass angel, who stared back at him with an unreadable yet mesmerizing expression. He couldn’t determine what lay in the winged warrior’s face. Compassion, detachment, anger . . . It was like Mona Lisa, every expression and none able to be read there.
    “I’m here, damn you. Come back now.” He swallowed. “Please.”

    Anwyn had returned to her private office, calling up the Queen’s Chamber on her monitor in there. “Let’s see what you’ve got, angry man,” she murmured. When he at last began to clean up her room, not just the dresser, her chest tightened, the constriction increasing as he tried to fold the tapestries, push the flowers back in the vases. As he got down and scraped glass and wax into his hands, her own fingers closed, feeling the pain of the small cuts. He looked so incongruous doing such tasks, and yet she knew this was harder for him than fighting a physical enemy. The most frightening monsters were the ones that lived in your head. The aroma of a red rose, sensory memory, could be as painful an assault as a bullet in the chest.
    “You are a strange and unsettling woman, cher . One who plays with a vampire hunter.”
    She didn’t take her eyes from the screen. Anwyn always knew when Daegan Rei was near her. It bemused him, she knew, because in his world, such cognizance was usually accompanied only by a marking. Perhaps because vampires had a physical way to inflict immediate mind, heart and soul intimacy upon humans, they didn’t realize that a human foolishly, deeply in love could acquire the same awareness, without a blood-link. His scent wrapped around her like a longing for what could never be. It made the craving even sharper, bittersweet.
    “That intrigues you. It’s why you like me playing with him.” She stood behind her office chair, which she’d positioned in front of the monitor screen as if it were a barrier between her and what she was watching. Much like the barrier she’d always held between her and Daegan. It was an unexpected discovery, that she felt some of the same wariness about Gideon’s impact upon her senses as she did Daegan’s.
    However, when the vampire slid his