Elusive Hero: Invitation to Eden (Vampire Queen Series Book 12) Read online

  She was aware of their lingering gazes. She’d been a beautiful mortal, which had helped her be a successful spy. Becoming a vampire had only enhanced that beauty. Now when people saw her, they saw long red hair rippling like silk to her narrow waist, pale skin like cream and a body made for pleasure. If they looked into her oddly vibrant golden-brown eyes, which were rimmed with a dark ring around the iris and fringed with reddish-gold lashes, they lost their tongues entirely. But their lust, their mindless reaction that could drive them to their knees before her, wasn’t what she wanted.

  Then she saw what she did.

  Chapter Two

  A half-moon scattered lightning bolt patterns along the water lapping against the dock. As her gaze followed the wooden boards with the same zigzagging path to the shore, she saw a man standing at the end. Even with her enhanced senses, she couldn’t penetrate the darkness to see his face, as if the island intended to cloak him, intrigue her, make her want to draw closer. She moved silently by instinct, despite her usual caution about revealing her vampire nature among humans. But Vardalos knew what she was, didn’t he? Everything about this place suggested it held so many secrets, one vampire was going to be a drop in the bucket.

  He was tall, broad-shouldered. He had that way of standing that powerful, military-trained men or large animals did, aware of their strength and carrying the confidence that went with knowing how to deal with threat, crisis or…anything.

  Was she going to unleash her fantasies here on the docks? Maybe. She had over a century’s worth of self-discipline, yes, but she was here because that restraint had grown thin enough for her to take an incredible risk. So she kept moving toward him, even as she recovered herself enough to school her expression to impassivity, and her body language to that of someone who expected nothing for herself, but who was prepared to deal with…anything.

  Her steps slowed at that. God, if this was going to be same-shit-different-day, she’d rather just turn around and get back on the plane. At least in her real life, she was in an environment that reinforced that discipline.

  He had his head cocked and though his face was shadowed, she could feel his attention. Most humans in her own world didn’t meet her eyes unless invited to do so. Even in the oblivious mundane world, most humans wouldn’t hold her gaze for more than a second, but when she drew close enough to see his eyes, they were on hers. The angle of darkness kept her from knowing what color they were, but they were piercing. As startling as a gunshot in the darkness.

  A flutter went through her breast. It had been decades since she’d had the luxury to consider whether or not the power of a man’s gaze would compel her to lower her own. She knew just how important a message that was. Life changing.

  But her life couldn’t be changed. No matter what happened here, she had to get back on that plane in ten days. Because of that, she resisted the compulsion, unsettled enough by it to be defensive. She redirected her attention to absorb other things about him instead.

  His head was shaved, the broad skull matching his strong, square cut features. Yet what caught her eye, as soon as she was close enough to see them, were the scars. One jagged line ran diagonally from his cheekbone to cross his nose, which would have been straight and fine as an aristocrat’s if not for that bisecting groove. The scar ended at the hinge of his jaw. As if that hadn’t come close enough, another scar started under the left ear, taking an equally harrowing route across his throat, making her question how he’d survived a wound so deep around the vital jugular and carotid pathways. The scar disappeared into the collar of his black polo shirt. Combined, the two marks made a crooked pattern not unlike the dock.

  She thought his head was shaved because of the additional scars there. She couldn’t imagine hair being able to grow in smoothly over the gouges and short slashes that reminded her of a map. Perhaps made by some form of shrapnel, an explosion of metal.

  His brows were thick black silk matching the sprinkling of hair on his forearms and the signs of chest hair curling out of the throat of his shirt, suggesting he would have had black hair on his head.

  She wondered why he hadn’t had the damage minimized with cosmetic surgery, but maybe he couldn’t afford it. Despite the mantle of authority he bore, she was sure this wasn’t the Master of Eden. He wore a black T-shirt with the same embroidered logo as the porters’ polo shirts, suggesting he was staff. Instead of shorts, he wore black jeans and athletic shoes.

  She had no objection to the difference in wardrobe. The shirt stretched over his chest with admirable effort, and the jeans hugged strong thighs, accenting a noticeably well-packaged groin area. She expected he had a similarly excellent ass. But she dealt with male vampires all the time, so seeing a powerful, fit male wasn’t what made him so appealing. Heat rolled off of him, as well as power…control. Her body tightened in so many ways, instinctively recognizing what he was, what she wanted.

  Her blood hunger surged to the surface, because with vampires it was pretty much coupled with physical lust. Feeding was an erotic exercise unless one had to rush it for survival, and she could almost taste the virility that would infuse this man’s red blood. He could nourish a girl for a good, long time.

  This was a human, she reminded herself. She could break him, take his life with as much effort as breaking a nail. Yet somewhere low in her belly, she was trembling. She had a sudden vision of a lion tamer being circled by a lioness. Not one of those poor creatures who lived their lives in cages, transported from city to city, forced to entertain people rather than experience the open, free lives God had intended for them, but a truly wild, powerful creature, able to break the lion tamer with only a swat of a paw. But something about that lion tamer, the fix of his eyes, the stance of his body, said he was a predator worthy of respect, fascination…making the lioness want to come closer and perhaps allow herself to be leashed, as long as he understood and respected what she was, what she truly needed.

  The man extended a hand to her, palm up.

  No words. He just kept that dark gaze locked on hers. He didn’t tell her to take his hand. He didn’t need to do so.

  Eden can provide you a respite… Vardalos’s words. She wasn’t sure if she’d really believed it, or had wanted it to be true so much she’d been pulled in by the right combination of words and a pretty brochure. It should take more than one magnetic male to do it. Or maybe not. Maybe she was so hungry for this, she’d let herself be beguiled by Vardalos’s magic water and set aside logic, suspended disbelief and let it happen. Maybe the lioness was letting herself believe the impossible.

  No. Even if that needy part of her wanted to be so gullible, she was incapable of handing over control to someone who didn’t deserve it. There was a long way to go between fantasy and reality. Who she’d become made her too wary. Could a human male earn a true surrender from her, even for a ten day fantasy?

  And what if he did? What if this male eliciting such a strong reaction from her was able to brush up against her fantasies? What if Vardalos was successful in giving her what she craved?

  She needed to turn around and get back on the plane. This might be the greatest risk she’d ever faced as a vampire.

  Yet she stayed motionless, even though her hand was twitching, telling her it wanted to place itself in that strong grasp.

  “Going to make me come to you?” he said. His tone, low and even, warned her there would be consequences for that. The timbre reminded her of a dark cave near the earth’s center, resonant with heat and solidity. Those tremors in her lower belly increased.

  The discordant roll of a dock cart bumping across the boards disrupted her reverie. The porters transporting her luggage had caught up to her.

  “Where we taking her, Rand?” one of them asked.

  In her peripheral vision, Kaela noted the other porter scanning her high breasts and trim waist delineated by her silk-shot knit shirt, her hips etched by her snug above-the-knee skirt and legs accented by two-inch heels. She’d dressed formally for travel, be
cause it projected the right image. Detached, in control. Untouchable. There was nothing as intimidating as a beautiful woman with a cool stare and an impenetrable force field of self-confidence.

  As such, she ignored him, but Rand didn’t feel the same way about it. His shadowed eyes glittered coolly at the ogling man as he answered the first porter.

  “You’re not taking her anywhere. Her luggage goes to Level B, the west wing. Suite A.”

  The other porter recognized the admonition in Rand’s look, giving him a quick nod as he moved away with the other attendant, though she caught the muttered exchange between them.

  “What’s got Master Frankenstein’s drawers in a twist? And Level B, west wing? Didn’t even think we had rooms in the west wing…”

  “Tell me what color your eyes are,” she said.

  She should be able to penetrate the darkness enough to tell, but she couldn’t. The darkness must be making his pupils so large, they took over everything else. Rand brought his unsmiling attention back to her yet remained silent.

  This was the mundane world, she reminded herself. Humans were used to polite questions, not statements sounding like demands. But she knew that wasn’t why he remained silent, or why she restated it.

  “Would you mind telling me the color of your eyes?”

  “They were blue, once. Still are, in the right light.” After that odd statement, he extended his hand. “Want to try this again?”

  This time she went along with it, placing her hand in his grip. As soon as it closed over her fingers, that tremor she usually contained so well ran from the point of contact up her arm and down her side, making her left breast and hip bone tingle, the sensation curving under the crease of her buttock to arrow between her legs, as if the contact had set off a string of electric impulses.

  His thumb ran over her knuckles, an intimate caress, a reassurance. She closed her eyes, absorbing that touch, even as she took another step closer into the shadow of his body. When was the last time a single touch had brought her a feeling of…sanctuary?

  There were a few male vampires who had his size and breadth, but none of them felt as large as he did. She thought of what the porter had called him so unkindly, but she thought of it as a compliment. In the human world, her kind were mostly considered monsters, too.

  She opened her eyes, looked up into his face. The moonlight was different at that angle, and for just a second she caught a glimmer of what he’d said. A faint hint of cerulean blue. If he had in fact had black hair before the extensive scarring, that—coupled to his strong features, “used to be blue” eyes, and impressive body—would have made any woman’s head turn. Though in truth, he wasn’t having any trouble holding her attention now.

  “You know, people often mistakenly confuse Dr. Frankenstein’s name with his creation,” she said. “Mary Shelley never offered his name.”

  “No. People tend to fill a void. In the book, Frankenstein called him a variety of things. Devil, wretch. Ogre. Whereas the monster referred to himself as Adam.”

  There was a stilted note to his voice, the words formed like bold script, each one a stamp on the air between them, no room for misinterpretation. He was looking at her as if he intended to lean in even closer, take a detailed accounting of her every feature.

  Her pulse beating high in her throat, she laid her free hand on his chest to ground herself. She was used to touching humans when she desired to do so, and Vardalos had said blood would be provided for her when she landed. So this must be dinner. Something held her back from the automatic assumption, though, despite the growing hunger. His heartbeat was steady and strong beneath her hand. He laid his over it, a quelling gesture.

  “I’m Garron Rand,” he said. “I’ll take you to your room now. I’m in charge of your care while you’re here.”

  Without further explanation, he tucked her hand into his elbow and led her off the docks. A cobbled main road lined with graceful trees and island foliage seemed to lead up to the castle, but he turned off onto a narrower, less manicured path carpeted only with pine needles and marked with round pavers. While she was as graceful as all vampires were, the thin heels of her shoes weren’t made for the uneven terrain. He stopped, glanced down.

  “Take them off, my lady.”

  He was soft-spoken about it, but the direct command stirred her. She could break his hand, all five fingers, with nothing but a squeeze of her own, yet the words that sprang to her lips, a demand that he at least say please, died before that look.

  He’d addressed her as “my lady”. There was an intriguing difference to the way he said it. She couldn’t exactly place what that difference was, but it wasn’t disrespectful.

  Thinking about that, she took off her shoes. He held one of her hands, steadying her, not really necessary, but she accepted the pleasure of absorbing the strength in that grip.

  “If you stay on the pavers, nothing should hurt your feet.”

  Removing her shoes from her grasp, he looped the straps over his wrist before taking her elbow and guiding her onward. The foliage here was close enough to caress her skin, the stiff tickle of ferns, light-as-feather fronds from tall decorative grasses. She could smell the sea air, but mixed with it were interior scents, dark jungles, lush green places, fresh water sources. Stone. Because of the castle, she scented a lot of stone. Castles had dungeons where all sorts of torments could happen. Delicious torments.

  She could hear the blood beating in his throat and made herself think of other things. Time to cut through the air of mystery and put this on normal footing. “So you’re my personal concierge. You don’t look like that’s your usual job here.”

  “You’d be surprised.” The side of his mouth quirked, which pulled at the corner of his eye in an intriguing way against the resistance of the bisecting scar. She expected others found it macabre, but it increased the intensity of his focus, the flash in the affected eye. “I started as a bell guy and know most of the jobs here, so I still pitch in wherever needed when we’re short-handed or busier than usual.”

  “This doesn’t look like the type of place that Mr. Vardalos allows to be short-handed.”

  “No, that’s true. But staff members occasionally take a vacation.”

  “What do you do when you’re not ‘pitching in’?”

  “Security, part time bouncer at a couple of the clubs. With my looks and training, that’s easy work.” He said it matter-of-factly. “The rest of the time I’m one of the staff Masters at Club Sin.”

  “Oh. So I’m paying for your services as a Dom.”

  The thrill of confirming what was obvious about him came with an irrational feeling of disappointment. Theodosius ran a resort that excelled at giving people exceptional vacation experiences, commensurate with what she could pay. Rand was probably a fantastic Dom, so she should look forward to seeing how her money would be spent. How he could serve her needs.

  “No, my lady.” Garron stopped, retaining her hand as he turned toward her. “When Mr. Vardalos told me you were coming, I told him I wanted you, and cashed in ten vacation days. While you’re here, I’m off the clock.”

  She stared up at him. “You—and he—assumed I would accept that?”

  “No, my lady. You’ll decide what control you relinquish. I’ll decide how to handle that.”

  A cryptic statement, but the hard-to-read expression made her feel like most of the decisions rested in his hands.

  “So what exactly have I paid for?”

  His lips quirked again. “An expensive resort vacation on the exclusive, invitation-only Eden resort.”

  §

  She was shockingly beautiful. Garron wasn’t surprised Bill and Waylon, the porters, had practically drooled all over themselves. What surprised him was his possessive reaction, how instant it was. But he’d been thinking about her for over a month, hadn’t he? Ever since Theodosius had conducted an extensive series of conferences calls with him to discuss the situation, the Master of the Island preferring voice communic
ation to face-to-face meets.

  He’d told her the truth, that he’d done pretty much everything from grunt work to upper management jobs here. Whatever Vardalos needed, because the man had saved his soul. For the past few years, Garron had preferred the hands-off anonymity of being a paid Master at Club Sin, but doing extra hours as a bell guy or wherever they needed more hands kept his adaptation skills sharp. As such, filling in had become his primary means of occupying himself during leisure time. He liked getting people’s belongings to their room or back to the plane, responding to their questions and needs. Yeah, some of the bigwigs that came here liked to order him around, but far more often, they relied on his guidance, his ability to negotiate things they didn’t know how to do, letting him take the lead.

  He liked seeing people come here with unfulfilled hopes and dreams, insecurities and personal shit to work out, and leaving with excitement about what lay ahead, a sense of peace because of what they’d finally figured out. He had a front row view of slice-of-life, happily-ever-afters without being in the middle of them himself.

  It wasn’t that he avoided life. He just hadn’t found anything that made him want to be center stage about it again. Until Vardalos had told him about Lady Kaela, a vampire overlord. A female of extraordinary strength and will who hungered to be a submissive in a shadowy world that had zero tolerance for her desires.

  During his ten years on Eden, he’d seen a lot of unexplainable things. Well, check that. It was possible to explain all of it, if you believed in magic, time travel and a plethora of WTF moments. So hearing that vampires were real hadn’t been too much of a stretch. But until she got off the plane, he realized he’d still kind of expected her to be one of those Goth, blood-drinking wannabes.