Be My Valentine, Vampire: Vampire’s TangoA Night With A VampireHer Dark HeartSalvation of the DamnedThe Secret Vampire Society Read online

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  Cynthia Cooke, Vivi Anna, Theresa Meyers and

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  Be My Valentine,

  Vampire

  Vampire’s Tango

  Michele Hauf

  A Night With A Vampire

  Cynthia Cooke

  Her Dark Heart

  Vivi Anna

  Salvation of the Damned

  Theresa Meyers

  The Secret Vampire Society

  Lisa Childs

  www.millsandboon.co.uk

  Vampire’s Tango

  Michele Hauf

  CHAPTER ONE

  HE CLASPED my hand and placed his other hand at my bare back. Commanding fingers pressed firmly against my spine and sought to direct my movement. My skin sizzled at the connection.

  I ignored the illicit response and met his eyes.

  Dark and serious, his irises drew me into a sultry realm of the unknown. Yet they didn’t ask anything more than “Will you follow?”

  The bandoneón, an Argentinean accordion, pressed out notes. The violin sang. The singer wearing a black fedora enticed us into the tango.

  The milonga, a tango club in underground Paris, was dark and smoky, reeking of whiskey, perspiration and clove cigarettes. Dancers clung to one another in various stages of the dance, some close as lovers, others holding an open embrace and learning their partner’s movements as they taught him or her their own.

  I was thankful my new partner held me in an open embrace that didn’t allow for direct chest contact as we stepped to the beat around the floor. I followed the subtle direction of his eyes, his fingers and his steps.

  I had been following him for two weeks around the tight, twisting Parisian streets.

  Tonight was the first time I’d allowed him awareness of my presence.

  This tenuous first connection slowly gained confidence as he held my hand sure, but not too tightly. I answered by following dutifully. He was taller than me by a head but he bent slightly at the knee, which brought him to my level. His cinnamon scent was appealing. The presence of his muscled body, completely focused on the dance, was overwhelming.

  Altogether, much more enticing than I had expected the man to be.

  A showy couple mastered the middle of the floor. We moved counterclockwise around the dance floor, flowing with the other dancers who had no need for grandstanding.

  I knew his name: Alexandre Renard.

  He would never know mine if I danced this tango of two opposites correctly. I was nervous about this physical link tonight, but determined.

  The beat paused and he drew me closer, moving his face aside my cheek, but he didn’t press his skin against mine. As it was, the proximity of our mouths felt dangerous. His hot breath brushed my lips. His fingers at my spine bent, moving me closer until our chests touched. We stood in the close embrace similar to those I’d determined were lovers.

  I couldn’t let him smell my fear. I’d doused myself with my favorite vanilla cherry essential oil this evening. But I knew it wouldn’t matter. Fear could be felt.

  I was not afraid. Perhaps, secretly cocky. The mark stood in my arms. All six foot two of him, clad in a sleek black suit and red silk tie. Dark hair slicked back from his masculine bone structure emphasized his fierce demeanor.

  I slid my hand up his arm and around behind his neck, silently reassuring him this close hold was all right by me.

  He turned abruptly, and walked forward. I followed, noting the subtle rebuff and projecting the surprising anger I felt in the force of my steps. He clutched me close, his hand high across my back and gripping my side, just under my arm.

  We stepped the baldoso, back, side, forward twice, aside and then back to the embrace. A slide of his foot between my legs, was answered by a gancho as I hooked my leg about his. After the fight, the making up.

  But we didn’t make up for long, and I preferred it that way.

  Turning swiftly, we glided past the musicians. The brush of his pin-striped coat teased at me through the thin black chiffon dress I wore. Everything about him intruded upon my external defenses. My clothing, my skin—but he would not penetrate my determination.

  Palm to palm, hip-to-hip, willpower struggled to master surrender—on both our parts.

  When the music stopped and the dancers applauded the end of the tanda—four tangos danced in succession; we had only shared the last—he held me in the shadows edging the dance floor, his hand still at my back.

  “You are an excellent dancer,” he said, his voice low and edged with genuine kindness. Yet around the edges laced danger.

  “As are you.”

  I stepped away from his possessive embrace, entering the air as if released from a hypnotic fog. I didn’t turn to smile at him, or acknowledge that we’d just shared an incredible two minutes. Instead I walked toward the door and took the spiraling stone steps up to ground level.

  I emerged on a touristy street in the fifth arrondissement. The night was bold with partying vacationers bouncing from club to club. Neon flashed in restaurant windows. Grilled, spiced lamb and fried cheese tinted the summer air. Shouts and chatter distracted passersby from noticing me, a woman flushed and breathing heavily, hand pressed to her chest.

  I retrieved my backpack from the doorman, and slipped into the shadows of a narrow alleyway across the street.

  Tonight the hunt had taken a turn. Soon my prey would relent.

  In a hundred years, I, Alexandre Renard, have never met a more frustrating, yet intriguing woman.

  I suppose she thought her dramatic exit from the tango club would leave me wanting more, actually render me to pine for the mysterious woman who followed my lead masterfully. Our first dance, even. Her body had been fine, pressed next to mine. Not too slender, curves in all the right places. She was a woman. A real woman.

  A woman who I was aware had tracked me for a couple weeks. I cannot be sure if she has followed me since I arrived in Paris on a sort of getaway-to-take-stock-of-my-life excursion. It was unlikely, though, that she could have followed from my home state of Minnesota.

  Did she think I was not aware? Silly girl. I’ve been waiting for her to make a move. When she met my eyes across the dance floor, I held her gaze. I don’t know what color those eyes were, but I do know they were sad. So sad. Why?

  I decided to sit out the next tanda of dances. Perhaps I would leave for the night. Since arriving, this club has been a salvation to me. I came here, after a suggestion from my tribe leader, to forget things that will never completely leave my blood. Memories embedded within my very DNA.

  For three minutes tonight, I forgot the painful snapshots from my past. It was lovely.

  But I don’t believe it’s going to get any lovelier. Interesting, yes. Exciting? Highly likely. But like the tango, I sense the relationship I have begun with the woman with sad eyes will only grow more volatile.

  I wager she’s lurking outside, waiting in the shadows for me. It is her MO. I know what she wants—blood.

  I am willing to play along to see how far she will go to get it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SOMEHOW I missed Alexandre leaving the tango club last night. I don’t know how that happened. Sure, the crowd was thick, but my attention veered fro
m the club entrance only once or twice. I’m usually top of my game when it comes to tracking.

  Considering I’ve only tracked the one mark, I’d say I’m doing well.

  So the mark had slipped my radar. Fine. I had needed some breathing room after standing close to him, walking the dance floor with him in a suggestive clutch. I admit it. The guy had smoldered his sex appeal right into my skin.

  I rubbed my bare arms now as I weaved through the dancers gathered in the dark shadows of the club. He showed here every night after eleven. Danced with two or three different women. Sometimes he left alone. Sometimes he left with a looker snuggled in his embrace.

  What he did with those women was abominable.

  I would stop him tonight. I had to, or I’d never be able to face what my future held.

  A chirp of the bandoneón invited dancers onto the floor. I lingered near the brick wall for this dance. I wanted to sight my mark.

  He moved around the floor with a blonde woman who was taller than he. He kept their embrace open, not committing to intimacy beyond the control of the dance. I liked that. If he was going to dance close with anyone tonight, it had better be me.

  Well, er … strictly as a condition of the hunt, of course.

  I stretched my right leg out, toward the dance floor. Tonight I wore a slim-fitting deep violet dress cut as low in the back as it was in the front. A few spangles occasionally caught the smoke-muted lights and glinted. It made me feel sexy. So little, lately, actually did.

  He passed by me, and our gazes held for a moment longer than his partner preferred. She stretched her arm around behind his neck and touched him. He turned and scowled at her pleading pout.

  With a simple twirl, he delivered his partner from the floor. A quick dismissal.

  As the next song began, he walked up to me.

  “Now that you are here,” he said, leaning in so I could hear over the music, “I won’t be able to concentrate.” Now if that wasn’t a line …

  He clasped my hand, tentatively sliding his other hand up my back. An invitation. He would not move until I gave him a subtle signal. I arched my back, snugging my chest against his. We’d gone beyond mutual distance; the closer the better. It gave me, the hunter, the advantage.

  And he stepped back on his left foot to begin our duel.

  We walked, he judging my moves and leading with that knowledge. He made following effortless, like taking a breath.

  If only I could breathe like this forever.

  A slide of my foot between his ankles drew him closer, and again we stood face-to-face. Our chests close, I could feel his heartbeat—a surprise—against mine. The pulse of his blood gushing through his veins pounded within me as if a seductive bass beat.

  Our mouths close, I breathed in his cinnamon aura, and briefly, I imagined what it might be like to kiss him. All consuming, surely. I’d fall into his dark allure and never rise again, nor would I wish to. He’d seduce me with that kiss—and then the sharp reminder of his reality would cut me.

  I broke the close embrace and performed a feint by kicking one foot across my other.

  Chuckling lowly, he forced me closer and into a walk that would see me depending on him for balance until he angled toward the center of the dance floor and straightened his posture.

  His soft chuckle spilled over my exposed cleavage like a lover’s kisses. I leaned into him and felt him arch backward. He drew me forward along his body. I surrendered, bending forward on one leg and leaning back, stretching out my other leg behind me. He mastered me with his fierce gaze as we held the pose.

  “You’re dangerous,” I said.

  “And you are teasing me,” he replied as I stared up at him, completely at his command. “Slayer.”

  The music paused a beat. As did my heart. He knew? But how?

  Returned to standing position, I twisted my hand within his clasp, but he wasn’t about to release me from this dance. We walked more swiftly, hip-to-hip, facing forward, our path determined and insistent.

  “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. You’ve been following me for weeks,” he said. “I made an assumption that you just confirmed.”

  Damn. “The game is over for the night.”

  He didn’t answer, and I parted from him and walked off the floor, brushing aside the disheveled bangs from my lashes. I clutched a palm over my rapid heartbeats.

  “This doesn’t have to be a game,” I heard him say over the music.

  This time I did glance back. He stood with his hand held out, entreating. Daring me into his world. A dangerous dance of opposites.

  Something inside me wanted to return to the seductive menace of his arms, but I couldn’t face my failure. I turned and strode out, marking this night unsuccessful.

  I gave her ten minutes before I left the club and moved through the tourist crowd without touching a soul. Mortals parted at my silent command, unaware their minds were being subtly manipulated.

  I hadn’t expected my dance partner to retreat. Perhaps she wasn’t so bold as I’d initially thought. She’d looked hurt when I’d named her a slayer.

  Hell, a vampire has to keep his eyes peeled for her kind.

  But was she really that kind? I sensed she was rather new at the job. And proof came when I rounded the corner to find my sexy little slayer backed against the wall by two men who I knew were vampires.

  A wooden stake lay on the ground by her black velvet high heels. The side of her dress was torn to the hip revealing the top of her thigh-high black stocking.

  I charged and tore one vamp away from her. The other went for her neck, fangs bared. A punch to my gut did little more than anger me further. I fisted the vampire under the jaw. He staggered backward. Slipping around, I grabbed his head with both hands and twisted sharply. The move would have killed a human. As the vampire slid in a heap before me, I knew he’d revive quickly.

  The slayer screamed. I lunged for the stake and shoved it in the attacking vampire’s back. Ash dispersed before me to reveal the wide, frightened eyes of my daring dancer.

  I looked at the stake, dripping with blood—from my own kind. Abominable. I had never … I would be punished by my own for the crime. It was only just.

  An angel lured me from the dire thought.

  “You saved my life,” she said on a nervous warble. She shook her head and smiled. Gripping my face between her hands, she stepped up and kissed me.

  A nervous reaction to the adrenaline rush? Mercy, but her mouth was firm and lush and, when the few seconds required for a thank-you kiss had expired, she melted against my body more easily than she had when we’d tangoed.

  And then she fainted in my arms.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FLOATING ON A DREAM of cinnamon-scented desire, I resurfaced with a moan and a sigh. Opening my eyes I looked up into the darkest, sexiest eyes I had ever looked into.

  Damn, it was the vampire.

  I shoved at him, but realized he held me draped in his arms. That made for an awkward tumble away from him and a landing that found me clutching for my front doorknob.

  My door?

  “How did you know where I live?”

  He leaned against the door frame, suave and debonair in his pin-striped suit coat indicative of the Argentine tango. “You’ve been following me. I’ve been following you.”

  “Only on the dance floor, buddy.”

  “Do not lie to me, pretty slayer. Each night I sensed your presence as I left the club. Ever watching. I wondered how long it would take you to approach me. Never dreamed it would be on the dance floor.”

  “Yeah?” I shoved the key in the lock. “That was my mistake. I should have staked you the first night I saw you.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  I walked inside the cool darkness of my living room, gesturing he follow. I was too tired to argue. Mad rushes of adrenaline had taken away my energy. I turned to find a smirking vampire inside the doorway, leaning against the wall.

  Oh hell.<
br />
  With a casual sweep of my hand, I’d given him permission to enter. Now he could enter freely whenever he chose. Had I learned nothing from my training over the past year?

  “You haven’t done this before, have you?”

  He approached, and I had the forethought to whip out my stake, which, surprisingly, he must have retrieved and tucked in my purse.

  “Stay back, vampire.”

  He walked right to the point of the stake and pressed his chest against the tip I had honed myself. I winced, but did not relent. He scanned the room, taking in the clutter stacked on the rosewood secretary to my side, the chaise longue drowning in velvet pillows, and down the hallway where my bedroom door hung open.

  He grasped the stake and held it firmly at his chest. “What is your name?”

  “Ver—Veronica Marshall.”

  “Veronica,” he repeated, yet he made the name sound sexier than I’d ever felt it sounded. “I’m giving you a freebie here, Veronica. Why won’t you do it?”

  “I … don’t know.” I clasped the stake. Furrowed my brow. “It’s not supposed to be like this. You’re supposed to growl at me and flash your fangs.”

  “Like the vamps in the alley? They could have killed you.”

  “I know.” I tugged the stake from his grip and tossed it over my shoulder.

  What I next did is difficult to explain beyond that my heart insisted I follow this particular dance step.

  I pressed my face against his shoulder and my palms to his chest. Seeking safety. A slayer snuggling up to a vampire? That was wrong in so many ways.

  “You were to be my first,” I whispered, clinging to him. Just wanting rescue. Someone who would lead, so I could follow. “I know I can do it—stake a vampire. But, not yet. I … need time.”

  “And you expect me to wait around for you to muster up the courage?”

  “No.”

  “You only get one freebie.”

  “I know, I—Alexandre, why did you save me? Have you ever killed another vampire like that?”

  Head bowed, he didn’t meet my eyes. “A man can be forced to do terrible things. I will be hunted for the crime of killing one of my own. Doesn’t matter. I had to protect you.”