Buch lesen: «Dark Nights: Mistress of the Underground / The Vampire Affair»

To Tara Gavin, my amazing editor, who always understands how important my characters are to me. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to tell Paige and Ben’s story!

Chapter 1

You don’t belong here….

The skin tingled on the nape of Paige Culver’s neck, and she shivered. To assure herself she was alone, she glanced around her small, windowless office. Light penetrated the green glass shade of the lamp on her desk but didn’t dissipate the shadows clinging to the worn-brick walls.

You don’t belong here….

That voice wasn’t real; it had to be only in her head. Her own voice verbalizing the doubts that had tormented her since she’d bought Club Underground. She was a lawyer. What the hell did she know about running a lounge?

Actually, she wasn’t a lawyer anymore—at least not one with a firm where she could practice. So she’d bought the club, which occupied the basement of a traditional brick office building in downtown Zantrax, the city which had replaced Detroit as the urban metropolis of Michigan. The building was the only thing traditional about Club Underground.

Music throbbed through the sound system, tempting Paige to leave the office and join the action. She pushed paperwork aside and stood up, swaying slightly on her stilettos as nerves assailed her again.

Opening night. Actually, reopening night, under new management, but yet she’d hidden herself back here, away from the club patrons. Would everyone else think, as she did, that she did not belong here?

“To hell with them,” she murmured with the flash of pride and stubbornness that sometimes irritated the people she cared about. And to hell with what she thought, too. “There’s no turning back now….”

With a slightly trembling hand, she smoothed down her flyaway strands of blond hair. Then she smoothed her hands over her hips, settling the red silk against her body.

Would he be out there? Waiting to congratulate her? Or to question her sanity? She didn’t care which, as long as he was near—close enough to touch.

Anxious now, she hurried from the office, barely remembering to turn the lock before pulling the door closed behind her. In the hall, the music played louder, the bass lower and sexier. She glanced toward the door that separated the hall from the lounge. Then she glanced back the other way. To the door in the brick wall at the end of the hall. The door that led nowhere—according to the club manager. Then why was it locked?

You don’t belong here….

The voice had to be inside her head; how else could she have heard it over the volume of the music? She shivered again, but from cold, not fear, and considered unlocking the office to retrieve her sweater. But it would ruin the effect of the dress with its thin straps and low neckline.

She didn’t regret her decision, at least regarding the sweater, as she stepped into the lounge. It would have been out of place, would have made her look more out of place than she already felt among the bodies gyrating on the dance floor. She didn’t have the tiny waist or sharp curves of the women; her curves were rounder, fuller. And she was so much older, not just in years but in experience, than those laughing, flirting girls.

They were twenty-one, at least, or they wouldn’t have been allowed inside the club. But no lines creased or dark shadows touched their clear skin. Self-conscious, Paige lifted a hand to her cheek. From her sleepless nights, she had dark circles and lines of stress. Not just because of her impetuous purchase…

But because of him…

She glanced around the bar in the lowest level of the turn-of-the-century building. Like her office, the outer walls were exposed brick, and the interior ones were dark paneled and as highly polished as the hardwood floors. The lights were dim, candles on the intimate tables and booths, strobes flashing sexily across the dance floor. She recognized no one among the crowd. Had none of her friends shown up to wish her well? Of course, she hadn’t given them much notice about the club. She hadn’t told anyone about what had been going on in her life. Not even he knew everything.

He knew nothing—actually, not a thing about this woman…but that she was gorgeous. The muscles tightened in Ben’s gut as he studied her moving around the club, as bright and fluid as a flame. He tracked her through the crowd. In her red dress, with her golden hair, she stood out among the others with their dark clothes and their darker agendas. She didn’t belong…for so many reasons.

“Hey—”

He ignored the voices calling out and the hands reaching for him and slipped through the crowd, following her. She glanced back, as if aware of his presence. From the first moment they’d met, they had always had an uncanny awareness of each other.

But she didn’t stop walking. The sway of her hips, as she maneuvered through the crowd of club patrons, seduced him. He wanted to talk to her.

Who the hell was he kidding? He just wanted her.

Finally, he caught her—near the bar. She leaned over it, shouting out an order to the bartender. And he leaned against her, his hands sliding over the soft curve of her hips. Silk brushed across his palms, and his skin tingled from the heat of her flesh. He wanted the silk gone—the crowd gone. He wanted only her and him—and skin on skin.

Despite the heat of the crowded club, and his touch, Paige shivered. Her heart kicked against her ribs with excitement…and anticipation. “I’ll be out of your way in just a minute,” she murmured over her shoulder.

“Out of my way?” his deep voice rasped in her ear.

His warm breath raised goose bumps along her nape, and she nodded. “So you can get your free drink.”

“Free drink?”

“Opening night special,” she explained. “First drink is on the house.”

“What if I don’t want a drink?”

She tilted her head so that her gaze met his. His eyes, big and dark and fringed with thick lashes, studied her intently. His hair was dark, too, but for the strands of gray sprinkled throughout; it was also cut short, but not so short that she couldn’t run her fingers through its softness.

“Is there something else you—” she swiped the tip of her tongue across her bottom lip “—want?”

His fingers flexed against her hips, digging gently into her flesh. “I want the special.”

“I haven’t told you the special,” she reminded him with a teasing smile.

“I know what’s special,” he said, his gaze intent on her face.

Sadness tugged at her, pulling down the corners of her lips. If only she could believe him…but she knew better. If only she knew him better…

But they were strangers.

She whirled away from the bar and shoved past him. He caught her wrist, but she tugged free and slipped through the crowd. Voices murmured complaints as she bumped into hard bodies in her haste to escape him—and them—and that voice inside her head that pursued her all the way back to the office.

You don’t belong here….

Paige’s fingers trembled, and her keys jangled, as she pulled them from her small spangled clutch. She glanced to the end of the hall and that strange locked door.

Was the voice not inside her head? Was it coming from behind that door? The door that supposedly led nowhere? Now her legs trembled slightly as she passed the office and continued down the hall—toward that riveted steel door. When she neared it, still several feet away, cold air rushed around or through the steel and over her skin. She gasped and shuddered.

Then arms wrapped around her as a hard, warm body pressed against her back. And she screamed.

“No one can hear you,” he said, his voice a deep rasp in her ear as his lips brushed the lobe. “Not back here, not over that music…”

Even though her heart raced, her lips curved into a smile. “Are you threatening me?”

“Warning you…”

He’d warned her before, but she hadn’t heeded. Then. Now she was older and wiser. She knew this was the last man with whom she should get involved. Yet, instead of pulling away, she turned in his arms. He was taller than her, nearly a foot, with broad shoulders testing the seams of his black sweater. He wore all black: black shoes, black pants and that black sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He could have been a cat burglar or a stalker.

She should have been afraid, and part of her was, her stomach quivering as she acknowledged the danger of what she was about to do, the risk she was taking. But she didn’t care. She lifted her hands to his chest, settling her palms against the sculpted muscles. Heat and the rapid beat of his heart emanated through the thin cashmere.

“You’re not going to listen to any warning,” he said with a sigh of resignation, even as his dark eyes burned with desire. “No matter what I say…”

“You talk?” she teased, but her skepticism was real.

His mouth, wide and sensual, lifted in a slight grin. “What’s the point when you won’t listen?”

She lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug, which drew his attention to the skin bared by her low bodice. His eyes darkened even more as his pupils dilated. Desire thickened her throat as she murmured, “There is no point to talking….”

She didn’t want to talk or listen or think. She wanted the rush of passion pounding through her veins to drown out the voice and her doubts—not just about buying the club but about him.

His hands loosened their grip on her waist, but before he could step back, she reached up and clutched his shoulders. Then she lifted her face to his. For his kiss.

Instead of lowering his head to hers, he shook it. Then he manacled her wrists and pulled her hands away from him. He glanced over her head, at that steel door, and a shudder rippled through his hard, muscled body. “Not here.”

“You…you feel it, too?” she asked.

“I feel this between us—” he released a ragged sigh “—even though I don’t want to….”

“I don’t want to, either,” she insisted, even as her skin heated with desire for him. She tugged her wrists free of his hands and fumbled inside her bag once again for her keys. After jabbing the key in the lock, she turned the knob and opened the door to her office.

Just as at the bar, strong hands slid over her hips. Then he pushed her through the doorway and closed and locked the door behind them. Locking them inside the small, windowless room. Alone.

Her pulse quickened with excitement, but her stinging pride tamped down that excitement. “I thought you didn’t want to…that you didn’t want…me….”

He leaned back against the door, his arms crossed over his muscular chest. “Yup, you never listen….” He sighed again. “I didn’t say that I don’t want you.”

“But that you don’t want to want me.” She listened; too bad he hadn’t ever really talked to her before.

“This is so complicated, Pai—”

“Shh,” she said, interrupting him, reminding herself that she didn’t want to talk or listen anymore. “You don’t know my name, and I don’t know yours. We’re just strangers who met at a bar.”

“Is that the game we’re playing this time?”

It wasn’t a game, not really. “We are strangers,” she repeated.

“You don’t want this, either,” he pointed out, “or you wouldn’t have run away from me at the bar. You nearly ran me over trying to get away from me.” He shook his head and clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Hell of a way to treat your customers.”

“Are you a customer?” she asked, fighting the smile that teased her lips.

He lifted a brow, dark with just a touch of gray. “Maybe not,” he said, his voice a deep rumble. “I haven’t had my free drink.”

“Why not?” she asked, leaning against the edge of her desk because her knees trembled. She blamed the high heels; she wasn’t used to wearing them anymore. “Can’t you decide what you want?”

“That’s never been my problem,” he insisted as he straightened away from the door and advanced on her.

She didn’t care what he was implying because he was wrong. She knew exactly what she wanted. Him, closer. Close enough to touch.

“I know what I want,” he said, his hands closing over her bare shoulders, his fingers toying with the thin spaghetti straps of her dress. He wanted to talk. Just talk. That was what he’d told himself as he’d descended the stairs to Club Underground.

But now, touching her, her skin silky soft beneath his fingertips, he wanted only her. He pushed down the straps of her dress, exposing more of the luscious slopes of her breasts. “You are so beautiful….”

Her lips curved into a self-deprecating smile. “Back here—where it’s just you and me. But not out there—among all those beautiful young girls.”

“You’re beautiful,” he insisted.

“But I’m no young girl.”

And neither were most of her patrons. But he couldn’t point that out to her without having to explain things that defied explanation.

“You’re a woman.” His woman.

“For a guy who doesn’t like to talk, you’re talking too much now,” she complained, but with another smile. Then she reached for his waist and slid her hands beneath his sweater, scraping her nails up his abdomen.

Ben shuddered again—this time for a good reason. Because only her touch could incite his desire to the point that he forgot everything else going on in his life and everything that had happened between them.

He lowered his head to hers. “Paige…”

“Shh…” she murmured as she kissed him.

The silkiness of her lips, the sweetness of her mouth, seduced him further, so that his control slipped. His hands shook as he gripped her waist and lifted her onto the desk. She lifted her legs, sliding her calves up the back of his thighs and over his butt to lock around his waist.

His cock hardened, throbbing behind the straining fly of his jeans. He pushed his hips forward, pressing against hers. She arched into him—as if there were no clothes between them…or secrets…or pain….

Only passion. It pumped through Ben’s body, fast and heavy, and elicited a groan from deep in his throat. Paige answered him with a moan, and her hands clutched at his sweater, dragging it up his body.

He pulled his mouth from hers as she yanked the cashmere over his head and tossed it onto the floor. He fumbled with the clasp at the back of her dress, unhooking it before dragging down the zipper. As the red silk fell away from her body, his breath caught in his lungs, then escaped in a ragged gasp. “Damn it, woman…”

She wore no bra beneath the dress, so her breasts, so round and full, were bare to his hungry gaze. “You only get more gorgeous.”

“And you get more charming,” she said with a smile, as if she didn’t believe his compliment.

But he’d never lied to her…except by omission. There was so damn much he’d omitted over the years.

If she wouldn’t believe what he told her, he’d have to prove it to her with his desire. He cupped her head in his hands, holding her face still for his kiss, for the possession of his mouth as he pressed her lips apart and slid his tongue across hers. She arched again, and her nipples rubbed against his bare chest.

Desire pounded in his head and his heart and he couldn’t think rationally. He couldn’t think at all…beyond the fact that he had to have her. He swept his arm across the desk behind her, knocking her papers and a cup to the floor. Ceramic cracked and broke, but he didn’t care. He cared about nothing but her. Always her.

His hands shook as he fumbled with his zipper, pulling his pants down. And he took her. She was ready for him, wet and hot as he thrust inside her.

Her nails sank into his shoulders then scraped down his back, as she shifted and arched against him. He lowered his head and caught first one rose-hued nipple then the other in his mouth, laving it with his tongue.

Her fingers tangled in his hair as she pressed his head to her breast. He reached between their bodies, sliding his fingers through her golden curls until he found the nub of her femininity. He pressed and stroked the pad of his thumb back and forth across it until she came, screaming against his lips as he kissed her deeply. His tongue slid in and out of her mouth, matching his rhythm as he moved in and out of her body. Her muscles clutched at him, holding him inside her.

And he came. He broke the rules of her little game—as he screamed her name. He couldn’t pretend that they were strangers. He could only pretend that they could actually be together…even though he knew they had no future.

Chapter 2

Paige pulled her spaghetti straps back up her shoulders, making certain her dress wasn’t on backward. The back dipped as low as the bodice. Warm lips brushed the bare skin between her shoulder blades. Shivering despite the heat racing through her, she leaned away and protested, “Only the first drink was on the house.”

“Miss Kitty never kicked Marshal Dillon out of bed,” Ben protested, then groaned as he flopped back down on the couch in her office.

The supple burgundy leather shifted beneath him, nearly knocking Paige from where she perched on the edge, trying not to touch him again so that she would be strong enough to resist temptation. She smiled at his reference to the old western series about the female bar owner and the lawman. Late at night, after making love, they’d often watched reruns of the series.

“You’re not Marshal Dillon,” she told her ex-husband, who was actually a renowned cardiologist. But tonight, Dr. Benjamin Davison had been just a stranger in a bar. For these trysts, they usually pretended to be strangers. Unfortunately, they really weren’t pretending despite having been married for ten years.

“And you’re not Miss Kitty, Paige.” He wedged his elbow behind his head, his dark eyes studying her. “This is crazy, you know….”

“Sleeping with you in my office? Yes, this is crazy,” she agreed. But the craziness had everything to do with the fact that she’d never been able to resist him. She picked up his sweater from the floor and tossed it onto his chest, trying to conceal the wide expanse of hair-dusted muscles from her view.

To further steel her resolve, she stood up and padded barefoot across the hardwood floor to her desk. She needed some distance between them—even though moving out and divorcing him hadn’t given her nearly enough distance. Every time they’d run into each other in the four years since the divorce, they’d wound up in each other’s arms. Her hands shook as she picked up the papers and files he’d swept to the floor.

“It is crazy,” he agreed—a little too heartily for her pride. “I didn’t come here for this….” He stood up and stretched, muscles rippling in his arms, chest and wash-board lean stomach.

Paige bit her bottom lip to hold in a lustful sigh; it wasn’t fair. At forty-three, he was supposed to have a potbelly and love handles; he wasn’t supposed to be as lean as he’d been in his twenties and thirties. She held in another sigh, a mingled one of relief and disappointment as he pulled on his pants and dragged his sweater over his head. His hair, the soft mixture of rich, dark chocolate and glittery silver, was mussed from the cashmere.

“So you came here for that free drink,” she quipped, refusing to let him get to her again. Still. She had worked so hard to get him out of her heart; she couldn’t let him back in. Because he had never let her in…

“I came here to talk to you,” he said, “just talk.”

She tensed, holding back the hope that threatened to rush over her. She could not allow herself to believe that he was really willing to share with her. During their marriage, he had shared very little of himself with her. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I want to know what the hell you’re doing,” he said, lifting a hand to gesture around the office. “I want to know why you quit the law practice and bought this club. What’s going on with you?”

Despite having tamped down the hope, her heart constricted with regret. “You don’t want to talk, Ben. You want me to talk.”

“I want to understand you.”

We don’t always get what we want. She couldn’t speak the words aloud, not without her voice cracking with pain. She’d wanted to understand him, too, so badly, but he’d never given her the chance.

“Why?” she asked. “Why now?”

“You’re not acting like you.”

And divorcing him, no matter how much she’d loved him, had been? And making love with him every time they had seen each other since?

“No, I’m not,” she admitted, but he was the one who caused her to act out of character. Falling for him at all had been out of character; she’d known better than to risk her heart on anyone.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, dragging a hand over his hair, settling it back into place. “Why would you give up a career you love, that you lived for, for this?”

She’d lived for him, not her job. But she hadn’t given up practicing law; the law practice had given up on her. Pride choked her, so that she couldn’t admit she’d been fired. Finally she found her voice and injected a sassy edge, “Why not?”

“You don’t belong here….”

She shivered in reaction to those chilling words. Was Ben’s the voice she’d been hearing? “That’s not fair,” she murmured. He’d already messed with her heart; she couldn’t have him messing with her head, too.

“You’re cold,” he observed, closing the distance between them with two strides. But he didn’t touch her; he just stood close, so close that the silk of her dress brushed against his pants, the skirt swirling around his legs, binding them together. But even though there was so much binding them together, so much more kept them apart.

So many secrets. His. She had no idea what he kept from her; she just knew that he kept something. But more than secrets had caused their breakup—the loss and pain that they hadn’t been able to share.

“Tell me why you would do this,” he urged. “You have to know it’s a mistake.”

If so, it wasn’t the first one she’d ever made.

“I don’t—”

“You know nothing about running any club,” he said, “let alone one like this.”

“Like what?” she asked as nerves fluttered in her stomach. “What’s this club like?”

“You should have checked that out before you bought in,” he criticized her.

And Ben had never criticized her—not even when she’d made the mistake that had cost them both so much. “That’s not fair,” she accused him again. “You have no idea what I did or didn’t check out.”

“I know you’re not aware of everything about Club Underground. I know because you wouldn’t have bought it if you knew its secrets.”

She gasped. “Secrets?”

The last thing she wanted in her life was more secrets—more answers just beyond her grasp. Like that voice that taunted her…

A fist hammered against the door, startling her nearly as much as his revelation. Apparently—from the way he’d closed his eyes and clenched his jaw—a revelation he regretted making.

“Paige!” a deep voice called through the door, “I have to talk to you.”

She blew out a breath that stirred a lock of hair near her cheek. “Great. Usually nobody wants to talk….”

Ben’s fingers skimmed along her jaw, tilting her face back to his, as he insisted, “Paige, we’re not done.”

Didn’t she know it? They wouldn’t be done until the day she summoned the willpower and strength to resist the sensual hold he had on her.

“I need to open the door,” she said, her voice soft and a bit breathless as she struggled against the pressure in her chest, building with every word he spoke, every glance of his dark, mesmerizing eyes. “Ben…”

“You’ve made a mistake, Paige, just like you did when you…” He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to. She knew what she had done. They both did. She’d accepted that she would never be able to forgive herself; now she realized that neither would he. Hell, she had always known that too much kept them apart. But now more than his secrets—that pain and loss stretched between them.

The fist hammered again, rattling the wood in the jamb.

“I need to get that,” she said, stepping around her ex-husband to open the door before the club manager pounded it down.

But Ben called her back, “Paige…”

She ignored him to focus on Sebastian, the tall dark-haired man standing the doorway. Like Ben he wore black, but in a tailored suit. A silk tie, nearly as deep a red as blood, provided the only splash of color against a black shirt. “Hey, what’s the emergency?” She hoped like hell there wasn’t one, because she would have no idea how to manage it.

Sebastian Culver’s dark blue eyes narrowed as his gaze moved from her to Ben, then back. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ben remarked. He usually teased her younger half brother, but now his voice held a noticeable trace of bitterness.

She shook her head. “No, Ben and I were finished.” A long time ago, and they needed to remember that. “Do you need me in the club?”

“Your friends are here,” Sebastian said. “I put them at the quiet table in the back and set them up with drinks.”

Her friends. Would they think, like Ben did, that she’d made a terrible mistake, that she didn’t belong in Club Underground? She sucked in a breath, bracing herself to find out. She didn’t glance back at Ben as she turned and walked away. But she did glance again at the door at the end of the hall.

In ten years of marriage, she had never learned Ben’s secrets. She wouldn’t live that way again. As soon as her friends were gone, she intended to find the key to that door and find out exactly what was hidden behind it.

Watching her walk away—again—had anger gripping Ben. He was used to the frustration and resentment he always struggled with when he was around Paige. But this time there was more, and his anger boiled over to Sebastian. He clenched his hand into a fist, tempted to slam it into the other man’s handsome face. But he dragged in a deep breath and forced his fingers to relax. He hadn’t controlled his urge for violence out of any affection for his ex-brother-in-law but because, as a surgeon, he couldn’t risk injury to the instruments of his livelihood.

Even though he resented his career as much as he sometimes resented Paige, he couldn’t do what she had. He couldn’t give it up—no matter how much it had cost him. He didn’t understand her leaving the law firm now when she’d had better reasons for leaving before. The resentment flared up again, twisting his gut. Despite all the years he’d known her and how much they were alike in some ways—like their lacking childhoods—he had never really understood Paige.

He grabbed the taller guy by the lapels of his tailored suit. “What the hell were you thinking—letting her get involved with Club Underground?”

Sebastian wrested free of his grasp and stepped back. “C’mon, Ben,” he began with his patented charming grin.

He was too angry to listen, let alone be charmed. “We agreed to keep her away from here.”

“Yeah, right, like either of us has ever been able to keep Paige from doing anything she wants.”

Like divorcing him. She’d been the only one who wanted that, but he hadn’t tried hard enough to change her mind. Hell, he really hadn’t tried at all. He’d never been able to give her what she’d needed and deserved—all of himself.

“But why would she want to do this?” he asked, gesturing around the basement office. “You must have said something to her…something about the club closing.”

Sebastian sighed and pushed a hand through his overly long black hair. “I did, but I never intended for her to get involved. I tried to get financing on my own, so that I could buy the club. But I didn’t qualify and the place would have had to close down.”

Ben flinched, blaming himself. He’d tried to save the previous owner, but he’d been in surgery at the hospital and hadn’t gotten to the club in time. Sebastian hadn’t asked him for the money, probably because he’d already cost Ben too much.