Dark Needs at Night's Edge

16

"Are you a betting man, Conrad?" Néomi was surprised her voice wasn't quavering.

He'd shaved, fully revealing the striking structure of his lean face. And she'd been given no warning. She'd breezed into the room, then stopped, speechless at the sight of him reclining on the bed.

Devastating male. And she wondered why she couldn't stay mad at him.

He frowned at her reaction. He obviously had no idea of his heart-pounding effect on women. "Depends."

Yesterday, once she'd awakened from her lengthy reverie, she'd found a stack of newspapers lying on the floor. He'd gruffly said, "I was able to get some of the ones that had piled up out of your reach." She thought that for a man like Conrad, this had been on a level with picking flowers for her.

Though the gesture had softened her, she'd still been hesitant when he'd wanted to stay close by. "Why should I choose to be around you?" she'd asked. "You're just going to hurt my feelings or start haranguing me for the key again." The key that she'd stolen from Murdoch and hidden away.

"My brothers were here earlier," Conrad had answered. "They said they aren't returning for two days. There will be a moratorium on the key. And I won't insult you."

Apparently, his brothers had allowed him to remain untied from the bed, with his manacles in front—even after he'd disclosed that there was a ghost living here.

The idea that he'd had to tell them that he would have gotten the spirit to prove herself, but she was asleep, was too amusing. The image of him yelling at seemingly nothing but a sheet was hilarious.

She'd decided to give him another chance. Which was why she held a deck of cards this evening. "I challenge you to twenty-one rounds of vingt-et-un. Whoever loses a round has to answer a question, truthfully and completely. Any question whatsoever."

He sat up. "Deal."

She hovered on the foot of the bed to face him. He had difficulty with the cards because his hands were still chained, but he wouldn't ask for help. And she had to use her most highly concentrated telekinesis, which would mean she'd have to sleep more. But still they muddled through.

After he won the first hand, his lips curved, not quite a smile, but she still had to shake herself. "I win."

Yes, you do... . In the game of attraction, lips like his should be ruled an unfair advantage.

What were the women of his time thinking to allow him to go unscathed? She wanted to fan herself with the cards she appeared to hold. "So ask your question," she absently said.

"Were you survived by any of your family?"

"Non. I never knew my father. Maman died when I'd just turned sixteen. I was an only child."

She dealt again. He had an ace showing, and she had seventeen. Dealer holds. "Merde," she snapped when he flipped a ten of clubs.

He asked, "Why didn't you know your father?" When she hesitated, he repeated her words: "Any question whatsoever, truthfully and completely."

"I didn't know him because he was a scoundrel. He was rich, a scion of Nîmes, France, and my mother had been a young servant in his home. He was married, but he still seduced her. When she revealed to him she was expecting his child, he told her, 'Take the voyage to America, and I'll follow right after my divorce. We'll raise the baby there as a family.' But he never came. She waited for him—stranded here, pregnant, and without enough money to return."

"Maybe he died on the crossing. Who knows what could have happened to him?"

"Non, he sent maman a pittance that only served to let her know she'd been duped—a potential scandal decisively removed from société's eyes. To her dying day, she thought he would come for us, so she never remarried." Though there were certainly proposals in her line of work—some even legitimate.

Néomi had been unable to comprehend how Marguerite could turn away opportunities for a better life when they were offered to her, opportunities for a French émigrée dancer and her bastard to get out of the Vieux Carré.

In Néomi's mind, if a woman was silly enough to wait for a man to save her, then she didn't get to be choosy about which man it would be.

Marguerite's life had taught Néomi well. She'd vowed never to be in that situation, dependent on a man.

She dealt once more. She had nineteen, while he had a jack of hearts showing. "Hit," he said. She did. "Hit again. And once more." He flipped his cards over. Jack, two, three, six.

Her lips thinned. This card game wasn't working out as she'd planned. She'd hoped to find out about his past and how he'd gone a lifetime without sex—not to get interrogated.

"Twenty-one the hard way. I win again. If your mother didn't remarry, how did the two of you live?"

"She worked."

"That's not a thorough answer."

"She was a burlesque dancer. I grew up in lodgings above the club."

He raised his brows. "This explains much about you, and your lack of modesty. But with your looks"—his gaze dropped to her breasts, then swiftly back up—"why didn't you follow in her footsteps?"

She gave him a bland smile. "Who says I didn't?"

He looked aghast. "But you were a ballet dancer!"

"Not always," she murmured.

"You can't leave it at that."

"Then win this hand." Twenty to her and seventeen to him. I win." Finally. And if he was going to dig into her past, then... "Why aren't you more loyal to your family?"

He narrowed his eyes. "You're going to question my sense of loyalty?"

"Oui. Actually, I just did."

"I was in the Kapsliga for eighteen years. Then they turned on me. I fought side by side with my brothers for over a decade—they made me a monster."

"Why do you feel like you're a monster? I wish you didn't view vampires the way you do. You're growing on me"—I'm infatuated with you—"and I think your brothers are honorable men. The fact that you are all vampires is incidental."

"Incidental. My beliefs boiled down to one word." He fingered the edges of a card. "If you saw me in the midst of bloodlust, you'd think me a monster. Now deal. I'm keen to get to my questions."

She dealt. "Ha! I win. Why are your three brothers... different from you? Why did they never drink from the vein?"

"Sebastian prevented himself by becoming a hermit, staying away from any temptation. The oldest two joined an order, an army called the Forbearers. Their first law is never to take blood straight from the flesh. Though now I've heard they're allowed to drink from their immortal Brides."

"The Forbearers are King Kristoff's army, n'est-ce pas?" When he nodded, she said, "Why didn't you just join up with your brothers?"

"Kristoff's a bloody Russian!" he snapped, his broad shoulders tensing. "I fought those bastards for over a decade, in near daily battles, and then I was killed by Russian steel. I wake up, and I've got one's blood running in my veins, my brothers pledging my goddamned eternal fealty to him—a Russian and a vampire. There could be no combination I despised more."

"If these Forbearers fight tirelessly against evil vampires—"

"Kristoff has turned thousands of humans. The Lore balances itself, but not when he's creating vampires like that." Visibly making an attempt to calm himself, he said, "Deal."

"And the tide of twenty-one is turning," she said when she got vingt-et-un. "Tell me about your family."

He impatiently said, "My parents were a love match. My mother died giving birth to the last of four much younger sisters. My father was considerably older and never recovered from the loss."

"Three brothers and four sisters? You had seven siblings? I always wished for even one brother or sister."

"My sisters didn't live long—they died of the sickness. The oldest was only thirteen."

"I'm sorry, Conrad."

"I wasn't as close to them as I could have been. As I should have been. I'd already been fighting for the Kapsliga for years by the time the first one was born. They were closest to Sebastian."

"Why were you the son who was chosen for the Kapsliga?"

"Nikolai was the heir, Sebastian the scholar. Murdoch was the lover. As I had no pronounced interest, I became the killer."

"Why wouldn't you think of yourself as a protector? You saved human life. You protected them from horrible fates."

"And then later I meted out horrible fates. Now deal."

"Merde," she muttered again when she lost by one. "Posez votre question."

"You actually took off your clothes in front of crowds of strange men?"

"Yes, I did. My mother had just died unexpectedly. My choices were to dance in the club at night and continue my ballet during the day, or go to the paper factory to work for the rest of my life." She'd had no marriage proposals in sight then. After all, she'd only been in her midteens.

He narrowed his eyes. "You said your mother died when you were sixteen."

"So?"

His lips parted, exposing those fangs that were somehow becoming very attractive to her. "But sixteen?"

"Et alors. I'm not going to apologize for it. Times were different then, and I actually enjoyed it for the most part. I kept that chapter of my life secret, not because I was ashamed, but because I knew people would have the same reaction as you—and do close your jaw, vampire."

"You weren't a virgin, were you?"

She blinked at him. "Non, je suis Capricorne."

Ignoring her comment, he said, "And you weren't married?" When she shook her head, he gave her a look that said, Ah-ha, one of those women.

"Yes, Conrad, I am one of those women." She smiled as she dealt. "And I'm not ashamed about that part of my life either."

He hurried through the hand and won again. But when he hesitated with his question, she knew he was about to ask how many men she'd known—and Néomi didn't think he'd like the answer...