The Secret Night Read online

  She already knew that he hated Caldwell. That was a good sign. And it was a very good sign that he hadn’t simply sent her away. He could have dumped her at a hospital, despite her protests. But he’d taken her in and tended to her himself—and probably better than a harried ER staff would have.

  She wanted to know more about the man. And not just because she needed his help. Taking her time, she moved on through the rooms, captivated by the house yet on the lookout for information.

  She walked back upstairs and toured the bedrooms. They were all luxurious, as if somebody had taken the time to outfit an upscale bed-and-breakfast. But, except for the one she’d occupied, they all looked as if nobody ever slept there. She admired the furnishings and the views from each room, but the first floor was much more interesting. She headed back downstairs.

  To her disappointment, she came across not a single photograph of Nick’s family. But she forgot all about that when she came to his library. She felt as if she’d found a treasure trove. Like the furnishings he seemed to favor, many of the books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves were old and valuable. But he also had a huge selection of contemporary novels and nonfiction. Lord, Marg would love it in here!

  On a side table was a chessboard set up with beautifully carved ivory and ebony pieces. It looked as if a game was in progress. Was Nick playing both sides, or did he have a partner who visited—or remained stashed in a closet somewhere?

  Down the hall from the library she came upon a closed door.

  When she opened it, she saw a small office with a desk, file cabinets and a computer.

  Standing in the doorway, she scanned the room, her fingers itching to see what they might come up with on his computer or in his files. She wanted badly to learn more about the man, but she stopped herself from snooping. She wanted Nick to trust her, and the best way to achieve that end was to be trustworthy.

  Besides, while she had no qualms about invading Damien Caldwell’s privacy, she’d had a legitimate reason to do so. She had none here—save her own burning curiosity. And she felt an odd sense of loyalty to Nick, this man who’d haunted her dreams.

  Those dreams had been so intimate, yet in them she’d never seen his bedroom. And it didn’t look as if she would anytime soon, either. Was he keeping her away from that private space on purpose?

  After closing the office door, she turned and walked slowly back to the kitchen. Often the door to the basement was found in the kitchen of a house. But not here. She wandered down another hallway until she came to a closed door.

  Opening it, she peered down a flight of steps. The basement. The light from the hallway pierced the darkness just enough to illuminate what looked like the cement floor of a typical storage area. No musty smell, but it was still difficult to believe Nick slept down there when he had so many beautiful rooms to choose from.

  She stared into the gloom. Nick had told her not to go to the basement, so she wouldn’t. But she was damn well going to ask him some questions when he came back up.

  IN HIS DARKENED BEDROOM, a dream grabbed Nick by the throat. He was back in France. He recognized the tapestry hanging on the wall behind the low couch where Jeanette sat. They were talking about René Descartes, the sixteenth-century French philosopher who had uttered the famous phrase, “I think. Therefore I am.”

  Jeanette had been educated far beyond the expectations of the women of her time. She read both Greek and Latin. She knew the classics. And she loved modern literature and science. She was arguing that Descartes’s contributions to physics and mathematics were as important as his philosophical ideas. But Nick won the debate by gathering her into his arms and tumbling her to the pile of pillows on the Oriental carpet, as she giggled happily and pretended to resist.

  When he landed atop her, the encounter turned from laughter to kisses, and he was able to bank his mounting passion only with the greatest self-control.

  Suddenly a shadow fell upon them. Damien Caldwell was standing over them.

  “How dare you?” Damien challenged. “Any woman who lives here is mine,” he hissed. And with that he yanked Jeanette up and out of Nick’s arms.

  Nick grabbed for her.

  But Caldwell only laughed as he dragged Jeanette away, down an endless corridor.

  His breath coming in great gasps, Nick pounded after them. But somehow he could never catch up. As he ran, his panic grew because he knew the terrible ending of the story.

  Jeanette’s screams echoed in his ears. Only it was no longer Jeanette. It was Emma being dragged away.

  “No!” Nick screamed. “Not Emma. Not her, too.”

  He struggled to wake up, to make sure Caldwell hadn’t broken into his house and seized her.

  EMMA WAS STILL STANDING at the top of the stairs when she heard a muffled shout.

  “Nick?” she called. “Nick, what’s wrong?”

  When he didn’t answer, goose bumps rose on her arms. What if he was sick or in some kind of trouble? What if, despite his alarm system, someone—the bikers, maybe—had broken in to harm him?

  He’d told her not to go to the basement. But this was an emergency.

  With one hand firmly on the banister, she turned on the light at the top of the steps and started down. When she reached the bottom, she looked around, trying to figure out where to find Nick. The space looked entirely unfinished, nothing like where someone with a lot of money might sleep. She saw a few closed doors and wondered if a finished suite might lie behind one of them.

  “Nick?” she called again.

  The light went off, and a bloodcurdling howl split the air, followed by the sound of metal clanking behind her.

  Her own scream broke from her lips as she whirled, intent on running back up the stairs. But instead of reaching the steps, she smacked into some sort of barrier.

  She frantically felt around in the darkness and realized she was facing a metal gate. She searched for a latch that would open it, but she found nothing. And behind her she now heard heavy footsteps approaching. In her fear she could easily imagine that Frankenstein’s monster was after her.

  Moaning, she dodged to one side. She’d seen some boxes on the floor; maybe she could hide behind them. But before she reached the hiding place, an eerie green light sprang up before her, a motor whirred and mist or smoke began rising from a corner of the room.

  In the darkness, she didn’t even know in what direction to run. Maybe she could scale the metal gate.

  But before she’d gotten so much as a toehold, a hand clamped down on her shoulder, and she dissolved in terror, her scream ringing in her own ears.

  Chapter Seven

  “Take it easy. It’s me—it’s Nick. Take it easy, Emma.”

  He wrapped her in his arms, but she didn’t seem to know who he was and kept struggling.

  After the raw emotions of his nightmare, when he’d thought Caldwell was dragging her away, he’d awakened to the sound of her screaming.

  And her scream was real. Had Caldwell followed her here, intent on dragging her back to the Refuge and sacrificing her in one of his damn ceremonies?

  Was that where his dream had come from?

  In a panic, he’d rushed into the front of the basement and found her trapped by the security gate.

  “It’s okay. Everything’s okay,” he murmured to her now.

  Because his night vision was excellent, he could see the terror on her face.

  “Emma, it’s Nick. You’re okay. Everything’s okay.”

  His voice must have finally penetrated her terror, because she lifted her face toward him. “Nick?”

  “Yes. Let’s get you out of here.”

  When she slumped against him, he picked her up and carried her to his bedroom, laid her on the mattress and snapped on a low light.

  But the first words out of his mouth were hardly gentle. “I told you not to come down here,” he bit out.

  She raised wounded eyes toward him. “But I heard you call out. I thought you were in trouble.”

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nbsp; He muttered a curse. “I was having a damn nightmare.”

  “It must have been a doozie,” she said weakly.

  She pushed herself up to search his face. And before he could object, she caught his hand and drew him close, pressing herself against him.

  He’d awakened from a nightmare about her abduction to the sound of her very real scream. He had dreamed of Emma Birmingham before he’d even met her, but now she was actually here—in his bedroom—and he was helpless to deny reality. With a sound low in his throat, he gathered her close.

  “Nick, I was so scared. For you and for me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It was my fault. You got tangled up in the security system I told you about. As you saw, it’s very effective at—”

  “Driving an intruder mad?” she interjected. “I’m afraid your ‘security system’ has a lot in common with a carnival’s house of horrors.”

  He managed a grating laugh. “I guess that’s my twisted sense of humor. I used a few elements from a video game I designed.”

  “A P.I. who can treat gunshot wounds and design video games? Clearly you’re a man of many, many talents.”

  “Yeah,” he said uneasily. “Anyway, I figured anyone who broke in here deserved to get scared spitless before the knockout gas hit them. But I didn’t expect you to get caught in my amusing technology,” he added wryly.

  “Knockout gas?”

  “Yeah. I turned it off.”

  “I see why you warned me to stay upstairs.”

  “But you came charging down here anyway. Because you thought I was in trouble.”

  Nothing could have prepared him for that notion—that she had ignored her own best interests when she’d thought he was in danger. Just as he hadn’t been prepared for his reaction when he awoke and thought Caldwell really might have her in his clutches. His nightmare was still fresh in his mind, like a raw wound. He had lost Jeanette, and he had thought he would lose Emma, too.

  He tried to tell himself that he barely knew Emma Birmingham. But that hadn’t stopped him from getting caught up in his fears for her.

  “You’re too brave for your own good,” he said gruffly.

  “I’m not brave. Far from it. But I am a pragmatist, and I do need you.”

  He knew she’d meant that she needed his help to rescue her sister.

  But suddenly it was as if they were sharing a dream again, their lips mere inches apart, their heartbeats loud in his ears. And when she lifted her face, he brought his mouth down to hers.

  At first he merely sipped from her, but as his own need skyrocketed, he increased the pressure of his lips on hers.

  Her mouth opened under his, and he was intoxicated by its warmth, its texture, its sweetness, all of which he had tasted the day before.

  He had never brought anyone to this bedroom, not even in a dream. He could hardly believe Emma was here now—here in his lonely sanctuary from the world. Because no matter how he filled his nights, loneliness was the core of his existence.

  His fatal love for Jeanette had taught him that honest relationships would never be possible for him. He couldn’t tell anyone what he was; he couldn’t allow anyone to get close to him.

  But right now, the only thing that mattered was the connection he had made with Emma, first in his dreams and now in reality. It couldn’t last, but he swept the pain of future loss from his mind and focused on the woman in his arms.

  Delicately, his tongue investigated the softness along the inside of her lips, stroking the sensitive tissue. When small sounds rose in her throat, he felt his heart leap.

  He angled his head, melded his mouth to hers and kissed her long and deeply, surprised by how satisfying just that mouth-to-mouth contact could be. His tongue prowled possessively over the ridges of her teeth and the silken interior of her lips. Truly, kissing was all he intended to do. All he should do. But as their kisses became deeper and more intimate still, a kind of desperation took hold of him.

  He plundered her sweetness, gratified by the way her breathing accelerated.

  Lifting his mouth from hers, he kissed the line of her jaw, working his way downward to the slender column of her neck, the line of her collarbone revealed by the neck of her T-shirt.

  As he kissed her there, he pushed up her shirt, then lifted her slightly, sliding his hands under the shirt and fumbling with the catch of her bra.

  Obligingly, she leaned forward to give him readier access. As he worked the fastening, he smiled, thinking how much easier modern underwear was to remove than its nineteenth-century equivalents.

  Easing her back onto the mattress, he rolled her shirt up to her neck and pushed her bra out of the way. When he saw the sweet mounds of her breasts, his breath caught.

  “You are so beautiful,” he whispered.

  “I’m not. I’m perfectly ordinary,” she protested a bit breathlessly.

  “Well, your body may be ordinary to you, but I can tell you that you’re exquisite.”

  As he finished the declaration, he lifted her breasts in his hands and pressed his face into the valley between them, turning his head first one way and then the other, inhaling as much of her feminine scent as he could while brushing his fingers over her taut nipples, loving the way they hardened even more for him.

  “That feels so good,” she gasped.

  “Sweet saints, yes.”

  She blinked up at him, and he realized he’d slipped back into the speech patterns of his young manhood.

  “You sound like a poet.”

  “You make me feel poetic.”

  With a little smile, he reached down to open the zipper—another nice modern device—of her jeans so he could slip his hand inside. He slid his fingers beneath her silken panties, gliding them through the triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs. Then he dipped lower, slipping into her slick folds.

  She pressed upward against his fingers, moving her hips. “Oh, Nick.”

  Clothing had changed, but not the delights of a woman’s body. He turned his head to suckle one pebble hard nipple, hoping he was making her feel as hot and needy as he was. Taking the other small peak between his thumb and index finger, he tugged it gently, watching her face, seeing how much she liked what he was doing.

  “Don’t stop,” she moaned, her eyes closing as she arched into his intimate caress.

  As her hips rocked against his fingers, he felt his fangs slip from their sheaths.

  She called his name again, and he stoked her pleasure, urging her toward completion. As he felt her body convulse in his arms, he stayed with her and fueled her orgasm. When he felt her physical sensations begin to ebb, he sent a mental fog into her mind so that he wouldn’t hurt her.

  Then he turned his face, pressing his fangs into the soft flesh of her neck, drawing precious blood from her—feeding the need that had been building since he’d first taken her into his arms.

  It was so good, better than he had dreamed it could be. He wanted to go on and on, drawing from her while he plunged deeply inside her.

  But even as that thought surfaced, he knew that he had already gone too far.

  He pulled his teeth from her sweet flesh. He had taken from her. But not enough. Not nearly enough.

  He used his tongue to seal the small punctures, then watched her eyes blink open to stare at him, her confusion and uncertainty tearing at him.

  “What…what happened?”

  “Something good,” he whispered, knowing he had carried his own pleasure further than it ever should have gone.

  “Was that just me or did you…?”

  “Both of us,” he answered, unwilling to give her any clarification. He had thought that if he took blood from her without having intercourse, he would slake his need. It hadn’t worked out that way. He was still hot and wanting.

  Maybe because she was feeling embarrassed about what she’d let him do, she looked away from him and around the room. Like the upper floors, his room was furnished with expensive antiques—except for the high-tech bank of
video screens on the wall he’d undraped earlier. He took the opportunity to put a little physical distance between them.

  “Your surveillance system?” she asked.

  “Yeah. That’s how I knew that you and those bikers were outside three days ago.”

  “Oh.”

  She gestured toward the upper right-hand screen, which showed the storage area where she’d been trapped. “Why did you wait so long to get me out of there?” she asked.

  “Because I was still sleeping. I heard you scream, but at first I thought it was part of the nightmare I was having. It took a few minutes for me to figure out it was real,” he answered.

  She answered with a small nod, then asked, “Can we go back upstairs now?”

  “Yes.”

  She rose from the bed, straightened her clothing and started toward the door. Then she hesitated.

  Climbing out of bed, he walked toward her. “The house of horrors is deactivated now.”

  He stepped out the door, and she followed him into the unfinished part of the basement. When he saw her shiver, he slung his arm around her shoulders and escorted her across the cement floor and up the steps.

  Once upstairs, he cleared his throat and asked, “Did you find everything you needed while I was sleeping?”

  “Everything I needed?” she echoed. She scuffed a toe against the Oriental runner. “I took a shower and ate. But you haven’t told me whether you’re going to the Refuge with me.”

  “I said I hadn’t decided yet,” he muttered. He wasn’t feeling very good about himself at the moment. He had allowed his loneliness and lust—and leftover fear from the nightmare—to push him over the edge. But he couldn’t tell her the magnitude of the mistake he’d made. He’d been swept away by forces he should have controlled. And once he’d taken her blood, he knew that one taste would never be enough.

  For her own protection, he should send her away. Far away from him. Or he might prove even more dangerous than Damien Caldwell. But the pleading look in her eyes made sending her away impossible.

  Worse, he knew what would happen if he did. Despite his warning, she’d rushed down to the basement because she thought he—practically a stranger—was in danger. Obviously she’d rush back to the Refuge to save her twin sister on her own if he didn’t agree to go with her.