Page 17 of Seduction in Blood
Her shoulders relaxed, and she sighed. “I had no idea. Now everything makes sense.” I could tell I was going to get an earful. I wasn't wrong.
"Long ago, I mean hundreds of centuries ago, vampires lusted for blood to survive. Or so that was the thinking. But once their presence was discovered by a growing human population slowly becoming more educated and more superstitious, vampires couldn't feed as often. They soon discovered they didn't have to drink blood as frequently to survive. Next, they learned that the older a vampire got, the less he needed to feed. They also learned to tolerate food, as long as it was grown naturally, or what today we'd call organically. And boy could they put away the liquor without any lasting effects."
That was information I didn't know. "But why would you want to be a vampire?"
She looked at me like I was a dimwit. "Because of their immortality and superior intelligence."
"Superior?"
"Oh, yes. Devon speaks eight languages, is deeply knowledgeable in the sciences, math, and economics. He's also a master strategist. None of this came from schooling. It developed over time by reading."
I stared at her, not believing the superior bit. Some people could just remember facts better than others. But she answered a few other questions, and now I knew she was human.
"My father was never interested in becoming a vampire, and at first, I admit he wasn't happy with my request to become one. But as he got older and closer to his own mortality, he gave in to my desire and asked his mistress if it were possible. She didn't want the responsibility but knew I could be useful in this house, so an exchange was made.
"An exchange? They own you?"
Another laugh that was starting to grate on my nerves. "I can leave at any time. By exchange, I meant that Devon had a personal assistant, and he didn't need two. The one he had would have to leave before I could join his household. By the time my father died, Fatina was ready for a new assignment and expressed interest in joining my old house." She tilted her head. "You have a dark history, don't you?"
I sat back. "Why would you say that?"
Anna shrugged a shoulder. "You seem to see something sinister in the simplest things." She stood, grabbed her basket, and walked toward the ocean.
I sat for a moment, digesting everything she'd said. I'd have to do more research before I believed anything she said about vampires. She was obviously biased by living with them her whole life. Yet, I was irritated that she might be right about me seeing everything through a dark lens. Maybe we were both biased by our upbringing. But wasn't that true for everyone?
When we walked back to the house and reached the grave markers again, I needed to resolve another curiosity. "Who's buried here?"
She didn't even glance over. "It's the family plot from long ago."
"Who's the person who visits it in the middle of the night?"
Anna stumbled but caught herself. "I should tell Devon this walkway needs repairing."
I looked down but didn't see anything that would have made her stumble unless she'd caught a heel. Or hadn't been prepared for my question. I stopped and turned toward the house. I quickly found my corner room on the second floor, then raised my gaze to check out the third floor.
A curtain was drawn back, but it was impossible to see if anyone was there. Until the curtain dropped back in place. A cold breeze from the shore washed over me, sending shivers down my neck. Trelane had warned me to stay away from the third floor. And why did I always want to do the exact opposite of what I'd been told?
ChapterTen
For some reason,I thought the training room would be in the basement, but it was a startlingly empty first-floor room tucked away in a far corner of the house. It was the size of a ballroom, and I idly wondered if it had once been used for fancy society parties. My new sneakers squeaked on the polished wood surface as I surveyed the training equipment. A twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot mat had been placed in the middle of the room. Several feet away, three ropes hung from the ceiling. On the other side of the mat, an equal distance away, stood a ten-foot wooden post. Another rope ran in a taut incline from the top of the post to a climbing wall. Five feet farther down, one last rope hung from the ceiling. I found the placement of the objects odd but ignored them, assuming Trelane would tell me what they were for.
In a corner, toward the back of the room, a door led into what I assumed would be a storage closet, but it held a treadmill, an expensive stationary bike, and a rack of dumbbells. No one was in there, and I wasn't sure why a separate room was needed. I shrugged. One more mystery in a house full of them.
A single bench had been placed in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror that stretched a good length of the wall opposite the climbing wall. I sat down to remove my shoes and socks before stepping to the middle of the mat to take a position.
Trelane was running late. He'd missed dinner, so I ate alone in the dining room—a green salad filled with raw vegetables, a slim slice of salmon, and focaccia bread. No alcohol since I would be training. That had been an hour ago, and I was ready to rumble.
Not knowing if the vamp would show, I began with some exercises to warm up my muscles. I was soon running through a series of martial arts moves that increased my heart rate and brought a sheen to my skin. I had been trained in three martial arts styles—karate, Jiu-Jitsu, and Shaolin kung fu. Any of the three could be used for therapeutic mental conditioning, defense, or killing. I practiced for self-defense and to stay limber. Enhanced technical advancements in security had forced me to scale buildings and bend around laser sensors when I didn't have someone who could hack them. But I knew one or two moves that could kill—if necessary. I'd never had to put those particular skills to use.
I was thirty minutes into a martial arts exercise and coming up out of a roll when I stumbled. Trelane stood no more than ten paces from the mat, watching me.
Devon Trelane—vampire and absolutely hot specimen—standing in a tank top that showed off his lean muscular arms and sweatpants that hugged his trim waist. He was barefoot with his dirty-blond hair tied in a ponytail and a rakish stubble that made him look twice as dangerous as he already was. His blank expression revealed nothing except the hard line of luscious lips.
"Your form is sloppy." He strolled around the mat, inspecting me from head to toe as if I was a soldier in his army.
And all I could think about were the last words he'd spoken to me earlier that day. That he was training me to be his human lover. Right now, I was thinking maybe that would be the better option. I glanced around the room, rethinking how the few training elements might be used and hoping he wouldn't break anything, like my arm or leg—or both.
His brows lowered as I turned to follow his path around the mat.
