Livia Reasoner - Dark Nights - Mistress of the Underground / The Vampire Affair

“You keep leaving,” she reminded him. “You just take off, with no warning, with no explanation of where you’re going or where you’ve been.”

“I’m a doctor, Paige,” he said. “You knew that when you married me. You knew I’d work long hours and be on call twenty-four seven.”

She shook her head. “Maybe when you were an intern you needed to work those crazy hours. But not now.”

“I have patients. I have a responsibility to them.” No matter what they were.

“What about us?”

He flinched. “I know, Paige. I wasn’t there for you…like I should have been.”

“And you can’t promise that it’ll be different now,” she pointed out.

Despite all his secrets, she really knew him too well. “No,” he admitted with a heavy sigh.

“You can’t protect me if you’re not here.”

“I’ll be here,” he vowed. “I’ll stick close to you.”

She shook her head. “Don’t make a promise you’ve never been able to keep.”

He pushed a hand through his still-damp hair and sighed. Damn it to hell, but she was right, as usual. It was another of her traits that had charmed as much as it had annoyed him.

“You always leave me,” she reminded him, the tears overflowing her eyes to trail down her face like the rain on the window. “So do what you do best…leave.”

He sucked in a breath of pain over her resolute rejection. “Paige?”

“And this time, don’t come back,” she said. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“But playing these games was your idea,” he reminded her, with a flash of anger.

He had tried to do the right thing; he’d tried to stay away from her after the divorce. But after a few months of no contact, she’d starting coming to him. A blow job at his office. A quickie in the backseat of his SUV. She’d shown up sporadically, weeks or sometimes months passing before she came to him again. And so desperate to see her, to touch her, to taste her, he’d started coming to her.

“It was a mistake,” she said, “to think that we could keep it light and unemotional. We’ve never been about fun and games.” She released a shuddery breath. “We’re all about secrets and pain.”

“I’m sorry.” Not just about the pain he’d caused her…but the pain she would not let him protect her from.

Paige held back her tears until the door closed behind Ben. But then, instead of shedding them, she blinked them away. She’d cried enough over him.

Her body hummed with the pleasure he’d given her—again and again. And over the past four years, she’d kept seeking him out for more. She hadn’t imagined the pleasure only he could give her, but she had forgotten the subsequent pain.

She couldn’t move on with her life if she kept him in her life. Even if she was really in danger, he couldn’t protect her. He could only cause her more pain, just as she had caused him.

Her heart contracted as she remembered the look on his face—the raw pain of her rejection. He hadn’t looked that upset even when she’d divorced him. In fact, she’d often thought that he’d looked more relieved than hurt when she’d served him with papers.

He hadn’t been relieved tonight. She wouldn’t kid herself that it was because he loved her. He had agreed with everything she’d said and was acting more out of obligation than love.

But it was time she protected herself. And she couldn’t do that by hiding away. That little voice in her head might be convinced she didn’t belong at Club Underground, but Paige was not.

At the moment, she had nowhere else to go.

Ben expelled a breath but hesitated before drawing in another. He hated the smell of this place. The stench of the blood, the death, the sewer…

Sebastian shuddered. “Why’d we have to talk here?”

“Paige can’t see us together,” Ben said.

And she was out there, just beyond the steel door, down the hall in her office. The club had closed for the night; all the patrons had left but she had yet to go home. God, she was stubborn.

“Why not?” Sebastian asked. “I can’t talk to my ex-brother-in-law?”

Ben shook his head. “Not now. She’ll know what we’re talking about.”

“What are we talking about?” Sebastian asked.

“Her,” Ben replied. “You have to stick close to her. She won’t let me.”

Because she wanted nothing to do with him anymore. She wouldn’t take his calls or return his messages except to leave one of her own. I don’t want to see you. Or talk to you anymore . Please leave me alone… .

He’d erased the message, but he would never forget the words—or the conviction in her voice. She’d been hurt and confused when she’d served him with divorce papers. She wasn’t confused anymore; she was certain she didn’t want him in her life.

“She won’t let me protect her, either,” Sebastian admitted with a heavy sigh. “It doesn’t matter if she sees us together or not. She keeps accusing me of hovering. She insists she’s not in any danger.”

“We both know better.”

Sebastian sighed again. “And so does everyone else. After Owen’s murder, I can’t convince anyone else to help me keep an eye on her.”

Ben shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t trust anyone else. You have to protect her.”

“But I don’t know—”

“This is your mess. You brought me into this,” Ben reminded him, frustration gripping him as he remembered the first time he’d seen this room. With the young man he’d believed his brother-in-law bleeding to death on the table, a stake protruding from his heart. “You brought her into this—you brought her into the world.”

And he had broken the law of the secret society when he had. Vampires were not supposed to procreate with mortals; they weren’t supposed to mate with them, either. But that was a law too many of the undead had broken for it ever to be steadfastly enforced.

Sebastian’s eyes glistened with regret and love. “She can never know that….”

“That you’re her dad instead of her younger half brother?” A claim she had too readily accepted as fact when Sebastian had showed up at their door ten years ago. “Yeah, that would kind of blow the damn secret out of the water.”

“And if she learns it…”

“If…” Ben snorted. “Does it matter? She doesn’t know it now, but she’s already in danger.”

“Is she?” the other man asked. “It’s been over a week and nothing else has happened.”

“Someone is threatening her,” Ben reminded him.

Maybe it was time he threatened back. He’d already lost Paige once because of the damn secret. He didn’t intend to lose her completely.

But then a scream penetrated the metal door, the voice shrill with terror. And terrifyingly familiar. Paige.

Was it already too late?

Paige pressed a trembling hand against her throat, where blood oozed between her fingers. With her other hand she fumbled for the light switch in her dark office. Before she could find it, the lamp flickered on her desk, and the faint glow of the bulb penetrated the shattered green shade and illuminated the trashed room.

She lurched to her feet and stumbled over the legs of the chair she’d thrown. Keeping that hand pressed against her wound, she tossed aside files and books as she looked for her purse and cell phone. Like the chair, the purse was upended—its contents spilled. She needed to get a purse with a damn zipper. Spying the glint of metal beneath the desk, she reached for the phone just as strong hands closed around her shoulders.

Thrusting her elbow back, she writhed and fought to free herself again from her assailant. “Let me go!”