Dark Fates (A Paranormal Anthology)(93)

Her hand trembled as she reached out and let her finger hover over the painting. The portrait was in good condition considering its age, but not as perfectly preserved as its subject. Anger filled her as she remembered the last wall she knew this painting had hung on.

“Where did you get this?” she hissed and leapt from the couch, throwing Tyler to the floor hard enough that he cried out in pain. “Were you his? Is that why I’m here? Are you going to extract justice for that monster?”

Sitting up with a wince and rubbing his shoulder, Tyler faced her without fear. “Damn, this is the first time you’ve ever lashed out at me like that.”

She curled her fingers into claws, fear tearing at her as she hissed, “Where did you get this?”

“Relax, I didn’t get it from Arcadia. I bought it off a family who swore it was a portrait of a distant relative, but to the best of my research, I don’t think that’s true. Your descendants moved away from Italy years ago.”

“You have one last chance to tell me who you really are before I end your life,” she whispered.

“I’m the man who loves you with all his heart. That is who I really am.”

That was not what she was expecting him to say. “What?”

Standing slowly, like he was afraid to spook her, he held his hands out. “There was so much you weren’t telling me, so many things I had to puzzle out for myself. You absolutely refused to discuss how you were turned, and I knew that somehow it was the reason you freaked out about us, why you refused to turn me. I needed to know what stood between us. You were living in the past, a past you refused to acknowledge and it was tearing you apart. I had to know how to get you to live in the present again, to enjoy life. To want to live.”

Utterly confused, she took a step back. “You aren’t making any sense.”

“Dang it, Lisabetta, you were fading when I first met you. Still beautiful but also…apathetic. The first tip-off I had that you were more than you appeared was when I met your eyes. They were so old, so jaded and broken. It was disconcerting to see the eyes of an old woman in a young face. Made me want to do anything I could to see those beautiful brown velvet eyes filled with happiness. At first glance you captured my heart in a way that I haven’t felt for a long, long time.”

She trembled, fighting the urge to both run from the home and to hug him. Her mind spun, unable to process what he was saying. While she could handle fighting six vampires at once, she couldn’t figure out how to process the emotional blows that kept coming.

Tyler’s voice softened into a soothing rumble. “Please, have a seat. I’ll give you your explanation but not with you looking ready to tear my heart out any second.” He laughed and rubbed his face. “Damn, I think this is the first time I’ve ever been scared of you.”

For some reason the idea that she scared him upset her, so she took a seat without protest. “Talk.”

“Where to start… Five weeks ago I was at this bullshit dance club, dragged there for my buddy’s bachelor party. I was having fun, hanging out with the guys, when I spotted this amazingly beautiful woman across the VIP area. She was far too young for me, jailbait in a ten-thousand-dollar dress, but I couldn’t stop looking at her. It wasn’t just that she was attractive, even though she was the most stunning creature I’d ever seen. It was the air of beautiful sorrow that hung about her like a fine perfume.”

A fine tremor ran through her again as she fought the animalistic flight-or-fight sensation filling her. She refused to acknowledge it as panic and clenched her hands into fists. There was a vague sense of knowing what he was talking about, those flashes again of his face smiling at her a thousand times. With a sinking sensation in her stomach, she thought she might know what was going on, and the idea terrified her.

When she didn’t say anything, only stared at him, Tyler continued. “I tried to ignore that beautiful girl with the disturbingly knowing gaze, but then she asked me to dance with her. At the first hint of her accent I was a goner. We spent the entire night together, and at the end of that night, she discovered something that terrified her enough that she asked her Maker to come and take the memory from her. That was the first night I met Sargon.” He chuckled with a wry look on his handsome face. “Fucker kissed me that night, showed me exactly how strong a male vampire in his prime could be and why I should be scared of him. Kinky bastard.”

Panic filled Lisabetta as she flung out her psychic senses as far as she could. There, on the very edge of her awareness, hummed a blank spot that could only be a Scion. Sargon. Her legs trembled with the effort of staying still, especially when Tyler knelt before her. He moved slowly, ever so slowly, broadcasting his intent while he stroked her cheek. The sensation of his rough skin on her smooth flesh cut through her fear like a knife, and she closed her eyes, letting out a slow breath.

She whispered, “How many times have we been together?”

“Every chance I could get. Thank f*ck I have a competent staff at my company, or I’d be in trouble right now. You didn’t come to the club every night, but almost. And when you did you would search me out, look for me even if you weren’t aware of it. If I wasn’t there Sargon made sure you went home with him.”

She kept her eyes closed, sinking into the feeling of his hand stroking over her. Pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, and she wondered if her Maker had purposely begun to leave bits of her memory behind. The fact that Sargon was here, close enough to be on hand if she needed him, touched her on a deep level. He was a very, very busy man and it had been a long, long time since anyone had cared about her enough to be there for her. Now that she thought about it, her Maker was always there for her, when she allowed him to be. She hated asking for help, hated appearing weak. Plus, she knew on some deep level that Sargon wanted more from her than what they currently had.