I was not about to rat out Teri. “My-my…new vampire boyfriend told me,” I lied.
He scoffed. “Masie, you are many things, but a great liar you are not.”
“That’s the thing about great liars, you never really know when they’re lying. Isn’t that right, Stark?”
He shrugged, as if nothing I said had meaning. Probably because it didn’t.
“Well,” I sighed, “might as well spill the chilibeans. Why am I here?”
He stared coolly. No reply.
“At least you had the decency to remove the toys.” I’d never seen the collection, but Stark had mentioned it once, when he’d first wanted to prove I was Anna reincarnated.
She had been a prolific journaler, and that included documenting her kinks with vampires, humans, and marble phallic items from her private collection. To each her own.
Anyway, Stark, in his infinite wisdom, had thought if I entered one of his two sex rooms and picked out Anna’s five favorite cooter gadgets, it would prove I was her. Like a lady, I’d declined to participate, though it hadn’t helped. My resistance was exactly what Anna would have done, according to him.
Sometimes people see what they want to see.Like the time old Burt, our local junkyard man, saw the image of Neil Diamond shaking hands with Jesus in a bucket of rusty screws. He’d charged fifty cents to take a look, and I couldn’t resist queueing up like everyone else in town.
Just a bunch of rusty screws, in my opinion.But all around me, people had been crying and falling to their knees after looking at the same thing. Years later, I began to wonder if what they’d seen was real—I just couldn’t see it.
Point was, sometimes people saw what they wanted to see. Other times, they couldn’t see things they weren’t ready for.
Me? I hadn’t been ready to accept that my plan to sit behind my computer, screaming to the world that we were all in trouble, wasn’t enough. Telling the truth wouldn’t make the problem go away. In fact, things had gotten worse. Charlie was dead. Congress would pass a bill to give vampires the tools they needed to take over. No one was coming to save us.And I’m trapped in a sex dungeon.
I’d played this whole thing wrong. That included getting involved with Stark when, deep down inside, I knew what he was.
But why had I been so resistant to face what had been staring right at me?
After a long moment of chewing on the factual cud of my choices, I decided that if I had any chance of turning this apocalyptic boat around, I had to begin facing the truth—about me, my situation, and the fact that it would take a miracle to stop the fanged wheels already in motion.
“I don’t know why you brought me here, or what you plan to do to me,” I said, “but I want you to know that…I did…love you. More than anything I’ve ever loved in my entire life besides my family. Maybe I still do in a way.”
“Then why couldn’t you stand by my side?” he asked acerbically. “Now we have humans hunting vampires, vampires pre-emptively stockpiling humans, and our coven leaders disappearing, creating a power vacuum. No one knows whom to negotiate with or align to.It’s every vampire for themselves. Complete chaos.
“Add to this, your lawmakers being hours away from passing the Repurposed People Act, and you have a mess beyond anyone’s control.” He shook his head. “We could have stopped this together. But nooo. You had to push and fight. Why couldn’t you trust me, Masie?”
“Why couldn’t you be trustworthy?” I threw back.
He gazed past the shiny satin walls. “I am not…accustomed to placing my fate in the hands of others.”
“Then what did you expect to happen? No trust. No truth. No transparency. Our relationship never stood a chance.”Also, you’re evil as fuck.He was great at sex, though, so I’d give him that.
He nodded pensively. “Perhaps I see that now.”
I slid from the bed and kneeled in front of him on the cold concrete floor. A tiny piece of my heart hoped he could change—that it wasn’t too late.If we just put our heads together, maybe we can stop what’s coming.
But could I trust him one last time?
Would he ever be honest with me? Everything I loved was on the line. Also, soundproof sex room. Not a great place to be.
I took his hands, preparing to test him. If he passed, maybe I could trust him just enough to tell the truth about kissing Charlie.
“Why did you really save me that night at theRooster?” I asked. He’d claimed he came across my scent, and it had reminded him of Anna. But I already knew there was more to the story. Stark and my uncle were already good friends when he’d turned my father over twelve years ago. Stark had to have seen me or caught my scent before that night.
Stark slid his hands from mine, his moss-green eyes intense. “Passion.”
“I don’t get what—”
