Black Swan

  Black Swan

  Linda Nightingale

  Suffering from a broken marriage, Carol Langston meets Tristan McLaghlan at a Black Swan party. Black Swans are mortals who willingly barter blood for the sensual ecstasy and euphoria vampires give in return. To Carol, this looks like the real thing until her handsome vampire runs away from her and his true nature. Separated by miles, divided across two species, can their love survive?

  Dedication

  Mary Marvella Barfield

  ***

  The fact that the man she loved was in bed with another woman ceased to be important when Holly saw the blood. Her heart, which had been running on empty until she met Tristan, stuttered and stalled. Horror freeze-framed time—the shutter snaps of images flooding her brain almost audible. She couldn’t breathe or move, knew she hadn’t made a sound, but Tristan's head snapped up. Wild red eyes honed in on her. Blood smeared his mouth, drizzled from two wounds on his partner's throat. The woman he'd been screwing appeared deathly pale and deadly still.

  She should run before he shouted, “What the hell are you doing here?” but fear had turned her to ice. Holly hadn't blinked but Tristan stood on his feet. Her heart tripped over a beat. No one could move that fast. He shook back his mane of black hair and, holding her prisoner in his burning gaze, glided toward her. The last rays of the dying sun bronzed his body.

  How incredibly beautiful he was. How she loved him. How dare he do this to her?

  She wanted to scream, “You S-O-B! Saturday you said you loved me. Monday you're banging another woman!”

  Humiliation, jealousy, and grief burned like fire beneath her skin. She tried but failed to tear her gaze from his. Tristan's eyes were luminous azure not scarlet. The blood on his mouth had somehow disappeared, or, please God, maybe she'd imagined it. His naked body blocked Holly's view of the bed though she knew the woman still lay there. Why hadn't she said something, jumped up or grabbed her clothes and slammed the door? Blood.

  Her head gave a dizzy spin. Maybe the woman was dead. Fear broke Holly's paralysis.

  “I’d no right.” She folded her arms tight across her chest, holding herself together as she backed away, babbling, “I did knock. The door was open a little bit.” But there’d been no welcoming light only shadows. “I’m sorry. So sorry. I'm going now.”

  Before I start crying.

  “Hols,” Tristan whispered, his voice as lovely as the music he made. “Wait please. Allow me to explain.”

  Hols. His pet name for me.

  In one swift move that blurred her vision, he bent and the sheet materialized loosely knotted around his hips. Was he trying to be modest? They'd been sleeping together for a month. In that time, she’d lovingly memorized every contour of his slender, muscled physique. Holly's willful eyes traveled down him, catching on the long lump beneath the sheet. Memories teased her, desire pulsing above her pelvic bone.

  Not modesty.

  Covering his nakedness marked an end to intimacy, a prelude to goodbye. Her gaze fled from temptation.

  Tristan manifested at her side. She clamped a hand to her mouth but a cry escaped. Velvet hands closed on her shoulders, and an electric thrill zinged through her. Holly's heart yearned to believe that she’d imagined the last five minutes, but the image of her Tristan tangled around another woman had been branded in her mind’s eye.

  Damn him!

  She’d chosen the green-and-white striped Ralph Lauren sheet riding low on his hips. He blinked as if she'd cursed him aloud, and his hands fell away. He gave her a wary smile.

  Though she still felt the warmth of his touch, jealousy hardened her voice. “I'm going, Tristan. Sorry I didn't mean to—” Catch you in the act? “To interrupt.”

  His smile faded and it seemed the world went dark. As if he could explain without speaking, he stared into her eyes and finally said, “It’s not what you think.”

  ***

  Unlike the lyrics of an old song, “Regrets I have a few but then again too few to mention,” an army of regrets pursued Tristan, found him defenseless, gazing into suspicious eyes.

  As Holly suspected, he'd killed the woman in his bed. When she'd caught him feasting, he'd cast a freeze-frame spell, vaporized from the living room, reappeared in the bedroom. He focused the energy absorbed in his victim's death on the corpse, and in an incandescent flash of light, the evidence disappeared. It was so bloody easy, he felt even guiltier, if that were possible.

  Energy vibrated his being, gilded his skin. Textured shadows and silvery moonlight were tangible feelings. Down the street, a man's voice lifted in anger, and a woman cried. Tristan swallowed hard, trying to master the blood high. His hands fisted at his side, and he bit his lower lip, tasting the blood welling around his fangs. With super human effort, he slowed his breathing and calmed the sensations resonating within him.

  Exactly three minutes after he'd disappeared, Tristan took Holly's hand and released her from trance. She blinked back to the moment, unaware of the passage of time. No need to guess what she thought, he had but to listen to her thoughts. He could erase her memory with a glance but he’d grown weary of vampire tricks. Holly's pain beat in his heart but sparks of anger danced with the hurt in her eyes. He deserved whatever she dumped on him. The coming inquisition would be a catharsis. For the first time, he noticed her eyes were the same color as Carol's, a clear light green.

  Sadness nipped at his heels. Yet another regret joined the battalion of fingers pointing at him.

  Carol.

  Last year, tired of the Black Swan scene—blood-bartered-for sex parties—he'd hunted London's nightlife and the city's streets in relentless pursuit of sanguine and carnal pleasures. On a lark one evening, he’d put in an appearance at a formal Swan Song in Mayfair.

  And met Carol Langston.

  “I'm new to this.” Carol's shy smile and the curvy figure sheathed in a red beaded gown intrigued him. “Newly divorced, as well.”

  He caught a flash of pain in green eyes. “You're not happy about the divorce.”

  She shrugged one bare shoulder. “I was shaken.” Her shyness evaporated, her gaze sliding from his eyes to his lips then down the front of him. “I must say now I'm glad it's over.”

  Damn, if he didn't feel her eyes undressing him, firing his libido and the bloodlust. This one wasn't looking for commitment.

  Tristan spent the night with Carol, slaking the Thirst while he satisfied physical lust in her body. Tossing beneath him, the wildcat gave him as good as she got. The next eleven months, they were virtually inseparable. She accompanied him to performances, listened to the endless hours of practice, or modeled for his sculptures. They caroused the city, spent moonlit hours in Hyde and St. James Parks. She'd known and accepted him in every way. One rainy night in an alley behind a trendy nightclub, she'd even watched him take a victim. In bed, after the storms of passion had passed, she'd caress him as she read to him from her favorite author, a fellow Irishman, Oscar Wilde.

  Then one night it happened. Minutes before dawn on a gray winter's day, he left his lover sleeping and slipped away with no word of farewell. To her credit, Carol rang once, listened to his excuses and never rang back. He buried guilt in the tomb with his other emotions and returned to the hunt. The night he decided to abandon the Old World and the Hunger, he’d killed another woman as they both came, his fifth victim in as many days. Sex and death fed the beast, lust and bloodlust synonyms. Disgusted with himself, he'd dissolved from the girl's bedroom, reappeared in his and packed. A memory of Carol, the wind whipping her long dark hair, flashed through his mind. Bloody hell, indeed it was time to go.

  The gig with the Seattle Symphony was a door to escape. He'd hoped that immersing passion in music and art would rescue him from what he was. Donning his mas
k, he turned his back on the vampire, boarded a plane, and left England without a backwards glance.

  Alas, he hadn't outrun his problems. They, once again, stared him in the face.

  ***

  The longer Tristan held Holly's gaze, the more she calmed. Dreamily, she watched azure eyes deepen to indigo. Trick of light. When she swayed on her feet, he put his arms around her waist. His lips brushed hers, and her body betrayed her. Her mouth opened for his tongue. Fever for him seared her, body and soul. Willful, hungry hands stroked his bare back. Moaning into the fierce kiss, she melted against him, feeling him hardening against her. God, she could forgive him anything if only he’d stay with her.

  When she was breathless, he broke the kiss to nuzzle her neck. She stroked his soft black hair and remembered how good it felt drifting over her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. She glanced over his shoulder, and a shiver iced her spine. The bedroom door was closed.

  When had he closed it? He hadn't left her even for a moment. Where was the woman?

  He caught her gaze, smiled. She felt high and light, drunk without alcohol. She'd ask these questions…in a moment. No, he'd promised to explain.

  Tristan took her hand, led her across the living room. Sparse furnishings freed space for his sculpting. A white leather sofa faced a white marble fireplace. The ashes of some other night’s fire littered the alabaster hearth. Until the day before yesterday, he hadn’t owned a TV. Saturday, they'd shopped and had gotten a cable hook-up, which provided a few hours of entertainment. That night, like many other nights, he'd played for her, then had taken her to bed, caressing and stroking her as skillfully as he coaxed music from the cello.

  “Sit down, Holly. Allow me to explain. I know you're shaken.” His voice ebbed through her, quieting doubt, quickening desire. “Would you like a drink?”

  Holly did as he asked, sank down on the sofa, and folded her hands, white-knuckled, in her lap. “That woman is still in your bedroom. Why doesn't she do something? She had to see me.”

  “She didn't.” His tone left no room for argument.

  He wouldn't meet her eyes as he strode across the room to a small antique table. His cello rested in the shadows beneath the cloaked windows. He threw open thick velvet curtains. In the sunburst window, a silver quarter moon floated on a cloud. Tristan

  stared into the night as if he'd forgotten her, his total immobility eerie in the twilight. Holly shuddered, biting her lip, suddenly wanting to run.

  Tristan rotated his shoulders, tossed back his hair, and turned to smile at her, instantly reading her expression. “Holly, you're staring at me. I don't really have horns, do I?”

  She whispered a laugh, shook her head. “You were so still…it was… frightening.”

  His gaze fled hers. He lifted a crystal decanter. “Brandy all right?”

  No explanation. Merely another question.

  She nodded but his back was turned, and he didn't see. “Yes.”

  On the circular table inlaid with mother of pearl, there were a decanter, two matching glasses etched with a delicate rose pattern, a stack of unopened mail, and a program from a museum.

  Whose letters had he ignored? Except for the cello and the shrouded sculptures, nothing in the apartment revealed anything about this mysterious man. She knew very little about him except that he was a member of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

  One of the secrets Tristan guarded best—his past.

  He tucked his hair behind one ear and smiled over his shoulder. “Excellent. It's all I have.”

  Fool that she was, Holly wanted him, in her arms, inside her. Looking at him in his makeshift loincloth got her hot but, “Tristan, that woman is still in your bedroom.”

  “No.” He stiffened but kept pouring the Hennessey into two glasses. “I asked her to leave. She did so by the rear stairs. The metal fire escape. Hols, I reiterate, it's not what you think.”

  The sheet unknotted, glided to the floor. He faced her but didn't smile—at times she had to win Tristan's smile. As much as she should hate him, the heat of his gaze distilled anger to passion. Men like Tristan understood the power of beauty and charisma. The handsome devil was totally comfortable naked. His feel-good tool, hard and ready when he leaped from the bed, lay softly at rest but she knew how to wake it up. Like a knight in his satin skin, he drifted across the room and knelt to hand her a glass. Their eyes met over the rim and her breath caught. His smile, she thought, looked infinitely sad as he ran his hand over her hair.

  “Why?” The question burning her throat came out a breathless gasp.

  His eyes narrowed, and she'd have sworn on a stack of Bibles that they were black—sparked with red. “I promised to explain but first I want to show you something. I'd planned to wait until it was finished.” He smiled, and her heart broke all over again. “Needless to say, I'm not a patient man.”

  He set his glass on the floor and strode to the corner where his other love lived, and with a flourish, uncovered a bronze of a man and a woman entwined. “Recognize anyone?”

  “Oh my God, it's fabulous.” Holly jumped to her feet, cradling her glass to her breast. “So that's what you work on during the day when you are, I quote, not available.”

  “The woman is you.” His Irish accent and passionate gaze made her knees weak.

  “The man is you,” she whispered, and he nodded.

  So why had he sculpted them and screwed another woman. Anger flickered to life.

  “Come see.” He wriggled his fingers.

  “Later.” She placed her glass beside his, her gaze glued to the floor. “I gotta get going. Should have gone when I—” she ran out of breath, looked up, and squeaked.

  Tristan stood at her side, eyes crystal blue not black and red. Was she losing her mind or imagining the shift of eye color? Had she imagined the blood or was it real? The snapshot memory of what she'd seen haunted her. Something she should know or had forgotten fled beyond reach. Silence echoed in the vast room of hardwood floors and fancy Victorian molding. Lord, why didn't she grab her pride off the floor and bolt for the door?

  As he gently urged her down on the sofa, Tristan's hands on her shoulders fired a thousand sensations and emotions. He sat beside her, stretching his long legs in front of him. Both crystal brandy snifters remained untouched. He rested his head on the sofa, blue-black hair spilling over the back, and closed his eyes.

  His sigh echoed the sadness she'd glimpsed in his expression. “I didn’t have sex with her.”

  “You don't owe me any explanations.”

  His finger dented her lip. “You think I lied when I said I loved you. I didn’t lie. I do love you. Hols, you don't know how good for me you've been.”

  He shook his head, and she couldn't resist when he took her in his arms, pulling her close to his bare chest. His lips wandered over her hair, the indefinable scent of him—he never wore cologne—making her pleasantly dizzy…and weak with wanting.

  “I was lost when I came to Seattle,” he said, butterfly kisses wandering her face.

  When did I lose myself?

  A month ago, Holly had been named Photography magazine’s most promising newcomer. When she’d rented a downstairs apartment in the two-story Victorian, she’d been focused on her career. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected to fall into bed with her mysterious upstairs neighbor. Late for a shoot, she'd punched the up button instead of down, cursed as the elevator opened and the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen boarded. She wanted to suck the lower lip of his smile. Brass gates of the refurbished Victorian elevator swung closed. And Holly fell in love at first sight.

  Romantic, Black Irish Tristan was just her style, the archetypal artiste. The fiery musician and the zealous photographer seemed a match made in heaven until she’d stumbled into hell a few minutes ago.

  Tristan spoke softly, perhaps to himself. “I was running from myself when I came to Seattle. I found you and truly believed I could become the man I desperately wished to be.”

  “You c
ouldn't be any better than you are.” Holly winced at the stupid confession but he stroked her back, comforting her like a child.

  “God knows, I never meant for this to happen again.” He held her away from him, his arms rigid. The lyrical Irish accent grew more pronounced. “I’m sorry you saw what you saw. I promise I wasn't cheating on you.” He rubbed his forehead as if he could erase a memory then embraced her tightly again. “But unfortunately I can't tell you what was really happening.”

  She gasped. Tristan had literally disappeared from her arms, reappeared by the window. In profile, he looked like an angry ancient god. From the apartment next door, Ravel's sensual Bolero and the sounds of lovemaking wove through the utter stillness.

  “Love. . . is rare in my life. I didn’t wish to lose it yet again.” His voice was part of the throbbing melody. “But I am what I am.”

  Holly hated to be the one left behind. At any faint sign of goodbye, she jumped to shore, waved bon voyage before the boat sailed from dock. This time, her heart screamed, “Stay,” but Tristan spoke in past tense. Whatever it had been, it was over.

  His last four words penetrated her misery. For a couple of stuttering heartbeats, she stared at him in shock. Fear invaded her fantasy world. The image of a pale motionless figure, blood oozing from her throat, blinded Holly and a hard shudder rolled over her.

  “What you are? What are you, Tristan? What did you do to that woman besides—”

  He whirled, his eyes glowing in the dark. “You don't want to know what I am.” A muscle in his sculpted jaw twitched. “But perhaps you should.”

  No doubt about it, he'd made a critical decision. Dread, fear, her non-existent sixth sense—something whispered a warning.

  Holly leapt to her feet.

  Fangs dented the bottom lip of the most beautiful, evil smile she’d ever seen.

  She clamped her hands to her face, covering her eyes. “God, no, you can't be. There's no such thing.”