Any Way You Want It (29 page)

He took another step back from her. He was doing it again, allowing himself to believe that he could have this woman. That her acceptance of his vampirism was all he needed to allow him happiness, love.

But being a lampir was never the problem. Not really. It was his curse, and that he couldn’t control.

He had to find a way to make her fall out of love with him. It was the only way to save her. The only way to ensure that the woman he loved remained safe.

“Maggie, this is a lot for me.” He didn’t have to lie about that. “I know that sounds really stupid, considering that you just discovered the man you’ve been sleeping with for the past week is actually 223 years old.”

“Is that how old you are?” Again, she didn’t sound upset. Just curious. Amazed.

“Yes.”

“Who made you a vampire?”

Ren stared at her for a moment. Her calm curiosity really was unnerving. Which did seem a little strange, given that he should be the one freaking her out.

“My mother,” he admitted. “And she made me a lampir, actually.”

Maggie seemed stunned by that. “Really?”

“Yes,” he said. “Maggie—”

“Is that why you hate her?”

His mouth snapped shut at her question. This really wasn’t going well.

“In part,” he answered, then attempted to move on. To buy some time until he could think of what to do. It really was impossible to think with Maggie here. “Maggie?”

“Was your father really the Duke of Ashfordshire?”

Ren nodded, growing a tad frustrated. He had no idea Maggie could be so tenacious.

“And he never accepted you as his son?”

“No.”

Maggie shook her head, clearly disgusted. “That’s terrible.”

For a moment, her irritation with his illegitimate father blotted out his own frustration, filling the air around them with warmth. Acceptance.

Damn, she made him feel good. Really good.

He straightened. Get a friggin’ grip. He needed to stay focused. He needed to protect her.

“Maggie?”

This time, she actually seemed to listen to him.

“Yes?”

“I know this sounds really strange, given what you know about me, but I need a little while to figure out how to deal with this.”

Maggie didn’t seem to find it strange at all. She nodded. “Okay. Do you want me to wait for you back at your place?”

He wanted to say no. Knowing she was there waiting for him was just too much of a temptation.

He liked her being there far too much. Of course, whose fault was it that she was staying there with him? She really had nowhere else to go.

Not to mention, she was literally in danger. He shouldn’t allow her out of his sight. He couldn’t.

What if the curse happened, and he wasn’t even there to attempt to save her? Like with Annalise.

He had been with Nancy, but he’d been no help. He couldn’t send Maggie away.

There was no choice but for her to stay here. He had to keep an eye on her while he found a solution. A way to make her fall out of love.

There had to be a way to do that—although the thought of hurting her killed him. But heartache she’d get over. And then she’d be safe from him, safe from this goddamned curse.

“Come back inside,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

No. He wasn’t sure about anything. But he nodded.

When they went back inside, the Impalers were playing. Dave, the bassist, had taken the mic.

Ren could easily just take the night off again. It wasn’t as if the band really cared. The owner cared more, but he wouldn’t be that concerned. To be honest, it was a pretty quiet night.

But Ren couldn’t deal with Maggie yet. And his only chance to get any thinking done was to go back on stage.

He walked her over to a vacant high-top table and waited with her while she got settled. She smiled at him when she was done. He must have sported a concerned look, because she touched his face again in a way that made him want to nuzzle against her open palm. Not a familiar feeling for a man who prided himself on being removed from emotions.

“Don’t worry,” she said.

Easy for her to say, but he nodded, turning to head back to the stage. He had to worry enough for both of them. And he had to think of some way to save her.

Maggie watched Ren as he waited at the edge of the stage for the song to end. Then he took the mic again. Tonight he didn’t look at her as he performed, and she got the feeling he simply couldn’t.

Was he ashamed of what he was? Why should he be? After all, his mother turned him into a vampire. Or, what was the word he used? A lampir.

She kept waiting for fear and even disgust to hit her. She was seeing a vampire—or a lampir, for heaven’s sake. But neither emotion appeared. She couldn’t see him as a monster or an aberration. He was just Ren. The man who made her feel sexy and smart and talented and protected. The man who was everything she’d ever wanted in a man.

Did that make her weird? She smiled to herself. She didn’t feel weird. She felt in love—and while that was pretty different, she didn’t see it as strange.

Ren lifted the mic, belting out a portion of the lyrics, his voice raw with emotion.

She knew he was shaken, and she could understand why. After all, she’d managed to figure out his secret. She had the feeling not many people had.

But his secret was safe with her. He had to know that.

She just wanted the chance to love Ren. She didn’t care who he had once been. She just wanted the man he was now. The one who’d never hurt her. She knew that, deep inside.

“Dude, you’ve got to stop letting your woman come here,” Drake said with a sigh and a shake of his head. “She way frigs up your concentration.”

Ren couldn’t deny that. If he only knew how to get rid of her. He suppressed a groan. Just imagining her gone was hell. But he had to, he had to come up with a plan to drive her away. A plan to make her hate him.

He suggested a song—“My Own Worst Enemy” by Lit—then he tried to juggle the lyrics and his own thoughts.

What could he do that would make her hate him?

Just then, the redhead from a few nights earlier entered the bar. She immediately tried to catch his attention, pausing at the edge of the stage, her fingers curling around the railing.

He absently acknowledged her, and she grinned back. A broad, inviting smile. One that stated exactly what she’d like to do with him.

He ignored the grin, until realization hit him. What was the one thing that Maggie would never forgive? What would kill every emotion she had for him, dead?

He glanced at Maggie. She smiled at him, her own smile as inviting as the redhead’s—just in a more lovely and generous way. A way so deserving of love.

For a moment, he shoved his plot aside. He couldn’t hurt her like that. Then he glanced out the window at the symbol of his past mistakes. The hotel. His mistakes that were unforgivable.

Annalise had died because of loving him. He couldn’t let that happen to Maggie. He loved her far too much.

His eyes locked with Maggie’s once more. Pain so crippling that it stole his breath shot through him. But then he refocused on the redhead. He had to do this.

He had to find a mistake that Maggie couldn’t possibly forgive. A “mistake” that would kill any love Maggie felt for him.

He smiled down at the redhead, putting as much open interest into the look as he could.

Maggie turned on the faucet in the women’s restroom. The rust-stained porcelain and gunk-caked knobs hardly gave a person the sense of truly cleaning one’s hands. But given what the bathroom stalls looked like, she had to attempt some sort of cleanliness.

Of course, she’d actually come into the filthy bathroom to do exactly what the facility was meant for—unlike the couple who’d come in after her and now held residence in one of the other stalls.

She turned to glance in the direction of the gray pen-and marker-scrawled door. At the moment, all she heard was the occasional shift of bodies, small breaths and moans, and soft giggles.

Maggie raised an eyebrow. She was insanely hot for Ren, but this bathroom was the last place she’d want to do that with him.

A low moan, definitely feminine, echoed through the filthy room. Maggie glanced that way again, seeing a black patent-leather, four-inch sandal in the space under the stall door.

Maggie shook her head, but had to smile. Okay, maybe, if Ren was very, very persuasive, she’d risk the filth to be with him here. But he’d really have to beg.

She laughed at that, then returned her attention to washing her hands.

She caught her reflection in the dirty mirror. Touching her hair, she realized that she hadn’t even had a shower this morning. She’d been in such a hurry to go research Renaldo D’Antoni that she hadn’t gotten to her usual ablutions. And then with what she’d learned—well it wasn’t too surprising she hadn’t thought of showering.

She fiddled with her wavy locks a little longer, then gave up. Given what she had discovered, she supposed she didn’t look too bad.

Again the couple in the stall made noise. This time a low, very masculine moan joined the female one.

“Oh, yeah, baby,” the woman whispered.

Maggie blinked at the door, then decided she’d shared the room with the amorous couple long enough. Once she started to hear their actual dialogue, she was getting far too involved.

Quietly, she opened the door—not that people who decided to shag in a public restroom were concerned with privacy. Still, Maggie felt the need to afford them a little.

The dance floor was only filled with ten or fifteen revelers, grinding and gyrating to the DJ’s music. Maybe another six or seven people lined the bar, but otherwise the place was empty. And the band was on break.

Good, maybe Ren was feeling better and they could talk a little.

Maggie wandered toward the stage, seeing the drummer and the bass player still up there. The rest of the band members had disappeared, Ren included.

She stepped outside onto the sidewalk. Often the band went out to grab a breath of air, and she suspected that was where Ren waited. The two other guitarists were out there, leaning on the wall, chatting. But still no Ren.

She cast a look around the street, thinking maybe he decided to take a little stroll. She knew he was shaken by the fact that she’d pieced together who he really was. Which hadn’t actually been that difficult. It was a wonder someone else hadn’t figured it out before this.

A warm wave washed over her, adding to the flush that the humid air had already created on her skin. She knew she was the only human who knew the truth about him. She’d seen it in his eyes.

She couldn’t say why or how, but she’d sensed it in him, as if the truth was radiating off his body and she could “read” it.

The fact that this was their secret was thrilling to her. Thrilling and significant. She wasn’t as sure about Ren’s feelings for her, however. She did believe he cared for her, and that his true nature was what was holding him back from allowing things to deepen between them. But he hadn’t told her what he felt. He hadn’t used the “1 word” as she had—not that he’d heard her. But she did feel that he could love her. It might just take a while. After all, he hadn’t allowed love for so long.

“You looking for Ren?” the guitarist with the goatee and shaved head asked.

She nodded. “Yes. I thought maybe he came out here.”

The guitarist shook his head. “Not that I’ve seen. Last time I saw him he was talking with the red

—”

The other guitarist, the one she’d never heard speak, elbowed the chatty one. The gesture, of course, put Maggie on alert.

Red? She considered that. The redhead. Oh, Maggie had noticed the woman from the other night had returned to the bar. Maggie had seen her leaning on the stage. She was hard to miss in her four-inch-high heels and skintight animal-print dress. This time a tiger print. She apparently favored exotic cats in her wardrobe.

Maggie had also noted that Ren was paying a little attention to her. But she had thought it was because she was indeed hard to miss. She also knew Ren was avoiding her; he was having a hard time with her knowing the truth, and Maggie understood that.

But Ren had been talking to the redhead? And had gone somewhere with her, obviously.

Suddenly she recalled the glimpses of feet under the stall door of the bathroom. High heels—

ones she recognized. Worn with a tiger-print dress.

Without thinking over what she would do, what she would say if her suspicions were true, she rushed back to the women’s restroom.

When she shoved open the door, she was greeted by the sounds of moans, the wet smacks of deep kisses. Revulsion washed over her. At least she hoped they were wet kisses.

And God, please God, don’t let it be Ren in there with the redhead.

She hesitated at the stall door, then reached out a trembling hand and pushed. The gray, graffiti-covered door opened easily.

Her first limited glimpse revealed the woman pinned against the wall, her dress hiked up around her waist, her head flung back, auburn hair cascading around her, her red lips parted. The picture of wanton lust.

Then Maggie’s gaze turned to the man, his head at her neck, kissing her. His hand between her thighs, his own shirt pushed down around his arms to reveal broad, muscled shoulders and back.

Even as Maggie stared at the man, at the long chestnut hair reaching the middle of his back, she told herself it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Ren.

Then he moved, kneeling down in front of the woman until his face was level with her…

He flipped his hair, and she saw Ren’s tattoo. Cards, aces and eights. Right between his shoulder blades.

The dead man’s hand.

Maggie stared at the flesh and ink, feeling like she was the one who’d died. Was dying.

Nausea hit her, and she shoved a hand to her mouth, trying to hold back the wretched feeling.

But she couldn’t hold back the wretched sound that escaped her lips.

Ren turned. His hazel eyes met hers. She heard the other woman make a shocked cry, but Maggie couldn’t tear her eyes away from Ren to see her reaction.