Authors: A. C. James
Fallen Ever After
Table of Contents
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2014, A.C. James
(Wandering Impulse Press)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means; electronic or mechanical including photography, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
Cover art designed by Ramona Lockwood.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Diane Peters and Kathy Kulig for their critiques. I’d also like to dedicate this book to Vikki Jankowski and Amy L. Gale for their friendship and support. Oh, hell. I dedicate this book to all the gals of the Pocono-Lehigh Romance Writers who’ve supported my writing and have become my friends!
Acknowledgments
And I’d like to thank Alexis Arendt as my editor.
Chapter 1
Having an eternity to figure things out is a really long time. It seemed like a good advantage to have, since I was only twenty-two, but that was before things got messy. Really messy. On the other hand, adjusting to being a vampire and everything that went with it would have been more difficult if not for the fact that I’d dealt with having the Sight my whole life. Freakish, supernatural occurrences were an everyday thing in my world long before I met Arie Cush.
The afternoon sun filtered through the bedroom window of the loft as I shifted in Arie’s arms. It had been a week since Katarina’s death—a week since I’d become a vampire through some strange twist of magic that I still couldn’t wrap my head around. Killing Katarina had killed us both, except now I was a vampire. Not a small side-effect.
I studied Arie’s face while he slept. He had a face that I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of looking at. A dark curl fell across his forehead; I wanted to reach out and brush it back, but I didn’t want to wake him. His eyes, had they been open, would have been a somber gray, and his lips did unimaginable things to me. Just thinking about it made my thighs tingle. Throughout the week he’d been patient as I adapted to my new life as a vampire, as a Night Walker.
Or at least that’s the ancient term that Victoria used, even though bloodstone made it possible for vampires to withstand the sun. I could walk in the daylight as long as I wore the ring that Arie had given me. But he’d explained that ‘Night Walker’ had been a superstitious term that villagers used in Victoria’s time. I twisted the bloodstone wrapped around my ring finger. One day I hoped Arie would give me a different sort of ring, that I’d wear on an entirely different finger. I sighed. I doubted that would ever happen, given his tumultuous history with Katarina.
Katarina is dead. And I’m here now.
But I wondered how he felt about me killing the woman he once loved. Still, it
was
self-defense and she
had
terrorized the entire city. She was a whole different kind of crazy. I hoped her memory wouldn’t haunt us, but it had me thinking maybe we should slow down. We’d been thrown into a living situation that neither of us was ready for. Now that my life wasn’t at stake and I could protect myself, there wasn’t any reason to rush. My heartbeat quickened at the thought of disappointing him. I couldn’t help feeling just a little bit guilty over killing his crazy-ass ex, even if I didn’t have a choice. It was me or her. And I chose her.
His chest rose and fell with the steady rhythm of his breathing. “Holly…you know it’s not polite to watch someone while they’re sleeping.”
His eyes were still shut but the hint of a smile curved his mouth. God, he was sexy as sin and twice as wicked. The word for Arie was hot with a capital ‘h.’
“How did you know I was watching you?”
Arie’s eyes fluttered open. “I could hear your pulse quicken. I can only imagine what dirty thoughts are running through that pretty little head of yours. What are you thinking?”
Warmth flooded my cheeks and my pussy clenched just from the sound of his raspy voice. “I was thinking it’s Saturday, so it’ll be busy at the club.”
I lied rather than deal with a subject that would be difficult for him to hear. That insecure part of me wondered whether we’d stay together, because we’d been tossed into a dangerous situation and he’d only wanted me in first place because I looked like
her
. But that was over now. Besides, the world didn’t stop spinning just because Arie and I had been wrapped up in one another, cocooned in the loft since the night of the gala. The night I’d killed Katerina and everything had changed.
“Holly,” Arie said in a stern voice. “You know Tessa said to take all the time you need.”
“I know. It’s just that I need something that resembles normalcy after everything that’s happened. A distraction might be good for me. Besides, I can’t stay in bed with you forever.”
Arie laughed. “And what’s wrong with that? You really think going to the club will bring you a sense of normalcy? You’re joking, right?”
I couldn’t help but grin back at him.
The Hellfire Club operated as an underground BDSM sex club upstairs and a Goth club downstairs. But that was the very normal, very human part, that hid Chicago’s playground for the supernatural right in plain sight.
And lying there with the sunlight streaming down on us, everything felt right. It felt natural, almost, after the nightmare that filled the previous months. Katarina had killed so many innocent people, and it took all my strength and embracing a magic I didn’t understand to stop her. Somehow I didn’t think the calm would last, and I wanted to enjoy every minute of it while it did.
Reaching out, I grazed Arie’s cheek with the back of my hand. He caught the back of my knuckles with a kiss that made my breath catch in my throat. “I want to see how Victoria is doing. I haven’t seen her since the night of the gala. You said she’s been asking about me.”
Every detail of the night of the gala, the night that I died, would be etched in my memory forever.
“Did you forget? She stopped by and helped me decorate the tree—helped me plan the scavenger hunt?”
I blushed. “Oh, right. I forgot she stopped by, but I had a good reason to be distracted.”
Arie’s eyes darkened with desire. After he’d almost lost me, it didn’t take much to get the blood pumping in our cold, dead veins. A look or a touch, even one as chaste as brushing his cheek or kissing my knuckles, could end with us falling into bed. Then we’d make love until the sun came up and sleep until noon.
But I’d died.
Arie didn’t bring me back as a vampire. Some strange mystical exchange happened. Maybe because Katarina drank my blood and then I’d used Rue’s words to summon magic and by some lucky accident I’d defeated her—like Dorothy dropping a house on the Wicked Witch of the West. The happy accident had worked out. Well, mostly, if you ignored the fact that I was a real-life-blood-sucking-vampire.
Death had drawn us closer together. Gone was the moody and brooding vampire I’d fallen in love with. We were both mad about each other. I got under his skin almost as bad as he got under mine. His sexy scavenger hunt over the holidays had ended with a multitude of mind-blowing orgasms and Arie giving me a promise ring. I could wait for more, because I knew what that meant to him—what a huge step it was. In that one gesture he promised me forever. It made me feel happy and scared all at the same time.