Blood Ties Bundle: Blood Ties Book One: The Turning / Blood Ties Book Two: Possession / Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes to Ashes / Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night

I laughed, until I realized he was serious. “Well, I’d feel overdressed, for one.”

“No one would mention it.” His champagne flute dangled from the tips of his fingers as he leaned back in his chair. “It befits your station.”

I huffed in annoyance. “My station. Because you said you could make me a queen, right?”

“I can’t make you a queen, that was a bit of a fib. More like a princess.” He made the remark without a hint of humor. “You’ve read The Sanguinarius?”

“Only about half of it. My copy was lost when my apartment burned down.”

“A pity. So, if I mentioned the name Jacob Seymour, you’d have no idea who I was speaking of?” Cyrus’s eyes were fixed on my face, as if he were trying to register something in my reaction.

He’d find nothing there. “No clue at all. Why, is he someone important?”

“Yes, you could say so. He was my father.”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I merely waited for him to continue.

“My father was not a powerful man in life. He was an old man with two wives in the grave and ten grown children when he was turned. We were serfs, what you call peasants now. We farmed land owned by a wealthy lord and tithed most of our profit to the Crown.”

“In England?” I took a sip from my glass, enjoying the effects of light-headedness from the champagne and satiation from the blood mixed with it.

Cyrus nodded. “The vampire who sired my father did so on the condition that he use all the powers gifted to him to grow strong and overcome those who would rule him. Father took it quite literally. First, he killed the noble family who enslaved us. Then he killed and fed from his sire, and finally, one by one, he sought out those of our kind already in existence. The oldest, the strongest, the most fearsome. My father slew them all. He drank their blood and stole their power.

“And then, of his seven living sons, he chose the one he felt was the most ruthless and calculating, and he sired him.”

Cyrus straightened in his chair, pride transforming his face. “And while my brother slept, on the first day of his new vampire life, I killed him and stole his blood.” He paused, and his brows furrowed as if he were trying to remember something. “Then I stabbed him in the heart and took a handful of his ashes to my father to show him what I’d done. That I deserved the place I’d been denied.”

My heart racing, I reached for my glass and drank half of it down before I could speak again. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because my father has now successfully killed all the oldest known vampires. He is the leader of our kind.” Though he said this in all seriousness, he shrugged it off rather quickly. “His blood runs in mine, and my blood runs in yours. We are royalty, Carrie.”

I looked around helplessly as a tremor of—was that paternal affection?—passed across the blood tie.

“So, in a roundabout way, what I’m saying is that there’s good reason for you to wear the dress again.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I breathed.

A new, frightening possibility entered my mind. What if Cyrus wasn’t the man I thought he was at all, but merely a pawn under his father’s control? How much of the evil he inflicted on others originated from his own brain? He’d been a vampire for so long now, perhaps he couldn’t remember what it was like to be free from the blood tie.

Cocking his head, Cyrus regarded me with the amused smile of a man viewing a prize that was nearly his. “My God, but you’re lovely.”

The sentiment was a bit too heartfelt to sit comfortably with me. “Why do you say things like that?”

He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Because I mean them.”

I filed his words away under “Ploys to Disarm Me.”

He nodded to Clarence, and the butler stepped forward to clear the table.

Still hungry, I handed my glass over with some reluctance. “Are we finished?”

Cyrus stood and moved to take my hand. “No. This was just an appetizer. Now we’re on to the main course.”

He stepped behind me and covered my eyes with his hands. The feeling of him so close, his body brushing against my back as he led me from the room, set my nerve endings on fire.

“Where are we going?” I asked as if I didn’t know the answer.

“Look,” he whispered as he removed his hands.

A huge bed on a raised dais dominated the room. Elegant curtains of sheer gold-and-cream fabric hung from the dark wood canopy, and in the center lay a young man, bound, gagged and shirtless.

Although his hair was clean and trimmed, and he wore trousers instead of jeans, I recognized him immediately.

Ziggy.

“He’s for you.” Cyrus walked over to the bed and held his hand out to me.

Don’t react, I urged myself, picturing a brick wall in an attempt to keep Cyrus from seeing my thoughts. Pretend you don’t know him. Deny you’ve ever met him. Just don’t do anything to endanger him.

But my panic clearly transferred through the blood tie. His face full of concern, Cyrus moved from my side. “He’s completely harmless.”

Ziggy’s eyes were wide, pupils dilated, but he didn’t struggle. I stepped closer. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Drugged.” Cyrus sat on the edge of the bed and motioned for me to join him. “They tend to gain strength when fighting for their lives, and I wanted tonight to be perfect.”

I stepped up cautiously, trying to cloak my thoughts from Cyrus while I frantically willed Ziggy not to show any sign of recognition.

Was it possible Cyrus didn’t know who this was? It would be unlike him not to gloat about his prize, especially after the way he’d acted this morning. But it made no sense for Ziggy to be in the mansion at all.

“Who is he?” I croaked, fervently praying Cyrus didn’t already know the answer.

To my immense relief, he yawned and reached up to unbind his hair. “I don’t know. Some runaway. He showed up here a few hours ago. Isn’t he breathtaking?”

The day before I wouldn’t have exactly agreed with that statement, but groomed and divested of his various piercings and odd metal jewelry, Ziggy recalled a Renaissance portrait of youthful, male beauty.

Hesitantly, I climbed onto the bed. “Why is he here?”

“For you to feed from, dearest,” Cyrus answered distractedly as he popped off his cuff links and shook out his sleeves.

“But he’s conscious.”

My mouth went a little dry as I watched Cyrus work the buttons of his shirt. “Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? No fun drinking from a victim who can’t feel it. But you’ll have to hurry. The paralytic will wear off soon.”

I frowned. Paralyzing drugs were nothing to trifle with. Ziggy could die of suffocation if his lungs were affected. In the guise of lazily stroking his chest, I measured the rise and fall of the flesh beneath my hand. His respiration was labored, but not seriously. “He can’t be too paralyzed if he’s breathing.”

Cyrus reached for me over Ziggy’s body, tracing a line up my arm, over my shoulder, to my neck. He pulled me forward. I rose on my knees and braced my hands against the smooth, cold skin of his chest beneath his open shirt.

I heard Ziggy’s blood moving faster and faster through his veins between us. I remembered the rich taste of his blood and my stomach growled. Another hunger sprang to life in me, an ache that grew as Cyrus pushed my hair aside. He pressed his mouth to my neck, grazing his teeth over the surface.