Mistress of the Underground Read online

  Chapter 12

  Sebastian winced as Ben pulled the needle through his skin, pulling closed the gaping wound over his ribs. A curse slipped out of his clenched teeth.

  “Hold still,” Ben admonished him. “You’re going to be damn lucky if this doesn’t get infected.”

  He’d gotten damn lucky that Paige hadn’t noticed the blood seeping through his makeshift bandage or she would have insisted he go to the hospital. And the bright sunlight would have done him more damage than the sharp point of the wooden stake had.

  Another sharp point of the needle jabbed through his skin again. “Son of a bitch…”

  “Hey, you’ve never met my mother,” Ben said with a short chuckle but no humor.

  Because Sebastian had checked out the man with whom his daughter had fallen in love, he knew all about Ben’s past. Dr. Davison had only made the comment to distract Sebastian from the pain he was never quite able to numb him from feeling. “I know what you’re doing and that your mother is dead.”

  Ben sighed. “My first failure…”

  “You were ten when she died,” Sebastian said, frustrated with how much responsibility Ben took on himself. But then some people had to make up for men like him, who’d never take on their own responsibilities. “You grew up in foster homes after that. Then group homes when you got older.”

  Although his hands remained steady as he worked, Ben lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  It hadn’t been that good, either, Sebastian suspected, but yet Ben had grown up strong, smart and ambitious. He would have been a good husband and father…if not for Sebastian screwing that all up for him…and for Paige.

  Trouble was the last thing he’d intended to cause his daughter when he sought her out. He’d only wanted to be part of her life. And to protect her. He grimaced, but it had nothing to do with the needle pulling his skin. “Seems like we’re making a habit of this….”

  “Me sewing you up?” Ben asked, then nodded. “Yeah, it’s a bad habit. So you didn’t get a look at who was waiting in Paige’s condo?”

  “No.” Rage throbbed along with the pain of Sebastian’s cuts and bruises. “I got jumped in the dark.” By someone brandishing a damn wooden stake. “Like Paige, I had no idea if it was a man or woman or…”

  “Beast?”

  The Underground didn’t consist of just the secret vampire society; other creatures existed there and had sought Ben’s medical help in the past.

  Thinking of some of the werewolves and shape-shifters Sebastian had met during his many, many years living in the Underground, he shuddered in revulsion. “I’m just glad I dropped Paige at your house before coming home.”

  “Because they were really after her.”

  Dread tied Sebastian’s stomach into knots. “It looks that way.” He’d hoped it was him—that the flowers and the damage to the car had all been warnings to him. But after she’d been attacked in her office, it appeared that Paige was really the one in danger.

  “How the hell are we going to keep her safe?” Ben asked. “She’s too stubborn to listen to reason. She won’t stop coming around here.” With the needle still in his hand, he gestured toward the locked door that opened onto the back hallway of the club.

  “No, she won’t,” Sebastian agreed. “The only way we can keep her safe is to stick close to her.”

  A muscle twitched along Ben’s tightly clenched jaw. “I can’t…”

  “She had me drop her off at your place last night,” Sebastian reminded his friend. “She may say she wants you to stay away from her, but she doesn’t really want that.”

  “She’s not the reason I can’t stick close to her,” Ben said.

  “Then I don’t understand….” Because he knew the man still loved Paige—that he had never stopped.

  “I can’t because of you,” the doctor explained. “You and them. I wasn’t there for her the last time she needed me. Because I have to come every time one of you—one of them—calls.”

  “I’m sorry.” No matter how many times he said it…his guilt never lessened. Because the damn words made no difference; they couldn’t change what had happened, they couldn’t bring back everything that Ben had lost.

  All Sebastian could do was try to make sure that Ben lost nothing more—not Paige’s life or his own.

  When they’d been married, she’d invited Ben to Happy Hour several times, but he had never been able to make the time to meet her friends. Then. What the hell was he doing here now?

  She had been too busy, working back in the office, to realize that her friends had arrived and had taken the table in the quiet corner. But Ben was there. And it didn’t look quiet, as everyone had their heads thrown back, laughing.

  At what? Her?

  Had to be over her because Ben had never told anything but lame jokes. How could such a brilliant man have such a limited sense of humor? Well, he had to have one fault. Not that her friends, the traitorous bitches who fawned over him, found any fault with him. Not even Kate, who Paige had thought considered him public enemy number one. Well, maybe not public enemy, just Paige’s enemy. And what about Lizzy, whose hand lay on Ben’s arm? Where had Paige’s divorce lawyer’s loyalty gone?

  She could understand Renae laughing, since Ben was her superior at the hospital. Dr. Grabill might want to make a good impression. But the other women…Paige had thought better of them. They had never gone all giggly and giddy over a man before, any man. That was why they were Paige’s friends.

  She walked straight over to that usually quiet booth. When she joined them, the laughter died down as everyone turned to her.

  “Paige, join us,” Ben, the interloper, invited. “Unless you’re tending bar now?”

  She shook her head and held up her water bottle. “No, just grabbing a drink.”

  “You look good on that side of the bar,” he remarked. His dark eyes flared with desire as he shared the memory with her, of the two of them making love on the hard, polished surface.

  Her face heated, her nipples hardening beneath the thin silk of the red blouse she wore with a black velvet skirt and knee-high leather boots.

  “Ben, what are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I’ve been getting to know your friends,” he said, flashing his wide grin at the women sitting around him.

  Paige was more concerned with their getting to know him. But the buzz of the beeper in his shirt pocket allayed her fears. “You have to go,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  He winked at her, obviously aware that she wasn’t. “Yes, I have to go.”

  His new fan club uttered protests at his leaving. “Oh, you haven’t been here very long.”

  Paige inwardly grimaced at their remarks even while she held on to her smile. “Maybe he can come back another time,” she suggested.

  Like when hell froze over.

  “Please stick close to her, Kate,” he implored the brunette, dropping his voice so only the detective, who sat on the end of the booth near him, and Paige could hear. “She refuses to be careful.”

  She couldn’t argue with him, because if she was being careful, she would avoid him at all costs.

  When Ben stood up, his body brushed hers, and he whispered in her ear, “I’ll see you later.”

  She lifted a brow, challenging his claim.

  “Naked,” he promised, then asked, “In my bed or yours?”

  Her breath caught in her lungs. Helpless to resist her attraction to him, she answered him in a voice husky with desire. “Mine.”

  “Staking claim?” Campbell asked, as all the women watched Ben walk away. But they weren’t the only ones watching him. Everyone in the club followed him with their eyes—his broad shoulders, his long strides—the man had more than sex appeal. He was magnetic; no wonder Paige couldn’t stay away from him.

  She blinked. “What?”

  “You called him mine.”

  She shook her head, then settled into the booth next to Elizabeth. “Not anym
ore. Lizzy helped me take care of that four years ago.”

  “He doesn’t hold it against me,” Lizzy said, “thank goodness.”

  “I can’t believe you divorced Dr. Davison,” Renae said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “Couples have many reasons for getting divorced,” admitted the divorce lawyer.

  Campbell nodded. “A lot more reasons to get divorced than to get married. Especially when it’s so hard to figure out who it’s safe to trust.”

  Kate’s lips lifted into a small smile. “I had to tell them what was going on with you, Paige, so that I could find out if they’d noticed anything suspicious.”

  The other women started peppering her with questions about her investigation. Paige was almost relieved to discuss the scary incidents that had happened. She would much rather talk about her stalker than Ben.

  “You really impressed my friends tonight,” Paige said as she collapsed onto Ben’s chest, slick with perspiration, boneless with satisfaction. Just as he’d promised, he’d been waiting in her bed, naked, when she’d come home from the club. And she’d quickly joined him.

  “What about you?” he asked between ragged breaths, his chest pushing against her breasts as it rose and fell.

  She pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “I think you know how much you impress me.”

  He rubbed his hand over her naked back, kneading her shoulders. “And if you impressed me any more, Paige, I’d be dead.”

  “Heart surgeon dies from heart attack,” she mused, repeating his remarks from the other day, but, of course, she left off the “brilliant” part. “Talk about irony.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “let’s talk about irony, like two divorced people who can’t get enough of each other.”

  Enough. That was what she needed to call this.

  “We are divorced,” she said, hoping that if she kept repeating it, she might remember. “So I’d understand if you didn’t want to spend so much time with me.”

  His hands stilled on her back, then moved up and around to cup her face. “Paige?”

  “What I—I mean,” she stammered, and she never stammered, “if you’ve been seeing someone else…”

  “When?” He lowered his brows, as if trying to figure out when he would have managed that. “You know how my job is. It’s amazing I find as much time to be with you as I do.”

  “That’s what I mean,” she said, “that I shouldn’t be taking up all your free time.”

  He sighed, both wearily and wistfully. “I wished I’d spent more time with you when we were married.”

  Then they might still be married? She hoped he didn’t believe that…even if he might be right.

  “We both have regrets,” Paige admitted, closing her eyes as all hers washed over her again.

  “Let’s talk about those,” he urged.

  She shook her head, pulling it free from his hands. “No. That’s the past. There’s no sense in rehashing all that.”

  He obviously didn’t agree, as he opened his mouth to argue, “Paige—”

  She laid her fingers across his lips. “I want to talk about now, about how it’s not fair that you’re spending all your time with me.” When he’d probably be much happier with someone, with anyone, else. “Don’t feel that you have to—”

  “Paige, I want to.”

  “Because you think I’m in danger.” She pressed a kiss to his jaw, which was so tense a muscle twitched in his cheek. “It’s sweet that you want to protect me, but it’s not fair to you that I’m taking all your free time.”

  “Even without the stalker, I’d want to spend all my free time with you, Paige.” He tipped up her chin and pressed his kiss to her lips.

  Moved by his words, she felt her heart shudder. Against his mouth, she murmured, “Oh, Ben…”

  Her nipples hardened, brushing against the soft hair on his chest as she breathed deep through her nose, her mouth molded to his. His tongue slipped through her lips, sliding over hers, teasing, tasting.

  She moaned and shifted, brushing just the tips of her breasts against his chest, tormenting them both. She parted her legs, so that her heat rubbed against his erection.

  “I can’t believe you want me again,” she murmured as she slid her lips from his, over his jaw, down his throat.

  “Always.” He worked his hands, his clever, healing hands, between their bodies.

  He pushed her until she sat up, straddling him. Then his palms cupped her breasts, massaging them while his thumbs flicked back and forth across her sensitive nipples. He rose up, just enough, that he could close his mouth over one of the peaks, tugging with his lips and teeth until she convulsed and shuddered, an orgasm spilling from her.

  Beneath her, his cock became hot and hard. She eased up and closed her hand over him. She rubbed the glistening tip of his erection against her clit. She bit her lip, trying to hold in a moan, as another orgasm ripped through her. “Ben…”

  “Let me in, Paige,” he beseeched her, his cock throbbing in her hand.

  She slid the length of him inside her. Her muscles closed around him, holding him tight. Then she rose up, riding him up and down.

  His hands closed over her hips, lifting and slamming her back down, while his mouth continued to feast on her breasts.

  She bit her lip again, but she couldn’t hold in the moan, “Ben…”

  “Say my name,” he ordered her.

  “Ben…”

  His hand moved between them, his fingers stroking over her clit. Her toes curled as her inner muscles convulsed, and an intense orgasm tore through her. She reached behind her butt, sliding her hand up his inner thigh, touching him.

  He groaned and shouted her name as he came. He stiffened and shuddered, then collapsed back on the bed.

  Paige melted onto his heaving chest.

  “Paige,” he murmured sleepily, his lips lifted in a small, satisfied smile.

  She pushed her hair out of her face, lifting her head to meet his gaze. But his eyes were closed, his chest moving more easily now as his breathing relaxed. And he slept.

  In her bed.

  It wasn’t fair. She needed to tell him that they had no future, only a past that bound them so tightly they weren’t quite able to walk away.

  But Paige knew telling him to leave now would be pointless. Until the stalker was caught, he was determined to stick close to her, to protect her. But who would protect her from him…from getting her heart broken once the stalker was caught and he left again?

  Chapter 13

  His pulse racing, Ben pulled back the curtain in the Emergency Room. Because he had braced himself for the worst, he drew a sigh of relief at finding Paige sitting atop the gurney.

  “What happened?” he asked, unable to completely relax even though she was conscious. “Why are you here?”

  She gestured toward her throat.

  “Oh, God, you were attacked again?” But she was alive—did that mean that she would always be alive? That she’d been turned?

  Yet he doubted she’d be conscious, then. The line between being turned into an undead and being dead was a very fine line—one few mortals had successfully crossed. Or else the society would not have remained as secret as it had for all these centuries.

  “No.” Paige shook her head. “Renae took out the stitches.” She furrowed her brow in confusion at his overreaction. “I’m fine.”

  His heart slowed. “I heard you were here, and I…”

  “…expected the worst?” she asked.

  “That’s been the case lately.”

  Hurt flashed in her blue eyes. “Has it?”

  “Except for us,” he said. With as close as they’d been lately, he’d begun to believe that they might be able to try again—and make their relationship work.

  But as he noted the faint scar on her neck, he reminded himself that wasn’t possible. He knew something she could never learn. And with the secret between them, they could have nothing else.

  “Us?” she asked, the confusio
n remaining on her face and in the depths of those bright blue eyes. “We’re not an us anymore. If we ever were…”

  “We were,” he insisted. “We were happy.”

  “We were busy,” she said. “You with your medicine. Me with my law practice. I’ve changed.” She uttered an ironic chuckle. “Not by choice.”

  “You could still practice law,” he pointed out. She would be a helluva lot safer if she did. “Firms would fight over you. Or you could open your own practice.”

  “I could,” she agreed.

  “You can’t really want to continue running the club,” he persisted, “not after everything that’s happened there.”

  She smiled. “I’m not a quitter.”

  “You’re not?” he challenged, as resentment overtook his earlier concern for her. “You’re the one who filed for divorce.”

  Her smile slid away, leaving only pain and her own resentment. “You’d quit us long before I filed.”

  “Paige…”

  “And the only reason you keep coming back is because you’re worried about me,” she accused him.

  He stepped closer, parting her thighs to stand between her legs. Leaning over her, his lips brushing her earlobe, he murmured, “We both know that’s not the only reason I can’t stay away from you….”

  She shivered. “Ben…”

  He slid his mouth from her ear, across her cheek to her lips. In her kiss, he tasted her anger and passion. And the resentment she harbored yet for his not being there when she’d needed him most.

  “Oops,” a feminine voice exclaimed.

  Paige pushed at his chest, shoving him back. “Renae—”

  “I’m sorry,” the young trauma surgeon said, her face pink with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll come back.”

  “No!” Paige wriggled down from the bed. “You took out the stitches. I can leave now, right?”

  Dr. Grabill glanced to Ben, as if seeking his approval. Probably because he had earned the respect of his fellow physicians.

  He hadn’t earned his ex-wife’s, though, as she ignored him and said, “I have to get back to the club.”