Masquerade (Vampires Realm Series Book 7) (Reading Sample), Felicity Heaton [read an ebook week txt] 📗

“I’ll fight you.” The hardness of those words leaving her lips surprised her.

The guards gathered around them moved back as one, positioning themselves at a safe distance, some of them shifting to stand behind the furniture.

A glimmer of light touched Vivek’s eyes again and Sophis had the terrible feeling he hadn’t meant what he had said as that sort of challenge. It didn’t matter. She had fought him before and she would fight him again. She would prove right here and now that she was strong and capable.

“I beat you last time we danced,” he husked in a low voice that felt too intimate, as though he was trying to speak to her alone, shunning the others who surrounded them.

She could feel their eyes on her, the spark of fear that ran through some of the younger vampires and Ella, but didn’t take her focus off Vivek. She wouldn’t give him an opening. If he made the slightest move, she was going to knock him on his backside in front of everyone. That would bring him down a peg or two but would do nothing to satisfy the deeper craving for violence that filled every inch of her.

Vivek lowered his head towards her, his sharp hazel eyes holding her motionless as though he had cast a spell on her, and carefully placed his hand over hers where it held his jacket. She started at the feel of his cool fingers closing over hers and swallowed the lump forming in her throat. She fought to tear her gaze away from his, feeling the danger of staring into his eyes, but failed. It was impossible when he was so close to her, barely a few inches away. Each flake of purest gold that flecked the transition of rich green to earthy brown in his irises held her fast and mesmerised her. She was open like this. He could attack her before she could bring her focus back to the fight let alone manage to defend herself. It would be game over in under a second.

He leaned in closer, until his mouth neared her cheek and she could no longer see his eyes. Her senses snapped back to attention, outlining the room and its contents in sharp relief in her mind. Vivek’s proximity played havoc with them. Her vampire senses bounced off everything in the room like radar but it was quickest to leap back from him. She could feel his senses on her too, monitoring, focused with intensity. The signals echoed back and forth, bouncing off each other, until awareness vibrated between them and threatened to drown out the rest of the room. Sophis swallowed again, fighting a losing battle against it and the startling effect it had on her body.

“Surely you do not want to humiliate yourself again?” he murmured against her cheek, sending unpleasant shivers down her neck as his breath washed over it. The shiver became a tingling that spread over her arms and trickled down her spine. She fought the urge to close her eyes and shoved him backwards, placing distance between them.

His gaze lost its warmth.

“I won the previous two, remember?” Sophis tightened her grip on his black jacket and he tightened his on her hand, crushing her fingers with gentle pressure, not enough to hurt but enough to remind her that he was the stronger out of them, and not only because he had fifty years as a vampire on her. Another rush of tingles swept through her, stealing the strength from her legs and turning her mouth dry. She straightened, refusing to let him affect her and denying the electric feel of his fingers against hers.

Her senses sharpened and Vivek responded in kind, his focus settling wholly on her. The intensity of it and the sure smile that tugged at his profanely sensual mouth shot her concentration to Hell. She sucked in a sharp breath, narrowed her eyes on his, and tipped her shoulders back. Vivek’s gaze briefly dropped to her chest, his right eyebrow quirking, and then met hers again.

She wasn’t going to let him fluster her. She was going to prove right here and right now that she could take him in a fight because if she didn’t, her men would never follow her lead.

Vivek’s broad build lent him physical strength that she couldn’t match, but while he could use brute force in their fights, she had intelligence and speed on her side. She had outwitted him several times over the past few fights and had won because of it.

Sophis snatched her hand back and squared up to him, tilting her chin up and holding his gaze.

“I’ll win this time,” she said on a sneer, unafraid of the darkness emerging in his eyes as the colour began to bleed from them. The flecks of gold turned icy, black gradually ringed his irises, and then pale blue emerged and subdued the hues of brown and green until his eyes were softest aquamarine, the colour that signified him as a member of the Venia bloodline.

Each of the seven pure bloodlines had different eye colours when they were showing their true face. From the obsidian darkness of the Tenebrae, through the fiery orange of the Nocens and the blood red of the Vehemens, the intense emerald of the Caelestis and striking sapphire of the Aurorea, to the royal purple of the strongest family in Europe, the mighty Validus bloodline. All of them were unique in this one way, and many thought it was this difference that divided them, that pitted them against each other in an eternal battle for dominion over their species.

Sophis allowed her eyes to transform and her canines lengthened into fangs, revealing her true self to Vivek. His pupils widened and then narrowed, and she sensed the change in him, the moment he went from treating her as a feeble woman to a potential threat. His guard came up, his focus sharpening, swamping her with a sensation that she was in danger.

She wasn’t going to back down. “You just got lucky last time.”

The group around them jeered.

Vivek glared icily at them and then his gaze shifted back to hers. His fangs showed between his lips as he spoke.

“I will not make the mistake of going easy on you again.”

With that, he threw a right hook at her.

Chapter 2

Sophis dipped her left shoulder back and down, bringing her head out of the path of Vivek’s strike. His fist grazed her cheek as it passed her and before he could right himself, she brought her hand up and struck him under the chin with the heel of her palm. He grunted and stumbled backwards, quickly regaining his footing and lashing out with a clumsy punch. She evaded it but his feint worked. His left fist came out of nowhere and smashed hard into the right side of her cheek, sending her careening across the room.

The wooden edging on the back of one of the blue antique sofas slammed into her spine and forced the breath from her. She grimaced and clutched it with one hand while swiping the back of her other across her mouth to clear away the trace of blood from where her canines had caught her lip. She glared at Vivek.

He smiled casually, rolled his broad shoulders, and then kicked the armchair he had been sitting on out of the way.

Sophis pressed the sole of her right boot against the couch behind her and shoved it backwards, scattering the guards gathered behind it for protection.

She unbuttoned her stiff black uniform jacket, revealing the white pin-tuck shirt she wore beneath, walked to the sofa and carefully laid it over the back. Vivek ran a glance over her, his pupils narrowed and focused, as though he was putting her to memory, and then shirked his jacket too.

Rather than the standard-issue shirt, he wore a tight white t-shirt beneath his black jacket. He laid the jacket down with the same care she had shown towards hers, a mark of their mutual respect for the guard of the Venia bloodline, and then faced her again.

His build was even more daunting now. The stark white of his t-shirt emphasised the breadth of his chest, and the soft material clung to each muscle of his torso, outlining the chiselled square slabs of his pectorals and the hard ridges of his stomach.

Vivek flexed his fingers, causing the tendons and muscles in his forearms to ripple and his upper arms to tense under the tattoos that covered him from wrist to shoulder. He rolled his shoulders again and sent a cocky smirk Ella’s way, gaining a shy teasing smile from the blonde in return.

Sophis clenched her fists.

She was going to lay him out flat on his backside no matter how much damage she took. She wasn’t going to let him use a fight with her over something as important as him belittling her and making her appear weak in front of three members of her squad in order to impress her best friend and work his way into her underwear.

If he hadn’t been there already.

Sophis launched herself at him and he was too slow to respond. By the time he was facing her again rather than Ella, her right fist was smashing into his jaw. His head whipped to one side and she knocked it back the other way with a swift left hook. He grunted, blood coating his lips, and shifted his left foot, bracing himself. She didn’t give him a chance to recover and didn’t listen to Ella as she begged Sophis to stop hitting his face.

Maybe a little time bruised and not so beautiful would give sense a chance to plant roots and grow in Vivek’s mind. Maybe then he would think twice about picking fights with her and doubting her ability.

Sophis landed an uppercut on the right side of his jaw and then frowned.

Had she just called Vivek beautiful?

His fist slamming into her stomach knocked that thought from her mind and she gasped for air. While her body had no need for oxygen, she wasn’t old enough to have overcome her instinct to breathe. Her throat burned as she sucked in great gulps, trying to settle her fear of suffocating. Vivek punched her hard before she could recover, his knuckles crashing into her right cheek and sending her down on one knee. Pain blazed over her skull, throbbing in her eye, and she couldn’t help crying out. She flinched away when Vivek moved, expecting him to deal the finishing blow whilst she was weak and vulnerable.

He surprised her by backing off.

The scent of blood reached her nose.

Sophis slowly opened her eyes, rose to her feet, and looked across the open expanse of Chinese rug to Vivek. His chest heaved as he breathed deep and fast, muscles straining against the white t-shirt. She tried to meet his gaze but he had his ice-blue eyes locked on her cheek.

His pupils dilated, blotting out the paleness of his irises.

Sophis raised her hand and touched her cheek. It stung and her fingertips came away wet. Vivek’s eyebrows knitted together but his pupils remained enlarged, fixed on the spot just below her right eye, burning into it.

Her own breathing quickened to match his, the