“And are you trying to tell me that when you stowed away on my ship, your intention wasn’t to decide once and for all if I was the agent selling information to the Federation?”
He swallowed hard. This was bad. She knew everything. “Fuck, it isn’t what you think.”
“It’s exactly what I think,” she retorted, before yanking her arm from his grip and storming out.
Marius moved first to follow her. “Sable. I tried to warn you about him.”
She continued downstairs, leaving the two men to trail behind her. “Go to hell, Marius. How do you think I discovered who he was? You kept popping up in my life in all the wrong places. The first thing I did after I moved in was use your computer to access your records. I know all about the tracking devices you’ve been putting on my ships.”
“I can explain—” he began.
“Don’t bother,” she said curtly. “In a way, I’m grateful, even though that damned tracking device almost got me killed by the Federation. Once I got into your record, I saw a Charles Stein poking around in there. I looked him up and found out he’s the assistant to Security Council President D. Atkinson, presently on a mission of Interstellar Security. It didn’t take me a second to put it together. Maybe if you’d been doing your job instead of stalking me, you would have remembered voting him into 110
Misled
office.” She threw her free hand up in the air. “I’m done with pushy, overbearing, domineering, lying, bullshitting vampire Masters. I think I’ll find me a nice docile human male for once. Someone I can push around for a change.”
“Sable!” the two Masters cried in stunned horror.
She waved at them over her shoulder and slammed the front door shut behind her.
* * * * *
Derek stood on the edge of the expansive ballroom in the Interstellar Council Headquarters and watched the hundreds of dignitaries and their dates swirl by on the dance floor. From the corner of his eye, a glimmer of golden hair caught his attention.
Marius Drake danced by with his fiancé, a beautiful woman who looked very much like him—cold and blonde. It had taken the other Master less than a month to find a newer, more docile mate after realizing that Sable was far more vamp than he could handle. Marius had tolerated her walking out on him once, but the second time was too much for his monumental ego.
Derek groaned inwardly. He, on the other hand, was still pining away for his one true love. He’d waited seven hundred years to find her and he would love her forever.
He’d tried to track her down, but she’d simply disappeared and he had no idea where to look. When Sable Taylor wanted to hide, she knew just how to do it.
He turned away from the festivities and headed down the hallway toward his offices. Work was his entire existence lately. All work and no play made Derek a very grumpy vampire. He hadn’t gone this long without sex in over six hundred years and it showed. He was curt and short-tempered, and since he’d ordered half his staff to scour the universe for Sable everyone knew why.
He strode through the open door leading to his outer offices and then further into his own expansive suite. He went straight to his desk and checked his messages. Sixteen agents had reported in, but the results were all the same—no sign of Sable.
He slammed his fist into the desk. “Damn it, baby, where are you?”
111
Sylvia Day
I hear you’ve been looking for me.
He looked up in shock, then shot to his feet. Sable lounged in the doorway, her long legs crossed at the ankles, her torso encased in the old-fashioned silver dress from Rashier 6. Her hair was piled high on her head, and she was gorgeous. Breathtaking.
“You came back,” he whispered, insanely worried that he’d frighten her away.
Pushing away from the doorjamb, she sauntered in with an exaggerated sway of her hips that made his cock harden instantly. “Why did you suspect me of treason?” she asked in a conversational tone of voice that couldn’t hide the hurt in her eyes.
“Your file was incomplete, with large gaps and inconsistencies. In fact, Captain Donnie hid you so well, I recently promoted him. He had you listed in the IAB database as a droid, an area I’m ashamed to say I never thought to look in, so I never caught it.
As far as I knew, you were a bounty hunter, but unlike most, you didn’t take breaks after every capture. You never stopped hunting. It was a red flag to me that you needed so much money and despite how many captures you made, you never seemed to get ahead financially. The leak was coming out of the Delta Sector field office and that’s the one you worked out of the most. It was reasonable to investigate you.”
“I see.” She licked her bottom lip. “When did you realize you were wrong?”
“After those two days on my ship.” He rounded his desk. “When I established our first mental connection you were distant and secretive, but I sensed nothing but good in you and a strong desire for justice.”
“You still thought I was a criminal.”
“There were too many questions, baby, and you block me very well. Too well. But even if you had been involved in something illegal, I would have found a way to keep you.”
The left strap of her dress slipped down her shoulder, displaying the creamy swell of her breast. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were when I told you I was IAB?”
Derek swallowed hard and leaned back against the front of his desk. “I was already 112
Misled
falling in love with you. I knew what you would think if I told you. I was afraid you wouldn’t believe my interest in you was genuine. And you see I was right. You broke it off with me as soon as you knew.”
Her steps slowed. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
“Sure. Right after the wedding.”
The other strap slipped and the dress hung onto her torso against the laws of gravity, barely clinging to the mounds of her breasts. His fangs descended as his cock swelled.
Her sapphire gaze narrowed. “Don’t you think that’s a little arrogant?”
He shrugged, pressing a palm against his straining, painful erection. “What better way to prove my love?”
As soon as he said the words, he felt her sensual call swirling around him— hot, misty and alluring. Sweat broke out on his forehead.
“I do love you,” he whispered reverently. “If you can believe anything I say, believe that.”
The dress fell to floor and Sable was gloriously naked beneath it, baring her firm, high breasts with their berry-colored nipples, her sleek abdomen and her impossibly long legs. All taut and toned, covered by creamy pale skin.
Damn, he loved her body.
“I realized you must care, at least a little,” she murmured.
“More than a little, baby. More than an
ything.”
“Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come back for you.”
Derek tore his silver jacket, the symbol of his station, away from his body. His pants also fell in tatters to the floor. And still she stood, unmoving, waiting.
Waiting for what?
“Let it out,” she urged in a throaty murmur. “Like the first time you took me and made me yours. You claimed me then, like a beast. And I loved it.”
113
Sylvia Day
He watched her hungrily, memorizing her just as she was now, then his eyes slid closed. He felt his power and need rising inside him, heard her blood pumping through her veins and smelled her arousal. The animal tore at him, fighting to be freed, and he struggled to restrain it, to control it. It began to radiate through his cells, growing in strength.
Then she said what he’d longed to hear.
“I love you, Derek.”
And he couldn’t hold it back any longer.
* * * * *
Sable felt the energy building within her mate. It poured from him in hot, steadily radiating waves. She smelled him—pure, potent vampire male. Her vampire. Her Master. Her slave. Her love.
Everything. All things. I’ll be all you need. All you want, he promised. Then he leapt at her.
She watched him in a daze, as if time had frozen, contained in a bubble. Strong, powerful, beautifully masculine, his body stretched through the air. And then suddenly the bubble burst and she leapt to the top of his desk, neatly avoiding his grasp.
He growled, a deep rumble that vibrated through the air into her body. Cream flooded between her legs as her nipples hardened and her mouth watered at the sight of him. His magnificent cock was so hard, it curved upward to nearly touch his navel.
She crouched and her lips curved in a come-hither smile. Moving slowly, carefully, she twisted to sit on the edge of the desk and spread her legs wide, letting him see her welcome. She leaned her weight on one hand, while the other reached between her legs and stroked her swollen clit.
She watched his nostrils flare, watched him lick his fangs with a loving caress of his tongue. His eyes were molten silver, his muscles bunched and thickened, his cock 114