Cathedral (Cradle of Darkness 1)

That is not an exaggeration.

Puppy dog eyes in a face that had graced GQ, Ethan begged. “For me?”

Smiling as if I’d fallen for his charm, my freshly-painted red lips replied, “I’m happy to write a check on his behalf. How much would the senator like?”

Before Ethan might do the unthinkable and mention a figure out loud, the pouting spectator who sat naked on the corner of my sex-mussed bed piped in. “I don’t understand why I can’t go.”

Ethan’s latest bleached blonde’s timing was both perfect and awful.

Adjusting his bowtie, Ethan colored. I sighed—both of us having forgotten she was in the room.

And there was pity to be had for her. It was never pleasant to be excluded—knowing one was lesser than their peers, cut—that I understood intimately. But the three of us going through the paces knew why she couldn’t attend Senator Parker’s birthday party. Not that I, or Ethan, or even she would say so.

Low class mistresses were condoned only behind closed doors, more of a light joke than treated as living flesh and bone. They were not tolerated, or heaven forbid, acknowledged publicly. Even with MTV and feminism.

It was a mercy when we left her behind.

Where we might give her gifts and pleasure, others would eat her alive.

Speaking of food, my stomach rumbled.

But I refused to dine tonight; habit led me to wait, the need to feed ignored as long as my body might comply.

I still had two days.

Forty-nine hours to be exact.

So, now was the time for perfume, and parties, and stolen moments with old friends who had no true recollection who I’d been in their lives.

Now was the time to mock terrible presidents with artfully applied smiles, and know, for a fact, that they had the world’s truly smallest, most pathetic penis.

Artfully applying a final sweep of black mascara, eyes currently a shade of blue, unlike my father’s glowing red, stared back at me. Lids dusted gold, painted to entice.

From my bed, our blonde wrinkled her nose at our refusal to acknowledge her complaint.

Ignoring her huff, Ethan—exactly how his grandfather Gerard had done decades before—placed his hands on my shoulders, smiling over me while I completed my toilette. In the soft light of the vanity, it seemed a tender moment, the way his thumb caressed the side of my throat sweetly as he chided, “We’re going to be late.”

“You look very handsome in your tux.”

How he fed on praise. That grin, those dimples, I could eat him alive.

Not literally. Humans were vile on the tongue.

And vampires shouldn’t be able to walk in the sun.

Those two anomalies in my life were the very reason there were hidden cameras catching every angle of my perfectly applied smoky eye. They caught the facets of metal glinting off extremely expensive Agent Provocateur underthings. Why the gown draped over my massive bed, picked at by our resident pet, was flawless as she pouted and whined that she was not included… again.

Lips painted the perfect shade of red. Eyes blue as the Mediterranean Sea. Skin pale but carrying the undercurrent of a long-ago bronzed people. I was alluring enough to reel any hapless mortal to an early grave.

Yet I knew that no matter this soul-solid reality, beauty never mattered.

Standing so Ethan might help me into my couture dress, I meant the smile I threw his way. The slip of a satin-lined gown, the cold clasp of diamonds circling my throat.

He was perfection at preparing a woman for the slaughter.

And I… I was perfection at leading the room by the nose.

Knowing better than to kiss me once my lips were smeared with rouge, instead, my darling ran his fingers from my shoulder to my wrists, surprising me with a gift.

I loved presents.

The cuff was weighty, immaculate, and worth a small fortune.

His grandfather, before he’d died in World War I, had given me one just the same.

“I love you, Jade.” Brushing a stray lock of hair behind my ear, ignoring our huffing blonde, he did something a man of his station never dared. He carefully kissed my red lips.

And was all the cuter for smearing my favorite color on his grin.

Chapter Three

Sipping a third glass of champagne, my red lips quirked at whatever politician’s wife Ethan was buttering up. The charm of a peacock, that one—all bright feathers and squawking.

Spell woven, he’d fully enraptured the woman to his cause with little more than dimples and a practiced swagger.

It was a ploy to aid the Parker family’s political agenda. Trying to swing a senate vote in his uncle’s favor would determine how far Ethan might take the night’s seduction.

“Are you enjoying yourself, Miss King?” Watching the same choreographed dance across the city’s chicest hotel’s rooftop, Ethan’s powerful uncle—the mercenary and corruptible Senator Randal Parker himself—planted his bulk by my side.

I was not there to enjoy myself; I was there to overhear softly whispered conspiracy. Still, I offered a smile to the man of the hour. “Happy birthday, Senator. It’s a lovely party.”