Kissed by a Dark Prince (Volume 1) Read online

  The light in his eyes faded and he looked off to his right, staring at the foot of the row of wardrobes.

  “My battles with this particular enemy always are.” Something drifted in his rich purple eyes, a shadow of remorse that left her feeling he would rather not fight this enemy.

  He cursed again, pushed to his feet and paced, taking long agitated strides up and down the room.

  Olivia leaned back against the wall and studied him in silence, giving him time to think and beginning to relax.

  He was beautiful, his tall lean figure shifting sensually with each stride, working his muscles like a symphony. Every so often, the markings she had followed with her fingers would flash into existence and he would growl, seemingly irritated by them, and glare at her, as if she were to blame.

  Olivia lost track of time, her fear melting away and her guard dropping with it. What was he thinking? He looked melancholy at times, pained, but angry at others. Feelings flitted across his handsome face, rapidly changing his expression, drawing her to him all the more.

  He seemed sad for some reason, a terrible sorrow that shone in his eyes, fathomless and painful. Mixed in with that sadness was a sense of lethalness though, the danger she had originally felt in his presence, a feeling he exuded like an aura. It should have warned her away from him. Instead, she found herself moving away from the wall and towards him, lured by an inexplicable need to comfort him and ease the pain she swore she could feel in him.

  “Are you okay?”

  He stopped dead and looked across at her, his expression open and blank, as though her question had caught him off guard. His look hardened again a second later and he pivoted on his heel and crossed the room to her. He halted inches from her, towering over her, making her feel nervous and unsure of herself. The longer he stood there studying her with those intense purple eyes without saying anything, the more on edge she felt, until her insides had twisted into tight knots and she couldn’t bear it anymore.

  “Have you finished questioning me now?” she blurted out.

  He nodded.

  “I can go home?”

  “I am sorry but I cannot allow that to happen.” He looked beyond her left shoulder, towards the blue curtains and the doors. “My enemy has made you a target, a well played move on his part and one I did not predict or even consider.”

  Her anger came back to a rolling boil and she opened her mouth to give him hell, but he stole her voice. His eyes came back to meet hers and he lifted his hand, slowly reached towards her and brushed aside the collar of her white coat. He caressed the marks on the left side of her throat, sending a hot achy shiver through her.

  “I have made you a target.” Those words sent a different sort of shiver through her. This one not at all pleasant.

  She raised her hand to touch her throat and ended up covering his hand instead. His skin was cool beneath hers. His nostrils flared, his eyes brightened and the pointed tips of his ears extended and sharpened. He bared his fangs at her and shifted back, pulling his hand away from her touch.

  Olivia’s heart leaped into overdrive, thundering against her ribs, and her hand shook, fear freezing her feet in place.

  The prince looked ill but, at the same time, there was an unmistakable spark of desire in his eyes.

  It might have flattered her if she hadn’t been clinging to what he had said, repeating it in her head and growing increasingly angry with each cycle. She was a target for a maniac who had beaten this immortal male close to death?

  “What the hell is going on here?” she snapped and advanced on him, surprised when he actually retreated, as if he feared her. No way a powerful male like him would fear a little woman like her. He hadn’t liked it when she had touched him. He had reacted strongly to it. Maybe he feared she would touch him again if he let her get close enough. She wanted to touch him alright. She wanted to crack his nose with her fist. “I want to know what’s happening because I have the feeling my life is on the line and I didn’t sign up for this shit. You bit me... I damned well didn’t ask you to violate me... and I want to know how your abuse of my body and my rights has made me a target.”

  The prince held his hands up and she halted, breathing hard to settle her volatile feelings. Getting angry with him probably wouldn’t solve anything. If she was in danger, she was probably going to need his help. He had dragged her into this. He could damn well get her out of it unscathed.

  “The reason your comrades found me so close to your facility is because my enemy left me there... it is a twisted game... he could have killed me but I would not have suffered.” He sounded too damn calm and he looked it too.

  Olivia couldn’t see how he could be so relaxed about all of this. Some psychopath had beaten him close to death and dropped him on her doorstep, and it was all a game? That wasn’t a game. That was sick.

  “And he wants you to suffer... why?” She couldn’t hold the angry note from her voice. He had wanted answers and had brought her here. Well, now she wanted some damn answers of her own.

  “It is not for you to know,” he said quietly.

  It damned well was. “Why did he dump you with us? Did he think Archangel would torture you?”

  He shook his head, the solemn look returning to his eyes. “No. He knew you would torture me.”

  Olivia frowned. “I don’t get it. What do you mean? I said did he think we would torture you and you said no, and then you said he knew we would... that doesn’t make sense. I warn you, I am liable to relocate your testicles if I don’t start getting some straight answers.”

  He took a step back. “It was a straight answer. Not we... you... he knew you would torture me.”

  “Me?” Her eyes shot wide and indignation joined the ranks of her feelings. “I’m a doctor. I know I work for a demon-hunting group, but that doesn’t mean I would torture one.”

  He glanced down at his boots and then back at her, his expression troubled. He growled, exposing his fangs, and shoved his fingers through his black hair.

  “He knew what you were when he dropped me there and he knew what I would do,” he barked the words at her, his expression wild and desperate, the look of a man firmly on the edge. He stepped towards her and reached for her, and then let his hands fall to his sides and cursed.

  “What... bite me?” She touched the marks on her neck, feeling the pronounced bumps where his fangs had punctured her. What had he done by biting her?

  The prince closed the distance between them and she tipped her head back, holding his gaze. He frowned and she gasped as his fingers settled against her jaw. He slid his hand along it to cup her cheek, his eyes locked on hers, drawing her into their purple depths until she felt lost.

  “Bind you to me.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Olivia couldn’t breathe, and it wasn’t only because she was drowning in his eyes and lost in the feel of his gentle touch.

  Bind. Her. To. Him.

  Bind her. To him.

  It gradually sank in, leaving her feeling numb and dazed.

  The man had beaten him unconscious and dumped him on her doorstep. Specifically. The prince had come around, injured and weak, and had bitten her. That bite had bound them together.

  His enemy had known the whole thing would happen.

  He had orchestrated it to make the prince suffer and make her a target.

  Olivia changed her mind. It wasn’t sinking in at all.

  “What the hell do you mean?” she snapped and glared up at the prince.

  His hand was still against her face. Dangerous. She pulled her barriers up, more afraid of him now than she had ever been. She was bound to him. That couldn’t be a good thing. It sounded distinctly intimate and she was not doing intimate with a demon. Never again. She had learned her lesson. You couldn’t trust a demon.

  “Under normal circumstances, my biting you would not have been a problem. Your blood would have restored my strength, you would have healed, and your life would have gone back to normal.”

 
; “You keep saying normal.” She always had been perceptive and he might be talking in a very practiced calm and rational voice clearly designed to placate people and keep them calm and rational too, but she was so far beyond calm and rational that she couldn’t even see it in the rear view mirror. “If that’s the normal version of events... what crazy one really happened?”

  His fingertips caressed her ear, distracting her.

  Olivia knocked his hand away and glared at him. “Answer me.”

  He lowered his hand and his shoulders slumped. “Very well. Your blood carries a specific gene that is rare amongst humans. It marks you as a potential mate for my species.”

  “Vampires.” She threw it at him like a barb.

  He neatly deflected it. “You know I am not a vampire... a forefather of that kind, yes, but not at one with the darkness as they are.”

  He was right and it wasn’t only because he had told her before that he wasn’t a vampire that she knew. She knew better than most that he only bore a passing resemblance to a vampire because she’d had firsthand dealings with one, a memory she had buried deep and would rather not recall because it hurt worse than the memory of the bastard demon who had used her.

  “Female?” His deep voice pulled her out of her dark thoughts and back to him, and she stared up at him, lost again but for a different reason this time. Her heart ached. She rubbed the spot on her chest and stifled the tears that threatened to come. “Are you unwell?”

  Olivia shook her head, touched by his concern and the gentle way he brushed his knuckles across her cheek.

  She sucked in a deep breath and squared her shoulders, shoving the pain away and locking it back within her heart.

  “What kind are you then? Just what species are you a prince of?” Would he finally give her the answer to the question that had plagued her from the moment she had set eyes on him? He owed her a little honesty since he had pulled her into a messed up war.

  “Elvenkind.”

  Olivia’s eyebrows shot up. “Elves? The elven species are supposed to be extinct... little more than myths... and you expect me to believe you are an elf?”

  He had pointed ears, sure, but he also had fangs and was darkness made flesh. She had always imagined elves would be fair-haired and nature friendly, not black-haired with a penchant for drinking people to death.

  He was beautiful though, and tall. She was overly aware of his stature as he closed the gap between them again and she had to tip her head back to keep her eyes on his.

  “We are not extinct. We merely left the mortal realm and for good reason. Mankind had become increasingly violent, waging war against demonkind and the fae.” His expression blackened, as if he were recalling the bloodshed he spoke of. “They hungered for violence, butchering our kind until many of the weaker harmless and defenceless species were extinct. We withdrew from the world, fearing the cruel acts would taint our souls.”

  And turn them wicked no doubt. Had the vampires stemmed from the elves who had remained behind, their souls blackened by the violent nature of mankind?

  “How long ago was that?” she said, her curiosity getting the better of her again.

  “Close to fifty centuries have passed since I lost my father and withdrew my people from the mortal realm. I have not set foot in that world since forty-two centuries ago, when I went to war with Vail.”

  Olivia couldn’t take that in. Almost five thousand years since he had moved his people and over four thousand two hundred years since he had been in her world. He was old. Very old. Damn ancient. Was Vail the name of his enemy?

  “Why were you here this time?” she said with a frown.

  “I did not consciously move from my realm to yours.” He averted his gaze and it picked up that conflicted edge it had whenever he was thinking about his enemy.

  The man had injured him, rendered him unconscious, and then dropped him into her world.

  Olivia paused. “Wait... what realm is this?”

  “It is not your world.” His smile was wicked.

  It did a funny thing to her insides that should have been illegal.

  Olivia’s gaze slid off to her left, towards the tall arched doors and the flowing curtains. Not her world. Her eyes slowly widened.

  The scientist in her found that fascinating.

  Beyond the walls of this building, there was another world, one filled with creatures she might never have heard of before.

  The woman in her was petrified.

  “I want to go home now.”

  “I cannot allow that.”

  Olivia snapped her attention back to him and fixed him with a scowl. “Why not?”

  “Because you are bound to me... my mate.”

  He didn’t have to say it like that, in a deep husky voice that sent another unwanted hot shiver dancing over her skin, making it ache for his touch. It didn’t matter what had happened. She was not staying here and she was not being his mate.

  “Why did he do this?” There had to be a reason. The prince had said his enemy had done it to make him suffer.

  “Vail sought to bond us to weaken me and make me vulnerable, and therefore grant him a shot at killing me.”

  That wasn’t right. His logic was screwy and he was hiding something.

  Olivia folded her arms across her chest. “Your enemy could have killed you rather than dump you at my door. I still don’t get why you haven’t just killed him before. You’ve been at war for four thousand years. There must have been opportunities.”

  “I almost succeeded once.” He began pacing again, long strides eating up the stone floor with ease. The man couldn’t keep still whenever he felt agitated and watching him pace only served to agitate her. It showed off his body in far too good a light and gave her a terrible excuse to stare. “I came close to killing Vail’s ki’ara... it would have given me a chance to capture him.”

  Olivia didn’t miss that he had said capture him. Not kill him. Now she knew why they had been fighting for so long. The prince couldn’t bring himself to kill this psychopath. Why not?

  “What’s a ki’ara?” She figured it was safer than probing about his reasons for not killing his enemy.

  He glanced across at her. “It is our term for our fated female... our eternal mate. You are my ki’ara. The dark witch named Kordula is Vail’s ki’ara.”

  So his enemy was another elf, and he had a fated female too, and the prince had tried to kill her.

  “Do you get like a harem of them... or is it a one-time deal?” She hoped he didn’t say that each elf only got one ki’ara, but the solemn edge to his purple eyes warned that he was going to shatter that hope the moment he spoke.

  “We have one fated female.” He looked away from her again, his head lowered now, his focus on his knee-high black boots.

  Whatever this ki’ara thing was, she had the impression that elves placed a lot of value on it and it wasn’t something they gave up lightly. She couldn’t imagine having just one shot at true love. The prince was five thousand years old and now he had found his ki’ara, in her, and he didn’t need to say it aloud for her to know that he was thinking about giving her up. He didn’t act or look like a man who was happy to have found his soul mate and was going to fight to keep her.

  “What happened with Vail and his ki’ara?” Olivia said and he stopped pacing, his gaze on the floor and his eyes widening.

  He frowned and spat out what she could imagine was a vile curse.

  “I am a fool. I have been looking at this all wrong.” He threw his head back and growled, his fangs sharp and ears pointed again. “Vail will seek you out and torture you to drive me to the brink. He is seeking revenge and desires me to suffer as he had. He will use you to hurt me.”

  Olivia’s blood chilled to sub-zero temperatures and she stared at him, struggling to get past the part about this madman torturing her.

  She managed to reach the end of what he said and realised that what he had told her earlier hadn’t been something romantic or noble at a
ll. He had meant it literally. If someone hurt her, then he would feel it. He would share her pain.

  Olivia couldn’t comprehend that. It was too much. She couldn’t breathe as the weight of it pressed down on her and the thought of being tortured closed her throat. Her head spun, the room viciously turning with it.

  “Calm yourself!” he bellowed, a dark commanding snarl.

  No. She was damned well going to have herself a major panic attack and he could damned well deal with it. She was sure that a panicking woman wasn’t on his list of things he enjoyed dealing with, but he had just announced that someone was out to torture her and considering this man had beaten the crap out of the prince, she felt her demise at his hands was somewhat inevitable.

  “Female,” the prince gritted out and Olivia tried to focus on him.

  He wobbled into focus and she frowned when she saw he was clutching his chest and was paler than ever, on the verge of collapse too.

  Oh my God. He didn’t only share her pain.

  His knees gave out, sending him crashing to the floor, and he whipped out a vicious curse in English this time, his handsome face contorting, revealing how much he despised what was happening to him. Olivia rushed to him and crouched before him. He inhaled hard, his shoulders heaving with each breath, struggling for air just as she had been a moment ago. She laid her hand on his shoulder. He was shaking like a leaf.

  Olivia ran her hand along his jaw and lifted his chin, and studied his eyes. She tilted his head towards the light and away, monitoring the responsiveness of his pupils.

  “What’s wrong?” She checked his pulse, pressing her fingers against his neck. It was fast, far quicker than it had been when she’d had him hooked up to the machines in the lab.

  She dropped her hand away.

  It matched hers.

  “Not used to the pace,” he ground out. He was talking about his heartbeat. Her heartbeat. She swallowed, stunned by the reality before her.