Chapter One
“Your mad crush accepted the invitation to tonight’s viewing at the club.” Jane Van Kamp’s thick British accent held a hint of teasing.
“My ‘mad crush’?” Drake Halston muttered, his eyebrow shooting up. “Didn’t realize I had one.” He was English as well, but his intonation was much more subtle because he’d been in the States longer than Jane. By nearly two centuries, to be exact.
“Please,” his assistant scoffed good-naturedly as she left her desk, positioned against the far wall of his enormous office. “I know it typically takes more than a mental fantasy to make you hard, but the mere thought of Shana White does the trick every time. She sends your cock and your barely beating heart into a complete tizzy. In the decades I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you so hot for, or infatuated with, any other woman.”
Feigning disinterest at the mention of the woman who was supposed to be the object of his secret desire—a vampire lusting after a human was an obvious recipe for disaster, after all—he continued his work at his own desk. Though he added, “I’m always hot for you, Jane.”
She laughed softly. “Stop flirting with me, I’m still on the clock.” She picked up the iPad sitting on an end table next to the tufted, pewter-colored sectional. The device controlled the video surveillance equipment throughout Drake’s club, Body Scenes. She played with the settings as she said, “Besides, what goes on behind closed doors between the two of us isn’t rose-petals-on-the-bed, candlelight-and-music, core-shaking lovemaking. It’s just sex, so you don’t have to seduce me with flattery or feel guilty that another woman rocks your world.”
He frowned at her flippancy. Shelving the part about feeling guilty—because there was validity to that observation, since he genuinely adored Jane and didn’t want to hurt her feelings now that she knew about Shana—he said, “I’ve never seduced you. I’ve always waited for you to come to me.”
“Yes. And neither one of us has any delusions about what our sexual relationship is all about—scratching an itch. That’s all. Your attraction to Shana, however…” She wagged a brow at him. “That would be rose-petals-on-the-bed, candlelight-and-music, core-shaking lovemaking. If you ever got around to speaking to her, that is.”
He groaned. Of course he’d never spoken with her. That’d be the equivalent of throwing all the volatile ingredients for said disastrous vampire-human recipe into a bowl and whipping up a soufflé of trouble.
It was difficult enough for him to keep from repeatedly playing her recorded performances with an international orchestra or downloading her photo from the Internet and using it as a screen saver. He didn’t need to add any fuel to the already blazing fire that was his desire for Shana White.
“I know you think it’s best to admire her from afar,” Jane continued. “But you’re just torturing yourself. And, quite frankly, it’s rather painful to watch.”
Quite frankly, it was rather painful to experience. He’d been right earlier. He didn’t have a mad crush on the woman. He had a maddening one.
And it didn’t help matters that he had no outlet for his sexual frustration. Jane hadn’t approached him for after-hours activities in months. In fact, the last time they’d been together was days before he’d come across Shana’s press picture and been instantly ensnared.
Well, bloody hell.
His jaw clenched as his gaze dropped to the computer screen. His guilt mounted. So Jane had known all this time. Damn it. He didn’t want her to feel as though he’d found someone else. In the grand scheme of things, he hadn’t. Shana was strictly a private yearning. A never-to-be-realized fantasy. An unrequited desire he hoped would eventually fade.
Though he had to admit, he’d never been so enthralled before, as Jane had accurately surmised. It was a bit unnerving.
“I know better than to get involved with a human,” he said.
“But you’re falling for one anyway.”
“I haven’t even met her, Jane. I don’t know anything about her.”
“You’ve been scouring the Internet until the wee hours of the morning, learning everything you possibly can about her.”
And finding it wasn’t nearly enough to sate his curiosity or his desire for her. Letting out a long-suffering sigh, he said, “Let’s leave my infatuation out of this, shall we?”
“Impossible. She’s downstairs.”
His gaze snapped to the sixty-four-inch flat panel mounted on the wall above the black marble-trimmed fireplace. The footage currently displayed was from a security camera positioned at the entrance of his exclusive Manhattan nightclub and naughty art gallery.