Read Immortals After Dark 03 - No Rest for the Wicked for Free Online Page B

hadn’t been time, opportunity, or, more important, women to have.
    His family’s home of Blachmount had been secluded from towns and markets. Any attractive farmers’ daughters within a hundred miles had been hopelessly in love with—and most likely enjoying—Sebastian’s rakish brother Murdoch. Which excluded them forever from Sebastian’s interest. He could never have compared with Murdoch’s experience, and he’d dreaded looking down as he took a woman and knowing that she was thinking the same.
    If not Murdoch, Sebastian still had to compete with two other older brothers.
    Then came the war.
    Sebastian’s forgettable—or disastrous—experiences had not prepared him in any way for Kaderin’s passion. She had been as frantic as he was. He couldn’t even imagine what she would be like naked and writhing beneath him. His erection throbbed at the idea, and he cursed it.
    She’d urged him on and then reveled in his strength, like some wild creature. Which reminded him that not only did he not know her full name or how to contact her—he didn’t even know what her species was.
    If only he understood more about this world he now inhabited, the Lore. He was as ignorant of it as he was of modern human culture.
    When he had awakened from the dead all those years ago, Nikolai and Murdoch had tried to explain what they knew of the Lore, which was little—they’d only been turned recently themselves. Sebastian hadn’t listened. What good would their teaching do him if he was going to walk into the sun anyway?
    For all these years, he’d avoided Blachmount, instead residing in the one country where no one would have thought to look for him. What if he returned now? Could he even predict what he would do if he faced Nikolai?
    From the corner of his eye, Sebastian caught sight of something. He twisted around to find his reflection in a shop window. As he stood arrested, he brought his hand up to grasp his chin.
    Christ, why wouldn’t she run?
    He looked like a monster in the pouring rain. His face was sun-blistered down one side and gaunt from irregular feeding—he had never been able to make himself drink enough to sustain his weight. His hair was cut haphazardly, and his clothes were worn and threadbare.
    In her eyes, Sebastian was penniless, living in a heap, without friends or relations. He’d given her no indication that he would be a worthy partner for her. In his time, a female had needed to be assured that the male she cast her lot with could provide for her. Surely something so elemental hadn’t changed.
    Worse than all this, he was a vampire—which she clearly detested.
    He would never be able to share days outside with her. God, how he already missed the sun—now more than ever because he couldn’t walk in it with her.
    Vampiir. He raked his hand through his wet hair. What kind of children would I give her? Would they drink blood?
    He’d have run from him, too.
    How could he expect her not to be repulsed by what he’d become, when he himself was? He subsisted on blood. He was relegated to shadow.
    “You’ll never be my husband,” she’d vowed.
    “I’ll destroy myself,” he’d vowed to Nikolai the last night he’d seen him.
    How could Sebastian persuade her to live with him, when for three centuries he hadn’t been able to persuade himself that he deserved to live at all?
    Yet even briefly, Sebastian had gotten her to kiss him and accept his unpracticed advances. With time, surely he could overcome her aversion.
    Perhaps other vampires were evil—he’d never seen any besides his brothers. But he could prove to her that he was not. He could protect her and provide anything she desired.
    Returning to Blachmount was no longer avoidable—all his wealth was there, buried on the grounds. Before Sebastian and Conrad had left the battlefield, Sebastian had amassed a fortune in war spoils from the Russian officers, including the castle he currently occupied.
    He had half a dozen chests filled