Vampire Trinity Read Online Free Page B

long, narrow hands. But Anwyn’s sharp eyes detected a decent figure, heavy breasts. With those eyes and the right clothes, her blond hair brushed out, she’d be impossible for any man to overlook. Except she appeared to have eyes for only one male. One who had delivered his polite speech and was now elbows deep in that piece of equipment again, brow furrowed and a lock of hair falling over his forehead as he muttered what sounded like expletives at it. Apparently, Debra was in charge of the touchy-feely hand-holding part of things.
    Gideon had left her, disappearing into Daegan’s room, and now he returned with one of his button-down shirts. Like most all of Daegan’s clothing, it was black, but it was worn, soft and easy on the skin. “Will this do, Mistress?”
    He used the title deliberately, she knew, always at the right moment, gauged to help her get a sense of balance. She’d known the first night she’d met him he was neither submissive nor Dominant, even though he’d come to her club in the capacity of a submissive. He’d come spoiling for a fight, looking for a way to exorcise the pain in his soul. He wanted to serve a woman, not a vampire. Unfortunately, his timing had landed him with responsibility for both, until she could get past this. His damn sense of honor wouldn’t allow him to leave until then, no matter how much he abhorred what she’d become.
    She was glad he wasn’t in her mind for the bitterness that fountained in her at the thought. The two men to whom she’d felt the strongest connection in her life both had reasons to want to be away from her. She guessed she should be grateful they’d managed to stagger their escape schedules, Daegan taking his now, Gideon planning his for later.
    When she went into the bathroom to change, it took an act of will not to put her fist through the vanity mirror that no longer had any function, at least in terms of checking her appearance. She changed in the bathroom without looking at it, feeling her blood pounding in her throat. At least one man in her life would never leave her. Barnabus, the vampire who’d done this to her. Her true sire. Her lip curled. Planting his residual schizophrenia in her, so his voice sometimes captured her throat, made her say all sorts of despicable things during seizures. Even when she wasn’t having seizures, those shadow creatures in her head, the ones who supposedly weren’t real, overrode everything else until she could barely see or think. She could only huddle in a corner, hands locked over her head, body rocking as she muttered and shouted at them to stop.
    How many times had she passed homeless people lying in their nests of garbage, doing the same? No one else knew what it was like to have them in there, did they?
    While she couldn’t bring herself to feel pity for the vampire that had violated her on so many levels, there were times where she admitted enough empathy to agree with Brian’s decision—though a hard-fought one with Daegan—to spare Barnabus for the time being. He’d been put in a temporary holding facility of Daegan’s design so they had access to her “biological sire’s” blood as long as they needed it. Once Brian had arrived, he’d agreed to take on custody of the vamp, employing some of his vampire and scientific contacts in the States to take over Barnabus’s care from Daegan. Periodically he sent Debra to that undisclosed location to get more blood, Anwyn’s anonymity carefully protected from Barnabus’s new wardens. Brian had explained he wanted to study the way schizophrenia interacted with Barnabus’s vampire nature, and assured Daegan he’d call him in for termination when those experiments were completed, unless he could rescue the vamp’s mind.
    She doubted that was possible. Just as a symptom of her turning, the voices were so integrated in her head. She hadn’t been born with it in her genetic makeup, like Barnabus. Of all of them, Gideon understood those voices the