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  Haunted by the King of Death

  Felicity Heaton

  Haunted by the King of Death

  A ruthless vampire warrior, Grave Van der Garde rules the mercenary Preux Chevaliers with an iron fist, determined to retain his hard-won position as one of the most powerful men in Hell and his reputation as the heartless King of Death. But beneath the cold façade beats the heart of a vampire torn between love and hate, ripped in two directions by a single ethereally beautiful female—his fated phantom mate.

  Driven by her phantom instincts, Isla used a spell to make her solid in order to deceive the vampire who killed her sister’s demon mate and have revenge on him, condemning him with a single kiss to become a phantom too. But her plan took an unexpected turn when she fell in love with him, and with her new life, and the night she betrayed him shattered both of their hearts. Now, he lives to make her suffer through their connection, one that is fading with them as they begin to slip into the phantom world, and she must face the monster she created if she is to save herself and the vampire she still loves.

  With a demon from Grave’s past determined to destroy him and everything he holds dear, and the clock ticking down to their inevitable doom, can he and Isla overcome their past and their pride to work together to claim the future they both desire deep in their hearts? Or will death finally catch up with the vampire king and his phantom mate?

  OTHER PARANORMAL ROMANCE BOOKS BY FELICITY HEATON

  Stories in the Eternal Mates romance series

  Book 1: Kissed by a Dark Prince

  Book 2: Claimed by a Demon King

  Book 3: Tempted by a Rogue Prince

  Book 4: Hunted by a Jaguar

  Book 5: Craved by an Alpha

  Book 6: Bitten by a Hellcat

  Book 7: Taken by a Dragon

  Book 8: Marked by an Assassin

  Book 9: Possessed by a Dark Warrior

  Book 10: Awakened by a Demoness

  Book 11: Haunted by the King of Death

  Stories in the Vampire Erotic Theatre romance series

  Book 1: Covet

  Book 2: Crave

  Book 3: Seduce

  Book 4: Enslave

  Book 5: Bewitch

  Book 6: Unleash

  Stories in the Her Angel romance series

  Book 1: Her Dark Angel

  Book 2: Her Fallen Angel

  Book 3: Her Warrior Angel

  Book 4: Her Guardian Angel

  Book 5: Her Demonic Angel

  Book 6: Her Wicked Angel

  Book 7: Her Avenging Angel

  Book 8: Her Sinful Angel

  Stories in the Vampires Realm romance series

  Book 1: Prophecy: Child of Light

  Book 2: Prophecy: Caelestis & Aurorea

  Book 3: Prophecy: Dark Moon Rising

  Book 3.1: Spellbound

  Book 3.5: Reunion

  Book 4: Seventh Circle

  Book 5: Winter's Kiss

  Book 6: Hunter's Moon

  Book 7: Masquerade

  Book 8: Hunger

  Books 1-3 are also available in one anthology ebook: Prophecy Trilogy

  Stories in the In Heat romance series

  Book 1: In Heat

  Book 2: In Heat: Mating Call

  Discover more available paranormal romance books at: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk

  Or sign up to Felicity's mailing list to learn about new titles, be eligible for special subscriber-only giveaways, and read exclusive content: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/newsletter.php

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  Paranormal Romance Books by Felicity Heaton

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  Grave’s fangs sliced into the supple female flesh beneath his lips. She cried softly into his ear, her body arching forwards to press against the full length of his. He flexed his fingers against her curves and drew her closer still, closed his eyes and breathed in deep, silencing the buzzing in his mind as the warmth of her chased the cold away.

  The mark on his back tingled and he ignored it.

  He pulled his fangs free, wrapped his mouth around the twin puncture marks and drew slowly on her blood.

  His eyebrows pinched in a frown.

  Not the sweet taste of nectar she had promised, but the bitter taste of ashes coated his tongue as her hot blood filled his mouth.

  He swallowed it with a grimace and resisted the urge to snarl against her throat, focused instead on feeding and on her. The buzzing in his skull grew stronger, destroying the brief moment of calm, and his back began to burn, fire pulsing across it in a way that made him able to picture the mark on it as it chased along the lines.

  Damn her.

  Not the female in his arms, but the one who had done this to him.

  Reduced him to this.

  A snarl curled up his throat and he sank his fangs back into the female, felt her tense and heard her gasp, but didn’t notice either as he gave his voyeur the same show as always.

  A vision of fury and hatred.

  Grave tore his teeth from the willing female’s neck and shoved her back. She staggered but moaned, too high from his bite to care how he treated her, too deep under his spell. He tore the skimpy red dress from the brunette, exposing her breasts and the tiny excuse for panties, nothing more than a scrap of scarlet material. She whimpered as he palmed her full breasts and he smiled slowly as the buzzing in his mind, the burning on his back, grew stronger.

  Oh yes, his voyeur was very aware of his actions, was focused on him now.

  He hoped the bitch got an eyeful.

  Scarlet spilled down his blood host’s chest from the multiple wounds on her throat and he growled as he swooped on that trail, lapping it up and following the lines back to the puncture marks. She moaned sweetly, writhed and rocked in his arms, and he clutched her to him, planted both hands on her bare backside and dug his claws into the peachy globes.

  He licked the wounds, each sweep harder than the last, and then let out a feral snarl as he sank his fangs back into her. She jerked against him, her keening cry echoing around the sparsely furnished drawing room. Ecstasy. He could feel it in her.

  But he couldn’t find it for himself.

  Not anymore.

  The bitch had made sure of that.

  He pulled his fangs free and bit down again, and again, and each time the female shuddered and cried in pleasure, began to sob as she wriggled in his arms, the scent of her arousal permeating the air. The rougher he was with her, the more she got off on it, and he had chosen her for that exact reason.

  If he had to do this, if he had to use something that haunted his every waking hour, and sleeping one, then he would make sure that the one sharing the moment with him witnessed just how brutal he could be.

  Just what she had made him.

  He tore into the female’s neck, rending deep puncture wounds that spilled blood like a waterfall down her bare breasts, the warm liquid soaking into his black shirt and sticking it to his chest. His heart thumped a painful rhythm against his ribs, bloo
d pumping hard and hunger at the helm as he drank from the female.

  Gods, he wanted her.

  She squirmed against him, moaning in sweet supplication, rubbing her bare curves against his clothed body.

  He wanted to fuck her.

  Just as he wanted to screw every female who acted as a blood host for him.

  It wasn’t going to happen though, and that knowledge only made him rougher with her as the buzzing in his mind and across his back mocked him now, a constant reminder that he hadn’t been able to get hard for a female for almost a century now.

  All because of the bitch in his head.

  Raw anger surged through him and he drank deeper, courted the darkness in the hope it might take him away from this room, from this female and the other one who haunted him.

  Humiliated him.

  But his bloodlust was an uncooperative bastard, seemingly determined to see him suffer in other ways tonight, refusing to come to his aid when he needed it most, needed to drown in oblivion and forget everything.

  Images of her filled his mind and his body instantly responded, his cock twitching in his black trousers and beginning to stir, and he knew she would have felt it in him. He groaned, slowed his drinking and rubbed against the female, making her aware of his hardening shaft. She moaned low in her throat and dropped her hand to the front of his trousers, palmed him and made him harder still.

  He lifted his head from the female’s neck and kissed up it to her jaw, heading for her mouth. She rubbed him harder, sending shivers tripping through him, and he seized her lips in a hard kiss, determined not to squander this rare chance. Her fingers tugged at his fly and he willed her on, wanted to feel her hot hand on his flesh, needed to finally find release with a female. It was going better than usual. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been hard for a female.

  Her hand found his shaft.

  “Gods, take me, Lord Van der Garde,” she whispered.

  Not the voice of the female in his head.

  He instantly deflated, his cock going limp and useless in her hand. He shoved her off him on a snarl and tucked himself away as he glared at her.

  “You were told not to speak,” he growled and advanced on her, and she backed towards the dark wooden door of the drawing room.

  He scooped up her red dress and threw it at her as her back hit the deep green wall near the door. She hastily caught it and covered herself, her hands shaking as she fumbled with the material, her dark eyes enormous.

  Flooded with fear.

  Grave stalked towards her, wrestling with the darkness as it rose within him, demanded he deal with the female. She would speak. She would tell others in the town what had happened here, and he would be humiliated all over again.

  She turned to her right, hand stretching for the gold knob on the door.

  He kicked off and had her throat clutched in his right hand before she could reach it. Her back slammed against the green wall and he loomed over her, aware that his eyes had changed as the room brightened. She stared up into them, panting hard, her face paling and tears filling her eyes.

  “I told you not to speak,” he snarled again and leaned closer, made sure she got a good look at his fangs and his crimson eyes, was aware his would be the last face she saw if she dared to say a word to anyone.

  As much as he wanted to kill her, she would be missed by the local bordello, and the trail would lead back to him. He hadn’t worked hard to secure a position of respect in the area only to ruin it because one blood host whore didn’t know her place.

  “I’m sorry,” she choked out and lowered her gaze to his chest. “I forgot… it felt so good… I forgot. It won’t happen again, my lord.”

  Too right it wouldn’t.

  He eased the pressure on her throat and stepped back, drew down a deep breath to centre himself and then leaned to his left, twisted the doorknob and opened it for her.

  “Return to me in two days. Remember your place and the rules next time.”

  She pushed away from the wall, her mouth opening and then closing, and he knew he had given her punishment enough for her crime. If he had to go without, then she would go without too. Normally he made sure she found release, but tonight neither of them would leave satisfied.

  She lowered her head, nodded and then hurried away from him.

  Grave stood there in the open door, fighting the rising silence in the room, the quiet that he despised almost as much as the female in his head, because it was in the times of solitude and silence that she had the strongest hold over him.

  He pushed her away, not wanting to think about her now, and slammed the door behind him with enough force that one of the oil paintings on the plum wall of the corridor crashed to the dark wooden floor. He stormed along the hallway, heading away from the drawing room and back to his apartments on the other side of the building.

  The buzzing in his mind lingered and he struggled against it, tried to force the connection between them closed. Hunger and need chafed at him, his pulse pounding with them, urging him into finding another woman in some dumb hope that this time he would be able to slake both of his thirsts.

  He wrestled with them too, unwilling to give her that much power over him. He had to open his connection to her and use it just to get his fangs to cooperate when he wanted to bite a woman, and that was humiliating enough, showed him constantly the hold she still had over him all these decades later. He was damned if he was going to think of her in order to fuck a female.

  Although, it had been easier tonight. Was there a possibility that her hold over him was finally weakening as they approached a century apart?

  Could he finally break free of her?

  The part of him that always refused to be silent warned that it wasn’t going to happen.

  Thousands of women since her and not a single one had gotten him hard. Not a single fuck since she had screwed him over.

  He hated her. Loathed her.

  Once he had loved her.

  He took the steps on the curving white marble staircase in the black-walled grand entrance hall two at a time, ignoring the two men that he passed as they saluted him by pressing their left hands to the breasts of their black knee-length jackets and lowered their heads.

  His boots were loud on the wooden floor of the first level, and then the next curving staircase that led up to the second, where his quarters were located. He banked left and the cream corridor passed in a blur as he lost himself to thought, nursing the anger that thundered in his blood.

  He shoved the wooden door at the end of the corridor open, stepped into his apartments, and slammed it behind him. He pressed his back to it and exhaled slowly as he stared at his elegant red-walled drawing room and through the large arched doorway to the sumptuous four-poster king-size bed in his ice blue bedroom.

  Calm flowed over him as he rested against the door, his heartrate finally slowing to a more leisurely and normal rhythm.

  He pushed away from the door, feeling that calm collecting inside him, growing stronger as he meandered around his home in the bastion of the First Legion of the Preux Chevaliers. A legion he captained and a home that was his sanctuary.

  A place he kept free of females.

  Including the damned one in his head.

  He closed his eyes and attempted to shut her out, but the buzzing persisted.

  The calm he had fostered began to slip through his grasp. He walked into the left side of the drawing room and paced between the outside wall of his apartment and the wall of his bedroom, the heels of his riding boots marking the quickening rhythm of his steps on the dark wooden floor as he passed behind the black leather couch that faced the white marble mantelpiece. His pale blue eyes skimmed across the sash windows beside the unlit fire whenever he turned, alternating between the two that flanked the fireplace. The view beyond the panels of glass was sombre and dark, reflecting his mood.

  Hell.

  He had never felt the true effect of the dark realm before her.


  He had fought in the ranks of the Preux Chevaliers, had elevated himself to the position of not only the captain of the First Legion but the sole leader of the entire army through blood and broken bones, and a little deception, and had gloried in war, solidifying his reputation and that of the corps under his command. Never had a vampire achieved the power he held in his hands, and gods, he had ruled this realm.

  Until her.

  Grave shoved her out of his thoughts and quickened his pacing, attempting to work off the energy that boiled inside him. Energy he would have expended in wild sex and quenching his thirst just decades ago. Now, only one female tasted sweet to him, only one could give him what he craved, so he only had one outlet for it.

  War.

  On the battlefield, he found the thrill he had been missing since falling into her trap. There, he could find release of a sort, was able to bite his foes in the heat of a fight for his life and experienced the pleasure of sating his bloodlust, feeding the beast within him.

  Gods, he could bite any male he wanted any time, but he didn’t want men. He wanted to sink his aching fangs into female flesh, soft and supple, delicately laced with the scent of blood, and taste sweetness and life, not ashes and death.

  Grave halted and looked down at his hands.

  His palms tingled, not with the memory of the female blood host’s curves but the memory of her. They yearned to learn her curves again, to traverse paths he had found the deepest form of pleasure in, and feel her cool satin skin beneath his. Against his.

  He snarled and stalked across the room, shoving his fingers through the longer lengths of his short dark brown hair and pulling it back until his scalp stung.

  He had to free himself somehow.

  A mirthless laugh escaped his lips.

  How?

  He had tried everything imaginable to achieve that freedom he desired. He had even left fresh from a war in the Third Realm of the demons to seek assistance in a fae town in the mortal world, searching for an answer from the witches there.