A Slave to Duty and Desire (The Third Installment in the A Slave to Love Series)

Chapter 2: Wedding Bell Blues

Kiana

Halfway to the snack table and ready to drown my sorrows in sugar, I was stopped by an elegant woman, who looked about early thirties but being a vampire who knew how old she really was.

"Excuse me dear, but do you happen to be Kiana?" she asked, putting a hand out to block my path.

"Yes," I said, lifting my chin. It made me unspeakably nervous to be on my own in any confrontation with a vampire, even though Ace's bodyguards were hovering around the room unseen and I was wearing the earrings he'd given me last year that were supposed to ward off any vampire mojo or magical spells. While this was a casual event where most dangerous people had been left off the guestlist, every day assholes were still present.

I'd been to enough of these parties to recognize some people by now, even have a polite rapport with some, but I hadn't met everyone and this woman was unfamiliar, so it set me on edge.

"I thought so. You're so young and beautiful, I'm not surprised Ace chose someone like you. He's always had such exceptional taste in women through the years," she said, sugar sweet as she played with her pearl necklace. She reminded me a bit of a rich widow whose husband had died under mysterious circumstances.

I smiled and tried to pretend like there was a genuine compliment in what she'd said. "Thank you."

"You're a little more ruthless than his usual type though," she said, scrutinizing me like I was a dress on a mannequin she wasn't sure was worth the hefty price tag. "I never would have thought he'd go for someone who killed the last of his family, but I suppose he always was a bit of an odd one."

My heart thumped in my chest, uncomfortably fast. "Better to be ruthless than the victim."

"Is this Ace's girlfriend?" Another woman approached, younger this time, but equally glamorous. Why did Lexi know so many people? This could have been a tiny intimate gathering of people. "Oh sweetie, you better be careful. That man will wreck you. All those years, all those women in his bed, and not one of them lasted. A lot of them went away and were never heard from again too. You best run before you end up the same way."

While I knew Aros had gotten rid of all Ace's previous partners in one way or another, that had remained a secret from the public, and apparently had given Ace a nefarious edge.

"I'm more resilient than I look," I said.

"He may be a dream in the sack, but clearly there's a lot more hiding behind that charming façade of his," she went on, something almost gleeful in her gaze, enjoying the vicious words they flung so casually.

"Besides," the first woman said, "The apple doesn't fall that far from the tree, does it? No matter how good it tastes or how pretty it looks, it's probably rotted right through the core and you won't know until you take a big juicy bite."

"He'll probably have to dump you soon enough anyways. You cannot possibly give him what he needs."

"Excuse me?" My voice shot up several octaves. I was used to rudeness and barbed insults, but that was a little much.

"An heir, dear. She means an heir," the first woman patted my arm, sympathetic to my ignorance like I was but a young naïve girl, too innocent to know of such things. "You may be lovely and charming, and perhaps Ace might even care for you, but at the end of the day his duty comes first. And one of his main duties is producing an heir to take over once he's gone, and since he's the last in his family well..." her smile was so delighted, the idea filling her with bliss, "He has to take care of that sooner rather than later."

"A human like you can't support him or help him achieve success, which is the kind of partner a man like him needs," the younger woman said. "Someone to stand at his side, give him a family to continue our great traditions, and raise the next generation of leaders."