VET Vampire Romance 01 - Covet Read Free Page A

of her back, stretching her spine, and sighed. Preparations for the new season were always tiring but she had been working harder than ever tonight, hoping that Callum would notice and that Javier’s punishment would be less severe because of it.
    She wasn’t sorry that she had hit Victor. She was surprised.
    She had expected him to stop her or evade her fist. He must have been more caught up in what he had been doing than she had thought.
    Lilah removed the cover off the final chair in the elegant gold and red box, folded it and set it down on the pile near the red velvet curtain that shielded the private area from the corridor that ran between all the boxes. During the main season, the aristocrat vampires used the boxes, separating themselves from the elite who sat in the rows of seats filling the theatre below. She had never cleaned the boxes before.
    She ran her fingers over the carved wooden top of the hip-height wall around the box. Antoine had arranged the cleaning of the exterior and repainting of the interior during the closed period so the cream paint was perfect, highlighted with beautiful gold that one of the decorators had told her was real. Only the best for the aristocrats.
    Lilah leaned against the edge of the box and looked down at the crowd as they watched the show on the grand stage to her left. How did the aristocrats feel when they sat up here, looking down on their weaker kin? Was that why they preferred the boxes? So they could look down on vampires they believed were weaker and less worthy than they were? She had never understood the sense of separation between them. To her, it didn’t matter how pure their blood was or what lineage they were from. They were all vampires.
    She had never believed in their existence until Lord Ashville had found her on the streets and forced his blood down her throat, bonding with her and claiming her as a sort of slave. His blood in her veins linked her to him but she hadn’t seen him in a long time and she didn’t care. She hated him and wished she could break free of his rule, had tried to escape his mansion many times, so many that he had grown tired of her and sent her here along with another of his humans. She hadn’t realised what sort of place the theatre was until she had caught her first glimpse of the show. She had blushed a thousand shades of red and hadn’t been able to take her eyes off the stage, watching the perversion playing out on it, the bloodletting and debauched erotic acts.
    Lilah was used to it now and rarely stopped to watch, and she made sure that she was never in sight of the stage during the final act. The first time she had witnessed that, she had discovered the true nature of vampires. The scent of human blood had driven them into a frenzy, both the vampires on stage and those in the audience. It had even reduced the aristocrats, with their fine airs and graces, to slavering beasts, their red eyes bright and sharpened fangs dripping with saliva.
    That was the reason why she didn’t understand the separation between elite and aristocrat. When it came down to it, all of them hungered for human blood and couldn’t resist the smell of it. They were all beasts in human form.
    A brief flicker of golden light drew her gaze down to the door below the boxes opposite her, close to the front of the stage. The door slowly shut and she shifted her focus forwards, past Antoine where he stood to one side watching the show, blending into the darkness that edged the theatre, to the vampire who had exited from backstage.
    Javier.
    It was dark where he crossed the theatre using the strip of open red carpet between the raised black stage and the front row of the audience, but she knew it was him. She would recognise his fine athletic figure anywhere and the haphazard mess of his sandy brown hair. His suit jacket was gone but other than that he hadn’t changed from when she had seen him earlier. Her heart had lodged in her throat when she had looked up