Free The Vampire Voss by Colleen Gleason

Charing Cross remained. The current “Rubey”—certainly that wasn’t her real name—ran it with the same discriminating business sense as her predecessors. In all, Voss believed there had been more than a dozen Rubeys over the centuries, providing the members of the Draculia with a variety of pleasures of the flesh.
    Dracule had discriminating tastes when it came to food, drink and pleasure, and Rubey’s catered to all of them. The current proprietress provided an establishment that offered women and men who found it titillating and arousing to be fed upon by vampires, along with other physical pleasures. The best drink, the best food—for even though the Dracule required lifeblood for sustenance, many of them had never lost their taste for the same food mortals consumed. Just as they drank brandy often laced with blood, or wine or ale, they could find pleasure in the texture, scent and taste of food, despite the fact that it provided no real nourishment. As with opium and drink, cooked food was a sensual pleasure but not a necessity.
    Some of the most popular of Rubey’s women—or men— were ones who shared the taste for blood with a Dracule customer, sipping from a sliced vein and giving that unique pleasure in return as they copulated or did whatever the customer fancied.
    Last night, Voss had partaken of a bottle of blood-red Bordeaux and then the very sleek, very accommodating limbs of three young women in a room thick with scented smoke designed to heighten the pleasure of all. They certainly seemed well pleased, indeed, when he was finished.
    But he found himself unable to slake his lust; nor, surprisingly, was he all that interested in pursuing that conclusion. He considered engaging the only female Dracule that Rubey had on staff and having a rough, bloody time of it…but even that didn’t appeal to him.
    Too messy, and then there would be unsightly marks all over his skin.
    Things became slow and foggy when he had a goblet of Rubey’s special drink. Laced with opium and brandy, it had turned the rest of his night into a long, red, sensual blur.
    Yet, despite that blur, he recalled mulling over the fact that Angelica Woodmore was not as young as she’d appeared—at least if one looked in her eyes. There, one most definitely saw not only bright intelligence, but also an innate… comprehension —he supposed was the best word—that was missing from most other women. And, to be honest, men.
    And Voss had indeed been looking in her cocoa-brown eyes. He’d even tested out his thrall on her, allowing his irises to take on the faintest bit of a glow, an edge of his coaxing tug, in an attempt to draw her away from the party instead of to the dance floor. Just to see what her face would look like, caught up in that sensual moment. Perhaps to see if he could identify any part of her unforgettable scent.
    She was young and inexperienced, and he wouldn’t need more than a little hint of his power to enthrall her.
    But…it hadn’t worked. She’d seemed immune to the lure in his eyes.
    To be sure, he hadn’t intended anything other than to ease her away for a moment. A mere moment, where they might have a chance to speak privately, without being—as they’d been—interrupted by Dimitri. Damn him.
    Of course, Dimitri hadn’t believed Voss when he’d asserted he had merely been asking for a dance, and, now compelled to honesty by the reflection of his drawn, stubbled face, Vosscould admit that, in the same position, he wouldn’t have believed himself, either.
    Regardless of Voss’s intentions last evening, the fact remained that Angelica Woodmore hadn’t seemed affected by his compelling gaze. And that, perhaps more than anything else, was what had jammed such a burr up his arse at Rubey’s.
    In the face of his—albeit gentle—onslaught of charm and glamouring, Miss Angelica Woodmore had simply