Free A Diamond at Midnight by Anne Rainey Page A

control. He rumbled his approval and slipped a finger inside her wet heat.
     
    “You’re a virgin,” he murmured. “A sweet, tempting little innocent.”
     
    She couldn’t speak. The things she felt overrode her ability at rational thought. But he didn’t seem to require words from her.
     
    “Would you like to know what it’s like to be a woman, love? To be able to live forever and have anything your heart desires?”
     
    Her thoughts scattered when a second finger probed her entrance. In her need to have more, Diamonique shouted, “Yes!”
     
    There was a second sting at her neck, and soon she was drowning in rapturous bliss.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter One
     
     
     
    Columbus, Ohio
     
    Present Day
     
     
     
    Standing at the railing of her balcony, Diamonique stared at the cool, crisp Autumn evening. Tears threatened to spill over, as she recalled the exact moment in time when she first tasted immortality. The young and naive girl she’d been, gone for all eternity. Unbidden, an image of Cain sprang to mind. She’d fallen in love with him. Even though he’d turned her world upside down, she’d still given him her heart and soul.
     
    Her body tightened, her craving for blood mounting. She’d waited far too long to feed. Her sigh mingled with the air. She would need to hunt soon. Not even her plush and exotic penthouse suite could calm the hunger. Too much a coward to face the dawn, hence giving herself back to death like a present wrapped in charred flesh, Diamonique’s existence was nothing more than an empty tunnel of nights.
     
    Once upon a time, she’d believed in happily ever after, but the relationships she’d tried to conceive over the centuries had been but a bandage for her loneliness. At first, after Cain’s betrayal, she’d sought out her fiancé only to learn he’d been shot for having an affair with a married women . That solidified her feeling that men were not to be trusted. Due to constant relocations to keep her ageless appearance from being questioned, she’d never bothered to pursue a deep relationship. As the sole heir to her family’s fortune and her own knack for choosing the right stocks, she’d become independent in her own right, never having to rely on another man or immortal. Cain’s monetary guilt offerings over the decades were given to charity. And although wealth came in handy, it was still no comparison to loneliness.
     
    Diamonique shook off her self-imposed pity-party, shifted her body and took to the sky. She soared on raven wings, streaking off into the night in search of sustenance.
     
    She landed silently in a dirty, empty alley, before quickly taking to the sidewalks. Moving through the crowds of people with ease, Diamonique sneered in contempt at how stupid mortals were. Oblivious to the peril they were in just by being in her presence. She could have them, any one of them, with but a flick of a wrist, a bat of her lashes, and a curve of her lips. She knew her own power and reveled in it.
     
    Hunger turned her more dangerous than ever. She was a law unto herself and God help the one who thought to step between her and food this night. The only pleasure she received these days, came from the blood she drank. The sweet warm flow of it as it dripped onto her greedy tongue.
     
    She focused on the thoughts of the city as it awakened with the promise of lusty desires. Those who lived in a dull world by day would emerge by night, changed. They thought to sate their wicked appetites under the cover of darkness. Still, one mind was different. She closed her eyes and stopped dead in her tracks, then tuned her every nerve, her every thought to that one pattern of thought. His boredom struck her like a cattle prod. His need to escape the madness of the city, to leave behind all that was colorful and slip inside his pale loneliness. She searched him out. Coming to an open door, music blasting so loudly the windows vibrated with the intensity, she