Blood on Silk (3 page)

She’d need an expert to date the carvings, of course, but late seventeenth century seemed about right. That meant she’d have to look for differences between the legends before and after Dmitriu’s date of 1697. There were a lot of those for so young a man. She’d also need to reanalyze those stories set before his likely birth date, perhaps around 1670.

In fact, she needed to speak to Dmitriu again, and soon. She’d never expected to find anything as beautiful as this. . . .

She took one hasty snap before dropping the camera back into her bag. Fascinated, she gazed down at the likeness of the man she now believed to be the legendary Saloman. The still, stone face appeared surprisingly youthful. With no martial beard or ridiculous mustache like Vlad the Impaler’s, it was just a young, handsome countenance with deep-set, open eyes.

Why weren’t his eyes closed? The irises and pupils of each were well delineated; they might even have been colored under the centuries of dust. Christ, he even had eyelashes, long and thick enough to be envied by most women.

But there was nothing else remotely feminine about this face. Its nose was long, slightly hooked, giving an impression of arrogance and predatory inclinations. On either side were cheekbones to die for, high and hollowed, and beneath, a pair of perfect, sculpted lips, full enough to speak of sensuality, firm enough to denote power and determination, and a strong, pointed chin. Long, thick hair lay in stone waves about his cloaked shoulders, and again Elizabeth could almost imagine that the dust covered black paint.

The sculptor seemed to have imbued a lot of character into that dead stone face, as if he’d known him well and liked him; yet he’d also captured a look of ruthlessness, an uncomfortable hardness that sat oddly with the faint, dust-caked lines of humor around his eyes and mouth. Well, he wasn’t the first or the last bastard to have a sense of humor.

And besides, if he was a likable man and the true hero of some of the legends she’d listened to, why had he been killed in such a way? Where had the stories of atrocity come from? His enemies? He was a mirror of Vlad the Impaler perhaps, except no one before Bram Stoker had made Dracula a vampire. The Saloman vampire stories were far older, and they came from natives.

There was a splash of discoloration beside his mouth. Frowning, she reached out and touched it. Wet—it was a drop of her blood.

“Oops.”

But the carved face was so beautiful that she let her fingers linger, brushing against the cold, dusty, stone lips. Another drop of blood landed there, and she tried to scrub it off with her thumb. All that achieved was another drip and rather grotesquely red lips on the carving, so she yanked her guilty hand back and began to examine the rest of the sarcophagus.

It sat on a solid stone table, but it wasn’t just the lid; it was the whole sarcophagus that was carved into the shape of a man, and she could find no hinges in the smooth stone. Perhaps the body was in the table underneath? Unless there were hinges or some kind of crack on the other side.

Leaning over the sarcophagus, she ran her fingers along its far side, but she felt only the detailed outlines of muscled arm and hip and thigh, so lovingly carved that just stroking them seemed intimate. She stretched farther so that her hair and jaw brushed against the cold stone of his face, and she felt along the table instead. It too appeared to be one solid piece of stone. So where the hell was the body?

Movement stirred her hair, almost like a lover’s breath on her skin. Startled, she jerked up her head, but before she could leap away, or even see what was happening, something sharp pierced her neck and clamped down hard.

S
he couldn’t move, couldn’t even cry out. Somewhere she knew she should be terrified, but in reality her brain was far too busy trying to work out what the hell had happened.

There was pain at the side of her neck where it seemed to be stuck to the face of the carved sarcophagus—a strange, cold pain that suddenly heated as whatever had gripped her began to suck.

Now the fear surged, deluging her. She felt the blood rushing through her veins, away from her heart, and she knew she was about to die. Worse than that, the cold thing clamped around her neck grew warm, moved on her skin, and the rushing of her blood became a stream of weird, sensual pleasure. Fire and ice flowed together in her veins as she was held captive. Everything seemed to tighten in her body—her muscles, her nipples, her clenching womanhood—until it came to her in a flash that this treacherous, paralyzing sexual response was killing her.

With a yell, as much for self-encouragement as fear, she tore herself free, falling off the sarcophagus into a heap on the floor and scrabbling backward, away from whatever had attacked her.

She knew, she’d always known, it came from the sarcophagus itself, and yet the sight of the carving rising from the table in a cloud of dust drew a long, low whine from her that she couldn’t control. Her neck throbbed in agony; it felt slippery with her own blood under her questing, trembling fingers. Her heart hammered with the force of a pile driver, as the thing shook itself and emerged through the scattering dust toward her.

Not a beautiful stone carving but a beautiful, terrifying man, heart-churningly three dimensional as he yanked the broken sword from his chest and threw it to the ground. A sound seemed to hiss from between his teeth. It might have been pain, but right now, she didn’t care.

In the spotlight of her fallen, wavering flashlight, he regarded her from burning, coal black eyes. His cloak, now streaked with black, fell around him in stiff, dust-laden folds as he walked forward with slow, deliberate strides. Beneath it, his clothing was torn across the chest, but no blood oozed from the sword wound. His pale lips parted.

“Silly girl.” The deep, almost sepulchral voice vibrated through her entire body. “That’s no way to break off a relationship like ours.”

She scrabbled backward in a futile attempt to escape the horror, but inexorably, he kept coming.

“Is it?” he said, bending to take her numb hand and drag her to her feet. She stumbled and, appalled by the strength in his cold, flexible fingers, which didn’t feel like stone at all, she yanked her hand free. Even then, she suspected he let her.

“Is it what?” she demanded. God knew she didn’t care, but some instinct always made her fight back in the wrong situations. She barely knew what she was saying.

“Is it sensible to break away from me like that?” he said with exaggerated patience. “Look what you’ve done to your throat.”

He stretched out one long, pale hand toward the side of her neck; she flinched, staggering out of his reach. Even in the dim light she could see dust particles glistening on his skin, clinging in the creases of his knuckles.

“What
I
did?” she screeched in outrage. “I didn’t bite my own throat like a . . . like a . . .” The whole impossible situation was collapsing in on her, burying her in a morass of ghastly confusion and questions.

His eyes gleamed. “Like a vampire?” he mocked, coming after her. There was nowhere to go but backward, until the wall ground into her shoulder blades and buttocks, and still he kept coming. Tall and broad-shouldered as he was, his very size threatened her. Most of his handsome face was in shadow, hiding any expression. She could make out only his eyes, blacker than the surrounding darkness, yet glistening with some deep, wild hunger it hurt to look at.

He lifted his hand once more to the wound in her throat. His fingertip was cold, yet seemed to burn her skin. She gasped, quivering, and when he bent his head toward her again, gazing at her bleeding injury, she began to fight, crashing her fists into his chest, pushing uselessly against his shoulders.

He smelled of earth and cold stone, and gave off no sense of human warmth. So why did her body begin to weaken its resistance? Her fists, her struggles, made no impression on him. He continued to lower his head to her wounded neck. At least she could no longer see those terrible eyes. . . .

At the first touch of his lips, she gave up; she could do nothing against him, and some dark, perverse part of her remembered the unique, agonizing thrill of his first bite.

But he didn’t bite. He surrounded the wound with his lips and licked it once. She shuddered, helpless in the grip of fear and something she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—name. Then he lifted his head, and she stared at him, speechless, because the pain had gone.

The hunger hadn’t left his eyes, but in the glimmer of her flashlight beam, she thought it was overlaid with mockery. The bastard was laughing at her.

“I’m saving the rest for later,” he explained.

Her eyes widened. He was letting her live after all? At least for another minute. “L-later?” she stammered.

His fingers trailed across her throat, butterfly light, making her gasp. “Later. Your blood is strong and heady. I’m taking time to absorb it.” He bent nearer her, inhaling, almost sniffing the air around her head and throat. The skin of his face looked so smooth, she had an insane urge to reach up and touch it. His sculpted lips moved faintly, as if a smile almost danced across them, never quite forming before it faded.

“Interesting,” he observed, and his voice was different now, quiet, almost whispering, with just a hint of hoarseness. “I have to thank you for waking me. . . . What is your name?”

She swallowed. “Elizabeth. Elizabeth Silk.”

The almost smile tugged at his lips and vanished. His cheek brushed against hers, barely touching; yet her stomach seemed to plunge. “Silk. How apt,” he murmured. “Like your hair . . . and your skin, so soft and warm . . .”

His fingertips caressed her face, then slid down over her chin to her throat, and she gasped, jerking in panic. But the movement only brought her into contact with his body. He was hard and solid, and surely that stiff ridge against her stomach was his erection. . . . Vampires had erections? Unless that part of him was still made of stone?

Oh Jesus Christ and fuck!

She shrank, pressing her back into the wall once more. Shocked, she could feel wetness between her legs.
It’s just fear, not lust; it can’t be. . . .

“And you are English,” he said, changing to that language without warning.

“Scottish,” she returned mechanically.
What the hell does that matter?

He inclined his head, clearly humoring her. His body touched hers at breast and hips, hardening her nipples into aching peaks. Perhaps he felt them, for he said, “Do you know how long it has been since I have had a meal or a woman?”

Her stomach seemed to melt into her womb. Sweat had broken out on her palms and was trickling down between her breasts. But somehow she managed to do the math. “Three hundred and twelve years?”

His gaze dropped to her lips. “Don’t ask me. After the first couple of centuries, those decades just fly by.” He lifted his hand from her neck, tracing one tapered fingertip along her lower lip. She was afraid to move.

“Do they really?” she managed.

“No. But they let me work up some heady appetites.”

“For what?” She sounded more suspicious than terrified. Was that good? Perhaps. The almost smile reappeared and vanished as his face leaned nearer hers.

“For dinner,” he answered. “And dalliance.”

His finger slid to the corner of her lips, pushing gently until she gasped, and when her mouth opened, he took it with his.

Heat consumed her, drowning her in some strange, welcome weakness. His cool lips moved across hers, sampling, parting them. He should have tasted of dust and death and corruption. At the very least he hadn’t brushed his teeth in 312 years; yet what she inhaled in panic was something overwhelmingly seductive, an earthy sweetness, powerful and masculine, and, God help her, she wanted it. She wanted to give herself to his mouth, feel his kiss deepen and dominate while he pressed that large, hard body closer into her. She wanted to push herself against the hardness nudging her abdomen. She wanted it between her legs, pushing into her, because she’d never known a kiss as arousing as this, and the sex would be so . . .

Oh God!

Shuddering, she forced herself to be still, praying she’d given away none of her depravity. His lips released hers, and she glared into his shadowed face, summoning anger to hide the unexpected emotions that frightened her almost more than he did. But although she shoved his shoulder hard in an effort to barge past, he remained immovable in her path.

“You taste good enough to eat,” he said hoarsely. His hand swept down from her cheek to her throat and breast, where it lingered, spreading a fire she couldn’t control. Fresh moisture pooled in her panties. Again she had to fight not to lean into that hand—it seemed determined to tease rather than deliver. But he must have felt her pebbled nipple poking through her top, for his gaze followed his hand while his thumb traced a circle around her areola. “And beneath these very odd clothes, your luscious little body cries out to be fucked. You can take care of both my immediate needs.”

She closed her eyes, as if that could remove the temptation as well as the terror. In a strange, strangled voice, she said, “What’s wrong with the clothes?” If nothing else, it should distract him. She had to think about getting away from him, not about getting into his pants.