Blood Red (11 page)

“What did Yannick do to you, sweetheart?”

“I cannot say.”

He caught her delicate chin between forefinger and thumb. “I’ve been in the dreams, Althea. And I’ve done unspeakable sexual things. You can’t shock me.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear but the thick mass spilled forward again. “No, I expect I cannot. But it’s…it’s private. And intimate.”

He gave a wicked grin. “Ah, but I always share women with my brother.”

“Always?” She stared, eyes wide open. Even in the dark, they sparkled. Though he couldn’t see the exact color in the dark, he knew they were the green of the rain-soaked lawns surrounding Inglewood. Yannick’s home now. His no longer.

With a fluid movement, he sat up also, so he could cradle her from behind. Althea squirmed for a moment as he lifted her and settled her voluptuous bottom between his parted thighs. His erection bumped her spine through her nightgown. “Aye, always. Which means I’ve often seen him perform.”

She didn’t resist as he cupped her slim shoulders. “Now, what does Yannick do to please a woman?” he mused. “What have I seen him do?”

She gasped at that.

Gathering her hair in one thick mass, Bastien lifted it, flicked his tongue along her bared neck. Sweet and salty, touched by feminine perspiration and lavender-scented soap. He traced his way up to her ear. “Did he use his prick?”

He nipped her earlobe gently with his front teeth. He wrapped his arms around her and cradled her tight to him, where she belonged. Her heartbeat raced against his naked forearm.

“Please—”

“Or his mouth?”

“Don’t.”

Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 52

“There’s no shame, love. There’s pleasure in talking about sex.” He nibbled her ear, rewarded by the arch in her back, the soft moan whispering from her lips. “An aphrodisiac, as it were.”

“And there’s no shame in telling me what Yannick’s done, love. You’re destined to be shared by us.” For now at least.

He felt her shudder through his body, recognized it for what it was—a barely restrained surrender to arousal. She liked to talk about sex.

Her head tipped up and she turned in his arms. “What if I do not believe in the notion of destiny? Perhaps I believe I have a choice in this. What if I choose one of you instead of both?”

Bastien skimmed his hands up higher and cradled her breasts. Her heart thudded with life and desire against his palm. “Then choose me, angel.”

Heaven help her, Althea thought, the choice was no longer easy. Just like his brother, Bastien had appeared without a stitch—she knew that because his warm naked skin pressed against her. In the dark, with no moonlight, she couldn’t see him, but she knew his long, bare legs stretched on either side of hers. Muscular, naked arms surrounded her. His broad, bare chest was a solid wall behind her back.

This shouldn’t feel so intimate. He’d escaped confinement, for heaven’s sake, and was likely dangerous. Anticipation shouldn’t be alive in her. Her skin shouldn’t be on fire everywhere that his body touched hers.

And the way he spoke, his voice hoarse and ragged as though he truly yearned for her, made his words both a plea and a confident command. How could he sound both brash and vulnerable? But his vulnerability spoke to her heart.

Did he really think of her as his savior?

What about Yannick? Her heart had soared with him last night, had clenched in fear with worry that he might not find safety. Her foolish, traitorous heart could not flip its allegiance from one man to another so easily, could it?

No, what she felt for Bastien wasn’t at all the same. It was sympathy and sorrow and concern. Nothing more. Even though he’d been in her dreams, seductive and skilled and gorgeous. It couldn’t be more.

But Bastien’s mouth was wet fire along her neck. Burning oil flaming across water.

“Choose me,” he repeated, tempting as the devil.

She caught hold of her senses. “I’m a vampire hunter. I won’t choose either of you.”

His strong arms tightened, clamping her against his solid body, trapping his thick, erect cock between her spine and him. It felt enormous and rock hard, prodding her back. And strangely, his snug embrace made her feel safe, even though she should fear the strength inherent in his strong, hard body.

He was so different from Yannick. His chest smoother, his legs and arms leaner. His longer hair, gold, tangled with hers as he kissed her neck. But his voice and Yannick’s were so very alike, so much so that she quivered in shock each time he spoke. But they must be different, she guessed, in other ways. Yannick exuded both the arrogance of a peer and the gentleness of a loving man. Bastien had wistfully called her his savior, but he chuckled wickedly as he traced his fangs softly along her neck. Her nerves tensed and shrieked in panic. When he suckled her shoulder at the neckline of her nightdress, with soft lips and wet tongue instead of fangs, relief Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 53

slammed into desire, and she swayed at the combination.

Bastien held her up. He filled his hands with her breasts, squeezing them through her crumpled muslin nightgown.

“So you want us to slay Zayan for you and then you’ll kill us?” His voice was a gravelly rasp.

She flinched. She didn’t know. Didn’t know. “How did you know that’s why you were…resurrected?”

“I could hear every word you and your father and that Irish bloke uttered, lass.”

“I thought you couldn’t—”

His fingers plucked her nipples and she jumped at the sudden, delicious pleasure. Her bottom thrust back against his erection.

“Do you understand, Althea, why Zayan imprisoned me?”

She shouldn’t enjoy his touch on her breasts. She mustn’t. “Because you could kill him. I understand now that you and…and Yannick must be together to destroy him.”

“Wouldn’t it have made far more sense just to destroy one of us? With one or both dead, Zayan need never fear us.” He straightened, lifting his lips from her neck. But his hands stayed on her breasts. Each massaging stroke sent a jolt of need down to her quim. She was wet and hot, but lust was all mixed up with fear.

She managed to twist around, but in the dark she could not see his face. His breath whispered over her cheek. Even to her whirling brain, his words made sense. Why had Zayan spared them?

“I’ve no idea why he didn’t kill Yannick.” One hand dropped to rest over her belly. Fingers began bunching up the gown. The hem slid up in front. Bastien murmured in his deep baritone,

“But Zayan didn’t kill me because we were lovers once.”

She must have misunderstood. “
Who
were lovers?”

“Zayan and I.” A trace of jaded amusement flitted through his words.

How she wished she could see in the dark! She tried to turn more, following the sound of his voice. Her hand bumped his lean, hard thigh.

How could he have been Zayan’s
lover
? “But you are both—”

“Vampires?”

Her chest tightened around her heart. “Men.”

“But men can be lovers, my sweet. You must know that.”

She knew it happened somehow. And that it was considered a sin. But the shocking image of another man touching Bastien took root and refused to vanish. A man’s large hand touching as she wanted to touch. Stroking a broad shoulder. Splaying across his chest. Would a man kiss another man’s nipples the way she’d kissed Yannick’s? Would a man explore his lean hip, his long legs dusted with golden hair? Would a man touch his cock?

“You are curious, aren’t you? Imagining what two men do together. How two men make love.”

Knowing Bastien could see her, Althea shook her head—an outright lie. She did want to know. She
yearned
to know.

“Did you love him?”

Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 54

“Ah, sweetheart, I suspect you are really more interested in the sex.”

“No,” she lied again. But she was curious. Did men kiss the way a man and a woman did?

She remembered the dreams. Bastien’s mouth slanting over hers, tongue skillful in her mouth, luring her to sin.

How could Bastien be of that persuasion and still come to her in her dreams, kissing and caressing her with such intense desire?

“It can be highly erotic to make love to one’s own sex,” he promised.

“It is supposed to be a perversion.”

His laugh was the devil’s song, wicked and tempting in the velvety dark. “But I enjoy perversions, love.”

Not like his brother at all! For all Yannick was sensual and skilled and a vampire, he’d been tender and sweet about seducing her. With Bastien, she feared she might emerge from the night without her soul.

“But, in truth, Althea, nothing people do together in bed in the name of pleasure is a perversion.” He brushed a hot kiss to her cheek and she quivered at the surprising sweetness in it.

But at the same instant, his hand delved beneath her nightgown and stroked her bare inner thigh.

“After all, there’s no shame in having both my brother and me take you to ecstasy. You deserve to have us both enslaved to you.”

No, this couldn’t go on. Althea pushed hard against his spread legs, seeking to escape.

“Stay with me, sweetheart.”

Again she heard the soft plea and again it lured her to stay.

“Can you imagine making love to another woman?” he whispered. “Kissing her plump breasts? Taking her taut, thick nipples between your lips? Tasting and touching her as you would love her to do to you?”

His hand cupped the mound between her legs. “Scorching and soaked, aren’t you, sweetheart? I suspect you are like me in your soul, Althea. Wicked and sensual. I suspect you too would love to watch women have sex together.”

His hips rocked back and forth. The tip of his hot tongue played over the top of her spine.

“I love to watch women suck other women’s nipples, and smile with delight at the sound of another woman’s moans. Women so enjoy exploring another lass’ breasts. A woman with ripe, small breasts loves to lick a great big pair of tits, and a woman with large breasts is most curious about a slender, wee thing. It’s so arousing to watch them hug and squash their breasts together, nipples rubbing.” He strummed his thumb over her left nipple, as though to make his point.

“I can’t imagine watching such a thing!” But his fingers found her clit in her wet folds.

“Oooh!”

Stars exploded in the dark as he rubbed. She really must…must…stop…

“You forget I’ve been in your dreams.”

How did he make the word
dreams
sound so deliciously sinful?

“Dreams that kept me alive.” He rubbed until she was boneless, whimpering.

“Now, what else do two lassies like to do in bed?” Bastien mused. “Women do so love to plunge a rod into each other’s pussies. I had two such lovers who enjoyed giving me a lusty show—they loved to fill every hole they had with long, thick ivory wands. They would suck Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 55

each other’s nipples as they slid the wands into each other’s quims, working them until their juices flowed as fast as their moans. Then one bent over on all fours and the other slid a dildo right up her snug little bum. Right to the hilt.”

He wanted to shock her. He must. Why else would he be so…so blunt, so crude? Shame on her, but his story had her heart pounding and not entirely in dismay.

“They were on the brink of orgasm just preparing each other. The first woman slowly slid the last wand up the other’s voluptuous arse, stuffing her full. They then brought me into the fun, and sat at my feet to lick my cock and my balls. They bounced up and down a few times and both erupted into screaming climaxes.”

Althea couldn’t breathe for the guilt and the shock, but her orgasm didn’t care about shame at all. His fingers brought her close…so wonderfully close…She drove her fingernails into his thighs. But he eased the pressure on her and let her slide back from the brink.

She didn’t dare protest. Didn’t dare.

“Before I met Zayan, Yannick and I spent many nights at brothels, enjoying such displays.”

Yannick did such things? Or course he did. He’d made love to her in dreams with his brother.

Bastien whispered silkily, “But when Zayan turned me, he brought me into a dark, erotic world I quickly became addicted to. Have you ever tried opium?”

Startled, she shook her head.

“Sex can be like that. Addictive, until you are a slave to your craving. And, of course you require more potent doses.”

“What—” She shouldn’t encourage him, but curiosity—and her throbbing clit—begged her to ask, “What is a more potent dose?”

“Have you ever wondered how the flick of a whip would feel against your bare bottom?”

“Dear heaven, no!”

“Or ropes tied around your wrists, leaving you the slave to a gentleman’s every wish?” He arched his hips, pushing his cock against her. “The exquisite pain and pleasure of devices clamped to your nipples? A judicious spanking with a riding crop?”

Her head reeled at his words, her quim throbbed. “You would hurt women so?”

“Didn’t your experiences with my brother give you some taste of the agony that accompanies pleasure?”

He rasped his finger over her clit, hard and demanding, and she fought a scream. It was so unbearable.

Give me more. Please give me more.

Just like Yannick, Bastien took her to an edge where she feared his caress and craved it too.

Maybe she did understand, just a little.

Bastien’s touch on her intimate regions became feather-light. Tormenting her. Leaving her panting, hungry, and pressing forward to seek more.

He didn’t intend to take her to a climax? Only to tease her in this unbelievable way? “I wouldn’t want real pain,” Althea said quickly.

“Many do not. But in that dark, sexual world, the submissive and the master learn to trust. I was taught that the true conquest is to lure the submissive into exploring further. Accepting Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 56