Bloodlust Denied (12 page)

So her adoptive brother stood by and watched her—

He cut the thought dead. The brother was clearly a pervert but at least he wasn’t Morana’s lover.

“Do you have any blood brothers or sisters?”

Tension coiled in the room, as though he had just stepped over an invisible barrier erected around her heart. She wasn’t going to answer him, and that increased his desire to know. To discover everything about her life and her past and the fascinating path that had led her to that alley and into his existence.

“My only brother is dead.” The bitterness in her voice was barely discernible but to his preternatural senses, her loss screamed in soundless agony.

“How long ago did he die?” Not long. He knew that much.

She flicked him a startled glance, as if she’d expected him to sympathize with her loss, perhaps murmur meaningless platitudes.

“A long time ago. Another life.” The corner of her mouth quirked in a private, mirthless jest.

As the next course was served and he was unwillingly thrust into the tainted archives of his past when he had truly lived another life. A time when death had claimed all he loved, everything he had ever been. Memories he’d buried in unmarked graves.

He attacked the venison on his plate, momentarily imagining sinking his teeth into the meat. But that wouldn’t assuage the dull rage that churned through his gut or pounded through his brain. He dropped his pretense of eating and leveled his gaze across the table to where Morana sat staring at him, spellbound.

“Were you with him at the end?” He hadn’t meant to ask such a thing. And yet her love was so pure, it bathed her in a halo and he knew she would not have allowed her brother to die alone.

The way he’d let his beloved die alone.

The moldering memory rose like a putrid corpse from the black fog in his mind. He gritted his teeth, pushed the recollection aside. It was long ago, and even then there had been nothing he could do to change the hand of Fate.

Fuck, but he loathed Fate. He had spent the rest of his existence spitting in Fate’s eye. But it meant nothing, because nothing could change the past and the past was the only thing he craved with all of his shriveled heart.

“No.” Her voice was a whisper in the eons of time that separated them. He dragged his attention back to the present, back to the woman who sat opposite him. The only woman who had ever sat with him alone in this grand, empty dining hall.

“Why not?”

She looked down at her plate, clearly debating whether to accede to his demand. Or maybe she was just recalling another time, another place.

Finally she raised her head and for one eternal second he saw the monumental depth of her loss. A loss that surely encompassed more than her brother, more than anything a mere mortal was capable of withstanding.

“Fate had other plans.”

A chill trickled along his spine at her choice of words. But they were only words. It didn’t mean she could read his mind or see into his hollow soul.

“And now your guilt eats at your heart and conscience, until you fear for your sanity.” He offered her a twisted smile. How well he understood except for the fact he no longer had a heart and had long ago forsaken his conscience.

Her eyes darkened with sudden knowledge. “Who have you lost, Your Grace?”

He had no heart, yet still it ached. “No one.”

She was silent as the plates were cleared. He contemplated abandoning dessert, canceling the evening’s entertainment he’d arranged and instead take her to bed and pleasure her so thoroughly all thought of conversation vaporized.

Something, perhaps a masochistic streak he’d not realized he possessed until this moment, prevented him from moving a muscle.

“Was she your wife?” Morana’s voice was soft and her gaze didn’t waver despite the warning glare he arrowed her way.

No one dared question him. No one possessed the nerve to delve into his private affairs.

No one but this woman. And that was the reason she was here at his table.

“Yes.” The word grated through his chest, seared his throat. It didn’t matter what he said tonight. When he finished their liaison he would wipe the memories from Morana’s mind and apart from his most trusted servants, everyone else who served the needs of this house could never recall anything of import relating to him.

“How did she die?”

He could finish this conversation now. She had no right to question him. Despite what he was, he was still a peer of the realm, had been a fucking peer of the realm for so many centuries it meant nothing anymore. As if it ever had.

“She was murdered.”

Her reaction was satisfactorily appropriate. Her eyes widened, lips parted, and her fingers clenched around the crystal goblet she held.

“I’m so sorry.” Her voice was scarcely above a whisper. “Did—was the murderer apprehended?”

A mirthless smile slashed his mouth. He could feel his fangs splitting through his gums and wondered what Morana’s reaction would be if he allowed her to witness that phenomenon.

“Vengeance was mine.” The crypt opened, the blood-soaked memory crawled forth. For the first time in countless centuries, he recalled the smell, the feel and the overwhelming fury as he’d splattered blood and bone and brain across the marble floors and elegant columns.

Vengeance was his, but it was empty, meaningless, because nothing had brought
her
back to him again.

Morana took a deep breath as if she wasn’t sure how her words would be received. “My brother was also murdered.”

He felt the waves of desolation roll from her and there was something so fundamentally
wrong
with the scent of her emotion that it pierced the thick black anger building in his chest.

With effort, he slammed shut the vault, once again imprisoning the darkness. He focused on her, on the pain emanating from the heart of her being, on the agony shredding her soul and mind.

For her brother?

His senses sharpened. Her love was pure but it filled every atom, overflowed, spilled into the room and he could feel the loss as acutely as if the loss were his own. But this love was somehow amiss, askance, as though her precious virtuoso was playing off-key, a discordant note amidst perfection.

“Was his death avenged?”

Her dark eyes transfixed him. “Vengeance is the reason I exist.”

After dinner, Morana accepted the duke’s hand and he led her from the dining room. She couldn’t believe what had possessed her to tell him such personal details but truly, what did it matter? He would think she exaggerated, or spoke purely from grief.

Never in a thousand years would he guess she’d admitted the absolute truth.

Bewigged flunkies opened the doors to another room and she gasped. Sculptures graced the palatial music room and sixteenth-century tapestries adorned the walls, but her eyes were drawn to the string quartet. Instinctively she focused on the violinist and a pang shot through her at the knowledge it was not Thanatos.

But she’d see him soon. Already he was close to finding her, she had no doubt.

“French,” the duke whispered in her ear, his amusement obvious. “I’m nothing if not patriotic.”

She turned and smiled, and wondered at the instant stiffening of his features, as if something in her smile startled him.

How odd. “Music transcends petty rivalries.” She’d lost count of the battles and wars mankind had waged over the centuries. How pointless they all were.

They sat on a sofa upholstered in a needlework cornucopia of fruit and foliage, and the exquisite strains of Bach replenished the well in her heart and joy overflowed, tumbling through her veins. She gripped her fingers together and crossed her ankles so she wasn’t tempted to leap to her feet and let the music consume her, the way music always consumed her; to lose herself in the notes and the magic and forget all the
whys
of her lonely, endless existence.

“Dance for me.” His smoky whisper caressed her skin, igniting a passion that had little to do with the lure of the dance and everything to do with the lure of the man.

“How would you have me dance?” Her whisper was as sultry as his and she glanced at him from beneath her lashes. How exciting to flirt, and with such a potentially dangerous partner as the duke. “For the ballroom or the gutter?”

His green eyes smoldered. “The gutter.”

She stood, turned her back on the quartet and felt the music sink into her soul, bathe her heart and captivate her limbs. Her fingers slid sensuously across her hips, her waist, the outline of her breasts, and the soft fabric of her gown heightened her senses as she gyrated in seductive rhythm.

Never taking her gaze from his, she slowly pulled the diamond pins from her hair and flicked them onto a small Louis XVI table until, at last, her hair was free of constraint and she tossed her head, luxuriating in the liberation.

The tempo increased and it was a banquet, notes cascading and colliding. So much more to relish than a solo, even when the soloist was as flawless as Thanatos.

And then the duke pulled her roughly into his arms and the music abruptly silenced. But she hardly noticed the musicians hurried departure because the music still thundered in her blood, still echoed in her brain, and it wasn’t from instruments of timber and string but from the touch of hands and lips.

“You entrance me.” His husky voice against her mouth sounded more like an accusation than compliment.

“And you’ve enslaved me.” Let him make what he wished of her words. Either interpretation was true.

“You’ll honor the wager?” He pulled back, just enough so their gazes clashed. “No limits or constraints?”

Desire shimmered through her blood. If she agreed, there was no knowing what he might demand of her, what he might exact. The thought caused her nipples to tighten in anticipation and liquid heat trickled from her pussy. “No limits.”

Fingers speared her hair, holding her still as his lips captured hers. But instead of the plunder she expected, his touch was gentle, questing. As if he was exploring her for the first time, tasting and probing and discovering her every secret.

She plunged her fingers in his hair mimicking his actions and the silken threads caressed her palms. So soft, seductive, so much more than when she’d touched him in the carriage and been hampered by her cursed gloves.

Their tongues touched and she slid into his mouth, thrilling to his heat and the feel of his teeth against her. But before she had tasted her fill, he drew back, severing contact and she moaned in protest.

A ragged laugh grazed her cheek. “Patience, my love.” His endearment no longer grated on her nerves because it no longer seared as an insult. She could imagine he meant the words, even if she knew in her heart he did not.

He worked the buttons on her gown, tugging at them when they didn’t immediately unfasten.

“Patience, Your Grace,” she mocked softly and he growled against her ear and the fabric ripped as he tore the last buttons with no semblance of propriety.

“Patience is overrated.” He tugged the gown over her breasts and hips and she kicked it aside as he attacked the stays of her corset and pulled the chemise free, until she stood before him clad only in silken stockings and beribboned knee garters.

She basked in the heat of his gaze, and reached up to tug on his perfectly crafted cravat. He didn’t stop her, nor did he assist, and so she unbuttoned his coat, his waistcoat, and slid them off his powerful shoulders before tugging at his shirt.

“Gods, how many layers do you wear?”

He laughed before ripping the shirt over his head. “Does this please you better?”

She traced her fingers over his impressive pectorals, delighting in the warm texture of his skin before dropping to her knees to tackle the intricacies of his breeches. The position reminded her of when they were in the carriage. Her mouth watered to taste him again.

She pulled his breeches over his hips and his magnificent cock filled her gaze. She leaned closer and breathed in deep, the elusive scent of his arousal causing her pulses to quicken.

The tip of her tongue licked the underside of his swollen head and his tortured groan echoed around the room.

“Morana.” His fingers dug into her shoulders and she looked up at him. His emerald eyes blazed down at her. “You are a witch.”

He would call her worse, and mean it, if he knew what she truly was.

“Yes.” Her voice was husky. “Beware I don’t bewitch you for all time, Your Grace.”

His teeth flashed in a fleeting smile. “I would have no objection to your trying, Miss Craven.”

If she possessed such magic, she would not hesitate to use it. But all she had was now. And she would enjoy every moment until the inevitable end.

Hastily she pushed his breeches farther down his legs. She molded her palms over his firmly muscled thighs and could feel leashed power vibrating through his body as he held himself in check.

It was clear he was holding back because of the way he had behaved earlier. His thoughtfulness touched her and made the knowledge that they had no possible future together even harder to bear.