Bloodlust Denied (14 page)

But this was no Van Dyck. Although she had already guessed the master she sought out the name and her stomach churned as she read
Raphael
.

“I wondered how long it would take you to explore the library.”

The duke’s amused voice shattered her paralysis and she whirled to face him. His cravat was loosened and he looked relaxed. She might even go so far as to say he appeared happy to see her.

She could let it go. What did it matter? And yet it did matter, and she couldn’t let it go. Because something tugged at her senses, something dark, unnatural, and she didn’t want the insidious poison of doubt to tarnish her feelings for the duke.

“Who is she?”

Instantly his features hardened and once again he was the autocratic aristocrat who had abducted her against her will.

“One of my ancestors.”

She maintained eye contact, even though his eyes no longer radiated warmth but instead reminded her of a frozen lake in the depths of a forest.

“She’s the same woman whose portrait hangs in the hall.”

His jaw tensed in clear displeasure. “My dear Morana,” his voice dripped condescension. “You know that’s impossible. This portrait was commissioned almost one hundred and fifty years before the Van Dyck.”

The uneven thud of her heart echoed through her skull, jarring her brain. She struggled to retain focus, not only on her scattered thoughts but the alarming way her vision had blurred.

“Why are neither dressed in the fashion of their day?”

“Should I know why they chose to play dress-up?” His lip curled in obvious disdain. “Perhaps their husbands had a fetish to see them as a Greek goddess.”

She pressed her hand to her forehead and wondered at the clamminess. “Where do you keep the portrait of your wife?”

“That’s none of your concern.” His voice was so cold it chilled her heart. But she couldn’t let it go.

“Did she also have blue eyes and golden hair?” She wanted him to deny it. As though it would make any difference to how he felt about
her
.

The icy silence ate into her limbs and froze her marrow. Finally, through the haze, she saw him shrug apparently bored by the conversation.

“Yes. She was the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.”

His words were blades in her heart. Why, she couldn’t tell because she knew he didn’t love her, couldn’t possibly love her and yet she’d retained a small hope that their physical union meant more to him than simple animal lust.

But he was still in love with his wife. The wife whose ghost haunted him, haunted this house. She even haunted the portraits of the duke’s distant ancestors.

Morana forced her hand back to her side and tried to ignore the strange flutter high in her breast. But then, without warning, every candle extinguished.

Alexius battled to contain the rage flooding through every particle of his body. How dare she ask about his wife? She had no right. That she had noticed the similarities between the two portraits didn’t overly surprise him. Many, he knew, had done so over the years.

The difference being Morana was the only one to ever have confronted him about it.

He’d finish their liaison, travel to Italy and start the cycle of his existence, as his mythical son, yet again.

But would that be enough to stop Morana haunting his mind? Fuck. The thought of plunging his fangs into her sweet flesh and tasting her the way he wanted to taste her plagued him incessantly, and only when he was with her, talking to her or savoring the pleasures of her body did the bloodlust vanish.

It made no sense, and yet he relished the phenomenon for its very illogicality.

But only so long as she remembered her place. And her place was warming his bed, servicing his needs. Yes, he enjoyed her conversation but not if she started to—

“Morana.” He caught her before she hit the ground and stared into her chalky face with rising bemusement. If not for the shallow rise and fall of her breasts, he would think her a corpse.

Fuck that.
She would not die
. He scooped her into his arms and strode from the room, her head lolling against his shoulder. For a second, he was reminded of how she had felt in his arms the last time she was unconscious. When he had fought her stubborn mind and induced her to sleep.

“Travis.” He roared the name as he marched across the marbled hall. His trusted manservant, father of Evan, appeared within a blink.

“Your Grace.” Travis looked at Morana and his eyes widened. Alexius bared his teeth and Travis bowed his head by the slightest degree.

“No, I didn’t.” He growled the words for Travis’ ears only and didn’t miss the flicker of relief that brushed over the old man’s face. Irritation pounded. When had he ever fed his most base of lusts here in this ancestral home?

“I’ll fetch Jane for the Lady Morana,” Travis said.

Once in their chamber, Alexius laid her on the bed and then hovered over her. Why had she fainted? She wasn’t the type to faint. In fact she was one of the strongest women he’d ever come across. If not for his preternatural strength, there were times—such as when he’d bundled her into his carriage—when he doubted he would have been able to physically overcome her.

He glanced over his shoulder, to ensure he was alone, before pressing his ear against her breast. The faint beat of her heart reassured him, but only slightly because why couldn’t he hear her heartbeat from across the room? Why couldn’t he hear the rush of her blood through her veins, as he could usually?

“Your Grace.”

He straightened and scowled as Jane, almost as elderly as her husband Travis, bustled over and waved a bottle of smelling salts under Morana’s nose. She coughed, shuddered and her eyes flickered open.

An odd ripple coursed through his body, gravitating toward the pit of his stomach where it twisted into a painful knot. It had nothing to do with hunger. It had nothing to do with anything he could imagine.

“You fainted.” He made it sound like a crime of treasonable proportions.

“How do you feel, my lady?” Jane asked, smoothing Morana’s hair from her brow.

Morana stared directly at him. Her dark eyes were a little unfocused, as if she still struggled to escape from whatever had sent her spinning into oblivion, but they were still the most beautiful, captivating eyes he had ever seen.

A silent thunder of protest ripped through him.
Betrayer
.

His hands fisted, his heart lacerated. It had been over two thousand years. He wasn’t betraying his love just because he wanted to keep Morana by his side. Fuck it all, even if she lived until she was one hundred years old, that was nothing compared to the endless existence that stretched before him. The endless existence in which he could continue to mourn his one true love.

And Morana
.

“Have you eaten?” He barked the words at her because he had to silence that last, treacherous thought from his mind.
And Morana
?

A tornado whipped through his chest, crushed his lungs. Morana was a distraction, nothing more. When she died, years from now, he would regret her passing as he did all the humans close to him over the centuries, but that was all. She wouldn’t leave a gaping chasm in the fabric of his soul because his soul had long ago decayed.

“Yes.” Her voice was hoarse. “I don’t know what happened. It’s never happened before.” She sounded confused, although her eyes were regaining focus.

“Your Grace.” Jane stared at him until he reluctantly tore his gaze from Morana. “If I might have a word?” She raised her eyebrows and surreptitiously jerked her head toward the door.

He didn’t want to leave Morana. In case she had another fit of the vapors.

“I’ll return directly,” he said, unable to stop glowering at her although in truth, he had the strangest desire to hold her in his arms until he was completely reassured she was recovered.

Once outside, Jane clasped his arm in a motherly gesture and he allowed such liberty only because she was Jane.

“Your Grace.” Her tone was low, urgent. “Are you absolutely certain you haven’t fed from her?”

He snatched his arm from her grip. “Do you think that’s something I might forget?”

Jane didn’t cower beneath his leashed anger as anyone else would. Why should she? She had been in his service from the moment of her birth and knew what he truly was, as had her father and grandmother before her. Her loyalty toward him was absolute. But sometimes her presumption irked him greatly.

“Her pallor is unnatural. And her lethargy increases by the day.”

“Her lethargy?” He flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture. “I exhaust her with my sexual demands. That’s nothing to concern yourself about.”

“Her lethargy,” Jane said, not rising to his bait, “is that of one whose energy is being drained from their soul.”

Gods, Jane was always so melodramatic. Just like her great-great-grandmother had been so many decades ago.

“Just medicate her, Jane.” He turned back to the door. “I don’t want her lying sick in bed. She’s of no use to me like that.”

“You should return her.”

He swung around and leveled Jane with a quelling look. “No.”

“Then she means something to you.”

He saw the gleam of speculation in her eyes and the barely disguised pleasure in her voice. He recalled Morana’s dark eyes and black hair, and struggled to replace them with eyes the color of a flawless summer sky and hair of purest gold.

He bared his teeth, allowed his fangs free reign. Jane didn’t even wince.

“All I want from her is what I can get from between her thighs.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” Jane sounded like the perfect servant. And then shattered the illusion. “I understand her mind and ready tongue are of no interest to you at all.”

“I’m perfectly well.” Morana pushed back the satin sheet and eiderdown and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The duke grasped her ankles and swung her back.

“Until Jane assures me you’re well enough to rise, then you stay in bed.”

“You don’t object being dictated to by your
housekeeper
?” Morana stared at him in disbelief as she tried to work out what was really going through that mind of his.

“Believe me, Jane is far more than my housekeeper.” His tone was dry, and the glance he shot her made no sense at all.

There was only one way she could be well again. And it didn’t involve staying in bed until her malady had passed.

“I need to see Thanatos.”

His countenance darkened. “No. You do not.”

Startled by his vehemence she stared at him. “Indeed, I do. It’s imperative I see him again. He’s my brother, and I—”

“He’s a bloody menace.” The duke sounded feral and she only just refrained from gaping. “I won’t allow him near you until you are recovered. That’s my final word.”

Her fingers clutched the sheet as her mind churned. Should she insist, and risk the duke’s wrath? If she angered him to that degree, he certainly wouldn’t assist her.

Another night or two wouldn’t make any difference. She would wait a few days, approach him in a different manner, explain how Thanatos was the only family she possessed in the world. She wasn’t used to compromise; it left a strange, surreal echo in her mind, but if a compromise would save Thanatos and allow her more time with the duke then it was a small price to pay.

“Then join me.” She shifted over and patted the bed, and offered him a seductive smile she knew he couldn’t refuse.

His brows knotted as though he found her invitation anything but enticing. Ice stabbed through her heart. Had he grown tired of her already?

“Not tonight.” The words growled from his throat, as if they caused him great suffering.

The ice splintered, chilling her blood. He only wanted her for one thing, she knew that, and if he believed her incapable of providing it then why should he want her to stay?

She smoothed the folds of her gown, one of many the duke had acquired for her during the last ten days, and tried to ignore the irregular fluttering in her breast that hampered her breathing and constricted her throat.

So this was how it ended. Because she had shown weakness in front of him, he no longer desired her. How ironic, when the truth was, until he had abducted her, she’d possessed a strength of which he could never imagine, a lifespan that would shatter his mind and a purpose that would send his soul fleeing into the wilderness.

But her strength had deserted her. Her lifespan meant nothing and as for her purpose?

The horrifying truth blazed through her mind.

Her purpose for existing hadn’t troubled her thoughts since the night the string quartet had entertained them. And even now, when she actively recalled why she was still alive, why she possessed the gifts she did, the fire in her blood remained banked and the fury in her heart barely stirred.

Her purpose no longer sustained her, was no longer the focus of her existence. With unaccustomed trepidation, she raised her head and stared into the duke’s smoldering eyes.