Bloodlust Denied (6 page)

She let out shaky breath, as if the prospect of being abducted truly did bother her. And yet why would it? He didn’t know what game she played but it was a dangerous one and after all, he wasn’t offering her something she hadn’t before experienced.

“Stop the carriage, and I will acquiesce to your demands.”

Fast as lightning, he grasped her wrists in one hand. “You’ll acquiesce to my demands regardless.”

The tip of her tongue moistened the seam of her lips, and lust speared through his groin and along his thickening shaft. Three years he’d waited for this moment and now that she was in his power, he was going to enjoy every last second.

He tugged her to her feet and she stumbled against his knees, dark hair tumbling over her shoulders. He inhaled her fresh, clean scent, rose petals and raindrops and without conscious thought, he drifted his mouth across her tempting skin. He could feel the frantic beat of her pulse vibrating against his lips, against the tip of his searching tongue. His fangs pierced his gums, aching with need and want and rising desperation.

“I should punish you for leaving me in that alley, Morana.”

Her uneven breath feathered across his cheek and her cleavage beckoned.

“I delivered. I owe you nothing from that night.”

“I hadn’t finished with you.”

She moved restlessly from him and tried to free herself. “That’s not my concern. It doesn’t give you the right to take me without my consent.”

He wrapped his free hand around her loosened hair and slowly pulled her head toward him. She resisted and pain flashed across her face but it made no difference. She had no choice but to bow before him.

“I have the right to do whatever I desire.” He breathed the words into her face, watched her pupils dilate and the musky scent of her arousal washed through the enclosed carriage. “And no one will miss you, Morana. No one will instigate a search for your whereabouts. You are completely at my mercy.”

Her lips parted. He could feel her fighting her desire and it only intensified his own. Damn it, he’d hoped his memory had enhanced her allure, that his recollection of that night in the alley had been tainted with rose-hued sentimentality.

But he’d been wrong. If anything, his formidable memory had diluted her charms.

“Lady Harriet,” she began and he laughed softly, mockingly.

“Lady Harriet has already forgotten your existence.” He raised an eyebrow at her bemused expression. “I have skill in the art of hypnotism.” That was one way of explaining how he had the power to manipulate the minds of humans. “You’re nothing more than a dream to her. After all, it’s not as if you’re truly related to her, is it?”

She swallowed, and the column of her vulnerable throat caught his attention, hypnotized him.
How sweet her blood would be
. Even more so for the three years she had made him wait to taste her.

Need clawed through his guts and lust gripped his balls in a merciless vise. He dragged his rabid gaze from her tempting flesh to glare into her wide, dark eyes.

“I—I am her great-niece.” The words came from her reluctantly, as though she was drugged.

He angled toward her, until their noses all but touched. “And that’s why you offered yourself on the streets to me, is it? Because noble blood flows in your veins.”

Her lashes swept over her eyes, slow, languorous and infinitely erotic.

“I wasn’t offering myself.” Her voice was smoky, tinged with rising lust. “I was dancing.”

Crushed rose petals filled his senses and twisted through his pounding blood.

“Dancing to entice. To ensnare. So your worthless protector could seek release by watching you fuck
me
.” Rage heated the last word, rage at having been used, at allowing himself to be so used.

But most of all, rage at the knowledge he’d been unable to eradicate the memory of her body, her voice and her damned mocking smile.

“I dance because it is all I can do.” Her knees shifted against his, as if even now she swayed to music only she could hear. He tightened his grip on her hands and her hair.

“I expect more from you than dance, Morana. And this time we will have no perverted audience urging us on with the sound of his cursed violin.”

Morana tried to pull her hands from his punishing grasp, and unlike before, she used all her considerable strength. But the duke held her as if she merely squirmed like a disobedient child.

Her bones ached with the effort.

“You’re hurting me.” The words slipped free from her lips, startling her. No man possessed the ability to injure her and yet she had the sudden, shocking certainty that if she didn’t take care, the duke possessed the ability to not only injure her body but also her heart.

“Kiss me.” His challenge vibrated through the sexually charged air. “And I’ll release you.”

She recalled his identical demand back in the darkness of the alley. She had denied him then. And had regretted it ever since. Involuntarily she glanced at his lips. Sensual. Inviting. A part of her yearned to taste him so intimately but another part warned such liberty would be her undoing.

“Is my request so unreasonable?”

She heard the mocking tone in his voice, but there was something else, too, something he tried to suppress.

Longing.

Desire shimmered across her exposed flesh, tightened her nipples in anticipation and damp heat trickled through her pussy.

It was just one kiss. It wouldn’t cause the world to end or her heart to cease beating.

One kiss would change nothing.

It couldn’t be that hard. She had already fucked him. She intended to fuck him again, and the memory and the anticipation fired her blood.

Yet first, he demanded a kiss, and the technicalities intimidated.

Tentatively she brushed her lips against his, a fleeting, butterfly brush, barely a kiss at all and yet a sharp blade of want twisted deep inside her breast at the brief contact.

She pulled back, her breathing erratic, as if they had just shared a shattering orgasm instead of surely the swiftest meeting of lips in existence.

The tip of his tongue tasted where she had touched and she couldn’t tear her fascinated gaze from him.

“You kiss like an untouched virgin.” The corner of his mouth tipped into an unappreciative sneer and yet, buried in that condemning tone, white hot lust simmered. As if the kiss, despite its inherent chasteness, had aroused him beyond belief.

“I told you before.” The words were breathless. “I don’t kiss.”
But had she ever kissed? Before?
Impenetrable blackness hugged her mind, hindered her recollections, but then his hand released her hair and slid to her nape and the unease retreated to the dark shadows in her brain.

“You will kiss me, Morana.” His fingers tightened around her nape, reminding her she was in his power.
So he thought.
And yet trepidation raced along her spine because for the first time in forever, she was on her own and the rules of the hunt no longer applied.

“Or what?”

His teeth flashed in a brief smile. White, perfect. Even.

Her heart pounded against her ribs, blood throbbed through her veins. This wasn’t a hunt such as she was used to, but it was a hunt nevertheless. Except this time, she was the hunted.

“Or I shall never release you.”

Dark tendrils of need snaked through her soul. She ached to taste him once again.

Her breath fanned his face. “What guarantee do I have you’ll release me if I do as you say?”

The tips of his fingers caressed her nape, so shockingly seductive that spirals of lust teased her pussy.

“None whatsoever.” His arrogant response served only to heighten the desire thudding between her thighs.

She leaned into him, and braced her imprisoned hands against his shoulder. His grip did not lessen, but his fingers briefly stroked her bound wrists through the fabric of her gloves.

Their lips almost touched, but he made no move to assist her. Merely sat there, his hands chaining her, waiting for her to pleasure him as though he were an emperor and she a lowly slave.

“At least promise me you will stop your carriage.”

His eyes devoured her. “No.”

Her heart skittered and her breath stumbled. He would give her nothing, not even a veneer of civility.

But at least he gave her the truth. And that knowledge ignited flames deep within her sensitized pussy even as caution whispered through her mind at the prolonged separation from Thanatos.

She pressed against his unresponsive mouth. Her pulses hammered and she pressed a little harder, moving her lips across his, bumping noses.

He remained as immobile as stone beneath her touch. Except his fingers, clasping her nape, tightened.

It was enough encouragement. Elemental power surged through her at the knowledge that even her poor attempt at a kiss could arouse him. Her lips parted and her tongue caressed the seam of his firm, unyielding mouth and felt the barrier of his teeth. And then he opened to her, drawing her into his scorching heat, consuming her within the furnace.

He released her hands from their confines and caressed the length of her arm, from wrist to elbow to shoulder. His fingers slid into the bodice of her gown and ripped the fine muslin from her breast as though he was a primitive barbarian from the depths of time. Damp heat seared her pussy as his tongue tangled with hers and his thumb teased the aching nub of her nipple.

She leaned into his questing fingers and his legs parted, before trapping her between his muscled thighs. Fire flickered from the tip of her nipples to her core. Mindless with pleasure she speared her fingers through his windswept hair, and cursed the barrier of her gloves.

Her tongue probed, explored. Her breath shortened and pulses thundered. It felt as if she had kissed him a million times in the past, and yet this was all new, all erotic, all encompassing. He tasted of spices, of cinnamon, and the sensation was strangely familiar. Yet beneath prowled danger, scarcely leashed, clamoring for release.

And then, without warning, he severed the kiss. She gasped against his lips, desperate to recapture that closeness, that elusive sensation of being one.

His hot breath feathered her jaw and his green eyes blazed into her, as if he wanted to consume and destroy her. Tremors played over her naked skin, a melody of sensuality and her lips were tender, swollen and begging for more.

“Was that also the kiss of an untouched virgin?” Her words were breathless and she tightened her grip on his long hair, holding him still although he showed no sign of moving.

“A moderate improvement upon your first effort.” His lips barely moved, as though it pained him to speak.

Good. She wanted him in pain, wanted him on his knees begging for her favor and she had no idea why she wanted such a thing, because it meant nothing. Yet somehow, it meant everything.

“Then perhaps I should try again.” She angled toward him, unaccountably compelled to once again claim his lips and experience that exquisite sense of familiarity.

He resisted her blatant invitation by jerking his head to one side and tweaking her nipple between finger and thumb. Hard. The sensation was shockingly erotic and she gasped, but whether from pain or pleasure she didn’t know.

“I give the orders, Morana.” He rolled her nipple back and forth, and she hovered on the precipice, unable to protest or move in case the world imploded. “Tell me you will obey my every command.”

A red haze floated through her mind as the ecstasy and the agony from his ministrations radiated from the swollen bud of her breast to her trembling cleft. Couldn’t he see she’d agree to anything, obey whatever he demanded, so long as he promised to quell the ache consuming every atom of her quivering flesh?

“Tell me.” His scorching whisper grazed across her ear, and his lips briefly tugged on her lobe.

“I will obey your every command.” She breathed her surrender that was no surrender because he demanded nothing she hadn’t craved since the moment she’d left him in that dark alley.

His lips curved against her sensitized skin. She could imagine the arrogance in that smile but it didn’t matter. Let him have his moment of victory if it meant that much to him. In the end, they were both victors.

“On your knees.” His fingers, still clasped around her nape, bore her downward.

“What?” She stumbled as the carriage rocked over a pothole in the road and clung to his broad shoulders for support. “My knees?” Had she understood correctly?

“Where you belong.” The arrogant smile he arrowed her way far surpassed her imagination.

She braced her palms over his broad shoulders. Trepidation licked through her at the realization the duke had other pursuits on his mind than simple copulation.

“No.” She knelt before no man. No woman, either.

“Are you disobeying my command?” He sounded neither surprised nor angered by her refusal, but aroused.

She flattened her hands against the base of his throat. What would he do if she tore that elegantly tied cravat from his neck?

“Yes.” The husky word slipped from her lips as her fingers toyed with the cravat. She wanted him naked as he plowed into her, wanted to see his muscled arms and chest and groin without any sensual silk or fine lawn cloth between their writhing bodies.