Dawn Thompson (32 page)

He had tossed his coat inside the unlit circle and now pulled her into a smothering embrace. At first it was pure passion and relief as he cleaved to her, but then that changed; his sensuous lips clamped tight over clenched teeth told her all too well he fought the fangs, even as she herself did.

Frantic hands roamed her body, pulling her closer against the bruising force of his arousal. The bloodlust was unbearable. Palpitating spurts like liquid fire surged through her moist sex, and her arched body reached for him as her fingers threaded through his dark hair, wet with the evening dew. Their thundering hearts beat against each other as one, their loins responding with a jerking reflex. She looked him in the eye—those quicksilver eyes, red-rimmed now and hooded with bloodlust and desire. This was what he had warned her of, why he’d insisted that she carry the pistol. He could not stop, and she could not resist him. He was her husband. But this was beyond conjugal bliss; it was that combined with a ravenous urge to devour—to possess. It was an urge so powerful it usurped the instinct of self-preservation inherent in all creatures and bound them together in mindless oblivion.

Foxed by his ardor, by the fangs inches from her flesh that could destroy her, Cassandra only heard the white wolf’s growl from the distant periphery of her consciousness. It wasn’t until the great wolf slammed into them, separating them, driving them into the circle, then collapsing itself just outside the ring, that sanity came trickling back.

“Cassandra,” Jon moaned, his eyes a study in shame and grief as he fought his way back from blood madness.

“Help me get him . . . inside the circle,” she grunted, tugging the wolf’s inert body. “I cannot lift him on my own.”

Jon staggered to her side and, reaching down, lifted the wolf into his arms. He carried it inside the ring of straw. The motion stirred Milosh to consciousness, but the most that the Gypsy could manage was a half-upright position resting upon his front legs, his eyes glazed with pain.

The moon shone down in full eclipse, its blood-red halo glowing eerily. Jon’s hands were trembling as he ignited the straw circle with the gauze-wrapped stick. They were still trembling when he opened the flask and handed it to Cassandra.

“Three swallows,” he said. “Hurry. It must be now, Cass.”

She tilted the flask and swallowed once, twice, three times, all around a grimace. It was foul-tasting, bitter. She was hoarse from screaming, and she coughed once the last of it had trickled down her parched throat.
Please, God, don’t let me retch,
she prayed, handing the flask back.

Jon downed three swallows himself and was about to close the flask when her quick hand caught his. “Give it here,” she said.

Clearly nonplussed, he handed it back, and she dropped to her knees on the cold stone plateau and
poured some of the draught into the trencher she’d brought. Vertigo was robbing her of her vision. The blazing circle of fire seemed to spin around her; the surrounding darkness was sprinkled with glaring white pinpoints of light. Or, were they the stars? She couldn’t be sure. She was as good as castaway, but she slid the trencher toward the wolf and watched him lap from it greedily.

“I don’t understand,” Jon murmured. “Is this why you insisted upon bringing that deuced trencher? How could you possibly have known?”

“I had a vision,” she said, but said no more, for she spiraled down into blood-red darkness.

The orchestra had struck up a country dance—nothing scandalous, like the new waltz everyone was twittering about. Wrapped in a cloud of another scent, Jon scarcely noticed the aroma of stale cake, or the sickening tart-sweetness of fruity ratafia and almond-flavored orgeat assembled on the refreshments table along with the stronger libations for the men in attendance.

Miss Cassandra Thorpe. How fetching she was, wrapped in a cloud of apricot-colored tissue silk that made her skin glow. How gracefully she tripped across the labyrinth of his memory. Her provocative scent threading through his nostrils rose above the stench of blood and charred wood, and he was there, really there—at least it seemed so. Milosh had said there would be hallucinations.

From the moment he had taken her gloved hand and led her out on the dance floor he had sealed their fate. The first time he turned her lithe body to the strains of the country music, he knew he must make her his—knew it despite the chastisement that followed, the angry indignation
of Lady Estella Revere and her harridan mother, who had earmarked him for her daughter, and the righteous indignation of Lady Jersey, who’d taken him to task over wasting the occasion upon a totally ineligible lady’s companion. He still bled inside for the embarrassment—not for himself, but for Cassandra, though she didn’t seem to mind. All in all, it was a pleasant hallucination featuring that which he’d loved most before exchanging orgeat and ratafia for herbal poison and blood. . . . But that comparison quickly plunged his thoughts toward something he hated with every fiber of his being—
Sebastian.

Jon moaned as his dream took a darker turn. All at once, he was back in that dingy gambling hell, his nostrils filled with cheroot smoke, with the odor of unwashed men, the sickening-sweet ghost of Blue Ruin and other anonymous spirits long-ripened in the scarred wood floorboards. He saw again the tall dark shadow, the strange-looking man impeccably dressed in the latest London fashions who introduced himself and offered to point out an alternate method of finding the parishioner he was seeking. Jon relived, as if outside himself looking on, how eye contact with the monster had clouded his mind. All at once he was back in that wharfside alley reeking of fish, raw sewage, and rotting produce, sprawled on the slimy, filth-encrusted cobblestones peppered with spent cheroot butts and broken glass. He felt again the sharp fangs piercing his flesh, struggled again through his dazed disorientation and the aftereffects, the cruel realization that he had been infected.

Dark, swirling fog drifted over him in the hallucination. He didn’t want to see more, but it visited him nonetheless: the heart-stopping moment when he saw
Cassandra lying on the ground in Vauxhall Gardens, the creature feeding upon her, infecting her.
No
! His mind screamed, but the relentless visions would not fade. Jon fought with all his might to open his eyes, but he could not. He lay helpless, while the whole nightmare played out before him, until a voice like thunder at last bled into the rest.

“You cannot escape me,” it said, then burst into a spate of mocking laughter.

Did he dream that voice? Had it simply ghosted across his mind, a byproduct of the draught like all the rest? Was it a direct communication through thought, the way he communicated with Cassandra when they were in their animal incarnations; or was the voice real? His eyes snapped open. Sebastian was nowhere in sight.

Jon shook himself like a dog and tried to rise. His head was spinning. The mountain seemed to be whipping around, out of control, and he staggered like a drunken lord when he finally struggled upright on the third try. It was still dark. The moon had disappeared, but the stars blinked down innocently upon what had been a life-and-death struggle between the living and the undead. He held his head as if his hands would keep his brain from bursting; it felt about ready to explode. If only his eyes would focus. If only he could remember . . .

Cassandra! She was unconscious on the other side of the circle. Calling her name, he reeled past the fire that had dwindled to glowing embers, stumbled over his great-coat, and dropped down beside her. Was she breathing? He gathered her into his arms and shook her gently—how soft, how sweet and fragrant she was . . . and how still. How deathly still.

“Cassandra!” he gritted out. His teeth were clenched
to hold back the fangs, just as always when he was aroused. But there were no fangs. He ran his fingers along the edge of his teeth, scarcely able to believe it. He was on fire for her, but there was no bloodlust, only the raging heat of desire. “Cassandra,” he murmured, “it worked. The draught . . . it worked!”

Murmuring her name again, he smothered her with kisses. After a moment, she stirred and her eyes came open halfway. Her fingers were warm as they flitted over his face. It was as if she didn’t trust her eyes. All at once she was clinging to him, sobbing his name, fisting her tiny hand in his hair as she returned his kisses. He folded her closer, and her body arched against him—reached for him—and he was undone. They were alone on top of the mountain. In that moment, they were the only two people on earth.

Still gritting his teeth, for he could scarcely believe it, he dropped his head down to her shoulder, his lips a hair’s breadth from the vein at the base of her throat and the blood pumping through it, but there was no feeding frenzy. Yes, the flow of her blood—her life force—aroused him. Yes, his heart beat to that same rhythm. Yes, it sent shock waves coursing through his body, through his sex. But this was carnal desire not bloodlust that drove him, and he was experiencing it as if for the first glorious time in her arms.

His hand was shaking as he traced the blue veins visible through her opalescent skin. It wasn’t safe to make love to her here, but she gently kissed the fingers caressing her cheek and he melted.

“Milosh . . . ?” she murmured.

“He’s not here,” he replied, his eyes searching hers, which were dilated with desire in the last of the fire’s dying
embers. Judging from the absent moon and the position of the stars, dawn was not far off. The fiery ring that enclosed them had long since burned out, and a cool mist was rising over the mountain from the gorge below. It cast a ghostly aura over the scene of what had been a horrific battle.

If it weren’t for Cassandra’s quick thinking, setting Sebastian’s clothing afire, Jon would have lost that battle. At last he knew why Milosh had never been able to vanquish the vampire. Sebastian was possessed of an incredible physical strength that neither of them could match. If one thing was learned from the confrontation, it was that brute strength was not the way to kill the creature. It was only by wits, by cunning, that they would be able to conquer the centuries-old vampire.

Milosh. The Gypsy had proved his mettle, his loyalty, but still he remained an enigma. Nonetheless he had played a noble part in their protection, even to the point of attacking Jon when his bloodlust threatened Cassandra. Where was he now? His wounds had been serious to begin with, not to mention whatever other injuries he had sustained in the last confrontation. Had he crawled off somewhere to die? What sort of premonition had Cassandra had that made her insist upon bringing that trencher? How could she know that Milosh might need the draught as well and, more pointedly, how could she possibly know he would be in wolf form when he appeared?

All these questions cried out for answers, but not now—not when Cassandra’s soft flesh was calling to him. Not when her delicate, blue-veined hand had grasped his and was guiding it to the skirt of her frock and what remained of her petticoat, pushing it up, exposing her sex to his gaze—and to his plunder.

Hungry eyes devoured the sight of her. The soft moans leaking from her arched throat compelled him. One by one, all restraints were discarded until they both lay naked under a blanket of mist. Free of the bloodlust, it was as if each place he touched was being touched for the first time. Every nuance of their coupling was an awakening, bursting to life and awareness in a way he’d never dreamed possible.

He wasn’t prepared for the power of this passion that consumed him as the flames had consumed the straw. He wasn’t ready to make love to his exquisite bride without restraint, without fear—without having to plunge his deadly fangs into his own flesh to keep himself from destroying her tender body. This was all new to him, and he embraced it greedily.

Long, languid kisses deepened with desire, the taste of her honey-sweet skin, the thrill of her innocent abandon—all these things were happening for the first time. Yes, his heightened sense of smell detected her blood, but it no longer commanded him to drink from those delicate veins. Gone was the dark rapture of their embrace. What remained was rapturous, yes, and all-consuming, but gone was the peril. The blood moon ritual had allowed them to take their union into the light.

He groaned as his tongue found first one hardened nipple and then the other—something he’d dared not savor before, his fangs always at the ready. She was malleable beneath him, her arched body begging for penetration. Groaning again, he held back—not from fear of draining her blood this time, but to give her the most pleasure his body could provide.

Spreading her thighs, he entered her slowly, stretching her virgin flesh until it gave admittance to his anxious
member. All the while, her haunting, dilated eyes transfixed him. No more than a brief flash disturbed their shimmer as he entered her, gliding on her moist heat. She felt like hot silk against his hardness. Her sweet breath caught in her throat and he moved in her, riding her rhythm. Her hands raced over his back, over the indentation of his narrow waist, and cupped his taut buttocks. Jon groaned. She was touching him in ways they’d never dared touch before.

Deep, guttural murmurs seemed to echo from her very core as she clung to him, moving against him, whispering his name as she arched her spine, reaching to take him deeper. It was more than he could bear; more than he’d dared hope for. His sex was on fire, his body undulated against her.

Only when he felt her contractions sheath his sex—only when he felt her climax seize his member, felt the friction of her moist fire—did he plunge himself deeper . . . and deeper still until he’d filled her. Mindless oblivion took him then, just as it did her. He could see it in the dilated luminescence of her eyes. He could feel it in the hammering of her heartbeat against his, in the rhythm of her hot breath puffing against his skin, slick with sweat. She was his as he had never had her. She was totally his at last.

A bestial howl escaped him as her sex tightened around his engorged member again, and the seed of his life rushed from him in a steady pulsating stream. The breath left his body in the shape of her name, and he gathered her to him voraciously. The mist embraced them then, caressing their bodies, drifting over their moist skin. Neither spoke. There was no need. Below, the first signs of the lightening sky crept over the distant
hills. All was still until a deep-throated roar of laughter rumbled through the mountains like thunder.