Kiss of the Dragon (22 page)

“Is that so?” Draco pushed away from the doorframe where his
powerful body had been at rest in a pose that was deceptively unthreatening.
“Did he touch you, Bianca?” His eyes never strayed from his prey as he stalked
ever closer to the visibly sweating Englishman.

“No, Draco,” Bianca replied, and then she hesitated as she
tried to recall any familiarity on the viscount’s part. “I…I do not think so,
but I do not recall. I awoke with him hovering over me, whispering in my ear.”
Her voice trailed off as her mind turned introspective. She suddenly envisioned
what the viscount could have done to her had she not awoken or if Draco had not
come to her rescue, for the second time in one day.

But the viscount was not finished with his effort to throw
up a smoke screen to hide behind. “It has occurred to me that it is
inappropriate for you to come to the lady’s chambers at this time of the night.
What are you doing here? Perhaps the lady and I had no wish to be interrupted.”

A loud bark of laughter that careened around the room like a
clap of thunder followed his words, as Draco moved within inches of the
viscount, his eyes snapping with fury. “If the lady did indeed invite you for a
lover’s tryst, why is it that you entered her bedchambers through the window?”
It was then that Draco noticed the scratches and scrapes on the man’s face. “It
must have been an uncomfortable climb. Did you fall into the rose briars?”

Guiltily, Christian’s gazed dropped to the bloody scratches
on his forearm. In that moment of inattention, the dragon lord moved
uncomfortably close and he found himself staring up into Lord Draco’s dark, sinister
eyes.

“You have no idea of how close you are to never seeing
another day, Merridew. Only Bianca’s presence saves you from that end,” Draco
ground out between his tightly clenched teeth. Without giving the viscount a
moment to ponder his menacing words, he let fly his huge fist slamming it into
the Englishman’s jaw. It was the last thing he saw before his world went black.
Draco dragged his limp body to the door and tossed it out into the corridor.

“Take the viscount to his chambers, Jacque. And see that he
stays there.” The young guard stood staring at the unconscious nobleman on the
floor, and then up at Lord Draco, an appalled expression on his face.

“Yes, my lord. I will guard the door myself.”

A stiff nod was all he gave the guard before turning and
walking back into the room. He was certain that after tonight’s events, Bianca
would not have to worry about Christian Hamlin, Viscount of Merridew.

Bianca climbed from her bed and began to look for her shawl
when Draco stepped back into her chambers and turned to close the door on the
offending nobleman.

“I am sorry, Bianca.” His words were muffled as his face was
toward the door, his head bowed slightly as his forehead rested upon the cool
solid wood.

“What do you have to be sorry for, my lord? If it had not
been for you, God only knows what would have happened here.” She could not
believe this brave knight would feel guilt over what the viscount had attempted
to do.

Bianca moved to stand behind him and tentatively placed her
hand on his massive shoulder. She felt him quiver at her touch and it
encouraged her to be bolder. With hands splayed wide, she moved them down over
the hard, bulging muscle that formed his back, tracing the indentation of his
spine down to the hollow above his firm buttocks. A groan of need escaped his
throat as she hesitated in her exploration. He raised his head, swallowing
hard.

“If I had not discovered him climbing the vines to your
window, you could have been…he would have….” He could not even speak the
unthinkable things that he pictured in his mind and he yearned to drag the door
open and skewer that bastard with his blade as he lay unconscious in the
corridor. But Bianca’s soft hands moving over his body filled his mind with
other imaginings. He fought the urge to turn around and sweep Bianca up into
his arms to carry her to that bed and slake his burning desire with her soft
white body until he was mindless. But would that not make him just as vile as
the creature he had just beaten and tossed out into the corridor?

“Would you not look at me, my lord?” she entreated.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because if I do, I could not stop myself from touching you,
kissing you.” His raw honesty sent shivers of delight rippling through her
body, and she gasped her surprise. The knowledge that he wanted her made her
bold.

“Touch me, Draco.” Softly spoken, her words tore at him and
Draco nearly succumbed to her sweet temptation.

“I must go, Bianca, before you find yourself well
compromised, there, on your own bed. We would both regret it if that happened.”

He gave her no time to argue the point. Before she could
stop him, he had opened the door and slipped out. As he pulled the door closed
behind him she asked, “What of the viscount, he might come back.”

“Worry not, fair lady. I have men standing guard over him
and I will be outside your door to see to your safety personally.”

The door closed in her face with finality, and Bianca cursed
her ill fortune. The man was not cooperating with her seduction. What was she
going to do?

For several moments, Bianca stared at the heavy wooden door
that had just been closed in her face and then stamped her foot in a fit of
anger. The damned man had rejected her again. This seduction was not going well
at all. She knew how the tale should end. Had not she written story after story
in which the knight in shining armor rescued the maiden in distress from the
evil villain and then proceeded to carry her off on his great steed to live
happily ever after in his castle in the distant sunset? What was it that she
did wrong?

Bianca glanced at her bed considering whether she should
return to it, but immediately rejected the notion. Going back to sleep was
impossible after what had just happened. And knowing that Draco stood on the
other side of her chamber door was nearly beyond bearing.

Restlessly, she wandered across the room to her writing
table and lit several tapers. Since she knew sleep was impossible, she sat
down, determined to work on her newest fable. But when she dipped her quill
into the ink, her hand stilled and she stared unseeing at the clean parchment,
her mind a perplexity of emotions. When she finally did begin writing, it took
her several attempts to get the words she wrote to make some sense.

For the hundredth time Bianca glanced at the closed door.
She groaned aloud in frustration. What was wrong with her? Draco had made it
clear that he wanted nothing to do with her and that should have put an end to
it. But it had not. It was agonizing to be not more than ten paces from him and
not to be able to see his face, to touch him. Perhaps she should tell him to go
back to his own bed, so that his nearness would not torment her.

Bianca was on her feet and crossing the room before she
could reconsider her actions. Her fingers touched the handle before she
realized what she was doing. Snatching back her hand as if she had been burned,
Bianca chastised herself.

“Do not be foolish!” Then a horrid thought entered her mind.
What if he already thought it? “There is no need to give him further proof of
his assumption,” she muttered as she stood, staring at the closed portal as if
it were her worst enemy.

No matter how much she tried to talk herself into climbing
back into her lonely bed for what remained of the night, she could not get her
feet to move. Instead, she put her splayed hands against the door and then
leaned her forehead to the cold slab of wood that was all that separated her
from Draco. She turned her head and lay her ear against the door in an attempt
to hear any sound he might make. But there was only silence from beyond.

An exasperated sigh whooshed past her lips as Bianca whirled
about and hunched her back against the offending orifice. In total dejection,
she slid down the rough woodwork to sit on the floor, thinking to use the door
as a backrest. Too late, she realized her mistake. The thin night rail she wore
provided little protection against the rough surface.

Bianca slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the sharp cry
of pain that rose to her lips as a splinter of wood that felt to be the size of
a lance embedded itself deep in the sensitive flesh of her shapely posterior.
Only a low moan escaped her throat. But as she rose carefully to her feet, the
long splinter, of which a great portion was still attached to the door, broke
off causing even greater pain. Tears welled up in her eyes and Bianca swore
viciously beneath her breath, berating herself for her stupidity.

Venting her pain and frustration satisfactorily proved to be
a difficult matter without making any sound. But Bianca managed it. She hopped
about the room on her bare feet with tears streaming down her face, her mouth
still covered as she held the injured nether cheek with her free hand. She
glanced fearfully at the door, wondering if by chance Draco had heard her and
might come into investigate the strange noises she made. She hastened to the
door and eased the bar over the door to block him out if he happened to grow
inquisitive. It would be just too, too embarrassing if Draco saw her in her
present predicament.

She carried one of the tapers she had lit earlier and sat it
on the floor in front of her full-length mirror to give her enough light to
ascertain the damage. Fearing what she would find, Bianca pulled the tail of
her gown up slowly until she saw the black outline of the wood fragment. It was
embedded much deeper than she had first thought.

“What am I to do?” she quietly lamented to her reflection.
She had the urge to weep and indeed a couple of sniffles broke the stillness of
the room before she resolutely staved off more. She needed to be logical about
her miserable situation. It was obvious that even if she could twist as she was
now, looking at the splinter in the mirror, it would be impossible for her to
remove the offending piece of wood herself. Bianca worried her bottom lip as
she thought on the matter. It was evident that she would have to seek help.

Hearing a loud commotion in the corridor just beyond the
door, she dropped her gown and spun around. Holding her breath, she waited for
Draco to knock at her door and demand to know what she was about. Heat suffused
her cheeks at just the thought of him finding out what she had done.

After a few moments, the sounds of shuffling steps in the
corridor faded and no knock sounded on her door. Bianca sighed with relief. But
she still had to take care of the sting in her nether cheek. She needed help
that was a certainty, but asking Lord Draco for assistance was definitely out
of the question. Bianca wished that Leia had come up as she usually did to
sleep in the dressing room, but she did not expect her maid to show up until
morning.

She could go to Galen, but Bianca feared that he would be
too inquisitive and demand an explanation as to why she was up at that time of
the night. No, the situation was much too delicate to take to a man, even if he
was the resident healer. That left only one person. She would to seek out her
cousin, Modesta. But that presented one very huge problem. Lord Draco. He was
standing out there in the corridor guarding her door.

No, she would have to devise another way to get to her
cousin. Bianca paced back and forth her butt aching more by the moment. She
frantically searched for a solution even as the tender tissues began to swell.

Finally, with a sketchy plan firmly in mind, she grabbed the
bedclothes from her bed and began knotting them together as she eyed the only
way out left to her. It was a bold plan but she was left with few options. If
the vile viscount could use her window to come in, then she could certainly use
it to get out. But she would not be foolish and rely on the unreliable trellis
on which an abundance of prickly roses grew.

Tying one corner of a linen sheet to the bed frame, Bianca
tossed the remaining portion of her makeshift ladder over the window edge. She
leaned out to gauge the distance to the ground but in the dark, it was
difficult to tell exactly how far the knotted sheets reached. Assured that it
must be long enough, Bianca eased her leg over the window ledge and carefully
lowered her body down into the darkness.

A quarter of the way down the rose-covered wall, Bianca
began to doubt her presumption that she could make the climb with ease. Her
arms were beginning to give out and thorns cut into her tender, exposed flesh
causing more discomfort than the large splinter in her buttocks. As she
attempted to move one hand below the other, she suddenly slipped and let out a
loud yip of horror. She fell several feet before her scrambling hands found
hold of the bed covers, stopping her rapid decent.

But it was the ominous sound of ripping fabric above her
that left her desperately wishing she had not been so impetuous. Was a fatal
fall to the ground worth preserving her dignity? And then her frantic mind
pulled up the ridiculous vision of what would happen if she did fall and was
found sometime later. In her hysterical musing she pictured the guards finding
the Duke de Neige’s only daughter lying dead on the ground, nearly naked. It
would be at dawn’s first light while they made their rounds. The very thought
brought a deep blush to her cheeks even as she hung precariously from the
makeshift rope. Bianca sent up a whispered prayer.

“Dear God, please deliver me from my impetuous ways.”

In her haste to get to Modesta, Bianca had not considered
what she wore. She had not even thought to don a cloak over her thin nightdress
before climbing out the window. Now as the thorns ensnared the fabric of her
thin garment, Bianca cursed her ill fortune. Her arm muscles burned from the
effort of clinging to the impromptu ladder. The venture sapped what strength
she had. It quickly became apparent that she could go neither up nor down at
this point. Her original mildly distressing predicament of moments ago had
suddenly turned into a dangerous, life-threatening situation.

Looking back up at length of knotted bedding that she had
descended, Bianca decided that her only option was to climb back up to her
window while she still had a little strength left. But as she released one good
handhold to reach for another, her hand slipped and she dropped. Her startled
cry blended with an ominous ripping sound.

With her eyes closed, Bianca hung there whimpering in fear.
Steeling her nerves, Bianca finally opened her eyes to total darkness. It only
took a moment for her to understand why she could see nothing. At that same
time, she became aware of the chill that enveloped her entire body. Her
nightdress was now above her neck. Bianca found herself hanging naked from a
rope made of bedcovers halfway down the side of the outer wall of the west
tower of the keep. Carefully she eased herself down a fraction more and her
head popped out of her nightgown that now hung empty entangled in the thorny
brambles above her.

Could her circumstances become any worse?

“What in God’s name?” The incredulous exclamation exploded
from the darkness above her, from the vicinity of her window to be precise.
Bianca’s grip on her makeshift rope tightened as she wondered at Draco’s
discovering her escape.

If she did not love life so well, she might have considered
letting go and plummeting down into the darkness below her. But Bianca deemed
by the way her fortune had run so far this night, she would probably survive
the fall and her quandary would know no bounds. The sudden thought of her
father’s guards made her shudder.

“What the hell do you think you are doing, Bianca?”

“Taking a stroll in the gardens, what does it look like?”

Her sharp sarcasm was not lost on him and his frown deepened
as Draco noted that her hold on the makeshift ladder was weakening. In the pale
moonlight, he could make out only shadows and a ghostly semblance of white
against black. He blinked several times to determine what he was actually
seeing and suddenly he choked on an obscene curse. The damn woman was naked!

“Climb back up here!” He fairly roared at her. “Get your
lily-white butt back up here this instant. What the hell were you thinking?
Perhaps that is your problem. You were not thinking.” Even as he snapped out
his orders he realized that his lovely, nude lady was in danger of falling to
her death if he did not do something fast.

“Please, my lord, do not bellow at me in such a fashion.” He
could hear the tears in her voice as she begged for his tolerance.

“I cannot, Draco,” she finally admitted. “I cannot go up or
down. I am stuck.”

After taking in her perilous perch, Draco made a hasty
retreat down the stairs thinking to find the nearest window to her position and
try to retrieve her before she fell. He knew he had only moments to accomplish
the task.

A moment passed and Bianca swore that she heard a snicker of
a laugh. She would never forgive his cold-hearted attitude at her dilemma. His
amusement hurt her more than she dared to admit. She would let him feel the
heat of her wrath for his sniggering at her expense when she was once again in
a position to do so.

When Bianca heard nothing more from him, she glanced up
again and found that he was no longer there. “Draco? My lord?” When she
received no answer, she panicked. “Please, Draco, do not leave me here. I am
truly stranded.”

“Yea, my lady, I heard you the first time.” The words were a
mere whisper in her ears and hands grasped her waist. So startled was she when
he suddenly appeared at her side, Bianca shrieked and lost her grip on her
makeshift ladder. Strong arms grasped her around her bare waist and she was pulled
through a window beside her.

Clutching his head and neck with frantic arms, anchoring
herself to him as if she would never let him go, Bianca buried her face into
the side of his neck and inhaled his alluring masculine smell as she tried to
stem the tears of relief that flooded her eyes.

She was safe! Her knight in shining armor had appeared to
rescue her once again!

Then to her horror, her sniffles suddenly turned into
heart-wrenching sobs that were torn from her throat. Her whole body shook with
the force of her weeping.

“You are safe, Bianca. Hush, my love.” The words were out
before he realized that he had said them. But oddly enough, he found that he
did not want to retract them.

As he held her convulsing body, Draco tried to ignore the
fact that his lovely lady was completely nude. But it was an impossible task.
His body reacted to her soft skin and sensual curves. His hands moved over her
back and shoulders, one dropping low to cup her bare bottom, possessively.

The feel of her arms about his neck so trusting and her
firm, round breast crushed against his chest so tempting had his body flushing
with hot desire and regret that he could do nothing to satisfy his body’s
raging need. It was clear that Bianca trusted him explicitly by the way she relaxed
in his embrace, but he would be damned if he would take advantage of an
emotionally distraught woman. When he took this woman to his bed, if he took
her to his bed, he amended, it would not be because she was grateful to him for
rescuing her. It would be because she wanted him as much as he wanted her.