Lord of Fire (8 page)

Then he had noticed that she was alone, and the full, fierce spear of his awareness had homed in on her. He had watched her carefully picking her way through the crowd, slim and stealthy. She set his instincts jangling. The only question was, which instincts?

Intent on a closer look, he had begun following her casually through the crowd while his pulse took up a deep, primal drumming. His craving for a fiery coupling, skin on skin, twisted through his veins. It was the best he could hope for in the bitter knowledge that what he really needed did not exist, not in his world. Like anything else, however, love could be simulated. He wanted to be held like the last man on earth; he wanted to fuck until he was drenched in sweat, to lose himself in adoring a woman’s body and perhaps, for an instant, drive back the isolation that engulfed him.

Closing the distance between them, he had savored the modest allure of her walk and felt his body respond to the graceful sway of her hips as they approached the pool. He had envisioned her taking off her robe and showing him her slender nakedness, but instead, she had just stood there, as though searching for someone. It skipped through his mind that when he caught up to the girl, he would either apprehend or ravish her. He still wasn’t sure which it would be as he stood before her, blocking her escape with a dark, slight smile.

As she peered up at him fearfully from the shadowed folds of her hood, he found himself staring into the bluest eyes he had ever seen. He had only encountered that deep, dream-spun shade of cobalt once in his life before, in the stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral. His awareness of the crowd around them dimmed in the ocean-blue depths of her eyes.
Who are you?
He did not say a word nor ask her permission. With the smooth self-assurance of a man who has access to every woman in the room, he captured her chin in a firm but gentle grip. She jumped when he touched her, panic flashing in her eyes.

His hard stare softened slightly in amusement at that, but then his faint smile faded, for her skin was silken beneath his fingertips. With one hand, he lifted her face toward the dim torchlight, while the other softly brushed back her hood. Then Lucien faltered, faced with a beauty the likes of which he had never seen.

His very soul grew hushed with reverence as he gazed at her, holding his breath for fear the vision would dissolve, a figment of his overactive brain. With her bright tresses gleaming the flame-gold of dawn and her large, frightened eyes of that shining, ethereal blue, he was so sure for a moment that she was a lost angel that he half expected to see silvery, feathered wings folded demurely beneath her coarse brown robe. She appeared somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two—a wholesome, nay, a virginal beauty of trembling purity. He instantly
knew
that she was utterly untouched, impossible as that seemed in this place.

Her face was proud and wary. Her satiny skin glowed in the candlelight, pale and fine, but her soft, luscious lips shot off an effervescent champagne-pop of desire that fizzed more sweetly in his veins than anything he’d felt since his adolescence, which had taken place, if he recalled correctly, some time during the Dark Ages. There was intelligence and valor in her delicate face, courage, and a quivering vulnerability that made him ache with anguish for the doom of all innocent things.

A noble youth, a questing youth,
he thought, and if she had come to slay dragons, she had already pierced him in his black, fiery heart with the lance of her heaven-blue gaze. He felt as though she saw through him in a glance, the same way he saw through everyone else. It frightened him even as it held him riveted. If only . . .

It was then, as his initial amazement passed, that reality struck him. He did not know her. He had never seen this girl before, let alone approved her.

Good God,
he thought in sudden horror,
she was just the sort of weapon Fouché would send against him!

He instantly tightened his grip on her face to a shade short of cruelty, for innocence, too, could be counterfeited. He saw terror fill her eyes. He didn’t care. “Well, well,” he snarled, “what have we here? You’re very pretty, aren’t you, my pet?”

“Let go of me!”

He laughed nastily at her struggles. She wrapped her hands around his wrist and tried to dislodge his relentless grip.
Wings, ha!
he thought in self-disgust, baffled by his moment of irrationality—gawking at her like some love-struck youth! The only thing this wench was likely hiding under her robe was a dagger that Fouché had sent her to stick between his ribs!

He was enraged that she had nearly duped him in his own game even for a second, but he did not want to make too much of a scene with so many foreign operatives present. His visitors hailed from the Habsburg court,
Naples,
Moscow—he had even seen the detestable, barrel-bellied, American double agent Rollo Greene in the crowd. Fortunately, Lucien specialized in hiding the truth in plain view. He had to get her alone, learn who she was, and find out who she was working for.

Certain that she was hiding a weapon of some kind beneath her robe, he stopped her from reaching for it by catching her wrists up roughly behind her back, clenching her against his body. The little hellcat fought him, squirming and twisting, bucking against his body.

“Let me go, I say!”

He let out a lusty laugh as her hip chafed his groin. “Mm, I like that,” he purred, holding her slender body against him.

“You, horrible—stop it!” she yelled. “You’re hurting me!”

“Good.” He lowered his face toward hers and looked into her eyes with a menacing glower. “Now, then, my beauty, why don’t you and I go somewhere private?”

She stopped fighting suddenly, her blue eyes widening, her lovely face going from flushed to pale.

Without warning, he lifted her off her feet and threw her over his shoulder, still gripping her wrists with one hand while he clapped the other firmly on her backside to hold her in place.

Her high-pitched shriek went unheard amid the lusty cheers of the people all around them as Lucien carried her off, barbarian-style, to his private observation room behind the glowing red eyes of the dragon.

His wide shoulder was as hard as iron under her stomach, and his whole body gave off angry heat like a furnace. If
Alice’s notion of reality had been skewed by the decadence of

Her protests, threats, and begging went unheeded, drowned out by the throbbing music and drums. Her kicks and flailing punches when she finally wrenched her hands free had not the slightest effect on him. She even tried pulling his wavy black hair in her wild scramble to free herself, but it only brought his hand down on her backside in a hearty spank.

“How dare you?” she gasped, her body going rigid, her eyes smarting at the sting, though the blow hurt her pride more than her flesh.

“Quit pulling my hair or next time it’ll be your bare arse.”

At his crude threat, her courage blasted up in a geyser of fury and indignation. For a man who supposedly spoke seven languages, he was a master of the vulgar tongue! She did not think she had ever been so angry in her entire life. She felt helpless, hefted in his powerful arms, and she hated it—more specifically, she hated him. Oh, how she wished her brother were still alive! Phillip would have put a bullet in him if he could have seen this—first Caro, now her!

Nevertheless, as “Draco” stalked toward the great carved dragon, Alice stopped fighting temporarily, knowing she was overpowered physically and had best regroup before they arrived wherever he was taking her. She was going to need her wits about her if she had any hope of stopping the fiend from ravishing her.

A guard in a long black coat opened a door for him behind the dragon’s elbow. Lord Lucien strode through it. It closed behind them, muffling the echoing roar of the music and the crowd. She braced her hands on the curve of his lower back and tried to twist around to see ahead.

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded in a shaky voice.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he replied in a nasty tone.

She winced at his mockery, bounced against his rock-hard body as he began marching up a narrow spiral staircase hewn into the stone. His stride was tireless. At the top of the steps, another guard opened yet another door for them. With
Alice still dangling over his shoulder quite bereft of her dignity, Lucien marched into a small domelike room, dim and overheated. It had a couch, a wooden table with a couple of chairs, and two oval windows of scarlet stained glass that overlooked the Grotto and the great pool. She was startled to realize they were inside the skull of the dragon.

He leaned down and set her on her feet. “Don’t move.”

The order was futile. She was already in motion, instinctively backing away from him as she would from the wildest of predators.

He reached into his shirt and pulled out a pistol, which he coolly leveled between her eyes. “I said don’t move, love.”

She froze in place, staring in astonishment down the barrel of the gun. Her stomach plummeted with terror.

“Hand over your weapon.”

“What?” she whispered, her shocked gaze swinging from the pistol’s barrel to the ruthless beauty of his face. The lurid red glow from the dragon’s stained-glass eyes bathed the harmonious planes of his cheeks and forehead, contoured the sharp angles of his princely nose and square, determined chin. His sable hair was blacker than night in the underworld, spun from silken shadows. His silvery eyes gleamed with anarchy as he stalked toward her.

“You’re not going to cooperate, are you?” he chided in velvet menace. “Very well,
chérie
. If you’d rather have me search you, I am more than willing. Take off your robe.”

“My lord!”

He gestured with the gun. “Take it off.”

She looked into his steely eyes and promptly decided she wasn’t about to argue with a madman holding a pistol. With shaking fingers,
Alice untied the cinched cord of her belt, then lifted the brown robe off over her head, revealing the demure cotton morning gown that she had changed into before leaving her chamber.

His gaze traveled over her with slow, scorching heat. “Throw it on the floor.”

She obeyed.

“Place your hands behind your head.”

“Please—you’re making a mistake—”

When he narrowed his eyes at her in warning, she shut her mouth and quickly linked her fingers behind her head. He thrust his weapon back into the discreet leather holster inside of his shirt and closed the space between them, putting his hands firmly on her waist. He patted her sides, then circled behind her and began searching every inch of her body with his deft, deadly hands. With a small cry, she jerked her arms down and squirmed her hips away from his touch, but he captured her wrists and thrust them up behind her head again.

“I suggest you cooperate,
mademoiselle
.”

“This is absurd! I am not armed!” she protested with a scarlet blush.

“Be quiet and stand still, or I shall strip you of every stitch of your clothing, and richly enjoy doing so.”

She nearly choked. Good God, what had she gotten herself into? If only she had stayed in her room! She held her tongue and did her best not to flinch and twitch as his large, roaming hands explored her.

“You are very tempting, you know,” he said in a musing tone, “but I’m a little insulted that they should send such an amateur. Were they trying to get you killed?”

“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ah, of course, you don’t. Darling, you had better think fast about how you want to play your hand, because I know your kind all too well. I know why they sent you, of course—to lie with me, then stab me in my sleep.”