Stealing Magic (Vampire Primes) (7 page)

He drew back, filled her again. Again. So careful. He shook like a leaf. She felt how his every muscle strained with the effort to control his own need.

Grace pulled his head down, and bit his ear.

Which put paid to Julien’s control.

Grace held on and rode the waves of pleasure pain pleasure rolling through her as flesh joined to flesh. It was Julien who bit her just before his seed spilled into her so that they shared the moment of shattering orgasm.

He collapsed on top of her, a sweaty mass of limp muscle. Satiation and satisfaction practically glowed around him. She knew just how he felt. Grace touched his shoulder with her tongue, a long, slow lick tangy with salt. The scent of sex was sharp in the air. She was—exhausted in the best way. With her eyes closed she let out a long, slow sound, somewhere between a moan and a sigh.

“You’re smiling, copper girl.”

She hadn’t noticed when Julien rolled off her. She might have fallen asleep for a moment. He was lying on his side, propped up on one elbow. He traced a finger between her breasts.

“You are a most unconventional young mortal. Which is a compliment.”

“I didn’t think it wasn’t.” She rolled to face him. Their bodies fitted nicely together. “Are you a conventional vampire?”

“I suppose I am.”

He got up. She turned on her back and reveled in small residual rippling shocks of pleasure that accompanied the ache between her thighs. Julien returned to the bed in a few moments. This time he was the one carrying the water basin and toweling.

He sat down near the foot of the bed, putting the basin on the mattress.

“If that spills you’ll have to call a maid to clean it up, which would probably be me, but I am quite comfortable where I am,” she said.

“Let’s have a look,” he said.

When she didn’t immediately open her legs he tickled the bottom of her feet. She giggled. “Fiend!”

“If you lie down with vampires, my dear, expect fiendish things to happen.”

He ran his hands up her legs, and she let him have a look at her most private places, where he had already spent time anyway. He wiped her clean with a moistened cloth. The cool water was soothing.

“There’s a bit of bruising, I’m sorry to say,” he told her.

“My own fault for biting your ear.” She blushed as she looked him in the eyes, and her stomach fluttered with the beginnings of fresh desire. “Oh, dear. I think I need to do it again.”

Julien’s smile was mischievous, and full of promise. He stroked the insides of her thighs. “I am happy to oblige, my lady. But first.” He lifted his right hand to his lips. There was a glint of fang, then a dark drop of blood on his thumb. He held his hand out to her. “This will help your discomfort pass quicker.”

Grace was stunned. There were legends about vampire blood. Tales about how tasting the blood of a vampire made you their slave. But—she didn’t believe it. Not of Julien. He was offering her a taste. Her choice. No force involved.

The blood glowed like a ruby on his pale skin. His gift to her.

With her gaze holding his, Grace leaned forward and touched her tongue to the spot of blood.

She exploded, body, mind, and soul. Everything became a glorious swirl of color and fire inside her being as well as through her blood and bones. And Julien was there with her. Blending with her—

She had known pleasure before, but nothing so intense as this. Julien was holding her when she came back to herself. She knew he was as replete, and as exhausted as she was. She vaguely recalled their making love again as only one part of the wonderful, intense sharing between them.

He stroked her cheek. She leaned into his palm. So very happy they were together.

“Sleep now,” he said. “Safe in my arms.”

Chapter Ten

“My lord, the water basin has broken next to the bed. Be careful of your bare—feet—when you get up. I would send for a maid to clean up the mess, but one already seems to be here.”

“I told you that would happen,” Grace murmured. She was warm and soft, half-draped across his chest, fitting perfectly against him.

Beverly’s sarcastic drawl irritated Julien enough for him to raise his head in a full-fanged snarl. The spymaster took a hasty step back, his foot crunching a piece of broken crockery.

Grace put a hand on Julien’s shoulder. “Don’t kill him, love. He’s right to be annoyed with us. With you, at least,” she added. She rolled to the opposite side of the bed.

She called me ‘love’,
was Julien’s first thought. Then he glared jealously at the mortal male. Who was carefully not looking at Grace’s naked form. “Wise of you, Beverly,” Julien said.

When he looked back at Grace she’d already pulled her dress on and was doing up buttons.

“I shall dress you in silks and lace,” he said.

She waved off his offer. “I’ve already got a trunk full of those. This suits me better.”

Beverly cleared his throat. “My lord, you were sorely missed at last night’s affair. It would be provident to make your apologies at breakfast with—”

“Go do your job, my lad,” Grace said. “And I to mine. I would kiss you before I go, but we don’t want to give your valet the chance to sneer.”

Julien sprang from the bed and kissed her anyway, a long, thorough, luxurious kiss. She was so bright with reaction her freckles practically glowed when he was done. And she was limp against his naked body.

“Oh, no,” she said when he began to caress her sides. Grace slapped his hands away. “I didn’t do up all those buttons just for you to undo them.” She stepped away from him, and gave him a long steady look. “Goodbye, Julien Weaver.”

She walked past him, leaving by the hall door. His instinct was to follow her, but Beverly got between him and the door.

“There’s something dangerous about that girl, Julien. She is no ordinary housemaid.”

“She most certainly is not ordinary,” Julien said. Was she dangerous? Oh, yes. She was a mortal woman. “I have given her my heart.”

“Your heart is yours to do with as you wish,” the spymaster said. “Your brain belongs to Her Majesty’s Government for the moment. Shall we get on with the assignment?”

“Fine,” Julien said.

The sooner he found the spy, the sooner he could take Grace away from McHeath Manor to start their life together.

* * *

“Julien is mine! I know you’ve been with him! I’ve been waiting for you, bitch!” the woman at the bottom of the stairs shouted at her.

“Witch,” Grace corrected. She was so happy her whole being hummed with joy, which made her reckless.

She took the last step down the back staircase to face the livid Lady Emmaline. The moment she reached the floor, Lady Emmaline’s hand came up, slapping Grace hard across the cheek.

Grace instantly slapped her back.

The noblewoman howled, in surprise, indignation, and pain. “How dare you?”

Grace touched her own cheek, and raised an eyebrow in answer. She started to move past the angry woman.

Emmaline grabbed her arm, not gently. “I’ll have you sacked, you filthy slut.”

“I could use a bath,” Grace said. “If you do not take your hand off me, you will regret it.”

“I? Regret? I’ll have the law on you for striking me!”

She could. A noble and a servant certainly had different rights in the eyes of the law. Rather, the noble had rights, the servant didn’t, no matter how the law actually read.

“I am so glad I am not really part of your world.”

“What are you talking about, you whore?”

By now a couple of maids had stuck their heads out of doorways. The cook stood in the hallway, frowning, her beefy arms crossed. The butler was coming up behind Lady Emmaline. He wasn’t moving all that quickly, obviously not looking forward to being involved.

“Whore? My people would consider an adulteress a whore.” Grace pried the woman’s hand from her. She held Emmaline’s wrist tightly and studied the woman’s palm. Grace traced lines on Emmaline’s hand. “There’s a man at home who loves you no matter how you hurt him. He won’t fight for you even though you want him to. Go home, woman, and save your marriage.”

The noblewoman sputtered. The butler stepped up to them. Grace let Emmaline go. Emmaline was crying. She ran off, her sobs echoing down the hall. Grace couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, even though every word she’d said was true. Well, who was she to judge anyone?

“It is time for you to leave McHeath Manor.”

The butler was absolutely right. Absolutely, totally right. She’d become so emotionally involved with Julien Weaver she’d forgotten her purpose in making love to a vampire. The sexual encounter was over. The spell would work or it would not, but Julien’s part in it was over. Her feelings—and his—made no difference. Her duty was to her family. So, it was time to find Uncle Mungo and be off.

Chapter Eleven

“You have been crying for three months,” Granny McCoy said. “All this moping must stop.”

“I’ve only been crying when no one’s looking,” Grace said. She didn’t see why her loneliness, and, yes, anguish, as melodramatic as that sounded, should matter to anyone but her. “And I smile all the time.” She smiled now, as falsely as usual, she supposed.

How long was this heartache going to last? Would she always be haunted by a smile, a face, a touch, a scent that were just out of reach? What had he done to her? What had she done to herself?

She took a sip of tea and a bite of biscuit. This made her stomach roil, but it proved she was taking care of herself. The woman seated across the small kitchen table from her nodded with satisfaction. The fire crackled in the stone hearth. Rain pattered against the small window. A deer hound snored, curled on the braided hearth rug. A cat purred on a bench under the window. It should have all been soothing, homey. Grace’s nerves stayed on edge. Which probably wasn’t good for the baby. They kept warning her about all the things that might be bad for the baby. Grace knew whatever might be good or bad for her didn’t matter. She loved this child.

But she also loved the child’s father, and couldn’t seem to get him out of her mind. Or the memory of his touch out of her skin. Sometimes she would wake at night thinking she heard him calling to her. But there were too many guard spells around her for that to possibly be true.

She’d been sent to the McCoy family property in Scotland, where Aunt Meg ruled the comings and goings of the various Travelers with a gentle hand. There was a huge old stone farm house, three cottages, all the farm outbuildings, and always a few caravans of relatives passing through camped in the meadows. Here, Grace was surrounded by loving family, and found no comfort in it. She’d moved into the smallest of the cottages and kept to herself as much as she could. McCoys were gregarious and tended to stop by at all hours for a cup of tea and to check on her well being. Even with all the company she was desperately lonely, and she wanted to be left alone.

“I don’t know why Aunt Meg called for you,” she said to Granny McCoy. “Everything is going well.”

“Why shouldn’t I visit you, child?”

“Don’t sound so concerned. I’ve done what you wanted. Don’t pretend you care.” Her own petulance made Grace laugh. “I’m sorry. It is just that there was no need for you to make the trip all the way from London.”

“I am not a frail old woman, you know. I’m here on holiday while my shop moves location. One doesn’t like to keep the same address for long, now does one?”

“Best not to,” Grace agreed.

Traveler witches—all witches—had long ago learned it was safer to remain secretive and elusive. If they were really needed, fate had a way of making sure they would be found.

Granny ran a tea shop. She sold not only fine teas but tinned biscuits and herbal concoctions—such as tisanes, philtres, and spells—and took the occasional fortune telling client. Grace had learned her own skills at reading palms and tea leaves at Granny’s knee in her various tea shops.

“Now, finish your tea, Grace, and let me take a good look at the dregs of the leaves. Even if they only tell me you’re pining for a vampire you cannot have.”

* * *

Julien paced the windowless room of the London house. It was lit only by the fire in the hearth.

“I think I am going mad, Matri, since she disappeared. I know how melodramatic that sounds, but the hole in my being grows and grows.” He had explained about meeting, making love to, and then losing Grace. “I am sorry to sound so weak over a mortal woman, but I cannot deny these feelings. Or the pain.” Pain that was as physical as it was mental. “My head aches all the time. It feels like I am repeatedly running into a wall.”

“Perhaps you should stop trying to find this mortal girl.”

Julien whirled to face the head of his Family. She was his great-grandmother. She sat in a chair so ornately carved, gilded, and upholstered it might as well be a throne. And why not? Considering she was Matri of the Family, the female vampire whose word was law, whose every decision was instantly obeyed by the females and Primes of every Weaver House. She was the one they went to for help, and advice. After three months of hell Julien had finally come to her.

The Matri folded her hands in her lap and gazed at him serenely. Serene, but stern. Any protest he might have made died in his throat at her look.

“Do you truly want to continue this liaison with a mortal, even a psychic one? Think and answer clearly, my dear boy.”

Thinking clearly had not been what he’d been doing lately. He took a seat on the edge of a sofa. Beneath the steady gaze of the head of his family, Julien made himself go through all the implications and complications of the situation.

“Yes,” he said at last. “I cannot want anything else.”

She nodded. “I suspected as much. You are bonding with the mortal.”

Julien thought he should be surprised at her words, and deeply ashamed. He was neither. Of course he had suspected psychic bonding. “It began the first moment I caught her gaze,” he said. “It was the most wonderful moment of my life.”

She nodded again. “I have a bondmate. I recognize the feeling. I think you came here hoping I would order you to give up your quest to find the mortal. You hoped I would telepathically make you forget her.”