The Hunger (20 page)

“I can’t call you Langley.”

He nodded, a little puzzled. “John would do. May I call you Bea?”

“No, that is what . . . others call me. I call myself Beatrix.”

He smiled. “Beatrix,” he breathed into her mouth. He felt her smile in return.

“John.”

She did a surprising thing. She pulled away and rolled him over onto his back, her hands upon his shoulders. He raised his brows in inquiry.

“Give yourself over to the moment, John.” She straddled his hips and hung over him in the light of the candle, her palms on his shoulders, breasts swaying, dark hair like a curtain. Her head dipped and she licked at his left nipple, then his right. Then she took it gently between her teeth, and sucked hard. Feeling shot through him. She sat up. Arching her back, she moved the moist parts between her legs along his cock until he shivered with sensation. Her eyes closed. Up and back. He could see her breath come faster.

“God, Beatrix. You’ll draw me too soon,” he warned.

She opened her eyes. Some trick of the candle near the bed made them seem almost to glow with a reddish light. She leaned down and whispered in his ear. “I have faith in
you. You have an almost infinite capacity for pleasure. I can tell.”

He knew somewhere inside that he was still weak from his experience in the hulks, but that seemed far away. She pressed her breasts against him and licked at his neck. He shivered. The hair on his right arm and leg stood erect Let her do what she would with him. He gave himself over to his hunger for her. Her heart thumped against his chest. Something sharp dragged along his neck just under his ear. Her teeth? He shuddered again.

Suddenly, she pushed up off his shoulders with something almost like a growl. She closed her eyes and when she opened them the reflected glow from the candle had faded. She managed a crooked smile. “A near thing,” she said in that contralto he would cross seas and sands to hear. “But I’ll do now.” He didn’t know what she meant and didn’t care. She raised her hips and with one hand slipped him inside her, then spread her thighs and pressed down even as he thrust up.

“Ahhh,” they both sighed as he filled her. She was very tight. That was a bit surprising. He held her waist and lifted her. She straightened and ran her hands through her hair as she moved on top of him. It lifted her breasts. And then John felt a pulling at his cock in rhythm to their movement. It was the muscles inside her, caressing him. He made a low sound in his throat.

“You can hold it, I know you can,” she said. And he could. He wasn’t sure how. He teetered on some brink of ecstasy, trembling on the edge just this side of insanity. Her breath was coming faster now. They went on, moving in unison like horse and rider, one. He adjusted the angle to reach her sweetest spot, far up inside her womb. That made her eyes open.

And then her eyes went unseeing and her moan of pleasure wound up the scale. He could feel her muscles contract around him and that sent him over the edge himself.
His back arched to meet her and he loosed his seed in some never-ending fountain of ecstasy.

Beatrix almost fell onto the bed beside him. He drew her into his arms and cradled her against his side. She had come off safely. A near thing. She had wanted so to taste his sweet blood. Her muscles continued to contract in fading echoes of orgasm. God in heaven! It was six hundred years since she had felt this. Had it ever been like this? Her brain was muddied with the power of her release. Her Companion scratched at her veins in disappointment, but it was a distant distraction. John would have allowed her to feed from him. He might have
welcomed
it he was so consumed in passion. She would have only needed to use a little extra compulsion to induce him to forget her feeding. But she had resisted. Yes. She was safe.

She wanted him to remember her for who she was, not some mistaken dream. It had been a grave risk even to use feather-light compulsion on him to prolong his enjoyment. She might have lost herself and fed. But if she had not he might have wasted himself too early, and she wanted to give him the best possible experience.

It occurred to her that it might have been some time since he had found release as well. Interesting. Especially for a man who had a reputation for bedding women at the drop of a hat.

He distracted her by kissing her hair, gently. He drew the coverlet over her against an imaginary draft in the warm room. “Are you cold?” he murmured with that deep bass rumble. She could hear it in his chest. She snuggled in to him and wrapped her arms around him.

“Surely you jest,” she whispered, and spread her palms across his back.

What was this?

She moved her hands up toward his shoulders. “Will you stay the morning with me? You can leave at noon as
though you paid a morning call.” She said it to distract him. There were two or three scabs still. But she felt the long lines of new scarring as well. He had been whipped, and fairly recently. No wonder he had been shy of his nakedness.

He chuckled. “In satin knee breeches and evening slippers? Why not post a notice in the
Observer?
It will save the gossips the effort of speculation.”

Why had this man been whipped? Under what circumstances could a gentleman possibly have come to that? “I shall send my incredibly discreet servant round to your incredibly discreet servant and collect some more discreet clothes, of course.” She murmured it almost into his mouth. “You need your sleep after all, since you are recovering from the influenza.”

“What makes you think I intend to get any sleep?”

She looked up into his eyes and saw the glow growing there. As impossible as it was, a throb began between her legs. She, who could not bring herself to make love even once in six hundred years, now wanted a repeat performance. Perhaps several. “Are you strong enough?” she murmured. She could make him strong enough. But she wouldn’t, not even the whisper of compulsion she had used to give him staying power a few moments ago. Why not? Had she not been using compulsion of one kind or another with men to feed her Companion for seven hundred years? Even if she did not use the power of her Companion, she used her knowledge of men to make them do her bidding, whether they would or no. Only this man had refused her. Only this man came to her freely, because he had the strength to say no to her.

“I shall endeavor to please,” he said, with mischief lurking behind his eyes. “Perhaps we could go a little slower this time? Just for my health, of course.”

She thought that slower just might kill her, judging from the reaction in her loins.

“Would you mind terribly if I tasted you?” he asked, feigning politeness, though his voice was husky. An Englishman who wanted to use his tongue?

Unheard of. But intriguing. “Be my guest,” she whispered.

John woke in the darkened room. Beatrix still lay in his arms. She looked fragile and innocent wrapped in the red brocade of the comforter. It made her skin glow white in the dim room. He had pleasured her with his hand, his mouth, his cock, had brought her, trembling, to some state of perpetual desire. He himself was spent to the point of being raw inside and out. How he had lasted three, no four times to her five, he could not imagine.

He had achieved what he had wanted of her for nearly two months. He half expected that achieving the citadel would give him the welcome protection of indifference. But as he watched her breathe in sleep, he knew he was more entangled than ever.

Who was this woman? And why should she attract him so? Was she not as much a user of men as Angela or Cecilia, Pauline Bonaparte or countless others? For one who had tried so hard and so vainly to find virtue for himself, she was all wrong. She was the opposite of virtuous. Why was he so damned attracted, then? Probably only because she could have ministers, poets, the Prince Regent himself according to some, and yet she had just succumbed to her passion with him.

She probably succumbed to her passions with someone every night. Who was to say that he was special to her in any way? Had he not known women who were addicted to the sexual act? And yet . . . she had seemed so surprised at the rising of her passions again and again in the last hours. She had clung to him as she cried out. True, there had been no clawing of his back, a sure mark of a woman’s passion. For that he was, frankly, grateful.
Yet she seemed genuinely transported. He was glad. And she had been clever, gentle, and kind at coaxing his own pleasure, even after he moaned that he could not. For that he could thank her experience, no doubt.

He sighed. This evening he would report to a cutter in the Pool and depart for France. At least he would not make an assignation he could not keep this time. He pressed his lips together. He would have to tell her.

A feeling of futility washed over him. What had he achieved here? He was going away, perhaps for months, perhaps to die. He was all his country had in defense against this mysterious woman, Asharti. That was the life he had chosen. He had made this commitment long ago in his search for some kind of virtue in himself. It was a commitment Barlow and those he stood for counted on John to keep. The choices were hard. He killed. He lied. He betrayed. But never his country. That life was the only island of certainty about himself he possessed.

And that life allowed no room for an ongoing relationship with a woman who had never met virtue, let alone embraced it. He had wanted her, without compunction, without reservation, because of the dreams of her that had sustained him in the hulk. Had he made her in his mind into something she was not? Perhaps even now, she thought to use his desire for her to induce him to tell her his secrets. Secrets which she could betray, if she was a spy.

He would never be sure of a woman’s motives again. He lived in a world where everyone’s motives were suspect and lies were a way of life. And this woman? She was not pure of heart any more than she was pure of body. This woman, more than any other, could never be part of life for a man like him. In truth, she had asked him nothing. Perhaps she sought to ingratiate herself and the prying would come later. The thought pained him. It didn’t matter. He would be gone before she had a chance to compromise him.

He looked down as she stirred in his arms and stretched like a sleepy cat.

“What are you doing awake?” Beatrix muttered, stretching. “Did I not exhaust you?” She had never felt so . . . full. It wasn’t just the sated feeling of desire wakened after six hundred years. No. She had had sex without succumbing to Asharti’s brand of evil. She had wanted only to bring John pleasure, to bring them both the satisfaction of a union. She hadn’t mixed the sex and blood. Was it only sex? She looked up. His dark lashes brushed his cheeks as he closed those intriguing green eyes for a moment. There had been a connection between them, a bond of caring. His caresses, after the first passionate fires had died down to glowing coals, were tender. She felt safe here in his arms for the first time in . . . in a long time.

She blinked once. Was she crazy? This man would despise her if he knew what she was. She sat up. She was who she was. He would call her a monster.

All right. She would use him to interest her for as long as she could to stave off the memories and the darkness. If he could help her, he would have served his purpose. There was no such thing as desire that lasted. That had been proved to her from the very first passion she had conceived for a man. She would not think of that other word. When one resolved not to think about it, yearning for it was all her mind could encompass. Love? Not for the likes of her.

Let not some intrigue and a night of passion contradict centuries of experience. She must gain her balance and the upper hand. She knew to her cost what happened when she did not. She had lost her balance after Stephan . . .

“Beatrix, I must tell you something,” he said, breaking into her thoughts. She pushed down the memory of that horrible time and looked up into green eyes like the sea in the late afternoon sunshine with the light behind the waves.
Her throat was full in anticipation of something, she didn’t know what.

“I leave tonight.” He put it out bluntly, without excuse.

Her heart thumped irregularly in her chest. Repetition cascaded over her, bringing blackness at the edge of her vision. “Oh, really?” she asked, somehow managing a casual tone even though his arms still held her, though her heart was stabbed clear through. What had she expected? How stupid was she to allow herself to be tempted into engaging, so much that she had actually had sex with him? All the hurt from all the years came hurtling down upon her. Mother, Stephan, Asharti . . . How could anything be different? Darkness gathered . . . “Do contact me when you return. We could perhaps arrange another night like this one. I enjoyed it.”

His expression shut down over a flash of shock. “It might be some time.”

She shrugged as she sat up. “At your convenience, love.” She managed to be sure it did not sound like an endearment. “If I am not engaged you can count on an evening of frolic.”

He swung out of bed. She saw the pink weals across his back that would shortly be scars. He had forgotten himself, after all his care for so many hours. She turned away, just as he glanced back in horror, realizing his mistake. “Should I send round for your morning clothes?”

“I’ll take my chances,” he growled, shrugging on his shirt.

Her insides were knotted, her throat full. Damn him! She roiled herself in the heavy coverlet and stood, not wanting him to see her naked anymore. “I take it you won’t breakfast?” she asked, attacking in self-defense. He looked daggers. “No. Well, then.” She escaped to the dressing room and donned a rose-colored wrapper. She could feel her own flush. As long as she had lived and she still could not prevent her blood rising to her face?

Langley bowed, once, crisply. He was dressed, though his cravat was tied indifferently. “Your servant, Countess,” he said stiffly.

“Not at all,” she returned. “The pleasure was mine.”

He turned. The door closed. He was gone.

She blinked in shock. Darkness lurked in the corners of the room. Before she could resist the memories came pouring over her. Her mother, Stephan . . . and after Stephan she had clung to Asharti as the only way forward. Oh, God in heaven . . .