The Passion (33 page)

"Perhaps," she agreed. She stopped then beneath the shade of a mulberry tree, and looked straight at me. "But not for two."

She never took her eyes off me. I could not have mistaken her meaning had I been blind, for the gentle power of that gaze al but made my knees buckle. My world tilted on its axis, spun wildly out of control, blossomed in color and light. I said hoarsely, "I love you, Elise."

Her eyes shimmered. "My dear, dear Alexander,"

she whispered, "I know."

She lifted her hand, and with her knuckles she stroked my cheek, my ear, and, releasing one finger, delicately, expertly explored that sensitive curve of the skul just behind the ear. Sun and sound and the world around me faded away.

We had played the sex games before, we knew each other's taste and feel and zones of pleasure, just as we knew the same of dozens of others with whom we ran. We were comfortable with each other, easy and compatible. But she had never touched me like this before, never held me in that fire-eating gaze,, never deliberately unleashed the ful power of her sexual al ure.

Her scent enveloped me: the wine-sweetness of her breath, the sunshine of her hair, the salt of the skin between her breasts, the musk of sex. The tip of her finger, like heated silk, lightly teasing the center of my most erogenous zone was agony. For with her touch, with her scent, with her questing gaze, the query was implicit: Would I find her desirable?

Could she arouse me?

My own sexuality responded immediately and with a ferocity that shocked even me. I moved close to her.

I touched her throat, her jaw, her ear. Heat from her loins flowed into mine. Her pulse roared in my ears, captured my heartbeat, dragged it into her rhythm.

With the most delicate, sliding, almost liquid motion I touched her there, just behind the ear.

My muscles cramped and beads of sweat broke out upon my forehead as I fought back the Change that she, with nothing more than that simple, erotic touch, pushed me toward. And, to my everlasting triumph, I saw her own features go waxy, felt the flash of heat that consumed her body, and knew the sorcery was mutual—whether or not she had intended it to be.

I caught her hand quickly, before we went too far, and held it tightly. "Foolish girl," I said huskily, and was in part surprised that enough of the human form remained in me to form words. "Did you have to ask?"

The image of her was burned upon my brain, the need for her burned into my soul. I couldn't take my eyes from her. Nor could she from me. She said softly, "You are the fool, Alexander Devoncroix, fretting over whether or not I would be able to attract a mate… when it is clear, and has been clear for weeks to everyone but you, that I have already chosen one."

How to describe my emotions then? Can anyone who has ever loved fail to know them even without being told? Doubt, disbelief, wonder, joy, the purest ecstasy it is possible to know outside the mating bond. The discovery. The promise. A future unfolding that holds not one but two hearts fast together. Ah, is there in al of creation anything more perfect? Can there be in the life of man or werewolf or beast that crawls a moment more precious than the moment in which he discovers that he is loved?

It would have been easy then to let passion sweep us away. It would have been fitting, it would have been right. But in matters of state, things are rarely so simple—no more than they are in matters of the heart.

I took her hand and brought it to my lips. I said thickly, "Elise. You are my only treasure."

And then I caught the scent that had been there al along, so familiar to both of us that neither of us registered it as unusual until suddenly there was a sound—a rustling, a step, a half-caught breath—to go with it. We turned as one, Elise and I, toward the steps.

"Tessa!" I exclaimed.

But she was already running away, and did not answer my cal s.

Later, I would spend hour after despairing hour trying to piece together the events of that day from Tessa's point of view. If one could know the future, it has often been said, one would do nothing but live in the past. Perhaps. Perhaps the knowledge would paralyze us completely. I know, for my own part, it would have at the very least made me more alert.

In fact, that afternoon I spent less than ten minutes on Tessa and her mysterious—and annoying—

behavior. Elise questioned the door attendants and the guards as to whether Tessa had asked for her specificany, and when they seemed anxious that they had done wrong by not holding Tessa for questioning, she replied impatiently that they must not be foolish, the human Tessa was to come and go about the palace without impediment as she had always done.

But to me she said sadly, "We've hurt her feelings, I'm afraid. Do please send for her, Alexander, and let us make amends."

You may believe I had matters of far greater import on my mind than the feelings of Tessa LeGuerre. I was torn between the desire to do anything to please my beloved enchantress and a justifiable impatience with Tessa that she should distract me from what was, after al , the most crucial moment in my life thus far.

I said, trying to keep the note of irritability from my voice, "She is a spoiled child, and I wil do her no service by indulging her further."

"She is lonely and bored. Your house wil be empty by now, with al of the werewolves coming for the midsummer run—"

"There are plenty of humans to keep her entertained." But at the look of reproval she gave me, I softened. "I can't bring her back here on the night of a Festival run, you know that. We've had this argument before. And Tessa knew she was being disobedient to come here, which is why she ran when we saw her. I'm sorry she's lonely, but it can't be helped. I wil send a note to her tomorrow.

Perhaps I'll take her to town for sweets."

Elise smiled, passing her hand over my hair in a light, caressing stroke. "That would be kind of you, Alexander."

I basked in her approval and in the gentle radiance of her smile.

Then she said, starting up the steps, "And now I think I wil fol ow the example of the rest of the pack, and rest in the sun for the run tonight. Perhaps I'll see you," she added, with a coy glance over her shoulder, "in the forest."

And I replied gal antly, "You may be sure of it, mademoisel e."

And this, then, was the way of it between us, for even in the deepest matters of the heart it is important not to al ow our passions to govern our behavior, for good or il . Of course I did not want to part from her, even for the space of the afternoon, any more than she did from me. There were words to be said, looks to be exchanged, caresses to be shared. Yet how meaningful could those words have been had we not believed that we had the rest of our lives in which to say them? And knowing that we would never touch again in the way we had touched before only made the anticipation more sweet to savor.

Yet I confess as she left me, the emotions of a young male in love consumed me. I was awash in foolish happiness. I found her scent on a strand of my hair and I brought that strand to my nostrils, inhaling deeply, letting her aroma flow through my bloodstream like an intoxicant. Fierce possessive joy, deep and holy wonder, weak-kneed desire—

these were only a few of the emotions that leapt and tumbled within me as I stood upon the steps as helpless in ecstasy as a cub with first Change. The werewolves who passed me had no trouble determining the cause of my thral and grinned at me in companionable understanding; stil , I wanted to tel someone. She had chosen me. She had touched me with the intent to arouse me, and desire had flamed in her blood as wel . She wanted
me
, my Elise, my queen, the living embodiment of al that was strongest and purest and most perfect of our kind—she had chosen
me
. I wanted to shout it to the world, I wanted to howl it from the highest hil , I wanted to grab the next person who passed and dance around in circles and exclaim my wondrous secret. And the oddest thing was that the person I wanted most to tel was Tessa.

Of course I told no one, although Gault, who smel ed the musk of Elise's experimental caress upon me, knew immediately and seemed smugly unsurprised. To have made a comment of any sort would have been unconscionably impolite, however, and so he began to fuss about my toilet as I stripped off my town clothes, muttering about that "wretched human girl" and her impertinence. I did inquire whether or not he had spoken with Tessa, and he replied that she had insisted she would speak with no one but me and made a great fuss when he told her I wasn't at the Palais.

"She accused me of hiding you from her," he added with a sniff. "As if I would bother myself to lie to an insect such as she. When I heard you arrive, I sent her to you. Didn't she find you?"

I paused to glance at him, suspecting mischief—

which would not have been so unusual a thing coming from Gault, considering it was directed at Tessa. But his expression was bland as he careful y smoothed out a crease in my trousers.

I walked naked to the tub, and he added as an afterthought, "She did scribble a note for you, but I was so out of patience with her by then I tossed it directly into the fire."

I turned to glare at him. "What did it say?"

"I didn't read it. How important could it have been?"

On another day I might have upbraided Gault for his presumption, but there was at that moment no shred of anger anywhere within me that I could summon forth for the occasion. Besides, he was right.

Everyone of importance was here, at the Palais, and nothing that happened abroad this night could be of much concern to us. Human servants could deal with any emergency that arose at the estate until my return. I would see Tessa in the morning, and whatever problems she had—if in fact she had any problem at al —could be resolved then.

I settled into the sunken bath fil ed with steaming water and scented herbs, and soaked there until my muscles were like taffy and my mind stripped of al but its purest, deepest instincts. Then I stretched out upon the smooth, sun-heated stones outside my chamber and, one by one, masked al sounds from my ears save one rhythm, one pulse, one life. With my lover's heartbeat as my mantra, I sank deep into the river of the soul and there the two of us floated away.

TESSA

Chapter Seventeen

Tessa didn't even realize she had departed the Palais until she dismounted the horse in the stableyard of Alexander's estate, stumbling a little as she released the stirrup. She left the animal standing there and started toward the house, moving like a sleepwalker while the tattered pieces of her world swam about her head.

You are my only treasure
, he had said. Elise. His only treasure.

What a fool she had been. Of course he loved Elise.

And of course that was why he had sent her away.

That night in the garden… he had lied when he said it meant nothing. He had told her he and Elise were not mates, but he had lied. The noble werewolf, whose hands and lips and sweet words had loved her so wel , had in the end behaved no better than any human male when he found a woman he loved better.

Tessa wanted to feel angry at him for this. Al she felt was broken.

Denis had been right. Al that he had said to her in the vineyard… he had been right.

There would be an advantage in bringing the
Antonovs and the Devoncroix together again
, Elise had said. And when Alexander had refused to cooperate with his brother's scheme, perhaps his motives had not been so honorable after al . He must have known even then that he wanted Elise for himself.

Ambitious
, Elise had said of him.

These were the things that were swarming around in her head, darting and screeching at her and plucking her with pincerlike claws. Tessa felt smal and insignificant and lost, bleeding from a thousand wounds.

And yet above it al there was a clarity, stark and unquestioned, a simple truth. She stood on the steps of Alexander Devoncroix's house and she looked at its blank faceless windows and she knew at that moment she could turn away. She could simply walk down the drive and never look back, and al of this would be behind her. But if she went forward, her life would never be the same again.

Either way, al that she had known and loved and believed to be true was over.

It was over. She should walk away. But she could not.

She went up the steps as though in slow motion, leaning heavily on the rail. She went through the doors. She tugged off her coat and hung it on the carved hook in the foyer. She proceeded through the house with its wide light-swept corridors and tal cool rooms, and Denis Antonov was waiting for her in the receiving parlor. He rose when he heard her footsteps and beckoned her enter with a glass of wine in his hand. "I decided to accept your kind invitation to come to the house," he said, smiling.

"Wil you share a glass with me?"

A coldness settled in the pit of Tessa's stomach which was not fear but something much deeper.

"Who let you in here?"

He raised a reproving eyebrow at her tone. "A human girl. Should she have refused entrance to her master's brother?" He glanced around. "A modestly fine dwel ing, but I could never be comfortable here."

Somehow Tessa made her numb lips move, made her voice sound almost normal. "Why should you, when you wil have the Palais?"