Wicked Lord: Part One (6 page)

Pain was good
, he thought. It could
make the un-dead feel alive. But as he rushed through the forest
carrying his bleeding, nubile virgin, a thought relentlessly
scratched at him. Why was the woman not affected by his bloodlust
and his carnally aroused allure? Normally, when a male vampire's
lust became fixated with a woman in close proximity, he exuded an
appeal that enslaved and mesmerized the woman he lusted for. It
couldn't be stopped. If a vampire's shaft was hard, the unwilling
became willing.

He despised it.

Beth couldn't believe the strength of the
man that carried her. She wanted him to be a man. He spoke like a
man, so she made him a man. Not a beast. It felt better when she
decided he was a man named Trinity, and he was trying to help her.
Not
eat her.

Besides, all the blood in her body had
pooled into her head from the position she was being carried in. It
made her feel lightheaded as her long hair trailed down to the back
of Trinity's calves. His pants were lighter colored than her hair
and on different bounces of her body, she could see the black ends
whipping against the material as he strode forward.

It came to her in snatches that she'd read a
romantic tale once about a great warrior saving a damsel and
carrying her away over his shoulder. It had sounded so enthralling
at the time. However, in reality it was horrid and jarring and
completely breath-snatching as she moaned and felt a black curtain
of unconsciousness fall over her.

Chapter Six

"Maiden?" Trinity questioned. He'd felt her
body fall limp over his shoulder. Sweat strafed his temple with the
effort he used to refrain from jerking to a standstill, to lick the
blood he could smell like a lover's scent, husky and cloying in a
cloud around them. Yet he realized she was too delicate to carry as
he was. He stopped his near-running pace and lifted his senses to
the immediate surroundings and then the woods beyond.

The foul creature that hunted human women,
and strangely not for their blood, he thought, was gone from the
woods. The monster's last bloody corpse was to the east of where he
stood and his own horse was straight ahead. Trinity felt his
younger brothers' attentions were elsewhere and that was good,
because this newest dilemma of one virgin's blood scent might be
hard for any of the Blacknall brothers to resist.

Resist they would … of course. Nevertheless,
why put all of them through the agony that one of them could
endure. And he was enduring. Church, he was certain, was not far
away. Perhaps his brother had conjured an idea of what they were
going to do with a young society miss. A very naked society miss,
completely out of her gown.

He steeled himself. It was becoming easier,
or perhaps he was becoming stronger. The tempest of desires that
attacked him was not the violent cyclone it had been. He would
choose, and he chose not to bite and feed upon the warm and
delectable woman in his arms. It was as if maturing from puberty
into manhood. Youngsters found it hard to control their lustful
intentions; a man did not.

He'd lusted after and he'd bedded women in
his long years. Always retaining a minute control to do nothing
more than that. When he engaged, if he did at all, he picked older
women. Widows whom he could ply with drink, so they might not
really remember the rougher sides of their sexual encounters. If
they happened to question a more animalistic tone, he simply wiped
those thoughts away from them.

In essence it had become tedious to control
and a bothersome event, to the point he'd not even tried to form a
liaison in well over …

"A year," he snapped, with dawning
incredulousness. By god, it had been
that
long.

Trinity drew an irritated breath at himself
as he lifted the lady off his shoulder. He bent one knee to kneel
as he lowered the woman to the ground, but he supported her with
his bent leg. Her head lulled forward, then to the side, and
finally caught arched backward. Dark tendrils of her thick black
hair fell away from her flushed face.

He saw several scratches on the cleavage of
her lily-white breasts. The maiden was ethereal, her skin was so
ivory, and he saw a cut on her pale slender neck. He forced himself
to glance quickly over to another on her delicate cheek. All those
abrasions had stopped oozing blood. However, the one that raised
his hackles and made him suck in a controlled breath was seeping
with sluggish determination over the hand and fingers he used to
support her back.

It was where the monster had slashed her as
she ran. He'd heard her pain at the moment of the attack. Somehow,
as he'd lifted her off his shoulder, his hand had reached beneath
his jacket against her bare skin. His hand settled just above the
lace on some style of short-corset she still had on, and his hand
was pressed against the gash, which was oozing blood.

He dared not move his hand, as desire like
the molten center of a wildfire swept through his empty soul. It
told him if he touched his unique saliva to the laceration on her
human flesh the bloodletting of the wound could slow. It reasoned
with him that if he bit her luscious neck, he could stop himself
after only a few draws and she wouldn't be harmed.

"Don't kill me, I
beg
you, my
lord."

Trinity's stalking gaze left the tender and
dark cove between the virgin's legs to lift to her pleading gaze.
The retort of denial was upon his lips, but it stuttered to a halt
when he saw his free hand, not supporting her back, was clasped
over her delicate throat. He was shocked that he'd not realized
he'd arched her throat and started to turn it to the side. He was
riveted … realizing tragically she might be too much of a
temptation for him.

"Please," she pleaded with enlarged pupils
of fear as her small hands touched his chest. They pushed
ineffectually.

"Do not plead with those pretty lips," he
said in a low, almost tender tenor, as he looked deeply into her
eyes and his breath blew across her face. Her body trembled, but
her eyes remained sharp, and once again, confusion furrowed his
brow.

"I cannot mesmerize this temptation," he
muttered, loosening his fingers over the warm and fragile column of
her neck.

"You look like a man," she whispered, and
her small hands uncurled from their fists upon his chest. They
flattened against his tensed muscles.

His own hand lifted from her throat and
lowered downward to graze over the curve of her exposed breast with
his curled fingers.

"Don't, please!" she cried, clenching her
eyes shut, while digging her nails into his chest.

It came to him that dressed, or rather
undressed as she was, didn't make her any less the innocent. He
rarely moved in the circles with young society girls … and he
reminded himself that they were the purest form of untried.

Beth couldn't believe the frothing of
emotions claiming her. She had never once in her life thought about
a man touching her …
her
bosom. She might die. She couldn't
believe it had actually happened. The resulting ache that shivered
through her chest was agonizing in its pleasure, instantly wanting
to make her feel its throe again. Then it suddenly sent pangs lower
into her core, completely surprising her into a small moan. She
desperately wanted to clasp her hands between her thighs as her
eyelids lifted.

"Maiden," the man who saved her, named
Trinity, rumbled in a deep tenor voice.

He knew things about that moan she did not,
and for the first time since she'd been attacked in the dark woods,
she shivered with cold.

"Trinity!" a man's voice shouted.

Beth gasped, clutching her hands over her
breasts, while trying to scrunch her lower body beneath the bottom
of the jacket, where it wouldn't go.

"Church!" Trinity shouted above her, lifting
his intense gaze above her head, even as he pulled her closer to
his strong chest.

"Is she alive?" Church asked, and Beth could
tell he wasn't coming closer to them.

"You cannot sense her heartbeat?" Trinity
asked, with his deep voice sounding amazed.

"Nay, just smell the bewitching blood,"
Church called back. "But I've a cloak here I'm throwing to you,
brother."

Beth felt Trinity lower his gaze to her, but
she pressed her face into his neck. For the first time she wondered
who these men were.

"You are more and more a mystery, maiden,"
Trinity said, and as he spoke, Beth could feel the rumble of his
voice through her hands pressed to his chest.

The shiver she felt was beginning to turn
into quaking of her limbs. After all the terror, her mind was
returning to the horrible predicament she was left in — nearly
naked, freezing, and with two men she didn't know. However
unreasonable it might be, this made her burrow even more into the
embrace Trinity offered.

Trinity heard Church announcing, "The lady's
brother is close."

"Adam!" his maiden cried with her humid
breath, warming his throat.

Trinity bent both their bodies forward to
reach out and grasp the cloak Church had thrown him. He lifted the
cloak and his gaze rose to Church who stood off several hundred
yards. With his predator's night vision, he could clearly see
Church's fanged sneer. Church worked his head to the left, then
right, arching his neck fighting for control. Trinity understood
that even staying at a distance, away from the maiden's unusual
blood temptation, was not really helping.

"Please, can't I go to my brother, my
lord?"

"What is your name, maiden?" Trinity tried
to speak softly as he brought the cloak over her. He dared not move
his hand from her back, until he could release her for good and
flee away from her.

"Beth Winslow," she whispered, clutching her
hands to the cloak and pulling it around her shivering body.

"Then, Lady Beth, if you put your arms
around my shoulders I will take you to your brother."

This time he watched Beth do it without any
hesitation and strange feelings curled into his chest he'd not felt
before. Later he would be astounded at his control, but for the
moment, he felt everything about the woman he carried in his arms
as she held onto him and her warm temple caressed his jaw line,
while her hair fell over his back.

"This way," Church called. "We are
close."

Beth embraced him tighter as he strode
forward and his exceptional eyesight caught glimpses of the back of
a well-lit mansion.

"What if someone sees me," Beth exclaimed,
turning her face into Trinity's strong neck. She didn't know what
to think or do. She was nearly afraid to ever let go of Trinity.
She felt him stop as he held her close.

"Bring him here," Trinity called.

She was so grateful he'd rescued her, when
he didn't know her. "Thank you," she offered, with her voice soft,
but tight. Then hot tears began running down her cheeks.

"Maiden? … Lady Beth?" His deep voice was
questioning, but she was too choked to respond.

Then she heard, "Beth!" It was Adam's voice.
She tried to call his name, but her crying only worsened.

"By God! What have you done to her?" Adam
demanded.

He rushed forward, however he was stalled by
the look alone of the tall, blond-haired man holding his weeping
sister in his arms. Adam quickly placed the man as another
Blacknall brother by his build and blond hair. The light was better
from the back of the mansion, just beyond the edge of the woods,
and he could see this brother better. He hoped he'd never have to
cross the man because he looked dangerous. His face was etched in
stone and pinpoints in his irises glowed with a red embedded in
unearthly yellow.

As much as the man made him pause, this
Blacknall held his weeping sister. His heart nearly broke. Beth
looked to be in quite a state with her black hair unbound and
trailing over her and the man that carried her. Adam could tell by
her bare shoulder and feet that her clothing was also in wild
disarray. If he'd not seen the mangled body of innocent Lady Ariel
earlier, he'd believe the blond brute holding Beth had ravaged
her.

Not even danger over the lethal qualities of
the Blacknall holding his sister was going to stop him from trying
to bring her to safety. He stiffened his spine, and he walked
toward Beth. It appeared this Blacknall looked as strained as any
man he'd ever seen.

Adam cleared his throat as the man's glassy
and unnatural eyes studied him. "I will take Lady Beth now," Adam
demanded with as much authority as he could muster into his
voice.

"In a moment," the brute uttered and the
aura surrounding him intensified.

"Now, listen here!" Adam replied hotly,
starting forward with his arms stretched outward.

"
Do
not try it," the man snarled, and
Adam swore he looked every bit a savage beast.

"Wait! Trinity means her no harm." Adam
stopped his determined advance at the sound of Christian
Blacknall's voice as he learned the name of the blond brute holding
his sister.

"Christian, stay away!" Trinity shouted, and
Adam turned to see Christian still coming toward them. "She's
bleeding, Christian! And there is something unnatural about the
effect," Trinity uttered.

"Bleeding!" Adam yelled, with alarmed
question. "Beth, come here now!" he yelled, while fairly leaping
toward her. Strong hands grabbed him, pulling him back from the
snarling Trinity, as his sister screamed and cried.

"Nay, Lord Winslow," Christian begged him.
"Please listen, we only want to help, but you must help us!"
Christian exclaimed.

Adam heaved panting breaths as he heard
Trinity speaking with compassionate tones to his sister. "Lady
Beth, do not be afraid," Trinity said. "I will give you to your
brother, but I need your help."